Came across this rather confusing tweet posted a week ago by a Dutch lecturer in energy transition (translated from Dutch):
Things are not going well with negative prices yet; 13 hours so far.
But next night there will be two hours with virtually “free” electricity (ex tax): price <1 €/MWh.
In total, the Netherlands now has 31 such hours. In 2023, the Netherlands recorded 23 so far; In 2022 there were 9.
#graphoftheday
He is apparently counting the number of hours with negative prices on the Dutch grid and counted 13 hours in 2024 until then.
The graph below the tweet shows the evolution of the number of hours lower than €1/MWh from 2019 until now. It also detailed what type of price he is talking about (day-ahead prices) and that the number of hours with low (day-ahead) prices increases each year (2020 was an exception from about April on, for obvious reasons).
I was a bit confused by the fascination for those day-ahead prices. There were also cheering responses that wanted more of these negative prices. Okay, who doesn’t want (virtually) “free” electricity, but then, day-ahead prices aren’t what comes to mind when someone talks about “free” electricity (even excluding taxes).