My Dutch feed today is only screaming one single thing. 'Get free money by just using your daily appliances in the way that you normally also would do'.
Now who doesn't love some free funds on the side, so let's take a small look into this. Because this has everything to do with the current (fragile) state of the Dutch electricity grid and how it all works.
Pixabay by Richard Foulon
See in normal electricity contracts when you would have solar panels, it always means that when you would make electricity with your solar panels and you didn't use it, you would send it to the central grid and that amount of kwh would be dumped into your account. You would be able to use these 'unused' kwh in another moment when the sun isn't shining and it would all balance out.
Now this rule it set to change in the upcoming years which isn't a bad thing I think. The reality is that you can not store these kwhs for in winter time, and that is really the time that the sun isn't producing a lot here up in the north.
Dynamics
Because of that this rule would be starting to change, different types of electricity contracts appeared on the market. One of them is the dynamic contract, where you pay the market price of what you are using in electricity.
That has a high variation in there. As you can imagine, when people are starting to come home after work and appliances are turned on, the demand is higher and the price goes up (it is all just finance right?). But in slow hours when no one is using electricity and the demand is low the price goes down and it is super cheap to do your laundry or turn on the dish washer or something like that.
You are still following me in this one right?
Negatives
Now this is where the supply is getting too big. On days where it is very sunny and there is a lot of wind and in combination with a lower demand and especially if this is on a Sunday or on a holiday where not all companies are using electricity because they are closed, that means there is a lot of khw circulating on the grid, causing the larger chance of congestion to it.
And that means you have to pay money when your panels send it back to the grid because it is already congested.
That also means when you take electricity off of the grid, you get paid to do so.
As you can see in the image here currently at real time you get $0.47 per kwh that you take off of the grid. And if you have some stuff that needs to be charged, heck you can make some nice funds of that from there.
At the same time you can also see that later today it will also cost you about $0.33 per kwh to use it again around cooking time, so my suggestion would be making a an oven dish in the afternoon that needs some hours haha.
Bo000om
So today is labour day which is not widely celebrated here in the country, but it is in other countries but these weeks are holiday season and schools are closed at the moment. The wind is making a decent breeze which sailors would like and the sun is perfect for have a drink outside while the electricity meter is running back in the mean time because I am doing my laundry and getting paid because of it. It all does sound a bit weird right?
I just have the feeling days like these could also trigger a gigantic frying of the network on a certain day. The electricity cables in the groundworks are getting expanded every day, but I am not sure if the demand can keep up with the supply already running through the cables.
So how much it seems that everything is all fun and games getting paid to use electricity, it also feels like in a same situation in a different week, it could also go to shit.
Or am I being the party pooper now?