[pyrale]

The author's point is that Spain's electricity is very cheap compared to other European countries thanks to its great electricity mix, etc.

The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread are extremely limited. If Spain was located near Germany and well interconnected, their prices would look like Germany's. And while cheap energy is pictured by op as a good thing, Spain understands very well that higher prices are good for its renewables industry, and is pressing for more interconnections[1].

The overall tone of the article feels like the author is here to extoll the virtues of renewables.

[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/8e94079c-585f-11e4-b331-00144feab...

[maartenscholl]

This is an interesting point about energy market balancing but it has causality backwards. Spain simply has a better energy mix than Germany, no matter how big the spread between the countries is as a function of interconnectedness.

[jauntywundrkind]

Spain also has pretty sensible legislation that is somewhat green. For large public areas the lowest allowed AC setting is 27°C / 81°F. Where-as in America you'll go to a mall and it'll be 65°F. https://www.catalannews.com/politics/item/spain-limits-air-c...

Probably doesn't make a ton of difference. But I found that very respectable. It made me hopeful they have other basic green sensibilities.

[ahartmetz]

That is very sensible of Spain. I find that 27°C + the dehumidifying effect of AC is exactly the comfort temperature when wearing hot weather appropriate clothes. American polar breeze AC settings seem completely insane to me.

[outime]

It will make a real difference if you're at the gym or in a very crowded place though.

[Teever]

Wouldn't the AC system adapt to the increased heat production from the extra people and maintain the temperature at 27'C?

[ahartmetz]

The AC's temperature sensors won't feel your microclimate or body temperature. I'm all for 27°C in the general case, but yeah I'd prefer a few degrees lower in the gym or in a dense crowd.

[koolba]

> Spain also has pretty sensible legislation that is somewhat green. For large public areas the lowest allowed AC setting is 27°C / 81°F.

As a red blooded American, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen all weekend.

[mixmastamyk]

Sounds good to me. One thing I hate in the summer is being dressed in shorts and t-shirt then going inside and freezing because the AC is on full blast.

[ahartmetz]

You should try it, I find it rather pleasant. When I was in an office with per-room AC settings, I liked 27°C (shorts or light pants + T-shirt or short-sleeved shirt). When I was in Asia, I noticed that the setting was commonly 27°C. It seems to be only North America where "let's show nature who's boss" AC settings are common.

[steveBK123]

Maybe, but most people I know who set their summer thermostat super high like 81F also do the same in winter.. so its just hot vs cold preference.

Find me someone running 81F in summer and 59F in winter and I'll applaud their eco-consciousness.

[tormeh]

27 is really bad when it's constant. I lived like this for long periods of time (top floor + evening sun) and it's exhausting. 25 is fine.

[ahartmetz]

27 with air conditioning is different. It's less humid and usually the air is also noticeably moving.

[alamortsubite]

Even within the U.S., there's a correlation between obesity and climate control preferences. Spain's obesity rate is half ours.

[leonidasrup]

Let's not forget that Spain has better theoretical PV potential.

"Global horizontal irradiation (GHI, measured in kWh/m /day), the long-term amount of solar resource available on a horizontal surface on Earth."

German average 2.978 kWh/m2

Spain average 4.575 kWh/m2

https://globalsolaratlas.info/global-pv-potential-study

[hunterpayne]

The article is a mix of facts and figures on the supply side. However, the real reason for the current cheap prices is the lack of demand. Spain's economy isn't doing well and they have hurt their tourism industry with politics. That's most of the reason for the temporarily cheap power that they mostly import from their neighbor. Being dishonest about their energy policy is pure politics.

[tzs]

How have they hurt tourism? According to the data here [1] tourism has been going up every year since 1996 except for a moderate hit during the 2008 recession and a big hit during COVID.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Spain

[cheema33]

> Spain's economy isn't doing well and they have hurt their tourism industry with politics.

I don't live in Spain. And this is the first I have heard about their politics keeping tourists away. Can you elaborate?

[troad]

There have been protests against tourism in Spanish cities, esp. Barcelona.

As always, the protests are really about local issues (lack of housing, jobs, etc) and foreigners are being scapegoated. A lot of this has a dark edge - e.g. locals spraying water on people that appear foreign to them. The framing around sustainability and 'over-tourism' allows the far left to get in on the xenophobia that's been so useful to the far right. Much easier to attack foreigners than actually come up with solutions to deliver more housing or jobs.

Media narratives aside, these incidents have not affected tourism at all. Spain is and continues to be a massive tourism destination, and the average tourist has never even heard of any of this.

[randochatter]

You should correct this article, they don't know Spain's tourism is in shambles either. https://apnews.com/article/spain-record-foreign-tourists-5aa...

[throwaway_2626]

Spain's energy policy could easily be improved, but saying that Spain's economy isn't doing well is disingenuous. In terms of GDP, it's one of the countries with the fastest growth in the EU [1].

Also, our economy is becoming more diversified, precisely thanks to lower energy prices that attract industries that previously gravitated towards Germany and Eastern Europe. [2]

I'm curious about how politics have hurt tourism industry, though, if you could elaborate.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/stellantis-chinas-leapmo...

[zdragnar]

It's easy to win the fastest growing award when it has been doing so poorly before. Youth unemployment is at a near twenty year low of 24%, down from recent years around 30%.

As for politics hurting tourism, there's some formal policies restricting airbnbs and placing higher tourism related taxes on over-encumbered areas, but I think most of the detraction is the anti-tourism protests from locals, which were quite large in 2024-2025. You'd have to consider local sentiment as "politics" for the statement to really be true, I think.

[BonitaPersona]

The GDP is growing simply because the population is growing massively. This is such a low-quality measurement driven by government propaganda. Quality of life, GDP per capita, and plenty of other measurements are needed to actually evaluate how an economy is going.

And Spain's economy is far, very far away from "going like a rocket", like your misinformation echo-chamber tries to parrot.

[tpm]

> The GDP is growing simply because the population is growing massively.

Per capita GDP is growing too, so this is simply wrong.

[PowerElectronix]

To add to this, Spain gets it gas from Algeria, the rest of europe gets it from Russia and the middle east. So yeah, It's easy to have better prices when your gas is comparatively free from disruptions.

[tialaramex]

Sure, Algeria does have gas pipelines to Europe. Two of them actually. The smaller one goes to Spain and Spain as we see in this article has lower electricity wholesale prices.

But er, the bigger Algerian pipeline goes to Italy, a country with notoriously high energy prices. So if Algerian gas was the secret that's actually a big problem for you.

[MakersF]

What are you talking about? Spain is one of the biggest importer of Russia LNG, at 25% https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-remains-spains-to...

[spiderfarmer]

Check your facts.

[miohtama]

Hmm. Everyone should just disconnect Germany, let them freeze, and enjoy cheap electricity?

[generic92034]

You forget the times with an overproduction of electrical energy in Germany. Then they sell it for a negative price to the neighbor countries. Later, when they need more energy they buy it back at a premium. It is good business for neighbor countries with enough storage (pumping hydro, etc.).

[ragebol]

Spain's neighbors could also have lower energy prices with more interconnection to Spain. The whole network diversifies, which would be more beneficial for Europe as a whole.

[Leonard_of_Q]

That would raise electricity prices in Spain just like prices in Sweden - which traditionally had low prices - went up with the 'diversification' of the European distribution network. While these price effects were mostly seen in the southern half of the country due to the way Sweden is divided into 4 price regions with most of the interconnects being found in the southern-most region the recently inaugurated 'Aurora' interconnect with Finland caused prices in the north of Sweden to shoot up [1].

[1] https://www.aftonbladet.se/minekonomi/a/Exwx4A/elprissmocka-...

[pyrale]

The issue is that Spain has three interconnected neighbours (France, Portugal and Morocco) and all of them are overflowing with electricity.

The best candidate for lowering prices would be France, but France would most likely re-export that electricity to other countries, and paying to build up the internal grid to carry electricity that is neither bought by nor sold to French actors isn't very attractive.

Ideally Spain would interconnect with Italy, but that's more expensive.

[crote]

There has already been a serious proposal for a HVDC cable from Morocco to the UK. If that's possible, why not go for Spain-Germany?

[toast0]

Hvdc in the ocean requires way less right of way than hvdc over land. Running oceanic hvdc from Spain to Germany might have some trouble in the English channel where it would be in territorial waters.

Spain to UK might make more sense.

[pyrale]

Spain has also floated he idea of a HVDC cable to the UK, but it's never happened.

Sometimes, headlines are out of control.

[PowerElectronix]

France systematicaly refuses to increase the power of their interconect with Spain, as well as to make a gas pipe that would provide cheap Algerian gas to the rest of europe.

[pyrale]

An interconnection is being built up as we speak.

That being said, building new interconnections makes no economic sense for France. The country has no unserved consumers close to the border. That means any electricity imported from Spain would have to be carried further. That involves grid spending paid for by french consumers, without any benefit for them.

The same goes for gas pipelines. No one enjoys big infrastructure projects for stuff they don't really need.

[pyrale]

That's not my point. My point is that the price spread between EU electricity markets speaks more to the availability of interconnections than to the virtues of one country's electricity mix. The article gets to that conclusion because that's what it was looking for.

The one question the article leaves open, but which is pretty relevant, is the question about who should pays for stability services to the grid.

[watwut]

Absent interconnectivity, the spread of the price is literally virtues of the electricity mix.

With interconnectivity, those virtues are less visible in local prices. They would be visible in earnings.

[noprocrasted]

Then you'd have people run extension cords across the border and selling their cheap electricity at inflated prices to their freezing neighbor.

[mhh__]

normally when you buy electricity it costs money!

[victorbjorklund]

Many times negative spot prices.

[XorNot]

Which is bad, it's a market and infrastructure failure. Negative prices are to get generators to turn off.

A new feature on solar inverters is curtailment mode so they can be remote shutdown when the grid goes negative, since if you're on wholesale energy pricing you'll be charged if you keep driving the grid.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's a good thing and you explain why in your second paragraph.

What gives people the right incentives to increase or reduce curtailment? The market price being negative or positive.

[XorNot]

If the market is being driven negative then it means there's an oversupply. Which means overall the price of electricity is higher then it should be - negative prices have to be compensated by higher positive prices at other times, and reduce the return on capital to build new power infrastructure of all sorts.

Turning off productive solar panels is wasting power.

[mhh__]

This is a lesson in how electricity isn't really a commodity e.g. it's very very difficult to send some electrons from one side of the world to another.

[hn_throwaway_99]

But all commodities are like this. It is actually pretty easy to send some electrons great distances, or heck at least it's a well understood, solved problem. It's just that those interconnections haven't been built yet.

Heck, oil is probably the "default" example of what a commodity is, but we're now all acutely aware of what happens when moving that oil from one place to another becomes exceedingly difficult.

[pyrale]

> or heck at least it's a well understood, solved problem.

It is not. As a case in my point, Spain had a blackout last year (and I completely believe they are competent professionals - the task is just hard).

> It's just that those interconnections haven't been built yet.

They haven't been built because the grid isn't just a technical problem. It's also a socioeconomic problem, and adding new interconnections would require finding who needs to pay for it ; and currently, that question has no answer.

[bryanlarsen]

Hard is relative. Sure, it's hard, but it's a lot simpler problem than something like being able to consume tropical fruit in a temperate country in the middle of winter.

The difference of course is that the invisible hand of the market gets that fruit into grocery stores. For various relatively good reasons, power is driven by very visible hands.

[pyrale]

> Sure, it's hard, but it's a lot simpler problem than something like being able to consume tropical fruit in a temperate country in the middle of winter.

"Brain surgery? Well, that's not exactly rocket science..."

[gusgus01]

There are quite a few visible hands driving the fruit industry. Trade agreements, tariffs, water rights, disease/blight controls, and of course weather events/patterns are regularly in the news and discussed as it pertains to the cost and availability of various fruits (and veg).

Off the top of my head, we've recently had shortages of fresh strawberries because of weather in California, a shortage of peas because of weather too, and various changes in Trump's tariffs were done to try and alleviate the rising cost of certain fruit and veg.

[toast0]

Commodities are traded on type, quantity, and place. Oil of a specific grade at a specific port. Pork bellies (no longer traded) of a specific grade in Chicago. Etc.

If you want the commodities elsewhere, you have to provide for transportation. Same for electricity. Grids (or grid sections) where supply outpaces local demand and transmission to remote grids can hit negative spot prices even when neighboring grids haven't.

[pyrale]

That it is treated as such speaks volumes to the craft of the people designing and maintaining the grid.

[mhh__]

Unfortunately in Britain at least politicians are absolutely dead set on taking the piss / abusing this by e.g. adding huge amounts of subsidy and stealth taxes into what should be price discovery mechanisms (or for example when was the last time you heard someone talking about how cheap renewables are and discuss the CfD schemes).

[tialaramex]

> when was the last time you heard someone talking about how cheap renewables are and discuss the CfD schemes

All the time? Every single HN discussion about this ends mentioning CfD, often as if it's some secret nobody knows about even though the CfD strike prices are often headline news when they're agreed.

[mhh__]

I've basically only just seen this stuff started to be discussed critically in the media in fairly recent years.

not including $work discussions with energy traders.

[tialaramex]

> in fairly recent years

Although this financial instrument dates from late last century, its use in energy markets is much newer, the UK began using CfDs for electricity about a decade ago.

So, yeah, if you recall conversation about wholesale electricity prices back in 2010 they wouldn't have mentioned CfDs for the same reason they didn't mention the effect of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it hadn't happened yet. Back then renewable electricity generation schemes were subsidised very differently.

[ZeroGravitas]

Why are you hearing it discussed critically? It's a great British innovation that has demostrably made the world a better place and provided the UK (and others who have copied it) with big investments in cheaper and cleaner energy.

[verzali]

It is actually very easy to move electrons. I only need to get on an aeroplane to move a lot of electrons around.

[leonidasrup]

It's very easy to move electrons, it's just expensive to move lot of electrons.

Just to illustrate the scale costs of energy moved in the form of natural gas:

Nord Stream 1 + Nord Stream 2 with combined capacity of the four pipes is 110 billion cubic metres per annum (3.9 trillion cubic feet per annum) of natural gas.

Calorific Value of Natural Gas from 34 to 52 MJ/m3

https://met.com/en/media/energy-insight/calorific-value-of-n...

So energy per annum for NS1+NS2 is between 3.74^18 J and 5.72^18 J. The maximal power throughput of NS1+NS2 is then between 118GW and 181 GW.

"According to Gazprom, the costs of the onshore pipelines in Russia and Germany were around €6 billion. The offshore section of the project cost €8.8 billion."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_1#Costs_and_financ...

So the cost is about $123M per GW of capacity.

For comparison: the Biscay Gulf electricity interconnection

https://cinea.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/cef-energy-bisca...

"The EPC contracts will cover two high-voltage direct current (HVDC) links (each with a capacity of 1000 MW, amounting to approximately 1600 km of HVDC submarine and land cables), the two converter stations and the civil works associated with the land cables."

2000 MW capacity with cost of EUR 2.85 billion gives:

1425M Eur per GW of capacity

Of-course the projects have been build decades apart so inflation plays a big role and Nord Stream pipelines are currently damaged.

[ahartmetz]

I think the joke was that all matter is full of electrons.

What you really want is electric potential differences that push electrons. It's the difference between having oil and having hydraulic energy (pressure and flow rate).

[sega_sai]

It is worth mentioning that the linked FT article supporting the claim is from 12 years ago.

[pyrale]

Yeah, that's not new. Here's another article from 2025, in the wake of the blackout.

https://www.politico.eu/article/france-needs-eu-push-on-powe...

[g8oz]

The relative isolation you cite for power being cheap were true a decade ago when power was expensive. The author is correct in extolling the virtues of renewables.

[try-working]

This is correct. The price for electricity has been increased by 2x-10x in the Nordics because of the interconnect with Germany.

[iot_devs]

I mean it is hard to argue with the number - I believe everyone will benefit for more interconnections. More energy to Europe, more money to Spain.

And for the numbers it seems obvious that renewables are a fundamental part of the picture.