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Germany has too many solar panels, and it's pushed energy prices into negative territory
(markets.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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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?
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.