[crdoconnor]

It's surprising just how much people seem to discount the reliability of markets to smoothly deal with variations in supply and demand.

German aluminum smelters for instance are already building their plants to be able to scale electricity with supply. They've seen these periods where electricity prices dropped almost to zero and they want in.

As always, markets often take time to adjust to new realities, so this shift won't be instantaneous.

[Gibbon1]

I'm totally with this, the idea that no market for 'excess' electric will appear doesn't pass the sniff test. A paper I read discussed a pilot plant in the 50's that produced iron from sulfide ores. Certainly sounds like a process that can consume excess power without much trouble provided that situation happens frequently enough.

http://www.ulcos.org/en/docs/Ref03%20-%20Electrowinning%20-%...

'High purity iron was produced, with a current yield of 85% and a power consumption of 4.25 kWh/kg iron'

Far as I can tell, 1 GW for an hour would produce ~250 tons of iron.

[Qantourisc]

In some countries it gets even more interesting: they pay you to consume power, as they have nowhere to dump it.