[adamcharnock]

I made a comment with regards to this a while ago [1]. I'll repeat it here as I think it is relevant:

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I’ve heard on the grapevine that facilities are now being designed which work at under 100% capacity in order to soak up excess/cheap power.

I believe this is coming about because: 1) the high cost of power and presence of sporadically cheap power makes it economically viable, and 2) designing equipment with lower duty cycles can actually provide substantial cost savings. Ie a facility which only runs 50% of the time is much cheaper to build & run than once which runs 100% of the time.

Sorry I cannot cite sources right now.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18929542

[lovemenot]

It'd be a boon for renewables if energy consuming plant costs were less dominated by investment in equipment.

Imagine doing shift planning at such a site though. Eight days from now, there's a 60% chance of wind in excess of 5m/s between 22.00 and 06.00. But labour costs would be 130% higher than 06.00 to 14.00 on that day. On that morning shift there's a 50% chance of clear skies ...

[caf]

If only there was some form of programmable electronic computation device that could be used to solve such complex sets of constraints modelled as equations :)

[TeMPOraL]

It's not the calculation part that's the problem, it's the investment part (and perhaps also labor part).

[VBprogrammer]

I think the savings in planning for low duty cycle probably result from reduced redundancy i.e. installing one pressure pump instead of two. Which naturally means when there is a low chance of excess energy is a good time to work on maintaining the systems rather than just taking one off line and working on the other.

This means that you just staff it at a consistent level and plan the work around the energy levels.

[pedantsamaritan]

I would be sad to be the worker subject to that shift planning