Dunkelflaute

'Dark Doldrums' or in proper meteorological terms, 'anticyclonic gloom'. Although the sun is indeed shining, making it extremely cold, the PV panels are covered in snow and there is no wind whatsoever to generate power. And thus the electricity prices are high.

This year I changed to a 'dynamic price' electricity supply contract to take advantage of the ability to charge EV car and house battery in periods when PV was not sufficient. Basically pay the hourly charge on the German/European spot market plus a small admin charge. As the price has often fallen to €0 or even negative, it seemed like a good idea. 

However in the autumn things started going wrong: the computers of the spot market crashed and on two days for several hours, the prices were 5x normal. Didn't effect us as we had enough battery to get over the period, but we also encountered several weeks where there was no sunshine and no wind resulting in longer periods of 2x normal cost and no period to charge the battery at sensible prices. 

'Normal' fixed contract price is around €0.28/kWh, the cheapest price I can get is around €0.19 - sadly even when the spot price is negative, German taxes are based on the kWh used, not the price. I always look enviously at UK EV owners reporting on their £0.07/kWh rates they get first 5 or 6 hours at night. That would be perfect for me. Could charge car & house battery full every night.

As it happens,  the UK company Octopus Energy has started up in Germany, with a similar system the only difference being they can only do €0.19 for 5 night hours. However the rest of the day is at a competitive approx €0.28/kWh. Given all the hassle of watching hourly price & programming system daily, I am now changing to Octopus from 8th January.

So long story to get to today's Blip - as it hasn't made sense to charge the car at home, nor any need in last week, thought I could give it a bit of a boost from its 30% level by doing evening walk with Luna at Erkheim where the supermarket offers 22kWh charging for €0.19 equivalent to cheapest I could ever do it at home. My car can do 22kWh AC which means it takes only 3 hours from empty to full or some 300km range. So a one hour walk gives me 100km (winter - in summer 130km).

When I got to the supermarket the chargers were switched off. I guess as all shops are closed from Christmas Eve till Friday, they've decided to also shut the chargers. Shame.

But, on the good side,  I noticed the two big HPC 300kWh DC chargers, each with two plugs that were installed months ago, have finally been connected to the grid. Price is sadly €0.49, a bit too high for it to be interesting for me, but still a good backup option if in a hurry. Allows 10-80% (recommended best practice) charge in 25-30  minutes.

Still didn't the walk, lots of groups of people out walking in late sunny afternoon.