[marcosdumay]

> the spot (instantaneous) energy price will drop to near zero

Yes, and that means generation will become unprofitable.

We seem to be a decade or so away from the point where the investment on generation can't be decided by direct ROI. And nobody is preparing for this. Governments need a long time to regulate that kind of thing... so we can expect some problems on the near future.

[triplepoint217]

I think Renewables (especially solar) tend to be fairly easy to cutail (stop generating) and can probably avoid generating much during negative prices. I'd guess the negative prices will probably mostly hit legacy assets that don't have that ability.

[JumpCrisscross]

> that means generation will become unprofitable

For that time period. At the same time, using energy becomes supremely profitable. This isn’t a weird quirk of the power markets; compute time is also instantaneous. It’s just less noticeable because we haven’t unified a market for it. These are amply solvable problems.

[marcosdumay]

> For that time period.

For the time period that the most common generators generate the most energy. By itself, that guarantees that there won't be enough investment to create excess renewables. Or at least that markets won't make that investment.

If you want excess renewables (and they are a safety and security necessity), you need to fund it by something that isn't interested on direct ROI.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If you want excess renewables

Sure, agreed. I don’t think this is something we should necessarily want. But if it is, it would require subsidy.