The grid always needs to be in balance to remain at a stable voltage and frequency. If you have too much supply or demand, you will destabilize the grid and it will eventually shut down to protect equipment. Negative energy prices mean the grid operator expects so much excess power on the supply side that they need to artificially raise the demand. In other words, they pay people to use – sometimes waste – energy they otherwise wouldn’t.
Either I am misunderstanding your meaning or you misunderstand how batteries work… I thought batteries do the most good when they are full, and do no good when empty. 🤔
In this case they do the most good when empty because the grid has too much energy which needs to go somewhere and that somewhere could hopefully be some empty batteries. But when the batteries are full there’s nowhere for the energy to go
The grid always needs to be in balance to remain at a stable voltage and frequency. If you have too much supply or demand, you will destabilize the grid and it will eventually shut down to protect equipment. Negative energy prices mean the grid operator expects so much excess power on the supply side that they need to artificially raise the demand. In other words, they pay people to use – sometimes waste – energy they otherwise wouldn’t.
There’s plenty of useful ways to spend that extra energy but nobody really wants to invest the time and effort to do so.
Which is why grid operators will pay anyone who will find a use for that energy during peak solar generation
I will gladly take a grant to build a powerful railcannon to shoot corrupt politicians and billionaires into space.
You have my support!
Again, so what? It’s friggin renewable energy, so what does it matter if we have to burn off some excess here and there?
Man, you would think somebody would have invented something that could regulate voltage in the last three centuries.
Oh. Wait a minute…
Yeah and it’s really unfortunate that batteries don’t exist in real life.
Batteries exist, but they won’t do you much good when they’re full.
Either I am misunderstanding your meaning or you misunderstand how batteries work… I thought batteries do the most good when they are full, and do no good when empty. 🤔
In this case they do the most good when empty because the grid has too much energy which needs to go somewhere and that somewhere could hopefully be some empty batteries. But when the batteries are full there’s nowhere for the energy to go
That’s the kind of problem capitalism is good at solving if the regulators are not captured.