[roenxi]

The market reacts quite quickly if a company is going bankrupt; so assume for the sake of argument that all the electricity producers in the market are turning at least a small profit.

If power prices are negative but the provider is making a profit, then at some other time prices will have to be very high to bring the average price sold positive.

I assume that is what is happening here. I don't have a lot of respect for SA's electricity strategy, but it may work out. At least there are interesting opportunities if anyone can think of a way of profitably sinking vast amounts of power; there has to be something useful that can be done. Ironically in this case, using more power might reduce power prices because the providers don't need to charge as much in off-peak times.

[rosege]

So perhaps they should drop the costs to encourage more usage and thereby also reduce the wholesale cost.

[roenxi]

Bunch of stuff they should be doing; negative power prices are an economic emergency. If your lot can figure out something that works for consumers I'm sure we'll start copying it up and down the east coast. I'm glad it was NT doing this expensive experiment and not NSW; for all that we've mucked up our electricity markets something shocking.