Negative prices do incentivize storage, because storage will alliw sellers to sell at a time with higher prices (i.e. when demand is greater relative to supply).

I could see this then pushing more consumers to have their own batteries to store energy when it's inexpensive. Interesting market playing out with energy storage :-)

> A market where a good fluctuates between profitable and not is not one very attractive to investment.

This is the most wild thing I've ever read on this website. Pick just about any security and you'll see that buying and selling it over time fluctuates between profitable and not profitable. If something was always profitable everyone would do it and get infinitely rich. Arbitrage wouldn't exist. Economies would shut down.

Why? If you make a sufficient amount of money in the 5-8pm peak period it can make you strongly profitable despite losing money at noon.

And solar plants, unlike most other plants can be easily and quickly shut off so you don't even need to sell at negative prices.

Empirically this doesn't seem to happen.