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consider the implications for a post scarcity future
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this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Well, you have to handle excess power produced, you can't just dump it on the ground.
If the grid produces too much power in excess of what's being consumed, parts of it need to shutdown to prevent damage.
That's why the price can go negative. They'll actively pay you to use the power so they don't have to hit emergency shutdowns.
As we build more solar plants, the problem gets exacerbated since all the solar plants produce power at the same time until it's in excess of what anyone needs. Unlimited free power isn't very helpful if when it's producing it's producing so much that it has to be cut from the grid, and when demand rises it's not producing and they have to spin up gas turbines.
That's before the money part of it, where people don't want to spend a million dollars to make a plant that they need to pay people to use power from.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/14/1028461/solar-value-deflation-california-climate-change/
They go on to talk about how getting consumption to be shifted to those high production times can help, as can building power storage systems or just ways to better share power with places further away.
Thats literally what a "ground" is electrically. The ground.
We literally design electrical systems to do exactly this, all day long. You can literally "dump power into the ground."
No, you can't.
The ground in a circuit doesn't dissipate energy
the energy gets dissipated elsewhere. That's what ground is: it's what we call the electrical part of a circuit where the energy has already been dissipated (I'm being a little casual with my electricity, but I think it's a valid statement nonetheless
ground is defined as the zero potential).
You can try this out by plugging a wire from hot to ground in your house (please don't do this). The energy gets dissipated in the wires. This is bad, because it is a lot of energy dissipated very quickly. Best case you throw the breaker. Worst case you burn down your house.
You can run it through a very large grid of aluminum fins which get hot, and you know, I don't know, boil water with it or something to be used for uh, purposes, such as heated water. :)
So... You can use it. As exactly described. By the description of the problem.
Sorry for being snarky, but this is exactly what the "paying people to use your energy" part of this situation is.
Yep absolutely
a few kW? I can burn that no problem. A MW? Well...that takes a little more thought. A GW? That's a whole different ballgame.
Haha, thanks for taking my comment with humor and stride. Yeah, you're right. I still think having too much energy is a good problem to have overall.
I do microsolar and when my batteries are full (rare), I just unplug them. The solar panels just sit baking in the sun, and then cool off at night.
What is microsolar? Tried looking it up, didn’t come up with much.
It's having a very small (typically less than 2 kW) solar system