“Like a flood, we can't store it all” – is Watt surprised by this?

Article by Eric Worrell

The question is – who pays for the solar energy that must be thrown away?

Australia is rich in solar energy. Like floods, experts say we can't store them all

Energy reporter Daniel Mercer reports

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The number of homes and businesses with solar power has surpassed 4 million – just 20 years ago there was virtually no solar installed anywhere in the country.

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But all this solar energy raises some thorny issues, for one simple reason – Australia's electricity system sometimes has too much solar power to handle.

Experts say Australia needs to embrace this seemingly counterintuitive argument in order to deal with this abundance.

It requires accepting the fact that most solar energy will be wasted or leaked – Sometimes.

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“Minimum demand issues typically occur at midday on weekends, when there is a lot of solar power but there may not be a lot of demand,” Dr Wanhas said.

“At that point, the grid actually became a little unstable.

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Learn more: https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/australia-is-awash-with-solar-power-like-flooding-rain-experts-say-we-can-t- store -it-all/ar-AA1ucYf6?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds

The author goes on to ramble on about all the wonderful investments in batteries, which even under the most optimistic growth projections would only cover a few minutes of the nation's energy storage.

My question is established. Someone has to lose.

Will the cost of unwanted solar energy be passed on to owners of rooftop solar installations? Will they sometimes have to endure having their electricity benefits slashed, with rooftop systems not being able to offset their electricity bills as well as they thought?

How will the expected reduction in income affect those fancy “free solar” contracts that many low-income households sign, where repayments are credited to grid buyback revenue? Is there a small print clause in the contract that makes the homeowner responsible for paying off the debt out of pocket if solar revenue falls below a projected threshold?

Or will the cost of unwanted solar be loaded onto everyone else’s energy bills, including those of poor people living in high-rise apartments who have no way of getting in on the solar rate-rigging game?

Or will the Australian government sell out its grandchildren to the international banking cartel by borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to buy additional battery storage capacity to soak up all the occasional excess solar energy in the hope that the stored power will last before the batteries run out of power? Use it?

Who will pay for traditional generators that have been squeezed out of the market but must remain on standby if solar and wind power fail for extended periods of time? Like what happened this past June, in the depths of winter in the Southern Hemisphere?