[petertodd]

> This is a mild curiosity at best.

Exactly. There are genuine economic/engineering reasons for negative prices to occasionally exist. But in a well-designed, well-run, grid price will be negative only a small minority of the time. It just doesn't make sense to install a bunch of expensive equipment to provide this service when sufficient capacity exists from "happy accidents" like spare battery storage.

In the long run, better managed solar and wind should make negative prices a fairly rare event.

[eru]

Once you sign up customers for 'cheaper electricity, but you have to agree to the occasional loadshedding', you can probably also sign them up for a bit of 'oh, and please burn some more electricity, when we tell you to'.

The former is already happening and useful, the latter would be a relatively simple and easy add-on that could be used to offer ever so slightly cheaper electricity.

[jounker]

My washing machine has a timer. I do the wash when local electricity rates are near zero.

[eru]

Yes, and you could imagine telling your utility: just kick off the laundry anytime in this time interval, in return for cheaper electricity.