• B16_BR0TH3R@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 hour ago

    This is idiotic. The fact is your electricity transmission system operator has to pay a lot of money to keep the grid stable at 50 or 60Hz or your electronics would fry. With wind and especially with solar power, the variable output is always pushing the frequency one way or the other, and that creates a great need for costly balancing services. Negative pricing is an example of such a balancing service. Sounds good, but for how long do you think your electricity company can keep on paying you to consume power?

    • Kimano@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      3 hours ago

      People also don’t realize that too much power is just as bad as too little, worse in fact. There’s always useful power sinks: pumped hydro, batteries, thermal storage, but these are not infinite.

      • Aeri@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        25 minutes ago

        Stupid question but can we not like, make toggleable solar panels? Like if I Just pull the plug extracting power from a solar panel does it explode or break or something?

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          19 minutes ago

          Not really. You can discharge into the ground, but for large installations even the ground has a limited (local) capacity.

    • tweeks@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 hours ago

      Why isn’t this as easy as storing some of that excess energy in a home battery and letting the rest down in a wire into the ground? Then if it’s smart enough it could only give back energy when needed.

      • pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 hour ago

        While water in pipes is often a metaphor for electricity, it’s not particularly useful here. You can’t ground out part of a charge. Energy storage is the solution though. Batteries are good, pumping water up back up into dams to be regained from a hydro plant when needed is ideal, as I understand it.

      • B16_BR0TH3R@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 hour ago

        Well, that’s what they’re doing some places. The batteries assets are not in private homes usually though, they’re by themself or run by power-consuming industries. Batteries are expensive though, and they degrade quickly if you use them wrong. In the EU, ENTSO-E defines the market rules, trade systems and messaging systems that energy companies and asset owners play by. Sometimes the revenue-generating asset is a battery, sometimes it’s a hot water boiler, wind park, factory, hydro plant etc.

        • A7thStone@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 minutes ago

          To start the frequency of the electricity isn’t the issue. Second all modern electronics use switching power supplies which don’t care about frequency. That’s two incorrect things just in the second sentence that they literally said was fact.