VRM feature announcement: Manage Negative Energy Prices in Dynamic ESS

We are happy to introduce a new feature in Dynamic ESS that allows you to better align with the specifics of your energy contract. Some energy contracts set energy prices to ‘zero’ when they go negative, preventing customers from profiting from negative buy prices. If your contract includes this condition, you can now easily configure it within Dynamic ESS.

In the configuration settings, under the ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ prices sections, you will find a toggle that indicates whether your energy provider considers negative prices. By toggling this off, Dynamic ESS will automatically adjust calculations to use a ‘zero’ price per kWh whenever prices drop into the negative range.

This feature is flexible, allowing you to set this condition separately for buy and sell prices. If your energy provider allows negative sell prices but not negative buy prices, you can configure Dynamic ESS accordingly to ensure accurate pricing and optimal energy management.

Try out this new setting to ensure your Dynamic ESS is fully aligned with your energy contract terms.

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Tried today - czech region - price “P” between 1PM - 2PM is “- 0.45 Kč / kWh”. I add to formula “+ 3,34” for service fees and multiply it with 1.21 for VAT. So the final price for me when negative prices are allowed is 3.5 Kč / kWh - which DESS shows correctly. But when I toggled that Negative prices are not allowed, it should show 4.05 Kč / kWh (0 + 3.34 * 1.21) but DESS graph shows the same value 3.5 Kč / kWh as it was when negative prices are allowed, toggled DESS On/Off, waited few hours, but the same value 3.5 Kč / kWh as it is not taking this option into account.

Hi Michal,

I am afraid this is intended behavior. As your nett price (including service fees and VAT) is still positive, DESS considers that rather than the ‘p’. Are you certain about the service fees? Do you receive those when you sell energy?

I am on fix tarif when selling, this is for buying and yes, final price is positive, but what I mention is that, that it calculates final price with “p” letting negative and if I understand this function correctly, it should make negative “p” to p=0 then add service fees and multiply it with VAT, which is not happening and it calculates the formula with original “p” which is for certain hours negative, but my provider does not accept negative “p” and instead of it he bills with “p” =0. But in buy price graph of DESS this is not taken in account, but it should when there is this new feature, which should do exactly that - if “p” is for that hour negative, make it zero and than calculate the formula for final price, which of course can result in positive, but higher value than if “p” would still remain negative.

For the moment, negative prices are not taken into account for Germany. Probably it will come next year for new installations. As the negative prices can be seen day ahead, DESS should also override the grid setpoint of ESS to dump the battery SOC to grid in advance. This allows to recharge battery while prices are negative. Otherwhile energy would be lost.

The price formula determines the price Dynamic ESS works with. So this feature was made so that when that price (from the total formula) is negative, we make it 0.

I can discuss within the team if we should change it to only look at ‘p’, I will get back to you.

Thanks for understanding the issue - it is exactly as you said - in our country (I think also in others) when billing energy prices at companies which does not allow negative price it works like that - they “zero” only “p” value and than they add other fees + VAT. They do not “zero” final price per kWh.

Good day,

I was super excited when I read this announcement, however, I was a little bit sad when I realised that this is only available when selecting a dynamic provider and not when selecting fixed prices

Can this feature be made available.

Kind regards

Hello Werner,

When on a fixed price schedule, you can enter the prices as you wish. So whether those are negative or positive is up to your input.

We added this for dynamic prices, because for those contracts, you don’t control the hourly prices.

But perhaps I misunderstand. Could you elaborate a bit on what it is you would expect this feature to give to the fixed price functionality?

Hi Barbara,

Maybe i misunderstood the feature.
I am looking for a way to keep track month to month with energy imported and exported assuming the rates are fixed, and from here have a feature in the ESS to prevent that more energy is sold back to the grid than imported. Essentially so that the energy bill will always be positive or close to zero as possible.

Hi Werner,

I see. That is a useful feature, but indeed not the goal of this Dynamic ESS change. This feature is to support countries where energy providers do not support negative sell prices to the grid.

We will work on economic reports linked to Dynamic ESS in the future, and there you can probably keep track of how well Dynamic ESS does in bringing your energy bill to zero.