The price for base load delivery of power was -24.27 EUR/MWh on Monday, 1st of May, its lowest value for 52 months. The reason for this price is low demand combined with high wind feed-in. On both Sunday and Monday, the price for peak load was below the price for base load.
According to Montel the price level for base load dropped to the lowest value since Christmas 2012. At the Day-Ahead-Auction for Sunday, 30th of April, a total of 10 hours settled below 0 EUR/MWh as shown in figure 1 (Source: EpexSpot). Base load delivery reached a price of -6.74 EUR/MWh.
Figure 1: Results of the Day-Ahead-Auction (Price zone Germany/Austria) for Sunday, 30th of April 2017 (Source: EpexSpot)
The peak generation of wind and solar plants on Sunday stood at almost 44 GW in hour 12 and the lowest hourly price was identified at -74.92 EUR/MWh between 2pm and 3pm (Source: Montel).
For 1st of May following the Sunday even 17 negative hourly prices occurred during the Day-Ahead-Auction. In the peak load period (8am to 8pm) the average price settled at -31.73 EUR/MWh and therefore even lower than the price for base load which was at -24.27 EUR/MWh. As shown in figure 2, the power price was negative from midnight until 5pm.
Figure 2: Results of the Day-Ahead-Auction (Price zone Germany/Austria) for Sunday, 1st of May 2017 (Source: EpexSpot)
Due to low utilization of solar plants, as well as lower feed-in by wind power, positive prices reappeared again in the evening hours.
The correlation between negative power prices at both holidays and a high feed-in of renewable energies as well as low power demand becomes evident in figure 3. Furthermore, figure 3 shows the strong movement of the prices in the transitional hours.
Figure 3: Conventional power generation, (grey), regenerative power generation (green), electricity consumption (pink), as well as Day-Ahead-Power-Prices (blue) from 29th of April to 2nd of May 2017 (Source: Agora Energiewende)
