this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Mildly Interesting

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It's still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it's pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.

Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (22 children)

Generally the heat was only “on” at night when electricity was cheap

That is exactly why rates are going negative during the day now. Baseload generation benefits from artificial increases in the base, off-peak load. With solar and wind generation increasing, we now have a need to reduce that base, overnight load, and increase peak, daytime load.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (20 children)

At risk of starting a whole new fight, this is why hybridizing renewables with nuclear doesn't work. They don't cover for each other's faults very well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (16 children)

Nuclear isn't particularly good for leveling the daily demand curve, no.

But, it can be very useful for leveling the seasonal variation. Slowly ramping up nuclear production to make up for the short winter days of December, January, February. Slowly rolling it back for the long summer days of June, July, August.

Nuclear is also an excellent option for meeting overnight demand.

But you're right: it is terrible for making up for inclement weather, and other short-term variation. We will continue to require short- and medium-term storage. We will continue to need peaker plants, although we will hopefully be able to fire them with hydrogen instead of carbon-based fuels.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

And don't forget that the plants are really expensive. Having them produce very little or even no power for half the time doesn't help that at all.

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