this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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This is a real problem but you can only have so many words in a tweet. Note that the price isn't zero but instead negative. It means there is literally too much power in the grid and it would need to be used. If a grid has too much power then it is bad. It can damage it. There are things we can build that essentially amount to batteries (or natural variants like a dam) that get charged during times of higher supply than demand and discharged during times of higher demand than supply.
No but see you can't build infrastructure to solve problems. What is this the 1700s? Go ride a train, commie!
Problems are only solved by grinding humans into a fine paste/powder, or destroying things for quarterly profits. Or doing a giant mountain of cocaine.
Yes, infra can be built, but not fast enough to keep up with all the solar panels being installed. For example: In the Netherlands our network can't keep up with the requests being put out by companies, and we've already been busy for the last 5-ish years to install new infra, but that shit can take over 10 (!!!) years before a large line has been added. Land needs to be bought, people need to be informed, plans need to be made or adjusted, local companies need to be hired, the materials bought in and build into new pylons, etc.
It's a MASSIVE undertaking. Even if you talk on a local level, where "The Last Mile" is the time-consuming problem there.
Shit takes time.
What infra? Youre acting like its a single thing. Sure pumped hydro takes a while. Even small scale, water towers on buildings. Sure.
But build a metal smelting thing. Take a crack at fusion. Use crypto mining techniques to tap cables and install massive racks of computers to do comedic deep fake smut of fascist politicians. Basically all meta-capacity can be applied to this, and some of it is really fucking portable.
Sorry, I should've been explicit that I meant the power grid. You can generate all you want, but if the power grid can't handle it, you're shit out of luck :)
but not everything needs to feed the main grid. solar near a major factory, for example-its mostly generating during the same hours the machines are on. or in the middle of residential in a hot region, that power all gets eaten up before it hits (and I'm going to assume from what little I know of power grids that they look at least a little similar to networks) a trunk line. you need a lot less wire there. if you use generating methods closer to sites, and storage closer to sites, theres less transport to to, right?
not everything is more efficient at centralized scale. thought that was like half the point of solarpunk.
https://www.beny.com/101-guide-to-solar-panel-disconnect/
Or you ask a large company to run their machines for a bit to catch up the "overgeneration" (if that's a word).
...yes. That's why the price is negative. You're paying folks to use electricity.