This is a lesson in how electricity isn't really a commodity e.g. it's very very difficult to send some electrons from one side of the world to another.
But all commodities are like this. It is actually pretty easy to send some electrons great distances, or heck at least it's a well understood, solved problem. It's just that those interconnections haven't been built yet.
Heck, oil is probably the "default" example of what a commodity is, but we're now all acutely aware of what happens when moving that oil from one place to another becomes exceedingly difficult.
> or heck at least it's a well understood, solved problem.
It is not. As a case in my point, Spain had a blackout last year (and I completely believe they are competent professionals - the task is just hard).
> It's just that those interconnections haven't been built yet.
They haven't been built because the grid isn't just a technical problem. It's also a socioeconomic problem, and adding new interconnections would require finding who needs to pay for it ; and currently, that question has no answer.
Hard is relative. Sure, it's hard, but it's a lot simpler problem than something like being able to consume tropical fruit in a temperate country in the middle of winter.
The difference of course is that the invisible hand of the market gets that fruit into grocery stores. For various relatively good reasons, power is driven by very visible hands.
> Sure, it's hard, but it's a lot simpler problem than something like being able to consume tropical fruit in a temperate country in the middle of winter.
"Brain surgery? Well, that's not exactly rocket science..."
There are quite a few visible hands driving the fruit industry. Trade agreements, tariffs, water rights, disease/blight controls, and of course weather events/patterns are regularly in the news and discussed as it pertains to the cost and availability of various fruits (and veg).
Off the top of my head, we've recently had shortages of fresh strawberries because of weather in California, a shortage of peas because of weather too, and various changes in Trump's tariffs were done to try and alleviate the rising cost of certain fruit and veg.
Commodities are traded on type, quantity, and place. Oil of a specific grade at a specific port. Pork bellies (no longer traded) of a specific grade in Chicago. Etc.
If you want the commodities elsewhere, you have to provide for transportation. Same for electricity. Grids (or grid sections) where supply outpaces local demand and transmission to remote grids can hit negative spot prices even when neighboring grids haven't.
Unfortunately in Britain at least politicians are absolutely dead set on taking the piss / abusing this by e.g. adding huge amounts of subsidy and stealth taxes into what should be price discovery mechanisms (or for example when was the last time you heard someone talking about how cheap renewables are and discuss the CfD schemes).
> when was the last time you heard someone talking about how cheap renewables are and discuss the CfD schemes
All the time? Every single HN discussion about this ends mentioning CfD, often as if it's some secret nobody knows about even though the CfD strike prices are often headline news when they're agreed.
Although this financial instrument dates from late last century, its use in energy markets is much newer, the UK began using CfDs for electricity about a decade ago.
So, yeah, if you recall conversation about wholesale electricity prices back in 2010 they wouldn't have mentioned CfDs for the same reason they didn't mention the effect of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it hadn't happened yet. Back then renewable electricity generation schemes were subsidised very differently.
Why are you hearing it discussed critically? It's a great British innovation that has demostrably made the world a better place and provided the UK (and others who have copied it) with big investments in cheaper and cleaner energy.
It's very easy to move electrons, it's just expensive to move lot of electrons.
Just to illustrate the scale costs of energy moved in the form of natural gas:
Nord Stream 1 + Nord Stream 2 with combined capacity of the four pipes is 110 billion cubic metres per annum (3.9 trillion cubic feet per annum) of natural gas.
Calorific Value of Natural Gas from 34 to 52 MJ/m3
So energy per annum for NS1+NS2 is between 3.74^18 J and 5.72^18 J. The maximal power throughput of NS1+NS2 is then between 118GW and 181 GW.
"According to Gazprom, the costs of the onshore pipelines in Russia and Germany were around €6 billion. The offshore section of the project cost €8.8 billion."
"The EPC contracts will cover two high-voltage direct current (HVDC) links (each with a capacity of 1000 MW, amounting to approximately 1600 km of HVDC submarine and land cables), the two converter stations and the civil works associated with the land cables."
2000 MW capacity with cost of EUR 2.85 billion gives:
1425M Eur per GW of capacity
Of-course the projects have been build decades apart so inflation plays a big role and Nord Stream pipelines are currently damaged.
I think the joke was that all matter is full of electrons.
What you really want is electric potential differences that push electrons. It's the difference between having oil and having hydraulic energy (pressure and flow rate).
Heck, oil is probably the "default" example of what a commodity is, but we're now all acutely aware of what happens when moving that oil from one place to another becomes exceedingly difficult.