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by Holger Douglas

(Translated/edited by P. Gosselin)

For a long time, electricity prices have known only one direction: upwards! Ever faster, ever more clearly. Now the shock for many families: The Federal Government has presented official figures in an answer to an inquiry from the FDP Free Democrats parliamentary group in the Bundestag and announced the true extent of the electricity price increase.

320 euros extra annually per household

In the past ten years, the price of electricity for households and industry has risen by a third. According to the Augsburger Allgemeine, which quotes from the paper, the price of electricity rose by 35 percent between 2009 and 2019. For a typical household with 4,000 kWh per year, this means 320 euros in additional costs for electricity alone.

This is even more than the various comparison websites had previously calculated.

8% hike

BILD expresses how drastic it is: “The electricity price wave is sweeping over Germany! Now the energy giants Innogy, RheinEnergy and Vattenfall are also raising prices by eight percent”. Millions of households are affected.

Thus the electricity price is nowhere else as high as in Germany. One kilowatt hour of electricity now costs on average 30.03 euro cents. The experts at the Verivox comparison portal expect that prices will continue to rise this year, for a simple reason: Germany is paying for the transition to green energies.

With the so-called EEG feed-in levy, every electricity consumer pays for the feed-in of the unreliable and extremely expensive “renewable energies” and thus also for the destruction of the previously reliable and inexpensive power supply.

No way around subsidies

No sensible person would install wind turbines on a large scale in Germany. The yield of electricity is simply too low and too unreliable. If, yes, if it would not have to be propped up by money.

Money for nothing

According to the German government, wind turbine operators alone received a total of 635 million euros in compensation in 2018 because they were unable to feed their electricity into the grid because of the times it was not needed.

This “compensation” will be even more drastic in 2019, because in the first quarter alone there were strong winds; the wind turbines delivered so much electricity – but at inopportune moments, and so it could not be used, not even given away to neighboring countries.

“Anti-social”

FDP politician Sandra Weeser explained: “We have an extremely anti-social redistribution here. The weakest citizens would be burdened with the electricity price just as much as the strongest.”

Ms Weeser also sees the attractiveness of Germany as a business location at risk: “With our high wage cost level, we cannot keep increasing the production costs of electricity if we want to keep industry in the country.

“Gigantic redistribution machine”

The so-called EEG feed-in program continues to prove to be a gigantic redistribution machine. This is once again calling the profiteers onto the scene – as can be seen from the results of the solar tender of the Federal Network Agency. Tendered were 500 MW of capacity for solar plants, bids were submitted for a total of 1,344 MW. That is a 2.7-fold more than needed. In mid-January, the agency awarded the contract to “121 bids for a solar capacity of 501 MW to be erected”.

Unsteady supply means inefficient use of backup plants

This means: even more photovoltaic systems for ridiculously low hours of use and even higher EEG fees. And even more CO2 emissions from those conventional power plants that have to supply electricity when the sun does not shine because Germany still does not want to go without electricity. The very frequent, inefficient start-up and shut-down processes of these large power plants on standby also cause additional CO2 emissions. This increases operating costs.