468
Germany has too many solar panels, and it's pushed energy prices into negative territory
(markets.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
468 points (92.2% liked)
World News
39161 readers
1786 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oh no, it's too bad Germany isn't surrounded by other countries it could sell that excess power to!
Germany has lots of grid connections to other countries, and are pretty surely selling off what they can get rid of, but France has nuclear, Sweden and Norway have hydro, Denmark has wind and solar. All these markets are also currently negative. We've had negative prices for almost 14 days now, but somehow they went into plus today here in Denmark, although we (personally) had lots of sun and could sell 61,9 kWh from our solar panels.
I just checked, and the prices are near identical between: Germany, Belgium, Poland, Austria, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-ahead/prices?deliveryDate=latest¤cy=DKK&aggregation=Hourly&deliveryAreas=AT,SYS
Your sarcasm is misplaced.
Gee, you mean some internet rando didn’t figure out a solution that no one in German energy could think of?
I think he was suggesting that it's not actually a problem and this whole article was penned by someone with an agenda to paint renewables as bad.
Which is a totally reasonable assumption honestly.
Wait. You know they were being sarcastic right?
I thought you really just wanted to show your knowledge until that last part.
Of course it was sarcastic, which is exactly why it doesn't make any sense. The sarcasm is what's idiotic about the comment I replied to. Because it indicates that Germany isn't using obvious options. Of course they are using those options, as are all other European countries.
Edit:
I've changed the last part of my comment above to show that I responded to the original comment understanding it as sarcasm.
It probably wouldn't be negative prices if they could. I'm guessing it can't be sold easily due to distance or some other factors? Which is why it maybe has to be used. But I'm just guessing.
The US is split into three power grids: Eastern interconnected, Western interconnected, and Texan (because Texas' strident Independence forbid them from connecting to other states, even though their power grid has failed spectacularly in recent years). (I bring up these three delineations to show that energy can be transferred over pretty large distances.)
As we know, the US is a geographically large country. But technically, power can be transferred from the middle of Utah, across Nevada, and into California. So power transmission distances can be pretty large.
There is energy loss for sure, so it's not always especially efficient. But if Germany is generating so much solar power that it's impacting their market costs, that shouldn't be a massive hurdle. In essence, they should be able to sell electricity to Poland or Austria or other neighboring countries.
Maybe there are other reasons that restrict Germany from selling their surplus power. But I don't think distance is it.
The thing is, it is not a German-only topic. There is the same discussion ongoing in Austria. There is a lot of solar already in place. That is really great! Now we need good storage solutions as a next step
Interesting. Yes, this is a good problem to have.
The whole European grid is connected (which is a miraculous feat). And yes, there is a European market for energy where countries can sell surplus and buy in high demand situations.
I don't know how EU grids interoperate so this could be irrelevant:
There is a fear, with this sort of thing, of falling into the innovators curse. By moving first/fastest (especially when it comes to infrastructure) you make all the mistakes, have the oldest equipment, and the most technical debt. Now if Germany is able to make a market (that didn't previously exist) out of this excess daytime generation they could get undercut by a neighbor who learned from all of Germany's mistakes and who bought newer, more efficient panels. Which would effectively take Germany's costs associated with making the new market and set the money on fire.
Basically the fear of capitalism can be as detrimental as the capitalism.