The answer is batteries. And dismantling capitalism, but batteries first
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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Nah, lets squash capitalism first.
Lets squash it with batteries, they are heavy for a reason.
Not saying we shouldn’t do both, but in reality waiting to destroy capitalism before fixing the grid just means you have too much theory and not enough praxis.
It's funny how capitalist apologists in this thread attack the format of a tweet and people not reading the actual article, when they clearly haven't read the original article.
Negative prices are only mentioned in passing, as a very rare phenomenon, while most of it is dedicated to value deflation of energy (mentioned 4 times), aka private sector investors not earning enough profits to justify expanding the grid. Basically a cautionary tale of leaving such a critical component of society up to a privatized market.
Where did op put that link?
Without reading the article, I could already see what the problem was.
Unless you have capital to invest, you can't expand or improve the power grid. That capital can either come from the gov't--through taxation--or from private industry. If you, personally, have enough capital to do so, you can build a fully off-grid system, so that you aren't dependent on anyone else. But then if shit happens, you also can't get help from anyone else. (Also, most houses in urban areas do not have enough square feet of exposure to the sun to generate all of their own power.)
Fundamentally, this is a problem that can only be solved by regulation, and regulation is being gutted across the board in the US.
This is what the Cabal is doing !!
People keep reposting this like it's a gotcha.
It's not
If prices are negative most of the day there is less incentive to provide the capacity that's needed during the night. The money for capex has to come from somewhere so it goes up significantly at night. And of course the negative price isn't "real", it just means power plants will shut down for swaths of the year until it's affordable to keep the remainder running. Which then means lower average capacity on days that are cloudy, or additional maintenance on systems that only run in the winter. So then people throw battery stuff around... batteries are expensive. Really, really, really, really expensive. So you have to find a way to keep capacity up that's not absurdly expensive or hard to maintain, or you have to keep all your fossil fuel plants at the ready while producing $0 in income to offset the upkeep, which...yes, gets passed to the consumer.
I know people want to simplify the national grid which spans across all continental states and connects to literal billions of devices producing and consuming power...but it's actually kinda complicated.
The original article literally frames it as an economic problem under capitalism. Most of the article is about value deflation, not about the niche case of storing excess energy until it is profitable to sell again.
Lower prices may sound great for consumers. But it presents troubling implications for the world’s hopes of rapidly expanding solar capacity and meeting climate goals. It could become difficult to convince developers and investors to continue building ever more solar plants if they stand to make less money or even lose it https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/14/1028461/solar-value-deflation-california-climate-change/
Maybe take a break from the capitalist apologia to understand that this shouldn't be a problem for a society that is trying to move away from cooking the planet.
Op is a tweet, not an article.
"Instead of trying to solve the problem we currently have, with the systems and tools that are there, how about we forget about the problem and work on something much much harder instead".
Don't get me wrong you're absolutely free and welcome to advocate for systemic solutions. But don't attack people working on alleviating symptoms in a practical way or I'll call you an accelerationist. "Here's how we implement socialism! Step one: Burn the planet".
wow, its almost like the government that we pay taxes to should be what's powering the country and not private corporations that are only concerned about profits 😋
Hear me out: a giant water balloon. Roughly the size of the sun.
As a solar punk, I have solar panels, some batteries, and all my stuff runs off USB or 12v. I don't pay utilities
How do you heat water?
Three options: 12v cup, small camp stove, and large wood stove.
He shakes himself really fast in the tub
This is probably part of why PG&E is desperate to stop paying for rooftop solar that people tie into the grid.
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