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?
Generally not, no. Most manufacturers would rather turn it off as needed rather than turn it on as needed. Unpredictable outputs require unpredictable staffing rosters, introduce more risk into plant operations and does not give confidence to customers (“we need to delay your shipment”).
Desal would need very big reservoirs to be able to erratically run, but perhaps that is done off peak in some places? Aluminium is complex, you can’t let it cool too much otherwise you risk the whole process solidying (no recovery, requires rebuilding entire smeltery).
No, it’s not. It’s a practical problem, not an economic one, but leave it to the tankies here to take it as an opportunity to show how many slogans they have learned.
So why was the problem expressed in economic terms? The practical problem isn’t “oh noes there’s a price label with a minus on it”; it’s that there’s a surplus of power which is dangerous.
In reality what that represents is an opportunity for someone to come in, and store the excess power, and sell it back to the grid when supply is lower – but energy companies only want to model the flow of money going one way.
I wasn’t talking about a fire department, and neither were the tankies so I’m not sure what you’re on about
Except it’d be much less of a practical problem if the question “but who gets paid” would be taken out distributing excess energy.
How about this: power generation and distribution is not as easy as you think, it requires lots and lots of infrastructure and maintenance and that has a cost. If prices go negative too much it might become a problem to keep that running. There, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?
Negative prices are short-term self-regulation reactions of the market, they can’t stay negative long-term, just because of how the system works. So I’m not sure what you’re worried about.
Also, cut the condescending tone, it does nothing but make you look like an asshole.
Am I the only one noticing a lot of conservative economic priests in here? Is this normal?
Reactionaries grow louder as the system becomes more strained and workers more class aware.
The fact that this is a known phenomenon does not make it incorrect, lmao.
This is a real problem but you can only have so many words in a tweet. Note that the price isn’t zero but instead negative. It means there is literally too much power in the grid and it would need to be used. If a grid has too much power then it is bad. It can damage it. There are things we can build that essentially amount to batteries (or natural variants like a dam) that get charged during times of higher supply than demand and discharged during times of higher demand than supply.
Or you ask a large company to run their machines for a bit to catch up the “overgeneration” (if that’s a word).
No but see you can’t build infrastructure to solve problems. What is this the 1700s? Go ride a train, commie!
Problems are only solved by grinding humans into a fine paste/powder, or destroying things for quarterly profits. Or doing a giant mountain of cocaine.
Yes, infra can be built, but not fast enough to keep up with all the solar panels being installed. For example: In the Netherlands our network can’t keep up with the requests being put out by companies, and we’ve already been busy for the last 5-ish years to install new infra, but that shit can take over 10 (!!!) years before a large line has been added. Land needs to be bought, people need to be informed, plans need to be made or adjusted, local companies need to be hired, the materials bought in and build into new pylons, etc.
It’s a MASSIVE undertaking. Even if you talk on a local level, where “The Last Mile” is the time-consuming problem there.
Shit takes time.
What infra? Youre acting like its a single thing. Sure pumped hydro takes a while. Even small scale, water towers on buildings. Sure.
But build a metal smelting thing. Take a crack at fusion. Use crypto mining techniques to tap cables and install massive racks of computers to do comedic deep fake smut of fascist politicians. Basically all meta-capacity can be applied to this, and some of it is really fucking portable.
Please don’t use ableist language here even if it’s just meant as a joke. Thanks.
My fault I thought this was reddit with no censorship. ill try to hold back
We don’t aim to censor anyone. Mods don’t enjoy receiving or responding to reports. Just be mindful of the words you chose as I asked. Unfortunately a word you used jokingly was reported for violating the very few and basic rules of this instance ( no bigotry, including racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia or xenophobia; ) that exist to make everyone feel welcome. “Hold back” on that and we’re all good.
