TLDR: please don’t just put solar on your roof, we’re past those days, please either get an EV you can charge during the day or battery
TLDR: please don’t just put solar on your roof, we’re past those days, please either get an EV you can charge during the day or battery
how would you rethink the system of too much supply and not enough demand?
I’m not up to date on how effective large-scale battery tech is, but it seems odd that there wouldn’t be demand for electrical energy, especially when non-renewable power sources are still in use.
If we can make electricity a post-scarse resource that isn’t profitable to generate, that’s an amazingly good thing.
Honestly might even be worth the government investing in a sort of nationalisation of home solar electricity, rather than this counterproductive market.
it would be but it’s unrealistic as infra needs paying for and someone has to pay for it
if you make electricity non-profitable then everyone’s fit rate gets reduced to 0c removing a major incentive for people to get solar, if you make electricity ultra cheap, why would anyone buy solar panels?
the energy market is a near perfect market, supply has to meet demand and demand has to meet supply at all times 24x7, if either get out of whack the power goes out
that’s the problem with solar, only works when the sun is out :p
that’s pretty much the main convo happening right now, grid firming
there is more demand coming in the form of big batteries but a big problem is that the people with the capital don’t have much incentive to build them when they are not very profitable, if you had 10 billion would you invest it in renewables and get 2% return or something else and get 8%
try to pretend you’re someone who likes money 😝
https://reneweconomy.com.au/bp-to-abandon-renewable-targets-divest-assets-in-shift-back-to-fossil-fuels/
so the labor gov stepped in to underwrite revenues so projects don’t become unprofitable:
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/energy/renewable/capacity-investment-scheme
the idea of the gov taking over the whole thing is you run the risk of getting a tony abbott who immediately halts all renewables, gotta remember we went nearly 30 years with coalition in power majority of the time and they’re still not happy with renewables at all
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-27/the-coalition-s-ongoing-civil-war-over-net-zero/105939634
you’d also have to explain to tax payers why they are now paying even more tax when the largest users of electricity are factories and businesses
so it’s a bit complicated 🫠
Thanks for the details :)
Haha, I just can’t stand that the people with the capital get to stop society from fixing so many things.
Yeah that’s a good point. Nationalising is unstable in our current two-major-party flip-flopping.
We need to just create energy sinks… well effectively batteries but not in the traditional sense. Like kinetic storage. Sure, they’re not efficient, but what does it matter if they’re only in use when electricity has a negative value
probably in a way that doesn’t consider “supply and demand” of a nearly endless resource.
The nearly endless resource doesn’t put out at night though - hence the supply and demand problem still being an issue. We’ve now got enough production to cover demand at peak solar output but now we need enough storage to utilise that peak supply and cover demand at other times.
at night we buy energy from the grid. figure out a system that doesn’t include stupid stuff like negative pricing for the mostly coal or petroleum fired energy.
or we go all out on batteries and store the extra energy from the day.
they could try all sorts of solutions instead of telling people to stop using solar panels if they really wanted to.
Yes that’s what the article is saying
The day time negative pricing is because coal power plants can’t turn off but are needed at night, if we stop needing them at night we can just shut them down