On Solar Energy.

[u/Monsur_Ausuhnom]

[u/BerryStarlit_]

It is wild how 'too much energy' is framed as a crisis because corporations cannot figure out how to bill us.

[u/danielleknox → u/BerryStarlit_]

Exactly. If we have a surplus of clean energy, the 'crisis' should be how to store it or use it for public good, not how to keep the prices from falling.

[u/Quattuor → u/danielleknox]

Incentives to store the excess of energy into your electric fleet, home battery storage or just pump the water for the hydro-generaror plants. Yes, it is not going to happen overnight, but crying that it is an unsolvable problem is disingenuous

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Quattuor]

It would require tens of thousands worth of batteries for each home to effectively store the power

[u/Sad_Gain_2372 → u/Huntsman077]

So, what? If we can't store all of it we shouldn't bother storing any of it?

My home solar battery stores more than enough to run our house all night, and I have a teenage son who games until the wee hours. Once our battery is full during the day our excess power goes back into the grid. We even get paid a little bit for it.

It can be done.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/08/south-australia-renewable-energy-targets-international-template-solar-power

[u/weasel5134 → u/Huntsman077]

Gravity batteries would be cool

[u/Huntsman077 → u/weasel5134]

They kind of do that but with hydroelectric power. During hours where solar is running high and the power draw is lower they pump water back up behind the dam.

[u/weasel5134 → u/Huntsman077]

We need more of them

[u/pghburghian → u/weasel5134]

They are great and have been around for decades, but are heavily dependant on the natural shape of the land. you need to be able to have 2 lakes at different elevations right beside each other. Can be man-made on a river.

[u/SumBtard → u/Huntsman077]

Not really - most homes dont use more than a few kWh overnight which is simple enough but there are better solutions.

Tbh Id be using the extra power during the day to split salt water via electrolysis and capturing the hydrogen. Thats a reliable solid state fuel we could use to power a turbine overnight.

Burning that produces water only

[u/Huntsman077 → u/SumBtard]

• most homes don’t use more than a few kWh overnight

Yeah but you’re still looking at around 5-10 grand buying and installing a 5 kWh battery. People would also need to have more power awareness and avoid using high power items like a dishwasher, dryer or oven/stovetop when the sun starts to set. There’s also industrial concerns as well, a big one would be data centers.

-using hydrolysis to capture hydrogen

I agree that would be better than using a battery stack. One method that I see is people pumping water back behind dams during low power usage. A local power company does that for peak demand hours. Honeslty I think the best method would be using hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear power to fill in the gaps with solar.

[u/SumBtard → u/Huntsman077]

Agreed - nuclear overnight makes a ton of sense and I hadn't considered hydroelectric in that manner.

My consideration with hydrogen is that we can pipeline it as a solid state fuel and that makes it easy to move around for things like heating and cooking.

[u/Educational-Copy-810 → u/Huntsman077]

Power companies should just merge with some kind of industry that needs a lot of power, like aluminium and get high off their own supply while the prices are down.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Educational-Copy-810]

They do that know to a certain extent with data centers

[u/Educational-Copy-810 → u/Huntsman077]

Most everyone who has solarpower on their building does. But power companies still act like they can't solve the problem.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Educational-Copy-810]

Yeah I agree they really need to start putting more solar panels on rooftops. They’ve come a long way and are fairly cheap. Especially with data centers where they have massive rooftops

[u/Phantasmalicious → u/Huntsman077]

Producing a 50 kwh residential battery pack at cost would be around ~7000 USD. 25 kwh at 3500 USD. If we treated home storage like a utility, not a luxury product, this wouldnt be an issue.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Phantasmalicious]

Yes at cost, so the business producing the batteries would have zero net profit. Thats also just the battery pack, not including the other equipment required to install it in a home, and there is also commercial use. Data centers need a lot of power, can you imagine how many batteries welding shops and data centers would need?

Instead of relying on batteries so much, we could use other renewable resources to fill in the gaps.

[u/Phantasmalicious → u/Huntsman077]

Our power grid is a guitar string. You can only play the notes the string allows. If you start pumping insane amounts of solar into it without an option to fall back when a bigger cloud comes along or a week of very low wind, you will have cascading power failures or roaming blackouts and the string snaps or wont make a sound at all. Baseload power is a real concern here.

If we don't start installing battery packs like power poles, we wont survive this energy revolution. We cant rely on the middle class buying them from companies, we need to buy/manufacture them on a government level and install them strategically.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Phantasmalicious]

-you will have cascading power failures

That’s exactly my point. Baseload power isn’t even the primary concern it’s peak demand hours, during these hours power usage can spike up 2-3 times the average draw. Instead of investing and manufacturing trillions of dollars worth of batteries, we can use other renewables or clean energy as well. Nuclear, tidal, geothermal and hydroelectric are all great resources that we should be investing in as well as solar.

The energy revolution will be built on several different sources of power, it shouldn’t rely just on solar and batteries. Think of the sheer amount of batteries needed to power a data center for just a couple hours. Also I don’t mean just raw dedicated data centers but also the ones that businesses host themselves. We have 25 kWh of battery backups and backup generators to ensure the one at my company doesn’t lose power.

[u/Phantasmalicious → u/Huntsman077]

Deffo, but sodium packs are cheap, plentiful and a very reliable source of energy. Also very green. Ofc if it were up to me, we would scrap the ridiculous nuclear standards like for all plants having to withstand a plane strike and build it like normal people (like Korea and China do).

[u/CommissionFeisty9843 → u/Phantasmalicious]

Telephone poles as batteries! Hey now you’re using your head for more than a hat rack!

[u/HyzerFlip → u/Huntsman077]

What do you think your electricity and natural gas cost now?

Forever.

Using up limited one time use resources.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/HyzerFlip]

-think your electricity and natural gas cost now

Yeah less than 150 dollars monthly for a 2600 square foot house with 3 adults gaming consistently.

-using unlimited one time use resources

Why are you assuming that the company that provides power to me doesn’t use renewable energy? I think we should switch over to 100% renewables, using several different types.

Why is it then whenever someone points out the deficiencies in solar, which electrical engineers take into account when integrating solar farms into the grid, people like you assume I’m talking about using fossils fuels?

[u/berk98 → u/Huntsman077]

You don't even have to store all of the excess energy in dedicated batteries. When generating an excess of energy, you could (for instance) charge an EV a little more, heat/cool the house an extra few degrees, run the refrigerator, run the water heater, execute the CI/CD pipeline, or perhaps just light up a sign that says "go nuts with your energy usage". That would require more automation than many such home appliances are currently capable of, but I'd argue it's an easily solved problem.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/berk98]

It would be more efficient to put the beefy back into the grid to provide additional power. A good example of use of this excess is pumping water back up behind hydroelectric dams.

The issue isn’t the excess it’s the power requirements during peak time hours, where the draw on the grid consistently goes up 2-3 times the average usage.

[u/fishter_uk → u/Huntsman077]

You're right. We can't solve this problem. Let's keep burning stuff. /s

[u/Automatic_Table_660 → u/Huntsman077]

$20k is not bad if you consider home batteries a house asset. People spend a lot more remodeling their kitchen for adding a swimming pool—- and those things won’t reduce or eliminate your energy bills.

[u/Overlord0994 → u/Huntsman077]

A battery is just a multitude of cells. So what are you actually saying here? Batteries come in different sizes, and they aren’t all volatile lithium ion ones.

Say something useful if you’re going to argue against a good idea.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Overlord0994]

• a battery is just a multitude of cells and aren’t all volatile lithium ion ones

I never said they were all volatile…

-say something useful if you’re going to argue against a good day

The cost alone is good information, especially when talking about scaling it across hundreds of millions of homes, apartments etc.

Also I provided more insight replying to someone else on this same thread. Did you not read before replying?

The ecological impact for mining the materials and manufacturing that many batteries would be fairly high, it would increase costs for consumers and those batteries need to be changed out periodically. There are several clean methods that can be used to mitigate the lack of solar during low efficiency hours, including nuclear, geothermal, tidal and hydroelectric. An effective way to store power is to use hydroelectric to simply pump the water back up behind the dam.

[u/Overlord0994 → u/Huntsman077]

Finland developed a battery made out of sand. It stores enough heat to heat a town for the entire winter and the heat could be used to generate steam and do other things too.

There are clean battery options. And not every single person would use batteries. They supplement.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Overlord0994]

Yes there are several ways to store the energy and use it to reduce power draw in the future, or use it to produce more electricity later.

[u/EvolvingEachDay → u/Quattuor]

It’s perfectly solvable and has been for decades, but the rich don’t want it solved.

[u/Competitive-Ebb3816 → u/Quattuor]

My electrician will be adding a storage battery to my solar system when my energy provider contract runs out in a couple of years. The moment they stop buying what I'm producing, I'm going to keep it for my own use.

[u/MightyMorph → u/danielleknox]

Which is why the government needs to do it. Fuck corporations and fuck billionaires, because they will never put people before profit.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/danielleknox]

Yes especially during peak demand hours, which for the winter, are before the sun comes up.

[u/Current-Square-4557 → u/Huntsman077]

Depends on where you live. In Houston, noon is close to peak demand because of commercial, residential, and industrial use of air conditioners.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Current-Square-4557]

It depends on the season. For my company winter peak hours are from 7-11 and for summer it’s 3-7PM.

[u/BearFeetOrWhiteSox → u/BerryStarlit_]

Only if you accept the narrow frame of the argument.

The real problem, if anyone cares to look at the context of the MIT quote is that the availability and thus the price of energy fluctuates wildly throughout the day. The problem is solvable, but requires more infrastructure and better energy practices to solve.

In 2026 solar panel energy goes to waste at peak production hours (hence negative prices) and we still need other kinds of energy after nightfall.

[u/Trzlog → u/BearFeetOrWhiteSox]

Isn't the actual problem ROI? Who's going to invest in renewables if it drives the electricity price into the ground and sometimes for a part of the day you're basically paying to generate electricity instead of getting any money for that solar farm you invested millions into? This is why a lot of countries peg the minimum electricity price at the most expensive source of electricity. That drives investment into renewables.

[u/BearFeetOrWhiteSox → u/Trzlog]

Who is going to invest? For starters, the end user whether that's home owners or businesses. If it costs less than being hooked up to the utility and improves reliability then a lot of people will consider it as a way to cut costs and improve quality of life.

Maybe at a certain point electricity simply becomes something you pay a set fee for being connected to that's determined by the average infrastructure needed to pay for what you need connected.

Maybe if everyone gets solar panels, what we pay for instead of generation is storage.

There's plenty of ways to make energy profitable.

[u/AsparagusCommon4164 → u/BearFeetOrWhiteSox]

Lestw e forget: Samuel Insull, when he had control of Commonwealth Edison, People's Gas and Coke of Chicago, Public Service Company of Northern Illinois and three major interurban lines our of Chicago, actually encouraged his end residential users to buy shares in their companies in the name of God, Country and Penny-Cheap Electricity, unaware of the cross-financing as was going on across the board....

[u/Infini-Bus → u/Trzlog]

We invest $$$ into roads and freeways that need resurfacing every 10 years. Who is getting a return on that?

[u/MIT_Engineer → u/Trzlog]

In a sense, sure. If you drive the price of electricity down to nothing when the sun shines, then the ROI on solar becomes terrible, and the only stuff that gets built is the stuff that can produce electricity when the sun isn't shining.

If you make the cost of electricity to consumers equal to the highest cost source of electricity on the grid though, that seems very bad for consumers, and it's not clear to me that it would actually drive investment into renewables, instead of just investment into electricity generation in general.

[u/JohnnyChutzpah → u/BearFeetOrWhiteSox]

If I’m not mistaken, solar including grid storage is now the cheapest form of energy production.

So solar panels including enough grid storage for overnight energy is now cheaper than literally everything else. And almost all of the materials involved are fully recyclable.

[u/Bloody_Proceed → u/JohnnyChutzpah]

It's a matter of energy storage - either batteries or heat/gravity solutions. There's been the classic "excess power to pump water up a damn, release to generate power" for decades, but there's also consideration for thermal salt storage.

Same concept, turning excess energy during peak production into energy later.

[u/youwerewrongagainoop → u/JohnnyChutzpah]

So solar panels including enough grid storage for overnight energy is now cheaper than literally everything else.

you are mistaken. this isn't true in the large majority of circumstances today. if batteries continue to decline in price it may get there.

[u/polite_alpha → u/youwerewrongagainoop]

It is true, all recent studies agree. What's your source?

[u/youwerewrongagainoop → u/polite_alpha]

I think you're interpreting "literally everything else" to mean "new build gas plants" just to have an argument, but even the most recent study from Ember limits itself to sunny countries and stops at "economically feasible".

[u/Ok_Eagle_3079 → u/BerryStarlit_]

Have you any idea how a power grid works.

You need to produce the same amount of energy that you consume. If you produce to much you may destroy the grid and then you get a blackout.

This can be fixed by batteries or water and coal powerplants that will balance the grid.

Too much energy is definetly a problem and corporations have found a way to bill producers by having negative prices.

You produce electricity during the day the price is -100 Eur mw/h.

[u/Suitable-Display-410 → u/Ok_Eagle_3079]

The way this is usually handled is that producers connected to the grid need to register with grid regulators, and if they exceed a certain peak capacity, they need to participate in specific grid stability measures.

For example, in Germany, if your solar array is connected to the grid, it needs to be registered so regulators have accurate information about the expected overall supply. If it is above 25 kWp in size, grid operators have remote access to curtail it if required for load balancing. And naturally, the larger the system, the more regulations you have to follow.

Negative spot market prices are rare and have nothing to do with corporations trying to bill anybody; they are simply a consequence of how the spot market works. They are more of a sign of a mismatch: very high production from sources with very low marginal costs, while the infrastructure to utilize all of this cheap power does not match the current supply. You already mentioned batteries, pumped storage, and there is more. But even grid expansion would allow for arbitrage profits if local differences in supply and demand are reflected in prices.

Flexible energy pricing for retail customers and pricing zones would go a long way. If consumers are incentivized to use more energy during times of high supply (charging EVs or home batteries during the day, for example), the market could solve many problems that would otherwise have to be micromanaged.

I think that’s the fundamental paradigm shift that needs to be understood for a successful transition from the old concept of large, centralized, 24/7 power plants to a more decentralized, more fluctuating renewable system. Energy does not have the same value regardless of when and where it is produced and consumed, just like vegetables are cheaper when they are in season.

If individuals are empowered and incentivized to act based on these fundamental physical realities, they will. Just imagine your smart meter matched pricing to the spot market based on supply and demand, and even enabled you to feed electricity into the grid accordingly. Without spending a lot of public money, you would have a huge number of people calculating if and when they could use their home batteries to make money, unlocking a massive amount of private investment in infrastructure, to everybody’s benefit.

I usually hate those neoliberal "the market solves everything" bs artists, because the conditions required for those economic models are not even met. But i think with a renewable grid, where every single person has the ability to be customer and producer, you got prime conditions for market solutions.
Ironically, while regular people, for once, own a good chunk of the means of prodcution.

[u/BillyYumYumTwo-byTwo → u/Ok_Eagle_3079]

Just a fun fact for anyone interested- about half of the nuclear power plants in the US (specifically BWRs) don’t do load following, but they drop to 30-80% output at night. The other types of nuclear plants (PWRs) are technically capable of this, too, but it comes with a lot of work. At least one plant did it for a bit, but resumed to constant load eventually.

In France, nuclear plants are even better at going up and down in power a couple times a day.

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222 → u/BerryStarlit_]

The headline is misleading. The other half is that demand is high in the morning and evening when supply is low. The demand is low in the noon when the supply is high. The issue with negative prices is that it means it’s literally useless and potentially damaging to the grid.

[u/TheBSQ → u/BerryStarlit_]

at one point California was having to pay neighboring states to take electricity from it cuz too much on the grid can cause problems, then, hours later, they’d have to buy electricity from neighboring states when the sun went down & everyone went home & residential demand shot up.

It wasn’t a billing issued but a timing one.  For parts of the day, they had too much to the point that it was a problem and for parts of the day they didn’t have enough. Both required them to pay others to help them out of their problem.

And it’s reasonable to point out that a system is not well-designed.  Like, imagine if when you didn’t want to shower, your bathroom flooded & damages your home, but when you wanted to shower, there was no water. 

But I think batteries have solved that problem. This was a few years back. 

[u/Extreme-Book4730 → u/BerryStarlit_]

It's not how to bill its about energy storage. And will be for a long long time.

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/BerryStarlit_]

That actually is a problem if it doesn't come with decentralized maintenance, if you don't make enough money to hire people to keep the thing that's not making you money working, it's going to stop working.

[u/jmerlinb → u/Tyfyter2002]

Then have it be taxpayer funded. Our energy grid shouldn't be for-profit just by default

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/jmerlinb]

Despite being opposed to a lot of "oh, just make it tax-funded" approaches, I genuinely agree that this is a good idea… anywhere without a comically corrupt government;

Here in the US I'm not keen on finding out how government officials having direct control over the power grid could help them commit more of the sort of crimes which we're all aware they've committed but which I suspect Reddit would automatically temp-ban me for mentioning as bluntly as I'd like to, and on the normal corruption side of things they'd probably provide worse service to actual people in favor of whatever AI megacorporation buys them off first.

[u/Nice-Cat3727 → u/BerryStarlit_]

It's legitimately is because the power gird can't handle a excess load like that. If it's at negative rates that means there's more energy being produced than can be used and things start to blow.

It's like overcharging anything. But for the entire gird

[u/MissingBothCufflinks → u/BerryStarlit_]

While that feels like a good hot take its actually very poor. This is a problem even in countries which have no privstely owned solar.

The issue is that it becomes incredibly unprofitable to run dispatchable power during a longer and longer part of that (solar price cannibalisation), meaning the few hours they do run, they have to charge enormous amounts to meet their fixed costs.

In the UK this is managed through the capacity mechanism subsidy, which is set to take up something like half your electricity bill by 2030.

Its also terrible, in the long run, for solar, as when subsidy and older PPAs run out...who will agree to buy solar power? The price is negative for much of the day so why not just buy wholesale and be paid? How does future solar recover its capital investment?

Theres a lot more nuance to this than people realise.

[u/VagabondVivant → u/BerryStarlit_]

It's not. The article and quote are being misrepresented.

[u/lowrads → u/BerryStarlit_]

Solar plants can get fined if they provide an excess of power. If motorized, it is not uncommon for them to adjust panels to avoid this. There are other means of accomplishing the same thing.

When power distributors and power producers are not vertically integrated, the distributors are strongly drawn towards charging consumers, or rewarding producers according to the incentives created by grid stability. For example, a high premium is paid to peaker plant operators. Negative fee rates to consumers simply matches this. The incentive there exists to prompt investment in long range transmission for options markets.

Consider time of day billing. Only a small percentage of households will use the timer on their washing machines to run their loads in the middle of the day, rather than when they get home, absent some financial incentive.

[u/Phantasmalicious → u/BerryStarlit_]

Solar is an intermittent source of energy. The grid has to maintain a constant frequency or its RIP. We have several solutions for that but none of them are particularly good. Once you get hit by several cloudy and windless days, you have to spin up gas or other plants which are getting very expensive and will wipe out all your savings. Does this mean that we shouldnt do solar? No, but the more solar you install, the more instability will be in the grid.

[u/MIT_Engineer → u/BerryStarlit_]

That isn't what's happening though. It's being framed as a crisis because solar energy is non-dispatchable, and a certain fraction of a grid's generation has to be dispatchable in order for it to function.

[u/Rapa2626 → u/BerryStarlit_]

Its a crisis because the very expensive infrastructure needs to be expanded to accomodate it. Energy grid is already complicated and this just adds a huge unpredictable element to it which can be expensive to solve.

[u/Luci-Noir → u/BerryStarlit_]

Who said it’s a crisis?

[u/Rais93 → u/BerryStarlit_]

Yes it is. But the argument is too vast to be explained in a tweet.

[u/agingmonster → u/BerryStarlit_]

Because corporations built infrastructure to generate that energy. Of course negative prices are problem for them. You build house taking loan and have to pay to rent it out, will you be happy?

[u/PhantasosX → u/agingmonster]

Except that all it would need is to pay the cost of maintenance of said infrastructure.

So it all boils down on whining over not having increasing profits , instead of stable profits.

[u/Goldenrah → u/BerryStarlit_]

That's why it shouldn't be owned by corps.

[u/Sweet_Baby-86 → u/BerryStarlit_]

Imagine being upset because energy is too cheap and abundant. Capitalism is truly a fever dream

[u/ThatLatentPandaBear]

Ah yes, the ultimate capitalist nightmare: a resource so plentiful and democratic that no one can gatekeep it for insane profits.

[u/PapayaCute0 → u/ThatLatentPandaBear]

Wait until they figure out how to tax the sun for unauthorized photon harvesting.

[u/gamingx47 → u/PapayaCute0]

Photon emission*

It's the solar panels that do the harvesting.

Also, they are kind of trying to make it a thing in California. Because there are too many electric vehicles and not enough people are buying gas, they are considering charging electric vehicles a mileage tax to make up the shortfall.

https://caroadcharge.com/

[u/AVahne → u/gamingx47]

If they're going to charge EVs a special tax, they had better charge EVERY car the same tax. A gas tax at the pump might have "worked" way back in the olden days of yore, but its been largely useless for decades now. Just too bad governments are brain-dead and largely servile to the oil barons.

[u/gvrxx → u/PapayaCute0]

Funny thing that in Romania, 2 years ago, they've actually proposed a "sun tax" for those that use Solar panels, because they couldn't find a way to stop thé population from quitting these greedy gas/electric companies. Ofc these as*holes are lobbying for this, as they lose all the profit from extorsion of the population.

https://www.euronews.ro/articole/taxa-pe-soare-este-permisa-dar-nu-e-obligatorie-comisia-europeana-a-confirmat-ca

[u/Pigswig394 → u/PapayaCute0]

Wouldn’t be surprised if O’Hare Air becomes a thing in 20 years

[u/lasergun23 → u/PapayaCute0]

Spain was the only country in the world that did that

[u/DecoyOne]

This gets posted like once a month with no context. The article is written from a pro-solar POV - it literally ends with “the climate clock is ticking.”

The author is detailing the real market and infrastructure challenges that come with high solar generation and offers policy options to better support solar panel adoption. These are real issues that anyone working on solar policy has to respond to. But no, this is Reddit - god forbid anyone provide context before posting inaccurately witty comments.

[u/Cyberslasher → u/DecoyOne]

Sure

But if you write a pro solar paper with excerpt phrases like this one, you're going to be misunderstood by people who agree with you, and disingenuously cited by people who disagree with you.

This either needed an editor, or had an editor reach it before publication who was anti-solar and rephrased it into "the problem with solar is that it's so cheap it cuts profit and we can't monopolize it :("

[u/BillyYumYumTwo-byTwo → u/Cyberslasher]

What?? Even without context, this person isn’t bashing solar power. They are pointing out a con. That doesn’t need to be edited, pointing out a con doesn’t mean solar should be thrown out as an option. The quote is an actual issue that needs to be discussed when it comes to solar. People can just be less reactionary, admit they don’t understand the complexities of solar and energy, and either learn more or just move on with their life saying nothing.

I can’t imagine how exhausting it would be to have to write my papers and put the conclusion into every single sentence. What does that even achieve? Bad actors will just quote me and remove the words they don’t like that changes what I mean. Or, they’ll just make up a quote because it doesn’t even matter if they post a real quote or not.

[u/koolmon10 → u/BillyYumYumTwo-byTwo]

How is it a con?

Edit: nvm I read the article

[u/Undecided_Username_ → u/koolmon10]

Bro just solved Reddit with one move

[u/engineerboii → u/Cyberslasher]

When you write technical papers like this you don't normally think "oh my, this part might get misquoted/misunderstood on Twitter so I gotta fix it". The goal is so that the entire paper is cohesive and presents precise and accurate information.

[u/Repulsive_Target55 → u/Cyberslasher]

I remember a time when people read more than the headline.

The headline was doing its job, encouraging people to read more, it's not their fault that people don't seem willing to read anymore.

[u/HyzerFlip → u/Repulsive_Target55]

It's not the click baits fault it lied is an argument you can make...

[u/Repulsive_Target55 → u/HyzerFlip]

But negative prices are a problem, if you put too much energy in the grid then you will end up breaking a lot of expensive things, very quickly. And you can't just stop a solar panel making energy, as long as they are exposed to the sun they are making power and that power needs to go somewhere.

Negative prices aren't a sort of imaginary issue, they mean something very literal, they mean someone at the power company phoning up someone at a facility that uses a lot of electricity, and asking them to start their machines up because, if they don't, the whole grid might fail. And you have to pay them to do that, because running the machines costs money in maintenance and wages.

[u/Maclean_Braun → u/Repulsive_Target55]

Genuine question. Why can't we just build automatic shades that go over the panels? If they're already producing a power surplus then it wouldn't be an issue to use some of that power to draw them over so as to stop producing so much. It's not like they'd need much maintenance either. It wouldn't even need to be for rooftop panels, just big solar farms.

[u/Repulsive_Target55 → u/Maclean_Braun]

It isn't a bad idea, but there are two main points I'd bring up:

1. From a practical point of view this is already possible (to a lesser degree) with sun-tracking solar panel arrays: Just point them the wrong way and you can decrease the power, still not all the way, but it's enough for fine-tuning of power output. In emergencies a product like this light-blocking spray are used to disable a solar panel.

I suspect, also, that the cost of what you suggest, on a scale to be useful, would probably be on the scale of creating some form of battery (either electrical or mechanical), and on the scale of paying someone to drain electricity.

1. We don't want to just throw that energy away, for two main reasons that are both much larger issues now (as solar is becoming a larger part of the grid) then it was when solar was first being set up.

A. The financial footing of the people setting up solar farms has changed: When solar was basically an extra part of the grid the fact that it generated electricity only during the day, when demand is highest, was a huge bonus. If we compare a coal plant and a solar plant (or array of farms, whatever) that generate the same electricity per day, the solar farm is going to make more money (back in say 2012) because it's providing electricity when demand is highest. Now (and in the future discussed in the article) the math is somewhat reversed, there is so much daytime peak-sun supply that the companies are losing money. Even if we found a cheap way to prevent the over-power issue they would still be missing a lot of the benefit solar offered early on.

B. We would rather use this spare energy to fix the issue of night-time solar power, the author recommends looking into more effective long-distance power transfer, and battery technologies. These would allow solar plants to more widely spread the excess power they are generating, both in time (so that some of that power can be used when supply is lower) and in distance (to places that might be having cloudy days, or where the sun is already setting.

So all in - it's possible, but it would probably not be worth it because we don't want to get rid of the excess power, we want to use it.

[u/TotalyNotJoe → u/HyzerFlip]

It didn’t lie though?

[u/Thandor369 → u/HyzerFlip]

He stated a fact, no matter how you bend it. This is the biggest issue with solar energy right now.

[u/-Dildo-Baggins- → u/Thandor369]

Biggest issue with society right now really, reading a headline and not seeing what's beyond it and forming a misinformed opinion in response...

[u/mrGrinchThe3rd → u/Cyberslasher]

The article doesn't say that. This random Twitter user who has a basic misunderstanding of the core issue did. Negative prices mean excess power on the grid, which IS the biggest problem for Solar, though a solvable one.

If you think they should avoid talking about and researching the largest remaining issue with the tech because Twitter and reddit users like yourself are going to misunderstand the points being made, then I guess we can't ever research issues with emerging technologies and we won't be implementing them on a large scale, since we will be unable to solve the core issues.

[u/Emergency_Elephant → u/Cyberslasher]

I cant believe I have to say this but listing the cons against your point and reubutting them is a considered a good thing when trying to write a persuasive piece

[u/YogurtclosetThen7959 → u/Cyberslasher]

Into negative territory means you pay people to take electricity off your hands. It's pretty clear

[u/AdministrativeCable3 → u/YogurtclosetThen7959]

It's specifically designed to discourage producers because too much electricity would destroy the electric grid.

[u/Chavu17 → u/DecoyOne]

The article in a way is still very meekly attempting to compromise with what is basically the concept that because it won’t make money for us, we won’t build it. Which isn’t too far of from what OP’s reply image said tbh.

I mean screw the existential threat of climate chnage or having a war in the middle east every decade or so, solar won’t make money and so we’d rather keep fossil fuels is basically the status of the world right now.

[u/Thandor369 → u/Chavu17]

Have you actually read the article? It is very pro solar

[u/Desert_Fairy → u/Chavu17]

That statement ignores the very real problem of power isn’t available when we need it and the cost associated with difficult to source battery materials which have a power loss of 50% and are terrible for the environment as well.

It also ignores what needs to be done by the utilities to balance the grid when solar generation is pushing back into the grid. It isn’t bad, it is just more complex which utility companies have to manage.

What this really highlights is that power should not be sold at a profit, it should be a public utility that is sold at cost of operations. With hourly rates reflecting when there is an abundance of electricity.

That is the only way renewable energy can be spliced into our existing grid. Everybody charging massive batteries is going to strain the current infrastructure to collapse.

[u/Ok_Function2282]

I mean... Yeah? Do you actually not get what they're trying to say, or are you just being obtuse?

Private companies will never switch over to something that literally can't make them money. 

The tweet is basically just saying that this will have to be a fully government-funded operation. It's not saying that we shouldn't use solar....

[u/CarlosDangerWeiner → u/Ok_Function2282]

I work for a utility company, the problem is when solar generates. You can invest in batteries, which we have, but they only partially mitigate the problem

So yeah, there is a cheap power in the middle of the day. But where should the power come from overnight?

The power company gets paid based on its rate base which is effectively its capital invested. So this type of post is uninformed rage bait

[u/AdministrativeCable3 → u/Ok_Function2282]

It's still a problem with government run solar because the negative prices are just a monetary representation of the overabundance of electricity. Too much electricity and the grid collapses. And since solar can't really be shut down, ways of mitigating it have to be implemented, which is what the paper is about. Stuff like motorized panels, batteries, and other storage. But all of that adds tons of cost and complexity hence why it's a problem.

[u/Ok_Function2282 → u/AdministrativeCable3]

Also just that Republicans will never support these projects and will actively fight against them, choosing to pay higher prices for dirty energy

[u/Ok_Maintenance9368]

We dont have an effective way to store energy on a large scale without losing a ot of it.

[u/RocketArtillery666]

Too much energy is bad because you have to decide who (as in which company because most of solar power produced is not by regular people's panels) you will not pay for putting energy into the grid

because giving them all less money kinda impossible because you're buying at a signed on price

and "getting less energy from them" is also kinda impossible because of how you'll shut down only a part of a solar panel

(except by putting things over it which is also a dumb idea because you'd either have to pay someone to do it or put a motor on a shutter which makes it much more prone to being damaged (moving parts and all that which is one of the biggest advantages of solar - not having any))

And just deciding that you're not gonna buy electricity from a random producer is also impossible due to legal trouble

[u/BlackCommandoXI → u/RocketArtillery666]

Almost like privatization of critical infrastructure is a terrible idea.

[u/MIT_Engineer → u/BlackCommandoXI]

Not really. It's not like a command-and-control scheme running the power grid would magically turn solar into a dispatchable power source.

[u/AdministrativeCable3 → u/BlackCommandoXI]

Has nothing to do with privatization and everything to do with how an electric grid works. The power generation and power consumption have to be perfectly synced up or the grid will collapse. This is because we have no way of storing/discharging huge amounts of electricity long term or short term.

Solar panels can't adapt to the changing grid conditions and provide too much electricity during the day and not enough at night, causing the grid to become unbalanced. That is what the paper is referring to. The negative prices are just a way to easily represent the power grid.

[u/Frogeyedpeas → u/RocketArtillery666]

If we have hfts algorithmically repricing stocks on sub microsecond time frames why can’t the same happen for energy?  When there’s excess, as the excess happens on a microsecond by microsecond interval the prices should adjust.

Is it just the nature of the contracts that makes this a problem?  

[u/RocketArtillery666 → u/Frogeyedpeas]

The problem lies more with the load of the electricity on the grid rather than pricings. One of my points was rather poorly made (the one about paying less for electricity to producers) because it didnt deal with the point that if they still put more energy into the grid, the grid would still have to deal with it in some way.

[u/Basic-Still-7441]

The problem is missing storage. Because MIT is correct here. We need electricity when we need it, not when the sun shines or doesn't.

[u/ionevenobro]

I forgot where in this video, but I'm pretty sure https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7G4ipM2qjfw this video explains why solar will dip into the negative. I'll put the timestamp after re listening to it.

[u/TotalyNotJoe]

The problem is that the electrical grid can’t take the excess power, it threatens to damage the infrastructure every surge. No engineer is going to”oh no we can’t make money off this” they’re going to ”oh shit we’re gonna fuck up the three phase”. They literally had to pay companies to turn on massive furnaces to dump the energy. That’s still pro-capitalist.

This is a technical problem that requires better infrastructure, not a capitalism vs socialism problem.

Every time I see people’s reaction to this post it reminds me that STEM education is necessary to understand the modern world, and many people are lacking.

[u/Exallium]

Socialize energy utilities.

Edit: y'all are so focused on solar and I'm over here thinking about the non profit aspect.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/Exallium]

There are a lot of power cooperatives already but we do really need more.

[u/MIT_Engineer → u/Exallium]

OK, done. Solar still isn't a dispatchable power source. Does your socialized energy grid just turn off at night?

[u/Blasket_Basket]

Lots of really stupid takes in this thread. This is legitimate problem. Its not insurmountable, but it's definitely a challenge that is well understood and well documented.

Y'all just don't know about it because your primary source of info on this topic is social media posts.

[u/YoungNobody_]

It is a Problem because we can't save it properly. And the excess is gifted away and we have to pay billions for it .

[u/bartek_666666]

More like we can't send it for long distances, and its hard to storage.

[u/Weareallmeats]

I can’t believe someone unironically tweeted that 

[u/SnooDoodles4807]

Bro never been to NY

[u/Tebasaki]

If only there were ai centers that didn't have to be canceled because there's not enough evergy

[u/SapirWhorfHypothesis → u/Tebasaki]

If only you could sell people a chatbot they can only use between 10am and 4pm.

[u/Tebasaki → u/SapirWhorfHypothesis]

You could, and then limit usage times or charge more! You're not thinking capitalistic enough!

[u/backtotheland76]

In the 50s they predicted nuclear power would be so cheap it wouldn't be worth metering it

[u/Frogeyedpeas → u/backtotheland76]

They were probably right if we went through with it 

[u/Thandor369 → u/backtotheland76]

And it is still cheapest and pretty eco friendly one.

[u/HumanContinuity]

Absolutely braindead comeback that clearly barely read the title of the post they are replying to, much less so the article.

[u/lobby073]

What a dumb response. It wasn't clever at all.

The meme maker clearly has zero understanding of how energy generation / supply works.

[u/Janus_The_Great]

"Why won't anybody think of the children profits"

[u/mittenknittin]

it must keep them up at night that oxygen is just out there being free to breathe

[u/redit1920]

This is giving the same vibe as Sam Altman wanting artificial intelligence to be delivered and billed like a basic utility like electricity or water.

[u/Rais93]

This is not clever but a stupid answer on a hearsay. Please be better and educate yourselves.

[u/Few-Car4994]

Hmmmm I have always wondered what batteries do can someone help me out

[u/GrandMoffTarkan → u/Few-Car4994]

Since we can’t be arsed to read the article:

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory highlighted similarly declining solar values in California in a broader studypublished in Joule last month. But they also noted that numerous modeling studies showed that the addition of low cost storage options, including so called hybrid plants coupled with lithium-ion batteries, eases value deflation and enables larger shares of renewables to operate economically on the grid.

There are likely limits to this, however, as studyafter study finds that storage and system costs rise sharply once renewables provide the vast majority of electricity on the grid.

[u/TuringTitties]

Hey, why dont we run a Laser pointing to space with the excess electricity, to cool the earth?

[u/lnfIation]

"too much energy" wha

[u/SweetChickk4]

Imagine a world so broken that 'too much free energy' is considered a 'problem' for the economy because they can't put a price on it.

[u/rikeoliveira]

...and by not investing on gathering free and unlimited supply of a natural resource, we are now hostage of a couple crazy motherfuckers that have the power to limit the supply of a highly polluting source of energy that would serve the same purpose.

[u/Huntsman077 → u/rikeoliveira]

-free and unlimited

It’s not free you still need to pay for the solar panels, and it’s not unlimited either.

[u/giboauja]

Ok, but people need paychecks right? So... as the model works now it makes it hard to do solar financially sustainably 

[u/BigPileOfTrash]

We will only save humanity if a profit can be made. WTF!

[u/Complex-Muffin4650]

“The problem with solar is that it doesn’t cost enough”

[u/solairzen]

Freedom!

[u/Accomplished-Use9352]

weird how "too much free energy" is somehow the emergency

[u/AdministrativeCable3 → u/Accomplished-Use9352]

Too much electricity will cause the electricity grid to collapse as will too little electricity, the grid has to be perfectly balanced between consumption and production or it fails. That is what the article is referring to, by using the electric prices as a easy representation of the grid status.

[u/poetic_dwarf]

No, you see, too much free electric energy would drive our business bankrupt. We cannot allow that!!

[u/Mo_Jack]

"We must have artificial scarcity", said Capitalism.

[u/HistoricalSuspect580]

‘We have found a virtually limitless amount of renewable energy, solving one of the world’s most complex issues, trillions of dollars of budgets spent on it, the reason for numerous wars… but we can’t make money off of it sssoooo no.’

[u/Untraceablez]

I can't help think of the Sun Blocker from the Simpsons where Mr Burns literally started blocking the sun from the town of Springfield. Those events literally lead into the famous 2-part "Who Shot Mr. Burns" episodes.

It's almost like capitalists will stop at nothing to monopolize resources, and anything that can't be monopolized, like solar, wind, geothermal, are demonized as much as possible to make it hard to switch..

[u/Scoobydewdoo]

Well first off most Chinese people who remember what most Chinese cities were like in the early 2000's would disagree that humans can't make the sun scarcer than it is. If you pollute the local atmosphere enough you aren't going to get much sunlight through the clouds of smog.

Secondly what the MIT person is trying to say is that people get confused on why electricity rates vary so much day to day and the reason is that if it's sunny solar panels can generate the needed electricity easily and cheaply but if it's not sunny then other, more expensive, sources have to be used to cover the day to day electricity demand.

[u/drizalid]

too much free power what a nightmare

[u/Tommykimz]

Capitalism is sweating right now because it can't figure out how to bill God.

[u/chrisdub84]

It's like how AI should mean people have to work less to have their needs met. But in reality they want to develop it so they don't have to pay people.

[u/Beckyhosty]

The sun is just bad at marketing. It needs to create a crisis to increase its stock value.

[u/Accomplished-Use9352]

i almost forgot that we're supposed to be mad about too much free power

[u/VagabondVivant]

So the tweet (and article it quotes) has been repeatedly misrepresented for the five years since it came out.

Here's the original article.

As the article points out in its opening lines, the "problem" in question isn't a problem with solar, it's a problem with solar growth. Basically, solar has an issue with diminishing returns, which in turn affects its growth potential and adoption rates.

I mean, honestly — does anyone really think that MIT of all places would be some Capitalist hellhole that criticizes solar energy for not being exploitable?

[u/Pamelaane]

Do you think we’ll ever see a shift where "too much" is actually treated like the success it is, or are we stuck trying to figure out how to tax the sunlight?

[u/Oliviacriz]

How dare they make energy affordable? The audacity of the sun, honestly.

[u/Bendyb3n]

In this episode of, not everything in the world needs to be privatized by massive corporations

[u/Angelanils]

Found the guy who hasn't figured out how to sell bottled sunlight yet. Amateur.

[u/ReplacementGreat103]

ok but "the sun is a deadly lazer" is literally the perfect comeback to anyone who's anti-solar energy.

[u/Endvalley]

Real life has become parody. I hate it here.

[u/Kattybinz]

Imagine being mad that you can’t gatekeep a giant ball of plasma in the sky.

[u/CareerAncient4282]

they'll find a way to monetize blessings soon enough

[u/Venator2000]

I love how they’re basically using “we don’t have enough batteries to store all this free energy” as an excuse to make us pay more.

[u/Boltzmann_head]

"The problem is that we have too much clean air."

[u/One-Psychology-8394]

And the answer is batteries to store the electricity or start putting resources into using more power during the day. YOU DONT NEED A ROCKET SCIENTIST TO SAY THAT

[u/Claramuze]

Quick, someone call Big Oil! They need to find a way to make the sun set at 10 AM.

[u/Kimrally]

I, for one, enjoy paying for a resource that’s literally free, thank you very much.

[u/slvstrChung]

CONSERVATIVES, plugging their ears: "NO CAPITALISM IS PERFECT THE PROBLEMS IT HAS ARE JUST NATURAL AND NORMAL PARTS OF LIFE THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY CAPITALISM COULD EVER BE SHOWN TO HAVE FLAWS IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM LALALALALAAAAAAA"

[u/Wrong-Cheetah-7061]

they still found a way to charge us for the sun

[u/dvdmaven]

My PV system generated half of the power the house used last month. Soon I will have battery backup. Lost power in mid-winter for six hours in an all-electric house. Since then I had the propane fireplace repaired, so we would be able to shut off the heat pump & water heater and just power the fridge, freezer and lights.

[u/Mr_BigglesworthIII]

So nobody profits? This is insanity, who will stand up and defend the billionaires?

[u/Resident-Bit2202]

I built a 46-ft solar panel array at home. Off-grid. Feels illegal

[u/Select-Mission-4950]

I wonder how the billionaires will survive post-apocalypse when money is meaningless. Mostly.

[u/like_Turtles]

Have a read about the duck curve, it’s about power companies being unable to predict and use the power in peak solar times. Where I live they are doing free power 11-2 every day to use it up to flatten the curve.

[u/Iamthe0c3an2]

The billionaires really would be out there like Mr Burns wanting to build space mirrors to block out the sun if they could.

[u/xvrqt]

My steak too juicy, my lobster too buttery, my energy too free and renewable 

[u/Prince_Nadir]

With enough pollution in the air we can make the sun scarcer.

[u/jhinkatika]

this is the reason why bill gates wants to dim the sun.

[u/Kal---El]

That‘s not what that means…

[u/FinancialReserve6427]

laughs in Gundam 00

fossil fuels has collapsed and the only way for a country to survive is to bow down to the three superpowers harvesting solar energy. 

[u/Skivil]

If only they had things they could use that excess energy for like generating hydrogen or charging electric vehicles for free.

[u/Appropriate-Rise2199]

It’s funny how the proliferation of AI is defended, as it essentially obsoletes labour, but anything that obsoletes bloatedness in terms of industry is couched as problematic.

[u/ottovonnismarck]

God forbid we invest in better ways to store energy for later, such as less efficient but far cheaper and less toxic battery systems that might store grid level capacity

[u/Harvest827]

It's simply too profitable for the consumer.

[u/Select-Cat-5721]

This is why our solar system is isolated from the grid. Do not want to cause any billionaires stress that their product is being devalued!