Electricity prices across Europe are expected to fall below zero due to the rise of renewable energy from a surge of summer winds.
According to Bloomberg, the negative prices aren’t new, but are happening more frequently this summer after Europeans added a record amount of solar panels to the power grid last year to cut demand for expensive natural gas.
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“Negative pricing is an important signal in the electricity system to incentivize flexibility and storage, which is critical to a modern-day electricity system,” said Tom Haddon, a consultant at Arcadis LLP based in Cardiff. “At the moment negative pricing is a bug, but it should be a feature.”
The risk is that a prolonged slump in prices could undermine the case for future investments, add costs for consumers and waste energy that could be used to cut demand for polluting alternatives.
Therefore, the only way to address the issues is for both power systems and power consumption to adapt.
