All about Energy sector

Due to the high electricity prices, windfall tax laws have been enacted in all EU member states that skim off surplus revenues from the sale of electricity. As a rule, only electricity producers are affected by this regulation (with the exception of Poland). The windfall tax laws stipulate that electricity producers may keep part of the market revenues generated as "legally permitted revenue". Any revenue more than this (surplus revenues) must be surrendered. Many member states have decided to deduct not 100 % but 90 % of the surplus revenues in order to leave plant operators an economic incentive.

At my farewell party in beautiful Cologne-Ehrenfeld, which will otherwise remain shrouded in mystery, a colleague asked me what I was going to do now. "Something new, I guess" was my answer, without shrugging my shoulders, without fatalism. "Yes, but what?" she followed up. "No idea," I returned. The new is always unknown, I think to myself, and you just have to open up to it and it will come.

Visitors entering the trading floor of Next Kraftwerke perceive much more monitors than people. At least four, sometimes eight monitors are grouped around each workplace. Traders watch the activities on the screens with full concentration: energy market prices, load and generation profiles, market information, weather reports, and plant schedules. The job is to keep an eye on, prioritize and evaluate a wide range of information. The acquired knowledge largely determines the traders' activities on the European power exchanges.

Hendrik Sämisch and Jochen Schwill, founders and CEOs of Next Kraftwerke, on the partnership with Shell Renewables & Energy Solutions

On June 22 of 2020, Poland came very close to a countrywide power outage: Power plants with a capacity of thirteen gigawatts (out of which, only six planned) went down – and subsequently, balancing energy prices rose to record level.

In our blog series “Next Stop” we are taking a closer at various global energy landscapes. This time our stop is in China, where Jan Völpel from our “Innovation & Development team at Next Kraftwerke visited a workshop on demand side flexibility.

Our new series of blog posts covers power markets throughout the world. Our next stop is India – Ravi Vaidya is writing his master thesis on Non-European Flexibility Markets at Next Kraftwerke as part of our Innovation & Development team. Together with Jonas Simon, who has just been to India on a business trip, they discuss the Indian energy market.

Our new series of blog posts covers power markets throughout the world. To kick things off, Alexander Krautz and Tobias Romberg discuss their trip to Japan.