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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
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: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday January 03 2018, @02:37PM
It isn't. The price goes negative because of the peculiar contracts, which involve arcane formulae, between the generators and their customers (who are the retail distributors, not the end users). The generators are still incuring real costs (their staff wages for a start) even if they are having to pay their customers. This has nothing to do with being "green", and the Second Law of Thermodynamics has not been fooled.