Storm Eugen continues to sweep across Germany, leading to a high level of wind power generation. Yesterday, wind generation output totalled 931.7 GWh, accounting for 54.8% of total generation and 63.6% of electricity consumption (the grid load). Despite the high output there were no negative prices on the wholesale electricity market.

For today, however, electricity was traded at negative prices as low as minus 36.71 euros per megawatt hour on the day-ahead market between 12pm and 5pm. This could be due to the even higher feed-in from renewable energies forecast for today. Although wind power generation is likely to remain more or less the same, a higher feed-in is expected from solar PV.

The chart shows the German wholesale electricity price on the day-ahead market and the forecast electricity consumption and residual load and the actual consumption.

The forecast residual load gives the share of electricity consumption that is not expected to be covered by wind or solar PV generation. This is contrasted with the consumption forecast.
In the chart these two curves are far apart today, meaning that a large share of today's electricity consumption will probably be covered by wind and solar generation with low marginal costs. This, in turn, results in wholesale prices being low or even negative.

More information on negative wholesale prices and on why they occur can be found here.