Electricity and heat prices

Germany has the second highest electricity price for household consumers among other European countries, outrun only by Denmark. In 2016, the average price for household customers with an annual consumption rate of between 2 500 kWh and 5 000 kWh was 29.7 cent/kWh. This is 93%, 57%, and 46% higher than in Finland, Sweden, and Austria, respectively. Such high price is due to a huge share of surcharges and taxes (figure 9).

Only the EEG surcharge accounts for more than 21% of the final price. Moreover, there is a constant increase in the state-determined price components of the offshore liability surcharge and the surcharges paid under EEG, KWKG and section 19 of the StromNEV (The Electricity Network Charges Ordinance). Thus, in 2016, the price components, which are not controlled by the supplier (surcharges, levies, taxes, and network charges), amounted in total to approximately 75%, meanwhile the competitive part of the price (energy procurement, supply, and margin) was only 25%. (Eurostat 2017;

Bundesnetzagentur 2016a)

Figure 9. Household customer price breakdown as of 1 April 2016. (Bundesnetzagentur 2016b)

The same tendency can be seen for electricity prices for industrial consumers. Germany shows the second highest price within Europe for customers with an annual consumption rate of between 500 MWh and 2 000 MWh, outrun again only by Denmark. In the second semester of 2016, the average price was 19.58 cent/kWh, what is twice higher than the price in Finland and Sweden. Alike price for household consumers, the better part of electricity price for industrial customers is taxes and levies. The average national price without tax part in 2016 amounted to 7.93 cent/kWh, what shows that taxes and levies took approximately 60% of the final price. (Eurostat 2017)

Despite the fact that Germany with 3 372 heating plants has the biggest district heating market in the European Union, only 13.5% of all existing houses are connected to the DH network. In 2014, the percentage of new houses purchasing heat from the network was 21.5%. Nevertheless, the majority of new buildings (49.8%) were equipped with natural gas boilers; heat pumps and wood/wood pellet boilers were installed in 19.9% and 7% of recently built houses, respectively. (E&P 2015; FMEAE 2015) On top of that, there is still a big amount of houses, which use oil and coal to satisfy their heat demand; however, this amount is continuously decreasing due to the government’s program for phasing-out of such installations. Thus, to compare the costs of heat from conventional sources, it is necessary to mention not only the district heating price but also the price of natural gas.

According to data (Eurostat 2017), in 2016, the average natural gas price for household

customers with an annual consumption rate of between 20 GJ and 200 GJ (5.6 MWh and 55.6 MWh) was 17.83 euro/GJ (6.42 cent/kWh). The price for customers with a consumption rate of between 10 000 GJ and 100 000 GJ (2 777.8 MWh and 27 777.8 MWh) was 10.96 euro/GJ (3.95 cent/kWh). Assuming the efficiency of gas boilers with a heat capacity of 14 kW and 101-545 kW being 95.6% and 97% (Rinnai 2017; Viessmann 2016), respectively, it is possible to roughly estimate the price, gas boilers’ users had to pay for the heating of their homes. Therefore, the heat price (not including operational costs) for users with own boilers was 6.72 cent/kWh and for those with the central heating system (one common boiler for several dwellings) was 4.07 cent/kWh, while the district heating price was 7.6 cent/kWh (Energiforsk 2016).

4.1.3 Investment and production costs

For the rough estimation of investment and production costs in Germany, a CHP unit Spanner HK 45 with a capacity of 45 kWe and 108 kWth was chosen. Since there are no capacity restrictions for plants to be eligible for the government support, only one unit is installed in the hotel. The price of a unit is EUR 176 000 and installation costs are EUR 15 000 for plumbing and EUR 10 000 for electrical installation. The price of a drying system is EUR 35 000. The average price of wood chips in Germany is between 15 and 20 EUR/m³, which means 75-100 EUR/t of wet chips. (Spanner 2017; Westermaier 2017) The number of running hours per year and the share of electricity consumed on site are varied from case to case. All produced heat is utilized for heating and hot water production (80%) and fuel drying (20%). Excess of electricity is fed into the grid and remunerated with a feed-in tariff. On top of that, it was assumed that a loan, fully covering investment costs, for a period of 10 years was granted by KfW. Furthermore, in order to estimate yearly savings from the utilization of CHP installation, it was assumed that before the commissioning of a CHP unit, the hotel was buying electricity from the grid and was producing heat with a natural gas boiler. According to data from the Association of Energy Consumers (BEV 2017), in all considered cases, the hotel with its consumption rate is treated as a household consumer; therefore, prices of gas and electricity are 6.42 cent/kWh and 29.7 cent/kWh, respectively. Finally, for payback time calculation, equation (7) (Calculator 2017), considering the loan interest rate, was used:

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The summary of equipment related costs is presented in table 7.

Table 7. Summary of equipment related costs.

Unit Value

CHP unit - Spanner HK 45

Electrical / thermal capacity kW 45 / 108 Maximum number of working hours hour/year 8 000

Unit price EUR 176 000

Dryer price EUR 35 000

Plumbing price EUR 15 000

Electrical installation price EUR 10 000

Price of wood chips EUR/wet ton was obtained. Detailed information for the case with 8 000 running hours per year and 80%

of produced electricity consumed by the user can be found in Appendix 2. For the fast comparison of payback time, depending on the number of running hours and consumed electricity, table 8 can be used.