this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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It's a very capitalist way of thinking about the problem, but what "negative prices" actually means in this case is that the grid is over-energised. That's a genuine engineering issue which would take considerable effort to deal with without exploding transformers or setting fire to power stations
Home owned windmills, solar panels and battery storage solves that.
Edit: Look at this awesome diagram of how it's done for a hybrid setup that's about $400 on Amazon.
PIKASOLA Wind Turbine Generator 12V 400W with a 30A Hybrid Charge Controller. As Solar and Wind Charge Controller which can Add Max 500W Solar Panel for 12V Battery.
How, exactly, does that solve anything? It's not like we can add some kind of magic automatic residential cutoff system (that would just make it worse) and residential distribution is already the problem! Residential solar is awesome (tho home batteries are largely elon propaganda...) but they only contribute to the above issue, not solve it. There are ways of addressing it, but they're complicated and unglamorous.
Of course we can. They're called Microgrid Interconnection Devices (MIDs).
Microgrids that can disconnect from the utility at appropriate times may in fact make it better. If homeowners responded to utility alerts of high demand and opted to disconnect from the grid during those times while still having power, that would just make grid operators and home owners happier.
Microgrids are the solution!
While residential BESSs are largely Tesla based, they are absolutely key in the energy transition from fossil- to renewables-based power sources.
How?
Which ways?
MIDs are in fact one of the bigger ones! That said, all the ones I have worked with are promising but are as-yet still unreliable enough that municipal adoption has been mired in safety concerns and the usual nonsense. To be honest that's been ever since they were first added to the NEC (admittedly most of this initially was based on speculative concerns), because of course. There are still warranted concerns with the implementation of microgrids, including things that are obviously bullshit like a lack of confidence in the reactivity of stations to the potential for the excessive peaking large residential adoption of home batteries might cause, but also much less bullshit things like the complicating risks of having very large lithium-based batteries present in a residential fire.
They are not insurmountable concerns, but they are ones that need answering and are not a small part of why I say that currently, home battery storage solutions just aren't there yet. Local-grid facilities (what one of your sources calls a Mini-grid) are currently the best solution, which is why so many utilities are installing them. I've no doubt that the issues will be worked out, and although it will be some time before the technology matures to where the economies of scale present at the municipal level are no longer a driving consideration, it'll probably get there.
very minor stuff
Is this what you'd intended to link here, because while you're factually accurate in their necessity and I'm not disputing your claims, as far as I can tell the source here is only discussing local-municipal ('mini grid') installs, not microgrid installs, nor does it touch on the value of home-scale BESS
(edit: fixed some typos)