alt.hn

4/7/2026 at 10:33:51 AM

Germany Power Prices Turn Deeply Negative on Renewables Surge

 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-07/germany-power-prices-turn-deeply-negative-on-renewables-surge

by rustoo

4/7/2026 at 12:06:34 PM

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.

by Dagonfly

4/7/2026 at 12:43:44 PM

> It just means that the day-ahead market was cleared below 0

No, it doesn't. The article is explicitly about intraday-prices. So day-ahead clearance made invalid assumptions about generations and consumption that were not met during the day. This kind of miscalculation does require additional (costly) redispatch measures to mitigate the overproduction, and it can affect grid stability.

by thyristan

4/7/2026 at 12:55:22 PM

You are right that intraday went even more negative than day-ahead. But I disagree about the rest of your comment. A spread between day-ahead and intraday does not imply additional redispatch. Only some of it might have been countertrading by the grid operators.

The redispatch was not extraordinary: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power_redispatch/chart.htm...

by Dagonfly

4/7/2026 at 11:00:17 AM

Similar situation last year over Easter:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/clouds-shield-german-po...

by leonidasrup

4/7/2026 at 11:53:29 AM

Germany experiences negative electricity prices on a near daily basis now from spring through fall.

This weekend, prices were more negative than usual, but still not that negative.

by eigenspace

4/7/2026 at 12:16:48 PM

It really depends on the size and placement of the oversupply, this could cause localized grid overloading.

"However, BDEW warned that around half of the new capacity came in the form of small-scale systems under 100 kilowatt each, which under current rules feed into the grid whatever they produce, without the option to curtail production when this is necessary to ensure grid stability."

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-adds-record-175...

Smart electric meters for individual PV producers that signal and account for negative prices would help. e.g. if your balcony solar power pushes electricity during oversupply you pay penalty.

by leonidasrup

4/7/2026 at 12:27:02 PM

Yeah. Going forward, I suspect the way to handle this will be requiring the small producers to join a "virtual power plant".

It'll result in a lot of misinformed shrieking from people, but probably the way forward is to remove the guaranteed price subsidy for individual household producers, and make it so thar they have to join a VPP if they want to sell to the grid.

by eigenspace

4/7/2026 at 1:08:13 PM

IIIRC, new individual systems are already required to have the capability to wind down export based on external signals.

by scary-size

4/7/2026 at 1:24:23 PM

Is this required even for PV systems under 7 kWp ? I could only find new regulations from March 2025 for PV systems over 7 kWp.

https://www.mvv.de/photovoltaik/ratgeber/solarspitzengesetz-...

by leonidasrup

4/7/2026 at 3:47:48 PM

I guess „it‘s complicated“. For our system, 6kWp with iMSys, the grid operator can cap the ingestion as they see fit. For systems over 7kWp, you are required to install a iMSys that allows them to cap. Systems without a iMSys must have the capability to cap to 60% (either at all times or „intelligently“ depending on your consumption). BUT if you install anything today, you most likely will install a iMSys anyway. Also export fees for 7kWp and below are a bit of a joke anyway.

by scary-size

4/7/2026 at 11:04:52 AM

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.

by ash217

4/7/2026 at 11:14:33 AM

In the UK you can get energy plans with a price that updates every half hour, published a day ahead. From 12:30pm - 4pm today that price is negative. It was also negative for around 16 hours of Easter Sunday. https://www.octopriceuk.app/agile

by mcintyre1994

4/7/2026 at 11:38:56 AM

Well dynamic pricing only ever works until you have a power outage in the winter and suddenly you pay a years worth of money for the 1 hour you could use your fridge, during a snowstorm.

by paule89

4/7/2026 at 11:59:23 AM

It’s still capped at £1/kWh, which is a lot but also a price I’ve seen maybe for a few slots on a couple days in the last three years.

The price was known ~1 day in advance so I had the choice to fill up the battery with cheaper (but still high) prices overnight and reduce the impact

by wrxd

4/7/2026 at 3:54:42 PM

Consumer pricing in the UK is regulated with a price cap (per kWh), so consumers can't be fleeced in an unexpected event.

Business energy users aren't protected, so they buy long-term contracts, hedge, or go-under in the event of an unforeseen energy-shortage.

by manarth

4/7/2026 at 11:47:01 AM

That's what batteries are for.

by HPsquared

4/7/2026 at 11:59:17 AM

That is the trade off for renewables. Power is very expensive when needed and very cheap when not.

by Ekaros

4/7/2026 at 12:42:40 PM

Electric power is very expensive when demand is greater than supply, very cheap when supply is greater than demand.

by leonidasrup

4/7/2026 at 11:33:43 AM

Where’s profitable crypto mining when you need it?

Back yard plasma furnace? Artificial diamond making? Aluminum smelting?

by api

4/7/2026 at 12:26:44 PM

You need something that's valuable, energy intensive, easy to stop and start, and cheap to build capacity for. Either or both of those last two tend to be the problem for most industrial processes (and also crypto mining).

by rcxdude

4/7/2026 at 12:05:59 PM

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!

by amai

4/7/2026 at 1:11:19 PM

AFAIK regulatory changes were needed and implemented recently. Commercial offers for Vehicle to Grid started this month.

by maxhille

4/7/2026 at 12:52:06 PM

I thought that bidirectional charging increases the complexity of the equipment used for the electric grid and can introduce a fire risk in homes if the equipment or wiring is sub-standard or faulty. Basically, it's costly to implement.

by ndsipa_pomu

4/7/2026 at 11:14:32 AM

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.

by notTooFarGone

4/7/2026 at 11:50:10 AM

No, it is not at all reserved for big players. You just need to get a dynamic price electricity contract, and a smart-meter in your home and you can do this right now.

by eigenspace

4/7/2026 at 11:56:22 AM

In Sweden you can also register your battery to an aggregation service that makes money (and gives you a share) from balancing the grid.

So there is not only a market for buy/sell, you can also be stand-by for charging your battery when grid frequency increases and consumption needs to increase.

by fifilura

4/7/2026 at 3:31:26 PM

I don't sell mine, but I time-shift with a small pile of batteries (about 10kWh) and it's pretty reasonable. I save about usd $30/month. It's basically a big ups that will pay for itself in ten years, and I get backup power.

by dgacmu

4/7/2026 at 4:01:10 PM

So in 10 years when you have to buy new batteries, what do you expect the payoff time to reset to?

by readthenotes1

4/7/2026 at 5:51:58 PM

I don't. The batteries will last longer than 10 years. The 10 year typical advertised lifetime of lifepo4 is to 80% capacity, and I'll just keep on using them.

The actual payoff calculation is a lot messier than that because you have to factor in the NPV of buying batteries vs. just throwing the money in the market, AND you have to be able to forecast that growth vs. growth in power prices. So the honest truth is I have no idea if it's going to be a net good investment vs other options.

Fortunately, I don't have to care, because I bought the batteries for UPS runtime, which I value independent of the time-shifting. The time-shifting is just a way to squeeze money out of an investment I already made. Had I been going for payoff, there are cheaper battery/inverter options out there with a sub-5y payoff.

by dgacmu

4/7/2026 at 11:16:10 AM

I know someone who does this in Mew Zealand with power walls.

He is retired and mostly just a hobby.

by lostlogin

4/7/2026 at 12:06:08 PM

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.

by ZeroGravitas

4/7/2026 at 12:13:44 PM

Clearly they need more datacenters!

by MasterScrat

4/7/2026 at 11:25:03 AM

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

by cubefox

4/7/2026 at 11:50:24 AM

Batteries are the next frontier of the renewable explosion. It's already happening.

by karmakurtisaani

4/7/2026 at 11:34:49 AM

...and batteries are unsuitable for seasonal storage.

by red75prime

4/7/2026 at 11:47:04 AM

First lets handle single summer day using renewables + storage (California is slowly getting there). Then we can talk about seasonal problems.

by Sankozi

4/7/2026 at 11:49:46 AM

How is seasonal storage relevant here? This is the usual few-hours-fluctuations, I assume? (can't read the article)

by jbrnh

4/7/2026 at 12:02:21 PM

It will be more relevant in the future, but it's still worth thinking about. Right now intermittent energy sources cover around 15-18% of the total energy consumption in Germany[1]. And seasonal variability is covered by other methods (natural gas and others).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:...

by red75prime

4/7/2026 at 12:21:33 PM

But since 2/3rd of the fossil energy is wasted, it's more like 40% of the useful energy.

Some people don't know about the primary energy fallacy, others know about it and try to exploit it, so you should be suspicious of the opinions of anyone trying to use it suggest lack of progress and futility.

by ZeroGravitas

4/7/2026 at 1:04:21 PM

If you measure useful energy as electricity output of a fossil fuel plant then yes. But in many cases the waste heat is used in other applications for example district heating or low grade industrial heat.

If you use fossil fuel to directly drive an industrial process, for example melting of ores/metals/glass then the efficiency is much higher.

by leonidasrup

4/7/2026 at 1:52:07 PM

Electricity can still be more efficient for many of these with heat pumps, like indoor heating and steam production. The gap is smaller then for working engines of cause.

by jbrnh

4/7/2026 at 12:26:05 PM

Who talks about futility? It's about tradeoffs: seasonal storage/nuclear power, batteries/wind+interconnections and so on.

by red75prime

4/7/2026 at 12:17:29 PM

And Germany right now have battery storage equivalent of fully powering Germany for about 30 minute sand raising up every month, which is quite wild.. https://battery-charts.de/ With those feeding on negative-priced electricity, intermittent sources will only get more economical to the detriment of gas and nuclear.

by jbrnh

4/7/2026 at 11:43:35 AM

Unfortunately Germany closed down its nuclear power plants.

by cubefox

4/7/2026 at 11:45:38 AM

They would find it hard to compete with negative prices too.

by __d

4/7/2026 at 5:17:49 PM

Not at all. The prices aren't negative during the night or on overcast days.

by cubefox

4/7/2026 at 11:57:39 AM

Nuclear power plants can store energy?

by brazzy

4/7/2026 at 12:31:43 PM

No but they can operate during the night and on overcast days.

by cubefox

4/7/2026 at 11:57:15 AM

Germany should use it to search for Marsenne primes

by Vektorceraptor

4/7/2026 at 11:28:03 AM

[dead]

by l5870uoo9y

4/7/2026 at 11:38:00 AM

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.

by flanked-evergl

4/7/2026 at 1:36:08 PM

Decision to decommissioned nuclear power was a political decision not economical, technological or ecological decision. Decision based on fear.

by leonidasrup

4/7/2026 at 11:08:47 AM

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

by Hamuko

4/7/2026 at 11:17:01 AM

it makes private energy storage a viable investment option. You can just invest in a large battery (or other storage system) and make a profit over buying/selling energy.

I really hope, this happens on a big scale and further reduces the dependency on fossil fuels (at least over 24h. winter is a different question)

by jones89176

4/7/2026 at 11:51:01 AM

It doesn't, for reasons of price.

For consumers, power prices consist of the actual price of power, plus network fees. Network fees are fixed at (on average) something like 10ct/kWh or 100€/MWh. So negative prices are only really negative if the power price drops below those -100€/MWh, which rarely happens (the usual dips are at low single-digit cents per kWh).

And even then, there is the issue of network fee double-dipping: Depending on the contract you have with your power company, the size and kind of storage you are operating, and the phase of the moon and your donations to the ruling party, you will be charged network fees twice, once when buying the power, once when selling it again. In that case, the threshold would be even worse, at -200€/MWh.

And all that doesn't factor in the cost of the storage infra.

Edit: And there is another factor: The current very low dip is in the intra-day prices. But contracts for consumers use day-ahead prices, which usually don't include those very large dips that result from miscalculations of weather and dispatch capacity.

Edit2: Just check https://tibber.com/de/preisrechner (use e.g. 10119 as Postleitzahl) and scroll down for the graph. Today, they give a negative day-ahead price of -1.5ct/kWh, but including network fees, taxes and their cut, you still end up paying 18.2ct/kWh...

by thyristan

4/7/2026 at 12:00:05 PM

If you're buying and selling the power, then you don't care much about the absolute price, but rather the delta between the purchase and sale prices.

Below -100€/MWh, you don't need to sell the power to profit; you'd make at least some money just using it to heat up a big resistor.

by Majromax

4/7/2026 at 12:07:05 PM

You didn't read what I wrote. The news is about trading prices. End users never pay those, because there are fixed network fees to be paid on top. So the actual bill will practically never have a negative price on it anywhere.

And even if there were negative end prices happening: There are metal smelting works and other operators of big resistors who will happily heat up even more. So prices will probably never get so negative that a normal consumer can ever profit from them.

by thyristan

4/7/2026 at 11:30:32 AM

It does not make private energy storage viable on its own. You need to get enough charge/discharge cycles out of it in a certain time period. This means you need almost daily high price fluctuations. We aren't seeing that in Europe. We see high winds push down prices for multiple days and we see multiple weeks with consistent high prices in the winter, with occasional drops on the weekend.

by arpinum

4/7/2026 at 11:50:03 AM

It’s a daily event now in Australia. Very low prices during the middle of the day, and higher in the morning and evening. Anyone with a battery or an EV they don’t need to drive far can play the market, usually with scripted sell/buy trigger points.

There’s enough profit to make the payback period for a decent battery quite short.

by __d

4/7/2026 at 12:08:16 PM

Yes, I see energy-intensive industry moving away from extreme latitudes in the long run. Most of Europe is at an unfortunate latitude and has surprising levels of cloud cover.

by arpinum

4/8/2026 at 5:16:22 AM

Yes. Europe has far more wind than Australia, I imagine for that reason.

by __d

4/7/2026 at 11:24:29 AM

The only interesting part is that renewable production in Europe is so random that there can be far too much for short periods.

The wholesale price system is not a reliable signal or incentive for electricity generation supply and demand in Europe. There are various subsidies, taxes, levies, and fixed costs not shown at the wholesale level that completely change calculations.

These numbers will make customers upset and complain about price gouging if they don't understand the disconnect. Or, it makes customers think that renewables are cheap because they are not seeing the subsidies that on net result in higher payments to renewable providers than carbon-based producers.

by arpinum

4/7/2026 at 12:16:41 PM

It's an indicator of how far they've come in supplanting fossil fuels. Today it's one day; soon it will be two, then a week. They can start thinking about next steps.

by jfengel

4/7/2026 at 12:27:57 PM

No.

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.

by flanked-evergl

4/7/2026 at 3:47:07 PM

Two things can be true at the same time, such as: Germany decommissioning nuclear power was a huge loss, and also, rising use of renewables is a success story.

by SideburnsOfDoom

4/7/2026 at 11:15:55 AM

Energy prices being low is interesting and important right now, since we are undergoing a petrochemical energy price increase shock.

by SideburnsOfDoom

4/7/2026 at 12:29:17 PM

Prices being negative for one day does not make energy prices low. The "green shift" in Germany has increased the use of fossil fuels and the price of energy.

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.

by flanked-evergl

4/7/2026 at 3:39:02 PM

> Prices being negative for one day does not make energy prices low.

My apologies, that was poorly worded - I didn't mean to imply that all energy prices were low across the board. Of course they are not.

It's an interesting indicator, not (yet) a systemic change. And as I said in answer to the parent comment, it's a important subject right now because of the petrochemical price shock.

Nevertheless, if I were to interpret your statement as unilaterally as you interpreted mine: you said "negative prices are not low prices", which is wrong as a matter of arithmetic.

by SideburnsOfDoom

4/7/2026 at 11:26:16 AM

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.

by somedude895

4/7/2026 at 11:36:49 AM

The grid is not unstable and it was also not unstable the last view days when prices were negative. Germany has one of the most stable grids in the world. Negative prices are good when you need to buy electricity and they are bad when you are selling, but of course generally in a functioning market there shouldn't really be too many days with negative prices. It does mean that there isn't enough storage currently on the grid.

by _fizz_buzz_

4/7/2026 at 11:45:33 AM

They are working on that https://battery-charts.de/

by jbrnh

4/7/2026 at 11:59:58 AM

Sure, and negative prices will send a strong signal to the market to hurry up with adding storage. So, this will probably be more of a temporary situation and in the future there will be very few days with negative prices, however there will then also be fewer days with very high prices.

by _fizz_buzz_

4/7/2026 at 11:44:06 AM

Now what we need is a cheap grid interconnect for home users running solar panels that automatically starts charging a battery when grid prices go negative, to absorb that extra power.

by chongli

4/7/2026 at 12:01:33 PM

That already exists

by eigenspace

4/7/2026 at 11:47:23 AM

Yeah, the curtailment is a simple way to deal with instability. I wonder who chooses which power plants should curtail their output. The Bundesnetzagentur?

by red75prime

4/7/2026 at 12:04:30 PM

The plants that are willing to give supply for the most negative price are the ones that will not be curtailed. So market forces. Basically at such points power plants are paying for the privilege to be allowed to supply power. This is dominated by restart costs and as such is often paid by classic "baseload" plants such as nuclear ones. i.e. they will accept losing money during one part of the day/week so that they can make money during a different part of the day/week.

by jerven

4/7/2026 at 12:19:22 PM

So, the economic incentives favor peaker plants and storage (natural gas plants, peaker coal plants, batteries, pumped storage).

by red75prime

4/7/2026 at 11:49:01 AM

The grid is not unstable, Germany has a gigantic amount of batteries, flywheels, and giant resistors that can soak up the power, and is able to order wind farms and solar producers to curtail production if its still too much for the grid. Contrary to what a lot of folklore about Germany's grid suggests, these investments in stability are actually the primary reason Germany's electricity is so expensive compared to a lot of other countries

This is all actually beneficial. It creates real economic pressure for just about everyone to build and install more batteries everywhere to profit from the price swings.

Most importantly, it motivates the wind and solar producers to buy up batteries and install them on site, so that they can shift the times where they sell power to the grid to times of day where its more profitable.

by eigenspace

4/7/2026 at 11:51:29 AM

For anyone interested, the dynamics are something like:

1) Commercial entities generally try to sell their products for a profit (positive price).

2) Negative prices make this quite hard.

3) To get back into positive profit, they're going to need to charge a higher price later on.

There are 3 ways the overall market can go if prices are negative - either prices go positive at some other time to make up for the losses the power providers are making, someone figures out a use for the free power and the price stops going negative or power providers go out of business. Typically what this seems to result in for renewable-heavy grids is occasional (even regular) negative wholesale prices and some impressively high retail prices. Free electricity turns out to be very expensive; it shows the grid isn't coping.

by roenxi

4/7/2026 at 11:34:48 AM

1. They could export the surplus. No?

2. Isn't cheaper electricity a good thing for the manufacturing industry?

by mhitza

4/7/2026 at 11:40:26 AM

> 1. They could export the surplus. No?

Yes, and that is in fact done. However, there it is still a bad deal with negative electricity prices.

> Isn't cheaper electeicity a good thing for the manufacuring industry?

It technically is, but its not as simple as that. Industrial manufacturing is a relatively steady load, which means the consumption is constant. The lowest prices do not matter all that much, the average price does. And that average price is relatively high here, even for industrial consumers.

by moooo99

4/7/2026 at 3:50:01 PM 

    > "They could export the surplus"
Negative prices generally indicate that the transmission connections are already saturated: as much energy as possible (or financially/technically acceptable to the third parties) is already being exported.

Transmission capacity and interconnectors are usually the bottlenecks.

by manarth

4/7/2026 at 11:40:57 AM

The negative price is an indication that consumers can't utilize all the energy. That is, no one is willing to pay to consume more.

by red75prime

4/7/2026 at 11:32:55 AM

It's a good thing if you can profit from it.

It doesn't seem that hard. All you need is a load, but obviously harder as you increase the scale.

Heck you could build some large bodies of water and boil them from time to time.

by nutjob2

4/7/2026 at 11:54:47 AM

> Heck you could build some large bodies of water and boil them from time to time.

Some suppliers already do that. When a power plant also supplies the city heating, it makes sense for them to put the power surplus into pre-heated water which they can store and later distribute to the buyers of the heat.

Obviously this needs some huge and well insulated tanks.

Here's an article (in Polish) about one built in Warsaw, 10TJ capacity: https://globenergia.pl/najwiekszy-wodny-magazyn-ciepla-w-eur...

by praptak

4/7/2026 at 11:36:58 AM

This has happened in the Netherlands many times. The North Sea is a wind turbine paradise but Dutch people are asleep 8 hours a day- weak!

by expedition32