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European electricity prices tumble into negative territory amid glut of green energy
(markets.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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How can it be negative? Does the government pay you to use electricity? Or is it just a measure and you just don't have to pay anything?
Basically if there is too much power going into the system it can damage transmission equipment, so they pay other grids or large users to accept some of the load. But these negative prices are usually for electricity wholesalers—prices for household consumers don’t usually change much and haven’t ever gone negative to my knowledge.
For a couple of hours last week I was paid to use electricity. Price of eletricity goes negative fairly often, but only a little. On top of the electricity I, having a spot priced contract, pay a margin ~0.5 € cents/kWh and tax and transmission fee. Last two are about 3 cents /kWh. So for me to get paid the price has to be about -7¢/kWh and that has only ever happened during a few hours.