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Power Earth United Kingdom

Energy Prices Drop Below Zero In UK Thanks To Record Wind-Generated Electricity (ecowatch.com) 135

Long-time Slashdot AmiMoJo quotes this report from EcoWatch: Record wind-generated electricity across Northern Ireland and Scotland Tuesday night pushed Britain's power prices below zero.

Wind output peaked at a record high 22.4 gigawatts (GW), breaking the previous high set [last] Sunday evening, the national system operator said, as Bloomberg reported. The record output provided more than 68 percent of the country's power.

From 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the half-hourly price fell to 6.57 pounds per megawatt-hour, according to data from European power exchange Epex Spot.

"Setting another clean electricity generation record just four days after the previous high shows the pivotal role wind is playing in keeping the country powered up during the festive season," said Dan McGrail, chief executive of RenewableUK, as . "This is also demonstrated by today's official figures which reveal that renewables have generated more than half our electricity for four quarters in a row."

The article adds that energy prices with negative numbers "have been recorded for 131 hours in the UK this year, an increase of 45 hours over 2023...

"Wind power was the largest source of energy in the UK from January to September of 2024."

Energy Prices Drop Below Zero In UK Thanks To Record Wind-Generated Electricity

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  • Negative prices (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @03:53PM (#65033087)
    Probably means that there would be a natural market for storage. A grid scale battery owner could make money absorbing the power and then make money again selling it when its needed.
    • Re:Negative prices (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jsonn ( 792303 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @04:17PM (#65033153)
      Regular over-capacity on the production side is the base for various storage and "absorption" products to be economically feasible. We are not yet at that point, but getting there.
      • Finland is already seeing a huge increase in both announced and under way large scale battery storages. That is because so much of the power comes now from wind that the prices have huge variation, so the expected pay back time is quite short.

    • Re:Negative prices (Score:4, Interesting)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @04:27PM (#65033175)
      An alternative view is that wind should include building and bear the cost of these batteries so that it doesn't create price fluctuations that make cryptocurrencies look stable by comparison. Or add mining rigs to soak the excess energy when it's particularly windy so the grid remains unaffected by the erratic spikes.

      Would you also argue that nuclear plants create a natural market for companies to process, store, or otherwise handle any waste products they create? I don't think anyone would make that argument and would instead state that nuclear power plants ought to bear the costs of their own activities. You're just putting a nicer spin on wind externalizing its costs.
      • Re: Negative prices (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Ossifer ( 703813 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @04:36PM (#65033191)

        If we want market pricing to solve clean energy problems, just charge an appropriate price for pollution. This should never have been considered to be "free". They are stealing from all of us, and for generations.

        • The problem is not charging for pollution, but spending the proceeds to mitigate it. 1/3rd of the price of our fuel and electricity consists of excise (not counting VAT or levies that are supposed to pay for maintaining and extending the grid). But little of that money is being spent on cleaning up emissions... even if they knew how to achieve that.
          • Charging the end user a tax for pollution doesn't alter the producer's behavior. It far cheaper to avoid creating pollution than to clean it up.

            • by Ossifer ( 703813 )

              I am talking about charging the polluter, not the polluterâ(TM)s customerâ¦

              • Those are the exact same thing.

              • by PPH ( 736903 )

                I am talking about charging the polluter, not the polluter's customers

                The customers always pay. Or the plant operators just close down and the former customers get no power. But there are always customers willing to pay. BitCoin miners, LLM datacenters. Menwhile, your grandmother in Chicago freezes.

                The big problem is: Given a subset of customers with deep pockets and a carbon market or set of fines to set prices, many producers have no problem finding paying customers and just buying the carbon credits. Or paying the fines. No matter how you slice it, the poor always get lef

            • When the producer pays a tax, tariff or penalty, it gets passed onto consumer. Unless there is a market force such that there is competition between multiple producers and not all of them have the same tax. Then the one with less tax are at an advantage.

              In the UK, you can choose your utility provider. Meaning there is already some competition baked into the system, at least for residential service. In the US, even with privatized utilities, a user has only a limited selection of providers in their area.

              Even

        • I've suggested this very idea for years. Figure out the approximate cost for releasing X amount of Y, multiply it by 1.1 or so to cover administrative costs, and call it a day. No grandfathering. Update prices as science suggests different amounts.
          For introduction, start at like 10% and increase it by 10% a year. So year 1: 10% all around. Year 2: 20% of the latest price figure, etc...

      • Not only the storage but also the backup has power plants for all the times wind isn't producing much of anything. And all the grid upgrades needed to hook it all up. We need power when we need it, not when it happens to be sunny or windy.

      • so that it doesn't create price fluctuations

        Price fluctuations are a natural function of the grid. You are a price fluctuation based on the fact you probably work the same hours as most people in your country and have a tendency to eat food the same time as other people. Supply and demand are not fixed, and just how a grid with only intermittent energy sources can't function, neither can a grid with 100% base load power unless some of that power is made up of really small and typically inefficient generators.

        E.g. your nuclear plant: You can't just ra

    • As long as the price difference between the daily peak and daily minimum is sufficently large enough to justify the capital investment and operating cost of grid scale storage. Obviously if energy prices were negative continously then nobody could make money at generation or storage. But conceivably excess energy would make certain industries viable, like opening up high grade steel foundries with arc furnaces.

    • Probably means that there would be a natural market for storage.

      I see a market developing for energy waste. Electric resistance heaters are real cheap, cheaper than batteries to obtain and maintain, and if people get paid to heat the outside air then expect that to happen.

      A grid scale battery owner could make money absorbing the power and then make money again selling it when its needed.

      Sure, there's income on both recharge and discharge of a battery but a battery has capital and operating expenses that nichrome wire does not.

      • by tragedy ( 27079 )

        I can't tell if this is supposed to be satire or not. What in blazes are you talking about?!

        • It's basically law of unintended consequences, or perhaps "freak-o-nomics", where you get weird stuff that is illogical because of the actual incentives at the time.

          If the price for electricity literally goes negative, even if it's only 0.001 cents/kWh, I am actually encouraged to use as much of it as I can - I'm being paid to use it.

          A cheap way to use electricity is just to heat stuff up with it. A $10 toaster can pull 1kW. If the price of electricity is -1 cents/kWh, in 10k hours I'd have paid off the t

          • It's basically law of unintended consequences, or perhaps "freak-o-nomics", where you get weird stuff that is illogical because of the actual incentives at the time.

            Looks like you got it.

            Let's say that you can average $11/day. That's $4k/year, for a battery system that cost you ~$8500. With about a 3 year payoff, it's an easy sell.

            I'm not so sure that's an easy sell. There's other ways to turn $8500 into passive income, just putting it in an interesting bearing bank account of some kind comes to mind. There's pros and cons to each option so that needs to be considered. With the bank account I'm seeing my rate of return increase if I'm not withdrawing any money, and if I do need that income for things like paying off my electrical bill then it is going to keep making money for years while at some point that ba

            • by tragedy ( 27079 )

              I think you guys are forgetting that those prices are really just for brokers in the energy industry. Real end users have to pay delivery charges regardless of whether the supply charges are negative.

              • Are you saying that the operators of the windmills are paying for some kind of "right of way" on transmission lines? That by giving the best price they can somehow make money further down some wires? I don't see how that is profitable, that is unless there's government subsidies for wind power involved.

                I suspect that the UK has similar kinds of wind subsidies as in the USA. Here we see wind and solar power producers getting government subsidy for electricity to the grid without regard on if there is dema

                • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                  Are you saying that the operators of the windmills are paying for some kind of "right of way" on transmission lines?

                  No, I'm saying that negative prices on electricity are not actually available to the typical end user who could actually set up some heaters and implement your plan and get paid to use electricity. I thought that was pretty clear. Negative electric prices are essentially a monetary fiction for traders and brokers. They don't get passed down the line to end users.

                • In the US what you're talking about, paying for transmission between nodal resources, is called a financial transmission right, or FTR. In wholesale markets they're auctioned and traded much like the underlying commodity. They can get somewhat complex, although my tangential experience with them via traders is for utilities they tend to wash out, since you both own and utilize some of the transmission. Assuming a similar system exists in Scottland though I'd imagine that could be different, as they're prett

            • I'm not so sure that's an easy sell. There's other ways to turn $8500 into passive income, just putting it in an interesting bearing bank account of some kind comes to mind. There's pros and cons to each option so that needs to be considered. With the bank account I'm seeing my rate of return increase if I'm not withdrawing any money, and if I do need that income for things like paying off my electrical bill then it is going to keep making money for years while at some point that battery will fail and I'll have to pay someone to haul it off for recycling. Maybe the scrap value pays for disposal, maybe I make a bit of money on that sale, what I'm not likely to get is my $8500 back like I would if I closed out my bank account.

              $4k/year off of a $8500 investment is a 47% return. Now, it's a bit less due to depreciation of the battery system, but note that I specified Sodium-Ion, which are supposed to be extremely durable batteries. So they should last multiple decades.
              If you're making 20% per year, that is an investment hard to beat.

              You're also unlikely to have to pay somebody to "haul it off", as it has premium stuff in it - they're likely to pay you for it.

              As for individual homes vs big battery banks, I just scaled for 100kWh

      • Heating things is already something we do when supply is high and demand low. Pretty much all heavy industry operates based on being allowed to take power only when thereâ(TM)s grid surplus. As soon as the wind blows, a ton of electric furnaces fire up to melt a bunch of metal.

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Heating the air outside? People do that with patio heaters, but beyond that your pro-fossil fuel bias is showing. However, there are various processes that can be scaled up a bit when excess power is available, and some of these operate in the UK. For example, large hotel chains may increase or decrease A/C in response. In theory, domestic appliances could also respond.
    • Correct. It means that there are power plants that canâ(TM)t easily shut down (like nuclear) saying âoeplease please please take the electricity weâ(TM)re generating, we canâ(TM)t get rid of it.â Additional storage is indeed the answer.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You can actually do it with your home battery/EV and solar if you make the effort. Charge when you get paid to, export when it is profitable.

    • by kd3bj ( 733314 )

      Probably means that there would be a natural market for storage. A grid scale battery owner could make money absorbing the power and then make money again selling it when its needed.

      Or just burn it with resistors and collect the money once. A lot simpler than storing it.

      • Negative wholesale rates do t equate to 'free' electricity for the end customer, it's just a brief blip in the wholesale price.

        Last YEAR there were 13- hours of 'below zero' electricity, that's 131 hours out of 8,760 hours in the year. Whoopiee!

    • From 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the half-hourly price fell to 6.57 pounds per megawatt-hour, according to data from European power exchange Epex Spot.

      How is 6.57 pounds per Megawatt-hour "below zero"?

  • record profits from the energy companies
    • record profits from the energy companies

      How does an energy company profit from paying people to consume energy? My guess is that they take 10 pounds/dollars/pesos/whatevers from the government for some unit of energy, pay people 3 whatevers to consume that energy, then keep 7.

      We should not be paying subsidies for energy to a point that it drives prices negative, that only encourages waste. If I got paid to burn more natural gas then I'd open the windows to heat the outdoors, this logic doesn't change because the energy is in the form of electri

      • by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @05:21PM (#65033299)
        how do they excess profit ? For example having a standing daily charge that is supposed to cover the costs of reading \maintaing the meter network. ok fair enough wages go , inflation etc so does that cost but it is pegged to the market price of them buying gas so in the last 2 years standing charges have gone up over 400%
      • I can't make money selling at a negative price (unless I bought at an even more negative price), but I would want to minimize my losses.

        For example, suppose I have a contract to buy a certain amount of power. The generator has built and managed a system to supply that amount of power, based, in part, on the contract they have with me, so I am bound to take that power. Now I can't on sell the power, because my customers have too little net demand, so I need to get rid of it. I expect the details will vary wi

    • All those British Fish and Chip shops going broke after >60 years in business, because the energy price is a killer. We will see how many British pensioners freeze to death this winter.
  • Energy Prices Drop Below Zero in UK

    From 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the half-hourly price fell to 6.57 pounds per megawatt-hour, according to data from European power exchange Epex Spot.

    6.57 still looks like a positive number to me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's because the writer of the EcoWatch article didn't copy correctly from the source article here [bnnbloomberg.ca]:

      Wind output peaked at 22,360 megawatts during the evening, breaking the previous high reached just a couple of days earlier, according to the national system operator. Half-hourly prices turned negative between 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, touching minus £6.57 a megawatt-hour, Epex Spot data show.

      They forgot the "minus" part.

  • by ishmaelflood ( 643277 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @04:21PM (#65033165)

    A “Dunkelflaute” period of weather has sent wind power generation tumbling in the UK, Germany and other parts of northern Europe.

    The phenomenon – which translates roughly as “dark wind lull” – describes periods when wind speeds plunge, leading to little to no generation from turbines.

    On Tuesday Nov 6 2024, it meant wind farms were only able to meet 3-4pc of the UK’s electricity demand during the morning and evening peaks, with gas-fired plants instead fired up to meet around 60pc of demand.

    So I rather think boosterism like the crappy article quoted is out of place. Maximum renewable generation is not important, the minimum is.

    • by ac22 ( 7754550 )

      On Tuesday Nov 6 2024, it meant wind farms were only able to meet 3-4pc of the UK’s electricity demand during the morning and evening peaks, with gas-fired plants instead fired up to meet around 60pc of demand.

      Yes, that's how it's supposed to work. The UK has enough CCGT capacity to not require any wind power. But gas is expensive, so the gas-fired plants only get spun up when needed.

      I downloaded the data for the UK's total power output for the past year into a spreadsheet and went through the numbers:
      When wind is generating 10GW+, CCGT averages 5.82GW
      When wind is generating between 5GW and 10GW, CCGT averages 7.15GW
      When wind is generating less than 5GW, CCGT averages 10.59GW

      https://www.gridwatch.templar.... [templar.co.uk]

    • That is actually good.
      And what is better: regulation by price worked, triggered spare capacity to go online.
      Nobody in the whole of Europe suffered a shortage as a result of the mythical "Doppeldunkelflaute"
      Yes, today, the spare capacity is dirty gas turbines.
      But if they are used only for short periods 5% of the year instead of 24/365, that is a huge win for the environment.

  • I don't know why but somehow this is wrong and bad. One thing I do know is that this would NEVER have happened if we stuck with good old electricity generated by BRITISH coal.

  • ... The conventional energy producers?! How are their CEOs supposed to own an island, or afford their yearly mega-million-dollar bonuses if we're using solar?
  • by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Sunday December 22, 2024 @06:12PM (#65033391) Homepage

    I wish this was reflected in my utility bill!

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Get on to Octopus Agile. When prices are negative you get paid to use electricity.

    • I wish this was reflected in my utility bill!

      Be careful what you wish for. Are you also going to wish it was reflected in your bill if a major power plant trips and the cost of electricity suddenly increases by a factor of 10? Or on a hot day? Or in the evening when everyone runs the kettle and consumes a shitton of power?

      In many countries there are options to work with a provider that offers spot prices for energy. Just don't come crying when it doesn't work in your favour, like those people in Texas who suddenly ended up with a $5,000 power bill for

  • Oh right, you can't. Why is that again?
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 )

      > Why is that again?

      Lack of political will to make the investment, mostly because it would really piss off the people who own all that conventional power infrastructure (and the industries that fuel it), but also because of dipshits like you who insist it can't or shouldn't be done.

      =Smidge=

    • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @09:17PM (#65033651)

      You can't get rid of it because wind/solar is not schedulable. You can't call up a wind farm and tell them to bring 10 MW on line at the top of the hour. And if you can't, you had better have a backup plant contracted to meet your obligation. Or we cross you off the available sources list. But if you are a wind producer and a breeze picks up three minutes after the hour, you expect all the other producers to get off the system so you can sell your power. But if the wind dies 15 minutes later, it's Not Your Problem. Someone else will have to arrange thermal plants to take over.

      Storage could go a long way towards filling in the gaps. But here again, to the solar/wind people, backup is Not Their Problem. Unlike conventional producers.

      • It is very much their problem, and well illustrated by the article. When the wind is blowing, the price is negative and the wind power generators lose money. When the wind isn't blowing they can't generate electricity and they make no money. The people who are making the money are the ones who are generating power when the wind isn't blowing.

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          When the wind is blowing, the price is negative and the wind power generators lose money.

          Because unreliable sources are placed on the spot market. If you want a guaranteed, fixed price for your power you have to provide it on demand. Reliably. Which means lots of batteries (financed by you) or exchange and backup agreements. Often with thermal power producers.

    • >> Get Rid of Conventional Power Generating Right NOW
      You Live in Lalaland.
      Nobody said the transition happens overnight.
      But conventional generation goes down, MW after MW.

  • and yet (Score:3, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @09:42PM (#65033661) Journal

    "The UK currently faces the highest industrial electricity prices globally, standing at 25.46 pence per kWh in 2023, according to government data"

    This is not a trivial disparity either, this is two to three TIMES the price of European peers.

    https://www.energylivenews.com... [energylivenews.com]

    You guys are so fucking gullible.

    • You guys are so fucking gullible.

      It seems weird to call victims gullible. As if they had a real choice in the matter.

    • You guys are so fucking gullible.

      What is gullible? The fact is the spot price dropped negative, this has nothing to do with the retail energy price. Also the UK's high average energy price has fuck all to do with renewables, they were uniquely fucked due to the energy mix they had and the contracts for providers of the required fuel / transmission to neighbours.

  • by ZombieEngineer ( 738752 ) on Monday December 23, 2024 @12:24AM (#65033787)

    The Australian South West Interconnected System (SWIS) has been regularly settling trades at negative values.
    https://wa.aemo.com.au/ [aemo.com.au]

    The negative prices started at 6am this morning and projected to be negative until 6am.
    This is with Perth experiencing a heat wave (43.4C / 110F), obviously not enough air conditioning being used...

    Took the UK a year to achieve what happens here in two weeks.

    • Correction: "negative until 6pm".
      Duck curve on steroids....

    • Is it caused by wind farms, or something else? I normally think of heat waves as having low wind, at least in Melbourne.
    • Took the UK a year to achieve what happens here in two weeks.

      Comparing the UK to Australia is like comparing a piece of string to a spiderweb (more descriptive than saying Apples and Oranges). Australia's grid is somewhat unique in the world in it's lack of redundant connections. The result is there's completely different market powers at play pushing for a completely different grid solution than in other countries. There's a good reason Tesla chose Australia for it's first grid scale battery. There's also a very big difference in how Australia can exploit renewables

  • Prices are a function of supply and demand. The fact that electricity prices have fallen so low is not something that should necessarily be celebrated if the reason is due to lack of industrial/manufacturing demand for electricity. Lack of manufacturing in first world nations is typically due to excessive regulations or taxes, both of which are really bad!
  • So, of course those savings were passed into the customers who were willing to turn on devices and charging throughout the household to take some of the load. EVs were fast charged, old Bitcoin miners were spun up, home batteries were topped off...

  • This also happened in the era of large base-load coal plants. When demand drops at night, but the coal-fired generators needed to keep turning, spot pricing went negative.

  • No?

    Well then, it's just another of those fraudulent "green energy good" stories that pretends that wind or solar can run the grid without coal, or gas, or nuclear. We keep seeing these headlines blaring that some country has run completely on solar and wind, or that solar and wind are now cheaper than coal, etc and then when you get past the headlines and read the details you see that some price or quantity was achieved for a few moments at an odd time, or it didn't REALLY happen as implied, etc. The simple

Swap read error. You lose your mind.

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