[dennisdamenace]

The article also fails to distinguish whether this was the day ahead market or real time market.

In various regions in the US prices go negative often. Nothin usual. Good time if you have storage.

But most of the generation, 89%, is in the day ahead market which rarely goes negative.

The article also doesn’t bother to mention that Germany burns more coal than the US as a percentage of fuel mix.

Lousy article misinforming it’s readers.

[xxgreg]

Fun fact. The US burns more coal per capita than Germany. Sure theres lots of cheap natgas, but Americans tend to use a lot more electricity. Aircon isn't the difference either, this only makes a small difference.

[shagie]

The data at http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Coal/C... for 2001 shows the US and Germany neck and neck in the coal per capita with the US slightly more. https://www.statista.com/statistics/604946/per-capita-coal-c... for 2015 has similar comparisons.

The 2015 data shows the US at 1.63 metric tons of coal per person (?!) and Germany at 1.38 metric tons of coal per person.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/10/10/why-arent... goes into the breakdown of German power generation. As noted, its actually going to get worse as Germany gets rid of its nuclear power (currently 13% of load).

Overall, for power consumption per capita, yes... Germany uses much less than the US (12,071 kWh for the US, 6,602 kWh for DE).

One thing to note in that is the further north and continental you get (colder winters), the more the power consumption goes up. Norway (24k kWh), Canada (14k kWh), Finland (14k kWh), and Sweden (12.8k kWh) all use more power than the US per capita. Likewise, industrialized equatorial countries also use more power per person (probably for cooling?).

[dennisdamenace]

Are you looking at domestic generation or imports too?