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European electricity prices tumble into negative territory amid glut of green energy
(markets.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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It has happened in America too from time to time. I don't think it happens often anymore as there are things they can do to throttle windmills, connect to other grids,.and otherwise predict this. Nobody wins (not even the.consumer in the long run) when this happens so contracts get written to avoid it
Wait not even the customer? How?
You build wind turbines and do not use the electricity. So it might have been smarter to just not built them. At the same time, this is an important price signal to built more storage, grid connections and add felxible demand(with proper pricing system, so people actually do it).
Because negative price means they won't have money to maintain their infrastructure and so in a couple years of cutting maintenance trying to stay working things fail when they are needed and then you don't get power when you want it.
A negative price is almost always walled on both ends by solid positive prices. And a negative price does not mean a negative transmission fee. The price of producing electricity and the price of delivering it are separate things, at least in Europe. You'd still pay a little to the grid operator (who is typically forbidden from being an energy producer, except in emergencies) to receive the surplus energy.
Over here, negative prices typically happen when the weekend (industry is resting) is both sunny and windy.
During weekdays and nights, prices quickly turn positive again.
I would describe it as an incentive to store energy. If a storage plant has capacity, it will be pumping water uphill, charging batteries, heating a thermal store or making hydrogen / methane / whatever it makes (alas, there are very few such plants here). It will continue until there are many, so they can absorb the surplus.
Until then, consumers charge their cars (alas, only 1% of cars) and heat their sauna when it happens.
Yeah the theory of an actually smart grid is home and Industrial ai turning loads on and off to absorb over production and limit over demand - when automation is more evolved I think we'll certainly see it in common use, remote devices charging their batteries at mid day and things like washing machines turning on