In Europe and also in the Baltics, we increasingly see that with many installed solar parks, electricity prices are significantly lower in the middle of the day. The Solar Power Duck Curve* in Latvia shows that for 20 days since April, the price of electricity in the middle of the day was significantly lower than during the rest of the day.
In the past, we observed such effects only in countries such as Australia or California in the USA, but the data show that the Baltics also have a sufficiently high solar intensity to successfully produce electricity.
As recently as last winter, looking at the Duck curve of electricity consumption characteristic of California and Australia, it was hard to believe that in a few months it would be the same in Latvia. In the collected data of California solar energy, we can see that electricity from the grid is actively used in the morning, then in the middle of the day electricity from the grid is used significantly less, because the necessary is produced by solar panels, but in the evening people connect their electric cars to the grid, and again the need arises for energy that is in the distribution grid, because then the sun is already setting, and other generation sources have to be connected for electricity consumption.
If this year in January we looked at this curve as a further future, then since April a similar scene as in California can be observed in Latvia on Sundays. Because of this, the price was at or near zero in the middle of almost every Sunday. Later in May, we observed similar effects on several Saturdays and even on weekdays. However, energy should not be evaluated in just a few days, because this is a long-term business, and the effects should be evaluated over a longer period of time.
If in the summer of 2022 we experienced a price ceiling on the electricity exchange during the day, this year in the spring in Europe and also in the Baltics, negative electricity prices were observed for several hours in the middle of the day, and this is new, because previously we experienced such situations only at night when the wind was blowing.
Obviously, we will have to adapt to such situations, because we will observe them more and more often. Since April of this year, there have been more than 20 days in which it can be clearly observed that the price of electricity is significantly lower in the middle of the day, usually close to zero, and in several cases also negative. For example, on July 16, the electricity price for one hour on the stock exchange for the Latvian zone was even minus 56.55 EUR/MWh.
Although the electricity consumption curve shows that there is a reduction in electricity consumption in Latvia during sunny hours (that is, produced by small electricity producers connected to the distribution network), these low electricity prices are most often formed from the calculation of the Nord Pool exchange and arise in the Netherlands or elsewhere in Western Europe, where already at times the electricity produced by the sun exceeds the national consumption, many producers have various state subsidies, as a result of which they are able to earn by selling electricity even with a negative electricity price. In the Baltics, new solar parks are put into operation almost every day, most often they are smaller, the construction of which is faster, the largest solar parks will start production in 2024/2025. year. This new situation enables users to adapt to perform energy-intensive tasks with very low electricity costs.
For example, recharging an electric car at private charging points during these hours, even including distribution and transmission service fees, is already several dozen times cheaper than refueling an equivalent amount of energy in gasoline or diesel cars. If it is easier to adjust your consumption to cheap hours with electric car refueling, then it is probably more difficult to do it in various production processes, where energy-intensive processes may have to be transferred to holidays, which is not so easy to do.
Usually, on hot summer days, Latvia lacks its own sources of electricity production, because in summer there is little water inflow in the Daugava, and due to the low demand for thermal energy, it is less efficient to operate cogeneration thermal power plants. In these situations, solar parks will contribute to the fact that electricity prices will be significantly lower during sunny periods.
Therefore, in the future, electricity produced by the sun, together with wind stations, will perfectly complement Latvia’s electricity production portfolio and bring Latvia closer to energy independence throughout the year.
* The duck curve is a graph of electricity production during the day that shows the temporal imbalance between peak demand and solar production. The term was used in utility power generation in 2012 and was introduced by the California Independent System Operator.
2023-07-25 11:52:56
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