Finland Electricity Prices Flip Negative After Glut of Hydroelectric Power

What does negative electricity price even mean? Is it really worth while for power companies to pay people to receive electricity over their electrical infrastructure? Would it not be cheaper to drive a metal rod into the ground and send it there?<p>&gt; In practice, it doesn&#x27;t appear any ordinary Finns are being paid to consume electricity. People pay a markup on the electricity, and often pay agreed rates for power instead of the raw market price.<p>Or am I completely misunderstanding negative priced electricity? Is it just a clickbait term?

You can get an overview of the electricity situation in the nordics here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.svk.se&#x2F;om-kraftsystemet&#x2F;kontrollrummet&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.svk.se&#x2F;om-kraftsystemet&#x2F;kontrollrummet&#x2F;</a><p>The page is in Swedish, but i am guessing the important information is still comprehensible (Vatten = Hydro&#x2F;Water, Kärnkraft = Nuclear).<p>As you can see (if you read this today), the electricity is at €0 in both Finland, mid&#x2F;north Sweden and north Norway.<p>Finland just finished their long awaited nuclear power reactor OL3. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant</a><p>Before the new reactor the normal situation for them would be to import some electricity from Sweden&#x2F;Norway.<p>What happened today is that Finland&#x27;s nuclear power is on full steam, while wind power in Sweden is producing a lot (more than nuclear in both Finland and Sweden a the moment, Sweden has a couple of reactors down for maintenance today).<p>Hydro in Sweden is producing very little today, guessing as little as is practically possible.

Estonia (just south of Finland) just dropped to negative too a week ago. When comparing December and April, the reason it actually costs &lt;0 is that all the solar panels in the country are producing more than we can consume on weekends, inside the week it&#x27;s often 0 when there&#x27;s sunshine. In December we were paying through our nose for electricity and there was even a slight panic about it. I appreciate nuclear power, but I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;s the primary factor in Finland.

Are the electrical grids in northern Europe not interconnected? It would seem that if one country happens to be producing more energy than its people currently needs, then it should be able to sell the excess to other countries where that is not the case.

Finland has multiple interconnects to neighboring nations. So how&#x27;s them energy export revenues ?