How can the price go negative? There's always going to be maintenance costs that have to be covered if nothing else.
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
598 points (97.6% liked)
solarpunk memes
5876 readers
995 users here now
For when you need a laugh!
The definition of a "meme" here is intentionally pretty loose. Images, screenshots, and the like are welcome!
But, keep it lighthearted and/or within our server's ideals.
Posts and comments that are hateful, trolling, inciting, and/or overly negative will be removed at the moderators' discretion.
Please follow all slrpnk.net rules and community guidelines
Have fun!
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
The idea is there such an abundance of energy that they are willing to pay you to consume some of it to keep the net stable at 50 (or 60) Herz.
In practice, there are always taxes and surcharges that the final prices is not negative, but is lower than the surcharges themselves.
Too much energy is not good for the system, so there must be a way of compensation.
Can they not just cut off some of the panels with some sort of breaker when the output exceeds consumption/storage?
Because its deterrent for people to supply electricity when its not needed.
I have a 10kWp system, sometimes I have to pay for the electricity I create and I dont use. There's no maintenance costs in my system
Who are you paying when that happens?
Also, the panels never wear out or get damaged or have to be cleaned or anything? This isn't me trying to make a point against solar, I'm just questioning how there could ever be absolutely no cost to having it. More in the sense of an electric company rather than private owners.
They've found the same is true for the wind, that the oil robbers can't own that either... I think Maria may own the wind... I'm not sure. They call it that... the wind, that is.
the best solar and wind ad you can imagine is russian energy grid attacks and how communities had built diverse workarounds to mitigate the grid going down here and there. it also spawned local businesses to maintain these stations which greatly helps local economies.
I mean, a surplus in the electricity grid is actually sort of a problem, especially if you don't have any way to store the extra energy.
we can just put a white blanket on top of the panels...
I'm ignorant of the mechanism of solar panels and electrical grids...do they just explode if they are set up and not draining power?
Because why can't you just cut the inflow of electricity on a signal? I'd appreciate actual answers.
You can cut it, but how? If you don't have a system in place, thousands of private home will be injecting power into the grid because they don't know any better. In extreme cases it could overload the grid. Not really explode, but cause voltage spikes, trip breakers, and ultimately (and somehow ironically) cause a blackout as the grid protection mechanisms kick in.
I Germany all new installations need to be able to be remotely controlled to prevent grid feed in when there's too much production.
Disclaimer: hobby self-taught solar panel enthusiast, not an electrician or grid engineer.
Solar panels have no problem if nothing consumes the power they can produce.
Wind turbines can be feathered and the turbine break engaged until they stop, at which point they're not generating anything.
So negative energy prices are not really a technical problem of renewables, rather they're due to the way the decision of "who stops their generation" being left to market systems - rather than there being some kind of centralized control, possibly with agreements in place, that decides which generators are stopped first when there is excess generation, market prices just float as offer and demand float and individual suppliers are left to individually decide if it's worth it for them to generate for a given price or not and thus if they should reduce or stop their generation.
There are delays and inertia in the whole process of signalling demand/supply balance via market prices, so there result is that the price can overshot and undershot, the latter being sometimes all the way down to negative prices.
Yes solar panels and most renewables can be turned off easily if there is too much energy on the grid. The term for this is "curtailment". Some energy sources can't be turned off easily, like nuclear, large coal plants, and combined cycle gas turbines. So you will tend to turn off the easy things before the hard things.
The only major problem here is that this upsets the capitalists that own the generation; they don't want to pay for stuff that isn't producing money at every instance that it could be producing money. There are no real technical reasons why you can't curtail wind and solar plants whenever you need to.
Worth noting that a large amount of "renewables bad" you'll see is fossil fuel propaganda too, so be careful there.
Would a nuclear or fossil fuel turbine power plant just tear itself apart if disconnected from load at speed? I vaguely understand that the load provides a sort of magnetic resistance on the spinning generator. Without load they would they spin too fast? Or is it a matter of there not being any easy way to dump the power by doing something useless with it like just melting sand or smth?
Fossil plants, not really. The hard part for them is getting them started again which can take hours. But disconnecting them suddenly won't hurt them. There are many layers of protective devices keeping them from overspeed events.
Nuclear plants are similar but they will continue generating heat long after they are disconnected from the grid and you have to have a plan for removing that heat or bad things will happen. This was what caused problems at Fukushima.
Yeaaaah, I hate that. A lot of the structures that everyone says are shite seem to be propped up by "solutions" that create and perpetuate the problems they "solve."
We setup a 25kw setup recently in Pakistan but ran out of money to have inverter and batteries for it. So far they have been up for a couple months, none have exploded yet.
Can't it go to some AI datacenter or smth?
𝖸𝖾𝖺𝗁 𝗌𝗈𝗅𝖺𝗋 𝖼𝖺𝗇’𝗍 𝖻𝖾 𝖺 𝗆𝗈𝗇𝗈𝗉𝗈𝗅𝗒 𝖻𝖾𝖼𝖺𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝖢𝗁𝗂𝗇𝖺 𝖺𝗅𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝗒 𝖼𝗈𝗇𝗍𝗋𝗈𝗅𝗌 𝟫𝟢% 𝗈𝖿 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗉𝖺𝗇𝖾𝗅𝗌 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗀𝗂𝗇𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗌𝗈 𝗋𝖺𝗓𝗈𝗋 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝖶𝖾𝗌𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗇 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗉𝖺𝗇𝗂𝖾𝗌 𝖼𝖺𝗇’𝗍 𝗆𝖺𝗄𝖾 𝖻𝖺𝗇𝗄 𝗈𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗁𝖺𝗋𝖽𝗐𝖺𝗋𝖾. 𝖨𝗇𝗌𝗍𝖾𝖺𝖽 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗒 𝗁𝖺𝖽 𝗍𝗈 𝗀𝖾𝗍 𝖼𝗋𝖾𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗏𝖾 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗋𝗍 𝗅𝖾𝖺𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗌𝗁𝗂𝗍 𝗈𝗋 𝗌𝖾𝗅𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖺 𝖻𝖺𝗍𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗒 𝗐𝖺𝗅𝗅 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝗍𝗈 𝗅𝗈𝖼𝗄 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗂𝗇. 𝖠𝗇𝖽 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗇 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗌𝗍𝗂𝗅𝗅 𝖼𝖺𝗇’𝗍 𝗌𝖼𝖺𝗅𝖾 𝖿𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝖻𝖾𝖼𝖺𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗀𝗋𝗂𝖽 𝗂𝗌 𝖺 𝟣𝟫𝗍𝗁 𝖼𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗎𝗋𝗒 𝗋𝖾𝗅𝗂𝖼 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝖼𝖺𝗇’𝗍 𝗁𝖺𝗇𝖽𝗅𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗏𝗈𝗅𝗎𝗆𝖾 𝖺𝗇𝗒𝗐𝖺𝗒.
Don't worry, the market will adapt to solar becoming a better product.
Isn't that what you always tell us?
You know I've really come around to solarpunk as a concept.
I used to genuinely be against solar because the carbon costs barely break even, but the very simple point was made to me that solar panels are an ideal ore for making solar panels -- meaning the carbon costs of solar panels goes down once we start recycling them. Add the independence solar panels give people (that punk aspect), and yeah I dig it.
Just FYI: The claim that solar panels barely break even in regards of carbon is misinformation:
Indeed, the solar panels exported from China in 2024 will have paid off their “carbon debt” within an average of just four months, according to detailed recent analysis for Carbon Brief. Manufacturing the solar panels will have added some 72m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) to China’s emissions in 2024, but will cut them overseas by 203MtCO2 per year, the analysis found. In total, these solar panels will save some 4.1GtCO2 over their lifetimes, paying off the upfront “carbon debt” some 57 times over. Looked at another way, the lifecycle emissions of solar power are far lower than those of fossil fuels, as shown in the chart below, which is based on UN data published in 2021.
And since most solar panels are produced in China and China is rapidly building clean energy, that will also go down further in the future. Solar is great.
Can you point me to a study saying carbon cost barely breaks even? Compared to what?
I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert. I can't even find the graph I saw -- much less verify its integrity. If you're really curious, I can tell you I once saw a bar graph that had fossil fuels (or maybe it was just coal) as very negative, then solar as barely breaking even, then wind or maybe it was hydro electric as more positive, and nuclear as very very positive. I don't really want to defend the graph because I can't even find it to check the axes.
I will say my undergrad was in material science (actually "nanoscience" but basically material science), and there seemed a lot of semi-open corruption in wafer fabrication (or maybe it was just between Andrew Cuomo and CNSE). I was never really clear on the details, but it made me quite skeptical of anything associated with that field. Life-time is actually one of the big points as the economics teacher I had in undergrad said most solar panels are tossed well before they reach their supposed lifespans -- again, I don't know if that's actually true.
To be honest, as I've gotten older the independence aspect of solar panels has been what's appealed to me more than the environmentalism. Not to say I don't care about the environment. Just that I don't think green energy is going to be adopted in time to solve the problem, and carbon capture is obvious BS unless it's biologically based (went into structural biology in grad school, so the biology is closer to my expertise).
The owners of my family's last house left us with solar panels, and as a struggling barely middle class family, it helped my parents afford all our expenses; from groceries to rent and even a vacation. It makes me so happy to see solarpunk become so popular, the good it can do is nothing short of awesome.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Problem counter: 0
Lack of capitalist imagination
We own the land you need to build the solar panels on.
We own the factories that build the solar panels
We own the solar farms.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Don't worry, there are literally startups, and Elon Musk, working right now to block sunlight from you and sell it back to you.
There is literally limitless energy available to us. But as long as the people in charge benefit from people believing the supply is limited, people will be made to believe the supply is limited.
load more comments
(2 replies)
This gets posted regularly on Lemmy, and while the economic take is tone-deaf at best, there's a real issue with generating more power than you can use. You can't just dump grid power
it needs to go somewhere. The grid needs to consume as much as it generates at all times or else bad things happen.
There are of course solutions, but that doesn't mean it's not an engineering challenge to implement.
Figuring out what to do with kilowatts is easy, but figuring out what to do with megawatts, at the drop of a hat, is substantially harder.
Solar panels don't care if the energy they could produce isn't consumed.
Wind generators can be feathered and breaked until they stop rotating and generating.
Hydro-generation dams can simply close their water intakes and stop generating.
The things that have problems stopping generation are not renewables, they're things like nuclear power plants.
Negative energy prices are not a technical problem - if the decision to do so is made, renewable generation systems can quickly stop producing.
Negative energy prices are due to Market systems being used to decide who stops generating if supply exceeds demand - instead of some centralized entity deciding who will stop, the individual suppliers look at the market price for their product and decide themselves to stop/start producing or not.
Because electric power supply/demand balance changes way faster than said market signals are produced and processed ultimatelly to decisions to stop or start generation, you end up with prices overshooting and undershooting the ideal price point which is in equilibrium with the supply/demand balance, and sometimes the undershooting results in negative prices.
So negative energy prices are the result of the political choice of using market systems rather than some kind of centralized control - a system with centralized control would respond far faster to falls in demand and would thus not generate more power than demand to the point that somebody is actually paid to consume power.
So yeah, the idea that it's solar panels that are the problem by causing negative energy prices is complete total bullshit - the choice of a market system to regulate supply and demand is the source of the problem and solar, because it has very low operational costs and thus the price solar operators are willing to sell their product for is lower, just means that when the market at times naturally undershots (because it's SLOW at responding to changes in supply/demand) it will do so against an equilibrium price which is lower because solar is cheaper, and will thus more frequently end up going below zero price and into negative territory before bouncing back and stabilizing at the price which is in equilibrium with the current supply/demand balance.
Why wouldn't batteries work?
Oh they absolutely do! My only point is that grid supply must equal grid demand. There are many ways to achieve this, as folks here have pointed out.
Throttling power generation (turning off/disconnecting PV from grid for example), and storage (chemical, heat, or hydro battery) are all established technologies, they just need to be implemented properly to avoid supply/demand mismatch.
No. No no no. You can literally turn solar generation off, nearly instantly. It's called curtailment and it's done all the time in saturated markets. Older residential inverters don't have the reactive technology, but residential solar is a drop in the bucket compared to utility-scale solar.
The economics of that are great. Negative power prices are an incentive to store energy and get payed for that. Then release the energy again later in the day or at night to earn money on it again.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Peak energy production would be a good time to train the damn llms instead of building natural gas power plant I guess.
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(60 replies)
view more: next ›