This doesn't even pass an econ 101 sniff test. The market should self regulate by increasing electric usage during the day and scaling down at night. Alas the free market cannot manage such an ideal scenario.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
233 points (99.2% liked)
technology
24389 readers
332 users here now
On the road to fully automated luxury gay space communism.
Spreading Linux propaganda since 2020
- Ways to run Microsoft/Adobe and more on Linux
- The Ultimate FOSS Guide For Android
- Great libre software on Windows
- Hey you, the lib still using Chrome. Read this post!
Rules:
- 1. Obviously abide by the sitewide code of conduct. Bigotry will be met with an immediate ban
- 2. This community is about technology. Offtopic is permitted as long as it is kept in the comment sections
- 3. Although this is not /c/libre, FOSS related posting is tolerated, and even welcome in the case of effort posts
- 4. We believe technology should be liberating. As such, avoid promoting proprietary and/or bourgeois technology
- 5. Explanatory posts to correct the potential mistakes a comrade made in a post of their own are allowed, as long as they remain respectful
- 6. No crypto (Bitcoin, NFT, etc.) speculation, unless it is purely informative and not too cringe
- 7. Absolutely no tech bro shit. If you have a good opinion of Silicon Valley billionaires please manifest yourself so we can ban you.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
"The problem with solar panels is that, besides being extremely clean, they also provide extremely cheap electricity"
Statements made by the utterly deranged.
load more comments
(25 replies)
Batteries can be used to store excess power until needed
ideally you want to use not batteries as they have to be replaced - a physical "battery" using two lakes that pump between each other for example would be a better potential energy store than a battery imo
load more comments
(6 replies)
Hear me out: we build a literal iron dome over the entire world and sell sunlight to people regardless of whether they use it for solar energy or not!
Someone else will then build a Dyson Sphere & sell property on it while killing your scheme.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
This is a false framing of the actual dynamic at play. The problem is not the unmonetizability of it. This IS an issue to certain capitalist forces but the much more serious problem in the eyes of the capitalist state is that solar is decentralized. Centralized power production relies on infrastucture controlled by the capitalist. Even a personal home generator needs fuel to function. Which must be bought from those who control oil supplies. Solar once bought is entirely decoupled from their control. You can have solar panels and they cannot cut you power off anymore. It is an issue of power. Not the electric kind but the political kind. Controlling energy gives a person significant power of a society. Part of this is the ability to monetize that control but it is also simply a mechanism for control. The proletariet is seen as a threat by the capitalist and so any technology or policy that would remove direct control over the lives of proles is a threat. If they cannot cut off our power it removes a way for them to stop us from rebelling against them. Food and water supplies are also centrally controlled for this region. In many regions it would be cheaper and make more sense to grow much of our own food locally and have small well or rain catchment water systems. These are not used as they would destroy central control over the proles means to live. Making the prole a threat that cannot easily be neutralized. "Off-grid" living will always be something they attempt to discourage and make possible only for the wealthy. As to live truly off grid would mean to break free from the majority of the control mechanisms that are used to keep you subservient.
load more comments
(14 replies)
The problem with nature is it causes negative money in our market design somehow
shit, at least Mr. Burns' provided nuclear power as an alternative instead of coal 
I've seen that post a few times now and I still don't get what they're trying to say like how could that possibly be a bad thing?
Energy prices being driven into negative territory means that energy providers (and thus households with solar panels) have to pay for energy they provide to the electricity grid because the grid is almost at capacity. It’s a measure to discourage electricity production and encourage energy use for these periods.
Solar energy has the characteristic that it provides lots of energy during a sunny summer day, less in winter and none at night. So it’s not a constant or controllable flow like nuclear or fossil energy. To be able to completely switch to green energy, (afaik) either the grid capacity has to be increased tenfolds, or energy suppliers need huge batteries to store energy during supply spikes. Batteries are not super durable and their production not green at all so that has to be taken into account when determining the ecological footprint and material cost of solar energy.
This all is not to say that solar is comparably bad to fossil energy, I’m just explaining the hurdles that need to be taken care of when switching to solar.
Oh what a shame I guess it makes economic sense to nationalize utilities then
load more comments
(3 replies)
I mean it's a thing and it has effects.
Some people financed them under the obviously flawed assumption that they would always get like 10c/kWh for their excess electricity.
In some countries (
) pension funds are pretty bought into conventional energy production, under the assumption that this is a save investment with consistent returns. So this will be a bit of a blow to an already crumbling system.
This seems like the real reason they will scorch the skies like they did in the matrix…
That's not an accurate way to paraphrase what MIT Technology Review is saying.
Yeah what MIT is actually saying here is that because solar creation is too efficient it is actually creating an economic situation in which switching to solar costs more than the profit that would be made from it.
That wouldn't be an issue if they just allowed Chinese solar panels but without Chinese production it's an economic issue with capitalism.
Yeah what MIT is actually saying here is that because solar creation is too efficient it is actually creating an economic situation in which switching to solar costs more than the profit that would be made from it.
Not only that, but it reduces the profitability of other forms of generation too.
The major issue is of course capitalism, because everything has to make a profit. But what they really want is to socialize the losses encurred by solar onto us so they can continue to profit.
Our options are to either subsidize, or behead all the private energy company execs and subsidize it without profit.
There are a ton of non-private energy cooperatives around the US that do actually invest heavily in solar because of this though, so maybe as time goes on the "third position" is that power co-ops win out in the marketplace because they don't have a profit motive/burden
Addendum: It's insane that systems like MISO and ERCOT exist. Both of those systems but the reliability of the grids of 60% or more of Americans in the hands of a closed "free market" of energy trading to help stabilize the grid. It's absolutely amazing that it has continued to function at all, and that system is the exact issue that prevents wide adoption of solar due to the negative prices causing the whole market to start collapsing in on itself until they get bailed out by a State or Federal entity.
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Is their concern inherently driven by a a capitalist profit motive?
If so, and I suspect it is, then it’s accurate enough.
Even if you were in a cashless planned economy, dumping excess watts into a grid when they're not required would be creating negative value. Solar plants would avoid that by curtailment or diversion, but this is still defined as a problem that needs solutions like load shifting and storage.
load more comments
(3 replies)
I mean, the real problem here is storage. Solar works great in Phoenix but not so much in Seattle, cuz you know, clouds.
There are already solutions to this issue the problem is most of them are kind of expensive.
view more: next ›