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Here in California, utility companies are "solving" this by instituting extremely high fees for the privilege of connecting your solar power to the grid. If I recall from the last time I ran the numbers, rooftop solar panels no longer make economic sense for the vast majority of residential customers - it costs more money to install me solar panels and pay the monthly connection fees then you'll save by producing energy over the lifetime of the solar panels.

Edit: I just googled and it looks like after public outcry the regulators pulled their really bad fee schedule to replace with a slightly less bad fee schedule. The system works!

Probably the one time in history PG&E tried to fix a problem ahead of time. 😆

The electricity network should be a public utility. Taxes should be used to make and maintain a network, not make a profit. If people can contribute to the network and decentralise generation, it shouldn't be a problem. It being a problem is an indication of a broken system.

It noted utility-scale solar plants were having to pare back generation or switch off entirely during such periods to avoid having to pay to maintain production.

Bro, generate hydrogen with that abundant energy! Then when solar can't provide energy (at night) and at the same time wind energy isn't available, you can generate energy from the hydrogen. Hell, with that abundant energy, you could create a whole hydrogen economy and tank the petrol economy - make it completely obsolete. How the fuck is this a problem?

Meanwhile in Australia anyone without solar panels is paying record high prices for their power and are trying to conserve their power use as much as possible to try to make ends meet. There's no "negative pricing" for consumers.

That's pretty amazing. I guess it's time to start moving on short-term energy storage solutions.

That's why the calls for storage should be in the form of rebates for solar and battery systems for residential houses, rather than the big battery tech they keep on suggesting we use. Wholesale prices won't go negative if solar users don't sell the power they generate, and the solar users can save money too by using the power we've stored when the prices go up.

It's a win-win, albeit with the major exception of those who don't have solar. Who won't be able to take advantage of negative prices and will probably be hung dry with higher bills (keep in mind they are already pretty high to begin with)

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