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Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem. As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power (wapo.st)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'll note that right now, this is a seasonal issue, associated with moderate springtime temperatures when there is a lot of sunshine available.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Capitalism is the problem, here.

This should be a warning: the rich are going to fight the idea of post-scarcity tooth and nail, because not being able to coerce people woth the threat of homelessness or starvation will remove just about the only lever they have.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Excess power on the grid is a very real problem though. It's easy enough to shut off photovoltaic solar when not needed (which is probably what should be happening here!), but industrial scale generators cannot all be turned on or off on a whim. Serious damage can result if power production does not match the load.

It's easy to dump a few kW (just boil some water or turn on a heater), but dumping many MW or even GW is not trivial.

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