this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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320
German Power Slips Below Zero as Negative-Price Phenomenon Grows (www.bloomberg.com)
submitted 3 days ago by ArtikBanana@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

German power prices dropped below zero on the first trading day of the year, an increasingly frequent phenomenon in Europe as renewables expand.

Intraday prices in Germany, the region’s biggest market, turned negative during four hours overnight as wind-energy output reached as much as 40 gigawatts, far outstripping demand."

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[–] DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 138 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

And there are 180GWh battery storages planned to store this energy for the next day. But guess who has to confirm the plans? The 4 almighty German power companies. And guess why it‘s just in planning phase? And who is loosing money if energy prices don’t fluctuate that intense? And who tried to slow down the renewables last decade? Same shit as the petrol and gas heads did. Change can’t be stopped, so they play for time.

Edit: Some figures of public power production were published. Power was 62% out of renewables. Mainly wind power. Solar as second.

And the Carbon emissions for electricity is reduced and 50% as of 2014 (152 million tons CO2). Lot of dirty coal burning for power in the past.

Now, heating and mobility as to be transformed to electricity. Making it cheaper as well.

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

180 GW is power.
If you're talking about energy I suppose you mean 180 GWh.

[–] DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago

Changed it. Thx

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They'll only block it until they can be the ones to own the battery plants. There is a hell of a market incentive to be able to purchase literally free electricity ans resell it later.

[–] DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Right now it has a ROI of around 4-5 years. However, this playground isn’t for standard people.

[–] eleitl@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Domestic scale storage ROIs a lot longer than that, despite 1 kWh going for over 0.3 EUR.

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Oh of course, grid scale energy is never for the "normal person". The point I am making is established fossil-fuel based energy majors do not want any pip-squeak independent startups to start siphoning profit off from their system or possibly making it more efficient or cheaper for the consumer. Vertical integration of regional monopolies is the name of the game.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

They introduced some kind of caps (don't remember the details) on negative pricing quite early on, from what I understand it would have been very lucrative in the last decade or two to get into grid-scale battery storage without those caps.

One thing I remember is Flensburg building, pretty much on a whim, a water storage tank with immersion heater, an investment that amortised within a month or two as they were literally getting paid to fuel their district heating.

There's got to be some rules as to what you can do with electricity you by at negative prices, e.g. not just put an immersion heater in the ocean, maybe some prioritisation as to who gets the energy first just as there is on the production side (fossils have to shut down and pay if they don't do that fast enough while renewables get to produce energy), but overall I don't see why there should be a limit on negative prices.

[–] leisesprecher@feddit.org 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The thermos approach is unfortunately almost the best we currently have, because every storage solution would have to pay taxes twice, once for buying, once for selling. Not VAT, but Stromsteuer.

Also, these dips don't occur that often, are usually not very long and it's kind of a reverse game of chicken. The more storage we have, the less profitable each one gets. All that makes it rather unattractive to install grid scale plants.

[–] DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The dips occur more often in last two years. We build more renewables. There’s definitely a need to build energy storages. Please don’t forget that the price dips increases the funding need for the small pv-owners. They‘ll get the EEG (fixed governmental subsidies ) price for each Watt they produce. Only bigger pv‘s get nothing/ cut off the grid for that time. So, negative power prices costs much governmental tax money - the difference of market price and the EEG fixed price.

Source: amount of days with negative price https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/618751/umfrage/anzahl-der-stunden-mit-negativen-strompreisen-in-deutschland/

[–] leisesprecher@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm not arguing against the need, I'm saying that the economic incentives for private investors are not really great.

[–] DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

Oh sorry. Didn‘t get your point. For what I‘ve read, the driver of PV this year were mid-sized companies to get cheaper power. And small PV‘s for house owners. Yes, investors and big PV farms rather look for battery storages.

[–] tja@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago

Good thing then that Bundeskartellamt and Bundesnetzagentur are looking more closely at this now

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Meaning, energy storage farms could be a business?

[–] eleitl@lemm.ee -5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Only if Germany changes existing legislation on power taxation. And do check out for how much a TWh of grid scale storage goes for. Hydrogen is the only borderline cost effective solution at the scale required.

[–] Zementid@feddit.nl 8 points 2 days ago

Decentralized 1-8 WH "Trade at Home" Packs would be able to buffer the civil need, even with a low adoption rate... but come on, these things would generate money by trading AND you have a nice power backup solution for your flat.

But that's just a stupid idea... why would anyone want this. It's not like we literally throw away LiPo Batteries after a single use (Vape).

[–] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 36 points 3 days ago

Oh no, communism. 🙃

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It also happened in the UK and I suspect other European countries with significant wind generation. Is this still a rare event in Germany? 2-3 times a month isn't uncommon here. Especially in the winter.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's rare in Germany since we have a quite large population and heavy industry compared to the renewables production. We had days with 100% renewable coverage in the past, but negative energy prices are still a rarity.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 2 points 1 day ago

We never have been 100% renewable in the UK. It's more that we go into surplus and shutting generators down is more expensive than the price going negative. Hence we won't get huge negative prices. Connectors to other countries can only export so much.

It also only happens when:

  • long term weather forecast underestimated weather based generation.
  • demand is low. (E.g. weekend and public holidays)

The population of Germany is only 25% bigger than the UK, so I think the two are comparable. A larger manufacturing base will make the demand-side curve more predictable though. Still, we're largely talking about the effect of supply unpredictability.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Neat. Now watch everyone collectively forget about it the very second nuclear power is brought up.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

The whole point of bringing up nuclear power is that that its output is constant.

The whole point of this article is that renewable electricity production sometimes grows so much that there's not enough storage.

Yes, you can't just count integrated production, because without necessary storage it's just wasted. At best.

[–] BMTea@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't get why it is relevant. Energy is cheap and abundant today almkst everywhere that isn't sanctioned or a warzone.

[–] piecat@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago

But, but, AI!

[–] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 days ago

archive.today link

[–] lig@lemmings.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Article is behind pay/account wall. Cannot read.