61–70 of 182 posts
Isolated this is a zero sum game in favor of buyers (someone has ti take the electricity), but longer term, this shows there needs to be better greater electricity storage solutions available, i.e batteries or similar.
This happens frequently in the UK too, if you have a compatible supplier you can set it up to charge your EV or some batteries during negative spikes. Ultimately if enough people were set up that way then prices would not get negative I suppose. * https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
I wonder how many people need to do that in order for it to become not negative.
It will take a lot of investment in storage tech (beyond lots of people using their EV car batteries as time-shifting storage, though that's certainly a good use!) in order to get prices smoothed out so that electricity generated at 1PM can be used at 11PM.
Isolated this is a zero sum game in favor of buyers (someone has ti take the electricity), but longer term, this shows there needs to be better greater electricity storage solutions available, i.e batteries or similar.
* Long term I have to imagine this is just "cheap" because there's got to be tons of industries that can use intermittent free energy.
Econ 101: with a marginal cost equal to zero, a competitive electricity market (with a price driven to marginal cost because of competition) cannot be sustainable because electricity price it cannot pay for the fixed costs. Solution: we must stop electricity pricing based on energy produced (which made sense when using fossil fuel) and switch to a pricing mechanism where you pay for available power because that's whe…
This happens frequently in the UK too, if you have a compatible supplier you can set it up to charge your EV or some batteries during negative spikes. Ultimately if enough people were set up that way then prices would not get negative I suppose. * https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
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 electricity is at your door, that cost will be always positive so it may not actually be net positive.
At steep enough negative pricing this could be profitable, however at that point power plants with the highest costs and easiest scale down/ shut down procedures will start acting.
Projects like the one at Dinorwig (pumped hydro-storage) are more viable solution for excess capacity.
This happens frequently in the UK too, if you have a compatible supplier you can set it up to charge your EV or some batteries during negative spikes. Ultimately if enough people were set up that way then prices would not get negative I suppose. * https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
* https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-go/ - 7.5p per kWh
* https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/charge-anytime - 7p per kWh
What I never understood was how France gets 70-75% of their electricity from Nuclear, yet their energy prices aren't "too cheap to meter", and while cheaper than their neighbors, don't really raise any eyebrows. Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future?
> Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future? Not at all. Nobody has really put forth "too cheap to meter" as a rationale for nuclear for 50 years or more. The issue is that nuclear is currently the only reliable base load generation technology that doesn't produce carbon (except perhaps hydro for reasonable definitions of "reliable"). The other top technologies either produce carbon (natural g…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which theyve actually used very very rarely. Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Theyre ridiculously cost ineffective when used for load following since it's basically curtailment. This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as theyve been plummeting in price).
> 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/…
What I never understood was how France gets 70-75% of their electricity from Nuclear, yet their energy prices aren't "too cheap to meter", and while cheaper than their neighbors, don't really raise any eyebrows. Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future?
> yet their energy prices aren't "too cheap to meter" French nuclear power is run by EDF, which although 85% owned by the French government has “a mandate to make a profit for its shareholders”
https://presse.economie.gouv.fr/08062023-letat-redevient-lac...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And de-incentivizes supply. A real solution need to be available to balance the supply and demand of power such that the rates on both ends are predictable. A market where a good fluctuates between profitable and not is not one very attractive to investment. Playing the video game Victoria 3 has taught me a lot about healthy markets. You have to play both sides of supply and demand to get to the prices you need
Why? If you make a sufficient amount of money in the 5-8pm peak period it can make you strongly profitable despite losing money at noon.