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by grues-dinner 291 days ago
There's also some long-term risk here. If we, humans, did massive amounts of dispatchable solar and wind, plus systems like this, static battery storage, other storage and things like widespread EV capacity arbitrage, it's not guaranteed that the negative or even low energy price events would even happen. The more people think they can store it and sell it later, the higher the demand for off-peak power. You could end up with op-ex exceeding revenue in the future.

Then again, the same also goes for the other storage methods as the spread compresses. Eventually, as always, it all comes down to who can do it on the thinnest shoestring. 1/4 the cost, but the thermodynamic efficiency is 1/3 (direct heat vs batteries + heat pump, say) is still a winner. Finns aren't going to stop needing heat in winter soon, and if you can provide it even a fraction under the cost of battery electricity and a heat pump, you get the customer. And the district heat infrastructure probably already exists.

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Its of course true that this will somewhat even out once storage becomes more available. But there are still market forces at play. If the electricity prices are higher, operators have a renewed financial incentive to generate more power (more power = more revenue), for example by re-powering solar and wind farms.

Theoretically this would be an endless cycle, which is of course constrained by very practical needs of the electricity users.