Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy floods the grid

This is something that has been occasionally happening in Europe (at least in Germany, don't know about France) for well over 10 years now. Probably more like 15.

What's sorely needed at this point is much more storage to make this energy available when it is needed instead of when it isn't. Before that happens, you cannot really decommission any gas or coal power plants, because you still need them during times of much less renewable production.

Let's

Fucking

Go

Lol get rekt fossil fuel barons

I'm a Fiscally Responsible American Republican and this is EXACTLY why we SHOULDN'T transition away from Oil! Imagine all the RESEARCH into YACHTS and MANSIONS the CEOS can't do now that prices are NEGATIVE!

Though it won't show up as negative in the bill, not even a discount

Yet whenever prices for something go negative we're never paid for taking it off their hands.

Lemmy and the nuclear propaganda is so funny. France recently increased the electricity prices because nuclear energy is way more expensive than solar and they will have to increase them again because half of their plants are in severe need of repair.

Article is paywalled, but love the headline. Imagine a future with energy as an essentially free resource. We have a LONG way to go, but just the fact that we are moving in the right direction gives me a glimmer of hope for the future.

is this end consumer prices? This sounds more like we're totalling in french energy exports, (france exports a LOT of nuclear energy, as well presumably, renewable)

Negative? Sounds like music to the crypto-miners. Heck, can I get paid for shorting two wires together?

archive.is

^oh ^no!

Am I the only one that doesn't understand how something could fall into a negative price range? Like does that mean the power companies have to pay the people using power? And how is power being that cheap a problem in any way? Isn't cheap accessible power what we've been striving to achieve??

Paywalled article

Just a note to say that this is the electricity market breaking down - don't celebrate it! France has had low-carbon energy since the 70s when they built a load of nuclear power. The have started building renewable plants rather than updating the nuclear plants. Electricity cannot be stored in the amounts that we use it. So many statistics about wind/solar quote power act like we can use it all... but an installation battery that could store a country like France's worth of energy for 12 hours (solar never works at night) would be the biggest megastructure humans have built*. During a period of high pressure a whole country might get little wind for a week. Also, check out this map if you visit regularly the low carbon energy solutions are nuclear or hydro... the only countries that reliably don't burn fossil fuels use these. [edit: clarity, *edit: Not quite-about 100mx100mx50m, approximately the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza, but made of flammable material - I got confused with something that could provide a week or two for windless anticyclones]