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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

#111

Post by jandrese »

marcosdumay wrote: post #107
jandrese wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you want to be pedantic yes. But its not like grid operators back in the control rooms are disconnecting solar farms because the grid is oversaturated. They instead tell the fossil fuel plants to reduce their burn rate. They have to work around the instability from the renewables. That's why grid scale storage is such a key component of the future energy economy.

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

#112

Post by pfdietz »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #41
robertlagrant wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. The way you've phrased this certainly doesn't sound like it couldn't be the future.

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.

If anyone told you that they were lying to you.

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

#113

Post by kelnos »

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.

I agree that the safety fears and waste disposal issues around nuclear are overwrought, but still: I would much prefer solar and wind farms (even with the downsides you mention) over the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. Even if the probability of something like that is 0.0000000001% or whatever, the consequences are so severe that it just doesn't seem worth it when there's a good-enough alternative. Also consider that nuclear is expensive (both in capex and opex)! The whole "too cheap to meter" nonsense from the 1950s never came to fruition.

I get that opinions differ on this (clearly you have a different take), but that's fine; reasonable people can disagree.

(To be clear, I don't believe solar/wind is the be-all, end-all. Base load generation is still a problem there, and neither source is reliable or consistent in the way that something like nuclear is.)

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

#114

Post by Herz »

Damogran6 wrote: post #103
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.

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... )

Do you have any idea how long it takes for a technology at a research stage to enter scale production and be commercially viable?

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

#115

Post by pyrale »

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…

Load scheduling driven by price incentives (namely hot water) is already the largest flexibility source in France iirc. I’m not sure that there is much difference between price-driven flexibility and smart grids though (in that most of the benefit is captured by communicating prices ahead of time rather than dynamic load modulation)

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

#116

Post by baq »

ragebol wrote: post #99
guerby wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the analysis I can find talk only about the spot price being negative. But what matters for economics is the volume exchanged at this negative price, that is if you are a buyer with infinite capacity to absorb kWh how much money you'll make yearly? Anyone with a good URL?

No URL, but if demand were there to take all that in, the demand would obviously go up. But there is not enough demand, so the capacity is far from infinite. The best fix for negative prices is negative prices, the demand will come. I'm still curious about the actual MWh's traded for negative prices as well

> the demand will come

Or… the supply will go away shudders

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

#117

Post by moffkalast »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #41
robertlagrant wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. The way you've phrased this certainly doesn't sound like it couldn't be the future.

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.

Presumably once it gets cheap enough it becomes profitable to sell it internationally which caps the price?

Besides, you still have to pay back for the construction and the fuel, it's never gonna be free.

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

#118

Post by marcosdumay »

jandrese wrote: post #111
marcosdumay wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you want to be pedantic yes. But its not like grid operators back in the control rooms are disconnecting solar farms because the grid is oversaturated. They instead tell the fossil fuel plants to reduce their burn rate. They have to work around the instability from the renewables. That's why grid scale storage is such a key component of the future energy economy.

> its not like grid operators back in the control rooms are disconnecting solar farms because the grid is oversaturated

You are correct that they are not.

But this is due to policy, not physics. It's obvious to shut-down the fossil fuel plants first, but after then, there's no physical reason why they can't keep shutting power plants down.

Anyway, agreed, adding storage is a much better solution than focusing on the management of renewables.

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

Herz wrote: post #101
bryanlarsen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#120

Post by jillesvangurp »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #26

What I never understood was how France gets 70-75% of their electricity from Nuclear, yet their energy prices aren't "too cheap to meter", and while cheaper than their neighbors, don't really raise any eyebrows. Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future?

That's because it's a state run system and it really isn't that cheap. The nuclear operators are shielded from market rates by the government. The way that works is that they get a guaranteed price per kwh in long multi year deals, regardless of what the market does. That's actually true in most countries that operate nuclear plants. Without those guarantees, it's to risky of a thing to do financially for investors.

What they charge customers in France is also controlled by the government (and not the same thing). The difference is simply made up by tax payer money. Of course being connected to the rest of the European market and also having a lot of their own renewables, this just means that bill is getting larger and larger for the French government whenever there is a surplus of wind and solar. Which is probably happening quite often now.

Here are some details on a deal the French government struck with nuclear operator EDF recently: https://www.clearygottlieb.com/news-and-insights/publication...

It's indeed a great example why commercial nuclear plants without extensive state support is not really a thing. Most places that have nuclear plants, also feature heavy government involvement and state funding. That plant that Bill Gates is involved with that recently started construction work, only still exists because of extensive state involvement.

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