Clearly they need more datacenters!
Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
61–70 of 101 posts
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#62Does someone want to elaborate why it's interesting/important that wholesale electricity prices were low one day during a long weekend?
It's an indicator of how far they've come in supplanting fossil fuels. Today it's one day; soon it will be two, then a week. They can start thinking about next steps.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#63Similar 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.
It really depends on the size and placement of the oversupply, this could cause localized grid overloading.
"However, BDEW warned that around half of the new capacity came in the form of small-scale systems under 100 kilowatt each, which under current rules feed into the grid whatever they produce, without the option to curtail production when this is necessary to ensure grid stability."
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-adds-record-175...
Smart electric meters for individual PV producers that signal and account for negative prices would help. e.g. if your balcony solar power pushes electricity during oversupply you pay penalty.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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:...
And Germany right now have battery storage equivalent of fully powering Germany for about 30 minute sand raising up every month, which is quite wild.. https://battery-charts.de/
With those feeding on negative-priced electricity, intermittent sources will only get more economical to the detriment of gas and nuclear.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
So, the economic incentives favor peaker plants and storage (natural gas plants, peaker coal plants, batteries, pumped storage).
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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:...
But since 2/3rd of the fossil energy is wasted, it's more like 40% of the useful energy.
Some people don't know about the primary energy fallacy, others know about it and try to exploit it, so you should be suspicious of the opinions of anyone trying to use it suggest lack of progress and futility.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
Here is one in German for one in Berlin https://group.vattenfall.com/de/newsroom/pressemitteilungen/...
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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:...
But since 2/3rd of the fossil energy is wasted, it's more like 40% of the useful energy. Some people don't know about the primary energy fallacy, others know about it and try to exploit it, so you should be suspicious of the opinions of anyone trying to use it suggest lack of progress and futility.
Who talks about futility? It's about tradeoffs: seasonal storage/nuclear power, batteries/wind+interconnections and so on.
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#69Earlier 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
Where’s profitable crypto mining when you need it? Back yard plasma furnace? Artificial diamond making? Aluminum smelting?
You need something that's valuable, energy intensive, easy to stop and start, and cheap to build capacity for. Either or both of those last two tend to be the problem for most industrial processes (and also crypto mining).
Re: Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It really depends on the size and placement of the oversupply, this could cause localized grid overloading. "However, BDEW warned that around half of the new capacity came in the form of small-scale systems under 100 kilowatt each, which under current rules feed into the grid whatever they produce, without the option to curtail production when this is necessary to ensure grid stability." https://www.cleanenergywire.o…
Yeah. Going forward, I suspect the way to handle this will be requiring the small producers to join a "virtual power plant".
It'll result in a lot of misinformed shrieking from people, but probably the way forward is to remove the guaranteed price subsidy for individual household producers, and make it so thar they have to join a VPP if they want to sell to the grid.