this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
1627 points (95.9% liked)
Solarpunk
5393 readers
29 users here now
The space to discuss Solarpunk itself and Solarpunk related stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere.
Join our chat: Movim or XMPP client.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Government should invest in more energy storage so the excess can be used later, like at night
That and incentivise smart devices like water heaters that run when power is cheap, which is effectively a rudimentary battery
If all grids did was put high resolution pricing data on the wire we could make those decisions for ourselves.
It still takes upfront investment. that's easy if you're wealthy but a lot harder if you're pay check to pay check + there's no reason landlords would do it. part of it is the high resolution pricing data, but we need more than just that
Problem is that storing electric energy at a large scale is really difficult, with lots of engineering and research effort going into finding solutions. Investment into storage is good, but it's still an area of active research how to even do it.
Everything is a cost.
It could quite easily be cheaper to pay people to use energy than it is to store it. Once that equation changes then hopefully they start buying storage.