In Spain, they went overboard with wind turbines and solar panels: renewable energy ate up prices

Active development of green energy in Spain and This leads to a paradox on The Iberian Peninsula, which is very popular with consumers, but worries specialists. Negative electricity prices in the region's energy system are occurring more and more frequently and are falling lower and lower. This threatens that countries will stop investing in power plants.

"The European electricity market may continue to break negative price records during a huge surplus of renewable generation and after a new low for the Iberian Peninsula of minus 58.60 euros per MWh in the first quarter," Montel reports.

According to the operator of the OMIE energy market, on February 12, the minimum price on the market went up to minus 300 euros per MWh during the day, which led to an average price per day of 0.31 euros per MWh. At the same time, since February, only three days in March have not seen negative prices.

Montel noted a fundamental shift: the rapid growth of solar and wind power is beginning to outpace the system's ability to consume or store this electricity.

A negative price appears when power plants produce too much and it is more profitable for them to pay for consumption than to reduce power. In Spain and Portugal's decline was due to stormy weather, which led to high production of wind farms, and floods, which increased the capacity of hydrogenation to the maximum, with moderate demand.

So far, power systems cannot cope with such situations. On the one hand, negative prices sound tempting for consumers. At the same time, this is a risk for green energy investors: a drop in revenues during peak production periods may slow down the pace of energy transition.

As EADaily reported, earlier the head of Europe's largest energy operator called on the German authorities to cut subsidies to green energy. Eon CEO Leonhard Birnbaum said that the energy transition has become a victim of its own success: the boom of green power plants is overloading the grid.

For example, in some regions of Germany, the energy system reaches physical limits, which leads to higher costs for households, as network operators pay compensation for reduced capacity of wind and solar power plants.