3 ms·

Shutting down factories in winter will make local industry uncompetitive, which will have awful effects.

• OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  That argument ignores the fact that the variability goes both ways: during peak production times, electricity will be CHEAP. Hell, it's not hard to imagine a situation where capacity gets built up high enough to extend the viable high-consumption times that during peak hours the grid has to actively incentivize industry to use more power. IMO, the right move is for the government to subsidize power generation to the point of absurd excess, like we do for agriculture. It's a matter of national security, and it ends up acting as a subsidy for industry of all kind.
  • concordDance 3y ago
    Yes, you can make extra cheap aluminium on sunny days, but when it's cloudy you have a bunch of metal workers with nothing to do.
    • pfdietz 3y ago
      Aluminum pots cannot have their power varied too much. Either they freeze up or they ruin the walls by overheating. Some variably can be tolerated, and would be useful, but they wouldn't be highly dispatchable like electrolysers would be (and are not at a scale that could load balance entire grids.)