Danish electricity prices dunkelflaute evening cooking and laundry costs, Digi Mart USA News (Denmark): Electricity has been expensive in Denmark in recent days, and at 5 p.m. today the price rises to more than 6 kroner per kilowatt-hour.
Casper Brejnbjerg Olsen, director of subscription sales and customer service at the electricity company Ewii, said the price is noticeably higher than what is normally seen.
According to Olsen, the high prices are largely due to the weather phenomenon known as “dunkelflaute.” He said there is not much of the cheap, renewable energy available because it is not windy and the skies are overcast.
Olsen also said higher prices for oil and gas are pushing electricity prices up as well. When all electricity cannot be produced from renewable sources, fossil energy is used to supplement supply, and that sets the price.
DR asked Ewii to calculate what it costs on average to use electricity today between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., and how much can be saved by waiting.
Between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.
today, the average total electricity price according to Ewii is about 5.45 kroner per kilowatt-hour.
According to Ewii, an average oven typically uses between 2,000 and 3,000 watts, depending on the brand, size and type. For example, an oven using 2,500 watts that runs for one hour would use 2.5 kilowatt-hours.
In that example, using the oven for one hour this evening would cost about 13.6 kroner.
Although the electricity price is high, baking a lasagna for dinner does not cost hundreds of kroner extra.
(All of Ewii’s price calculations in the examples in this article were made using the Nord Pool spot price, Trefor network tariffs, Energinet tariffs, electricity tax and VAT. The electricity company’s own surcharge and subscription are not included.)
If you can avoid charging your electric car between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.
this evening, there is a good amount of money to be saved.
As an example, Ewii calculated how much electricity it takes to charge a Volkswagen ID.3 with a 58 kilowatt-hour battery from 10 to 80 percent. Between 5 p.m.
and 9 p.m. today, according to Ewii, that charge costs about 246 kroner.
If you instead wait until after midnight and charge the car between midnight and 6 a.m., it costs about 105 kroner. In other words, you can save almost 150 kroner by charging at night.
(According to Ewii, the calculation accounts for about 10 percent charging losses.)
Although the savings are not nearly as large as for charging an electric car, it is still possible to save a little on the electricity bill by running the washing machine tonight rather than this evening.
According to Ewii, a wash at 40 degrees typically uses about 0.6 kilowatt-hours, while a wash at 60 degrees can use up to 1.2 kilowatt-hours, depending on the age, efficiency and program selected for the washing machine.
Based on a price of about 5.45 kroner per kilowatt-hour between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.
today, and a price of about 2.33 kroner per kilowatt-hour tonight, the average laundry costs look like this: washing this evening costs more than twice as much as washing tonight.
