Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

leonidasrup

Similar situation last year over Easter: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/clouds-shield-german-po...

ash217

As if negative prices trickle down to the consumer. The electricity market is byzantine, rigged and has resulted in higher energy prices in the last 20 years.

Hamuko

Does someone want to elaborate why it's interesting/important that wholesale electricity prices were low one day during a long weekend?

notTooFarGone

If it were just easy to buy a bunch of batteries and profit from this by selling the same energy during evening/night. But that is only reserved for the big players I guess.

asah

where's the bitcoin miners when you need them ??? /s

cubefox

> Excess electricity produced during periods of low consumption cannot yet be stored at scale, as battery capacity remains limited.

somedude895

For anyone thinking negative prices is a good thing: It's not. It's a panic signal because there are no takers for an oversupply of energy, making the grid unstable.

flanked-evergl

German excellence, shitting the bed both ways. From JP Morgan's 16th Annual Energy Paper, March 2026 https://cdn.jpmorganfunds.com/content/dam/jpm-am-aem/global/... > In 2024 we estimated that had Germany not decommissioned nuclear power after the Fukushima accident, it would have needed 50% less electricity generation from fossil fuels, 84% less generation from imported natural gas, 27% less fossil fuel capacity and 42% less natural gas capacity. Another road less traveled: Germany’s electricity prices in 2024 were almost 25% higher than they would have been had the country kept its nuclear power online . And as shown below, Germany might not have experienced such a sharp increase in its electricity imports which are 2x higher than a decade ago as a share of consumption. > More nuclear shutdown repercussions: Germany’s industrial power prices were 3x higher than the US and China in 2024, and part of the reason why Germany has been experiencing the deindustrialization shown on the right. On the positive side we in Norway have 10x higher energy prices because we now have to export energy to Germany during the winter and then our water storage is empty in the summer so we get fucked both ways as well.

Vektorceraptor

Germany should use it to search for Marsenne primes

amai

For absolutely no good reason bidirectional charging in Germany is still forbidden. Electric cars could be used to store and buffer the overproduction of electric energy. But no, the german burocrats forbid this solution. Ridiculous!

ZeroGravitas

As with many of these renewable cause negative price stories, the data shows something they never talk about: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/72h/hourly That shows that they still had roughly 5% gas and 5% coal running at the lowest price point.

Dagonfly

So many questionable comments in here. Negative prices have no effect on grid stability. It just means that the day-ahead market was cleared below 0, i.e. for every consumer (buyer) there is a producer (seller) selling at this price. The market is still balanced with consumption==production. Now, you can ask the question: Why are so many producers willing to sell below 0? That has to do with misplaced incentives. For older or home-installed renewables there is a feed-in tarrif which guarantees a fixed revenue at all times. So there is an incentive to sell even for negative market prices. Newer installations can't opt for the guaranteed revenue model with revenue during negative prices any more. Redispatch follows afterwards, if the market result clashes with physics: The physical grid can't transport the power from producer to consumer. There was no unusual amount of redispatch during easter. Source: I work on this stuff.

MasterScrat

Clearly they need more datacenters!