[curiousphil]

Couldn't this low demand peak noon energy be used to power something of value to someone somewhere? Perhaps a folding at home type setup? Maybe its a distributed cloud computing platform of some sort? I would think there are many clever ways that this low demand power could be used to generate some income that offsets the price.

[IkmoIkmo]

For a small village with excess solar capacity, absolutely, a university in a nearby city could choose to negotiate a PPA with the village's solar entrepreneurs and build a datacentre there using the electricity. But if you want renewables to make a difference worldwide and go from 1% of electricity generation to say 30%, then you're going to need such applications on a global scale. Right now there simply aren't such applications, evidenced by the large differences in the price of electricity throughout the day which means there's no arbitrage opportunities available to smooth that out.

The most likely arbitrage factor will probably be the rise of electric cars which will provide a natural, decentralised, consumer-driven battery storage on a large scale. Cars are idle most of the day, e.g. when you're at work at noon and solar generates peak power, they can be programmed to charge when prices are low, and at peak times prices would be pushed down due to extra supply.