Finland's average electricity price slips into negative territory

https://yle.fi/a/74-20033326

by alibarber • 3 years ago

94 92 3 years ago

bell-cot• 3 years ago

Idea: Convert a cargo ship into an Aluminum Smelter. Regularly relocate it to ports where the price of electricity is minimal or negative. Profit.

jl6• 3 years ago

Or site big batteries at every unthrottleable power plant.

aenis5• 3 years ago

Check the prices. At the current prices, they won't pay for themselves. I did the math on a 100kWH and a 10kWh battery assuming 60 days of negative energy prices (5 hours per each such day) and even assuming you can charge them fully within that window, you won't recover their cost in the 10 years they are guaranteed to work. Not even 1/3rd of their price. With abundant energy during sunny and windy days in Northern Europe, investing in panels or batteries is questionable at this point. Chances are, your neighbours are already subsidizing your energy consumption.

captrb• 3 years ago

Using excess electricity to generate hydrogen would be ideal,right?

flir3• 3 years ago

A vote for underwater compressed air energy storage here. Simpler and less dangerous all round than hydrogen.

ActionHank• 3 years ago

You will need to pay for a whole lot of fuel.

somedude895• 3 years ago

And probably not get to the place in time.

FourHand451• 3 years ago

To sail the ship around? I'd think the smelting operation would cover those costs.

sesuximo• 3 years ago

Just be careful not to dump the waste chemicals…

fulafel• 3 years ago

Transmission prices are a big chunk of the total per MWH cost even in times of normal prices. This is also why prices go negative in the first place, it costs money to use it.

I wonder what reasonable alternatives there are to fixed transmission prices. Though probably in times of high production, transmission would be more likely to be a bottleneck and priced even higher...

atemerev2• 3 years ago

We have Bitcoin for that.

aenis5• 3 years ago

It's happening in the Netherlands over the last two weeks as well. Many days where there are a few hours during which energy is either free or you get paid to consume it. (Taxation still makes it hard to turn profit - each consumed kWh is taxed at 0.15c regardless). Basically, if there is sun and wind, energy is very cheap.

2000UltraDeluxe4• 3 years ago

Too bad there's no infrastructure in place for producing synthetic fuel with the surplus electricity. It might not be efficient, but if we're producing surplus electricity anyway, then even inefficient storage/usage won't be a waste.

black_puppydog• 3 years ago

Compared to any (currently practical) storage, just laying more wires to places that don't currently have too much wind/sun is much more efficient.

Turns out, cables are relatively cheap, compared to batteries.

bluefirebrand2• 3 years ago

Why would we produce synthetic fuel when we have batteries? We also have other ways to store electricity.

Am I missing sarcasm in your comment or something?

Incipient4• 3 years ago

The problem is any plants that would be producing synthetic fuel, fertiliser, etc would all be operating 100% of the year. They wouldn't be an "on demand" plant - the economics wouldn't support it (mostly due to capex).

With excess wind/solar, pumped hydro would be the storage mechanism, but that clearly doesn't apply when a country has an excess of hydro too!

credit_guy• 3 years ago

Many industrial processes have a high capital cost. If you build a plant that can make synthetic fuel, you don't want it sitting idle 70% of the time. If the plant is extraordinarily cheap capital-wise, then you are ok to use if for load balancing. But the usual suspects (aluminum smelting, water desalination, production of synfuels) don't qualify. Maybe making hydrogen via electrolysis qualifies, but then you have a storage and transportation problem. Still, I think hydrogen is probably the best use case for cheap but intermittent electricity.

yread• 3 years ago

This guy keeps track of it nicely, 75 hours with negative prices so far this year:

https://nitter.net/BM_Visser/status/1660605197142351875#m

Consumers can sign up for dynamic electricity price to get the benefits (and risk a huge bill like in Texas last year): https://enever.nl/grafieken-stroomprijs-vandaag-morgen/

sidewndr462• 3 years ago

This is false, Griddy waived the bills:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/griddy-energy-charged-9000-powe...

niij3• 3 years ago

Edit: I misread. Sub cent tax makes a lot more sense :)

The tax is 0.15 euros / kWh?! That's higher than my total rate (amortized connection fee, per kWh cost, taxes)!

alibarber• 3 years ago

In Finland, sadly, it's closer to 2 cents. And in my particular part of the country distribution is charged at a further 5, plus VAT. Plus 30Eur/Month connection flat fee.

Hamuko4• 3 years ago

How little do you actually pay for electricity?

pelorat2• 3 years ago

I pay €0,394/kWh (Tax included, Netherlands). That price does not include fixed connection costs (0,19 per day) and a bunch of other things.

Prices are insane here. The provider will pocket the money they make off of cheap production of energy. Us consumers will see nothing of the low electricity price.

belter• 3 years ago

How is that affecting the ROI of people that invested in Solar at home?

edf13• 3 years ago

Crypto mining?

anttisalmela3• 3 years ago

Last year, 2000 MW of wind power was built, at the end of the year total power was 5200 MW. Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor was brought online, 1600MW. Solar power nearly doubled, from 358 MW to 606 MW. So far this year 500MW of wind power and 100MW of solar has been added to the grid.

Queries for grid connections pass already 100GW. Over twenty electrolysis plants are in planning.

iandanforth• 3 years ago

Any large battery installations you're aware of?

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

No large batteries (100MW+), but they are maxing out exporting power to Estonia constantly after that recent nuclear generator came online (which is leading to Estonia having a very clean carbon profile at the moment). Both countries recently signed a MOU to build an additional 1GW underwater HVDC interconnector ("EstLink3"), but it won't be done for a decade.

"Too much clean energy" is a good problem to have! Probably means Finland can pull forward retiring the 2.6GW of coal generation capacity they have (which has been running somewhat consistently at <100MW with the latest nuclear generation addition).

https://www.energy-storage.news/worlds-first-large-scale-san...

https://elering.ee/en/elering-and-fingrid-launch-joint-activ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estlink

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FI

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/EE

(EDIT: my note: smaller batteries mentioned in other comments for grid support are helpful for phasing out thermal generation traditionally providing grid support services, like maintaining frequency or voltage, but aren't big enough for material energy arbitrage)

Hamuko4• 3 years ago

There's a 30 MWh one in Lappeenranta and there's a 36 MWh being built in Lempäälä.

https://www.hs.fi/talous/art-2000009377977.html

anttisalmela3• 3 years ago

OL3 has a big one for grid support purposes: https://www.tvo.fi/en/index/news/pressreleasesstockexchanger...

Gwypaas4• 3 years ago

This shows why taking 15-20 years from decision to operational status, like nuclear power in the west does, is hugely risky. The world has moved past the need. Add on another 20-40 years to turn a profit and the prospects are laughable.

The output of Finland's newest nuclear power facility, Olkiluoto 3, has been significantly cut back because electricity has become too cheap, according to the plant's owner, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO).

https://yle.fi/a/74-20032375

troupo• 3 years ago

taking 15-20 years from decision to operational status, like nuclear power does, is hugely risky.

It takes China 6 years to build a reactor, and they build them in parallel.

The world has moved past the need.

Except when, you know, it's a quiet night

Gwypaas4• 3 years ago

It takes China 6 years to build a reactor, and they build them in parallel.

China have a foot in the nuclear industry, but they are betting on renewables. Also, do you want to have a Chinese reactor in your backyard? Try the nimbyism for that!

Except when, you know, it's a quiet night

The research is quite clear that designing a renewable energy system to handle nights is economical:

Much of the resistance towards 100% RE systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]– [282]; storage [40]– [43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]– [92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

Hamuko4• 3 years ago

Has the world moved past the need? Last summer, we were talking about the possibility of rolling blackouts during the winter. And while that was not necessary, a kilowatt-hour of electricity was tens of cents during the winter. I remember at least seeing 0.40€/kWh and it probably exceeded 0.50€ at points.

Gwypaas4• 3 years ago

Europe rebuilt the entire supply chain of fossil gas from the beginning of the invasion, while at the same time half the French nuclear reactors were out of commission. [1] If having a few expensive months is the worst outcome of the largest war since WW2 in Europe then the system is hugely resilient already.

Those prices were imported to the Nordics, they did not stem from the Nordics.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...

adrianN2• 3 years ago

If you could build a nuclear power plant as quickly as you can build a wind turbine you might still have a window where you could recoup the investment. Unfortunately building nuclear plants takes ages. If we started today to build the hundreds of nuclear power plants it would take Europe to go fully nuclear they wouldn't be done before renewables+storage ate their profit opportunity.

atemerev2• 3 years ago

Too cheap to meter, finally!

Go nuclear.

floitsch2• 3 years ago

The current (and past) electricity prices in most of Europe can be found on nordpool.

Three days ago, in Denmark, prices went as low as -41.37Eur/MWh (where 100Eur/MWh is a common price otherwise).

https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-...

At the moment electricity is cheapest (and therefore greenest) in the afternoon. Probably because of solar (partially from Germany).

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

It's also great to see how much green energy Spain got recently.

pelorat2• 3 years ago

None of this is passed over to consumers, the difference is pocked by the providers. It doesn't matter if the price slips into negative, my provider charges me €0,394/KWh regardless (Eneco in the Netherlands).

tialaramex2• 3 years ago

Nowhere in Europe allow consumers to take the entire risk/ reward because it's unconscionable. If the actual price of electricity on the market soars to $10000 per MWh, and you need to run your dialysis machine, European politicians (unlike apparently Texans) don't think it's OK that you're now bankrupt.

However, you can in several places choose to have a limited exposure, e.g. in the UK Octopus Energy will let you risk paying say £350/MWh at peak times, but also pay say -£50/MWh when it decides to blow a gale at 3am on an autumn night when most people are asleep. Both reward and (more significantly) risk are capped.

anttisalmela3• 3 years ago

Consumers in Finland (and as far as I know, in other Nordics too) can get Nordpool spot priced electricity contracts, doesn't really get truly negative since you need to pay margin, taxes and transfer anyway.

floitsch2• 3 years ago

In Denmark most providers charge you hourly rates.

Here is, for example, the page of my current provider: https://www.ok.dk/privat/produkter/el/priser

This page doesn't yet include the additional costs (last mile...), but there is definitely a big difference whether I consume the energy at cheap or expensive hours.

ksec• 3 years ago

Seems strange UK electricity price is still expensive.

Finland's average electricity price slips into negative territory

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