Grid prices going up leads to more clean energy solutions being installed, not less. It's not a problem for consumers but for monopolistic grid providers relying on obsolete and hopelessly noncompetitive means of generating energy. I.e. Nuclear, coal, and gas (in order of $/kwh). California has no excuse for power outages or water shortages as it plenty of untapped clean energy (sun, wind) to power the state and desalinate all the water it could ever need. All that takes is investing a few percent of the revenue of any their resident trillion $ mega corporations. Grid and water prices are high only because the local government there is a mess. It's the same reason it has a homeless problem & widespread poverty, the roads are bad, etc. These are governance issues, not technical problems.

The grid needs to be able to adapt to being needed much more sporadically. The only places where this is a problem is where the grid is a for profit monopoly relying on the ability to dictate prices. Most of the US used to be like that which is why they are running so many costly and out of date coal and nuclear plants. Lots of these are going bankrupt lately because of decades of just sitting on their hands while increasing prices and lobbying to prevent people from even being allowed to install solar on their roofs (e.g. Arizona until not so long ago) or refusing to buy excess capacity has failed to prevent the inevitable. Operating a coal plant in Arizona is like selling ice cream on the North Pole. I.e. not a great business plan. 2 out of the 5 remaining ones have scheduled closing dates in the very near future. I doubt the remaining 3 will survive the decade and it's in any case only a few percent of the total grid capacity.

Now that the proverbial shit has hit the fan in terms of people figuring out they can spend 5-10K dollars on upgrading their house and still get a return on investment in grid savings, grid providers are getting a reality check. All this means is that they are forced to adapt and compete on price. In most places that means investing in wind and other clean solutions with a very low variable cost. Anything that requires you to spend money on tons of fuel even when there is no demand just because spinning up and down capacity takes time is a problem because it means you are burning money for energy that you can't sell.

The key technical challenge here is to find a way to monetize the vast overcapacity we will inevitably end up with. If the grid is the only place you can sell excess energy and demand for grid is going down and you are investing in solutions that generate more energy than you need most/all of the time, finding a way to soak up that energy in a way that can generate revenue is the key thing to do.

Here's some cool stuff you can do guilt free with cheap clean energy:

- desalinate water (again, California: the pacific has plenty of H2O) or condense it from air (by chilling it) - generate hydrogen or other fuels from air, water, etc. - turn biomass into coal (yep, that's a thing). - charge batteries, pump up water, power industry, transport, etc. Whatever amount of twh. capacity we need. - exporting it to places that still have a shortage. - run the AC 24x7 at ridiculously low temperatures or heat your place at a ridiculously high temperature.

We are about to enter an era of vast of excess energy production capacity. That's not a problem but an opportunity. People are talking about covering 100% of our current needs when they need to be thinking in terms of 1000% our current needs. The market for clean energy is magnitudes our current consumption. There is no upper limit.