Energy Prices Drop Below Zero In UK Thanks To Record Wind-Generated Electricity (ecowatch.com) 74
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."
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."
Negative prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Negative prices (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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 ar
Re: Negative prices (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re: Negative prices (Score:2)
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.
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I am talking about charging the polluter, not the polluterâ(TM)s customerâ¦
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Those are the exact same thing.
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Not at all.
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Not really. If you charge the producer of the pollution for the pollution, it's internalizing that cost. If mitigation is really expensive, it might be cheaper to just pay it. If they can avoid the charge for less money by changing the production process - either using a different non-polluting material, neutralizing the pollution, or capturing it, they'll do that.
Plus, for the customers, a non-polluting version of the product might actually be cheaper, and thus selected more often.
Re: Negative prices (Score:3)
No itâ(TM)s not, because when the customer (the grid) chooses who to buy from, they will choose another supplier who isnâ(TM)t paying that tax (like wind). The thing that changes is the behaviour of the market, even if price increases get passed on.
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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
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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...
Re: Negative prices (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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I can't tell if this is supposed to be satire or not. What in blazes are you talking about?!
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Rather than "delivery charges", haven't decoupling policies made retail rates entirely administered by governnent commissions?
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I think that is what he was trying to get at. The end user typically pays a set amount per kWh plus a connection fee to have service. Business customers those plus a charge for the maximum power they pull.
It's the brokers who might see a negative power situation, and that's generally a signal for the windmills and such to shut off. But there's some amount of spinning power that can't turn off, so they might end up paying.
Subsidies from the government makes some sense though. I'm not aware of such subsid
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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
Re: Negative prices (Score:2)
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.
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Proof you can't store electricity economically (Score:1)
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The maintenance/cost per cycle of any current storage system is too high to profitably store electricity.
This is a strange claim, since commercially successful grid storage systems have been in operation for decades, for example pumped storage for off-peak nuclear plant output (e.g. Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Facility 1972); or Hornsby in Australia, which paid back its construction costs in just two years.
At present grid storage capacity in the US is growing exponentially, doubling roughly every two years, because companies are making profits with it.
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It seems to me the smart thing would be to put batteries in the wind turbine towers.
Re: Negative prices (Score:2)
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.
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Why can't they run excess to ground, if no one will buy it?
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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.
Re: Negative prices (Score:1)
Thatâ(TM)s all fine and itâ(TM)s been very windy in the UK recently. But youâ(TM)ve always been in denial about the prolonged periods of high pressure that becalm the whole UK for 5-15 days that causes wind generation to drop to below 20%. How much will it cost in wind generation and/or storage over production to get through such long periods? Or do you secretly expect us to be dependent on imported electricity through interconnects, despite that being extremely unpopular?
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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.
So of course expect (Score:2)
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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
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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
English math? (Score:2)
6.57 still looks like a positive number to me.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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Details, details...
For one hour... (Score:2)
> From 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the half-hourly price fell to 6.57 pounds per megawatt-hour
First off, that negative cost doesn't take into account the massive investment in infrastructure to generate that power. The hourly price, even for that one record hour, was still 6.57 pounds. Second, it was one hour during a low demand time frame - few people were at work at that hour, most weren't even awake. Reaching 70% of the grids requirements when those requirements are at a low is no major feat.
Th
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Indeed. When I jump, for a moment I'm actually levitating!
In other news, my electricity bills are still sky high.
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It's because we are too reliant on expensive gas. The price of electricity is set by the most expensive source, which is often gas. Nuclear pushes it up too.
The more wind we have the less gas we will use. It has also been suggested that we could have regional pricing, so expensive gas/nuclear needed in one area doesn't stop others from getting cheaper wind.
Re: For one hour... (Score:1)
The more wind we have, the more expensive gas will become per kWh. This is because the gas generators will be sitting idle for longer periods of time, with fixed costs.
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Fortunately we have a grid, so we can close gas plants as they become redundant and the remaining ones can maintain a higher usage level. Eventually though they will all be closed and replaced by storage and transmission lines.
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ACKCHUALLY...
> First off, that negative cost doesn't take into account the massive investment in infrastructure to generate that power.
The normal cost of electricity doesn't take that into account either. For any type of power plant.
> The hourly price, even for that one record hour, was still 6.57 pounds.
NEGATIVE 6.57. The article is misprint; if you go to the linked source [epexspot.com] you can see that in the "Weight avg" column, for 05:30-06:00 the price was -0.66 and for 6:00-6:30 the price was -6.57.
> Reac
Re: (Score:2)
> would breathlessly claim what is happening now would be totally impossible.
No, I'm the type of lone person who would have told you that the same financial investment in nuclear would have produced a massively different outcome - 24/7 clean power that didn't destroy the seascape.
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> the same financial investment in nuclear would have produced a massively different outcome
That outcome, presumably, being no power at all because "the same financial investment" would not have built a single nuclear power plant.
=Smidge=
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I think we all understood that this was a very brief event. It still is symbolically significant. What is really interesting is that at peak output, wind provided 68% of the entire country's electric power. We are moving in the right direction.
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First off, that negative cost doesn't take into account the massive investment in infrastructure to generate that power.
But it does account for that.
The costs of equipment design, manufacture, installation, maintenance, repair, and power distribution infrastructure, are all indirectly included in the market dynamics that dictate the price — along with more obvious price effects such as instantaneous supply and demand.
If infrastructure were cheaper to build then the instantaneous price would have been even lower (more negative).
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The authors have never been in a power station or bothered to talk to someone who works in one. J-school special.
For variable generators, like hydro, they have realtime pricing readouts and will ramp up production (e.g. release the head of water) when the price goes up.
This increases profits and stabilizes the grid.
The difference between $0.10 and $-0.10 is only twenty cents. On a hot AC day I used to see swings between $3 and $5 - much bigger. Baseload doesn't have that kind of variability so they can't r
Dunkelflaute 7 weeks ago (Score:2)
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 me
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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]
Proves wind power is wrong (Score:2)
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.
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Yet again, UK has found a way to make "cold, wet, & windy" an advantage. It also made then the best sailors in the world. Well, that & British food & British women.
Re: Proves wind power is wrong (Score:2)
the best sailors in the world (Score:2)
When was the last time the British had the Americas Cup?
Won't someone consider... (Score:2)
Sigh ... (Score:3)
I wish this was reflected in my utility bill!
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Get on to Octopus Agile. When prices are negative you get paid to use electricity.
Re: Sigh ... (Score:1)
I find comments like this to be excessively glib. Many of us canâ(TM)t shift their electrical usage for multiple reasons. Furthermore, our usage is so low that we were only paying £25/month before Putinâ(TM)s vanity project in Ukraine pushed up prices and the energy providers started playing tricks like increasing the standing charge, so the extra effort to save a couple of quid, if it were possible, isnâ(TM)t worth it.
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Octopus have never tariffs that are generally the cheapest around, favouring green energy.
I do appreciate how hard it is for many people though. We should be investing in upgrading housing stock with insulation, solar, and batteries. The prices are still too high, and we need to do something for people renting or who are otherwise unable to get those things.
Get Rid of Conventional Power Generating Right NOW (Score:3)
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> 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=
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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
That's terrible news (Score:1)
and yet (Score:3)
"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.