The answer is batteries. And dismantling capitalism, but batteries first
Nah, lets squash capitalism first.
Not saying we shouldn’t do both, but in reality waiting to destroy capitalism before fixing the grid just means you have too much theory and not enough praxis.
Lets squash it with batteries, they are heavy for a reason.
Batteries for something like this would be something like a lake on top of, and at the bottom of, a mountain.
Then you use excess power to move water up, and when you need power, the water comes down through a turbine.
Honestly, this attitude is downright suicidal for our species right now. Capitalism took centuries to develop. Anything that replaces it will form over a similar time scale. And with climate change, that is time we do not have.
I’ve got some bad news though. If our markets keep ignoring the environmental cost of… well, pretty much anything, as they always have, capitalism will also fuck us over in the long run. I’ve even heard it’s already happening…
CapitalistsPeople in just about every system ignore negative externalities, which are defined as costs borne by other people for the benefits that they receive themselves. Ironically, capitalism might be the best short-term solution, if only we had the political will. One of the major functions of government is to internalize negative externalities, via taxes and regulations. It’s easy for a factory owner to let toxic effluent flow into the nearby river, but if it costs enough in taxes and fines, it’s cheaper to contain it. We just need to use government regulations to make environmental damage cost too much money, and the market would take care of re-balancing economic activity to sustainable alternatives. The carbon tax is a well-known example of this technique, but we’ve seen how well that has gone over politically. Still, it’s probably easier to push those kinds of regulations in a short time frame than to fundamentally revamp the entire system.A non-functioning government is also a feature of capitalism, though.
A big flaw in German energy policy that has done a great job in expanding renewables, includes not giving its industry variable rates, that lets them invest in batteries, and schedule production more seasonally, or if they have reduced demand due to high product prices from high energy costs, just have work on the good days.
Using EVs as grid balancers can be an extra profit center for EV owners with or without home solar. Ultra cheap retail daytime rates is the best path to demand shifting. Home solar best path to removing transmission bottlenecks for other customers. Containerized batteries and hydrogen electrolysis as a service is a tariff exempt path at moving storage/surplus management throughout the world for seasonal variations, but significantly expanding renewables capacity without risking negative pricing, and making evening/night energy cheaper to boot.
This is what the Cabal is doing !!
Capitalism has always been the problem, nothing new here.
Great comments in here that understand the actual issues, instead of, ya’ know, the usual.
Something I haven’t seen in the thread: Can someone address the costs of keeping the infrastructure maintained? Free power sounds great, but it can never be free. Entire industries must be paid to manufacture pylons, wire, transformers, substations, all that. Then there are the well paid employees who are our boots on the ground. (Heroes to me!)
How is solar disrupting the infra costs?
All/almost all net metering plans will still charge access and/or infrastructure fees.
It’s called a connection fee that is levied whether or not you used any energy that month. Those fees will likely go up to make up for decreased energy distribution revenue.
The actual issue, as stated in the original article is value deflation, aka investors not making enough money to justify energy transition to a timeline where humanity still exists in 100 years. Decoupling the issue from the political and economic aspect is disingenuous at best.
Here in Belgium, the component related to power generation is only about one fifth of the residential power bill.
Most are (1) connection costs (what you describe), (2) taxes, (3) subsidies for solar and wind to replace gas power generation, and (4) since 2 years, subsidies for gas power generation for when there’s too little solar and wind.
This feels like it is begging for further context.
Hear me out: a giant water balloon. Roughly the size of the sun.
Just install a bunch of spotlights that point back at the Sun so when power prices go negative you can return all that excess energy! Come on MIT, I thought you were supposed to be smart.
Isn’t it easier just to cover solar panels with reflective material, so they stop producing energy?
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Obviously any business model’s problems should be blamed on whatever breaks it.
That’s exactly why i want it, but i can’t in our appartment…other than a single mobile panel on our balcony and a mobile battery, which will cost about €1000 and will only allow me to partially run some electric devices.
Who is “we”? Fuck that.
The capitalist class?
Ughh, no, negative prices aren’t some weird “capitalism” thing. When the grid gets over loaded with too much power it can hurt it. So negative prices means that there is too much power in the system that needs to go somewhere.
There are things you can do like batteries and pump water up a hill then let it be hydroelectric power at night.
negative prices aren’t some weird “capitalism” thing.
lmao.
🙄 It’s not like the need to get extra power out of the system magically goes away if money doesn’t exist.
I feel like having a colossal battery pack could help with that problem.
Absolutely. The hydro thing is really just a water battery, it’s just stored in potential kinetic energy instead of chemical energy. But sodium cells are starting to look like a good option for chemical energy too.
Colossal is an understatement
It can, but people need to build it.
But it doesn’t say “it can generate too much energy and damage infrastructure”, they said “it can drive the price down”. The words they chose aren’t, like, an accident waiting for someone to explain post-hoc. Like, absolutely we need storage for exactly the reason you say, but they are directly saying the issue is driving the price down, which is only an issue if your not able to imagine a way to create this infrastructure without profit motive.
this feels like someone just looking for an argument… having negative pricing is a problem, and yes there are solutions like hydro and battery… hopefully this encourages that infrastructure to be created!
Economists think in terms of supply and demand. Saying it drives prices down or negative is a perfectly good explanation of a flaw in the system, especially if you’re someone on the operating side.
Boy do I hate economists.
Why? Economists ≠ capitalists.
Why is it a flaw from an economic perspective?
Both generation and consumption of electricity have a supply and demand. This is perfectly accepted in many other markets as well. We also had negative oil prices during the first Covid spike because the excavation cannot be stopped immediately. Certain industries like foundries also struggle with fully shutting down and restarting operations so sometimes they rather sell at a loss than stop operations. Farmers sell at a loss when the market is saturated just to sell somewhere and in other years they make a good profit on the same produce (assuming they actually have market power and aren’t wrung dry by intermediate traders).
In terms of energy per capital investment and running costs solar power is among the cheapest energy sources, cheaper than fossils and much cheaper than nuclear power. So it is profitable overall to run solar power, even if sometimes the price is negative.
Nobody here is suggesting that we should avoid solar power because of this.
But the point is that it is not even a flaw from an economic perspective. There is demand both for short term flexible and long term stable energy production and energy consumption in the grid. If you assume prices to be a suitable instrument, which most economists do, then the negative price of the production is a positive price for the short term consumption.
Yeah mate. The people writing here are economists not engineers, and that’s the professional language for what they’re talking about in their field. It’s like if a nuclear engineer said “oh yeah, the reactor is critical” which means stable.
I hear the point your making and the point OP made, but this is how really well trained PhDs often communicate - using language in their field. It’s sort of considered rude to attempt to use language from another specialty.
All of that context is lost in part b.c. this is a screenshot of a tweet in reply to another tweet, posted on Lemmy.
The way it’s supposed to work is the economist should say “we don’t know what this does to infrastructure you should talk to my good buddy Mrs. Rosie Revere Engineer about what happens.”
All I know about nuclear reactors is that prompt critical is the “Get out of there stalker” one.
Your prompts are especially critical when you decide to let ChatGPT run your reactor controls.
Yep, and the cost difference between those times should make this very cost effective.
Except the grid overload thing isn’t even an issue with renewables, since wind can be shut down in a matter of 1-5 minutes (move them out of the wind) and solar literally just be disabled. Any overload they produce would be due to mechanical failure, where you can cut them off the grid since they’re in the process of destroying themselves anyway (like in those videos where wind turbines fail spectacularly). Otherwise renewables are perfect to regulate the grid if available.
In a hypothetical grid with an absolute majority of many badly adjustable power sources (like nuclear) you’d have to work with negative prices to entice building large on-demand consumers or battery solutions. So far nobody was stupid enough to build a grid like this though.
tl;dr, this whole problem indeed is about economics and therefore may very well be a “capitalism thing”. Renewables do not overload the grid.
That’s also a pretty naive take on it.
First of all, you can indeed shut of the renewables easily. But that means that adding renewables to the grid is even less profitable, making renewables less desired to be built.
Hence in for example Germany a law was passed that prevented renewables being shut down in favor of worse energy sources, but that then leads to the issue we mention here.
It’s a tricky situation with renewables. But on the other hand, society is slowly adapting to using them & improving the infrastructure to handle such issues, so we’ll get there eventually :).
sounds like a great argument for nationalization.
I don’t understand why it’s profitability is my concern. Or anyones.
Because that’s what makes companies invest in renewables. If it’s not profitable, no new investments, and our world goes to shit (even more).
Caring only about profit is the exact reason why it’s going to shit. That is in no way the answer.
It may not be the answer, but it is the current reality. If we want more renewable power right now, it needs to be profitable.
You can wish it’s different, we all do. But reality is what it is, so that’s why you should care :).
Except no, all we need to do is just not allow these companies to impose laws and regulations that stop us from innovating. That’s exactly what’s Happening Here. They’re not improving to be a better service, they’re not making cheaper better energy. They’re using coercive legal systems to stop cheaper better energy from being created. Your entire premise is utterly flawed.
Its not tricky, energy shouldn’t be privatized.
and that’s how you get laws preventing me from giving power to my neighbors when their breaker panel is getting replaced or the grid is down.
Not really, its how you stop paying entirely arbitrary prices for a monopoly.
Also what you’re suggesting is illegal in some areas, and that’s without true public utilities.
I agree that the grid should be a public utility, it’s just that the energy production makes some sense to be privatized (and have some pressure to use the public grid) because distributed supply (rooftop solar) allows for lower losses and with regulation changes could allow for less overprovisioned residential lines (have lower amperage service rates to incentivize people with solar to flatten their net power usage) and for car parking lots to have solar shading.
It’s funny how capitalist apologists in this thread attack the format of a tweet and people not reading the actual article, when they clearly haven’t read the original article.
Negative prices are only mentioned in passing, as a very rare phenomenon, while most of it is dedicated to value deflation of energy (mentioned 4 times), aka private sector investors not earning enough profits to justify expanding the grid. Basically a cautionary tale of leaving such a critical component of society up to a privatized market.
Where did op put that link?
Without reading the article, I could already see what the problem was.
Unless you have capital to invest, you can’t expand or improve the power grid. That capital can either come from the gov’t–through taxation–or from private industry. If you, personally, have enough capital to do so, you can build a fully off-grid system, so that you aren’t dependent on anyone else. But then if shit happens, you also can’t get help from anyone else. (Also, most houses in urban areas do not have enough square feet of exposure to the sun to generate all of their own power.)
Fundamentally, this is a problem that can only be solved by regulation, and regulation is being gutted across the board in the US.
That’s not the problem the article gets to. The capital is there. Capital is being dumped into solar at breakneck speed. That’s the problem.
As more solar gets built, you get more days when there’s so much excess solar capacity that prices go near zero, or occasionally even negative. With more and more capacity around solar, there is less incentive to build more because you’re increasing the cases of near-zero days.
Basically, the problem is that capitalism has focused on a singular solution–the one that’s cheapest to deploy with the best returns–without considering how things work together in a larger system.
There are solutions to this. Long distance transmission helps areas where it isn’t sunny take advantage of places where it is. Wind sometimes blows when the sun isn’t shining, and the two technologies should be used in tandem more than they are. Storing it somewhere also helps; in fact, when you do wind and solar together, they cover each other enough that you don’t have to have as much storage as you’d think. All this needs smarter government subsidies to make it happen.
As a side note, you seem to be focused on solar that goes on residential roofs. That’s the worst and most expensive way to do solar. The space available for each project is small, and it’s highly customized to the home’s individual roof situation. It doesn’t take advantage of economies of scale very well. Using the big flat roofs of industrial buildings is better, but the real economies of scale come when you have a large open field. Slap down racks and slap the solar panels on top.
If what you want is energy independence from your local power utility, then I suggest looking into co-op solar/wind farms. If your state bans them–mine does–then that’s something to talk to your state representatives about.
Wow, someone actually explaining the problem correctly. I’ll also mention that part of the fix should be on the demand side. Using your home as a thermal battery can load shift HVAC needs by hours, and with a water heater, it works even better. That’s not even talking about all the other things that could be scheduled like washer/dryers, dish washers, EV charging, etc.-
the real economies of scale come when you have a large open field.
And before anyone bothers you about the impact of turning fields into solar farms, I’ll add that we (the US) already have more farmland dedicated to energy production (ethanol corn) than would be necessary to provide our whole electricity demand.
And before anyone bothers you about the impact of turning fields into solar farms, I’ll add that we (the US) already have more farmland dedicated to energy production (ethanol corn) than would be necessary to provide our whole electricity demand.
Oh hell yes. 40% of the corn is grown in the US for ethanol, and it’s a complete and utter waste. Even with extremely optimistic numbers the amount of improvement is close to zero. It might be the worst greenwashing out there; sounds like you’re doing something, but its benefit is likely negative.
We have the land. That’s so not a problem.
It doesn’t take advantage of economies of scale very well.
You missed my point; I was talking about being entirely off-grid there. So unless the homeowner in question also has a large industrial building with a flat roof, we’re back to where I said that they didn’t have enough generative capacity to not be reliant on a power grid, at least in part.
If what you want is energy independence from your local power utility,
No, I want energy independence period. Not just from the local utility, I want independence from a co-op as well. I want to have my own well so I’m not relying on someone else to deliver water. I want enough arable land to grow most, or all, of my own food. This isn’t compatible with living in a city. (And part of the reason I want to generate my own power is so that I can use all electric vehicles.)
You missed my point. What you assumed the article said was completely off base.
No, I want energy independence period. Not just from the local utility, I want independence from a co-op as well.
Then what you’re asking for is a more fractured human society. This kind of independence from others is an illusion and is not compatible with how humans have evolved.
Then what you’re asking for is a more fractured human society.
No, I’m saying I want energy independence. I don’t want to be dependent on the vagaries of service providers, or politicians that decide one day that renewables are great, and then the next day fuck it all drill baby drill, or a utility–or government–that refuses to invest the necessary capital into infrastructure to maintain capability. I’ll pay my taxes so that shit can get done IF that ends up being the will of the people, but I don’t see the point of being dependent on a system that I both need and have no control over.
Drive to get groceries? You’re dependent on most of those same factors.
Water? Same. Even if you have a well, you still don’t want that well to be polluted by people around you.
Shelter? You presumably don’t want a neighbor’s rickety structure to fall over on yours during a storm.
This kind of independence is a farce.
Drive to get groceries? You’re dependent on most of those same factors.
I said I wanted enough arable land to grow my own.
Water? Same. Even if you have a well, you still don’t want that well to be polluted by people around you.
See above.
Shelter? You presumably don’t want a neighbor’s rickety structure to fall over on yours during a storm.
See above. I don’t intend to have neighbors within a mile.
Transmission is tough. But the solution from too much solar investment driving down profits would be to invest that same money into storage. That seems like a natural follow up.
Imagine your profit if you can charge your storage with negative cost power!
It’s one of the solutions, yes.
But let’s look at this more broadly. The idea of combining wind/water/solar/storage with long distance transmission lines isn’t particularly new. The book “No Miracles Needed” by Mark Z. Jacobson (a Stanford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering) outlined the whole thing in 2023, but was the sum total of the author’s insight that he had had over a decade prior. Dumping all the money in one was never going to get us there.
Capitalism does sorta figure this out, but it takes steps of understanding as it focuses on one thing at a time. The first step dumps money into the thing that’s cheap and gives the best ROI (solar). Then there’s too much of that thing, and the economics shifts to covering up the shortfalls of that part (be it wind or storage or whatever). That makes it better, but there’s still some shortfalls, so then that becomes the thing in demand, and capitalism shifts again.
It does eventually get to the comprehensive solution. The one that advocates in the space were talking about decades before.
The liberal solution–the one that leaves capitalism fundamentally intact–is to create a broad set of government incentives to make sure no one part of the problem gets too much focus. Apparently, we can’t even do that.
Negative prices are only mentioned in passing, as a very rare phenomenon
Negative prices are occurring more and more frequently. The cause is baseload generation: it can’t be dialed back as quickly as solar increases during the day, and it can’t be ramped up as fast as solar falls off in the evening. The baseload generators have to stay on line to meet overnight demand. Because they can’t be adjusted fast enough to match the demand curve, they have to stay online during the day as well.
The immediate solution is to back down the baseload generators, and rely more on peaker plants, which can match the curve.
The longer term solution is to remove the incentives that drive overnight consumption. Stop incentivizing “off peak” consumption, and instead push large industrial consumers to daytime operation.
I would post that passage from Grapes of Wrath about oranges. But copy-paste doesn’t work on my phone
I got you.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
Thanks. I love this quote. But it pisses me off so bad
Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
This reminds me of 2020 when they shut down slaughterhouses due to COVID. They killed hundreds of thousands (likely into the millions) of pigs using ventilation shutdown. These were not diseased pigs, it was simply to dispose of them while the slaughterhouses were shut down.
We live in a fundamentally sick society.
Isn’t capitalism the opposite ?
Competition and open market would promote sellers who quote lower because of abundance and consumers as well as sellers would benefit from the abundance.
Sellers who try to restrict the supply ultimately would loose in the long run because in a competitive market the seller would always choose cheap prices.
roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price This would be valid if no one wan’t to be sellers and a all the sellers in a market cooperate together to do this or are required by law to do this.
I know we like to blame capitalism for a lot of things but this here is a different situation i think.
It would in a properly free market. But late stage capitalism’s goal is monopolization, because it maximises profit. Or to quote Marx: “Monopoly is the inevitable end of competition, which engenders it by a continual negation of itself.”
And this is exactly what Steinbeck is describing here: “you buy food from us, at our prices, or nothing at all. We’d rather destroy our product than to sell lower.” And they can do this because no one has access to the products, or the means of production (e. g. the land to grow produce).
And this is where we are today with Amazon, Nestle, Walmart and so on. They don’t have any real competition anymore.
Never forget the plot of space balls is that they figured out how to monopolize the air.
It was released in 1987.
Mel Brooks is the goat.
I’m going to a screening of this movie on May 4th actually. :)
As a solar punk, I have solar panels, some batteries, and all my stuff runs off USB or 12v. I don’t pay utilities
How do you heat water?
Three options: 12v cup, small camp stove, and large wood stove.
Can you share the model of that 12V cup? I’m looking for something similar :)
There’s many out there, but I ended up with this one
Thank you!
He shakes himself really fast in the tub
