Might want to buy some of the Power Miners:
As chips reach the limits of the cutting edge tech, the only advantage will be how expensive your electricity is rather than replacing chips every 12 months
Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
21–30 of 191 posts
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#22An explanation of the mechanics of how I'd have to pay somebody else to take my electricity (e.g., a negative rate) would be helpful. As prices approaches 0, I could take the excess electricity and say, mine cryptocurrency. Is nobody considering the arbitrage opportunities here? Take the 0-cost electricity, move water up a hill, and convert it back to electric when it's needed, etc.
Executive Summary (drastically oversimplified): In a wholesale electricity market we have a market operator who estimates the demand for the near term future and opens the market up to bids for supply. Suppliers bid a certain capacity for each period, with the operator typically accepting firm supply offers, contingency supply offers, and ancillary service offers in advance. Since some suppliers are “baseload” (ie: u…
Why do they have to pay someone to take the electricity? I could take a dollar bill and rip it in half (perhaps not legally, but besides the point). I understand there's costs to shutting down a system. So, they might keep it running.
But what I don't get: the electricity producer has to pay someone to take the excess electricity off their hands? The producer can't route the excess to, well... nowhere?
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#23I'm in SA and I'm currently looking at getting solar panels and maybe a battery because we have the highest cost of electricity in the country. I'd like to know why we have the highest when the price seems to be going negative every other day?
Not knowing anything, but making an educated guess. Transmission costs?
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#24Might want to buy some of the Power Miners: https://powerminingshop.com/ As chips reach the limits of the cutting edge tech, the only advantage will be how expensive your electricity is rather than replacing chips every 12 months
Why waste energy on a system that's designed to grow increasingly inefficient over time (Crypto PoW mining), when you could simply store the energy or use it on something that is helpful to the local community, as in food or manufacturing?
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#25Sounds like someone needs a small aluminum smelter?
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#26[deleted]
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Executive Summary (drastically oversimplified): In a wholesale electricity market we have a market operator who estimates the demand for the near term future and opens the market up to bids for supply. Suppliers bid a certain capacity for each period, with the operator typically accepting firm supply offers, contingency supply offers, and ancillary service offers in advance. Since some suppliers are “baseload” (ie: u…
Why do they have to pay someone to take the electricity? I could take a dollar bill and rip it in half (perhaps not legally, but besides the point). I understand there's costs to shutting down a system. So, they might keep it running. But what I don't get: the electricity producer has to pay someone to take the excess electricity off their hands? The producer can't route the excess to, well... nowhere?
Not at that levels of output. With large enough machines it's "we're going to spend X to spin everything down, do maintenance checks, spin back up" vs "we're going to pay you X/2 so you take the output and we can keep going". The X may be spent on extra workers, on extra maintenance, on replacement for posts that wear out faster, etc. It's the cost of unusual operation.
And once you're generating there's no great way to just "disconnect" in many cases. If you disconnect the load, the charge still has to go somewhere. Preferably not into nearby equipment. Even the safety switches are non-trivial when dealing with high power - if you break a cable connection, the electric arc will still keep them connected.
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#28I wish these prices were reflected to the consumer. Electricity bills in South Australia are ridiculous, and as a renter you don't have the luxury of installing solar panels.
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can’t they discharge it for free? Why do they have to pay to send it into the grid? The crypto one won’t work because there would only be free electricity half of the time, and the water idea is good but it takes immense capex and time to make
The grid has to finely balance supply and demand. You can't just dump power into the grid. If you did the grid frequency would increase out of spec and it could damage connected equipment and machinery. Water storage would only work if there is a steep mountain or big hill nearby. Another way to look at negitive pricing is the grid is paying industrial users to burn as much power as they can.
I think the dominant question here is, "I have this machinery that produces electricity, and it's hooked up to the grid. Why can't I also hook it up to the ground, and -- during periods of negative prices -- send the electricity into the ground instead of the grid?" Nobody charges you to ground your wires.
Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do they have to pay someone to take the electricity? I could take a dollar bill and rip it in half (perhaps not legally, but besides the point). I understand there's costs to shutting down a system. So, they might keep it running. But what I don't get: the electricity producer has to pay someone to take the excess electricity off their hands? The producer can't route the excess to, well... nowhere?
Not at that levels of output. With large enough machines it's "we're going to spend X to spin everything down, do maintenance checks, spin back up" vs "we're going to pay you X/2 so you take the output and we can keep going". The X may be spent on extra workers, on extra maintenance, on replacement for posts that wear out faster, etc. It's the cost of unusual operation. And once you're generating there's no great way…
Some baseload devices can’t really be realistically switched off. Some of these turbines run for decades.