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Interesting - so presumably you could also make a small amount of money by turning on e.g. a bunch of electric heaters. Makes me wonder whether someone could (

by RobinL 3y ago

Interesting - so presumably you could also make a small amount of money by turning on e.g. a bunch of electric heaters. Makes me wonder whether someone could (or is) making significant money this way. It's amazing to me there isn't some better way of using this energy in energy intensive industries e.g. electrolysis

praseodym 3y ago
Charging an electric car will earn you €10-€15 and you get to drive your car a nice distance too. Battery storage could earn you more if you discharge at the right moment, but energy prices aren’t negative often enough to warrant the expenses on a battery pack. You could also trade on intra-day pricing differences (buy low, sell high) but I doubt this will be an interesting business case for the average consumer. Of course large scale battery parks work the same way, but they will have contracts with the grid provider to balance capacity, a more lucrative market. Large scale electrolysis has the same problem as home batteries: big investment, so you won’t recoup the investment unless you can run the electrolyser often enough. Another issue is that electrolysers can’t scale up or down very quickly, so you can’t respond to capacity issues and get lucrative deals in that market.
- Incipient 3y ago
  I think the main issue is predictability of price/power? If you could guarantee getting paid 10p unit for off-peak, and guarantee getting paid 40p to supply during peak, for say 5 years, I think a lot more of these projects would take off...but it's all still far too turbulent.
  - ragebol 3y ago
    The thing is: batteries, when used for buying low and selling high only in a turbulent market, have a dampening effect on exactly that. So, if deployed en-masse, they kill their own business case. With the 'side effect' of a much more stable price market, which is exactly what we want I guess.
irthomasthomas 3y ago
By "bunch of electric heaters" do you mean GPUs and such?
- Panzer04 3y ago
  GPUs cost a lot to exploit a small price issue like this. I would use a dirt cheap heat element heater - presumably you could acquire these very cheaply and get paid to use power. The problem usually is that there's a physical cap on how much energy can be transmitted through a grid endpoint, and grids themselves charge a significant portion of the bill, meaning arbitrage only works if the actual price is eg. -14c (the case in my particular location)
ragebol 3y ago
Ppl make money (an insignificant bit) by charging their car. Like €15, while the car cost is easily €3-40k
- dzhiurgis 3y ago
  Assume this every day and pays itself multiple times over the lifetime of car
  - ragebol 3y ago
    Then still, you'd need 5 to 8 years of very negative prices. These prices are a nice little bonus for some ppl but not something sustainable. It's a signal from the market something has to change: be more flexible, in demand or supply.
DicIfTEx 3y ago
Sounds like the Cash for Ash scandal, which took down the Northern Irish government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_sca...

by RobinL 3y ago

praseodym 3y ago

Charging an electric car will earn you €10-€15 and you get to drive your car a nice distance too. Battery storage could earn you more if you discharge at the right moment, but energy prices aren’t negative often enough to warrant the expenses on a battery pack. You could also trade on intra-day pricing differences (buy low, sell high) but I doubt this will be an interesting business case for the average consumer. Of course large scale battery parks work the same way, but they will have contracts with the grid provider to balance capacity, a more lucrative market. Large scale electrolysis has the same problem as home batteries: big investment, so you won’t recoup the investment unless you can run the electrolyser often enough. Another issue is that electrolysers can’t scale up or down very quickly, so you can’t respond to capacity issues and get lucrative deals in that market.

Incipient 3y ago
I think the main issue is predictability of price/power? If you could guarantee getting paid 10p unit for off-peak, and guarantee getting paid 40p to supply during peak, for say 5 years, I think a lot more of these projects would take off...but it's all still far too turbulent.
- ragebol 3y ago
  The thing is: batteries, when used for buying low and selling high only in a turbulent market, have a dampening effect on exactly that. So, if deployed en-masse, they kill their own business case. With the 'side effect' of a much more stable price market, which is exactly what we want I guess.

irthomasthomas 3y ago

By "bunch of electric heaters" do you mean GPUs and such?

Panzer04 3y ago
GPUs cost a lot to exploit a small price issue like this. I would use a dirt cheap heat element heater - presumably you could acquire these very cheaply and get paid to use power. The problem usually is that there's a physical cap on how much energy can be transmitted through a grid endpoint, and grids themselves charge a significant portion of the bill, meaning arbitrage only works if the actual price is eg. -14c (the case in my particular location)

ragebol 3y ago

Ppl make money (an insignificant bit) by charging their car. Like €15, while the car cost is easily €3-40k

dzhiurgis 3y ago
Assume this every day and pays itself multiple times over the lifetime of car
- ragebol 3y ago
  Then still, you'd need 5 to 8 years of very negative prices. These prices are a nice little bonus for some ppl but not something sustainable. It's a signal from the market something has to change: be more flexible, in demand or supply.

DicIfTEx 3y ago

Sounds like the Cash for Ash scandal, which took down the Northern Irish government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_sca...