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Germany has spent $200 billion over the past two decades to promote cleaner sources of electricity. That enormous investment is now having an unexpected impact — consumers are now actually paid to use power on occasion, as was the case over the weekend.
Power prices plunged below zero for much of Sunday and the early hours of Christmas Day on the EPEX Spot, a large European power trading exchange, the result of low demand, unseasonably warm weather and strong breezes that provided an abundance of wind power on the grid.
Such "negative prices" are not the norm in Germany, but they are far from rare, thanks to the country's effort to encourage investment in greener forms of power generation. Prices for electricity in Germany have dipped below zero — meaning customers are being paid to consume power — more than 100 times this year alone, according to EPEX Spot.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @11:17AM (2 children)
Sounds really useful. Half the time there's too much wind, and you have to dump power who knows be where. The rest of the time there's too little, and you have a to fire up the shit burners.
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Wednesday January 03 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)
The simple answer to output variability is energy storage. Pump water up the hill with excess power, run it it through the turbine at peak demand. I've seen this done in Wales. With Germany closing in on all-renewable energy I think we'll see a lot more lake energy storage and maybe some innovations in the area. How about raising massive weights? Generation would be from a direct mechanical link to the generators - high efficiency.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 03 2018, @11:52PM
Only so many places you can do that. But maybe German electricity providers haven't heard of this "pumped storage" idea before. Send them an email!