When the electricity exchange price is negative, the electricity producer has to pay for supplying electricity to the grid.
Exchange electricity the price will temporarily turn negative on Sunday. Finland’s regional price electricity exchange in Nordpool is on the minus side between 2 and 4 p.m.
Exchange electricity is cheap on Sunday anyway: even in the most expensive hour, the taxable price is less than five cents per kilowatt hour.
The momentary drop in the price is due to the fact that the demand for electricity is less than the production of electricity, which is either not worth it or cannot be shut down for a short time. For example, nuclear power plants typically run at a steady pace all the time, regardless of the market price.
Finland’s electricity production clearly exceeds consumption on Sunday, and there is also enough electricity for export to Sweden and Estonia.
When the stock market price of electricity is negative, the electricity producer has to pay for supplying electricity to the grid.
A negative market price basically means that the electricity producer pays the electricity consumer. Those who have taken out a contract linked to exchange electricity will receive a discount on their bill when the price is negative.
In practice, the negative price is deducted from the margin charged by the electricity company, but still remains to be paid. A fixed transmission price is always paid for electricity according to consumption to the own network company.
For these reasons, you cannot make money by wasting electricity, even if the market price is negative.
It is rare, but not completely unusual, for the price of stock electricity to be in the red. The last time this happened was at the turn of the year and in the fall. In the future, there may be more negative hours, because the amount of both nuclear power and wind power has increased in Finland.
In exchange electricity contracts the consumer should also pay attention to the monthly fees charged by the companies and the margin charged on top of the spot price of electricity.
A comparison of the Energy Agency’s contracts shows that there are noticeable differences in the margins charged by the companies. At the smallest, the margin remains at 0.29 cents per kilowatt-hour, while at the largest it is as much as 1.14 cents. The difference is almost fourfold.
Even though the figures are small in the amount of cents, for example, in an electrically heated detached house, the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive margin can result in an additional bill of at least a couple of hundred euros per year.
In April the average price of electricity on the stock market including taxes was about 6.7 cents per kilowatt hour. The price is clearly more affordable than the currently offered fixed-term or indefinite electricity contracts.
At the beginning of May, the price of electricity will rise for all Finns, when the reduced value added tax set for the winter months returns from ten percent back to 24 percent.
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