It's on a downwards trend again after the spike created by the war [1]. However, I don't think this is a big factor, since Microsoft is the second-biggest buyer of renewable energy, so other prices apply.
That second link … it’s depressing how a site about renewable _energy_ writes an article about cumulative _energy_ consumption but consistently fails to tell the difference between energy and power.
Germany is in the middle of Europe? 3rd largest economy (by GDP) in the world? Lots of customers nearby? It has one of the world-wide largest Internet exchange nodes in Frankfurt (-> DE-CIX)? It helps to adhere to EU (-> GDPR) and German regulations having data local, when wanting to serve EU customers?
> It helps to adhere to EU (-> GDPR) and German regulations having data local
Not this again. The moment you transmit data to European based servers under control of US corporation you could just as well send it straight to the US. Same difference.
Nobody cares if AWS, Azure or GCP have EU datacenters. They are for most part understood as under US control.
> Nobody cares if AWS, Azure or GCP have EU datacenters.
That's wrong. For EU companies it makes a difference, since it allows them to be compliant. It may not be enough for you and me, but it is a huge legal (and also practical) difference. Generally I agree it is dumb to give these companies data (regardless where they are) and that includes already data from me as an end customer. They can't be trusted when it comes to data privacy or lawful use of my data.
Still there is a difference of data being used for company/business usage or for intelligence. Generally the trend to host data in the EU and having regulations on the EU level is a positive trend.
ETH is Switzerland. The claim was "nearby". And when you're in Germany's south (even in Munich, which is relatively far east), the major French universities are pretty accessible, too.
They could have just gone to Switzerland and Germany would have been nearby! Also you get Germand and French speakers! So easy to jump between France and Germany.
Electricity for the industry is cheaper, they are freed from some taxes (not sure which one) and obviously VAT is deductible which is not the case for end consumers.
Regardless of that it's a myth anyway. Germany has a very competitive electricity market, and it basically works by having all the costs on the actual electricity bill (will not be 100% true in the coming years, but it was until now). Some other countries have cheaper electricity on paper, but cover the real costs with government money / taxes. France is the most obvious example as a neighbouring country.
Read what I wrote. The price of electricity is what gets paid. If you pay 5c per kWh and say I have the cheapest electricity in the world, but your electric company has to get bailed out by government intervention your electricity is not actually 5c per kWh.
I just checked and you can get a new contract in Germany for 25-30c per kWh. If you compare it to France, the price there is 24c per kWh, but at the same time the government fought tooth and nail last year to be able to fund repairs of the nuclear plants. They want to spend 20-25 billion per year of taxpayer money in the coming years. So do the math on what it actually costs. If you run a real company for profit you fund the future repairs through the price of the things you sell.
There is no such thing in Germany, or at least there wasn't until recently. There is a renewables surcharge but it was always on the electricity bill. Last year it was removed because of high electricity costs so it wasn't needed, and the current plan now is to finance it through taxes once the fund gets depleted. Personally I hope it gets put back on the bill because I like to know how much things truly cost.
Residential electricity has the full rates on everything. Commercial electricity is a bit cheaper because taxes and network fees are reduced, and industrial electricity is even cheaper because the reductions are even higher.
In case of the network fees, residential customers directly subsidize industrial customers: network fees cover the network operation costs, so it's a zero-sum game where one party's reduction is another party's increase.
It's still somewhat expensive to operate electricity heavy industry in Germany, but much less outrageous than the residential prices that are usually used in for comparisons in the news.
Check your provider's current rate, it's probably closer to 30 cents. Then call them and ask if they want you to switch at the next opportunity or if they're willing to hoist you over into the new rate.
They even backdated my contract change by a few months when I did that.
