by Andreas Franke, [email protected] -Edited by James Leech, [email protected]
by Andreas Franke, [email protected] -Edited by James Leech, [email protected]
German wind power output reached a new record this week, peaking above 33
GW overnight Tuesday, but dropped to just 1 GW by Friday, with coal and to a
lesser extend also gas-fired power plants providing the flexibility needed to
keep the system balanced, a Platts analysis of hourly generation profiles
shows.
However, lower generation costs due to sharply lower coal, gas and carbon
prices, weak demand and the return of solar output will limit the potential for
spot prices to recover to their "usual" winter peak levels, with
day-ahead baseload struggling to rise above Eur30/MWh.
Even with wind almost disappearing on Friday, maximum hourly prices barely
reached Eur40/MWh after plunging to minus Eur19/MWh earlier this week, data
from spot exchange Epex Spot and EEX transparency shows.
Spot power prices averaged just above Eur20/MWh for the first 12 days of
February and, despite slightly colder and windier weather conditions forecast
for the second half, this February is still on track for an average spot
delivery below Eur23/MWh, compared with a Eur36/MWh average in February 2015,
Platts data shows.
WIND RECORDS
Actual wind power output surpassed 33 GW for the first time ever on February 1,
with four days registering wind peaks above 30 GW so far this month, while
total daily wind generation on Monday reached a record 805 GWh, according to
data from Fraunhofer ISE institute and EEX transparency, which collect near
real-time data from TSOs.
Wind output during the first two weeks this February will be above 6 TWh,
already double the total monthly output of last February, the data shows.
That compares with just 2.3 TWh of coal-fired output and only 0.8 TWh of
gas-fired output so far this February as the massive swings in wind require
unprecedented flexibility from conventional power plants and overall reduce the
hours for the most-expensive forms of power generation, thereby depressing
power prices.
Currently, coal-fired power plants provide most of this flexibility for swings
in wind, with coal output ranging between a record 545 GWh on January 21 and
just 109 GWh this Monday, the data shows.
For gas, the swing was from 261 GWh on January 21 to 66 GWh this Monday,
although gas output is more driven by heating demand with some smaller CHP
units not registered in the TSO data.
Another swing factor is cross-border power flows, with Germany also exporting
record amounts of its oversupply across some 15 GW of cross-border links.
Germany boosted its wind power capacity by 12 GW over the past two years with
the total now just above 45 GW, data from Platts Renewable Power Tracker shows.
Germany also added some 7 GW of highly-efficient new coal-fired power
generation over the past two years with total coal-fired capacity around 27 GW,
data from Platts Powervision shows.
(Platts.com, 12 Feb 2016)
