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

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

#101

Post by Herz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #80
Herz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a bit whishful thinking to think that storage will come down in price and nuclear won't? Beyond that, leaving out storage costs, what are the technologies that can cover the world's storage? And in what quantities? Because if I think of lithium, wouldn't it be an environmental disaster to extract and recycle all the materials involved? In general, I don't understand why basically nuclear is to be replaced.

> Isn't it a bit wishful thinking to think that storage will come down in price and nuclear won't? It's been true for 50 years, assuming it will be true for another decade or two is not wishful thinking. > Beyond that, leaving out storage costs, what are the technologies that can cover the world's storage? And in what quantities? Batteries for short term storage and pumped hydro for long term storage. > Because if I…

> It's been true for 50 years, assuming it will be true for another decade or two is not wishful thinking.

Well it's one thing though to use the storage for a cell phones and some cars, another to keep all the industries and homes going on.

Do you have any data about what you claim?

For example in italy of hydro, nothing has been built for decades, everything that could be used has been used. If we want to go further, it's necessary to destroy valleys.

Your arguments do not go beyond whishful thinking... At least you need some data.

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

#102

Post by ragebol »

riffraff wrote: post #35

AFAIK this happens fairly regularly in some northern european countries (NL and DE come to mind) due to wind over-production. The sooner we get cheap grid storage, the better.

Fairly regularly indeed. The bare EPEX spot price, before taxes etc, is on track to be at least 500 hours this year in NL. (About 300h in 2923 iirc)

MartienVisser on twitter has some great graphs about the energy market, but I'm on my phone and banned twitter from that.

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

#103

Post by Damogran6 »

Herz wrote: post #72
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future? Not at all. Nobody has really put forth "too cheap to meter" as a rationale for nuclear for 50 years or more. The issue is that nuclear is currently the only reliable base load generation technology that doesn't produce carbon (except perhaps hydro for reasonable definitions of "reliable"). The other top technologies either produce carbon (natural g…

Isn't it a bit whishful thinking to think that storage will come down in price and nuclear won't? Beyond that, leaving out storage costs, what are the technologies that can cover the world's storage? And in what quantities? Because if I think of lithium, wouldn't it be an environmental disaster to extract and recycle all the materials involved? In general, I don't understand why basically nuclear is to be replaced.

There are other storage technologies being fielded...they haven't been popular because their energy densities are low...but if you have a 2000 lb hunk of Iron Aire battery next to your house, who cares? (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a42532492/ir...)

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

#104

Post by jandrese »

dmurray wrote: post #53
bell-cot wrote: post #2

> French day-ahead power fell to -€5.76 a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany’s equivalent contract dropped to €7.64. If true - how fast could a new transmission line from France to Germany pay for itself?

Let's see: The line can't just go a few metres across the border. Let's say it connects Dortmund, in the German industrial heartland on the French side of the country, with Chooz, the site of a nuclear plant near the German border. French nuclear plants are evenly distributed around the country [0], so that should be a reasonable choice. That's 250 km. High voltage transmission costs around €2m/km to build [1] and ca…

In general if the incentives are already aligned to solve a problem I don't worry about the problem. It is likely to solve itself without any intervention.

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

#105

Post by mrguyorama »

WheatMillington wrote: post #55
EcommerceFlow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard for years that if we just had "tons" of Nuclear plants, our energy costs would essentially be too cheap to meter. Yet France is not experiencing this even at 75% Nuclear.

Where did you hear that? I've only ever heard about how nuclear is both capital and opex intensive and very expensive.

It was a common BS claim in the Reagan years, as to why we didn't need to invest in renewables back then. "Why bother, soon all this nuclear energy will basically be free".

This has nothing to do with what anyone actually said. Just ask any 60-something, mild conservative. The meme exists, even though the actual quote was slightly more mealy mouthed.

It was always nonsense anyway. Electricity generation is mostly a deregulated market in most places, so nobody would spend billions on a Nuclear plant that wasn't guaranteed to make back it's money. It was always a thought terminating cliche.

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

#106

Post by kelnos »

rig666 wrote: post #83

I had a friend recently tell me about how his excess power is put back into the grid and how he hopes our area sees negative rates eventually like this. My cynical side was quick to point out that I would fire up my crypto miners if electricity was free for a few hours a day. After talking to him more I realized we both had different take aways from the story of "the tragedy of the commons" I lightened the conversati…

> I would fire up my crypto miners if electricity was free for a few hours a day

I dunno, if electricity was free only for a few hours, I would use it to charge batteries, and then use that stored electricity later in the day when it's not free.

If electricity was free most or all of the time, and/or if I could store more than I could use, then sure, I'd probably use it for unnecessary things that some might consider wasteful (not crypto mining; I'm allergic).

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

#107

Post by marcosdumay »

jandrese wrote: post #93
jerf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you've got a massive term mismatch. You have negative prices today, but a lot of reason to believe that by the time you could bring your storage online the problem will already have resolved itself. Oil briefly went negative a few years ago. If you decided to build a storage business dependent on negative oil prices for profit, you might just be coming online around now, and very much poorer than you we…

The reason why the prices are negative is that renewables have become cheap to install, but don't come with an off switch. There is good news though. With electric car sales slowing down (at least in the west) there is a surplus of batteries on the market, which makes grid storage projects more affordable. The incentives are currently pushing us towards decarbonizing our electric infrastructure faster and that is won…

> but don't come with an off switch

But they do. Often literally.

Negative prices usually happen because of laws requiring minimum utilization, or subsides, or because they are so small and rare that it is not worth having someone on place to turn the switch.

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

#108

Post by pfdietz »

remus wrote: post #92
manquer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is complex, wholesale prices generally do not reflect in retail directly. even when suppliers have flexible pricing and support V2G /buying from users solar etc, there is only only some correlation not 100% pass through of rates. There are also technical and economic reasons this may not work beyond just inelastic vendor pricing, there is cost to transmission(loss) and all the step down that has to happen before e…

> Projects like the one at Dinorwig (pumped hydro-storage) are more viable solution for excess capacity. I think this is a little simplistic. Pumped hydro is very reliant on finding suitable geography which ultimately limits the potential capacity. I think it's more likely that grids of the future will rely on a variety of storage solutions (pumped hydro, consumer EVs, grid scale batteries etc.) and smarter load-shed…

This is a bit misleading. Pumped hydro needs vertical relieve, but in places where vertical relief exists the potential is very large. It does not need to be on or even near any existing watercourse (although it can be piggybacked onto a reservoir that is, by adding another reservoir at higher elevation.)

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

#109

Post by kelnos »

Herz wrote: post #72
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future? Not at all. Nobody has really put forth "too cheap to meter" as a rationale for nuclear for 50 years or more. The issue is that nuclear is currently the only reliable base load generation technology that doesn't produce carbon (except perhaps hydro for reasonable definitions of "reliable"). The other top technologies either produce carbon (natural g…

Isn't it a bit whishful thinking to think that storage will come down in price and nuclear won't? Beyond that, leaving out storage costs, what are the technologies that can cover the world's storage? And in what quantities? Because if I think of lithium, wouldn't it be an environmental disaster to extract and recycle all the materials involved? In general, I don't understand why basically nuclear is to be replaced.

> Isn't it a bit whishful thinking to think that storage will come down in price and nuclear won't?

My understanding is that the costs around nuclear aren't due to the technology being expensive (something that yes, we would expect to get cheaper over time), but because of the -- IMO necessary -- regulatory and safety regime surrounding nuclear power. Costs that I wouldn't expect to change all that much (and maybe even increase with time).

With storage, the cost is mainly the technology. As the tech improves, the cost decreases.

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

#110

Post by pfdietz »

briandear wrote: post #67
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future? Not at all. Nobody has really put forth "too cheap to meter" as a rationale for nuclear for 50 years or more. The issue is that nuclear is currently the only reliable base load generation technology that doesn't produce carbon (except perhaps hydro for reasonable definitions of "reliable"). The other top technologies either produce carbon (natural g…

Why isn’t wind and solar politically dicey? Nuclear is only politically dicey due to ignorance. I’d rather one nuclear plant than having the landscape covered with huge windmills — windmills made out of materials that aren’t recyclable. Solar is even worse. Nuclear doesn’t affect wildlife like wind and solar.

Nuclear elicits outrage from customers forced to pay for it because it's so expensive. How do you propose muting them politics?
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