this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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I saw some context for this, and the short of it is that headline writers want you to hate click on articles.
What the article is actually about is that there's tons of solar panels now but not enough infrastructure to effectively limit/store/use the power at peak production, and the extra energy in the grid can cause damage. Damage to the extent of people being without power for months.
California had a tax incentive program for solar panels, but not batteries, and because batteries are expensive, they're in a situation now where so many people put panels on their houses but no batteries to store excess power that they can't store the power when it surpasses demand, so the state is literally paying companies to run their industrial stoves and stuff just to burn off the excess power to keep the grid from being destroyed.
Just send the electricity to a neighbouring state. Sure, it'll be really inefficient to pass it through that massive length of cable, but that's fine, we don't care about that. If the interstate power infrastructure doesn't have enough capacity then first priority should be to upgrade it.
America is severly lacking in UHVDC.
The peak of power demand is behind the peak of production. So sending power east makes so much sense.
That's one of the options they mention as a solution.
Basically store it, use it, ship it, subsidize it or pay someone to waste it are the options.
Right now they pay someone to waste it, which is the option that makes adoption the most difficult, so it's a problem.