Negative electricity prices

This page tracks wholesale electricity prices that fall below zero in the public markets covered by this site. A negative price means that, for one trading interval, sellers pay to put power into the grid and buyers are paid to take it. It is a signal of surplus supply at that moment, usually strong wind or sun meeting low demand, and it is not a price anyone pays on a household bill. The tables above are rebuilt every few minutes from the grid operators’ own published numbers.

For each market the table shows whether the price is negative now, how long the current unbroken run of negative intervals has lasted, the longest run in our data, the total hours of negative prices since 1 January, the median and lowest negative price, and the number of days since the last negative interval. Hours are counted interval by interval, so markets that publish 5-minute, 15-minute or 30-minute prices are measured on the same clock. Our data window starts on the date shown under each market name, and every total covers that window only.

The count of intervals close to a market floor appears only where the floor is a verified statutory limit. Elsewhere the page says that the floor is not verified, because showing a count against an unconfirmed limit would suggest precision we do not have. The notional ledger multiplies each negative price by the metered demand of the same interval. It is an illustration of scale at wholesale prices and is not money received by consumers.

The heat maps show hour of day against day for the last 30 days in local market time, and the feed lists every negative episode that lasted at least 15 minutes. For the general mechanics behind negative prices, read why prices go negative and the methodology.