Power Prices Go Negative in Germany
I see this as an important stage of going green:<p>Recently&#x2F;Currently: Unpredictable spikes in wind+solar power make it less profitable to run base-load power plants, since they can no longer guarantee profit at 100% of their duty cycle. Cleaner natural gas peaker plants replace the coal+oil baseload capacity.<p>Currently&#x2F;Soon: solar+battery costs fall below natural gas costs, so battery-storage systems replace peaker plants.<p>Near future: The transportation network converts from gasoline to electricity, absorbing spikes in generation.<p>Further future: baseload is entirely wind+solar, small and moderate spikes go into batteries that are distributed throughout the grid. But because baseload capacity is scaled to typical demand during typical weather, there are periodically very, very large power generation spikes when wind or sun is strong, generating a lot of temporary energy at essentially 0 cost. I hope this power is used to power negative-emission technologies.