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Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

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Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#91
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it very easy to "dump" electricity? Why even sell it?

Is it so easy? Suppose someone told you to 'dump' 100MW right now, for 3 hours. How would you do it?

As a Finn, probably just send out a message on some social media platform that people need to start turning on their saunas for the stability of the network. (Alternatively, like fingrid did, send a notification to my phone saying to "consume energy normally, as the pricing issue does not reflect energy availability")

Even a fairly small electric sauna is ~10 kW, so that's be just 10000 homes solving that problem.

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#92
post #61
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it very easy to "dump" electricity? Why even sell it?

Or, via lower price - negative if necessary - you let someone else go to the trouble, via facilities that they themselves invested in. Also in systems like this, there is not necessarily anything special about "zero" or "negative". It's just "less than the previous number" or "more incentive this way than the previous number".

The idea that negative prices are something weird is pretty silly.

A negative price indicates that the person sellers disposal technique is worse than the buyers disposal technique. In other words, the market is working as intended.

Nobody is complaining about the cost of garbage disposal where people are paying for having less (!) stuff.

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so easy? Suppose someone told you to 'dump' 100MW right now, for 3 hours. How would you do it?

As a Finn, probably just send out a message on some social media platform that people need to start turning on their saunas for the stability of the network. (Alternatively, like fingrid did, send a notification to my phone saying to "consume energy normally, as the pricing issue does not reflect energy availability") Even a fairly small electric sauna is ~10 kW, so that's be just 10000 homes solving that problem.

Those saunas wouldn't get turned on if they weren't getting paid for the trouble.

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#94
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to dump product you can't store. Happened to oil during early covid: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/business/oil-prices.html

Ah thank you. I remember now. Still weird that this can also happen (and is allowed to happen) in an energy market.

It's actually particularly important that prices be able to go negative in an electricity market, because it's physically impossible to store electricity: it must be generated and consumed at the same moment. "Electricity storage" is shorthand for "conversion to and from a different kind of energy", which from the perspective of the grid is just a kind of consumption or generation. And if there is too much unused power on the grid, it will damage it.

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#95
post #53
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the real time price will be very expensive, it depends how the consumer contract is written.

Most Finnish households have a contract which limits the effect of this pricing anomaly (fixed price contracts are quite popular as people see the hourly market rate as risky and unpredictable). However, I do have a hourly market rate based contract myself and tomorrow afternoon/evening with rates of -0,50€/kWh any electricity consumption is going to lower my energy bill - even considering the energy sale commission,…

What kind of tax is calculated on a negative rate?

Some flat fee?

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without trying to fall too hard into a potential late-stage-capitalism hole, what is the advantages on trading like this? Beyond the advantages of making money on futures. I guess the buy/sell in advance lets generators etc fund projects ahead of time (maint, expansion, etc) instead of always living hand to mouth on "real time sold" and without having to land "huge multi-year contracts", so the market can be a bit mo…

> Without trying to fall too hard into a potential late-stage-capitalism hole, what is the advantages on trading like this? Beyond the advantages of making money on futures Trying to view things as “late stage capitalism” isn’t a good way to really understand anything. It’s a cynical Reddit trope that assumes malice from the start, which doesn’t leave much room for a real explanation. The reality is that trading like…

I'd like to add a bit to your comment. I certainly agree that negative prices in this context don't mean anything remotely nefarious, but part of your comment suggests that "it's all consensual contracts" is a sufficient ethical justification for a system — which may or may not be what you actually think — and I wanted to touch on that.

Markets come in all shapes and sizes, and in reality you can't write up any contract you like — nor should you be able to. Indeed, electricity markets must be tightly regulated due to shared infrastructure, which is an example of the fact that these markets don't arise simply from the application of a fundamental "allow people to enter into whatever agreements they like" principle, but rather requires pragmatic _design_.

Ultimately, we, as collectives, decide what the rules of the game are. In the case of electricity, the need for innovation and flexibility to decarbonise the grid are perfectly acceptable justifications for adopting market solutions (the only real alternative being to allow the State to monopolise the whole system, which would come with its own serious and disruptive trade-offs); but ultimately, this is a _system_ that we decide on, and it doesn't arise out of natural rights, and systems can be more or less well-designed. I think you touch on this in your comment as well.

Markets aren't evil, but nor are they naturally good. They are a tool in our toolbox for constructing resource allocation systems. And the success of a system, and indeed _the_ system as a whole, must consider all the interlocking economic and social consequences — and it's anxiety about those that the "late-stage capitalism" trope really reflects. It's not something to dismiss altogether.

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#97
post #95
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Finnish households have a contract which limits the effect of this pricing anomaly (fixed price contracts are quite popular as people see the hourly market rate as risky and unpredictable). However, I do have a hourly market rate based contract myself and tomorrow afternoon/evening with rates of -0,50€/kWh any electricity consumption is going to lower my energy bill - even considering the energy sale commission,…

What kind of tax is calculated on a negative rate? Some flat fee?

There are two fixed fees households pay, an energy tax of 0,02253€/kWh and a security of supply fee (0,013 euro cents per kWh). These are not affected by fluctuations in the market prices of electricity.

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#98
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without trying to fall too hard into a potential late-stage-capitalism hole, what is the advantages on trading like this? Beyond the advantages of making money on futures. I guess the buy/sell in advance lets generators etc fund projects ahead of time (maint, expansion, etc) instead of always living hand to mouth on "real time sold" and without having to land "huge multi-year contracts", so the market can be a bit mo…

Yes, that's fundamentally it. By making the marking more liquid, different types of entities can adjust for their specific predictability/risk needs. Also note that though these markets are "free" they are still extremely highly regulated. I don't know much about the Finnish market but I've built trading algorithms for CAISO and PJM, and it is by no means a free-for-all. The rules about what types of entities can par…

The market is mainly regulated by having some restrictions on pricing by requiring the sellers to be able to prove that their price roughly matches your their costs + some profit margin (to stop a big player from buying all the cheap electricity and relisting it for massive profits) and forcing producers to put money into escrow/buy insurance for the case that they fail to deliver what they sold.

This latter one led the government having to open a line of credit for tens of billions euros last winter when the prices were high just so the actual producers could afford to sell their (historically highly priced) electricity as the money you have to leave in escrow/insurance price is tied to the SPOT price.

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without trying to fall too hard into a potential late-stage-capitalism hole, what is the advantages on trading like this? Beyond the advantages of making money on futures. I guess the buy/sell in advance lets generators etc fund projects ahead of time (maint, expansion, etc) instead of always living hand to mouth on "real time sold" and without having to land "huge multi-year contracts", so the market can be a bit mo…

Physical commodities cannot be delivered instantaneously, additionally there is no giant warehouse at the commodity exchange that stores the commodities. This means that what you are going to trade is a delivery contract. If you play a game like Prosperous Universe, there is no delivery problem on the central commodity exchanges and the commodity exchange has infinite storage capacity. When you buy something, you ins…

> there is no giant warehouse at the commodity exchange that stores the commodities

Actually for many commodities there is: https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/base/base-metals-war...

But of course not for electricity.

Re: Bidding error sees Finnish day-ahead power price tumble

#100
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how it was explained to me: its like if you booked a prostitute to come over on Friday, on Friday you found out your partner was coming over and you need the full service sex worker to go somewhere else but have nowhere to send them, so you attempt to pay anyone to take the booking and everyone else is in the same predicament and eventually someone’s going to take the loss of having the prostitute around their partne…

This sounds like something a toxic middle management bro might say to be edgy. If this is easier for you to understand, you might have a problem.

you’re right, sex workers take deposits for this specific reasons and have autonomy and agency, it’s weird and outdated to deny [probably] women that

thanks for pointing that out it’s a big plot hole and very much unlike the energy market. although maybe deposits would be an improvement to the energy market

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