Ontario: Supply and demand anomaly leads to negative electricity pricing

[Newsjock]

Source: Canadian Press

Ontario's biggest electricity consumers found themselves paying negative prices for power on Sunday - an anomaly that stems from too much supply and too little demand, the province's Independent Electricity System Operator said Wednesday.

At one point, large consumers - those that pay market prices for electricity and consume more than $2,000 worth of power a month - were actually earning $9.41 for every megawatt hour.

In other words, utilities that had no choice but to maintain production, like nuclear power plants that require time to slow down or speed up generation, were actually paying consumers to buy their electricity.

"That is the highest negative price we've seen since the market opened in 2002," spokesman Terry Young said.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/080507/K050704AU.html