In Capitalism, too much renewable, clean energy is a problem.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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Won't someone please think of the stranded assets! There are returns that will go unrealized. Actually this is not sustainable since how will coal mines or oil wells get dug if there's no market for the product?
Please, just give us tax breaks for hydrogen or nuclear or hydrogen-powered nuclear, we don't care... anything but sun and wind!
Any grid will have an issue if you produce more than you use.
There are plenty of excellent reasons to criticize capitalism, but this isn't one of them...
This is one of the big problems with renewables. We need to over supply, to cope with variability. We also don't yet have the storage capacity to buffer it.
When the price goes negative, it's bad. It means that more power is entering the grid that is being used. This will destabilise the grid and cause a shutdown. Negative prices are basically a desperate attempt to get anyone to burn off the excess.
The solution is more storage either short term (batteries etc) or long term (hydrogen, or desalination).
There is no problem with instability. Solar can be instantaneously shut off with no ill effects. This is purely an economic "problem."
In principle it can be. The question is whether it's configured to allow for that.
The economic problem is a symptom of a grid stability problem.
Every system operator where renewable saturation is even remotely possible requires it for all large plants. It's a technically trivial problem that has no impact on grid stability.
There are no electrical connections to the grid without a shut off. Every wire is required to have a rated shut off at the most basic level.
Ok, so how do the grid controllers access that? How do you decide fairly which sites to turn off?
It depends on the supplier contract that has to be filed with RTE before you're allowed to connect and transmit power.
Post-scarcity?!
I admit i am not well educated on this topic but isn't this basically an amazing opportunity to produce hydrogen for next to nothing?
Yes. Or any industrial facility that requires lots of power. Think how much the economy could zoom if people didn't have to worry about the price of electricity
I suspect the problem there revolves around “how fast can you produce hydrogen?” Generally, oversupply events (and resulting negative prices) are brief. To take advantage of oversupply / negative prices, hydrogen production (or other energy storage) needs to be able to convert energy to storage very quickly.
I don’t know much about hydrogen plants, but I would guess that they aren’t super “peaky” — meaning they don’t have the capacity to ramp up and generate a lot of hydrogen quickly like they would need to really take advantage of the situation. If that is the case, hydrogen plants can still take advantage (simultaneously helping the grid and helping to stabilize prices) but not to the extent we would like.
Hydrogen electrolysis meshes well with batteries. Having enough solar to meet non-heating needs in winter even on cloudy days, means having way too much power in other 3 seasons when sunny. Enough solar and batteries to charge in winter cloudy days, and dump into heat storage (or some H2 electrolysis) on winter sunny days, would also let you overcool till 3pm in summer, and do electrolysis in 3 seasons.
Not only is H2 import/exportable for backup power or heating, but the electrolysis equipment is sizeable into truck containers that let them move around seasonally. Canada/Europe long summers is good time for electrolysis from winter sufficient solar. Southern US, can be good enough other seasons, but southern hemisphere can gain more from other hemisphere's winter.
This has been happening every spring for last 5 years, with California. This is the first time for France. It should also be happening in the same places in fall, but doesn't make the news as much.
This is power shoulder season where demand is lowest due to no heating/cooling demand. Europe has had a very warm winter/spring.
Expect news within a couple of weeks of Solar and battery records in California meeting record energy demand.
Batteries, or enough grid connected EVs, is the solution to monetizing high solar energy later on in the day.