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> (Renewables) They have provided such an abundance of electricity that consumers are paid to use it. in one place. Once. And the author is making it sounds l

> (Renewables) They have provided such an abundance of electricity that consumers are paid to use it. in one place. Once. And the author is making it sounds like it's valid everywhere. Well, no.

sergiosgc 3y ago
Just wait a couple more years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption?tab=chart&time=2000..latest&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption?... We are in the middle of an energy technological leap. It'll take a decade to unfurl, but it's nothing short of astounding.
- credit_guy 3y ago
  It is, but ... If prices become negative on average, then there is no financial incentive for anyone to build a new power plant. Except if that plant can follow the load and generate only during the times when the prices are positive, and are above its breakeven generation cost. Natural gas power plants fall in that category. Battery storage too, twice better actually, as they can charge when prices are low or even negative, and discharge when prices are high. One could claim that solar plus batteries is fine. Except that whoever plans to build solar plus batteries can quickly figure out that the ROI is even better if they do battery only and no solar at all. The same goes for wind. The Economist ran a fairly informative article about this in September [1]. [1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/09/21/renewable-energy-has-hidden-costs https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/09/21/r...
  - ViewTrick1002 3y ago
    Which is self correcting. 1. Negative/low/volatile prices => Storage is worth constructing to arbitrage the price rather than new generation. 2. Prices smooth out. 3. More power generation get built to take advantage of smoothed out prices. 4. And the cycle repeats. Looking at the market as frozen in time will never match reality.
jakewins 3y ago
Negative prices happen constantly? Especially if you’re trading intraday and similar faster markets. It’s partially a useful thing - large generators paying to avoid stopping - but largely it’s because peoples rooftop solar doesn’t curtail and so produce huge surpluses that someone needs to take. We saw this over and over in several of the markets we trade in last spring.
thelastgallon 3y ago
Power prices are negative 200 million times/year in US and rapidly growing! European grid has more renewables, we can expect it to be negative more frequently. Right now, negative prices shut down production, wasting all the free production, called curtailment. Instead, EV owners can charge and be paid for charging. In fact, EV owners can get paid twice, once for charging and again for supplying power back to the grid as part of a virtual power plant. In a pilot this year, participants in VPP with their powerwalls made $150/day. It is entirely possible to do this with EVs. And, very few needs 100% charge/range. 52% of all trips, including all modes of transportation, were less than three miles, with 28% of trips less than one mile. Just 2% of all trips were greater than 50 miles.[3]. You can set a range, keep my car charged between 60 - 90% at all times, give me money both for charging and supplying power back to the grid! I'm sure there will be some people who'd be interested in free money. [1]https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-report-making-150-day/ https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo... [2]Wholesale prices went negative about 200 million times across the seven US grids in 2021, more than twice as often as five years earlier: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-renewable-energy-sends-us-power-prices-below-zero https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-r... https://archive.is/nFsOk#selection-4373.0-4373.136 https://archive.is/nFsOk#selection-4373.0-4373.136
- adolph 3y ago
  > Power prices are negative 200 million times/year in US and rapidly growing! European grid has more renewables, we can expect it to be negative more frequently. Given 31,536,000 seconds in a year, a more descriptive aggregate statistic might be how much of total capacity was at a negative billing rate.
audunw 3y ago
You could have said the same thing about the first cases of sending electronic mail. But once that ball got rolling it didn’t take long for e-mail to take over the world. We’ve already gotten to the point where over-construction of renewables and energy storage to scale to peak seasonal demand is the cheapest way to get energy. The only barrier to get there now is we don’t have the production capacity to transition faster. It’s now basically inevitable that renewables will result in energy too cheap to meter most parts of the year in most places. It’s just a matter of time to build it. Check Tony Sebas recent presentation on The Great Transformation. If you want more practical/empirical details you can check Mark Z Jacobsens studies. It’s kind of funny that people are now saying that solar is “only” providing 10% of electricity or whatever it may be in a given region. Just a decade or two ago people like Tony Seba was thought to be crazy for predicting that solar would reach this point this fast. Look at any instance of technology transitions “logistics curves” (“S-curve”). When you get to past the 10% point the new technologies take over incredibly quickly.
edent 3y ago
I'm sorry, I try to be clear in my writing. I did say "my electricity company emailed me" which was supposed to indicate that this was specific to my local area. London, where I live, has about 9 million people. So I suppose it also applied to them as well. And, I also pointed to a chart of the UK's energy mix. That was supposed to indicate that my blog post was about the UK. As others have pointed out, these <= £0 prices happen fairly frequently.

> (Renewables) They have provided such an abundance of electricity that consumers are paid to use it. in one place. Once. And the author is making it sounds like it's valid everywhere. Well, no.

sergiosgc 3y ago

Just wait a couple more years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption?tab=chart&time=2000..latest&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption?... We are in the middle of an energy technological leap. It'll take a decade to unfurl, but it's nothing short of astounding.

credit_guy 3y ago
It is, but ... If prices become negative on average, then there is no financial incentive for anyone to build a new power plant. Except if that plant can follow the load and generate only during the times when the prices are positive, and are above its breakeven generation cost. Natural gas power plants fall in that category. Battery storage too, twice better actually, as they can charge when prices are low or even negative, and discharge when prices are high. One could claim that solar plus batteries is fine. Except that whoever plans to build solar plus batteries can quickly figure out that the ROI is even better if they do battery only and no solar at all. The same goes for wind. The Economist ran a fairly informative article about this in September [1]. [1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/09/21/renewable-energy-has-hidden-costs https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/09/21/r...
- ViewTrick1002 3y ago
  Which is self correcting. 1. Negative/low/volatile prices => Storage is worth constructing to arbitrage the price rather than new generation. 2. Prices smooth out. 3. More power generation get built to take advantage of smoothed out prices. 4. And the cycle repeats. Looking at the market as frozen in time will never match reality.

jakewins 3y ago

Negative prices happen constantly? Especially if you’re trading intraday and similar faster markets. It’s partially a useful thing - large generators paying to avoid stopping - but largely it’s because peoples rooftop solar doesn’t curtail and so produce huge surpluses that someone needs to take. We saw this over and over in several of the markets we trade in last spring.

thelastgallon 3y ago

Power prices are negative 200 million times/year in US and rapidly growing! European grid has more renewables, we can expect it to be negative more frequently. Right now, negative prices shut down production, wasting all the free production, called curtailment. Instead, EV owners can charge and be paid for charging. In fact, EV owners can get paid twice, once for charging and again for supplying power back to the grid as part of a virtual power plant. In a pilot this year, participants in VPP with their powerwalls made $150/day. It is entirely possible to do this with EVs. And, very few needs 100% charge/range. 52% of all trips, including all modes of transportation, were less than three miles, with 28% of trips less than one mile. Just 2% of all trips were greater than 50 miles.[3]. You can set a range, keep my car charged between 60 - 90% at all times, give me money both for charging and supplying power back to the grid! I'm sure there will be some people who'd be interested in free money. [1]https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-report-making-150-day/ https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo... [2]Wholesale prices went negative about 200 million times across the seven US grids in 2021, more than twice as often as five years earlier: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-renewable-energy-sends-us-power-prices-below-zero https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-r... https://archive.is/nFsOk#selection-4373.0-4373.136 https://archive.is/nFsOk#selection-4373.0-4373.136

adolph 3y ago
> Power prices are negative 200 million times/year in US and rapidly growing! European grid has more renewables, we can expect it to be negative more frequently. Given 31,536,000 seconds in a year, a more descriptive aggregate statistic might be how much of total capacity was at a negative billing rate.

audunw 3y ago

You could have said the same thing about the first cases of sending electronic mail. But once that ball got rolling it didn’t take long for e-mail to take over the world. We’ve already gotten to the point where over-construction of renewables and energy storage to scale to peak seasonal demand is the cheapest way to get energy. The only barrier to get there now is we don’t have the production capacity to transition faster. It’s now basically inevitable that renewables will result in energy too cheap to meter most parts of the year in most places. It’s just a matter of time to build it. Check Tony Sebas recent presentation on The Great Transformation. If you want more practical/empirical details you can check Mark Z Jacobsens studies. It’s kind of funny that people are now saying that solar is “only” providing 10% of electricity or whatever it may be in a given region. Just a decade or two ago people like Tony Seba was thought to be crazy for predicting that solar would reach this point this fast. Look at any instance of technology transitions “logistics curves” (“S-curve”). When you get to past the 10% point the new technologies take over incredibly quickly.

edent 3y ago

I'm sorry, I try to be clear in my writing. I did say "my electricity company emailed me" which was supposed to indicate that this was specific to my local area. London, where I live, has about 9 million people. So I suppose it also applied to them as well. And, I also pointed to a chart of the UK's energy mix. That was supposed to indicate that my blog post was about the UK. As others have pointed out, these <= £0 prices happen fairly frequently.