It’s still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it’s pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.

Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.

  • nlgranger@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    A negative price is absurd and has no physical reality, it is the result of speculation and abstract rules not grounded on reality. It always costs to build and operate whatever power source and networks were involved, you don’t have to pay electricity to f*ck off if you produce too much of it.

    • booly@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      you don’t have to pay electricity to f*ck off if you produce too much of it.

      It’s not any different than most physical goods. Whatever you can’t sell before it goes bad, you have to pay someone to take off your hands using real resources (dumpsters, trucks, human labor).

      Too much electricity in the system is harmful, and if nobody wants to buy it, then you have to pay someone to take it out of the system.