* Germany shuts nuclear units, buys power from abroad
* Domestic coal, gas capacity may be driven harder instead
(Adds grid operator comment in paras 10, 11)
By Vera Eckert
FRANKFURT, April 4 (Reuters) - Germany has become a net
power importer from France and the Czech Republic since shutting
its oldest nuclear plants last month, utility group BDEW said on
Monday, sourcing much of it from reactors abroad.
German wholesale power prices have surged since the
government ordered seven of the country's oldest nuclear plants
to shut after a tsunami crippled a Japanese plant on March 11.
Berlin's reaction has made Europe's biggest economy a more
attractive market for nuclear power producers such as EDF
<EDF.PA> and CEZ <>.
Since the March 17 order to close around 7,000 megawatts
(MW) of nuclear capacity, Germany gas gone from being a net
exporter of 70-150 gigawatt hours (GWh) a day to a net importer
of 50 GWh of electricity a day, BDEW said on Monday.
"Power imports from France and the Czech Republic have
doubled," BDEW said. "German power exports to the Netherlands
and Switzerland have halved."
France gets more than 80 percent of its electricity from
nuclear plants, and the Czech Republic generates around a
quarter of its electricity from reactors and most of the rest by
burning coal.
Some of Germany's lost nuclear capacity has been made up for
by burning more coal, which has driven up coal prices, increased
Germany's climate-warming gas emissions and driven up the price
of EU permits to pollute. [].
Wholesale prices of German quarterly power in 2011 and the
benchmark contract for round-the-clock power supply in 2012 have
both risen by 12 percent, BDEW said.
Germany has some cleaner burning gas plants, which could run
for longer, but it currently makes more economic sense to import
power from French nuclear reactors or Czech coal and nuclear
plants than running Germany's gas plants around the clock.
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Graphic of German power revenue margins:
http://link.reuters.com/xyz78r
TAKE A LOOK-German energy industry plans: []
SCENARIOS-German power sector: []
German move may hurt users, help utilities []
World to warm if Japan panic spreads: []
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For the short term, Germany's neighbours have enough spare
plant capacity to keep systems supplied and in balance, European
grid operators' group Entso-E said.
But if summer peakload demand, driven by heightened air
conditioning needs, coincides with the nuclear shutdowns in
Germany, reserve power supply margins may shrink, Entso-E
Secretary General Konstantin Staschus told Reuters.
In the longer term, German utilities plan big capacity
increases to make up for the loss of nuclear energy, BDEW said,
hours before Germany's deputy environment minister said all
nuclear plants should be shut down before 2020. []
"In the medium term, other strategies may be used, for
example greater exploitation of existing, conventional domestic
capacity (coal and gas-based)," it said.
"This will depend among other things on the central European
merit order," it added, referring to a market mechanism whereby
the first plants to be used are those with the lowest marginal
costs.
For a table issued by BDEW on German power station
investment plans please click on []
(Additional reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff in Hanover, writing
by Daniel Fineren; editing by Jane Baird)
