By Michael Bassewitz and Oskar Loehr
Too windy, too sunny: Due to overproduction, Germany had to give away electricity on two days at the beginning of the month.
The background is the “energy transition”: electricity from wind and sun is often produced in the wrong place at the wrong time – supply and demand simply don’t match. Consequence: Because there is no storage, excess quantities build up that can only be sold on electricity exchanges.
But: If no one wants the expensively generated electricity, it will be GIFTED if necessary!
On July 1st we gave away our electricity again – and more than that: at times you had to pay up to 500 euros more when selling a megawatt hour, that’s 50 cents per kilowatt hour! Also on July 2nd the price was negative again! This is shown by data from auctions on the European electricity exchange “Epex Spot”.
In plain language: If you take the electricity off the market, you get a lot of money! – and the taxpayer has to pay for it…
Private customers do not benefit from the price fluctuations, they have to continue to pay their contractually regulated prices – according to the comparison portal Verivox, electricity customers in Germany paid an average of 41.4 cents per kilowatt hour in June. The fluctuating prices only apply to industrial customers and utilities. At home and abroad.
This absurdity comes up again and again. The reason: Electricity producers from renewable energies have no incentive at all to throttle production on days with a lot of electricity. Because: In many cases, they still get their money from the state, even with negative prices (!) – even if nobody wants the electricity and there is far too much of it.
The infrastructure for storing the electricity to such an extent: is missing! Otherwise the electricity could be stored until it is needed again.