4 ms·

Its not a market that in not elastic. It is physics, you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing. Deal with this. There are ways to handle the

Its not a market that in not elastic. It is physics, you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing. Deal with this. There are ways to handle the problem, like pumped storage power plants, but they require very particular terrain (a mountain next to the big lake). "grid-interactive buildings" are fun, but this is not the scale that can make any substantial difference. So far we do not have effective, long-term energy storage and no amount of hand waving is going to change that. So, let's be realistic and build nuclear power plants.

pjc50 2y ago
> you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing You can if it's solar panels! You can just turn the inverter off! The surplus is not in itself a problem, only the dark winter months.
- bb88 2y ago
  This. There will be spikes for demand and supply, and the grid is a real time market. There are already spikes and drops in usage as humans wake and sleep.
yetihehe 2y ago
> It is physics, you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing. Rooftop solar power plants are physically able to stop producing, this requires some firmware changes so that they stop putting power into grid when someone orders them to. But there is no market or political will for such solution.
cosmic_quanta 2y ago
Indeed, the inelasticity is because of the physics. Nonetheless, common terminology in the industry is that the market is inelastic. Regarding nuclear power: it is a great technology for the base load (edit: I mean firm power), but there's always going to be fluctuations in consumption, which needs to be met with fluctuations in generation. Grid interactive buildings can help mitigate this fluctuation.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Due to how much renewables many western grids today have the traditional ”baseload” is effectively zero nowadays. As shown by nuclear plants bidding negative so they don’t have to shut down.
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > the traditional ”baseload” is effectively zero nowadays Baseload is about the electrical demand, not the generation. The minimum demand across a period of time.
    - cosmic_quanta 2y ago
      Right I get it backwards all the time. I meant firm power
    - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
      Exactly. And then OP goes and talks about ”baseload nuclear” like they can force us consumers to buy horrifically expensive nuclear power when renewables deliver said ”baseload”. Which is why I said ”traditional baseload”. In other words: our need for 100% uptime coal or nuclear plants.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Really it's the other way round: all the generators have safety trips and can disappear from the grid in a short time if required, but it's uneconomic to do so. Which is why you get things like wind farm curtailment payouts; they're part of the weird set of compromises between spot market and long-term (necessarily central!) capacity planning.
crubier 2y ago
> you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing We can. Solar panels can be disconnected. Wind turbines can be stopped. Dams can be stopped and dump water without energy production.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Some dams can store water in reservoirs. Actually, if there is a surplus of energy, some dams can use it pump water up from their lower to upper reservoir (a reservoir is effectively a less efficient battery).
rstuart4133 2y ago
> It is physics, you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing. Deal with this. This is so wrong I can't resist ... I turn off the electricity pipe multiple times a day with a light switch, and as far as I can tell in my 6 decades of existence the electricity has stopped flowing every time with no ill effects. What are are perhaps trying to say is you can't just shut of some sorts of power generation - like coal and nuclear. But as another poster pointed out, that's a limitation of those technologies. Wind, solar, gas and even diesel generators can be turned of near instantaneously.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Build nuclear like France, one of the four countries named in the article as having negative prices? The nuclear that random posters here believe in is magical and mysterious and not at all related to the nuclear plants that exist in the real world.

pjc50 2y ago

> you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing You can if it's solar panels! You can just turn the inverter off! The surplus is not in itself a problem, only the dark winter months.

bb88 2y ago
This. There will be spikes for demand and supply, and the grid is a real time market. There are already spikes and drops in usage as humans wake and sleep.

yetihehe 2y ago

> It is physics, you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing. Rooftop solar power plants are physically able to stop producing, this requires some firmware changes so that they stop putting power into grid when someone orders them to. But there is no market or political will for such solution.

cosmic_quanta 2y ago

Indeed, the inelasticity is because of the physics. Nonetheless, common terminology in the industry is that the market is inelastic. Regarding nuclear power: it is a great technology for the base load (edit: I mean firm power), but there's always going to be fluctuations in consumption, which needs to be met with fluctuations in generation. Grid interactive buildings can help mitigate this fluctuation.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Due to how much renewables many western grids today have the traditional ”baseload” is effectively zero nowadays. As shown by nuclear plants bidding negative so they don’t have to shut down.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > the traditional ”baseload” is effectively zero nowadays Baseload is about the electrical demand, not the generation. The minimum demand across a period of time.
  - cosmic_quanta 2y ago
    Right I get it backwards all the time. I meant firm power
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    Exactly. And then OP goes and talks about ”baseload nuclear” like they can force us consumers to buy horrifically expensive nuclear power when renewables deliver said ”baseload”. Which is why I said ”traditional baseload”. In other words: our need for 100% uptime coal or nuclear plants.
pjc50 2y ago
Really it's the other way round: all the generators have safety trips and can disappear from the grid in a short time if required, but it's uneconomic to do so. Which is why you get things like wind farm curtailment payouts; they're part of the weird set of compromises between spot market and long-term (necessarily central!) capacity planning.

crubier 2y ago

> you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing We can. Solar panels can be disconnected. Wind turbines can be stopped. Dams can be stopped and dump water without energy production.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Some dams can store water in reservoirs. Actually, if there is a surplus of energy, some dams can use it pump water up from their lower to upper reservoir (a reservoir is effectively a less efficient battery).

rstuart4133 2y ago

> It is physics, you can't just close the pipe and electricity stops flowing. Deal with this. This is so wrong I can't resist ... I turn off the electricity pipe multiple times a day with a light switch, and as far as I can tell in my 6 decades of existence the electricity has stopped flowing every time with no ill effects. What are are perhaps trying to say is you can't just shut of some sorts of power generation - like coal and nuclear. But as another poster pointed out, that's a limitation of those technologies. Wind, solar, gas and even diesel generators can be turned of near instantaneously.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

Build nuclear like France, one of the four countries named in the article as having negative prices? The nuclear that random posters here believe in is magical and mysterious and not at all related to the nuclear plants that exist in the real world.