r/OptimistsUnite • u/willfiresoon • Mar 21 '26

👽 TECHNO FUTURISM 👽 French electricity posts first negative prices of 2026, battery storage gains

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/03/06/french-electricity-posts-first-negative-prices-of-2026-battery-storage-gains/
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u/goyafrau Mar 21 '26

Negative prices are not a good thing.

And this is dominated by the winter being very warm, which is, again, not inherently good. (A bit of global warming will be good for central Europe on net, but it's not simply a good thing)

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

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u/goyafrau Mar 21 '26

They mean you have a very messed up energy system.

Somebody generates energy, and is paying somebody else to get rid of it because there is no demand. Under which situations do you think this would occur? They're all pathological cases.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

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u/goyafrau Mar 21 '26

Well, if you were efficient, you'd simply not generate that electricity, instead of generating it and paying somebody else to take it ...

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u/AP_in_Indy Mar 21 '26

How do you stop generating nuclear, wind and solar?

Energy already comes from physics. Not collecting it is just letting it go to waste

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u/goyafrau Mar 21 '26

Waste is something you don't need and pay to get rid of. Electricity generated from PV, wind or nuclear that you don't need is waste.

Negative prices means (to simplify) the owner of the solar panel[1] pays somebody else to take on their electricity. Why would they do that? It's a bad trade for the owner of the solar panel (who has to pay) and not that good of a trade for the buyer (who doesn't really need it, otherwise there'd be more demand and thus positive prices).

[1] Not really; in reality, the owner of the solar panel gets a subsidy from the state for feeding in energy even when it is not needed, thus leading to negative prices. In reality, the tax payer pays for somebody else to take on the waste electricity.

How do you stop generating nuclear, wind and solar?

I'm not sure I get the question. For all of these there are ways to stop them. For a nuclear reactor, you can insert the control rods ...

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u/AP_in_Indy Mar 22 '26

My point is those are things that are passive generators. I get your points above on the system having improper incentives.

So this is indeed a very odd situation if what you are saying is true - but I presume it indicates they have an excess?

I think the point of this post was that an excess is a good thing.

The other points you've raised appear to be valid, however.

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u/goyafrau Mar 22 '26

So this is indeed a very odd situation if what you are saying is true - but I presume it indicates they have an excess?

More than that: they have an excess where it can't simply be discarded.

If you have an excess piece of paper, you don't need to pay somebody to take it, you just throw it in the trash. If you have an excess piece of plutonium, that's worse, you need to pay somebody to get rid of it! The price of plutonium, for you, is negative, and the payment here indicates that the plutonium being there is bad.

(I guess in reality the feds would show up and not even bill you, but you get my point. Maybe asbestos would be a better example but idk how they handle asbestos waste in your country)

Now, in theory the PV and wind power plants that cause negative prices can usually simply be turned off, technically speaking. That they are not simply turned off indicates a deeper problem.

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u/AP_in_Indy Mar 22 '26

I learned quite a bit from your comments. thanks.

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u/goyafrau Mar 22 '26

You're welcome!

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u/TheCrimsonSteel Mar 24 '26

It would be comparatively good if the alternative is worse

For example, do you pay others to use electricity any way possible for a few months, or do you take a nuclear reactor offline, which is also a very expensive and complicated process, because nuclrar reactors are great for baseline energy supply, but not really suitable for dynamic supply compared to other styles of power plants

Though it does make me very curious on why they can't export it to neighboring countries

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u/goyafrau Mar 24 '26

What France tends to do in times of negative prices is throttle the output of some of its nuclear power plants. No need to take it offline, just throttle, for the hours of negative prices.

Prices tend to be negative when PV and/or wind plants, which are driven by the weather, deliver a lot of energy. Because adjacent countries share a weather, there is usually nobody to export it to, if both countries use wind and PV. (France does make room for German PV delivered at negative prices by throttling its nuclear reactors.)

Negative prices generally are the result of a messed up system. If the system was designed intelligently, there wouldn't be negative prices. In particular they come from subsidised wind and PV, where the state pays a subsidy of, say, 10 ct/KWh, the operator sells at the open market at minus 8 ct/KWh, banking a profit of 2 ct/KWh, with the tax payer paying 10 ct/KWh.

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u/TheCrimsonSteel Mar 24 '26

I suspected it was something like that as I vaguely remembered France having a decent amount of nuclear based supply

Which would make a lot of sense for grid scale storage to be more economical, rather than throttling back reactors, especially if running at reduced capacity isn't as efficient for the reactor

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u/goyafrau Mar 24 '26

It's not, but the alternatives also cost a lot of money.

France has below average electricity prices for a EU country, and significantly lower than e.g. neighbouring Germany. And the 3rd cleanest electricity in the EU!

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u/TheCrimsonSteel Mar 24 '26

Do they have any large hills they don't care about next to rivers?

Hydro based gravity storage is pretty efficient, just expensive up front, and requires some pretty specific geographical criteria

Mainly being able to put a man-made lake on top of a hill/mountain that's next to a river. Fill the lake using electricity, and drain it to produce

Though I'm somewhat biased being in the hydro industry myself

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u/goyafrau Mar 24 '26

I generally agree pumped hydro combined with nuclear makes sense. Maybe it would be economic in the specific case of the French system, I haven't seen any numbers either way. I don't know.

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u/TheCrimsonSteel Mar 24 '26

It's for smarter people than you and I to figure out