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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 does effect electricity prices. For a non nuclear price comparison Germany and Poland are pretty good. Exchange traded price for Germany last June was 94.74€/MWh and Poland was at 118.17€/MWh. Germany has sometimes negative prices due to having significantly more renewables and that lowers prices.
Prices are there to show what infrastructure is necessary. This is basicly a sign for more variable demand and storage. Funnily enough a lot of the technologies currently used to electrify fossil fuels are somewhat variable demand like heat pumps and have some storage ability like evs. We need more green electricity anyway, so this is in no way a bad sign, but just a sign that there is an inbalance in built up between different green technologies. We most certainly need the power.
Yes, that's what I mean.
I honestly fail to see, how that is supposed to be a bad sign thou. It only shows that there is some overproduction at some times, usually weends with a lot of renewables. This is still not a daily thing to happen, even with solar being relativly predictable in summer. As it still does not meet work day demand in most places, althou it gets close.
Negative prices show overproduction and that is necessary to fill up storage, which is currently lacking. The good part is that overproduction drives down prices, whereas too much storage just costs money. So building generation first is the smart course of action. Looking aroudn, there are a lot of large scale batteries, variable demand consumers, such as electrolysis(for steel production) and large scale heat pumps with heat storage being announced. It is clearly working and leads to a further move away from fossil fuels. Can you please explain how that is a bad thing?
Only in the surge moments.
And show it through energy wasted.
If the consumers could adjust as fast at it's needed, there would be no negative prices etc.
This means inefficiency.
So what? This still drives down average electricity prices, which is what really matters. Right now oversupply only really happens on weekends and during nights, when demand is low, and there are at least good condistions for renewables. For renewables to actually lower prices even more, you want those moments to extend. The issue is that the generation costs for fossil fuels are significantly above renewables, which are basicly at zero. Due to price being set by the most expensive plant currently producing you will not see low prices from renewables unless they meet demand. Most of the time they are unable to do so, unless demand is low and we have the higher fossil fuel prices.
In other words, we need more surge moments.
This means inefficiency.
Actually the planned system is one with a bit of inefficency. When you built just enough renewables to produce enough electricity for the entire year, the electricity storage you need is insanly large. As you are basicly forced to built storage able to store electricity from sunny and windy summer days until no wind cloudy winter days. So from perfect conditions to absolutly worsed. The thing is there is usually some renewable electricity available at all time. A bit of wind somewhere and the clouds go away a bit during the day. So it is never totally zero for days and there are a lot of just okayish days. So you can use the power from just good days, for the really bad ones as well, which lowers your storage a lot. In fact most of the storage needed is basicly for a single night, which allows you to go most of the summer without fossil fuels at all. Basicly you overproduce a few percent more power, but cut your storage needs by 90% or so. To go most of the way you need storage for a single night. The rest can be long term storage, with less efficency like hydrogen burned in old gas power plants or biomass in coal plants. Obviously hvdc grids help a lot as well and they are built at speed. Norway and Sweden have insane storage capacity in form of hydro, which is intressting for the countries further south for example. Italy, Spain and Germany also have very different weather, which means different renewables power generation at times. That is also currently expended by a lot basicly everywhere in Europe.
In other words, this is a minor problem of loosing a few percent of generation for a bit until the systems are finished and a lot of the are built and planned right now. Without those prices the intrest in it would be lower thou. In terms of problems this is a very nice one to have and honestly good news. Certainly beats having to use fossil fuels all the time.
Yes, I've read about it, quite cool.
In everything else - I agree, just saying what negative prices right now indicate. I've actually meant exactly this - that there has to be sufficiently diverse and interconnected storage and the scale at which it all would even out.