https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-04/power-prices-drop-below-zero-as-solar-output-surges-in-europe
European power prices fell below zero again as production from solar farms overwhelms the grid early in the afternoon.
The pessimist in me is expecting someone to come in here to tell us why this isn't as good as it seems, but this seems good. Them stating it will only get more common seems great!
It's really good. So called "dynamic contracts" with hourly pricing known only a day in advance are on the rise. Lots of people whithout access to solar can still benefit strongly this way by timing useage of things like washer/dryers etc. Lots of these devices are also becoming "smart" now to automatically pick a good pricing window.
i'd like to emphasize on this. Our energy grid was so far demand driven. The conventional power plants adjusted their output to the demand.
Continueing on this path with renewables is only possible using extraordinarily many storage systems, which are very very expensive.
If we eevelop systems that flexibilise the energy demand, based on when suplly is available, we can reduce the needed storage capacity. This is already done for systems such as warehouse cooling and generally industrial applications will be vital. Still there is large potential within households too. Refrigeration, water heating, laundry and dishwashers all can provide a valuable flexibilisation of energy demand.
With private households its more tricky though, as you need to avoid all appliances in every household to jump at the cheap energy, creating a demand peak exceeding the supply.
Well, more and more people are buying these big batteries with wheels on them. They sure could be part of the solution, if more of them were to support v2h.
Our energy grid was so far demand driven.
Not quite, if you had night and day price differences, those existed to encourage people consume on a time that was more convenient for the producers.
Funny, how even this, which was an often cited use case for smart contracts of more sophisticated blockchain token like Ether, is totally not dependent on any blockchain.
I have yet to see anything legal which actually benefits from a blockchain (and isn't about the blockchain stuff itself, like trading crypto currencies).
I've been working with a company that uses a very common blockchain to timestamp documents/artwork/data etc.
It's a niche use case but it simply couldn't be done before the existance of blockchains.
Could you elaborate why a blockchain is beneficial here? The use case "timestamp documents/artwork/data" does not call for a blockchain to me.
Previously this timestamping was accredited by notaries. This had the problems of cost and the trust in a notary did not translate well internationally.
Now it is almost free to do and the cost of manipulating a blockchain (if possible at all) far outweighs the potential gain from malice.
Are there any of those smart devices that just take the price data and time their actions based on that instead of gathering all the data they can and sending it to some cloud application?
It's good for magazines writing about it. It's not a big deal otherwise, as it seems to be an outlier which will average out very quickly. I haven't seen any indication on whether this will happen more often in the future. Anybody got some data?
Well, negative prices for energy are probably not too good if you are a company that builds solar and wind energy parks.
It depends. In Germany a lot of renewable are guaranteed to get a certain amount of money per kwh, so they don't care about negative prices. The ones that loose are coal/nuclear that can not be turned off fast enough.
For one, it's awesome that we're producing this much solar.
However, it also means that when the price is negative, you pretty much have to switch off your inverter or something, because you're PAYING for the electricity you sell to the grid + you pay the grid fees too.
And funnily enough, the consumers still have to pay to consume it, at a price of 0.00 + grid fee, because the negative price doesn't reallllly make it to the consumer. Which is definitely super cheap, but why can't we make use of the negative pricing? It would be lovely, people would be more incentivized to consume energy during peak production.
The middle-men make a killing off this while solar producers suffer.
Those negative prices are always on the spot market, the bulk of the energy you get from your supplier was paid for in advance because it's generally cheaper and if your supplier is buying lots on the spot market, well, spot market prices would not be that low.
In a sense it would make sense to lower the price for the consumer, have some smart devices use it up (e.g. an already-loaded washer, an already plugged in EV) but most places don't have that kind of tech installed (yet) and even then it'd be cents, and you don't want consumer prices to oscillate too much. Also, the total impact is going to be limited, who the hell gets off the coach to load their washing machine with half a load just because electricity prices are low. Or re-schedules making pizza.
What makes a lot of sense is having large-capacity storage systems which can soak up this kind of seasonal load. They don't need to be particularly efficient, it's more important that they have a large capacity, both in terms of Watts and Watt-hours. Things like flow batteries. Many district heating systems actually have a giant water kettle just for this reason: Absurdly cheap to build, usually it's just standing around doing nothing, but when electricity prices go negative they can sink tons of energy into water and use that to feed showers for weeks to come. Not the most efficient use there is but it's a start.
To be clear, I meant contracts that follow the spot market. I used to have one, so my electricity prices went up and down with the spot market, but negative anything meant 0 for me. Same with euribor, when it was negative, it was still 0 for the end user, and the bank got a bigger margin.
That sounds like capitalism. Have you tried being a billionaire to have enough power to strong-arm the bank into giving you a fair share?
How can the price get negative? Why would a producer pay someone to take their electricity instead of just shutting down?