zlacker

It is complex, wholesale prices generally do not reflect in retail directly. even when suppliers have flexible pricing and support V2G /buying from users solar etc, there is only only some correlation not 100% pass through of rates.

There are also technical and economic reasons this may not work beyond just inelastic vendor pricing, there is cost to transmission(loss) and all the step down that has to happen before electricity is at your door, that cost will be always positive so it may not actually be net positive.

At steep enough negative pricing this could be profitable, however at that point power plants with the highest costs and easiest scale down/ shut down procedures will start acting.

Projects like the one at Dinorwig (pumped hydro-storage) are more viable solution for excess capacity.

>>manque+(OP)
> Projects like the one at Dinorwig (pumped hydro-storage) are more viable solution for excess capacity.

I think this is a little simplistic. Pumped hydro is very reliant on finding suitable geography which ultimately limits the potential capacity. I think it's more likely that grids of the future will rely on a variety of storage solutions (pumped hydro, consumer EVs, grid scale batteries etc.) and smarter load-shedding rather than any single solution being dominant.

>>remus+U3
This is a bit misleading. Pumped hydro needs vertical relieve, but in places where vertical relief exists the potential is very large. It does not need to be on or even near any existing watercourse (although it can be piggybacked onto a reservoir that is, by adding another reservoir at higher elevation.)

>>remus+U3
Load scheduling driven by price incentives (namely hot water) is already the largest flexibility source in France iirc. I’m not sure that there is much difference between price-driven flexibility and smart grids though (in that most of the benefit is captured by communicating prices ahead of time rather than dynamic load modulation)

>>remus+U3
I meant to imply grid scale solutions not just pumped hydro only. The point was end customers based storage is not cost effective option for negative pricing, which will be be almost always marginally negative just shy of the cost of plants to scale down their generation.

Pumped hydro has been the cheapest by far and proven at scale far beyond any other solution including grid scale batteries, but only works in specific geographies and up to a fixed scale.

Grid scale batteries, pumped hydro, molten salts or other grid scale storage are all viable options provided TCO is cheaper than arbitrage that comes from price fluctuations.

This is no different than arbitrage in say commodity markets by taking delivery of the goods like say how U.S. government is using its strategic oil reserves these days.

>>remus+U3
Unlike normal hydro which needs a flow, pumped hydro only needs an hill and a source. Those are common.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=view_citation...