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: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:12PM
The real question is why in the face of obvious evidence of too much regulation should the answer be anything else? It's not just negative prices for electrical power subsidized by small German consumers who pay well over average European rates. It's example after example of complex, opaque, onerous law that causes perverse and sometimes horrifying consequences to people who happen to run afoul of it (and which some bureaucrat decides to prosecute). It's law created faster than you can read it. It's the scenario where "ignorance is no excuse" becomes a sick joke.