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Supply and demand (slrpnk.net)
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[-] SaneMartigan@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Screen caps need dates. These tweets are pretty old from memory. It feels like making a joke about rotary phones not fitting in your pocket, it's out of date.

[-] MML@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Your mom needs dates, like even if she's happily married to your father, great lady.

[-] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 day ago

I dated his mom for a while

[-] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 1 day ago

"the problem with solar is we can't monopolize the sun or make it scarcer than it is"

Oh contraire. Have you seen the cloud seeding chemtrails?

[-] betanumerus@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago

Someone should tell MIT about battery storage.

[-] orbitz@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah but once people see the balance sheet in the red that's a big no no. If only someone smart, like maybe went to MIT could explain how it could be profitable overall.....like humans living being a profitiable side effect.

[-] betanumerus@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Batteries are already being used profitably all over the world.

[-] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

germany is developing a lot of hydrogen options, which is a surprisingly good strategy in a lot of fields. like, steel and cement can be produced with hydrogen alone, and germany is learning how to store and transport hydrogen through pipelines quickly.

[-] motogo@feddit.dk 3 points 1 day ago

Or, if the topology allows, use the excess electricity to fill up reservoir located up high so that it can drive turbines when needed. Organic energy storage is really cool

[-] betanumerus@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Yes, I consider this as a variation of hydro dams.

[-] I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org 2 points 1 day ago

Use excess solar to turn the wind turbines into fans and reverse global warming

[-] Landless2029@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I want those salt batteries to kick off for mass home storage. Less likely to explode like lithium.

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 106 points 2 days ago
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[-] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 130 points 3 days ago

This gets posted regularly on Lemmy, and while the economic take is tone-deaf at best, there's a real issue with generating more power than you can use. You can't just dump grid power


it needs to go somewhere. The grid needs to consume as much as it generates at all times or else bad things happen.

There are of course solutions, but that doesn't mean it's not an engineering challenge to implement.

Figuring out what to do with kilowatts is easy, but figuring out what to do with megawatts, at the drop of a hat, is substantially harder.

[-] pticrix@lemmy.ca 97 points 3 days ago

Peak energy production would be a good time to train the damn llms instead of building natural gas power plant I guess.

[-] SeptugenarianSenate@leminal.space 43 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sorry, but Johnny Oil with a shotgun to my head disagrees with your math. and while I never looked at the numbers myself, I am inclined to agree with him that such a plan would be disturbingly “unprofitable”.

-anyone around western spheres of influence in the vicinity of any sort of lever of power to authorize such changes in infrastructure investment

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[-] shweddy@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Why wouldn't batteries work?

[-] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 4 points 2 days ago

Oh they absolutely do! My only point is that grid supply must equal grid demand. There are many ways to achieve this, as folks here have pointed out.

Throttling power generation (turning off/disconnecting PV from grid for example), and storage (chemical, heat, or hydro battery) are all established technologies, they just need to be implemented properly to avoid supply/demand mismatch.

[-] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 27 points 3 days ago

Solar panels need an aperture.

Again, though, using gravity batteries or pumped hydro is a great way to manage excess juice, though these are expensive options.

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[-] BilSabab@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

the best solar and wind ad you can imagine is russian energy grid attacks and how communities had built diverse workarounds to mitigate the grid going down here and there. it also spawned local businesses to maintain these stations which greatly helps local economies.

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 7 points 2 days ago

How can the price go negative? There's always going to be maintenance costs that have to be covered if nothing else.

[-] Coleslaw4145@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Power grid stability.

Over generation and under generation can destabilize a power grid.

Thats why when there's over generation it can sometimes go negative because that power needs to go somewhere so they're willing to pay people to consume it.

[-] motogo@feddit.dk 7 points 1 day ago

Here in Sweden our electricity provider gives us a real time view of consumption and prices. When we charge the car during peaks of overproduction we get paid and the amount on our bill goes visibly down. It usually happens like 5-15 times a year during summers, and occasionally also because of excess winds on the farms year around.

[-] EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

The system is overloaded so there is no need for more power, in fact putting more power into the system has a negative effect. So there is no value to putting more power in the system and it may actually have a cost.

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 4 points 2 days ago

The system still has physical hardware that has to be maintained, the company has to charge it's customers to pay for this maintenance at the very minimum. As well as any other cost to deal with the excess power, although I don't see why that couldn't be mitigated by simply disconnecting excess panels from the system. That price should never be negative. It makes no sense. A negative price would mean they're paying their customers. For what?

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[-] sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago

It's like a dumpster filling up, where you have to pay a waste management company to come haul that stuff away, at least if people can't find a way to take it off your hands for free.

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[-] Sivecano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 days ago

I mean, a surplus in the electricity grid is actually sort of a problem, especially if you don't have any way to store the extra energy.

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[-] NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zip 24 points 2 days ago

Don't worry, there are literally startups, and Elon Musk, working right now to block sunlight from you and sell it back to you.

[-] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 2 days ago

Here's the article this is responding to if anyone wants to read it. Here's the study it's reporting on.

I'd say the tweet is at least a little bit disingenuous because the article is not arguing against the adoption of solar power, rather the focus is on what the challenges to California's solar goals are and what possible solutions might be. The tone is "economic constraints might slow down solar, how can that be addressed?" This is all from 2021, and it looks like since then the slowdown in solar capacity increase it cites as a concern has not materialized, still lots of consistent growth since then. I haven't read enough to know whether this is because the study was wrong somehow, or that it's premise that solar installation costs might not continue to drop just didn't pan out, or that the increased subsidies it suggested came through, but it's an interesting topic.

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[-] TheHighRoad@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Won't someone PLEASE think of the prices?!

[-] obvs@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago

There is literally limitless energy available to us. But as long as the people in charge benefit from people believing the supply is limited, people will be made to believe the supply is limited.

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this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
1134 points (97.7% liked)

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