[taneq]

1. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

In practical terms the energy has to go somewhere. Maybe they could build massive dump resistors to burn off the energy that way but doing so would only increase load on everything (shortening component lives) for no gain.

[iguy]

Those giant cooling towers that are most people's image of a power station are almost exactly this. They are a giant system for dumping heat into the air, usually (but not always) by evaporating water.

(The heat being dumped is usually low-temperature waste heat, not final output.)

[taneq]

Those giant cooling towers are pretty expensive and the water to run them can cause significant damage to the local ecosystem if it raises the temperature of whatever water body they draw from. It's a lot easier to just turn off the energy sources (such as solar) that can be turned off without ill effect.

[iguy]

Sure they are expensive. That's why the coal plants are willing to bid a negative price for their power, to have someone else deal with it. Rather than paying to build another tower.

The negative bids aren't coming from suppliers who can easily turn off, they have already turned off at this point.

And, cooling towers don't work by pumping hot water back into a lake. No need for a tower for that. They work by evaporating it, which lets you dump both the heat up to 100C, plus the latent heat of liquid -> gas.