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.

132 points

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.

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48 points

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.

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7 points

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

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14 points

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.

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10 points

Why /s there?

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

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5 points

A lot of that is the cost of transmission, which PG&E charges us out the ass for

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64 points

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

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39 points

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

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21 points

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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1 point

UK too.

https://dashboards.energy-stats.uk/d/5cZqqmf4z/user-dashboard?orgId=1&from=now-24h&to=now&var-area_name=Southern_England

Currently it’s gone back up to 7p (about half to normal price), but the solar has kicked in and I’m supplying power to the grid anyway.

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1 point

Scottish Power will charge me £330 this month anyway. Dry fucks.

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Because Sweden wants to be Nordic America these days.

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6 points

And the current right wing government is looking closely at US republicans in particular

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8 points

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. :)

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7 points

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

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4 points

Try Norway. Our electric companies were sold to private investors who sold our electricity to the EU, and then they sold too much so they had to buy it back at exorbitant prices and the public is footing the bill for their dumbassery.
It’s not as bad as it was a year ago but it’s still about 15 times more expensive than it was just 4 years ago.

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57 points

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.

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37 points

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.

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15 points

Colder and darker for sure

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20 points

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

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5 points

Can I get a link to this that sounds so fucked

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3 points

Your face would hurt from smiling all the time. Sounds awful.

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47 points

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.

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17 points

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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6 points

Variable pricing is a demand shaping method. Negative rates are an indication of insufficient flexibility to adequately shape demand. If we were able to adequately shape demand to match available supply, rates would fluctuate, but they would never go negative.

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1 point

If we were able to adequately shape demand to match available supply, rates would fluctuate, but they would never go negative.

I don’t see why that would follow.

If supply is higher than demand, then getting rid of that excess supply costs money, and the producer might have to pay someone to take it away. It applies to grocery stores that over order inventory of perishable goods, to oil companies that run out of space to store oil, and electricity grids that need to get rid of damaging/dangerous excess power.

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11 points

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

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9 points

“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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6 points
*

Luckily, several interconnects already exist and more are planned.

As to percentages, most electric grids will publish those - for example FinGrid’s current status.

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8 points
*

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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5 points

Lithium isn’t going to be the way to store electricity on the grid. I wish people would stop bringing it up.

There isn’t going to be a single thing. Pumped hydro, flywheels, sodium-ion, flow batteries, and heating up sand all have a place.

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2 points

and who will you sell it to? the other countries will be building their own infrastructure eventually and they’ll be trying to sell to you.

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2 points
*

You sell it to places with different weather conditions (or as noted, to places with storage capacity) - and if everyone in the grid becomes as successful as Finland, well “good job, everyone!”

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6 points
*

When I was growing up, my parents house had thermal storage electrical heating. Generally the heat was only “on” at night when electricity was cheap, then we’d control the temperature during the day with circulation fans. I remember it working really well while saving a ton of money.

Where is the thermal storage heating now? I specifically could use a mini-split heat pump, where the head unit is thermal storage, but I don’t see any such thing online

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3 points

I read about a, Finnish?, project whete they heated up sand, but in large silos in IDK 500°C or more. Could sit there for months apparently.

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2 points

Yeah, I’m sure the solution would require both large scale storage and point of use storage

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2 points

Generally the heat was only “on” at night when electricity was cheap

That is exactly why rates are going negative during the day now. Baseload generation benefits from artificial increases in the base, off-peak load. With solar and wind generation increasing, we now have a need to reduce that base, overnight load, and increase peak, daytime load.

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3 points
*

Let me rephrase: “ the heat was only “on” … when electricity was cheap” which at the time was overnight. That was 1970’s tech so basically a mechanical timer, but the timer could be set to whenever, plus surely current technology could be used for a smarter solution

Edit: I currently opt into a program to shift load, in return for a bonus on my bill. My smart thermostat is able to pre-cool the house before the peak time, and only shaves off two degrees at peak, so it maintains adequate comfort while helping shift load (assuming enough consumers join)

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2 points
*

At risk of starting a whole new fight, this is why hybridizing renewables with nuclear doesn’t work. They don’t cover for each other’s faults very well.

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1 point

Technology Connections has been arguing to just use the air in your house for this purpose - e.g. running air conditioning only at night, or allowing the power company to run it in advance of peak demand.

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2 points
*

I got this, works decently for a short period.

My smart thermostat allows me to opt in to a program where the power company can adjust the AC during peak periods, and I get an annual bonus on my bill. It does actually precool the house: sets the temp down two degrees for a bit, before peak where it sets the temp up two degrees.

However my house isn’t sufficiently weatherproofed: their changes can be 2-3 hours but the pre-cooling doesn’t help for that long

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1 point

thermal storage is kind of complicated and sucks a little bit, probably.

You can still do the heating thing, using your home as a thermal battery for example. You could also put a large thermal mass within your home, thousands of gallons of water (for example) directly integrating a thermal battery and optimally using it probably just isn’t as viable as not worrying about it and doing something else.

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1 point
*

It doesn’t have to be complicated, or the complexity is related to the use case. Does not need water or moving parts.

Consider a single radiator in a house. You only need storage sufficient to use that radiator for one day. And it doesn’t matter too much if it can’t cover extreme temperatures, as long as it is sufficient to cover peak prices most of the time

I finally found one. Why aren’t there choices like

Edit to circle back to the goal: now I can move toward cleaner energy by electrifying my house. I can save energy/money by using the most efficient heating technology. If there was thermal storage, I could save even more money with “time of use” metering and the utility can shift their load to make up for the peakiness of sources like solar. If I installed solar on my roof, I could potentially heat my house entirely with “free” energy

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1 point

Thermal storage needs to be quite large though, at least with the stone/brick like mass they used back then. And you need to isolate it, otherwise you have no control over the release of that stored heat. I wonder if new materials, maybe something that undergoes phase change in that temperature range, could be a lot more space efficient.

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1 point

It doesn’t have to be large, or the size is related to the use case. In the house I grew up, they were similar size and shape to standard radiators and worked well through cold winters in upstate NY

Consider a single radiator in a house. You only need storage sufficient to use that radiator for one day. And it doesn’t matter too much if it can’t cover extreme temperatures, as long as it is sufficient to cover peak prices most of the time

I finally found one. Why aren’t there choices like

https://stash.energy/en/

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3 points

In a region like Finland, sand batteries appear to be worthwhile for seasonal storage. Might be an avenue to pursue

Then there’s always green hydrogen as well

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2 points
1 point

Yep exactly

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3 points

or you know, we could subsidize spending some of this excess power on something like “folding at home” except its actually in a government datacenter subsidizing power production peaking.

Although that’s like, really boring.

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35 points

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”.

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