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This is happening right now, on a massive scale in Australia's NEM (National Electricity Market). Our market operator has recently moved to five minute pricing
by nvella 3y ago
This is happening right now, on a massive scale in Australia's NEM (National Electricity Market). Our market operator has recently moved to five minute pricing and settlement windows to accommodate the rapidly changing energy mix throughout the day, as well as rooftop solar; lots of it.
Most rooftop solar installations were installed before home batteries and smart inverters were common, so the market often finds itself in negative pricing during the day, incentivising investment into grid-scale batteries and pumped hydro which can be paid for both storing the excess during the day, and exporting it in the evening peak. Recently, as home batteries and smart inverters have started to become more accessible for home-owners, it is common to join your household onto a 'virtual power plant' with your electricity retailer, who then commands your household battery alongside thousands of others as similar to this article and pays a credit onto your bill. The other interesting development has been the wholesale pricing retailer; not only do they apply the live wholesale price to your consumption, but also your feed in. I know one of them (Amber) can connect into your battery and drive it's charging/discharging in response to the market price. It's not been uncommon to hear people's bills ending up in credit as the capacity of their battery, combined with the price volatility far outweighs the price impact from their consumption.
The volatility poses its own challenges however. Traditional retailers which typically provide flat or peak/off-peak rate have been struggling to economically provide competitive feed-in tariffs to their customers with older roof-top solar systems; systems which are unaware of the pricing environment. Many of their customers have these solar systems which export straight into negative pricing, creating a loss for the retailer that they have to somehow recoup. As far as I understand, they can't legally have a negative solar feed-in tariff, so I assume they're shifting the loss to the consumption tariff. Even though our daytime prices are often below $0/MWh, the average Australian will tell you that their electricity bill is the most expensive it's ever been.
- Maxion 3y ago> The other interesting development has been the wholesale pricing retailer; not only do they apply the live wholesale price to your consumption, but also your feed in. It works the same in the Nordics, you can purchase and sell power at the spot rate. Our timing is still hourly, but will soon change to 15 minute intervals. Our power here is still so cheap, and while the pricing is volatile the jumps aren't yet really large enough for battery systems to give positive ROI. At least not for consumers.
- theshrike79 3y agoBecause OL3 broke down (again), the prices today are just absolutely bonkers, jumping up to 96,77c/kWh for an hour (⊙_⊙) On the other hand we had literal negative prices for long periods of time during the summer and early fall so...
- applied_heat 3y agoFor some company to get financing to build a battery it requires some certainty they will not go bankrupt, which means a contract with someone than ensures they will make money. Gambling on the arbitrage opportunity in electricity market rates alone isn’t going to get a 100 million dollar loan. The last line of your comment is the most interesting to me, electricity is more expensive than ever in Australia.