Storm-induced negative power prices “show Energiewende’s madness”

The storm “Herwart” that hit Germany on the last weekend in October caused power prices to turn negative due to an excessive supply of wind power, thereby exposing “the glaring malfunction” of the country’s energy transition, Nando Sommerfeldt and Holger Zschäpitz write for Die Welt. Power prices during the storm temporarily fell to minus 83.06 euros per megawatt hour (eur/mWh), compared to plus 37 eur/mWh during “normal” times, forcing power producers to pay their customers, the article says. “Private consumers do not benefit from negative prices but instead have to pay for it in the long run,” as the government guarantees operators of renewable energy installations fixed feed-in tariffs, the authors write. Excess power needs to be consumed even when there is no demand, causing prices to turn negative. However, the problem could be remedied by providing greater storage capacities to preserve excess energy for later use, Tobias Struck of energy provider Wemag says.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet Why power prices turn negative for background.