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Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

fortune.com

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Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

#11

Post by pydry »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany already buys electricity from France. The cost mentioned above are the subsidized charges by the EDF to the french government. Germans would get the full cost which is much higher than the quoted price here. Besides nuclear power is not flexible enough to amp it up and down according to demand (unlike coal or petrocarbon industries).

French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities"). Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas generation to retire [2] [3]. TLDR More interconnector capacity,…

Which theyve actually used very very rarely.

Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Theyre ridiculously cost ineffective when used for load following since it's basically curtailment.

This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as theyve been plummeting in price).

Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

#12

Post by paulsutter »

topper-123 wrote: post #9

Isolated this is a zero sum game in favor of buyers (someone has ti take the electricity), but longer term, this shows there needs to be better greater electricity storage solutions available, i.e batteries or similar.

Negative prices make storage very practical

Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

#13

Post by [deleted] »

pydry wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities"). Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas generation to retire [2] [3]. TLDR More interconnector capacity,…

Which theyve actually used very very rarely. Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Theyre ridiculously cost ineffective when used for load following since it's basically curtailment. This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as theyve been plummeting in price).

[deleted]

Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

#14

Post by andrewxdiamond »

paulsutter wrote: post #12
topper-123 wrote: post #9

Isolated this is a zero sum game in favor of buyers (someone has ti take the electricity), but longer term, this shows there needs to be better greater electricity storage solutions available, i.e batteries or similar.

Negative prices make storage very practical

And de-incentivizes supply. A real solution need to be available to balance the supply and demand of power such that the rates on both ends are predictable.

A market where a good fluctuates between profitable and not is not one very attractive to investment.

Playing the video game Victoria 3 has taught me a lot about healthy markets. You have to play both sides of supply and demand to get to the prices you need

Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

#15

Post by hackerlight » 

  "French electricity prices turned negative as a drop in demand and surging renewables output prompted some nuclear reactors to power down."
This is an issue with nuclear in a net zero scenario. Nuclear starts out at 90%+ capacity factor, like in California today. But as fossil fuels become a low percentage of the grid, you inevitably get a low capacity factor which increases LCOE. Even if you don't want any renewables and you only build nuclear, the problem is demand isn't static so you have to overbuild nuclear by a lot and run at a low capacity factor, or you build storage, either of these increases LCOE.

The sensible thing will be to use renewables on top of nuclear rather than overbuild nuclear, like what France is doing. But that will also eat into capacity factor when it's more windy and sunny like what France experiences.

Just something to keep in mind when you hear people talk about nuclear costs. Multiply it by at least 1/0.7 if they haven't taken this into account.

Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

#16

Post by stkdump »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany already buys electricity from France. The cost mentioned above are the subsidized charges by the EDF to the french government. Germans would get the full cost which is much higher than the quoted price here. Besides nuclear power is not flexible enough to amp it up and down according to demand (unlike coal or petrocarbon industries).

French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities"). Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas generation to retire [2] [3]. TLDR More interconnector capacity,…

It is likely that the times where French renewables flood the market roughly coincide with the times where German renewables flood the market, which where 60% of the supply even in the winter. The few remaining times where that isn't the case are probably not relevant. I mean every bit helps of equalizing over a larger area can help, but we likely need interconnects with places that are a bit farther away than France like Spain and Norway so the gaps are more likely to fall into different times. Besides, coal plants are almost as bad in spinning up and down quickly as nuclear plants. In both cases they can probably do somewhat it to escape the penalty of negative prices, but likely they don't safe much if anything in terms of operational costs and fuel.

Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

#18

Post by cyberax »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #5

This was very surprising and positive. I had expected pain for the electricity market in France since EDF "lost" the uranium mines in Niger and replaced it by shipping uranium from canada/australia. So it looks like solar and wind have more than compensated for the nuclear power shortages. The olympic games will put this news to test and I guess we will find out soon if this news is indeed true.

This is NOT positive. Not at all. This means that the grid is filled with useless generating capacity.

As a result, nuclear power becomes less competitive. However, renewables work poorly during the winter time. In Europe, they can go down for multiple _weeks_ at a time, far beyond any storage capabilities. And the only power plants that can fill the gap are fossil fuels.

End result: more fossil generation.

Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

#20

Post by toomuchtodo »

stkdump wrote: post #16
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities"). Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas generation to retire [2] [3]. TLDR More interconnector capacity,…

It is likely that the times where French renewables flood the market roughly coincide with the times where German renewables flood the market, which where 60% of the supply even in the winter. The few remaining times where that isn't the case are probably not relevant. I mean every bit helps of equalizing over a larger area can help, but we likely need interconnects with places that are a bit farther away than France…

Spain is awash in clean energy from renewables [1] and has large interconnect capabilities with Portugal (~5GW). Between both countries [2] [3], they operate very close to ~90% low carbon most of the time. Spain's last coal fired generator retires in August 2024 [4]. We must push east with low carbon power, as that is where the dirty grids are (see live ElectricityMaps app map scoped to Europe for context).

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czkkgnp1d2xo

[2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/ES?wind=false&solar=fal...

[3] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT?wind=false&solar=fal...

[4] https://www.gem.wiki/As_Pontes_power_station

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