Negative prices have no effect on grid stability. It just means that the day-ahead market was cleared below 0, i.e. for every consumer (buyer) there is a producer (seller) selling at this price. The market is still balanced with consumption==production.
Now, you can ask the question: Why are so many producers willing to sell below 0? That has to do with misplaced incentives. For older or home-installed renewables there is a feed-in tarrif which guarantees a fixed revenue at all times. So there is an incentive to sell even for negative market prices. Newer installations can't opt for the guaranteed revenue model with revenue during negative prices any more.
Redispatch follows afterwards, if the market result clashes with physics: The physical grid can't transport the power from producer to consumer. There was no unusual amount of redispatch during easter.
> It just means that the day-ahead market was cleared below 0
No, it doesn't. The article is explicitly about intraday-prices. So day-ahead clearance made invalid assumptions about generations and consumption that were not met during the day. This kind of miscalculation does require additional (costly) redispatch measures to mitigate the overproduction, and it can affect grid stability.
You are right that intraday went even more negative than day-ahead. But I disagree about the rest of your comment. A spread between day-ahead and intraday does not imply additional redispatch. Only some of it might have been countertrading by the grid operators.
It really depends on the size and placement of the oversupply, this could cause localized grid overloading.
"However, BDEW warned that around half of the new capacity came in the form of small-scale systems under 100 kilowatt each, which under current rules feed into the grid whatever they produce, without the option to curtail production when this is necessary to ensure grid stability."
Smart electric meters for individual PV producers that signal and account for negative prices would help. e.g. if your balcony solar power pushes electricity during oversupply you pay penalty.
Yeah. Going forward, I suspect the way to handle this will be requiring the small producers to join a "virtual power plant".
It'll result in a lot of misinformed shrieking from people, but probably the way forward is to remove the guaranteed price subsidy for individual household producers, and make it so thar they have to join a VPP if they want to sell to the grid.
I guess „it‘s complicated“. For our system, 6kWp with iMSys, the grid operator can cap the ingestion as they see fit. For systems over 7kWp, you are required to install a iMSys that allows them to cap. Systems without a iMSys must have the capability to cap to 60% (either at all times or „intelligently“ depending on your consumption). BUT if you install anything today, you most likely will install a iMSys anyway. Also export fees for 7kWp and below are a bit of a joke anyway.
As if negative prices trickle down to the consumer. The electricity market is byzantine, rigged and has resulted in higher energy prices in the last 20 years.
In the UK you can get energy plans with a price that updates every half hour, published a day ahead. From 12:30pm - 4pm today that price is negative. It was also negative for around 16 hours of Easter Sunday. https://www.octopriceuk.app/agile
Well dynamic pricing only ever works until you have a power outage in the winter and suddenly you pay a years worth of money for the 1 hour you could use your fridge, during a snowstorm.
You need something that's valuable, energy intensive, easy to stop and start, and cheap to build capacity for. Either or both of those last two tend to be the problem for most industrial processes (and also crypto mining).
For absolutely no good reason bidirectional charging in Germany is still forbidden. Electric cars could be used to store and buffer the overproduction of electric energy. But no, the german burocrats forbid this solution. Ridiculous!
I thought that bidirectional charging increases the complexity of the equipment used for the electric grid and can introduce a fire risk in homes if the equipment or wiring is sub-standard or faulty. Basically, it's costly to implement.
No, it is not at all reserved for big players. You just need to get a dynamic price electricity contract, and a smart-meter in your home and you can do this right now.
I don't sell mine, but I time-shift with a small pile of batteries (about 10kWh) and it's pretty reasonable. I save about usd $30/month. It's basically a big ups that will pay for itself in ten years, and I get backup power.
> In 2024 we estimated that had Germany not decommissioned nuclear power after the Fukushima accident, it would have needed 50% less electricity generation from fossil fuels, 84% less generation from imported natural gas, 27% less fossil fuel capacity and 42% less natural gas capacity. Another road less traveled: Germany’s electricity prices in 2024 were almost 25% higher than they would have been had the country kept its nuclear power online . And as shown below, Germany might not have experienced such a sharp increase in its electricity imports which are 2x higher than a decade ago as a share of consumption.
> More nuclear shutdown repercussions: Germany’s industrial power prices were 3x higher than the US and China in 2024, and part of the reason why Germany has been experiencing the deindustrialization shown on the right.
On the positive side we in Norway have 10x higher energy prices because we now have to export energy to Germany during the winter and then our water storage is empty in the summer so we get fucked both ways as well.
For anyone thinking negative prices is a good thing: It's not. It's a panic signal because there are no takers for an oversupply of energy, making the grid unstable.
98 comments
Negative prices have no effect on grid stability. It just means that the day-ahead market was cleared below 0, i.e. for every consumer (buyer) there is a producer (seller) selling at this price. The market is still balanced with consumption==production.
Now, you can ask the question: Why are so many producers willing to sell below 0? That has to do with misplaced incentives. For older or home-installed renewables there is a feed-in tarrif which guarantees a fixed revenue at all times. So there is an incentive to sell even for negative market prices. Newer installations can't opt for the guaranteed revenue model with revenue during negative prices any more.
Redispatch follows afterwards, if the market result clashes with physics: The physical grid can't transport the power from producer to consumer. There was no unusual amount of redispatch during easter.
Source: I work on this stuff.
> It just means that the day-ahead market was cleared below 0
No, it doesn't. The article is explicitly about intraday-prices. So day-ahead clearance made invalid assumptions about generations and consumption that were not met during the day. This kind of miscalculation does require additional (costly) redispatch measures to mitigate the overproduction, and it can affect grid stability.
The redispatch was not extraordinary: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power_redispatch/chart.htm...
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/clouds-shield-german-po...
This weekend, prices were more negative than usual, but still not that negative.
"However, BDEW warned that around half of the new capacity came in the form of small-scale systems under 100 kilowatt each, which under current rules feed into the grid whatever they produce, without the option to curtail production when this is necessary to ensure grid stability."
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-adds-record-175...
Smart electric meters for individual PV producers that signal and account for negative prices would help. e.g. if your balcony solar power pushes electricity during oversupply you pay penalty.
It'll result in a lot of misinformed shrieking from people, but probably the way forward is to remove the guaranteed price subsidy for individual household producers, and make it so thar they have to join a VPP if they want to sell to the grid.
https://www.mvv.de/photovoltaik/ratgeber/solarspitzengesetz-...
The price was known ~1 day in advance so I had the choice to fill up the battery with cheaper (but still high) prices overnight and reduce the impact
Business energy users aren't protected, so they buy long-term contracts, hedge, or go-under in the event of an unforeseen energy-shortage.
Back yard plasma furnace? Artificial diamond making? Aluminum smelting?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storag...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage
There have wildly different prices for unit of stored energy and wildly different storage times.
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/us-grid...
It's not cost effective run aluminum smelting only during peak electricity production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting#Energy_use
So yes, it sure does!
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2503532-australia-is-ge...
But that is only reserved for the big players I guess.
He is retired and mostly just a hobby.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/72h/hourly
That shows that they still had roughly 5% gas and 5% coal running at the lowest price point.
> Excess electricity produced during periods of low consumption cannot yet be stored at scale, as battery capacity remains limited.
From JP Morgan's 16th Annual Energy Paper, March 2026
https://cdn.jpmorganfunds.com/content/dam/jpm-am-aem/global/...
> In 2024 we estimated that had Germany not decommissioned nuclear power after the Fukushima accident, it would have needed 50% less electricity generation from fossil fuels, 84% less generation from imported natural gas, 27% less fossil fuel capacity and 42% less natural gas capacity. Another road less traveled: Germany’s electricity prices in 2024 were almost 25% higher than they would have been had the country kept its nuclear power online . And as shown below, Germany might not have experienced such a sharp increase in its electricity imports which are 2x higher than a decade ago as a share of consumption.
> More nuclear shutdown repercussions: Germany’s industrial power prices were 3x higher than the US and China in 2024, and part of the reason why Germany has been experiencing the deindustrialization shown on the right.
On the positive side we in Norway have 10x higher energy prices because we now have to export energy to Germany during the winter and then our water storage is empty in the summer so we get fucked both ways as well.