It was nice this Sunday, June 16th, 2013 . Too good . So beautiful that electricity consumption in Europe has fallen, while solar and wind energy peaked. That day , per kilowatt hour has traded at a negative price in France, -20.29 euros. It came down to -200 euros for a few hours .
Producers unable to regulate the market? :
In fact , the producer are destabilized in recent years by the scalability of the production of electricity from renewable sources in Germany.
Its share in the German electricity mix increased from 6.6% in 2000 to 23.5% in 2012, according to the German Federal Office of Statistics .
Impact on distributors ?:
“The German energy companies, E.ON , RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall so far considered successful companies see their results deteriorate” warns Stephen Beeker. E.ON, the German utility first, recorded in 2011, the first loss in its history : 2.2 billion euros.
Consequences for neighboring countries ?:
With prices pulled down, it becomes more interesting for its neighbors to import electricity to produce it themselves.
Impact on the European electricity grid ? :
“When a massive power surge saturates the network, as is often the case with solar energy, it disrupts the current frequency” said Etienne Beeker (General Commission for expert strategy and foresight France) . On 4 November 2006, a single incident of a line of northern Germany, while the turbines operating at full capacity, resulting in a general blackout in Europe. EDF had to operate emergency “load shedding” (light, turn off the power to some homes) to prevent the disaster.
Solutions ? :
Aware of the problem, the European Commission advocates the construction of interconnections between EU countries to facilitate trade of green electricity. The project, called Connecting Europe Facility, should come from 2014 and will be worth € 50 billion. But the amounts involved are much higher : 250 billion euros of investment would be needed by 2030 to complete missing links and remove bottlenecks, believes the Commission itself .
Sources:
You can fin the whole article of Céline Deluzarche in Le Journal du Net of the 30th of october 2013
Press conference by José Manuel Barroso on Connecting Europe Facility and Project bonds