Post #3342725

2026-06-18 03:10 UTC

Spain’s renewables revolution is paying off: Electricity bills are lower despite energy crisis The country has long had some of the lowest wholesale electricity prices in Europe (including significant periods of negative prices) but households often saw higher bills due to marginal costs like grid balancing with gas. Those costs have improved as others have seen costs rise, and Spain now has household electricity rates lower than the EU average, as well as their neighbor France https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/16/spains-renewables-revolution-is-paying-off-electricity-bills-are-lower-despite-energy-cris #RenewableEnergy

Replies (5)

@bascule@mas.to 2026-06-18 03:15

Spain's grid still has a lot of problems, of course. They need more investment in BESS to transform curtailment and negative wholesale prices into a replacement for some of that gas balancing. They have early adopter syndrome in that much of their generation lacks grid-forming power electronics. Too much, it seems. But that fixes itself as new grid-forming generation capacity is deployed. They're also an excellent candidate for enhanced geothermal which can both help lower marginal costs with firm, flexible, dispatchable electricity as well as seasonal thermal energy storage. https://europeangeothermalcongress.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/30-SPAIN-EGC-2025-country-update.pdf #RenewableEnergy

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@gimulnautti@mastodon.green 2026-06-18 04:44

@bascule@mas.to Add some of CATL’s new sodium batteries on grid scale in 2027 to that, it’s gonna become even cheaper..

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@Npars01@mstdn.social 2026-06-18 05:23

@bascule@mas.to This is another item that terrifies oil oligarchs & their financiers. What happens to a fossil fuel funded fascist movement when the cost of energy falls through the floor? What happens to local economies like Africa's or India's when they stop being drained of cash at the frightening rate of $30 million an hour? What happens to a nation's tax revenues when the population stops buying gas & the gas tax revenue vanishes? Solar & wind are now cheaper than oil. Home solar is untaxed.

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@NatureMC@mastodon.online 2026-06-18 08:05

@bascule@mas.to ... and what about all the (planned) datacenters?

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@Sylvhem@eldritch.cafe 2026-06-19 14:45

@bascule@mas.to Sadly, in France’s case, it’s not thanks to solar or wind energy, but to nuclear power.

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