Being paid to consume electricity!

[Alan]

This article explains why at certain times of the year the over production of electricity results in the prices going negative and the company pays you the consumer for using electricity.

I have just received an alert that the prices are going negative between 1 and 7am so I have just set the solar panel inverter to fully charge the batteries during this period, then we’ll have been paid to have free electricity all morning, then I’ll charge the batteries again during the afternoon cheap rates to cover the expensive evening period. Normally the batteries are charged during the day by the solar panels but can be charged by pulling power from the grid. (Excess power generated during the day is exported to the grid and we get paid for that, but this is the first time we have been paid to use electricity)

This is fun stuff for a geek like me.

https://octopus.energy/agile/

Plunge Pricing pays you to take excess energy off the grid

Across the UK, whenever more electricity is generated than consumed, energy prices fall – sometimes to the point where prices drop below zero, and suppliers are paid to take energy off the grid.

Agile Octopus introduces Plunge Pricing – a world first that lets you take advantage of these negative price events, and get paid for the electricity you use. Receive SMS alerts whenever prices drop below zero, or use our API to program your smart devices.

Over the last 12 months, unit prices dropped below 2p / kWh 31 times.

 

[GrayHare]

Sounds like a great place for a bauxite refining facility. They are good at solving excess electricity problems.

 

[NW-Bound]

prices are going negative between 1 and 7am ...

If this is a recurrent event, one can delay the electric water heater until this period. It also helps to plug in an electric space heater or two.

 

[Alan]

If this is a recurrent event, one can delay the electric water heater until this period. It also helps to plug in an electric space heater or two.

It happened 31 times in the previous 12 months, so that would be a good idea. There are still plenty of folks who use storage heaters which charge up overnight and then are used the following day to heat the house. DW’s parents used them decades ago, and a few years ago when we rented a flat in the Yorkshire Dales that flat used cheap overnight electricity to both heat their water and also charge up storage heaters.

It is now very windy here (50 mph), and is forecast to be so for the next 24 hours so I guess the wind generation is at maximum. The UK last year had 33% of its electricity generated from renewables including wind and solar. It will be interesting to see how many of these over production days happen in the summer and how many during the winter where we have lots of wind.

 

[omni550]

It is now very windy here (50 mph), and is forecast to be so for the next 24 hours so I guess the wind generation is at maximum. The UK last year had 33% of its electricity generated from renewables including wind and solar. It will be interesting to see how many of these over production days happen in the summer and how many during the winter where we have lots of wind.

I've been perplexed as I've passed wind farms in the US on windy days and seen them locked-down (stationary). I was then told that they do not operate at 20 mph winds and above.

I look forward to hearing your reports, Alan.

(As bitcoin mining is energy-intensive, I wonder if someone might make use of this "free" electricity for that?...or are these episodes too short and sporadic for that usage?)

omni

omni

 

[Alan]

I've been perplexed as I've passed wind farms in the US on windy days and seen them locked-down (stationary). I was then told that they do not operate at 20 mph winds and above.

I look forward to hearing your reports, Alan.

(As bitcoin mining is energy-intensive, I wonder if someone might make use of this "free" electricity for that?...or are these episodes too short and sporadic for that usage?)

omni

omni

I think the lock down happens at 55mph according to energy.gov, but the BBC article below (on a wind turbine that caught fire in Scotland during a storm) says that the lock down speeds vary by type of wind turbine.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/how-do-wind-turbines-survive-severe-storms

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-24706238

 

[Alan]

Today was plenty of sunshine so batteries were fully charged for free ready in time for the peak rates in the evening. No cost for electricity consumption at all today. Sunny day forecast for tomorrow

Tonight is another price plunge rate with rates as high as -5p /kWh so I have set the inverter to charge up the batteries again overnight with electricity we are being paid to consume. I certainly never expected our solar panel installation with batteries to be so lucrative during the winter months. (More high winds causing generation to be higher than consumption).

 

[Plantman]

I doubt the electric companies in America would be as generous.

 

[aaronc879]

I wish I had the option to use less during peak times and more during lower rate time. My electric company just charges a flat rate all the time of $.13111/kwh

 

[HtownRose]

Griddy charges whatever the current wholesale rate is + a service fee. Worked great until massive price spikes in Texas this summer, so now they're looking into some sort of "stop-loss" type measure to bring a bit of protection for when that happens. I haven't tried them, but it was all over the local news when people were getting crazy high amounts charged for electricity. ($350 for 8 days in the example below.)

https://www.click2houston.com/news/...r-electricity-prices-during-recent-heat-wave/

 

[ERD50]

I doubt the electric companies in America would be as generous.

It has nothing to do with generosity. They are all trying to maximize profits.

I'd bet that the reason the UK grid operators can pay people to use electricity is the same reason it sometimes happens in the US. I'll bet that wind and solar has been subsidized in the UK, so let's say the grid operator gets a subsidy of 2 cents/kWh for wind or solar. Rather than shut down the wind or solar if there is a short term excess, they can drop the price and still earn the subsidy amount.

-ERD50

 

[Alan]

It has nothing to do with generosity. They are all trying to maximize profits.

I'd bet that the reason the UK grid operators can pay people to use electricity is the same reason it sometimes happens in the US. I'll bet that wind and solar has been subsidized in the UK, so let's say the grid operator gets a subsidy of 2 cents/kWh for wind or solar. Rather than shut down the wind or solar if there is a short term excess, they can drop the price and still earn the subsidy amount.

-ERD50

There will soon be no subsidies. The individual consumer subsidies for solar ended this year, and big company subsidies are on the way out. This article is from March, 2018.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...ergy-research-analysts?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The UK is well on the way to a new era of subsidy-free renewable energy projects that will largely kill off prospects for new gas power stations, according to industry analysts.

The falling cost of wind and solar projects combined with advances in battery storage technology will unlock about £20bn of investment in the UK between now and 2030, Aurora Energy Research said. Onshore wind and solar will both be viable without subsidies by 2025 in the UK, it added.

The prediction comes as the Swedish energy firm Vattenfall announced that it had won a Dutch government tender to develop a windfarm which will become the world’s first without subsidies when built off the Netherlands coast in 2022.

 

[Alan]

Griddy charges whatever the current wholesale rate is + a service fee. Worked great until massive price spikes in Texas this summer, so now they're looking into some sort of "stop-loss" type measure to bring a bit of protection for when that happens. I haven't tried them, but it was all over the local news when people were getting crazy high amounts charged for electricity. ($350 for 8 days in the example below.)

https://www.click2houston.com/news/...r-electricity-prices-during-recent-heat-wave/

With our company’s spot prices the price is capped at 35p/kWh plus if we happen to be exporting electricity during a summer price plunge the price will be capped at zero so although we won’t make any money exporting during those hours we won’t be charged the negative price.

 

[Alan]

The head of the National Grid has thanked me for helping to balance the grid. (Well, me and thousands of other users.)

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-extra-renewable-electricity-on-windy-weekend

Duncan Burt, the boss of National Grid’s electricity system operator business, thanked households for helping to balance the energy grid by “getting paid to use more energy on a windy night”.
In the past, only energy-intensive companies would be able to claim a fee for helping to balance the system by making use of the extra electricity. However, homes using smart-meter tariffs can lay claim to a renewables windfall too.
Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, said that 2,000 homes on the supplier’s Agile Octopus smart-energy tariff “made money for using energy when the wind was giving us more than enough”.
Octopus told its customers ahead of time that it would pay up to 5.6p for every kilowatt-hour of electricity used in certain overnight periods.
The customers who were able to pop on a middle-of-the-night laundry load could have earned a renewables windfall of between 1p and 5p for every kWh of electricity they used, rather than spending double this rate to run appliances for only a few hours later.

Homes using a new type of smart-energy tariff were urged to plug in their electric vehicles overnight and set their dishwasher on a timer to take advantage of the record renewables in the early hours of the morning.
The blustery weather helped windfarms generate almost 45% of the UK’s electricity on Sunday, setting a record of more than 16GW that evening. At times there was more wind power than the UK needed.

 

[ERD50]

There will soon be no subsidies. The individual consumer subsidies for solar ended this year, and big company subsidies are on the way out. This article is from March, 2018.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...ergy-research-analysts?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The article sounded to me that some research groups were saying subsidies would not be needed in the future to be cost competitive (I think?), but I didn't see anything saying the subsidies actually were ending.

Without subsidies, the grid operator won't be motivated to pay you to take any excess kWh - they'll just shut some wind turbines down (turn them 90° to the wind, that saves on wear and tear). But good coordination of some of these smart apps could take advantage of a very low rate, which could benefit both the grid operator and the consumer and the environment. Maybe a fraction of a penny per kWh is enough to justify wear/tear costs, for example. But why would they pay you take it, makes no sense that I can see, w/o a production subsidy.

While I'm not a fan of subsidies per se, I do think it makes sense to somehow reward renewable energy (or penalize dirtier energy), to the extent it is cleaner over it's lifetime production. But that's also a can of worms to figure.

.... Homes using a new type of smart-energy tariff were urged to plug in their electric vehicles overnight and set their dishwasher on a timer to take advantage of the record renewables in the early hours of the morning.

The blustery weather helped windfarms generate almost 45% of the UK’s electricity on Sunday, setting a record of more than 16GW that evening. At times there was more wind power than the UK needed.

And while all that is good news, we have to view it in context and recall some of the points made in that "100% Renewable" thread. A 45% number is impressive, and an accomplishment, but it's a combination of a low use Sunday night and good wind conditions, so average numbers will be far lower. And we still need to have most of the existing fossil/hydro/nuke on hand for extended periods of low winds at night. If you've become dependent on wind/solar, that's a lot of batteries if it goes on for several nights, especially if it occurs during a low solar period as well.

-ERD50