Sadly these 'negative' prices aren't available to regular people. Only a select few who can trade on the spot market can use them.
If regular people could get paid to switch on space heaters, the negative prices would soon go away.
If regular people could get paid to switch on space heaters, the negative prices would soon go away.
Citation needed. Last time I looked the pricing of octopus agile went negative for like 15 minutes a year...
EDIT: just crunched the data... It looks like this only happened frequently in 2020 (not in 2018/19/21), and even then, for a typical 1 kilowatt household, it would only save £2 per year, and even if you deliberately maxed out and used the maximum current limit of your AC supply (100 amps, 24 kW, for most households), it's still only a saving of £50, which doesn't pay for the effort really...
https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-north-eastern-engl...
Too many people think about the above two because it’s easier to see/feel/touch while it’s really thermal loads that are the bulk of household loads.
If I have to go down to 15C or deal with 30C, delay my shower/dishwasher/clothes washer/dryer to save enough bucks when it could really count, I’d do it.
Meanwhile on fixed pricing, I turn things off when prices are negative (that’s bad!) and indifferent to high prices when I have zero incentive to do differently.
I know my parents got half price electric for water heating, but I don't know how much they actually saved.
Shed the pool heater/cleaner, beer fridge and the hot water heater when things get incredibly expensive.
Put the washer/dryer in slow-mo when prices are high.
Ultra-chill the freezer and A/C when prices go low/negative.
Turn on a resistive heater and shut off the gas heat when things are negative...
Instead we want complicated too-big-to-fail grid storage systems instead.
I much prefer simple dumb appliances than smart crap that is garbage after 5 years. If the price is high like in Texas recently I can decide to not use the dryer.
For example, if you had a smart home that cut off heating in the recent Texas event when it saw prices rising (because it assumed prices would revert soon allowing for cheaper heating a little later) it would end up having to pay even more later when prices turned out to continue rising.
I don’t really think smart appliances are a sufficient solution for ordinary people because there is too much power usage that is fixed (or worse, correlated with high demand/low supply) and I don’t think consumers are actually signing up for the price volatility on their fixed usage.
It feels like you are suggesting that it’s ok to have everyone picking up pennies in front of steamrollers because they can speed up a bit if the steamroller gets too close or go and pick up more pennies if it is further away. But I say that this won’t be good enough if the steamroller starts going faster and they get too tired running away. It’s especially bad because many people merely thought they were picking up pennies and didn’t realise they were being chased by a steamroller. I feel like this analogy is pretty strained by now but the recent events in Texas showed a lot of people getting squashed without realising that they had been spending years running around in front of steamrollers.
That's not say someone isn't eating the cost of the high spot prices, it's just a lot of that cost is borne by sophisticated professionals who's job it is to price risk and black swan events. The problem with wholesale passthrough rates is consumers are rarely sophisticated enough to understand the details of energy markets and the financial instruments to offset the risk.
“Just Energy” and another cooperative.
Reality is, electricity distribution corps are more tolerant of risk than individuals because generators have to sell, but the distributor can always file for bankruptcy if it suddenly becomes very unprofitable.
(I'm not in anyway associated with Octopus btw, just interested in this sort of thing)