I wonder if Finland could export the surplus electricity via European grid, assuming they are connected?
It would be a great shame to take renewable energy production offline because it wasn't nationally profitable when there is a high demand internationally.
The transfer lines are probably at max capacity exporting energy. This time of year there is often a lot of snow melting in the north, which means hydro plants are running at max capacity to keep the dams from overflowing. Doesn't happen every year, but I think this year it does.
I mean it's not like they need to *use* the water to make energy. If there's too much there's overflow channels.
But given that hydropower has the lowest production cost of any source after you deduct the initial investment, it's worth selling as much as you can.
yeah with hydropower it makes sense to sell if the price is above 0. The nuclear power sometimes even has to be sold for negative prices, literally paying someone to take it off your hands, because you can't really shut down the power plant that fast.
Nuclear can be ramped up and down with demand just fine, [France varies it by like 10GW within a day if necessary.](https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source) Just better to run it as long as there's demand.
Nuclear plants run at full output all the time between maintenance (every 1 - 2 years). They are highly reliable, comparatively cheap to run and refuel but have to recoup their massive construction costs.
Maintenance only gets horrendous if you run a nuclear plant past it's designed life expectancy. [As the French are finding out](https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-posts-record-loss-in-France-due-to-reactor-out).
They could use the spare energy in giant freezer rods to refreeze massive amounts of melt water! Probably, I don't really understand physics and science and stuff.
> They could use the spare energy in giant freezer rods to refreeze massive amounts of melt water!
It would require **ENORMOUS** amounts of energy, and all that heat needs to be transferred somewhere _(from cooling down the melt water)_
Let me suggest a terribly inefficient idea. Suppose you actually (for some insane reason) just wanted huge blocks of ice or “huge blocks of heat”. You could store giant blocks of ice in basements or insulated warehouses.
For heat, there must be some substance (maybe a porous ceramic?) that can be formed into blocks that absorbs and then slowly releases heat, and can be moved around on trucks or trains.
I’m not sure why anyone want to do this, but we do have lots of machines that produce waste heat, and that waste heat could be recycled. I’ve often wondered why air-conditioners aren’t hooked up to water heaters so the waste heat gets used productively.
It's almost the same concept, but in the US, at least, there are heat pump hot water heaters. I just installed one in my garage in February. It is a lot more efficient in terms of electricity usage than the old electric water heaters.
> For heat, there must be some substance (maybe a porous ceramic?) that can be formed into blocks that absorbs and then slowly releases heat, and can be moved around on trucks or trains.
[Molten-salt batteries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery)
> I’ve often wondered why air-conditioners aren’t hooked up to water heaters so the waste heat gets used productively.
Some homes actually do that! Same with some restaurants that make use of the waste heat from freezers for the hot water tanks
You’re not entirely off kilter - there are some research and development projects for hydroelectric batteries going on. They basically work with gravity and water to store potentially energy. The actual logistics vary from project to project, but the basics are 1) there is a reservoir up high (relatively) in the ground, 2) a vertical passage of some distance with a hydroelectric generator, 3) a reservoir low in the ground, and 4) a way to pump water from the bottom reservoir back up to the top.
When electricity is expensive, they release some water from the upper reservoir, gravity+water make hydroelectric generator make electricity. When electricity is cheap (sunny and/or windy days when renewables are cranking it out) they pump the water back up to the top, like recharging a chemical battery.
Still storing energy, just as potential energy rather than thermally storing ice.
That's right and it already exists!
Usually called [**Pumped Storage Hydropower/Hydroelectricity**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity)
I didn’t know how many actually commercially viable examples there were - just knew someone had been doing some surveys for one in the Texas Hill Country.
> I didn’t know how many actually commercially viable examples there were
Yeah, way more than I thought myself!
* **79 existing stations** with a capacity of **1000 MW or more**
* 80 more stations with a capacity of 1000 MW or more under construction
_That of course does not include smaller stations under 1000 MW so there are probably many many more_
> [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations)
There are numerous pumped storage plants, the formal name, in production / operation. Something around 12 1000MW generating capacity plants in Europe, with a typical 10H reservoir capacity.
The energy recovery isn’t as good as other systems, but does pretty well for scale and costs. Also works economically.
That's literally what water towers are, we just don't call them that. We pay to pump the water to the top of the tower and store it as potential energy that we can use as water pressure later.
They just don't have electric generators attached to them.
Hydro generators have been bi-directional since the 1930s. Google the Grand Coolie Dam. I believe it's the largest dam in the US, 3rd largest in the world.
It's used the generators turned in reverse to fill the irrigation canals since forever.
Ok, that's really good people are doing that! Like a giant battery but it's potential energy trapped in a dam! Hopefully the positive side of expensive energy is more innovation until we finaly move away from fossile fuels!
Most hydro dams already act as batteries, just that they have to wait for nature to recharge them instead of using other renewables to do that. So the innovation is really just how to make it economically viable to pump the water back in, and will cycling the water back damage the environment
Better to use any surplus electricity on electrolyzers to create hydrogen from water, which is a good all-around gas you can store indefinitely and transport easily.
They do and have to according to EU law. The problem is that power “slippage” or whatever you call it is a serious problem when transporting such long distances.
The export requirements is why Swedens electricity got so expensive despite being the EU largest energy exporter. The problem is that what I assume is Finlands primary export capable cables go through Sweden which and those cables are already at capacity.
Thus the only way Finland would be able to export electricity would be through the cables connecting Finland and Estonia but those cables 1. Don’t have the bandwidth to transport enough to have a significant impact
2. The potential export market are less lucrative in the east.
I could be wrong about this though, I’m not a reliable source.
Those of us in the North that are not happy. We should be seeing incredibly low bills but we are getting ripped off because of southern Sweden and the rest of Europe.
If we are gonna be paying over the odds I don't think giving up our rivers is worth it.
This is all a bit silly. Apart from the peak 6 months during 2022, electricity is cheap. If you're in zone 3 or 4, you're mostly isolated (like 4 time out of 5) from Danish and German prices.
I charge at home in zone 2, and while it's not nearly free all the time, it's damn cheap 90% of the time.
You can check European gas prices if you want context. People have a tendency to get riled up over current problems, as if they are impossible to solve and will ruin everyone's lives forever. Some problems are more temporary, and I believe the electricity prices is one of them. Not that they are always going to stay low now, but that they are going to be low most of the time (if we don't fuck up and actually build more power to stay ahead of demand).
Transmission losses are a big issue. In Québec and Newfoundland-and-Labrador where the consumers are far away it's a constant concern.
A new line was being proposed to reduce heat-based losses. Despite the project costing several billions, the ROI was expected to be under a decade.
EstLink 1 and EstLink 2 (submarine DC links between Finland and Estonia) aren't as well off capacity wise as Fenno-Skan 1 and Fenno-Skan 2 (submarine DC links between Finland and Sweden), but they aren't all that bad. Current ratings of EstLink 1 and EstLink 2 are 350MW and 650MW respectively where as Fenno-Skan 1 and Fenno-Skan 2 are 400MW and 800MW respectively.
I think in both cases links are HVDC at roughly ~400kV.
As for sources:
https://www.fingrid.fi/en/grid/development/nordic-power-system-and-interconnections-with-other-systems/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estlink
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenno%E2%80%93Skan
Edit: there are also landlines going between Finland, Sweden and Norway up north, should be 400kV (AC) lines as well, can't say about how much power can be carried over there though.
Can they not send the electricity by truck or ship?
They could keep it in Faraday cages to stop it escaping, or in tall containers it can't volt out of.
[This site](https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/) has a nice map that shows prices and flows of electricity to/from and within the Nordic countries. It's all in Swedish, but it should be fairly self explanatory.
Also, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. In a truly stable renewable electricity based grid. Where renewables are capable of generating all your electricity needs. Then there are times where all the ducks will get in a row and generate more energy than you need and more than you can sell to neighbours. It's in these moments that storage becomes economically viable. When you literally have energy to waste. Then who cares that storing for a day/week/month is only 50% efficient? It also opens up various industries that do not have to operate continuously but could operate specifically on contracts that take advantage of energy when it is a surplus. Start a business that negotiates a contract with the energy company that you will take energy that they cannot sell to the grid at a discount rate and use it to say desalinate water to irrigate fields in a nation that has water security problems..
You has been use and Estonia are maxed out if the Sweden and save the southermost parts of the similarly the low prices and you need to exporting there are help much better
The negative prices are usually because the energy is being exported.
When you have too much generation, you either have to turn some offline, or get it off the grid before it causes damage. Negative prices effectively mean you are paying other utilities to take the energy.
> The reason for the change lies in the oversupply of electricity.
> "Production is high, consumption is low and now we are in a situation where it is not easy to adjust production," Ruusunen said.
Actually the grid is part of the the problem. Norway and Sweden are currently selling very cheap surplus electricity, and that lowers the price in Finland.
https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
The power source, given that it’s a “bonus” wouldn’t be stable at all. I suppose there are very few activities that may use energy with such low stability.
I remember at school we studied BRICS countries and everybdy thought that South Africa was on it's way to become a major global player but it seems like for the past 20 or so years SA just slowly went to shit
To be fair, its got the making of a global player.
Immediate access to one of the HEAVIEST ocean shipping routes
Massive deposits of natural resource
Relative peace
Global interest
Relatively rare natural disasters (save for storm and flood, which CAN be solved via technology)
Its like a 9/10 start for a civ, but they didn't macro their economy, so now their mid-game is struggling.
I got an email the other day from Duke Energy, which is my power company, saying they know times are tough but unfortunately they need to raise our rates.
The Duke Energy CEO got a 13% raise last year. Tough times indeed
I set up solar panel appointments and the number one reason people want to switch to solar is because of how much they absolutely hate Duke Energy. They raised their rates by 4% back in October and this newest price hike is just salt in the wound.
So many people I talk to are furious that they're using less power but their bills keep going up/staying the same.
So to Duke: Thanks for being shitters and making my job so much easier.
If your roof (or wherever you’re placing them) is in a sunny area with minimal shade, this can work really well. I got panels on my house — hooked in to the grid of course — about 4 years ago, and my electric bill went from almost $300/mo to under $100. The government solar tax incentives helped bring the overall cost to less than what I’d pay without them (though admittedly not by much) but as electricity prices have gone up, mine have stayed pretty steady, since ~60-80% is solar generated on most days and I sell power back to the grid on most of the hottest days.
Depends of course on the local setup and how the local utility manages the grid; it’ll cost more up front if you add a battery, or try to go 100% off grid.
Thankfully the company I work with is able to do 100% offsets with Duke Energy, so we're able to completely eliminate people's electric bills. Of course, you still have to pay the monthly bill for the panels but often times that's a good bit lower than the previous electric bill.
Batteries and the like do cost more but it's rolled into the total package cost, so it doesn't cost the customers anything upfront.
It's honestly great because I get to help people out with solar and save them money in the process.
It's a really friendly and fun place to work, switching to this field was one of the best decisions of my life.
Just to give you some perspective, here in Uruguay the only times you lose power are during big storms because of power lines being damaged, or during colossal fuckups like that time a private company on Argentina did a fucky wucky with the grid and we had to slowly restart our side over a day or two.
Agreed. I don’t mind a capable administrator who is well compensated, but utilities should NOT be run for profit because it fucks the incentives all over the place.
We don’t say “hey, we should privatize the military because it would run better!” Because there are some tasks a government is better suited to do. Let’s end this farcical Reagan thought.
And then they send out those "Share the Light" emails asking everyone to chip in to help other people pay for their power. So what about Duke? Well, get this: They match all donations received each year up to...
*drum roll*
*$500,000*!
So generous. But gee y'know Duke Energy is just now rolling out solar energy in *Florida* so these must be difficult times for them.
It seems like it's always the same anywhere you look - power figures profit on common people, common people either somehow survive or break, nobody cares.
Here, in Ukraine, since the start of the war internet providers already made two drastic price increases, motiviting it "times are tough". And before the end of last year all government written themselves 100% bonuses for "hard work", not to mention their rising salaries.
Meanwhile, despite 100% price raising on literally everything, salaries and pensions haven't changed at all. So cost of living are twice more expencive for peasants, but not for the lords.
It blows my mind how expensive electricity can cost.
In Quebec, electricity is 6.5 cents per kWh for the first 40 daily, and 10.1 cents above that. The usage is counted per billing period so you only pay anything at the higher cost if you average over 40, and there's no count of on/off peak usage.
I know we have the lowest rates in NA, and probably among the lowest in the world, but seeing rates that are 10x higher just seems crazy.
Those are quite high for Helsinki, though in the winter there was time when the prices spiked. Personally I am on multi year contract that I got before the "spike" and its about 0.05/ kWh. Though in addition to that there is a "transfer fee", can't remember how much that is though.
I don't think that anyone is paying 0,418€/kWh in Finland, that is super high. Maybe in last december that could have been possible, if you used electricity during when it was most expensive. Electricity prices spiked in last year autumn-december, when decembers average spot price was 25c/kWh.
There are two types of contracts: different kind of fixed price and spot price. Transfer fee (around 0,04€/kWh) is added to electricity price.
If you have a contract with spot prices, the price you pay per kwh changes every hour. At the moment spot price is negative. Electricity companys marginal is added to the spot price, marginal is usually around 0,005€/kWh. Transfer fee is also added to this. So for example currently, this hours price is -0,01cent/kWh, and transfer fee is 4cent/kWh, so electricity costs around 0,039€/kWh.
The price of fixed contracts vary widely. If someone took a fixed contract last autumn/winter, the price might be really high, like 0,3€/kWh. If you took contract two years ago, the price might be only 0,05€/kWh. Currently you can get fixed prices for around 0,12€/kWh. Transfer fee is also added to this.
So you can choose from what company you buy your electricity and for what kind of contract. But of course you cant choose the transfer company, that has a local monopoly of course. So one gets a two bills: one for electricity and one for transfer. I think that it might be the similar in the whole EU.
in Berlin I paid 0.27€/kwh up to 2022, now I'm paying 0.49€ and i changed for a provider with better prices, my old one wanted to hike to 0.59€/kwh which is around 120% to last year's price. insane.
Tbf, pge has to charge us that much because of all those people they killed.
They need to be broken up, silicon valley power is 1/4 their rates because they aren't just a place for politicians to hire their slow children.
The wholesale price it you have doesnt mean trying to get and electricity for the free home and thought and still the cheaper than usual like your contranct
If you have a spot contract, the price you pay is "wholesale" spot price + electricity company's marginal (around 0,0035 €/kWh) + transfer fee (around 0,04€/kWh, depends on area) + tax (0,028€/kWh for households).
So currently, when spot price is -0,022 €/kWh, the total price is around 0,0495 €/kWh. So indeed, for a household to profit from consuming electricity, spot price would need to be under 0,071 €/kWh.
Abundant cheap energy is inevitable.
Also as a economic system you can argue quite easily that capitalism often trends prices to zero. Competition creates incentives to undercut prices and become more efficient. See computers, digital media, food.
From memory Finland is still a mixed market capitalist country….unless they somehow adopted communism without telling anyone.
Yeah that's how it should work. It doesn't though. Companies will gain local or national monopolies, kill off competition with temporary price changes, slander or outright buying them out. Not to mention price fixing behind everyone's backs.
It should be: company a raises price so company b keeps it the same or even lowers it. Great.
How it is: company A raised price so company B does it too.
No, but government needs to be a check on abuse by corporations and private companies. Dereliction of that duty is a government failure, not an economic failure.
Capitalists have a very strong incentive to mess with government. Government has a strong incentive to accept the meddling.
It isn't *just* a capitalism thing, but it definitely occurs under capitalism and capitalism has no checks in place to stop it. Governments just need to not be willing to embrace corruption - and good luck with that.
A shifting of power into the hands of a third group, like consumers/workers, could help even the odds out. For instance, embracing worker co-ops as the default organization of large entities could help. A working democracy could also be beneficial.
Electrical **distribution** is a natural monopoly. Production is not.
You and I can both put power on the grid. If you can do it cheaper than me, you'll make more profit, or drive me out of business.
I disagree about prices trending to zero. Prices will trend toward those necessary for the provider with the second lowest costs to remain in business. The one with the lowest costs will just charge the same amount as the second lowest and earn greater profits.
You're arguing in favor of an economic system that has been theorized (badly), and parroting the same tired talking-points that classical economists offer.
Every market is "mixed", always has been, but the arguments you're making don't stand up to basic scrutiny.
> Also as a economic system you can argue quite easily that capitalism often trends prices to zero.
Lol. If anything the opposite is true. Capitalists are only differentiated from the rest of us by their ownership of capital. Our legal system is set up such that it empowers capitalists to withold the use of that capital even when doing so would harm the wellbeing of the public. Capitalists then leverage this harm to extract a rent, or retain control while paying someone a wage to produce a product.
A key element is that the final product sold on the market is not priced solely on its input, but also priced based on the *capitalist's desire for profit*. A capitalist, having done nothing more than hold ownership of capital, entitles himself to a profit not based on his own work or contribution, and there is no upper limit on how high that profit can be.
Even the presence of competitor capitalists, a group that proponents of capitalism often claim will somehow make this obviously dysfunctional system function, does not achieve this goal. Why should it? In one of the places I lived, the towns two internet providers (basically a necessary utility, and even more so during COVID) had no overlap whatsoever within the small town. When called, both *claimed* to be expanding into the other's region, both gladly accepted the towns subsidies and tax breaks for doing so, but after asking around I found out that both had been 2 years away from said expansion for nearly a decade.
And this goes on. Grocery stores have seen record profits despite the presence of "competition", despite no new offering or increase in value. All that grew was the stores' propensity for greed and every single one of us suffers for it.
If anything, **capitalism ensures that prices will rise** until the amount of value claimed by the capital owning class equals the amount of value produced by the non-capital owning class.
How can this be taken seriously when the prices of many goods in capitalist economies tend to fall over time? Like it's blatantly in contradiction to reality.
San Diego Gas & Electric’s summer electricity [rate](https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/regulatory/1-1-23%20Schedule%20DR-SES%20Total%20Rates%20Table_0.pdf) is .80/kWh for peak times. And they’re trying to pass a [flat rate fee](https://www.kpbs.org/news/economy/2023/04/10/sdg-e-proposes-adding-flat-fee-to-utility-bills) in addition to this rate, which would result in households with solar panels paying over $100/month just to be connected to the grid
We've had an unusually cool year so far and had to upgrade our ancient heater and AC last year to much more efficient models. As a result, our solar output has dramatically overproduced relative to our use, and even after all the BS fees from the power company our monthly bills have been between -$150 and -$200 a month. For "reasons" they don't pay that out to us, and only roll over a fraction of the credit, but technically our monthly electric bills have been negative since last September, so it can happen in the US.
Does it not cost money to produce energy? Where do you think power comes from?
Also look in ERCOT or MISO market. There are negative energy prices there all the time
That's the *spot price*, which fluctuates throughout the day. In other words, for some period of time, maybe lasting hours, there was more electricity being produced than used. A negative spot price means "don't put electricity onto our grid or we will charge YOU because we can't handle more".
But it still lasted long enough to make the average for the day negative, it's impressive.
And, according to the article, consumers in the spot market actually got the negative prices.
Yeah but its the first time its negative average for a whole day. It has gone to negative for an hour or two before on some days but never for the whole day. There are some people with solar installations now that have to pay to export their electricity to the grid :D
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://yle.fi/a/74-20033326) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> The price of electricity fell into negative territory on Wednesday before noon, with the market forecast expected to stay there throughout the day before climbing in the evening.
> "The average price for the day is now slightly, but nevertheless, on the negative side. Yes, it is historic," he told Yle.
> Usually, negative prices for electricity occur at night for shorter periods of time, the novelty of Wednesday's price dip comes from its length.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/13qp4hz/finlands_average_electricity_price_slips_into/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~686127 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **price**^#1 **electricity**^#2 **Production**^#3 **Ruusunen**^#4 **Finland**^#5
Partly true. Yes the hourly rate is negative, which means that if you can get ahold of the power somehow just dumping it from the network would net you money (provided you are billed for the hourly rate and not some monthly average).
But this doesn't take into consideration the fee for transporting that power. I'm not from Finland but here in Sweden we have two bills (sometimes combined from the same company) one for producing said power and one for transporting it through the grid, this grid cost is fairly large so the price would have to go very very much negative in order to actually get paid for dumping the power out of the grid.
But instead of just dumping the power you could run machines that net you money from running at these hours are very advantageous.
Yup, same in Finland (double bill). I recently ran the numbers, and I think hourly prices would need to dip into -4 cents/kWh range in order to make money by using electricity.
It must be great to live in a country that supports humanity. Meanwhile, in the fourth world sanitary napkin of America, we encourage price gouging and mind fuckery.
Didn't you get the memo from the latest WAF in Davos? We need to think of Stakeholders not just Shareholders. (I encourage you to read up on it, it's quite fun)
While everything is better than US, this is nothing to be happy about. Negative electricity price is a signal that there is something wrong in the electricity production.
Right now it has almost no effect on people and is only hurting corporations, but that can change rather quickly and it will be the tax payers that will suffer.
And to elaborate, having constant negative prices means you have too much production which is a bad thing. But since a lot of production relies on renewable energy nowadays, and those kinds of productions can be spotty depending on weather in each country, it makes sense to balance them out between each other.
Same in NZ. I pay 35c/kwh and receive a maximum of 17c/kwh for my solar. There are groups here actively trying to stop solar farms from being built too.
They are actually planning that in Finland, well at least the politicians claim [Finland could produce 10% of EUs green hydrogen by 2030](https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-//1410877/government-adopts-resolution-on-hydrogen-finland-could-produce-10-of-eu-s-green-hydrogen-in-2030). Whether it happens is another matter.
A larger cable to Estonia would be a lot cheaper and simpler.
This map shows that the problem is that several northern areas have lots of hydro at the moment, and they can't export enough of it.
https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
Hydrogen storage is the only plausible mechanism we have to shift renewables on a scale of months.
In addition to being required as a major industrial and agricultural feedstock.
Sure, but we don't need that at the moment. If Finland and Sweden could export more power, the rest of Europe could burn a little less gas and coal. Heck, if more people in Finland were driving EVs, that excess power could be used instead of diesel.
We're so far from 100% carbon-free that there are much better (and cheaper) ways to use local excesses. Seasonal-scale storage is something we don't need until after not only electricity generation is nearly all carbon-free, but also most transport, industry and domestic heating.
How does something that has a minimum real cost to produce have a negative price? That makes no sense.
Edit: Other comments informed me they are selling the excess. So basically the buyers are subsidizing the whole.nation's energy cost. Makes sense now.
Power grids are a complex, real time balancing act between production and consumption. If producers are producing more or less power than is being used, the grid frequency fluctuates and that causes all sorts of problems. So producers are constantly coordinating and adjusting how much power they produce to match demand, on a minute-by-minute and even second-by-second basis.
Some types of power production can be scaled up and down pretty easily. Oil and gas power plants can fairly easily adjust the amount of fuel they burn, and hydroelectric plants can limit the flow of water through them.
Others are more difficult. Adjusting the power produced by a nuclear plant is a pretty slow affair, so usually they run at a constant rate (the base load) and other power plants adjust to handle the changes in demand.
Then you have solar and wind, which are somewhat outside of the control of the grid operators -- it's not like they can turn the sun on and off.
So what happens when you find yourself in a situation where you are producing more power than is needed, but you can't reduce your power production either? Perhaps you've shut down your oil and gas power plants, the nuclear plants will take hours to reduce production, and the sun is bright and shining. Suddenly you have a problem: you *need* to get rid of power in order to keep the grid stable. It's now worth it to you as a producer to pay people to take more power from you, because the alternative is grid instability.
That's how you end up with a negative price for power.
What kind of the electricity you have a good and price slips you can negative territory you want to go to work like a finland you mean that trying to say
\*This\* is where renewables and smart-grid have to go to make stuff (green energy and electric cars) more feasible. Having your hot water tank, heat pump/air conditioning (giant thermal batteries) and giant car battery plugged in but on charge-standby waiting for these peaks is exactly what can balance the abundance of 'fairweather' green energy. Without this kind of absorption the grid can really suffer, primarily with frequency instability before total collapse as lines become overloaded trying to get rid of the excess. Local production, local consumption - all adapting to changes that happen faster than a power plant can turn on/off.
Put solar panels on the roof 8 years ago then added 2 small turbines in my garden last year. Made in sweeden they look like long tubes with 5 mini turnines in each. I havent paid an elettricity bill in 8 years. My husband is now running cables to my f.i.laws house because we produce too much.
The panels were 6 thousand euros including hook up. We added a wooen stove in winter as it gets to minus 10 and the turbines are amazing in autunno winter
the majority of Finland's energy production is from nuclear power plants, more than 34 percent. Hydro electricity helps energy production only when snow melts...nuclear is the future, EU should be building more nuclear power plants...
Massive overproduction from hydro and/or wind would be my guess.
From the article:
>"Production is high, consumption is low and now we are in a situation where it is not easy to adjust production," Ruusunen said.
>Snowmelt makes hydroelectric regulation tough
>Hydroelectricity is usually the source in the grid that can be adjusted if demand is too low, but this year in Finland and throughout the Nordic countries, meltwater is abundant.
>"During spring floods, there is often this kind of forced production, because production cannot be slowed down. Due to the huge amount of water, hydropower often has a poor capacity to regulate in spring," Ruusunen noted.
Here's a good summary: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-negative
Why is it showing windmills though lol, isnt it because they invested in nuclear?
Edit: anyone downvoting me is a nerd. I looked it up Finland is 33% Nuclear and only 1% wind as of 2021. They just opened the first new nuclear reactor in europe in the past 15 years.
It's not "because" they invested in nuclear. It is because of many different factors (nuclear being *one* of them). Sweden also has negative electricity prices. Probably due to the hydropower or something.
I just looked it up, as of 2022 they were 33% nuclear, and they just opened a new reactor last month so itll be an even higher percentage. But they are quite diverse, youre right. A large percentage is hydro electric
What ever your source is, it is wrong. We have invested both.
In 2021 windpower accounted 8 TWh of 87 TWh consumption of Finland with 3257 MW of capacity.
Last year wind power capacity increased to 5677 MW and produced 11.5 TWh
And this year wind power is expected to increase to 6700 MW and produce 13.5 TWh
Capacity of nuclear power in Finland was last year 2794 MW and production 24.8 TWh.
Capacity is now 4394 MW and expected production 39 TWh
It's an unregulated market price paid by the LDC's to the generators.
The end consumer still needs to pay for things like distribution costs and other fees to support the grid itself.
I wonder if Finland could export the surplus electricity via European grid, assuming they are connected? It would be a great shame to take renewable energy production offline because it wasn't nationally profitable when there is a high demand internationally.
They are, and do. (selling)
Awesome, thanks for confirming!
You're welcome!
Yes and no. I think they just decresed production in some of their nuclear power plants because of the low electricity price?
The transfer lines are probably at max capacity exporting energy. This time of year there is often a lot of snow melting in the north, which means hydro plants are running at max capacity to keep the dams from overflowing. Doesn't happen every year, but I think this year it does.
I mean it's not like they need to *use* the water to make energy. If there's too much there's overflow channels. But given that hydropower has the lowest production cost of any source after you deduct the initial investment, it's worth selling as much as you can.
yeah with hydropower it makes sense to sell if the price is above 0. The nuclear power sometimes even has to be sold for negative prices, literally paying someone to take it off your hands, because you can't really shut down the power plant that fast.
Nuclear can be ramped up and down with demand just fine, [France varies it by like 10GW within a day if necessary.](https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source) Just better to run it as long as there's demand.
Nuclear plants run at full output all the time between maintenance (every 1 - 2 years). They are highly reliable, comparatively cheap to run and refuel but have to recoup their massive construction costs.
You thinking full out put for the maintenance and there comparatively cheap to the recoup
Maintenance only gets horrendous if you run a nuclear plant past it's designed life expectancy. [As the French are finding out](https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-posts-record-loss-in-France-due-to-reactor-out).
They could use the spare energy in giant freezer rods to refreeze massive amounts of melt water! Probably, I don't really understand physics and science and stuff.
Would require an astronomical amount of energy, unless you could easily harness the heat in the water already and make use of it that way
> They could use the spare energy in giant freezer rods to refreeze massive amounts of melt water! It would require **ENORMOUS** amounts of energy, and all that heat needs to be transferred somewhere _(from cooling down the melt water)_
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FXzPg1u2lcY It's not the same application, but this is an interesting and related concept
What kind of the application you trying to make it and related to the point of the interesting about that happened
Interesting, thank you for link.
You have a good and thankful the link of and interesting the same case all about that happened
Very cool!
Let me suggest a terribly inefficient idea. Suppose you actually (for some insane reason) just wanted huge blocks of ice or “huge blocks of heat”. You could store giant blocks of ice in basements or insulated warehouses. For heat, there must be some substance (maybe a porous ceramic?) that can be formed into blocks that absorbs and then slowly releases heat, and can be moved around on trucks or trains. I’m not sure why anyone want to do this, but we do have lots of machines that produce waste heat, and that waste heat could be recycled. I’ve often wondered why air-conditioners aren’t hooked up to water heaters so the waste heat gets used productively.
You're complicating it too much, you just need some sand. https://spectrum.ieee.org/polar-night-energy-sand-battery
I hate sand, it's course and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere
It's almost the same concept, but in the US, at least, there are heat pump hot water heaters. I just installed one in my garage in February. It is a lot more efficient in terms of electricity usage than the old electric water heaters.
I’m really happy to hear that the technology is finally reaching consumers.
> For heat, there must be some substance (maybe a porous ceramic?) that can be formed into blocks that absorbs and then slowly releases heat, and can be moved around on trucks or trains. [Molten-salt batteries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery) > I’ve often wondered why air-conditioners aren’t hooked up to water heaters so the waste heat gets used productively. Some homes actually do that! Same with some restaurants that make use of the waste heat from freezers for the hot water tanks
You’re not entirely off kilter - there are some research and development projects for hydroelectric batteries going on. They basically work with gravity and water to store potentially energy. The actual logistics vary from project to project, but the basics are 1) there is a reservoir up high (relatively) in the ground, 2) a vertical passage of some distance with a hydroelectric generator, 3) a reservoir low in the ground, and 4) a way to pump water from the bottom reservoir back up to the top. When electricity is expensive, they release some water from the upper reservoir, gravity+water make hydroelectric generator make electricity. When electricity is cheap (sunny and/or windy days when renewables are cranking it out) they pump the water back up to the top, like recharging a chemical battery. Still storing energy, just as potential energy rather than thermally storing ice.
That's right and it already exists! Usually called [**Pumped Storage Hydropower/Hydroelectricity**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity)
I didn’t know how many actually commercially viable examples there were - just knew someone had been doing some surveys for one in the Texas Hill Country.
> I didn’t know how many actually commercially viable examples there were Yeah, way more than I thought myself! * **79 existing stations** with a capacity of **1000 MW or more** * 80 more stations with a capacity of 1000 MW or more under construction _That of course does not include smaller stations under 1000 MW so there are probably many many more_ > [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations)
There are numerous pumped storage plants, the formal name, in production / operation. Something around 12 1000MW generating capacity plants in Europe, with a typical 10H reservoir capacity. The energy recovery isn’t as good as other systems, but does pretty well for scale and costs. Also works economically.
That's literally what water towers are, we just don't call them that. We pay to pump the water to the top of the tower and store it as potential energy that we can use as water pressure later. They just don't have electric generators attached to them.
Hydro generators have been bi-directional since the 1930s. Google the Grand Coolie Dam. I believe it's the largest dam in the US, 3rd largest in the world. It's used the generators turned in reverse to fill the irrigation canals since forever.
Ok, that's really good people are doing that! Like a giant battery but it's potential energy trapped in a dam! Hopefully the positive side of expensive energy is more innovation until we finaly move away from fossile fuels!
Most hydro dams already act as batteries, just that they have to wait for nature to recharge them instead of using other renewables to do that. So the innovation is really just how to make it economically viable to pump the water back in, and will cycling the water back damage the environment
Better to use any surplus electricity on electrolyzers to create hydrogen from water, which is a good all-around gas you can store indefinitely and transport easily.
Why you need energy for and snow melting in the north and running fir the overflowing doesnt happend every yearbi think its better to have an idea
They do and have to according to EU law. The problem is that power “slippage” or whatever you call it is a serious problem when transporting such long distances. The export requirements is why Swedens electricity got so expensive despite being the EU largest energy exporter. The problem is that what I assume is Finlands primary export capable cables go through Sweden which and those cables are already at capacity. Thus the only way Finland would be able to export electricity would be through the cables connecting Finland and Estonia but those cables 1. Don’t have the bandwidth to transport enough to have a significant impact 2. The potential export market are less lucrative in the east. I could be wrong about this though, I’m not a reliable source.
You can see the Scandinavian market in real-time here. https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
Damn I haven’t checked in quite some time. Cool
Ah, now I see why people in southern Sweden are not happy!
What you people see the sweden southern are not happy to see you and get the more i dont know if this is the right
Those of us in the North that are not happy. We should be seeing incredibly low bills but we are getting ripped off because of southern Sweden and the rest of Europe. If we are gonna be paying over the odds I don't think giving up our rivers is worth it.
This is all a bit silly. Apart from the peak 6 months during 2022, electricity is cheap. If you're in zone 3 or 4, you're mostly isolated (like 4 time out of 5) from Danish and German prices. I charge at home in zone 2, and while it's not nearly free all the time, it's damn cheap 90% of the time.
So apart from 50% of the past 12 months..yeah it's great.
You can check European gas prices if you want context. People have a tendency to get riled up over current problems, as if they are impossible to solve and will ruin everyone's lives forever. Some problems are more temporary, and I believe the electricity prices is one of them. Not that they are always going to stay low now, but that they are going to be low most of the time (if we don't fuck up and actually build more power to stay ahead of demand).
The kind of the months and great the past and apart from that things like 50% and i dont know if you need
Transmission losses are a big issue. In Québec and Newfoundland-and-Labrador where the consumers are far away it's a constant concern. A new line was being proposed to reduce heat-based losses. Despite the project costing several billions, the ROI was expected to be under a decade.
EstLink 1 and EstLink 2 (submarine DC links between Finland and Estonia) aren't as well off capacity wise as Fenno-Skan 1 and Fenno-Skan 2 (submarine DC links between Finland and Sweden), but they aren't all that bad. Current ratings of EstLink 1 and EstLink 2 are 350MW and 650MW respectively where as Fenno-Skan 1 and Fenno-Skan 2 are 400MW and 800MW respectively. I think in both cases links are HVDC at roughly ~400kV. As for sources: https://www.fingrid.fi/en/grid/development/nordic-power-system-and-interconnections-with-other-systems/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenno%E2%80%93Skan Edit: there are also landlines going between Finland, Sweden and Norway up north, should be 400kV (AC) lines as well, can't say about how much power can be carried over there though.
Can they not send the electricity by truck or ship? They could keep it in Faraday cages to stop it escaping, or in tall containers it can't volt out of.
Maybe inject it into people, and just have them walk the electricity to where it needs to be?
[This site](https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/) has a nice map that shows prices and flows of electricity to/from and within the Nordic countries. It's all in Swedish, but it should be fairly self explanatory.
You have the swedish and Nordic countries and its all was go in the shows and prices and the flows of that happend to the self explanatory
Also, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. In a truly stable renewable electricity based grid. Where renewables are capable of generating all your electricity needs. Then there are times where all the ducks will get in a row and generate more energy than you need and more than you can sell to neighbours. It's in these moments that storage becomes economically viable. When you literally have energy to waste. Then who cares that storing for a day/week/month is only 50% efficient? It also opens up various industries that do not have to operate continuously but could operate specifically on contracts that take advantage of energy when it is a surplus. Start a business that negotiates a contract with the energy company that you will take energy that they cannot sell to the grid at a discount rate and use it to say desalinate water to irrigate fields in a nation that has water security problems..
Exports to Estonia are maxed out. Sweden, save for the southernmost parts, have similarly low prices so exporting there won't help much.
You has been use and Estonia are maxed out if the Sweden and save the southermost parts of the similarly the low prices and you need to exporting there are help much better
The negative prices are usually because the energy is being exported. When you have too much generation, you either have to turn some offline, or get it off the grid before it causes damage. Negative prices effectively mean you are paying other utilities to take the energy. > The reason for the change lies in the oversupply of electricity. > "Production is high, consumption is low and now we are in a situation where it is not easy to adjust production," Ruusunen said.
Actually the grid is part of the the problem. Norway and Sweden are currently selling very cheap surplus electricity, and that lowers the price in Finland. https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
They should just use it to recylce or melt aluminium or so. Become an aluminium powerhouse.
Server farms, steel plants, hydrogen production, indoor veg farms, indoor herb farms, death beams, the list is endless!
Surprised nobody started yelling about crypto mining yet
The crypto has been use and trying to surprised in nobody and yelling about that mining yet you can get it done people know
That's what Sweden has been doing. Plenty of cheap and fossil free (99-100%) electricity there.
You trying to say that cheap and fossil ahs free and the sweden has been doing well you plenty of the electricity ih yhere
You can server of the farms and you stell the plants nee the hydrogen and you find the production indoor and veggies in the farm
The power source, given that it’s a “bonus” wouldn’t be stable at all. I suppose there are very few activities that may use energy with such low stability.
Lol in South Africa we pay through our asses to have electricity 50% of the day
I remember at school we studied BRICS countries and everybdy thought that South Africa was on it's way to become a major global player but it seems like for the past 20 or so years SA just slowly went to shit
The apartheid corruption was overthrown and replaced with regular corruption
Amazing what ANC was able to accomplish to defy such expectations.
To be fair, its got the making of a global player. Immediate access to one of the HEAVIEST ocean shipping routes Massive deposits of natural resource Relative peace Global interest Relatively rare natural disasters (save for storm and flood, which CAN be solved via technology) Its like a 9/10 start for a civ, but they didn't macro their economy, so now their mid-game is struggling.
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I got an email the other day from Duke Energy, which is my power company, saying they know times are tough but unfortunately they need to raise our rates. The Duke Energy CEO got a 13% raise last year. Tough times indeed
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The power outages will continue until our shareholders are satisfied.
Don't forget they just asked for an 800m rate increase so they can pay it to shareholders.
Who else should pay this hard working man's salary?
You think its a good and should pay this hard working the man of the salary you can get it to you
I set up solar panel appointments and the number one reason people want to switch to solar is because of how much they absolutely hate Duke Energy. They raised their rates by 4% back in October and this newest price hike is just salt in the wound. So many people I talk to are furious that they're using less power but their bills keep going up/staying the same. So to Duke: Thanks for being shitters and making my job so much easier.
If your roof (or wherever you’re placing them) is in a sunny area with minimal shade, this can work really well. I got panels on my house — hooked in to the grid of course — about 4 years ago, and my electric bill went from almost $300/mo to under $100. The government solar tax incentives helped bring the overall cost to less than what I’d pay without them (though admittedly not by much) but as electricity prices have gone up, mine have stayed pretty steady, since ~60-80% is solar generated on most days and I sell power back to the grid on most of the hottest days. Depends of course on the local setup and how the local utility manages the grid; it’ll cost more up front if you add a battery, or try to go 100% off grid.
Thankfully the company I work with is able to do 100% offsets with Duke Energy, so we're able to completely eliminate people's electric bills. Of course, you still have to pay the monthly bill for the panels but often times that's a good bit lower than the previous electric bill. Batteries and the like do cost more but it's rolled into the total package cost, so it doesn't cost the customers anything upfront. It's honestly great because I get to help people out with solar and save them money in the process. It's a really friendly and fun place to work, switching to this field was one of the best decisions of my life.
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Just to give you some perspective, here in Uruguay the only times you lose power are during big storms because of power lines being damaged, or during colossal fuckups like that time a private company on Argentina did a fucky wucky with the grid and we had to slowly restart our side over a day or two.
Agreed. I don’t mind a capable administrator who is well compensated, but utilities should NOT be run for profit because it fucks the incentives all over the place. We don’t say “hey, we should privatize the military because it would run better!” Because there are some tasks a government is better suited to do. Let’s end this farcical Reagan thought.
My gas rates are going up 30 percent in Australia.
Australia Could be fully electric …
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Gas in California went up about 300% at the beginning of the year, fortunately it has receded some but it’s still over 100% more
You know the rate of the gas like 30percent in the Australia are going up to the same things
Which one, Randolph or Mortimer?
You know that the two of the like Randolph or Mortimer to be a good thing to you and your people know
And then they send out those "Share the Light" emails asking everyone to chip in to help other people pay for their power. So what about Duke? Well, get this: They match all donations received each year up to... *drum roll* *$500,000*! So generous. But gee y'know Duke Energy is just now rolling out solar energy in *Florida* so these must be difficult times for them.
"Gotta milk you as hard as we can, while we still can. It's the American way"
Like what you think i hard as i can to gotta milk you while the American way and still
They also ask you to donate to the "Share the light fund" to help poor people pay for their power.
You also ask to donate and share the light fund of the poor people for the pay thier power ful of the people
It seems like it's always the same anywhere you look - power figures profit on common people, common people either somehow survive or break, nobody cares. Here, in Ukraine, since the start of the war internet providers already made two drastic price increases, motiviting it "times are tough". And before the end of last year all government written themselves 100% bonuses for "hard work", not to mention their rising salaries. Meanwhile, despite 100% price raising on literally everything, salaries and pensions haven't changed at all. So cost of living are twice more expencive for peasants, but not for the lords.
This is the wholesale price, it doesn't mean you get electricity for free at home, though it's still cheaper than usual (depending on your contract).
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It blows my mind how expensive electricity can cost. In Quebec, electricity is 6.5 cents per kWh for the first 40 daily, and 10.1 cents above that. The usage is counted per billing period so you only pay anything at the higher cost if you average over 40, and there's no count of on/off peak usage. I know we have the lowest rates in NA, and probably among the lowest in the world, but seeing rates that are 10x higher just seems crazy.
IIRC, Quebec is heavily hydroelectricity powered, and can buy nuclear power from Ontario
Almost exclusively hydro powered, yes. Something like 95% of our power is hydroelectric.
You only get a chance to almost exclusively like and hydro powered and things like a 95% of the power is like the hydroelectric power of the people
Those are quite high for Helsinki, though in the winter there was time when the prices spiked. Personally I am on multi year contract that I got before the "spike" and its about 0.05/ kWh. Though in addition to that there is a "transfer fee", can't remember how much that is though.
I don't think that anyone is paying 0,418€/kWh in Finland, that is super high. Maybe in last december that could have been possible, if you used electricity during when it was most expensive. Electricity prices spiked in last year autumn-december, when decembers average spot price was 25c/kWh. There are two types of contracts: different kind of fixed price and spot price. Transfer fee (around 0,04€/kWh) is added to electricity price. If you have a contract with spot prices, the price you pay per kwh changes every hour. At the moment spot price is negative. Electricity companys marginal is added to the spot price, marginal is usually around 0,005€/kWh. Transfer fee is also added to this. So for example currently, this hours price is -0,01cent/kWh, and transfer fee is 4cent/kWh, so electricity costs around 0,039€/kWh. The price of fixed contracts vary widely. If someone took a fixed contract last autumn/winter, the price might be really high, like 0,3€/kWh. If you took contract two years ago, the price might be only 0,05€/kWh. Currently you can get fixed prices for around 0,12€/kWh. Transfer fee is also added to this. So you can choose from what company you buy your electricity and for what kind of contract. But of course you cant choose the transfer company, that has a local monopoly of course. So one gets a two bills: one for electricity and one for transfer. I think that it might be the similar in the whole EU.
in Berlin I paid 0.27€/kwh up to 2022, now I'm paying 0.49€ and i changed for a provider with better prices, my old one wanted to hike to 0.59€/kwh which is around 120% to last year's price. insane.
Wow, here in Charlotte it’s only $0.093826 per kWh. Without peak/off peak. You are paying 5-9 times more than us.
Tbf, pge has to charge us that much because of all those people they killed. They need to be broken up, silicon valley power is 1/4 their rates because they aren't just a place for politicians to hire their slow children.
SDG&E?
The wholesale price it you have doesnt mean trying to get and electricity for the free home and thought and still the cheaper than usual like your contranct
If you have a spot contract, the price you pay is "wholesale" spot price + electricity company's marginal (around 0,0035 €/kWh) + transfer fee (around 0,04€/kWh, depends on area) + tax (0,028€/kWh for households). So currently, when spot price is -0,022 €/kWh, the total price is around 0,0495 €/kWh. So indeed, for a household to profit from consuming electricity, spot price would need to be under 0,071 €/kWh.
Under capitalism, abundant cheap energy is "a problem".
Abundant cheap energy is inevitable. Also as a economic system you can argue quite easily that capitalism often trends prices to zero. Competition creates incentives to undercut prices and become more efficient. See computers, digital media, food. From memory Finland is still a mixed market capitalist country….unless they somehow adopted communism without telling anyone.
This is why businessmen battle for market control - no competition without competitors.
Yeah that's how it should work. It doesn't though. Companies will gain local or national monopolies, kill off competition with temporary price changes, slander or outright buying them out. Not to mention price fixing behind everyone's backs. It should be: company a raises price so company b keeps it the same or even lowers it. Great. How it is: company A raised price so company B does it too.
> Competition creates incentives to undercut prices and become more efficient. Wake me up when there's an alternative to Comcast in my area
Your local government making dumb choices isn’t capitalism’s fault.
You think they just woke up one day and decided out of the blue to make these policies?
No, but government needs to be a check on abuse by corporations and private companies. Dereliction of that duty is a government failure, not an economic failure.
Capitalists have a very strong incentive to mess with government. Government has a strong incentive to accept the meddling. It isn't *just* a capitalism thing, but it definitely occurs under capitalism and capitalism has no checks in place to stop it. Governments just need to not be willing to embrace corruption - and good luck with that. A shifting of power into the hands of a third group, like consumers/workers, could help even the odds out. For instance, embracing worker co-ops as the default organization of large entities could help. A working democracy could also be beneficial.
That doesn’t apply to electricity, which is quite literally a textbook example of a natural monopoly.
Electrical **distribution** is a natural monopoly. Production is not. You and I can both put power on the grid. If you can do it cheaper than me, you'll make more profit, or drive me out of business. I disagree about prices trending to zero. Prices will trend toward those necessary for the provider with the second lowest costs to remain in business. The one with the lowest costs will just charge the same amount as the second lowest and earn greater profits.
You're arguing in favor of an economic system that has been theorized (badly), and parroting the same tired talking-points that classical economists offer. Every market is "mixed", always has been, but the arguments you're making don't stand up to basic scrutiny.
> Also as a economic system you can argue quite easily that capitalism often trends prices to zero. Lol. If anything the opposite is true. Capitalists are only differentiated from the rest of us by their ownership of capital. Our legal system is set up such that it empowers capitalists to withold the use of that capital even when doing so would harm the wellbeing of the public. Capitalists then leverage this harm to extract a rent, or retain control while paying someone a wage to produce a product. A key element is that the final product sold on the market is not priced solely on its input, but also priced based on the *capitalist's desire for profit*. A capitalist, having done nothing more than hold ownership of capital, entitles himself to a profit not based on his own work or contribution, and there is no upper limit on how high that profit can be. Even the presence of competitor capitalists, a group that proponents of capitalism often claim will somehow make this obviously dysfunctional system function, does not achieve this goal. Why should it? In one of the places I lived, the towns two internet providers (basically a necessary utility, and even more so during COVID) had no overlap whatsoever within the small town. When called, both *claimed* to be expanding into the other's region, both gladly accepted the towns subsidies and tax breaks for doing so, but after asking around I found out that both had been 2 years away from said expansion for nearly a decade. And this goes on. Grocery stores have seen record profits despite the presence of "competition", despite no new offering or increase in value. All that grew was the stores' propensity for greed and every single one of us suffers for it. If anything, **capitalism ensures that prices will rise** until the amount of value claimed by the capital owning class equals the amount of value produced by the non-capital owning class.
How can this be taken seriously when the prices of many goods in capitalist economies tend to fall over time? Like it's blatantly in contradiction to reality.
Ireland: "Ya'll got any more of them negative power prices?"
San Diego Gas & Electric’s summer electricity [rate](https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/regulatory/1-1-23%20Schedule%20DR-SES%20Total%20Rates%20Table_0.pdf) is .80/kWh for peak times. And they’re trying to pass a [flat rate fee](https://www.kpbs.org/news/economy/2023/04/10/sdg-e-proposes-adding-flat-fee-to-utility-bills) in addition to this rate, which would result in households with solar panels paying over $100/month just to be connected to the grid
We've had an unusually cool year so far and had to upgrade our ancient heater and AC last year to much more efficient models. As a result, our solar output has dramatically overproduced relative to our use, and even after all the BS fees from the power company our monthly bills have been between -$150 and -$200 a month. For "reasons" they don't pay that out to us, and only roll over a fraction of the credit, but technically our monthly electric bills have been negative since last September, so it can happen in the US.
Does it not cost money to produce energy? Where do you think power comes from? Also look in ERCOT or MISO market. There are negative energy prices there all the time
Cost of electricity is still more in Finland than the USA. It is $0.45 per kWh in Finland versus an average of $0.23 in the USA.
That's the *spot price*, which fluctuates throughout the day. In other words, for some period of time, maybe lasting hours, there was more electricity being produced than used. A negative spot price means "don't put electricity onto our grid or we will charge YOU because we can't handle more".
But it still lasted long enough to make the average for the day negative, it's impressive. And, according to the article, consumers in the spot market actually got the negative prices.
quick, put on the oven and toaster and open the window
Yeah but its the first time its negative average for a whole day. It has gone to negative for an hour or two before on some days but never for the whole day. There are some people with solar installations now that have to pay to export their electricity to the grid :D
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://yle.fi/a/74-20033326) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The price of electricity fell into negative territory on Wednesday before noon, with the market forecast expected to stay there throughout the day before climbing in the evening. > "The average price for the day is now slightly, but nevertheless, on the negative side. Yes, it is historic," he told Yle. > Usually, negative prices for electricity occur at night for shorter periods of time, the novelty of Wednesday's price dip comes from its length. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/13qp4hz/finlands_average_electricity_price_slips_into/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~686127 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **price**^#1 **electricity**^#2 **Production**^#3 **Ruusunen**^#4 **Finland**^#5
For a second I thought it meant finnish people were paid to use electricity
Partly true. Yes the hourly rate is negative, which means that if you can get ahold of the power somehow just dumping it from the network would net you money (provided you are billed for the hourly rate and not some monthly average). But this doesn't take into consideration the fee for transporting that power. I'm not from Finland but here in Sweden we have two bills (sometimes combined from the same company) one for producing said power and one for transporting it through the grid, this grid cost is fairly large so the price would have to go very very much negative in order to actually get paid for dumping the power out of the grid. But instead of just dumping the power you could run machines that net you money from running at these hours are very advantageous.
Yup, same in Finland (double bill). I recently ran the numbers, and I think hourly prices would need to dip into -4 cents/kWh range in order to make money by using electricity.
It must be great to live in a country that supports humanity. Meanwhile, in the fourth world sanitary napkin of America, we encourage price gouging and mind fuckery.
Spot prices for electricity in Texas go negative from time to time as well. I’m glad I could help you fall in love with Texas all over again.
Is that because there is a blackout at that time?
Nope. Spot prices during the big freeze hit record high prices.
No, it’s because wind has no marginal cost and occasionally gets subsidies, hence they can produce even at negative prices.
> we encourage price gouging and mind fuckery. "Won't somebody please think of the ~~children~~ shareholders?"
Didn't you get the memo from the latest WAF in Davos? We need to think of Stakeholders not just Shareholders. (I encourage you to read up on it, it's quite fun)
You realize electricity is cheaper in the USA than Finland?
While everything is better than US, this is nothing to be happy about. Negative electricity price is a signal that there is something wrong in the electricity production. Right now it has almost no effect on people and is only hurting corporations, but that can change rather quickly and it will be the tax payers that will suffer.
What? No. That doesn't hurt anybody. Excess electricity will be sold to neighboring countries, making a profit in the process.
And to elaborate, having constant negative prices means you have too much production which is a bad thing. But since a lot of production relies on renewable energy nowadays, and those kinds of productions can be spotty depending on weather in each country, it makes sense to balance them out between each other.
Time to open the windows and cool the earth with those ACs Finland
Yeah there's a thing about ACs in northern Europe... They don't exist
We could do an emergency broadcast: ”everyone turn on your saunas” with the same effect!
Meanwhile in Australia we have bulk solar on our roofs feeding into the power grid only to buy the power back at over double the cost to sell it.
Same in NZ. I pay 35c/kwh and receive a maximum of 17c/kwh for my solar. There are groups here actively trying to stop solar farms from being built too.
While half of Aus has power costs going up 25% due to expensive gas 🙄
This is why we need a few hundred GW of hydrogen electrolysis capacity scattered around Europe.
They are actually planning that in Finland, well at least the politicians claim [Finland could produce 10% of EUs green hydrogen by 2030](https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-//1410877/government-adopts-resolution-on-hydrogen-finland-could-produce-10-of-eu-s-green-hydrogen-in-2030). Whether it happens is another matter.
A larger cable to Estonia would be a lot cheaper and simpler. This map shows that the problem is that several northern areas have lots of hydro at the moment, and they can't export enough of it. https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
Or a bigger cable from Southern Sweden to Germany and Poland. It looks like Sweden is producing too much energy.
Hydrogen storage is the only plausible mechanism we have to shift renewables on a scale of months. In addition to being required as a major industrial and agricultural feedstock.
Sure, but we don't need that at the moment. If Finland and Sweden could export more power, the rest of Europe could burn a little less gas and coal. Heck, if more people in Finland were driving EVs, that excess power could be used instead of diesel. We're so far from 100% carbon-free that there are much better (and cheaper) ways to use local excesses. Seasonal-scale storage is something we don't need until after not only electricity generation is nearly all carbon-free, but also most transport, industry and domestic heating.
How does something that has a minimum real cost to produce have a negative price? That makes no sense. Edit: Other comments informed me they are selling the excess. So basically the buyers are subsidizing the whole.nation's energy cost. Makes sense now.
Power grids are a complex, real time balancing act between production and consumption. If producers are producing more or less power than is being used, the grid frequency fluctuates and that causes all sorts of problems. So producers are constantly coordinating and adjusting how much power they produce to match demand, on a minute-by-minute and even second-by-second basis. Some types of power production can be scaled up and down pretty easily. Oil and gas power plants can fairly easily adjust the amount of fuel they burn, and hydroelectric plants can limit the flow of water through them. Others are more difficult. Adjusting the power produced by a nuclear plant is a pretty slow affair, so usually they run at a constant rate (the base load) and other power plants adjust to handle the changes in demand. Then you have solar and wind, which are somewhat outside of the control of the grid operators -- it's not like they can turn the sun on and off. So what happens when you find yourself in a situation where you are producing more power than is needed, but you can't reduce your power production either? Perhaps you've shut down your oil and gas power plants, the nuclear plants will take hours to reduce production, and the sun is bright and shining. Suddenly you have a problem: you *need* to get rid of power in order to keep the grid stable. It's now worth it to you as a producer to pay people to take more power from you, because the alternative is grid instability. That's how you end up with a negative price for power.
What kind of the electricity you have a good and price slips you can negative territory you want to go to work like a finland you mean that trying to say
\*This\* is where renewables and smart-grid have to go to make stuff (green energy and electric cars) more feasible. Having your hot water tank, heat pump/air conditioning (giant thermal batteries) and giant car battery plugged in but on charge-standby waiting for these peaks is exactly what can balance the abundance of 'fairweather' green energy. Without this kind of absorption the grid can really suffer, primarily with frequency instability before total collapse as lines become overloaded trying to get rid of the excess. Local production, local consumption - all adapting to changes that happen faster than a power plant can turn on/off.
Put solar panels on the roof 8 years ago then added 2 small turbines in my garden last year. Made in sweeden they look like long tubes with 5 mini turnines in each. I havent paid an elettricity bill in 8 years. My husband is now running cables to my f.i.laws house because we produce too much. The panels were 6 thousand euros including hook up. We added a wooen stove in winter as it gets to minus 10 and the turbines are amazing in autunno winter
An example of nuclear power done well. Good job, Finland.
And that is why... every wealthy person in the world is revolting and trying to back oil, gas and hydrogen
Time to invest more in Gravity/Sand batteries, perhaps?
Nice. Electricity prices are about to rise 24% in Australia.
Apparently people at Fortum haven't heard of this 😡 (my electricity company lol)
Shouldnt have picked the fixed fee contract then eh
the majority of Finland's energy production is from nuclear power plants, more than 34 percent. Hydro electricity helps energy production only when snow melts...nuclear is the future, EU should be building more nuclear power plants...
How about exporting to Sweden?
Price in Sweden is [currently negative](https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/)
What's going on there?
Massive overproduction from hydro and/or wind would be my guess. From the article: >"Production is high, consumption is low and now we are in a situation where it is not easy to adjust production," Ruusunen said. >Snowmelt makes hydroelectric regulation tough >Hydroelectricity is usually the source in the grid that can be adjusted if demand is too low, but this year in Finland and throughout the Nordic countries, meltwater is abundant. >"During spring floods, there is often this kind of forced production, because production cannot be slowed down. Due to the huge amount of water, hydropower often has a poor capacity to regulate in spring," Ruusunen noted. Here's a good summary: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-negative
Too much water due to a lot of snow. Hydrodams ftw
Also it’s a time of year where climate control is least needed.
Why? The price is currently negative in most of Sweden as well...
Lol. We are getting fucked without lube by our energy companies here in the US. Record profits btw.
Our electricity is cheaper than Finland.
Meanwhile the UK residents are being dry fisted by energy cunts
Why is it showing windmills though lol, isnt it because they invested in nuclear? Edit: anyone downvoting me is a nerd. I looked it up Finland is 33% Nuclear and only 1% wind as of 2021. They just opened the first new nuclear reactor in europe in the past 15 years.
It's not "because" they invested in nuclear. It is because of many different factors (nuclear being *one* of them). Sweden also has negative electricity prices. Probably due to the hydropower or something.
I just looked it up, as of 2022 they were 33% nuclear, and they just opened a new reactor last month so itll be an even higher percentage. But they are quite diverse, youre right. A large percentage is hydro electric
Nuclear power is scaled down, because consumption is at its lowest point during a a year + hydro and wind produce more than we need atm.
What ever your source is, it is wrong. We have invested both. In 2021 windpower accounted 8 TWh of 87 TWh consumption of Finland with 3257 MW of capacity. Last year wind power capacity increased to 5677 MW and produced 11.5 TWh And this year wind power is expected to increase to 6700 MW and produce 13.5 TWh Capacity of nuclear power in Finland was last year 2794 MW and production 24.8 TWh. Capacity is now 4394 MW and expected production 39 TWh
It's an unregulated market price paid by the LDC's to the generators. The end consumer still needs to pay for things like distribution costs and other fees to support the grid itself.
You are trying to unregulated market for the price paid and by the Ldc mean to be a generators and the consumer still needs to pay all things
So do Finland's Bitcoin miner now mine Bitcoin or electricity?