2023-10-20 16:35:22
Electricity can be expensive on the wholesale market, where suppliers obtain supplies overnight, at a price calculated hour by hour. Very expensive. But it can also happen, more rarely, that it trades at a negative price, when supply exceeds demand. The customers are then paid for the transaction, and no longer the producers. A shame!
France has already experienced one hundred and eighteen hours of negative prices in 2023, mainly between the months of May and July, but also during the winter – counting stopped on Thursday October 19. A record, according to figures communicated to Monde by the company Epex Spot, European electricity markets exchange. The previous one, in 2020, the year of recession in activity linked to the Covid-19 crisis, was one hundred and two hours, or 1% of a full year. The subject appeared in the country around ten years ago, after Germany and Austria.
Ce “relatively rare phenomenon on the wholesale electricity market” above all reflects the importance of developing the flexibility of the electrical system, according to Epex Spot. That is to say, to ensure that the offer adapts to needs. The question is being asked more and more with the deployment of renewable energies such as wind and solar power, which vary depending on the time of day.
Variations without consequences on households
One hour at a negative price “results from the combination, at the same time, of a large and inflexible production of electricity and a low level of demand”thus sums up the European Stock Exchange.
Wind and solar power, which are not yet stored in industrial quantities, provide electrons as much as the wind and sun allow. Including during weekends, when “there is less economic activity”notes Daniel Bour, president of the solar energy employers’ union Enerplan.
Example, Sunday July 2, a day with fifteen negative hours: in the middle of the afternoon, the price fell almost to −135 euros per megawatt hour. That month, however, the (positive) average was 78 euros on the wholesale market, according to data transmitted to the Monde by the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), a French administrative authority.
The market follows an order of precedence (the merit order, in English). First come, on the network, the energies considered fatal (wind, solar, run-of-river hydraulics), lost if they are not consumed immediately. Nuclear power can be “controlled”. “In moments of very low or negative prices”the operator EDF explains “be led to decrease or [à] temporarily stop production at some of its nuclear power plants”. Finally come thermal power plants (coal, gas), whose variable costs can be significant – to the point of pushing operators to run their installations at a loss for a few moments, rather than interrupting them.
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