• @[email protected]
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    67 months ago

    Isn’t there any kind of economic activity that could make use of this excess energy, even if it isn’t very profitable?

    • @CertifiedBlackGuy
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      127 months ago

      Yes. Desalination or hydrogen separation via electrolysis

      Both uses are productive, one generates fresh water, the other can be a form of energy storage.

      Both are extremely energy intensive for the yield, making them unprofitable, but are extremely useful things to do with a glut of electricity.

    • @[email protected]
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      77 months ago

      There is, but you have to set it up and link it with the central control system of your grid, similarly to how power generators have an automatic generation control to balance the network.

    • @[email protected]
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      57 months ago

      Yes there is. So consumers (with the right kind of smart meters) are paid to use energy and we are slowly moving from pilot plan into small scale production of hydrogen. But there’s nowhere near enough and the grid will literally fry itself unless producers stop pumping more onto the grid (during windy and sunny days, in areas with high penetration of intermittent production.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        the grid will literally fry itself

        I don’t believe this is true for three reasons.

        #1 it’s glossing over the mechanics of how equipment will get damaged

        #2 the people that own the equipment have ways of managing excess capacity.

        #3 minuscule increases in grid frequency result in devices using power less efficiently, so they use more power. There’s time to adjust power generation in surplus events.