• B16_BR0TH3R@lemmy.world
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    15 minutes 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
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      2 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.

    • tweeks@feddit.nl
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      56 minutes 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
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        38 minutes 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
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        23 minutes 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.