this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Prices going negative is Capitalism's solution actually. Gives the price incentive for folks to charge their cars when prices go negative, or whatever.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I hate to be the akshully guy but the big problem isn’t economics but usage. We can’t store electricity at any kind of meaningful scale so generation needs to be balanced to meet demand. Unused excess power needs to go somewhere, hence the negative prices (the market way of saying, “please somebody take this electricity it’s doing more harm than good on the grid”).

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

I mean it is a problem, not because of capitalism but because of reality, while there can be a lot of overlap between sunny day and lots of solar energy for all the ACs running our energy usave is also significant in the afternoon when solar is winding down and the evening where its non existent and we need to balance that and transfer all the energy, copper prices are going through the roof, there are shortages in electric grid components, its nice that solar is cheap but you need to distribute that energy and at some point we will have to bite the bullet and deploy a lot of nuclear energy, last time I checked the wind/solar installations didnt even offset the energy demand increase happening that year.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

There is never surplus power with a network of a few "turn it on as needed" intensive industrial uses like haber-bosch reactors for ammonia, dessalination plants and electrolysis for aluminium or other metals...right?

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