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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's not about subsidy, it's about keeping the grid voltage constant.
You're paying people for the service of using up energy, and keeping the grid stable. Negative electricity prices are really a symptom of not having enough storage capacity on the grid.
My $0.02 anyway...
No, this really is talking about negative energy prices. The suppliers are paying people to use electricity in order to keep the grid voltage stable, since production has to match demand.
Really this is a symptom of not having enough energy storage on the grid. They were generating so much energy that they could no longer store it, and needed to pay someone to burn the energy off.
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!
But if prices are negative, why don't they just feather the wind mills? No point in producing energy and paying for it, might as well shut them down if there's too much supply and too little demand.
EU and German law requires wind and solar to take priority over all other sources, so that last thing you are allowed to curtail is wind. Wind is only 15% total annual generation in Germany, if they want much higher penetration, they will need to curtail wind a lot more, which will make the cost of wind rise.
Actually nuclear has the same problem. It's a fairly expensive base load, but when demand drops prices still go negative, because you still need the grid to absorb the excess. You can't just ramp up and ramp down on a dime: that's why they call it base load. Your base load should always be less than total demand.
In fact what this news is pointing to is that the smarter we can be about using power when it's available, the more efficient we can be. Run your hot water heater and your home heater or air conditioner when prices go negative, turn it off when they go positive, keep the temperature under control but don't be stupid about it, and you need a lot less base load capacity.
"Traditional base load" does not match supply with demand.
It constantly produces around 95% of its max capacity. Hence the name: base load.
That is the minimum amount of power your grid will always consume. So you build plants that can be run close to 100% 24/7 all years long. Hence the name: base load.
But now we have so much renewables, that they produce more power than the base load plants.
You are mixing up 'base laod' with either 'load following', 'balancing power' or 'reserve power' or with all three of them.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
Not really. It's nothing to do with keeping grid voltage constant - voltage is a local phenomenon in the grid and is a reflection of current vector flows through the complex impedance, such that you don't need power plants to raise or lower the voltage, but instead, this is done by capacitors/inductors/variable phase shift transformers and variable ratio transformers.
Negative energy prices are a symptom of having too many power plants with no incentive to reduce output in an oversupply condition.
There are many reasons why a plant may not wish to reduce power:
- a thermal plant may already be operating at close to its minimum rated power, and may require the operator to waste steam to reduce electricity output, because the plant cannot sustain a lower steam production (in such a condition, there is a loss of revenue, but no reduction in fuel costs, so is undesirable - unless prices turn negative at which point steam waste may be judged appropriate).
- Renewable and nuclear generators which have zero, or near zero, marginal operating costs are reluctant to reduce output as it reduces revenue, without a saving in fuel costs
- Subsidised power generators (which in the UK model sell the power to the govt at a fixed price, and the govt then sells it on the open market) do not have to respond to market forces, so have no incentive to reduce power output, even in the event of negative prices.
- Some plants, such as the old UK nuclear plants, are limited by fatigue life, and therefore must avoid temperature and load changes, except for plant operational reasons, and therefore are reluctant to reduce load, even in the event of negative prices.
- Renewable electricity is legally required to hold a "privileged" position in the energy market, such that it must not be curtailed if any other source can be curtailed first. In the event that for technical reasons, renewable energy must be curtailed (e.g. very high local wind conditions resulting in local grid overload), the compensation that must be paid to the wind generators is very high (up to 10x the value of the subsidies curtailed).
Actually nuclear has the same problem. It's a fairly expensive base load, but when demand drops prices still go negative, because you still need the grid to absorb the excess. You can't just ramp up and ramp down on a dime: that's why they call it base load. Your base load should always be less than total demand.
Exactly this. During the California power crisis a decade or so ago, our public utility up in British Columbia made out like bandits. During the day time, power was at a huge premium in California. So, BC Hydro would run their hydro-electric power plants flat out, as hard as possible, unsustainably draining their reservoirs. At night, they'd turn the dams off, let the water build up behind the dams again, and buy dirt cheap nuclear power from California. The reason is that the older designs used in current Nuclear power plants can't reliably ramp up or down to meet real daytime/nighttime peaking.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Doesn't quite work that way. There is no such thing as an oversupply on an electric grid. Just because you have a wall wart that can supply 2000mA doesn't mean it will blow up your cell phone that only needs 500mA.
These are point prices on the energy market and works much like stock and futures markets. It's not like they go knocking at people's door to beg them to use energy, the end user still pays an exorbitant amount ($1+) per kWh at the end of the month. This is just a temporary swing in the futures of "supply cost" which is a very small chunk of the final cost, usage taxes, green buildout taxes, regulatory cost, network maintenance and energy transport costs make up the majority of the bill.
The reason for this is indeed subsidies, which you pay for in taxes. So the state subsidizes "green" power, but you can't just turn off your nuclear and other plants, that would be both dangerous and take days to recover. So you keep supplying power and as always, the only option is to turn off flexible generators (solar and wind), the problem is that you now have a bunch of money the government gives you per kWh the green energy plant "generates" but there is no demand and you can't legally keep/collect the money, so now the people that have paid for the futures of the green energy plant get paid back based on how much the plant would've generated if it were running.
So the end users are paying speculators through taxes levied on their energy bills for the energy that doesn't end up being generated.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Your utility made out like bandits because Enron came up with a scheme to banksterize the power grid, not because there was an actual problem.
Either direction is fine.
Those big windmills are there to combat global warming.
They are cooling fans.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.