this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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From a grid stability point, you can't produce more than is used, else you get higher frequencies and/or voltages until the automatics shut down. It's already a somewhat frequent occurence in germany for the grid operator to shut down big solar plants during peak hours because they produce way more power than they can dump (because of low demand or the infrastructure limiting transfer to somewhere else)
Negative prices are the grid operator encouraging more demand so it can balance out the increased production.
But the thing is, you CAN simply turn them off at the press of a button (or an automated script) so its really a complete non issue. As long as big solar installations control systems are accessible by the grid operators, it should be fine.
If you’re spending billions to build a solar plant that has to turn off all the time during peak hours then you’re wasting your money. That seems like a fundamental issue to me, not a non-issue.
It's two sided.
Yes you waste money by not exporting the electricity-transformed version of your resource (wind, sun, chemical potential, etc.).
But on the flip side if you export lower across your whole site, this means more losses at the inverters which can shorten operational lifetimes and lead to quickened inverter failures and needs for replacement. Those maintenance costs eat into your profit as well.
As someone in the industry, I'd imagine that inverter-based producers really just react to the rate structures of whatever grid and utility they hook up to. If the incentives of that utility favor one mode of operation during supply-demand mismatches - such as complete site curtailment - then that is what generators will do. If the incentives favor partial generation where only certain blocks of your solar or wind or BESS plant are switched off while others remain on, then we could see more producers do that.
Ultimately though you need to have a way to operate your site in those conditions to help balance out operation and nonoperation. If whenever a curtailment signal comes to your site, and in response you always shut off Block B while leaving Block A on, then Block A will experience accelerated lifetime degradation over Block B. Inverters, transformers, cables, panels will fail faster in Block A than Block B. But if you could rotate your curtailment/demand response such that certain blocks/strings are used sequentially and that lifetimes are averaged out, this might solve the problem. Think about how farmers rotate which crops they plant in which of their fields to avoid famine and soil degradation.
I think demand response is taking off in the utilization markets like in buildings and industrial settings, but really I think the principles we've learned from that should be carried over to generation markets as well. It's only a matter of time as the industry matures and smart technology penetrates the grid and generation markets.