Unlike “shithole”countries, Germany pays customers to use electricity

… just as California pays neighbouring states to use excess power generated, on Christmas Eve and early into the next day, Germany’s power trading exchange, EPEX Spot, had to pay companies and other large energy consumers up to $60 per megawatt-hour to use energy.

The company bills consumers negative rates when too much power is generated from renewables and there’s a low demand for it.

In general, experts say, solar and wind generation is wildly inconsistent, with a lot of it based on the season.

Germany alone has spent over $200bn on the renewable industry in the last 20 years; and since fossil fuel can’t shut down and restart easily, it’s better for the exchange to pay consumers (to use the excess energy being produced).

The power generation has been so high now that, for over 100 times in 2017 alone, the company had to send zero bills to consumers just to encourage them to use electricity!