this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Boy do I hate economists.
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!