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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."