zlacker

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/

>>Neil44+(OP)
I wonder how many people need to do that in order for it to become not negative.

>>risyac+n1
Interesting question! Maybe someone cleverer than me can work it out :)

>>risyac+n1
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.

>>Neil44+(OP)
It is complex, wholesale prices generally do not reflect in retail directly. even when suppliers have flexible pricing and support V2G /buying from users solar etc, there is only only some correlation not 100% pass through of rates.

There are also technical and economic reasons this may not work beyond just inelastic vendor pricing, there is cost to transmission(loss) and all the step down that has to happen before electricity is at your door, that cost will be always positive so it may not actually be net positive.

At steep enough negative pricing this could be profitable, however at that point power plants with the highest costs and easiest scale down/ shut down procedures will start acting.

Projects like the one at Dinorwig (pumped hydro-storage) are more viable solution for excess capacity.

>>Neil44+(OP)
Octopus and OVO also offer EV tariffs where you get a cheaper kWh price if you let them control when your EV is charged. You can always override the smart charging but you pay the standard rate.

* https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-go/ - 7.5p per kWh

* https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/charge-anytime - 7p per kWh

>>Neil44+(OP)
All the analysis I can find talk only about the spot price being negative.

But what matters for economics is the volume exchanged at this negative price, that is if you are a buyer with infinite capacity to absorb kWh how much money you'll make yearly?

Anyone with a good URL?

>>manque+O2
> Projects like the one at Dinorwig (pumped hydro-storage) are more viable solution for excess capacity.

I think this is a little simplistic. Pumped hydro is very reliant on finding suitable geography which ultimately limits the potential capacity. I think it's more likely that grids of the future will rely on a variety of storage solutions (pumped hydro, consumer EVs, grid scale batteries etc.) and smarter load-shedding rather than any single solution being dominant.

>>guerby+y6
No URL, but if demand were there to take all that in, the demand would obviously go up. But there is not enough demand, so the capacity is far from infinite. The best fix for negative prices is negative prices, the demand will come.

I'm still curious about the actual MWh's traded for negative prices as well

>>remus+I6
This is a bit misleading. Pumped hydro needs vertical relieve, but in places where vertical relief exists the potential is very large. It does not need to be on or even near any existing watercourse (although it can be piggybacked onto a reservoir that is, by adding another reservoir at higher elevation.)

>>remus+I6
Load scheduling driven by price incentives (namely hot water) is already the largest flexibility source in France iirc. I’m not sure that there is much difference between price-driven flexibility and smart grids though (in that most of the benefit is captured by communicating prices ahead of time rather than dynamic load modulation)

>>ragebo+T7
> the demand will come

Or… the supply will go away shudders

>>guerby+y6
Afaik most of the energy is traded otc, spot markets are a tiny fraction of what gets delivered.

But that fraction is still interesting: since p=c must be respected, and there is always some small delta that is hard to predict and has to be covered. The spot price is not relevant to consumer prices, but it is relevant to the cost for energy providers to fine-tune their supply.

>>ragebo+T7
Demand is not that flexible, especially intraday. Negative prices tend to be served by production program adjustments.

>>hn_thr+z2
> 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.

>>remus+I6
I meant to imply grid scale solutions not just pumped hydro only. The point was end customers based storage is not cost effective option for negative pricing, which will be be almost always marginally negative just shy of the cost of plants to scale down their generation.

Pumped hydro has been the cheapest by far and proven at scale far beyond any other solution including grid scale batteries, but only works in specific geographies and up to a fixed scale.

Grid scale batteries, pumped hydro, molten salts or other grid scale storage are all viable options provided TCO is cheaper than arbitrage that comes from price fluctuations.

This is no different than arbitrage in say commodity markets by taking delivery of the goods like say how U.S. government is using its strategic oil reserves these days.

>>remus+I6
Unlike normal hydro which needs a flow, pumped hydro only needs an hill and a source. Those are common.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=view_citation...