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Comment on Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem. As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power

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spujb@lemmy.cafe ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

they are right though. if you look into this at all, you will quickly find that negative prices are not a problem because of profits, but because non-renewable energy sources start to undergo damage when the power they create is unused due to an overfilled power grid.

as the article outlines, the solution is storage, but storage capacity has not yet caught up to solar capacity.

believe me, i too am highly critical of capitalism. but for once, this isn’t an instance of that. and by failing to read and understand the article you have entered this thread in pretty bad faith, more or less spreading misinformation because it’s what you assume to be true.

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lemat_87@slrpnk.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yep, this is sadly a physical problem in the essence, not created virtually by capitalist economy. The negative price is just how the capitalist economy reacts at it.

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- Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It is though. The entire reason we’re still using obsolete inflexible technology is capitalism. Might not be able to buy that 4th yacht if we pay to upgrade our LNG plant.
  
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- spujb@lemmy.cafe ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  glad mine was a helpful comment and thanks for your further comment adding detail :) was getting down over all the misunderstanding going on in the comments. cheers!
  
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Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Okay, I went and read it because I have more time today and excess electricity causing physical damage is a compelling narrative. But this article doesn’t support that. It’s just plant operators having to pay for people to take their electricity because their plant is obsolete technology and can’t idle. I did check a few other articles too. It seems the damage is financial and a problem because we’ve turned a public good into a for profit capitalist system.

The solution is many things but also to just have modern natural gas plants that are more than capable of flexible output. Of course the profit motive means updates like that only come when forced and boards like the CPUC have been hopelessly captured for my entire lifetime. So instead they shit on their consumers.

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