this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Mildly Interesting

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It's still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it's pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.

Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.

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[–] [email protected] 132 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Renewables dipped below $0 for us in California too this year. Fortunately for the utilities, those savings don't get passed along to customers and I still paid $0.53 kW/h. /s

Lucky you.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I still paid $0.53 kW/h.

That is surprisingly expensive, it's more than here (Cambodia), which is notoriously high for the region at around 20c.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you want people to use less energy this is the only way

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Alternative: Create more energy, preferably renewable. Penalize heavy users only (raise costs). Incentivize (lower costs) those using renewables like solar panels. Raising costs for all is the laziest way.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

In the case of PG&E, they have to pay for killing a bunch of people and burning down some towns, so they're passing the expenses onto everyone else. Privatize the gains and socialize the losses baybeee. Gotta love state sanctioned monopolies.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Why /s there?

Also fuck PG&E. Fuck that company. Assholes.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Why does it feel like every Nordic country is much better then Sweden these days.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago

We each have our problems but I have to admit that I haven't heard many positive news coming from there recently.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The energy prices in Sweden were also mostly negative yesterday, and today as well. Although probably not quite as much as in Finland.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because Sweden wants to be Nordic America these days.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Eeh? The price dipped to -70 öre in southern sweden today.. And you should probably not use negative prices as a messurement of success anyways. :)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Because we have been riding high on believing that our infrastructure is the best in the world.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 months ago (1 children)

People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.

Resistive load. Gotta dump excess energy somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago (3 children)

My electric company here in the us mines bitcoin with it and charges us a "peak time incentive" pricing model.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to be born somewhere like Finland.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Colder and darker for sure

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Only for half a year. The other half is colder and brighter!

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (42 children)

This is not a good thing. Any time generation has to pay to produce, solar and wind rollouts are slowed.

We need better demand shaping methods, to increase load on grids during periods of excess production, and decrease loads during shortages. We need to stabilize rates at profitable points to maintain growth of green energy projects.

We also need long-term grid storage methods, to reduce seasonal variation. A given solar project will produce more than twice as much power during a long summer day as it will during a short winter day. If we build enough solar to meet our needs during October and March, we will have shortages in November, January, February, and surpluses from April through September. We will need some sort of thermal production capability anyway; hydrogen electrolysis or Fischer-Tropsch synfuel production can soak up that surplus generation capacity and produce green, carbon-free or carbon-neutral, storable fuels for thermal generation and/or the transportation sector.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Negative pricing IS a demand shaping method, you need to have a certain % of the electricity produced that is consumed at the same time, otherwise you risk having an unstable electricity grid.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Or just export it - there must be nearby counties that don't have such a good renewable electric situation.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"just export it" sounds so simple, but the required infrastructure is actually incredibly expensive. Also most of Europe is already pretty tightly connected and trade does happen to a significant degree, but I have no idea what the actual percentage is or if it's used to balance oversupply and/or shortages. Kinda hard to find reliable sources for that.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Or water batteries for dams if your neighbors don't need your surplus, this way you don't need to extract lithium to produce regular batteries to store the surplus

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-giant-water-batteries-could-make-green-power-reliable

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago

Meanwhile in the USA the electric companies will mine BTC, and charge consumers more wherever they can. They will even sue people for going solar for "losing out on profits".

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Luckily my energy company found a way around all of this to always charge more! We have "Basic Customer Charge", "Summary of Rider Adjustments", "Renewable Energy Rider", and then Sales Tax on all of it. My base charge is over 100$ before they start calculating your actually energy usage. Yay electrical monopolies!

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It might be cheap now, but I'm fearing the December - February i.e. the coldest part of the year when the price can get salty. Especially when/if the OL3 (or any other) plant trips offline, the price will bump up a lot.

The good part of having excess eletricity is that doing a "electric-kettle" district heating becomes feasible. So instead of reducing the (windmill) production, it makes sense to dump the excess generation capacity into district-heating. (which has large capacity to store the heat)

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (11 children)

This will hopefully lead to storage methods, maybe exportable ones like hydrogen

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

Hydrogen is not good for energy storage. Round trip efficiency is abysmal and its incredibly difficult to store in the first place

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Does it ever make you want to turn on every appliance in the house just for the hell of it? Lol

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

No, since we pay a flat transfer rate on top of that, about 2-6 cents per kWh depending on the area.

Of course, that doesn't stop idiots from turning on all their stoves during these times anyway.

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