[martin_a]

To be fair: Wind energy and solar has gained a lot of traction in Germany and is producing more and more energy every year.

Sadly "the big four" (energy companies) are influencing politics and are actively halting progress on renewables which leads to really strange effects.

My landlord installed a rather big solar system on the roof and due to its size, the energy company can decide to remotely shut it off when there's enough energy in the grid.

It's really a shame and a lot of corruption is going on there.

Also: Little to no research on energy storage was done in the last 25 years, because of all this corruption.

[bluelu]

There can't be too much or too less electricity in the grid. So it's normal that the power operators can shut off larger producers, as they can also shut off large consumers.

This has nothing to do with corruption.

[martin_a]

> This has nothing to do with corruption.

In the end it has. Development and building of energy storage systems of any kind was not in the focus in the last decades because nuclear energy and coal was always "the solution" for energy problems and the big four told us not to worry about anything, so they could do their business as usual.

[speedgoose]

They have to shutdown production if the demand is not high. Once in a while they pay other countries to get their leftover electricity while they shutdown production.

[martin_a]

And we could use that energy instead to fill storage systems, be it water reservoirs or large battery packs or what might come.

But we need to have the right technology to do things like that...