On Thursday the 9th September, prices in the All Ireland Electricity Market hit record highs of €4,680 per MWh, well over 20 times the normal price :
The scale here is from €0 to €5,000 MWh
What a normal day looks like, prices rise to about €150 MWh
These prices may have had something to do with the UK switching on coal plant that same week, the cost of which can be very high. Margins are set to get even tighter in the UK as this week one of the interconnectors to France went on fire causing wholesale prices to rise even higher there. Low outputs of wind energy have plagued both Ireland and the UK for many months now. In essence, high prices in the electricity market go hand in hand with low amounts of reliable generation.
There have been three Amber Alerts and seven Notifications of Tight Generation Margins issued this month in the Single Electricity Market (SEM). An Amber Alert means there was expected to be enough energy to meet demand, but possibly not enough in reserve should something go wrong. They can also be issued if there are significant frequency / voltage deviations which can happen when there aren't enough large power stations on the grid. The notification of Tight Generation Margins seems to be a prelude to an Amber Alert.
System Alerts can go from Alert (Amber) to Emergency (Red) to Blackout (Blue) and finally to a Restoration state. Up to the end of August of this year there have been six system alerts on the grid. In the previous decade, they averaged just one per year.
That may have been a once off extraordinary price but this morning the wholesale price of electricity went from 133 to 152 cent per MWh. It used to be only 54 to 120 cents. Wind energy gets the fossil fuel price. Add 19 cents distribution costs to the wholesale price divided by ten to give the retail price. Small electricity suppliers in the UK have now asked for a government bail out.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget to check out the Eirgrid Smart Dashboard to monitor Ireland's electricity grid. Note the daily price and the generation mix. Being an Island it is a good example.
ReplyDeleteDivide the wholesale price by 10 to give wholesale price per kWh (unit). Add 19 cents to give an approximate retail price. Search Eirgrid Smart Dashboard or http://smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/#roi/wind
From the UK :
ReplyDelete"System sell prices in the balancing market hit a record GBP4,037.80/MWh on Sept. 9 as several plants priced themselves at GBP4,000/MWh amid low wind, outages and reduced interconnector availability."
So on the same day uk had the exact same wholesale price which shows just how dependent we are on the UK right now.