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Why did they go negative instead of zero or just very low? Why did the power company encourage people to needlessly waste electricity? Do excess generated elect

Why did they go negative instead of zero or just very low? Why did the power company encourage people to needlessly waste electricity? Do excess generated electricity cause problems for the companies? If yes, won't shutting down some generators get rid of the excess? This is my first questions to the headline. The answer is not obvious for me, but I can't find an answer in the article.

Dolores12 9y ago
Electricity should be consumed to avoid overload on net. Shutting down generator then starting it up again could be more expensive.(labor, excess amortization due startup etc)
marcosdumay 9y ago
All the electricity produced must be consumed, roughly at the same time. It has nowhere else to go. Shutting down generators is a process that may take hours (or days if it's nuclear) and may be expensive.
- hrasyid 9y ago
  Ah. Can't you just press buttons to turn off generation on windmills or solar panels for example?
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    You can disconnect solar panels, yes. You can disconnect a windmill turbine from its generator too (what carries a small cost). You can't just disconnect thermal solar generators, but shutting them down is relatively fast and cheap. When the price goes negative, it's usually because consumption is smaller than the coal + nuclear supply.
    - shagie 9y ago
      Or hydro can't put that much over the spillway because of regulations (environment, down stream flooding, etc...) - it has to go through the powerhouse. Or (for hydro again), there was a release of water upstream in anticipation of demand (it takes a few hours to go from the Grand Coulee to the bottom dam) and that demand didn't appear (or other sources produced more - such as a sunny and windy day). Hawaii and its island power issues also has the "well, you can turn off the centralized solar power systems, but the distributed residential ones are difficult to curtail."

Dolores12 9y ago

Electricity should be consumed to avoid overload on net. Shutting down generator then starting it up again could be more expensive.(labor, excess amortization due startup etc)

marcosdumay 9y ago

All the electricity produced must be consumed, roughly at the same time. It has nowhere else to go. Shutting down generators is a process that may take hours (or days if it's nuclear) and may be expensive.

hrasyid 9y ago
Ah. Can't you just press buttons to turn off generation on windmills or solar panels for example?
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  You can disconnect solar panels, yes. You can disconnect a windmill turbine from its generator too (what carries a small cost). You can't just disconnect thermal solar generators, but shutting them down is relatively fast and cheap. When the price goes negative, it's usually because consumption is smaller than the coal + nuclear supply.
  - shagie 9y ago
    Or hydro can't put that much over the spillway because of regulations (environment, down stream flooding, etc...) - it has to go through the powerhouse. Or (for hydro again), there was a release of water upstream in anticipation of demand (it takes a few hours to go from the Grand Coulee to the bottom dam) and that demand didn't appear (or other sources produced more - such as a sunny and windy day). Hawaii and its island power issues also has the "well, you can turn off the centralized solar power systems, but the distributed residential ones are difficult to curtail."