4 ms·

I am fully pro solar, but the duck curve is a real thing. Time value of money and time value of electricity. If there is nobody to consume that extra juice it i

• jacquesm 3y ago
  Extra solar power that doesn't get consumed simply isn't metered at the source. That's a direct function of how the grid works, as long as everybody plays by the transport rules regarding minimum and maximum voltage overcapacity is dealt with by simply reducing the amount of production. I see this up close almost every day on the local grid here, you can tell by 1 pm or so that the local grid is saturated and after that inverters start dropping off one-by-one until the voltage has dropped sufficiently for them to come back online again after a cool-down period (typically about an hour). There is not such thing as 'extra juice', all that happens is that some panels are not generating. After all, if there were 'extra juice' that would imply forced consumption or some kind of giant sink load to take excess power. Neither of these happen, it's financial until some lower bound and then it gets technical. The lower the impedance of the local grid the more margin there is for such adjustments to take place, if you are on a high impedance subnet in an otherwise low impedance grid chances are that your inverter(s) will shut down well before the grid itself has maxed out.
• ed25519FUUU 3y ago
  The funny thing about the duck curve is that PG&E still charges you the highest prices for electricity during that time period.