Britain experienced 214 hours of negative power prices in 2023, according to Imperial College London’s Electric Insights report.
This phenomenon, averaging over half an hour daily, coincided with wind farms receiving over £300 million for not generating electricity, indicating a growing surplus in energy supply.
Negative prices, once rare, are now increasingly common across Europe, with Britain ranking eighth in the number of negative price hours.
This surplus stems from factors such as renewable energy policies and inflexible nuclear reactors, necessitating price reductions to balance supply and demand.
Constraints in generator flexibility, particularly in nuclear power stations, exacerbate the issue.
The prevalence of negative prices is associated with wind farm curtailment, which reached 5% of output in 2023, equivalent to 4.3TWh.
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