Finally, energy too cheap to meter.
Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
171–180 of 182 posts
Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to draw a link between negative prices and increased subsidies in most cases. The subsidies can be recouped during the no-negative periods. In addition, subsidies are not needed anymore to make wind and solar cost competitive. And with increased use of electric cars (and battery storage in general) we will see increased usage of this negative pricing to charge them so the negative price will diminish or go…
> subsidies are not needed anymore to make wind and solar cost competitive See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/docume... where the European Commission approved the plan for the French state to give aid to push renewable deployment in France. I google translated section 2.2 (paragraph 9) of the ruling document > ... As such, the French authorities consider that there are “positive external effect…
> I would have expected inflation and interest rate changes to have negatively affected the viability of renewables. That is certainly the case for offshore wind in the UK
UK interest rates went significantly higher than ECB ones.
Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear is very poor for baseline requirements. Baseline requirements should be met by the cheapest source and more expensive sources should only be added as required to follow demand.
If you price in pollution, doesn't nuclear become the cheapest base load provider?
No, not even close.
Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Ontario, Canada would disagree with you: nuclear is 10.1¢/kWh, hydro is 6.2¢, (methane/natural) gas is 11.4¢; see Table 2: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023... Of course hydro-electric dams typically flood many hectares of land for the reservoir. The current ones are getting refurbished: * https://www.cbc.ca/news/…
Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c / kWh. Keeping the nuclear plants running overnight means they're losing 7 cents/kWh overnight. Better to shut those plants down overnight, but of course approximately all the nuclear costs are incurred whether the plants are running overnight or not, so shutting down overnight would just double the daytime costs.
> Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c / kWh.
And if you sign up for those ULO rates you also get 28.6¢ on-peak rates. The average over the entire day stays at 11.1¢ (see Table ES-2).
I guess they want to flatten the demand curve and reduce its cyclic nature: there's a cost to dealing with the traditional peaks times as well in various types of capacity.
Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
My aging mind can't remember the actual facts but it was determined that when someone has significantly more power than they had a need for (say, full batteries and a whole lot of solar) that it opened up interesting behaviors. We try hard to be as efficient as possible, but when you don't have to, it leads to interesting stuff. (like leave the lights on, leave the windows open with a space heater next to you, etc.)
Name for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
But in the case of the solar pwer generation and storage, the added use didn't have a negative effect...There's no penalty for using more, so they use more.
Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c / kWh. Keeping the nuclear plants running overnight means they're losing 7 cents/kWh overnight. Better to shut those plants down overnight, but of course approximately all the nuclear costs are incurred whether the plants are running overnight or not, so shutting down overnight would just double the daytime costs.
> Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c / kWh. And if you sign up for those ULO rates you also get 28.6¢ on-peak rates. The average over the entire day stays at 11.1¢ (see Table ES-2). I guess they want to flatten the demand curve and reduce its cyclic nature: there's a cost to dealing with the traditional peaks times as well in various types of capacity.
Much of that cost is due to Ontario's high reliance on nuclear power.
Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#177Earlier 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…
Unlike normal hydro which needs a flow, pumped hydro only needs an hill and a source. Those are common.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=view_citation...
Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#178Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, not even close.
Fancy elaborating?
Let's say the cost of pollution for a tonne of CO2 is about $100. Using some silly and outdated assumptions, solar power is listed at 41 g CO2 / kWh and therefore has a pollution "cost" of 0.4 cents. The cost of a kWh from a solar panel ranges from 0.5 - 4 cents, so adding the two together is still way under the cost per kWh of nuclear power whether or not you add the 12 g CO2 / kWh carbon footprint of nuclear power.
Re: Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fancy elaborating?
Let's say the cost of pollution for a tonne of CO2 is about $100. Using some silly and outdated assumptions, solar power is listed at 41 g CO2 / kWh and therefore has a pollution "cost" of 0.4 cents. The cost of a kWh from a solar panel ranges from 0.5 - 4 cents, so adding the two together is still way under the cost per kWh of nuclear power whether or not you add the 12 g CO2 / kWh carbon footprint of nuclear power.
Solar power is not base load.