On Sunday afternoon, a lot of sun and wind push the electricity prices on the wholesale market below zero. A few hours later, electricity is expensive again.
Traders on the wholesale electricity market will have to deal with a very volatile market on Sunday. There will be quite a lot of wind on Saturday night and Sunday morning, while a lot of sun is forecast for Sunday afternoon. This means that a lot of renewable energy is generated. At certain times, more energy is produced than we consume ourselves, especially because there is less demand for electricity on Sundays. There is a lot of export of electricity to neighboring countries, but that export capacity also has its limits.
Result: negative electricity prices apply on the short-term market between 10:00 and 16:00 on Sundays. The prices drop to -100 euros per magewatt hour. Large companies are then paid to purchase electricity.
Negative electricity prices also apply today/Saturday, but not as extreme as Sunday. This is a typical phenomenon for the spring, according to traders. Then there is more wind than in other periods. In the summer, for example, the wind is much less strong.
A few hours later, the negative prices are already over. On Sunday at 7 p.m., almost 200 euros per megawatt hour must be paid. After all, the wind has then disappeared, just like the sun, so that electricity has to be generated again with fossil fuel plants, fired with very expensive gas.
The ordinary consumer will not notice the negative electricity prices. In the longer term, scarcity still predominates, which has resulted in historically high energy prices on the consumer market for more than six months.
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