Germany had so much renewable energy last week that customers were briefly being paid to consume electricity, it has been reported. As spotted by Quartz, who cite data from German think tank Agora Energiewende, fair weather and high winds on Sunday 8 May saw wind, solar and hydroelectric power plants producing 54.6GW of power, roughly 80 per cent of the 68.4GW of power being consumed across the country at that time. As a result, the price of power plummeted, and went negative from 7AM to 5PM, bottoming out at minus 130 euros per MWh at 1PM. Energy providers were essentially being paid by producers to take the electricity off their hands.
Independent 11th May 2016 read more »
Shares in Eon, Germany’s biggest power producer, fell 5 per cent after it said it might have to raise capital to pay its share of the cost of storing Germany’s nuclear waste. Eon has provisioned 8bn euros for waste storage, but under a proposal published by a government commission last month it would have to pay an extra 2bn into a special waste storage fund. Altogether, Germany’s four big utilities have been told they have to contribute a total of 23.3bn into the pool. The nuclear issue is just one of the problems weighing on Eon’s stock. Like its rival, RWE, Eon has been hit by Germany’s radical shift to renewables, which has squeezed electricity from fossil fuels out of the energy market.
FT 11th May 2016 read more »