Comment on As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act

• Tja@programming.dev ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  My prices went down in the last two years by almost half. I could get a time based tariff and sometimes buy electricity at negative prices. Of course I have like 400 different electricity providers I can choose from… Monopolies are… not great.

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  • BD89@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Ok so 400 different providers lets me know you’re not in the USA then.

    That’s where this article is written about

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    • Tja@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yeah, monopolies are no-no in Europe.

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• JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It depends and varies wildly based on your area and how the electricity is actually sold.
  If they are using an energy stock exchange, as many places are, then increased capacity, especially increased renewable capacity, greatly reduces the price per kWh because the price depends on the most expensive method of generation.
  And because renewables always offer their electricity for free to the exchange, as they don’t have any fuel etc costs, you sometimes end up in the peculiar situation like here in Finland (and in the entire NordPool area) tomorrow between 13:00 and 16:00, where electricity is literally priced at 0€/kWh, as there is enough renewables to cover it all.

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  • boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Free electricity is cool unless you produce solar. Everyone who does will be paying to produce electricity because of the grid fees lol

    Luckily I do not produce solar. Wanted to install, but lately I’ve been thinking… With how NordPool works, the more common solar becomes, the less attractive it’ll be because there’ll be more and more periods where you have to PAY to produce electricity. Or disconnect your panels from the grid every time that happens? AKA whenever solar is the most effective…

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    • spidermanchild@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      I’m not familiar with NordPool specifics but this is exactly right and is playing out in California and elsewhere too. Basically just the duck curve. Storage is all but required as solar covers 100% of midday load.

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    • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      From what little I’ve researched about privately producing back to the grid here in Finland, it really didn’t make much sense. You get terrible rates and as you said have to pay the transfer fees too. It’s priced in a way that they clearly would rather you didn’t do it at all.

      But the NordPool isn’t really a system designed with tiny private producers in mind. Price goes to zero, or sometimes even negative, exactly to try to prevent having to pull electricity production down as that’s expensive and complicated. It’s clear to see that it isn’t a sustainable model in the long run, but hopefully it incentivises companies to build the solution - storage - to make use of all that “wasted” energy and stabilize the price and market.

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• chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Ideally anyway. Government interference can always screw it up and create barriers to competition.

  Where I live (Ontario, Canada) on-peak electricity prices have pretty much exactly kept pace with inflation over the past 20 years, so in effect electricity costs have not gone up.

  Off-peak prices have crept up more than that but solar power doesn’t help with off-peak generation at all. Wind turbines do produce more at night but we’ve had government subsidies to encourage building wind power capacity and those subsidies result in higher wholesale prices for that power (actually above the off-peak prices consumers pay).

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