[tmrgn]

The high-value kWH logic only holds true with a negligible amount of running solar capacity, however. If we realize the vision of a massive restructuring of energy provision towards photovoltaics, we also have to remodel how to determine the fair price for solar production. In Germany, for example, wholesale rates on sunny days are severely depressed since a few years (which doesn't hurt producers, however, since they were guaranteed fixed feed-in rates, but electricity consumers in general who have to pay for the support programs.)

[dpierce9]

This is a good point though one thing is that we can pretty much always use more electricity (Alcoa can start smelting more or something) and since we don't have feed-in tariffs I am not sure we will see those same market signals.

[tmrgn]

Right. In addition, flattening intermittent feed-ins as a business model hasn't really taken up (via large scale storage solutions, for example). Of course FITs strengthen the drive towards market-ignorant feed-ins. Still, as most renewables have very low variable costs, one might expect similar problems in more market-like regimes too.