12 ms·

Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

132 points by Capstanlqc 2y ago

bell-cot 2y ago
> French day-ahead power fell to -€5.76 a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany’s equivalent contract dropped to €7.64. If true - how fast could a new transmission line from France to Germany pay for itself?
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d74699be9/franco-german-power-price-gap-is-here-to-stay-analysts https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d7469... https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-interconnector-targets-tso https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-inte... https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5N0KW3WE/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5N0KW3WE/
- ganeshkrishnan 2y ago
  Germany already buys electricity from France. The cost mentioned above are the subsidized charges by the EDF to the french government. Germans would get the full cost which is much higher than the quoted price here. Besides nuclear power is not flexible enough to amp it up and down according to demand (unlike coal or petrocarbon industries).
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities"). Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas generation to retire [2] [3]. TLDR More interconnector capacity, battery storage, and renewables needed (my analysis). [1] https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR?wind=false&solar=false https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR?wind=false&solar=fal... [3] https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/france-extends-life-of-last-coal-fired-plants-to-avoid-winter-shortfalls/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/france-extends-li...
    - pydry 2y ago
      Which theyve actually used very very rarely. Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Theyre ridiculously cost ineffective when used for load following since it's basically curtailment. This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as theyve been plummeting in price).
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - orwin 2y ago
        It's untrue, it is used everyday on all our Gen3/Gen3+ reactors (our Gen2 are able to do it too, but it does cost a lot as core monitoring is more costly for them) I've found this https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-charge-29-2.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-... even if it isn't really clear, you have a graph that show you a typical year on a french reactor, and load followinf the german reactors used to do over a day.
      - throw0101c 2y ago
        > Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Ontario, Canada would disagree with you: nuclear is 10.1¢/kWh, hydro is 6.2¢, (methane/natural) gas is 11.4¢; see Table 2: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20231019.pdf https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023... Of course hydro-electric dams typically flood many hectares of land for the reservoir. The current ones are getting refurbished: * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/niagara-ontario-power-generation-sir-adam-beck-refurbish-1.7174267 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/niagara-ontario-power... Ontario's nuclear fleet are also in the middle of a bunch of refurbs: * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-nuclear-power-pickering-refurbishment-electricity-1.7098524 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-nuclear-power... Some of which are finished: * https://www.opg.com/releases/opg-celebrates-the-early-completion-of-darlington-unit-3/ https://www.opg.com/releases/opg-celebrates-the-early-comple... Live data on Ontario's grid: * https://ieso.ca/power-data https://ieso.ca/power-data § "Supply" tab
- dmurray 2y ago
  Let's see: The line can't just go a few metres across the border. Let's say it connects Dortmund, in the German industrial heartland on the French side of the country, with Chooz, the site of a nuclear plant near the German border. French nuclear plants are evenly distributed around the country [0], so that should be a reasonable choice. That's 250 km. High voltage transmission costs around €2m/km to build [1] and carries around 2 GW of power [2]. So your line costs €500m to build and makes €13 x 2000 = €26,000 an hour and pays for itself after 20,000 hours or three years. You might reasonably say you wouldn't expect to capture all of the €13 per MWh in arbitrage profits, and perhaps this disparity was a short-lived aberration. But actually it's not: electricity futures in France are priced €25 cheaper than their equivalent contracts in Germany [3], so you could reasonably expect to capture a good portion of that - if you split the surplus between you, the consumer and the producer you can still get €9. Of course, one problem with this free money is that your competitors are already doing it. The gap is expected to narrow over time thanks to interconnectors like this, increased generation in Germany, and French nuclear plants going out of service [3]. Still, with increasing electrification of the energy market, this kind of power transmission seems like a good business to be in and a good investment for national governments and grid operators. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-French-nuclear-power-plants-30_fig1_308513695 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-French-nuclear-po... [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358793859_Cost_of_energy_infrastructure_in_Europe_and_Austria_electricity_gas_oil_and_heat https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358793859_Cost_of_e... [2] https://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grady/_13_EE392J_2_Spring11_AEP_Transmission_Facts.pdf https://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grady/_13_EE392J_2_Spring... [3] https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d74699be9/franco-german-power-price-gap-is-here-to-stay-analysts https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d7469...
  - jandrese 2y ago
    In general if the incentives are already aligned to solve a problem I don't worry about the problem. It is likely to solve itself without any intervention.
    - dmurray 2y ago
kseistrup 2y ago
They ought to flood something towards Denmark. Right now, in this moment, I pay roughly 0.49€ (3.66 DKK) per kWh.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  Depends on where you are! Jutland and Fyn can share via the Central European grid whereas Sjaelland is on the Nordic grid with Sweden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta... (There are several HVDC links between those grids, but as I understand it that adds capacitance for the purpose of pricing.)
  - kseistrup 2y ago
    Indeed. I am on the island of Bornholm, just South of Sweden. There is only one cable connecting Bornholm, and it comes from Sweden (and once every couple of year a ship is sailing with its anchor out and tears the sea cable, so powercuts are longer and more frequent here than I'd prefer, but that's a story for another time).
- leobg 2y ago
  Let’s run a crowdfunding campaign for the cable. I’m midway and will want a piece of that as well.
ganeshkrishnan 2y ago
This was very surprising and positive. I had expected pain for the electricity market in France since EDF "lost" the uranium mines in Niger and replaced it by shipping uranium from canada/australia. So it looks like solar and wind have more than compensated for the nuclear power shortages. The olympic games will put this news to test and I guess we will find out soon if this news is indeed true.
- realusername 2y ago
  There's two years of uranium ready to use in reserve plus five years more in reserve to enrich plus all the other producers. There's never been any issue with uranium, not even remotely. I'm not even sure the Niger coup will last that long.
- cyberax 2y ago
  This is NOT positive. Not at all. This means that the grid is filled with useless generating capacity. As a result, nuclear power becomes less competitive. However, renewables work poorly during the winter time. In Europe, they can go down for multiple _weeks_ at a time, far beyond any storage capabilities. And the only power plants that can fill the gap are fossil fuels. End result: more fossil generation.
- yodelshady 2y ago
  "..the grid operator to request that Electricite de France SA take several nuclear plants offline." Could you read the article please? The lumbering beasts, which actually do hate changing output at all, turned off before the renewables. Secondly, another below comment already explains that no, there's not a shortage. Thirdly, please for f*ks sake, engage your brain and think what the impact of 700 euros a month (high in 2022) to negative prices now has on industry. What the everloving ** do I charge my customers? Maybe this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40679507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40679507
topper-123 2y ago
Isolated this is a zero sum game in favor of buyers (someone has ti take the electricity), but longer term, this shows there needs to be better greater electricity storage solutions available, i.e batteries or similar.
- paulsutter 2y ago
  Negative prices make storage very practical
  - andrewxdiamond 2y ago
    And de-incentivizes supply. A real solution need to be available to balance the supply and demand of power such that the rates on both ends are predictable. A market where a good fluctuates between profitable and not is not one very attractive to investment. Playing the video game Victoria 3 has taught me a lot about healthy markets. You have to play both sides of supply and demand to get to the prices you need
    - topper-123 2y ago
      Negative prices do incentivize storage, because storage will alliw sellers to sell at a time with higher prices (i.e. when demand is greater relative to supply).
      - thecosas 2y ago
        I could see this then pushing more consumers to have their own batteries to store energy when it's inexpensive. Interesting market playing out with energy storage :-)
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Why? If you make a sufficient amount of money in the 5-8pm peak period it can make you strongly profitable despite losing money at noon.
hackerlight 2y ago
"French electricity prices turned negative as a drop in demand and surging renewables output prompted some nuclear reactors to power down." This is an issue with nuclear in a net zero scenario. Nuclear starts out at 90%+ capacity factor, like in California today. But as fossil fuels become a low percentage of the grid, you inevitably get a low capacity factor which increases LCOE. Even if you don't want any renewables and you only build nuclear, the problem is demand isn't static so you have to overbuild nuclear by a lot and run at a low capacity factor, or you build storage, either of these increases LCOE. The sensible thing will be to use renewables on top of nuclear rather than overbuild nuclear, like what France is doing. But that will also eat into capacity factor when it's more windy and sunny like what France experiences. Just something to keep in mind when you hear people talk about nuclear costs. Multiply it by at least 1/0.7 if they haven't taken this into account.
- mjevans 2y ago
  High level planning is important for efficiency. It'd be great to have some resources which either store power in bulk cheaply (even if not efficiently) and/or inexpensive to idle operations that can achieve public benefit for spare power.
- bytesandbots 2y ago
  The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is the rate of the total energy output of the energy system to build and operate it over its lifetime to the average total cost of the system over that lifetime.
cft 2y ago
In related news: Macron calls for new elections
- D-Coder 2y ago
  New _electrons_? Oh wait.
Aeolun 2y ago
If the price is -5$ in France, but still $7 in Germany, why not dump all that excess energy to Germany?
- philipkglass 2y ago
  There isn't enough transmission line capacity to transfer all of it.
- jasoncartwright 2y ago
  Not enough interconnect capacity https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-interconnector-targets-tso https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-inte...
- 486sx33 2y ago
  Not enough interconnect High loses in transmission No one needs the energy in the times it goes negative, unless you’re a 1/4 planet away Unfortunately electric cars only make the peaks and valleys more pronounced. What we need is electric cars to be required to charge the grid during high demand and only charge during very low demand. The chargers need to be smart and integrated with the grid operator
  - nawitus 2y ago
    The explanation is lack of interconnect, not losses in transmission. If you have enough capacity to transfer electricity the prices will be equal in two neighboring electricity markets.
EcommerceFlow 2y ago
What I never understood was how France gets 70-75% of their electricity from Nuclear, yet their energy prices aren't "too cheap to meter", and while cheaper than their neighbors, don't really raise any eyebrows. Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I'm confused. The way you've phrased this certainly doesn't sound like it couldn't be the future.
  - EcommerceFlow 2y ago
    I've heard for years that if we just had "tons" of Nuclear plants, our energy costs would essentially be too cheap to meter. Yet France is not experiencing this even at 75% Nuclear.
    - WheatMillington 2y ago
      Where did you hear that? I've only ever heard about how nuclear is both capital and opex intensive and very expensive.
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        It was a common BS claim in the Reagan years, as to why we didn't need to invest in renewables back then. "Why bother, soon all this nuclear energy will basically be free". This has nothing to do with what anyone actually said. Just ask any 60-something, mild conservative. The meme exists, even though the actual quote was slightly more mealy mouthed. It was always nonsense anyway. Electricity generation is mostly a deregulated market in most places, so nobody would spend billions on a Nuclear plant that wasn't guaranteed to make back it's money. It was always a thought terminating cliche.
        robertlagrant 2y ago
gwbas1c 2y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20240617071413/https://fortune.com/2024/06/16/electricity-prices-france-negative-renewable-energy-supply-solar-power-wind-turbines/ http://web.archive.org/web/20240617071413/https://fortune.co...
jnsie 2y ago
Potentially ignorant question. How does this impact the consumer? Do they actually get paid/credited for electricity used?
- NullPrefix 2y ago
  transmission charges still apply
- gruez 2y ago
  Consumers don't pay the market rate, because that'd expose them to price shocks (see: the griddy fiasco in texas a few years ago). They get a fixed rate from their utility.
  - guerby 2y ago
    In France consumers with below 36kVA grid connection can choose to pay state fixed prices, or they can choose various market offers, here is the official list of electricity providers: https://www.enedis.fr/liste-des-fournisseurs-delectricite https://www.enedis.fr/liste-des-fournisseurs-delectricite
    - pyrale 2y ago
      State-fixed prices are rarely interesting though, as the price is calculated to be above-market.
  - nawitus 2y ago
    That depends on the consumer (and market I guess). In many countries in Europe that is an option. (Although there should be some extra fees on top).
Neil44 2y ago
This happens frequently in the UK too, if you have a compatible supplier you can set it up to charge your EV or some batteries during negative spikes. Ultimately if enough people were set up that way then prices would not get negative I suppose. * https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/ https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
- risyachka 2y ago
  I wonder how many people need to do that in order for it to become not negative.
  - Neil44 2y ago
    Interesting question! Maybe someone cleverer than me can work it out :)
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    That's pretty much the whole dilemma now with decarbonization. We know how to generate electricity very cheaply with solar and wind. We just don't know how to do it at the right time. It will take a lot of investment in storage tech (beyond lots of people using their EV car batteries as time-shifting storage, though that's certainly a good use!) in order to get prices smoothed out so that electricity generated at 1PM can be used at 11PM.
    - jayflux 2y ago
      > We know how to generate electricity very cheaply with solar and wind. We just don't know how to do it at the right time I’m not sure this needs to be a goal to be honest. It’s more practical for us to become accustomed to agile tariffs and have our own batteries + charging the car when prices drop than to hope for large scale storage solutions. In the UK the average solar install now includes batteries as prices come down on them. We can already do this today fairly easily, and with open tariff APIs plus more integrated devices it will become easier.
- manquer 2y ago
riffraff 2y ago
AFAIK this happens fairly regularly in some northern european countries (NL and DE come to mind) due to wind over-production. The sooner we get cheap grid storage, the better.
- ragebol 2y ago
  Fairly regularly indeed. The bare EPEX spot price, before taxes etc, is on track to be at least 500 hours this year in NL. (About 300h in 2923 iirc) MartienVisser on twitter has some great graphs about the energy market, but I'm on my phone and banned twitter from that.
- jtwaleson 2y ago
  I'm in NL and often use this website to check for day-ahead pricing: https://energie.anwb.nl/actuele-tarieven https://energie.anwb.nl/actuele-tarieven It's very frequent indeed. I noticed that it's mostly during sunny days in late spring / summer / early fall (solar). Much more rare is randomly at night (stormy days). Solar is still pretty small in national grid charts, but I suspect that residential solar just reduces demand from the grid and doesn't show up as production.
littlestymaar 2y ago
Econ 101: with a marginal cost equal to zero, a competitive electricity market (with a price driven to marginal cost because of competition) cannot be sustainable because electricity price it cannot pay for the fixed costs. Solution: we must stop electricity pricing based on energy produced (which made sense when using fossil fuel) and switch to a pricing mechanism where you pay for available power because that's where the marginal cost is increasing.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Many markets already do this: for example California pays generators a mixed rate per kWh and kW. But just pricing per kWh can work. If the limit is available capacity at 6PM, then those kWh are the most profitable and capacity will be built to meet demand at 6PM.
- digdugdirk 2y ago
  I'm intrigued. But with an electrical grid that requires a constant match between electricity generation and consumption, how would you ensure the stability of a thing when its controlling mechanism (pricing) is its own derivative?
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    I don't understand your question. But let me clarify something the grid requires constant match between generation and consumption power to match.
- pyrale 2y ago
  That's the goal of the capacity market. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/capacity-mechanisms_en https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/cap...
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
It’s only been negative for a few hours in the past year though. https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-ahead/prices?deliveryDate=2024-06-16&currency=EUR&aggregation=Hourly&deliveryAreas=FR https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-ahead/prices?deli...
rig666 2y ago
I had a friend recently tell me about how his excess power is put back into the grid and how he hopes our area sees negative rates eventually like this. My cynical side was quick to point out that I would fire up my crypto miners if electricity was free for a few hours a day. After talking to him more I realized we both had different take aways from the story of "the tragedy of the commons" I lightened the conversation up by informing him he could do folding from home for a few hours to make sure his excess power went to a noble cause & thwart my zero sum approach.
- Damogran6 2y ago
  My aging mind can't remember the actual facts but it was determined that when someone has significantly more power than they had a need for (say, full batteries and a whole lot of solar) that it opened up interesting behaviors. We try hard to be as efficient as possible, but when you don't have to, it leads to interesting stuff. (like leave the lights on, leave the windows open with a space heater next to you, etc.)
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Yes, mine is when I'm at a hotel I set the AC much cooler than I would at home, and I take really long showers.
  - stoperaticless 2y ago
    Name for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
    - Damogran6 2y ago
      But in the case of the solar pwer generation and storage, the added use didn't have a negative effect...There's no penalty for using more, so they use more.
  - kypro 2y ago
    I was told that in Russia nat gas is so cheap that they keep the heating on 24/7 and will often just open windows to regulate temperature. No idea how true this is and whether it just applies to offices / apartment complexes but this is what I was told.
gfarah 2y ago
Is excess renewable energy being used anywhere for direct air capture of carbon? My hope is that as more countries produce surplus energy, we will massively scale up direct air capture to help address our climate emergency.
chickenbig 2y ago
Day ahead prices turning negative does not mean the wind and solar generators make a loss for every kWh they sell; they still receive country specific subsidies (production tax credits, feed-in-tariffs, contract for difference, renewables obligations ... and let's not forget about investment subsidies which helped to get the plant built) which make it worth their while to keep the blades spinning and the solar inverters humming. Otherwise what is the argument for subject your equipment to wear-and-tear and then paying for someone to take your product? In addition there are more general system costs (the need for capacity payments to ensure electricity can be generated at peak times, as well as maintaining plants in reserve in case the weather isn't what was forecast the day ahead). By this line of argument, negative prices on sunny/windy days increase the price of electricity to the consumer, since all of these subsidies need to be recouped (either by the tax or energy systems).
- flakeoil 2y ago
  It's hard to draw a link between negative prices and increased subsidies in most cases. The subsidies can be recouped during the no-negative periods. In addition, subsidies are not needed anymore to make wind and solar cost competitive. And with increased use of electric cars (and battery storage in general) we will see increased usage of this negative pricing to charge them so the negative price will diminish or go away. Don't forget that we still produce most of our energy from coal, oil and gas. Most of that needs and will be replaced by electricity so there is a huge need for more electricity.
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > subsidies are not needed anymore to make wind and solar cost competitive See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/document/print/en/ip_21_3922/IP_21_3922_EN.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/docume... where the European Commission approved the plan for the French state to give aid to push renewable deployment in France. I google translated section 2.2 (paragraph 9) of the ruling document > ... As such, the French authorities consider that there are “positive external effects” linked to the development of renewable electrical energies, in particular the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector and the benefits in terms of robustness of the electricity sector. electricity supply linked to a more diversified electricity mix. These external effects are positive for the community but cannot be “monetized” by the investor. The French authorities consider that public support is necessary to have an investment in renewable energies that meets the expected collective benefits. I would have expected inflation and interest rate changes to have negatively affected the viability of renewables. That is certainly the case for offshore wind in the UK (AR5 failed to produce any bids, AR6 has 66% higher maximum bid).
rsynnott 2y ago
Finally, energy too cheap to meter.

132 points by Capstanlqc 2y ago

> French day-ahead power fell to -€5.76 a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany’s equivalent contract dropped to €7.64. If true - how fast could a new transmission line from France to Germany pay for itself?

toomuchtodo 2y ago
https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d74699be9/franco-german-power-price-gap-is-here-to-stay-analysts https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d7469... https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-interconnector-targets-tso https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-inte... https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5N0KW3WE/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5N0KW3WE/
ganeshkrishnan 2y ago
Germany already buys electricity from France. The cost mentioned above are the subsidized charges by the EDF to the french government. Germans would get the full cost which is much higher than the quoted price here. Besides nuclear power is not flexible enough to amp it up and down according to demand (unlike coal or petrocarbon industries).
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities"). Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas generation to retire [2] [3]. TLDR More interconnector capacity, battery storage, and renewables needed (my analysis). [1] https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR?wind=false&solar=false https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR?wind=false&solar=fal... [3] https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/france-extends-life-of-last-coal-fired-plants-to-avoid-winter-shortfalls/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/france-extends-li...
  - pydry 2y ago
    Which theyve actually used very very rarely. Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Theyre ridiculously cost ineffective when used for load following since it's basically curtailment. This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as theyve been plummeting in price).
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - orwin 2y ago
      It's untrue, it is used everyday on all our Gen3/Gen3+ reactors (our Gen2 are able to do it too, but it does cost a lot as core monitoring is more costly for them) I've found this https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-charge-29-2.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-... even if it isn't really clear, you have a graph that show you a typical year on a french reactor, and load followinf the german reactors used to do over a day.
    - throw0101c 2y ago
      > Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Ontario, Canada would disagree with you: nuclear is 10.1¢/kWh, hydro is 6.2¢, (methane/natural) gas is 11.4¢; see Table 2: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20231019.pdf https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023... Of course hydro-electric dams typically flood many hectares of land for the reservoir. The current ones are getting refurbished: * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/niagara-ontario-power-generation-sir-adam-beck-refurbish-1.7174267 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/niagara-ontario-power... Ontario's nuclear fleet are also in the middle of a bunch of refurbs: * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-nuclear-power-pickering-refurbishment-electricity-1.7098524 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-nuclear-power... Some of which are finished: * https://www.opg.com/releases/opg-celebrates-the-early-completion-of-darlington-unit-3/ https://www.opg.com/releases/opg-celebrates-the-early-comple... Live data on Ontario's grid: * https://ieso.ca/power-data https://ieso.ca/power-data § "Supply" tab
dmurray 2y ago
Let's see: The line can't just go a few metres across the border. Let's say it connects Dortmund, in the German industrial heartland on the French side of the country, with Chooz, the site of a nuclear plant near the German border. French nuclear plants are evenly distributed around the country [0], so that should be a reasonable choice. That's 250 km. High voltage transmission costs around €2m/km to build [1] and carries around 2 GW of power [2]. So your line costs €500m to build and makes €13 x 2000 = €26,000 an hour and pays for itself after 20,000 hours or three years. You might reasonably say you wouldn't expect to capture all of the €13 per MWh in arbitrage profits, and perhaps this disparity was a short-lived aberration. But actually it's not: electricity futures in France are priced €25 cheaper than their equivalent contracts in Germany [3], so you could reasonably expect to capture a good portion of that - if you split the surplus between you, the consumer and the producer you can still get €9. Of course, one problem with this free money is that your competitors are already doing it. The gap is expected to narrow over time thanks to interconnectors like this, increased generation in Germany, and French nuclear plants going out of service [3]. Still, with increasing electrification of the energy market, this kind of power transmission seems like a good business to be in and a good investment for national governments and grid operators. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-French-nuclear-power-plants-30_fig1_308513695 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-French-nuclear-po... [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358793859_Cost_of_energy_infrastructure_in_Europe_and_Austria_electricity_gas_oil_and_heat https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358793859_Cost_of_e... [2] https://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grady/_13_EE392J_2_Spring11_AEP_Transmission_Facts.pdf https://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grady/_13_EE392J_2_Spring... [3] https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d74699be9/franco-german-power-price-gap-is-here-to-stay-analysts https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d7469...
- jandrese 2y ago
  In general if the incentives are already aligned to solve a problem I don't worry about the problem. It is likely to solve itself without any intervention.
  - dmurray 2y ago

kseistrup 2y ago

They ought to flood something towards Denmark. Right now, in this moment, I pay roughly 0.49€ (3.66 DKK) per kWh.

Y_Y 2y ago
Depends on where you are! Jutland and Fyn can share via the Central European grid whereas Sjaelland is on the Nordic grid with Sweden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta... (There are several HVDC links between those grids, but as I understand it that adds capacitance for the purpose of pricing.)
- kseistrup 2y ago
  Indeed. I am on the island of Bornholm, just South of Sweden. There is only one cable connecting Bornholm, and it comes from Sweden (and once every couple of year a ship is sailing with its anchor out and tears the sea cable, so powercuts are longer and more frequent here than I'd prefer, but that's a story for another time).
leobg 2y ago
Let’s run a crowdfunding campaign for the cable. I’m midway and will want a piece of that as well.

ganeshkrishnan 2y ago

This was very surprising and positive. I had expected pain for the electricity market in France since EDF "lost" the uranium mines in Niger and replaced it by shipping uranium from canada/australia. So it looks like solar and wind have more than compensated for the nuclear power shortages. The olympic games will put this news to test and I guess we will find out soon if this news is indeed true.

realusername 2y ago
There's two years of uranium ready to use in reserve plus five years more in reserve to enrich plus all the other producers. There's never been any issue with uranium, not even remotely. I'm not even sure the Niger coup will last that long.
cyberax 2y ago
This is NOT positive. Not at all. This means that the grid is filled with useless generating capacity. As a result, nuclear power becomes less competitive. However, renewables work poorly during the winter time. In Europe, they can go down for multiple _weeks_ at a time, far beyond any storage capabilities. And the only power plants that can fill the gap are fossil fuels. End result: more fossil generation.
yodelshady 2y ago
"..the grid operator to request that Electricite de France SA take several nuclear plants offline." Could you read the article please? The lumbering beasts, which actually do hate changing output at all, turned off before the renewables. Secondly, another below comment already explains that no, there's not a shortage. Thirdly, please for f*ks sake, engage your brain and think what the impact of 700 euros a month (high in 2022) to negative prices now has on industry. What the everloving ** do I charge my customers? Maybe this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40679507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40679507

topper-123 2y ago

Isolated this is a zero sum game in favor of buyers (someone has ti take the electricity), but longer term, this shows there needs to be better greater electricity storage solutions available, i.e batteries or similar.

paulsutter 2y ago
Negative prices make storage very practical
- andrewxdiamond 2y ago
  And de-incentivizes supply. A real solution need to be available to balance the supply and demand of power such that the rates on both ends are predictable. A market where a good fluctuates between profitable and not is not one very attractive to investment. Playing the video game Victoria 3 has taught me a lot about healthy markets. You have to play both sides of supply and demand to get to the prices you need
  - topper-123 2y ago
    Negative prices do incentivize storage, because storage will alliw sellers to sell at a time with higher prices (i.e. when demand is greater relative to supply).
    - thecosas 2y ago
      I could see this then pushing more consumers to have their own batteries to store energy when it's inexpensive. Interesting market playing out with energy storage :-)
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Why? If you make a sufficient amount of money in the 5-8pm peak period it can make you strongly profitable despite losing money at noon.

hackerlight 2y ago

"French electricity prices turned negative as a drop in demand and surging renewables output prompted some nuclear reactors to power down." This is an issue with nuclear in a net zero scenario. Nuclear starts out at 90%+ capacity factor, like in California today. But as fossil fuels become a low percentage of the grid, you inevitably get a low capacity factor which increases LCOE. Even if you don't want any renewables and you only build nuclear, the problem is demand isn't static so you have to overbuild nuclear by a lot and run at a low capacity factor, or you build storage, either of these increases LCOE. The sensible thing will be to use renewables on top of nuclear rather than overbuild nuclear, like what France is doing. But that will also eat into capacity factor when it's more windy and sunny like what France experiences. Just something to keep in mind when you hear people talk about nuclear costs. Multiply it by at least 1/0.7 if they haven't taken this into account.

mjevans 2y ago
High level planning is important for efficiency. It'd be great to have some resources which either store power in bulk cheaply (even if not efficiently) and/or inexpensive to idle operations that can achieve public benefit for spare power.
bytesandbots 2y ago
The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is the rate of the total energy output of the energy system to build and operate it over its lifetime to the average total cost of the system over that lifetime.

cft 2y ago

In related news: Macron calls for new elections

D-Coder 2y ago
New _electrons_? Oh wait.

Aeolun 2y ago

If the price is -5$ in France, but still $7 in Germany, why not dump all that excess energy to Germany?

philipkglass 2y ago
There isn't enough transmission line capacity to transfer all of it.
jasoncartwright 2y ago
Not enough interconnect capacity https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-interconnector-targets-tso https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-inte...
486sx33 2y ago
Not enough interconnect High loses in transmission No one needs the energy in the times it goes negative, unless you’re a 1/4 planet away Unfortunately electric cars only make the peaks and valleys more pronounced. What we need is electric cars to be required to charge the grid during high demand and only charge during very low demand. The chargers need to be smart and integrated with the grid operator
- nawitus 2y ago
  The explanation is lack of interconnect, not losses in transmission. If you have enough capacity to transfer electricity the prices will be equal in two neighboring electricity markets.

EcommerceFlow 2y ago

What I never understood was how France gets 70-75% of their electricity from Nuclear, yet their energy prices aren't "too cheap to meter", and while cheaper than their neighbors, don't really raise any eyebrows. Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the future?

robertlagrant 2y ago
I'm confused. The way you've phrased this certainly doesn't sound like it couldn't be the future.
- EcommerceFlow 2y ago
  I've heard for years that if we just had "tons" of Nuclear plants, our energy costs would essentially be too cheap to meter. Yet France is not experiencing this even at 75% Nuclear.
  - WheatMillington 2y ago
    Where did you hear that? I've only ever heard about how nuclear is both capital and opex intensive and very expensive.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      It was a common BS claim in the Reagan years, as to why we didn't need to invest in renewables back then. "Why bother, soon all this nuclear energy will basically be free". This has nothing to do with what anyone actually said. Just ask any 60-something, mild conservative. The meme exists, even though the actual quote was slightly more mealy mouthed. It was always nonsense anyway. Electricity generation is mostly a deregulated market in most places, so nobody would spend billions on a Nuclear plant that wasn't guaranteed to make back it's money. It was always a thought terminating cliche.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago

gwbas1c 2y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20240617071413/https://fortune.com/2024/06/16/electricity-prices-france-negative-renewable-energy-supply-solar-power-wind-turbines/ http://web.archive.org/web/20240617071413/https://fortune.co...

jnsie 2y ago

Potentially ignorant question. How does this impact the consumer? Do they actually get paid/credited for electricity used?

NullPrefix 2y ago
transmission charges still apply
gruez 2y ago
Consumers don't pay the market rate, because that'd expose them to price shocks (see: the griddy fiasco in texas a few years ago). They get a fixed rate from their utility.
- guerby 2y ago
  In France consumers with below 36kVA grid connection can choose to pay state fixed prices, or they can choose various market offers, here is the official list of electricity providers: https://www.enedis.fr/liste-des-fournisseurs-delectricite https://www.enedis.fr/liste-des-fournisseurs-delectricite
  - pyrale 2y ago
    State-fixed prices are rarely interesting though, as the price is calculated to be above-market.
- nawitus 2y ago
  That depends on the consumer (and market I guess). In many countries in Europe that is an option. (Although there should be some extra fees on top).

Neil44 2y ago

This happens frequently in the UK too, if you have a compatible supplier you can set it up to charge your EV or some batteries during negative spikes. Ultimately if enough people were set up that way then prices would not get negative I suppose. * https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/ https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/

risyachka 2y ago
I wonder how many people need to do that in order for it to become not negative.
- Neil44 2y ago
  Interesting question! Maybe someone cleverer than me can work it out :)
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  That's pretty much the whole dilemma now with decarbonization. We know how to generate electricity very cheaply with solar and wind. We just don't know how to do it at the right time. It will take a lot of investment in storage tech (beyond lots of people using their EV car batteries as time-shifting storage, though that's certainly a good use!) in order to get prices smoothed out so that electricity generated at 1PM can be used at 11PM.
  - jayflux 2y ago
    > We know how to generate electricity very cheaply with solar and wind. We just don't know how to do it at the right time I’m not sure this needs to be a goal to be honest. It’s more practical for us to become accustomed to agile tariffs and have our own batteries + charging the car when prices drop than to hope for large scale storage solutions. In the UK the average solar install now includes batteries as prices come down on them. We can already do this today fairly easily, and with open tariff APIs plus more integrated devices it will become easier.
manquer 2y ago

riffraff 2y ago

AFAIK this happens fairly regularly in some northern european countries (NL and DE come to mind) due to wind over-production. The sooner we get cheap grid storage, the better.

ragebol 2y ago
Fairly regularly indeed. The bare EPEX spot price, before taxes etc, is on track to be at least 500 hours this year in NL. (About 300h in 2923 iirc) MartienVisser on twitter has some great graphs about the energy market, but I'm on my phone and banned twitter from that.
jtwaleson 2y ago
I'm in NL and often use this website to check for day-ahead pricing: https://energie.anwb.nl/actuele-tarieven https://energie.anwb.nl/actuele-tarieven It's very frequent indeed. I noticed that it's mostly during sunny days in late spring / summer / early fall (solar). Much more rare is randomly at night (stormy days). Solar is still pretty small in national grid charts, but I suspect that residential solar just reduces demand from the grid and doesn't show up as production.

littlestymaar 2y ago

Econ 101: with a marginal cost equal to zero, a competitive electricity market (with a price driven to marginal cost because of competition) cannot be sustainable because electricity price it cannot pay for the fixed costs. Solution: we must stop electricity pricing based on energy produced (which made sense when using fossil fuel) and switch to a pricing mechanism where you pay for available power because that's where the marginal cost is increasing.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
Many markets already do this: for example California pays generators a mixed rate per kWh and kW. But just pricing per kWh can work. If the limit is available capacity at 6PM, then those kWh are the most profitable and capacity will be built to meet demand at 6PM.
digdugdirk 2y ago
I'm intrigued. But with an electrical grid that requires a constant match between electricity generation and consumption, how would you ensure the stability of a thing when its controlling mechanism (pricing) is its own derivative?
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  I don't understand your question. But let me clarify something the grid requires constant match between generation and consumption power to match.
pyrale 2y ago
That's the goal of the capacity market. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/capacity-mechanisms_en https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/cap...

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

It’s only been negative for a few hours in the past year though. https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-ahead/prices?deliveryDate=2024-06-16&currency=EUR&aggregation=Hourly&deliveryAreas=FR https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-ahead/prices?deli...

rig666 2y ago

I had a friend recently tell me about how his excess power is put back into the grid and how he hopes our area sees negative rates eventually like this. My cynical side was quick to point out that I would fire up my crypto miners if electricity was free for a few hours a day. After talking to him more I realized we both had different take aways from the story of "the tragedy of the commons" I lightened the conversation up by informing him he could do folding from home for a few hours to make sure his excess power went to a noble cause & thwart my zero sum approach.

Damogran6 2y ago
My aging mind can't remember the actual facts but it was determined that when someone has significantly more power than they had a need for (say, full batteries and a whole lot of solar) that it opened up interesting behaviors. We try hard to be as efficient as possible, but when you don't have to, it leads to interesting stuff. (like leave the lights on, leave the windows open with a space heater next to you, etc.)
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Yes, mine is when I'm at a hotel I set the AC much cooler than I would at home, and I take really long showers.
- stoperaticless 2y ago
  Name for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - Damogran6 2y ago
    But in the case of the solar pwer generation and storage, the added use didn't have a negative effect...There's no penalty for using more, so they use more.
- kypro 2y ago
  I was told that in Russia nat gas is so cheap that they keep the heating on 24/7 and will often just open windows to regulate temperature. No idea how true this is and whether it just applies to offices / apartment complexes but this is what I was told.

gfarah 2y ago

Is excess renewable energy being used anywhere for direct air capture of carbon? My hope is that as more countries produce surplus energy, we will massively scale up direct air capture to help address our climate emergency.

chickenbig 2y ago

Day ahead prices turning negative does not mean the wind and solar generators make a loss for every kWh they sell; they still receive country specific subsidies (production tax credits, feed-in-tariffs, contract for difference, renewables obligations ... and let's not forget about investment subsidies which helped to get the plant built) which make it worth their while to keep the blades spinning and the solar inverters humming. Otherwise what is the argument for subject your equipment to wear-and-tear and then paying for someone to take your product? In addition there are more general system costs (the need for capacity payments to ensure electricity can be generated at peak times, as well as maintaining plants in reserve in case the weather isn't what was forecast the day ahead). By this line of argument, negative prices on sunny/windy days increase the price of electricity to the consumer, since all of these subsidies need to be recouped (either by the tax or energy systems).

flakeoil 2y ago
It's hard to draw a link between negative prices and increased subsidies in most cases. The subsidies can be recouped during the no-negative periods. In addition, subsidies are not needed anymore to make wind and solar cost competitive. And with increased use of electric cars (and battery storage in general) we will see increased usage of this negative pricing to charge them so the negative price will diminish or go away. Don't forget that we still produce most of our energy from coal, oil and gas. Most of that needs and will be replaced by electricity so there is a huge need for more electricity.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > subsidies are not needed anymore to make wind and solar cost competitive See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/document/print/en/ip_21_3922/IP_21_3922_EN.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/docume... where the European Commission approved the plan for the French state to give aid to push renewable deployment in France. I google translated section 2.2 (paragraph 9) of the ruling document > ... As such, the French authorities consider that there are “positive external effects” linked to the development of renewable electrical energies, in particular the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector and the benefits in terms of robustness of the electricity sector. electricity supply linked to a more diversified electricity mix. These external effects are positive for the community but cannot be “monetized” by the investor. The French authorities consider that public support is necessary to have an investment in renewable energies that meets the expected collective benefits. I would have expected inflation and interest rate changes to have negatively affected the viability of renewables. That is certainly the case for offshore wind in the UK (AR5 failed to produce any bids, AR6 has 66% higher maximum bid).

rsynnott 2y ago

Finally, energy too cheap to meter.