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While it's possible that the over supply of solar power in California is a case of poor incentives, my money is on it being a result of different parts of the CA solar + electricity ecosystem have progressed at different speeds. Assuming that we see increases in our facility with electricity transmission and storage, having "too much" solar power now doesn't seem as big of a deal as this article makes it out to be.

Which is more likely? That excess transmission and storage infrastructure gets built out before excess generation gets built out? Or that the demand for better transmission and storage infrastructure is preceded by an oversupply of solar power?

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Gibbon1 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I tried estimating how much power was curtailed from their big scary number(tm).

3 million megawatt hours per year.

Assuming 2200 hours of sun per years that's 1.4GW average. Total solar is 15-18GW maybe. So what 10% gets curtailed.

Maybe throw some more containerized batteries at it.

LA Times always feels like The Wall Street Journal of the west. Your go to source for reactionary negativism.

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Arnt 8 hours ago | parent [-]

10% goes to waste…

I've never worked anywhere that had significant servers and managed to load the production server CPUs anywhere near 90%. 9% perhaps.

Yes I think that's a fair comparison. Both are about choosing the appropriate capacity and the solution involves electronics without any moving parts.

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_aavaa_ 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The only downside with drawing these kinds of analogies is that you're still paying an operating cost for the unused portion of your production server.

The light falling on a solar panel is free.

Yeah there's theoretical lost revenue, but that's a theoretical loss versus a real loss from operating costs.

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Arnt 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If you want to be pedantic, hail falling on solar panels isn't free and happens sometimes. But adding up these kinds of cost requires a large dose of pedantry, because the costs are so small compared to the cost of operating devices that have moving parts.

(Pedantry is fun, of course. I love it.)

	▲	_aavaa_ 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My comment wasn't so much about being pedantic, though insurance would cover the hail and you're paying for that regardless of output amount. I was more taking umbrage with referring to curtailed solar and wind as "waste". It isn't waste any more than the sunlight falling on a plot of land without a solar panel is waste; neither have a real marginal cost associated with them. Unlike say the coal plant that chooses to go into negative prices rather than turn down its output.