It seems bizarre that industries that like low energy prices aren't taking advantage of this. I think that's fertilizer production, aluminum production, bitcoin mining, and I assume a lot of other things.

I assume the reason is that these "negative prices" are just fictions, only available to a few select existing customers, ie artifacts of regulation.

But the article is actually too vague for me to understand what the actual regulatory and political constraints of the situation are.

They are. I remember reading in particular that aluminum producers in Germany were scaling production up and down in response to renewable output.

They seem pretty press-shy about it though - possibly because this is serving as a kind of covert subsidy that wouldn't look too good under WTO rules.

I think it's mostly that they are transient. So not yet enough to build an entirely new business model around. Possibly it acts as a minor incentive for coal plants to invest in upgrades to let them ramp down faster, or for industries to sign up for demand response, as they can make money by both increasing or decreasing demand when asked by the grid.

Well, the most basic thing is: renewables are completely helpless alone, they need actual, real power generation (baseline, which are not dispatchable). If you let negative prices run too long (coupled with other incentives that skew the market), the baseline companies might go bankrupt and you won't have power when renewables decide not to work. Negative prices also more or less mean that your grid is overstressed and in risk of damage. Those are just the two most obvious (to me!) reasons.

Base load simply means you can't cheaply turn a power plant on and off to meet demand, which is the opposite of what you want with renewables. You want peaking power plants and energy storage.

Negative prices means the market is heavily subsidized, hence non competitive hence non sustainable.

Transforming renewable energy in electricity is anyway pretty ... stupid (lot of loss) and counter productive (handling surge, storing, grid complexification, poor capacity planning that requires even more fossil energy in high power mode to adapt to peak in demand)

The real solution maybe to adapt our lives to the seasonality, and maybe to use wind power ... well to make wind mill for instance. Mechanic to mechanic energy transformation is not stupid.

Right now, renewable energy is a big scam that can not sustain and that is used by thieves to still tax money in the name of good intentions.

> The real solution maybe to adapt our lives to the seasonality, and maybe to use wind power ... well to make wind mill for instance. Mechanic to mechanic energy transformation is not stupid.

What are you even talking about? Have you invented a new mechanic energy transmission process with no losses? If we are calling names, I'd say that mechanic energy transmission is even more "stupid". If your mechanic energy collection gizmo is not right where you want it, then you'll have tremendous losses transmitting it.

Not that it matters too much in case of renewables. You just need a bigger collecting system.

Also, electric energy is fungible. You can convert it into almost anything you need, including mechanical power. Good luck posting to hacker news with your mechanical energy.

The solution is not going back to medieval era. It is to figure out better solutions. Renewable energy is not a scam. The market may be heavily subsidized (not everywhere), but that's how you jump-start an industry. Market forces may prevent development, but that's a different problem.

Not to mention that everything is subsidized in some way. Coal power plants should be paying for the pollutants (including radiation) that they are releasing in the atmosphere. In fact, all current power plants (including hydro) are subsidized. If not by money directly, by the law.