On 9 December, the UK experienced a negative day-ahead trading price for the first time, with prices for 03:00AM to 04:00AM UTC delivery on the hourly day-ahead auction dropping to -£2.84/MWh.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we take a look at a first for the GB market, negative day-ahead trading prices, and analyse how this trend could develop in the future.
Nick Palmer
Low carbon generation
Penetration of renewables continues to dominate the energy news, as we saw renewables as a proportion of total demand reach new heights this week to a new record of ~70% penetration. In light of this continuing march toward a renewable-dominated grid (building on some analysis we did in Chart of...
Low carbon generation
In the last week, renewable generation in SA has varied from 126% of local demand to only 0.6%. During this period of low wind in the state, SA was importing ~600MW from Victoria. At that same time, renewables were thankfully generating 34% in VIC, along with brown coal pretty much...
Power and gas networks
A lot has been written recently about how the energy transition is lagging behind the required installed capacity needed to deliver on our net-zero future. We also know that the connection of new generation requires significant investment into additional transmission infrastructure (or other non-network solutions) and that this needs to...
Energy storage and flexibility
From an energy market perspective, 2022 was an especially interesting year as geopolitical events pushed Europe’s energy sector out of the status-quo and into uncertain and uncharted territory. While most of the attention remained focused on developments within the wholesale sphere, interesting developments arose within the balancing services space too....
Low carbon generation
The Victorian Government launched Australia’s first offshore wind targets as part of its transition towards a net-zero emission future. According to the target, 9GW of offshore wind will be installed by 2040, nearly quadrupling the total wind capacity in VIC. In this Chart of the week, we dive into the...
Commercial and market outlook
SA’s reliance on wind is getting to a point where there is not much to do except importing from VIC and generating with expensive fuel, such as diesel, when wind speed is not at its best shape. In this Chart of the week, we take a closer look at South...
Energy storage and flexibility
Renewable generation records continue to fall in the NEM, with several dropping in succession over the last week. As the amount of renewable generation in the NEM increases (led by a world-leading uptake of rooftop solar), as does the amount of curtailment. As curtailment is essentially wasted energy, minimising it...
Low carbon generation
On 13 September, BEIS published the draft budget notice and draft Allocation Framework for Allocation Round 4 (AR4) of the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, scheduled to open in December 2021. BEIS set out a total draft budget of £265mn (in 2011-12 money) for AR4, meaning that total spend in...
