Electricity: negative prices reshuffle the cards [Dossier]

This is an increasingly frequent phenomenon. In the first half of 2024, in France, the electricity market was marked by negative prices for 233 hours, or 5.4% of the time. Over the whole of 2023, these situations where supply exceeds demand had only accounted for 147 hours, 1.7% of the time. This acceleration worries and disrupts the operation of the electrical system.

Sub-optimal use of the park

“Some producers have an interest in offering all or part of their production at a negative price because, for them, it would be too costly to completely stop their production,” explains Anne-Sophie Dessillons, director of market development and energy transition at the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), in the last podcast of GreenUnivers on the theme “Electricity: how to escape the negative price trap”. The CRE has just presented proposals to remedy this “sub-optimal use of the installed production base, due in particular to the specific conditions of certain support systems for renewable energies. »

Adapting support mechanisms for renewables to reduce the formation of negative prices: this is also the objective of the French Electricity Union (UFE), accompanied by a series of suggested measures to modify the functioning of the electricity system . By improving both the flexibility of consumption and “the controllability of renewable production. »

These negative prices are not reserved for France and concern the European continent more widely, linked for example to the high Spanish solar production. In this context, the question of calling into question the system of obligation to purchase renewable electricity is openly raised.

All this “shows that we are in a transition”, also testifies in the podcast of GreenUniversVincent Maillard, president of Octopus Energy France. “We still live as if we had an essentially nuclear system, which raises the question: how do we increasingly adapt demand to more volatile production? “.

This new situation leaves room for batteries, a storage system that is relatively quick to deploy and dedicated to flexibility. But their future in France is not all mapped out.