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It's Been So Windy in Europe That Electricity Prices Have Turned Negative (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes: It's been very windy across Europe this week. So much so, in fact, that the high wind load on onshore and offshore wind turbines across much of the continent has helped set new wind power records. For starters, renewables generated more than half of Britain's energy demand on Wednesday -- for the first time ever. In fact, with offshore wind supplying 10 percent of the total demand, energy prices were knocked into the negative for the longest period on record. The UK is home to the world's biggest wind farm, and the largest wind turbines, so it's no surprise that this was an important factor in the country's energy mix. "Negative prices aren't frequently observed," Joel Meggelaars, who works at renewable energy trade body WindEurope, told Motherboard over the phone. "It means a high supply and low demand."
...electricity pays you!
Am I doing this right?
It must be nice to have such a high subsidy that you can pay people for your product and still make a profit.
Negative prices for energy are a pure fiction. If this were actually the case, the utility would pay you to use electricity. The reality here is that there are government subsidies or other government interference that is artificially distorting the market and that offset, minus the reduction in cost due to a glut in supply, may have netted a negative price for electricity temporarily. But all those wind turbines and other "green" systems are not free, thus if you have:
Some cost for green systems/total energy developed from those systems = positive cost per unit energy
That cost has to be paid by someone.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
My $0.02 anyway...
This reminds me of the time I went to buy cinder blocks at Home Depot. The guy told me the more I bought, the cheaper they are. So I told him to load them up on my trailer until they're free.
#DeleteFacebook
Then there are days, usually in winter, when the island has the opposite problem: it creates more energy than it can use or store. Just as Eigg Electric has to manage its deficiencies itself, it has to manage its surpluses. Fortunately, it has a system for that too: when there is a surplus of power, electric heaters in the community hall, pier lobby and two churches automatically turn on. This keeps these shared spaces warm all through the winter and requires “virtually no central heating in the system at all,” says Booth. “We don’t charge for it because the whole community benefits.”
Before too many people jump in blaming this on subsidies, they should read this:
https://www.cleanenergywire.or...
My understanding is that basically if you have energy sources which can't be quickly or cheaply shut down, and supply exceeds demand, the price can turn negative so that the grid can dump the excess power.
Slight correction, but the UK isn't home to the world's largest windfarm - that's actually Gansu in China - but it is home to no less than six of the world's largest off-shore farms, including the largest of those, The London Array.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Everybody knows everyone is using coal but the US because of the Paris treaty.
But ... but COAL!
This will result in people trying to take advantage of negative pricing by buying low, or even negative, and selling high. That will lead to developments in storage technology for energy which will eventually serve to stabilize the erratic power output of wind and solar and optimizing the price.
Just the free market doing what it is supposed to do.
but trump said clean-coal is futures - wind and sun is bad - jobs is coming back - lower prices and tax for alls! WIN!!
turbine owners received £1.2billion in the form of a consumer subsidy
so only took them years to get this effect for a minor limited time ..how long will wind farms spin to pay back £1.2billion lol
Is storage not an option? Guessing it's expensive? (I'm too lazy to look any of this up....)
How many birds were harmed in the making of this energy and did the producers of this clean energy face the same kinds of fines an oil or coal company would have for killing the same amount of wildlife? That would certainly offset any negative energy prices.
If only the electrical grid had some capacitance. I feel like Tesla's power wall is a really good way to start that. Not storage on the grid, but a good start.
time to mine bitcoin free power makes it good for profit
This is written up as if it's a great thing but in reality this is a symptom of the problematic non-load tracking nature of wind and solar. Adding more storage is a bandaid. Bandages tend to work, but the underlying issue remains.
"The trees are really sneezing today" - Calvin
Electricity prices have gone negative?
Not to worry, once they switch to "clean coal" that'll all be fixed.
In fact, maybe they could just run the wind turbines on coal and then there will be plenty of jobs for every coal miner in Europe!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Unfortunately, no. In any given year, there are less than 100 hours where the energy price is negative (ok, I'm fibbing here and haven't looked up the exact amount, but that's the general ballpark). In order to use a couple MW or GW of power to mine bitcoin, however, you have huge capital expenditures in bitcoin mining equipment -- which swiftly loses value over time as new generations of chips are introduced -- so the chip you are using at easter might be a lot less efficient compared to the competition at xmas; if you only use negative price energy periods (if you can even get on that market, the barriers to entry are rather high), you simply can't recoup the hardware costs at all and will be running at a loss.
If you are mining anyway, sure, negative prices could be a boon -- but I know of no bitcoin mining operation that is actually trading on the energy exchanges and as such they can't really take advantage of this fluctuation.
Only on Slashdot will you find people who will tell you that renewable energy is a far-fetched fantasy, but ubiquitous driverless cars are just around the corner. Oh, and we're totally going to Mars.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Germany has tons of Wind and Solar and yet they pay at least 3x as much as someone in the US does for electricity. The Brits pay 80% more than the US. And that is with the subsidies. If there were none how much more would the people be paying? And Germans have brown outs to boot. So until those prices come down sporadic bouts or high production do matter to your bottom line much.
https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity-prices-kwh.html
So if we solve "climate change" does that mean the wind speed will go down?
Presumably you read nothing other than the headline and jumped to a conclusion. The summary and the article make it clear - the price went negative, electricity users were being paid to use power.
Keep in mind that negative power pricing happens at the wholesale level. Unless you can buy power at the wholesale level, you will still pay your regular rate.
The large amount of renewable resources (mostly wind) and hydro electric run of the river (very little storage capacity) generation, when water flows are high and the wind is blowing, force the dams to spill water. Spilling water over the top of the dam (versus running water through the turbines or the fish facility) adds dissolved nitrogen into the water which makes the fish down stream "drunk". Hydroelectric operators spend big bucks (tens of US$ per fish per year) to keep the fish happy and alive rather than loopy and food for a predator. Hydroelectric generation operators can also be fined for contributing too much dissolved nitrogen to a fish habitat.
To avoid this, hydroelectric generation operators will pay (again, at the wholesale level only) other utilities to take excess power off their hands so they don't have to spill water.
Not the actual electricity itself. The Electricity has been rock bottom cheap here in Sweden for YEARS now.
But the EL-companys lobbyists have successfully lobbied away the roof on network/electricity transportation fee's, so there is no longer any roof on that.
This means the EL-Companies are working together to charge SKY high prices for transportation of the electricity, it's technically a fee they take to repair and maintain the network, but it's also an obligatory fee to be connected to them, it's insanely high, and they just yet again warned us of much higher prices.
In fact, our network prices are so crazy high that we pay roughly 40 cents per KWH just for transportation AND taxes on transportation. Yes, that's nearly half a dollar per KWH!
So all the sensationalist BS about negative EL-prices is just headline clickbait, it has no real life implication for any citizen.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Why can't we just turn the wind into coal?
(fingers in ears) la, la, la, coal rules!, la, la, la, i can't hear you...
So, this is the problem isn't it? Certain renewables "spiky" and without some sort of energy storage, the energy is effectively wasted. Lots of people like to say that excess energy can be stored in batteries, but really, those batteries are a pretty non-sustainable solution themselves.
This is why power companies just need to start using excess energy to split water and either store the hydrogen for use in a HFC power plant as needed or sell it for use in HFC vehicles.
It's so easy, Cal State LA is doing it and selling the hydrogen at the pump.
Get a clue. These articles are clickbait and only clickbait.
Isn't this this perfect scenario for using distributed computing, things like SETI@Home or Rosetta@Home etc., and having software in place to automatically launch this distributed computing on peoples home computers, in order to eat up all of that negative-price electricity? Through doing this, the kwh used in the computing can be calculated (relatively easy to approximate with modern processors - the completed work can be used as verification that the energy was used this way), and subtracted from the participants power bills (plus a bonus relief to the customer, for any error margin and as thanks for participating) - so that it's at no extra cost for the customer, and only the most marginal cost for government.
Make more wind!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You are required by law to screw the nuke operators at every opportunity. it's not a subsidy.
Thanks for making it so windy so we can run our cheap wind turbines.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
When electricity prices go negative it would be a good time to produce hydrogen fuel thru electrolysis. It could be used to for clean trucking and further reduce greenhouse gasses. .
It's wonderful how many "experts" there seem to be about the UK energy system,specially as so many appear to be from outside the UK or are just pig ignorant.
You all rattle on about base load being generated by nuclear/coal,problem is,the UK has very little coal generation,but none of you mention gas,which does have a major role in base generation and can be spun up or down very quickly, all they are is a jet engine connected to a generator pack..
The problem in the UK is that the vast majority is now owned by French and German firms who use the high prices in the UK to subsidies their own home customers with cheaper prices,if the UK had a far better storage system,that would take a lot of the fluctuation out,which would lead to lower prices.
All the interconnects are designed/built to mostly bring power in,not push it out..
If the energy market is ever re-nationalised in the UK,energy prices in France/Germany would go up about 15+% overnight..
not on my monthly bill...
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Global warming puts more energy into the atmosphere. More energy in the atmosphere makes for more and stronger winds. More and stronger winds makes for more and cheaper wind power. More and cheaper wind power means less global warming. Less global warming means less energy into the atmosphere. Less energy into the atmosphere means less and weaker winds...
aso. ...
so if a fuse in between a yuge generator and the first step up transformer blows then
the generator "runs-away" because there's no load because the circuit is not closed (but open because of the blown fuse)?
i don't think so.
anyway, the grid is synced, thus if you have 50 Hz and a peak (of the sinusoidal curve) at point A and then you have a point B, 300 km (or more) away, it will have the peak at exactly the same time. call it spooky action at a distance.
if there's no resistance or load or consumption then the generators will keep spinning at 50 Hz BUT MUCH MORE EASILY.
there might even be the situation, that because renewables are having a good, sunny and windy day that they are "carrying"
much of the connected loads, which leaves the "base load" generator, which can have a generator axle made from metal weighing several tons, to spinning close to free, or in other words, to keep the 50 ton generator axle spinning at 50 Hz,
you could connect some gears and a DONKEY (one donkey power) that WALKS in circles and it would have enough power
to keep the yuge ton axle spinning constantly at 50 Hz.
of course if a storm front moves in over the solar panels, their output would drop and the poor donkey at the base
load generator would start feeling a rather large physical resistance. now one could add more donkeys -or- drop
the clutch and start releasing steam from a boiler onto a turbine that is connected to the generator axle -or- fire
up the bolted to the earth jet-engine which is connected to it the same manner.
of course, one could remove the donkey and replace it with a semi-YUGE electrical motor that would absorb the
excess energy to keep the yuge generator axle spinning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser).
of course would could also use the excess energy to build more wind turbines or grow more poly or mono silicon crystals.
or one could use the excess energy to heat up the steam boilers of the coal power plants instead of coal.
For falling micro donkeys, as in case of dams, that use molecule sized donkeys, if there is little load or the load is
carried by the renewable already, then less donkeys per second need to be released from the donkey dam to keep the generator axle at 50 Hz.
in the same manner if a storm front moves in, looking to release vaporized donkeys into the donkey dam, the solar panels will output less energy and the generator at the dam will feel a "breaking power" (it picks up the slack), but since the grid wants 50 Hz, more donkeys per seconds needs to be released to "push" on the generator axle (via turbine blades).
maybe, just maybe, it's time to make the so-called "base-load" generators and turbines renewable-compatible. research and investment, good stuff(tm). or just hock up some batteries.
on a personal note, when i am not home, i am not using my solarpanel, grid-synced electricity generator ... AT HOME. but i get a smile, if i ride a lift or enter a air-conditioned shop because it think: "some of this happens because of my solar panels at home" ... and thus everybody should get the same price they pay.
The best stationary storage method for compressed air is one of these:
https://youtu.be/SScpJMsCm9c
They used to be everywhere in Europe.
One of them is still operating in Canada,
It powers all the machinery in a mine there.
This guy, Bill, really knew what he was talking about, even when totally drunk.
Granted, with a five-hour power surplus, you'll never break even on the cost and time for warming up your smelting plant, but if these periods of electricity surplus become longer, smelting alumin i um becomes a lot more investment-worthy than mining bitcoin.
At least, I'm having a hard time to imagine a future world that can make better use of bitcoin than aluminium...