“Like Flooding Rain, we Can’t Store it All” – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

The question – who pays for the solar power which has to be discarded?

Australia is awash with solar power. Like flooding rain, experts say we can’t store it all

Story by energy reporter Daniel Mercer

…

The number of homes and businesses with a solar installation clicked past 4 million — barely 20 years since there was practically none anywhere in the country.

…

But all of this solar is prompting some hard questions, and gnashing of teeth, for one, simple reason — there is, at times, too much solar power in Australia’s electricity systems to handle.

To deal with this abundance, experts say Australia needs to come to terms what appears a counter-intuitive argument.

It needs to accept that much of this solar will have to be wasted — or spilled — sometimes.

…

“The minimum demand problem typically happens in the middle of the day on weekend days when you have a lot of solar output but maybe not a lot of demand,” Dr Wonhas said.

“At that time, the electricity grid effectively becomes a little bit unstable.

…

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/australia-is-awash-with-solar-power-like-flooding-rain-experts-say-we-can-t-store-it-all/ar-AA1ucYf6?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds

The author goes on to waffle about all the wonderful investment in batteries, which even in the most optimistic growth forecasts at best will cover a few minutes of national energy storage.

My question stands. Someone has to lose.

Will the cost of unwanted solar be passed to the owners of rooftop solar installations? Will they sometimes have to live with having their power bill benefit slashed, live with their rooftop systems not offsetting their power bills as much as they thought?

How would the curtailing of expected revenue impact those fancy “no cost solar” contracts many low income householders signed, in which repayments are supposed to be charged to the grid buyback income? Do the contracts have a small print clause which makes homeowners liable for servicing the debt out of their own pocket, if solar revenues drop below an expected threshold?

Or will the cost of unwanted solar be loaded onto everyone elses energy bills, including the bills of poor people who live in high-rise apartments, who have no means of getting a foot in the door of the solar electricity bill rigging game?

Or will the Aussie government sell out the grandkids to the international banking cartel, by borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to purchase additional battery storage capacity to soak up all that excess solar energy on the odd occasions it is generated, in the hope the stored power can be used before the batteries lose their charge?

Who is paying for those conventional generators which are being squeezed out of the market, but still have to be kept on standby, for those occasions when both solar and wind fail for a prolonged period of time? Like what happened in June this year, in the middle of our Southern Hemisphere winter?