European day-ahead electricity prices spike to records. PV owners:write to politician for proper FIT

Caspero

Irish day-ahead average electricity price hit record. Source: https://twitter.com/youngsiward/status/1472573791490433032/photo/1

This is happening all over Europe. Day ahead average electricity prices for 21st Dec 2021 (source https://www.energylive.cloud/)

Here's some context on how unusual the spike is from Germany:

Anyone who's taken Economics 101 knows that price is set by the cost of the marginal unit of production. Generally speaking Europe's energy markets use natural gas as the marginal production when spikes/lack of supply from wind/solar cause supply/demand mismatches. In other words electricity production from Natural gas turbines is ramped up when demand looks like it will outstrip supply from wind/solar/coal etc.

Europe is facing a natural gas shortage for many reasons including Russian political tension limiting supplies/storage inventory of Russian gas and supply chain issues due to COVID meeting a demand surge from the successful vaccination program. So natural gas prices spiked and day-ahead electricity prices went through the roof too.

We may think that electricity prices have gone up a lot this year but if even part of this spike persists we haven't seen anything yet. It will roll through to household electricity bills very soon. When that happens it becomes a political crisis because it will hit every household.

That means this is the ideal time to actually make an impact by contacting your local politician if you are a PV owner who is unhappy with the FIT proposals . There's a lot to be unhappy with.

-- Only getting paid 7? cents per kwh for exported units when you pay 20 cents for each imported unit - WTF? Why not just offset export against import 1 for 1?

-- Not getting paid for any units you supply over 35% of your production - WTF? If you supply a unit and they get to use it you should get paid for it.

I suggest you write to your local politician now, stress the political crisis that is on the way for them and tell them that changing the FIT proposals can help because:

1. Consumers getting paid fairly for exported units are more likely to install larger PV systems which alleviates the supply/demand imbalance
2. Consumers getting paid fairly for exported units are less likely to hoard them. I'm not judging but the fact that this will happen can clearly be seen from how people are suggesting to just use your surplus up by doing things like mining bitcoin instead of exporting surplus

Not saying this is going to end the crisis quickly but I am saying that the FIT proposals are bullshit and should be changed. A political crisis is the ideal opportunity to make that happen.

slave1

We had our opportunity, there was a consultation period where anyone could submit their thoughts, this is now closed, I submitted a Net Metering request

Caspero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118355976#Comment_118355976

I know and I also submitted thoughts.

I think a political crisis over electricity prices changes everything however and introduces the possibility of change due to political pressure.