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Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

bloomberg.com

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Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#51

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

jbrnh wrote: post #31
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grid is not unstable and it was also not unstable the last view days when prices were negative. Germany has one of the most stable grids in the world. Negative prices are good when you need to buy electricity and they are bad when you are selling, but of course generally in a functioning market there shouldn't really be too many days with negative prices. It does mean that there isn't enough storage currently on…

They are working on that https://battery-charts.de/

Sure, and negative prices will send a strong signal to the market to hurry up with adding storage. So, this will probably be more of a temporary situation and in the future there will be very few days with negative prices, however there will then also be fewer days with very high prices.

Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#52

Post by Majromax »

thyristan wrote: post #42
jones89176 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

If you're buying and selling the power, then you don't care much about the absolute price, but rather the delta between the purchase and sale prices.

Below -100€/MWh, you don't need to sell the power to profit; you'd make at least some money just using it to heat up a big resistor.

Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#53

Post by eigenspace »

chongli wrote: post #30
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grid is not unstable and it was also not unstable the last view days when prices were negative. Germany has one of the most stable grids in the world. Negative prices are good when you need to buy electricity and they are bad when you are selling, but of course generally in a functioning market there shouldn't really be too many days with negative prices. It does mean that there isn't enough storage currently on…

Now what we need is a cheap grid interconnect for home users running solar panels that automatically starts charging a battery when grid prices go negative, to absorb that extra power.

That already exists

Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#54

Post by red75prime »

jbrnh wrote: post #38
red75prime wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and batteries are unsuitable for seasonal storage.

How is seasonal storage relevant here? This is the usual few-hours-fluctuations, I assume? (can't read the article)

It will be more relevant in the future, but it's still worth thinking about. Right now intermittent energy sources cover around 15-18% of the total energy consumption in Germany[1]. And seasonal variability is covered by other methods (natural gas and others).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:...

Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#55

Post by jerven »

red75prime wrote: post #35
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grid is not unstable and it was also not unstable the last view days when prices were negative. Germany has one of the most stable grids in the world. Negative prices are good when you need to buy electricity and they are bad when you are selling, but of course generally in a functioning market there shouldn't really be too many days with negative prices. It does mean that there isn't enough storage currently on…

Yeah, the curtailment is a simple way to deal with instability. I wonder who chooses which power plants should curtail their output. The Bundesnetzagentur?

The plants that are willing to give supply for the most negative price are the ones that will not be curtailed. So market forces. Basically at such points power plants are paying for the privilege to be allowed to supply power. This is dominated by restart costs and as such is often paid by classic "baseload" plants such as nuclear ones. i.e. they will accept losing money during one part of the day/week so that they can make money during a different part of the day/week.

Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#57

Post by ZeroGravitas »

As with many of these renewable cause negative price stories, the data shows something they never talk about:

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/72h/hourly

That shows that they still had roughly 5% gas and 5% coal running at the lowest price point.

Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#58

Post by Dagonfly »

So many questionable comments in here.

Negative prices have no effect on grid stability. It just means that the day-ahead market was cleared below 0, i.e. for every consumer (buyer) there is a producer (seller) selling at this price. The market is still balanced with consumption==production.

Now, you can ask the question: Why are so many producers willing to sell below 0? That has to do with misplaced incentives. For older or home-installed renewables there is a feed-in tarrif which guarantees a fixed revenue at all times. So there is an incentive to sell even for negative market prices. Newer installations can't opt for the guaranteed revenue model with revenue during negative prices any more.

Redispatch follows afterwards, if the market result clashes with physics: The physical grid can't transport the power from producer to consumer. There was no unusual amount of redispatch during easter.

Source: I work on this stuff.

Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#59

Post by thyristan »

Majromax wrote: post #52
thyristan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

If you're buying and selling the power, then you don't care much about the absolute price, but rather the delta between the purchase and sale prices. Below -100€/MWh, you don't need to sell the power to profit; you'd make at least some money just using it to heat up a big resistor.

You didn't read what I wrote. The news is about trading prices. End users never pay those, because there are fixed network fees to be paid on top. So the actual bill will practically never have a negative price on it anywhere.

And even if there were negative end prices happening: There are metal smelting works and other operators of big resistors who will happily heat up even more. So prices will probably never get so negative that a normal consumer can ever profit from them.

Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

#60

Post by arpinum »

__d wrote: post #39
arpinum wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not make private energy storage viable on its own. You need to get enough charge/discharge cycles out of it in a certain time period. This means you need almost daily high price fluctuations. We aren't seeing that in Europe. We see high winds push down prices for multiple days and we see multiple weeks with consistent high prices in the winter, with occasional drops on the weekend.

It’s a daily event now in Australia. Very low prices during the middle of the day, and higher in the morning and evening. Anyone with a battery or an EV they don’t need to drive far can play the market, usually with scripted sell/buy trigger points. There’s enough profit to make the payback period for a decent battery quite short.

Yes, I see energy-intensive industry moving away from extreme latitudes in the long run. Most of Europe is at an unfortunate latitude and has surprising levels of cloud cover.
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