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Unless wind farms are shut down on purpose when they could generate or hydro plants spill water then no energy is being wasted. Every watt of electricity has to
by snowwindwaves 10y ago
Unless wind farms are shut down on purpose when they could generate or hydro plants spill water then no energy is being wasted. Every watt of electricity has to be produced. There may be excess generation capacity that is shut down for the night but unless the marginal cost of generation is zero then they are not wasting power.
Wasting power would be generating power and just running a giant heater outside. Nobody is doing that.
The price does go negative some times because the nuclear plants don't want to manoeuvre down, in that case the nuclear plants pay people to use the power as that is cheaper than adjusting output. In that extremely rare case you could charge and reduce your power bill.