[stubish]

But it not entirely true. While renewables can cover well over 100% of daytime usage on most days in summer in my region, we are down to about 40% during winter. We need lots more solar panels and wind turbines and enough battery to get us through energy droughts, and installation and maintenance has economic and environmental costs. Much less than other forms of generation, but costs nonetheless. If everyone stops caring how much power they draw because it is 'free', the problem of supplying enough sustainable generation becomes harder and takes longer. The extra generation capacity needed is paid for by consumers in the form of connection fees and/or tax payers.

[hnaccount_rng]

You are of course somewhat correct. But - I think - only technically. In practice what happens is that the “maintenance”[1] costs on solar production is extremely limited and should (that’s not yet possible to reliably say) be much lower than the rest of the grid.

If that’s the case, then we really don’t have to care about usage amounts _during the surplus time_. That in turn will enable completely different patterns. I think the correct analogy is the movement from candles/gas lights to electric lights. Before electricity was widely available nearly everything in life had to be done during daylight hours. Today we don’t even think twice about whether a meal can be cooked “after dark” or to move to a different location or ...

And yes that means I say: We will provide electric power for free [2], just like we do with street lighting

[1] let’s just call all replacements of cells and inverters maintenance for this discussion here [2] at the point of consumption. But that happens if the cost is smaller than the implementation of the sales system