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Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

reneweconomy.com.au

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Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#61

Post by dv_dt »

glamp wrote: post #14
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #6

An 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.

On the grid there are lots of different types of producers (solar, diesel, wind, nuclear, etc.). Each has its strengths/weaknesses. A big weakness of nuclear plants is that it's very expensive to turn them off. So much so that when electricity demand temporarily goes down (and with it prices), it is actually more profitable for them to continue keep the plant running but pay someone to offset their excess production.…

The problems are also not always technical. In CA I've read articles with descriptions of similar moments where power needs to be shutoff from renewable sources and/or offloaded from the grid, but in part because contracts locked in priority for some fossil-fuel peaking plants over renweable sources.

Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#62

Post by ramraj07 »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #6

An 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.

Did you read the article? It goes into reasonable detail on why they don't necessarily do that.

Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#64

Post by flukus »

peteretep wrote: post #50
donw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to hazard a guess. If we assume the numbers for a sort of medium-size nuclear plant, we've got a total power generation of 500MW. Dumping that kind of power is... hard. If I haven't missed an order of magnitude, that's enough to boil an Olympic-sized swimming pool in about 25 minutes (500MW to boil 2.5ML of water, assuming STP). So you'd either need to build and maintain the infrastructure to burn that kind…

> that's enough to boil an Olympic-sized swimming pool in about 25 minutes This is in a country that — as I understand it — could definitely do with more desalinated water. How capital intensive can putting a huge kettle element in the sea with something to catch the vapour be?

More desalinated water would be handy, but typically it's not needed anywhere near the salt water and where it is needed more electricity isn't.

Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#65

Post by rosege »

roenxi wrote: post #55
rosege wrote: post #8

I'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?

The market reacts quite quickly if a company is going bankrupt; so assume for the sake of argument that all the electricity producers in the market are turning at least a small profit. If power prices are negative but the provider is making a profit, then at some other time prices will have to be very high to bring the average price sold positive. I assume that is what is happening here. I don't have a lot of respect…

So perhaps they should drop the costs to encourage more usage and thereby also reduce the wholesale cost.

Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#66

Post by jonathonadler »

coin wrote: post #54
steve19 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does excess electricity impact the frequency?

I thought voltage needs to increase because a differential is required to add power to the network.

Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#67

Post by dnpp123 »

nosuchthing wrote: post #24
LAMike wrote: post #21

Might 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?

You can move miners easily between inefficent sources of energy. Water, dams, etc... not that much. Using current battery technology would be too nefast for the environment.

Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#68

Post by atupis »

brownbat wrote: post #4

Storage is definitely the wise answer here, as the article mentions. The fun answer here is giant crypto farm.

Smart air-condition and cooling is also a possibility, a here Finland we have started to piloting programs where heating is smart so houses are heated more when electricity prices are low.

Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#69

Post by roenxi »

rosege wrote: post #65
roenxi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market reacts quite quickly if a company is going bankrupt; so assume for the sake of argument that all the electricity producers in the market are turning at least a small profit. If power prices are negative but the provider is making a profit, then at some other time prices will have to be very high to bring the average price sold positive. I assume that is what is happening here. I don't have a lot of respect…

So perhaps they should drop the costs to encourage more usage and thereby also reduce the wholesale cost.

Bunch of stuff they should be doing; negative power prices are an economic emergency. If your lot can figure out something that works for consumers I'm sure we'll start copying it up and down the east coast. I'm glad it was NT doing this expensive experiment and not NSW; for all that we've mucked up our electricity markets something shocking.

Re: Solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices

#70

Post by eecc »

coin wrote: post #54
steve19 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does excess electricity impact the frequency?

My guess is that load acts as an inertial mass that adds drag to the turbines. Think of cycling downhill at the same power used when going uphill: you’ll spin like a crazy fool
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