[Gibbon1]

Unlike the economist I know something about accounting. If there is excess power at zero marginal cost someone cunning is already planning on making some coin off it. As it is utilities with excess solar and wind are rapidly adding battery storage.

I think there are three stages of renewable development. The first stage renewables partly offset traditional suppliers. The second stage is you actually have excess part of the time. And the third stage you have a lot of season excess. China and Texas are in the first stage but California is in the second stage already.

[Leherenn]

> If there is excess power at zero marginal cost someone cunning is already planning on making some coin off it.

I'm not sure it's that simple as evidenced by the ever increasing hours of negative electricity prices.

As far as I know, there are so far no good applications for short bursts of negative prices. Everything that would love those is so capital intensive/high fix costs that even 10 or 20% utilisation rates at negative prices are not enough to make it economically viable.

Season excess is also a big problem. Batteries to smooth the days/nights cycles are fine, you can use them ~365 times a year. But a battery to smooth out summer/winter cycles can only be used once a year!

[Gibbon1]

I look at California ISO's site

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply

The difference between summer and winter for renewables is 20%. In California the difference is driven mostly by solar.

This is an interesting page.

http://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2021/11/world-population-by-lat...

Majority of the worlds population lives between 40 north and 10 degrees south. And also some places like Scotland had lots of wind.

Definitely winners and losers in the transition.