Here in the Netherlands we have some energy companies offering dynamic tariffs. Basically it means that the price is high when the demand is high, and on contrary, the price is low when the demand is low. When the energy supply is greater than the demand the prices can become negative, I.e. -0.05 ct per Kwm
And the negative price is what amazes me. It means you earn money by using electricity. So in theory I can built a giant hamster wheel which will be powered by electricity only when the price is negative, and it will make profit. Free money for doing nothing
Does anybody knows how negative energy prices work?
In: 3
Not every power plant can easily adjust their power production to match demand. Especially nuclear and coal power plants take quite some time to adjust to demands. If they shut off the steam supply to their turbines they still have a lot of high temperature high pressure steam in their boilers and very hot reactor/fire to deal with. So when they have too much steam they will sell power with a loss in order to get rid of the steam. This tends to happen whenever there is a lot of wind. It is very hard to predict the output from wind power plants so generally the coal and nuclear power plants will build up a bit of steam even though the forecast say it is going to be windy just in case it is less wind then expected. This leaves them with a bit too much steam. It costs money to transfer power so the wind turbines will be running full production in order to meet local demand but the coal and nuclear plants in other areas are not able to pay the transmission fees and compete with the wind turbines. So they sell the power with a loss locally instead.
It should be mentioned though that you are not getting money for using power. In addition to the power you also have to pay for the power transfer from the power station to your house. So the net cost of the power will still be positive. But if you need to use power anyway then using it at these times will be preferential.
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