> Excess electricity produced during periods of low consumption cannot yet be stored at scale, as battery capacity remains limited.
Batteries are the next frontier of the renewable explosion. It's already happening.
Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
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Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#42Does someone want to elaborate why it's interesting/important that wholesale electricity prices were low one day during a long weekend?
it makes private energy storage a viable investment option. You can just invest in a large battery (or other storage system) and make a profit over buying/selling energy. I really hope, this happens on a big scale and further reduces the dependency on fossil fuels (at least over 24h. winter is a different question)
It doesn't, for reasons of price.
For consumers, power prices consist of the actual price of power, plus network fees. Network fees are fixed at (on average) something like 10ct/kWh or 100€/MWh. So negative prices are only really negative if the power price drops below those -100€/MWh, which rarely happens (the usual dips are at low single-digit cents per kWh).
And even then, there is the issue of network fee double-dipping: Depending on the contract you have with your power company, the size and kind of storage you are operating, and the phase of the moon and your donations to the ruling party, you will be charged network fees twice, once when buying the power, once when selling it again. In that case, the threshold would be even worse, at -200€/MWh.
And all that doesn't factor in the cost of the storage infra.
Edit: And there is another factor: The current very low dip is in the intra-day prices. But contracts for consumers use day-ahead prices, which usually don't include those very large dips that result from miscalculations of weather and dispatch capacity.
Edit2: Just check https://tibber.com/de/preisrechner (use e.g. 10119 as Postleitzahl) and scroll down for the graph. Today, they give a negative day-ahead price of -1.5ct/kWh, but including network fees, taxes and their cut, you still end up paying 18.2ct/kWh...
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#43For anyone thinking negative prices is a good thing: It's not. It's a panic signal because there are no takers for an oversupply of energy, making the grid unstable.
For anyone interested, the dynamics are something like:
1) Commercial entities generally try to sell their products for a profit (positive price).
2) Negative prices make this quite hard.
3) To get back into positive profit, they're going to need to charge a higher price later on.
There are 3 ways the overall market can go if prices are negative - either prices go positive at some other time to make up for the losses the power providers are making, someone figures out a use for the free power and the price stops going negative or power providers go out of business. Typically what this seems to result in for renewable-heavy grids is occasional (even regular) negative wholesale prices and some impressively high retail prices. Free electricity turns out to be very expensive; it shows the grid isn't coping.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#44Similar situation last year over Easter: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/clouds-shield-german-po...
Germany experiences negative electricity prices on a near daily basis now from spring through fall.
This weekend, prices were more negative than usual, but still not that negative.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#45For anyone thinking negative prices is a good thing: It's not. It's a panic signal because there are no takers for an oversupply of energy, making the grid unstable.
It's a good thing if you can profit from it. It doesn't seem that hard. All you need is a load, but obviously harder as you increase the scale. Heck you could build some large bodies of water and boil them from time to time.
> Heck you could build some large bodies of water and boil them from time to time.
Some suppliers already do that. When a power plant also supplies the city heating, it makes sense for them to put the power surplus into pre-heated water which they can store and later distribute to the buyers of the heat.
Obviously this needs some huge and well insulated tanks.
Here's an article (in Polish) about one built in Warsaw, 10TJ capacity: https://globenergia.pl/najwiekszy-wodny-magazyn-ciepla-w-eur...
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#46If it were just easy to buy a bunch of batteries and profit from this by selling the same energy during evening/night. But that is only reserved for the big players I guess.
No, it is not at all reserved for big players. You just need to get a dynamic price electricity contract, and a smart-meter in your home and you can do this right now.
In Sweden you can also register your battery to an aggregation service that makes money (and gives you a share) from balancing the grid.
So there is not only a market for buy/sell, you can also be stand-by for charging your battery when grid frequency increases and consumption needs to increase.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#47Germany should use it to search for Marsenne primes
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#48Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the UK you can get energy plans with a price that updates every half hour, published a day ahead. From 12:30pm - 4pm today that price is negative. It was also negative for around 16 hours of Easter Sunday. https://www.octopriceuk.app/agile
Well dynamic pricing only ever works until you have a power outage in the winter and suddenly you pay a years worth of money for the 1 hour you could use your fridge, during a snowstorm.
That is the trade off for renewables. Power is very expensive when needed and very cheap when not.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the UK you can get energy plans with a price that updates every half hour, published a day ahead. From 12:30pm - 4pm today that price is negative. It was also negative for around 16 hours of Easter Sunday. https://www.octopriceuk.app/agile
Well dynamic pricing only ever works until you have a power outage in the winter and suddenly you pay a years worth of money for the 1 hour you could use your fridge, during a snowstorm.
It’s still capped at £1/kWh, which is a lot but also a price I’ve seen maybe for a few slots on a couple days in the last three years.
The price was known ~1 day in advance so I had the choice to fill up the battery with cheaper (but still high) prices overnight and reduce the impact