Chile Has So Much Solar Energy It's Giving It Away for Free (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: Chile's solar industry has expanded so quickly that it's giving electricity away for free. Spot prices reached zero in parts of the country on 113 days through April, a number that's on track to beat last year's total of 192 days, according to Chile's central grid operator. While that may be good for consumers, it's bad news for companies that own power plants struggling to generate revenue and developers seeking financing for new facilities. The main culprit is the northern part of the country, in the Atacama desert. Chile's increasing energy demand, pushed by booming mine production and economic growth, helped spur the development of 29 solar farms, with another 15 planned, on the country's central power grid. Now the nation faces slowing demand for energy as copper production slows amid a global glut, and those power plants are oversupplying a region that lacks transmission lines to distribute the electricity elsewhere.

Comments

Central planning failure

[ErikTheRed]

And must people keep using the normally beautiful word "free" in such an Orwellian context? There is literally a whole world of unseen (a la Bastiat) opportunity costs behind this overbuilt boondoggle, especially in a country largely still mired in poverty.

Re:Central planning failure

[NotInHere]

I guess OP refers to Orwellian twisting of word's meanings. "Freedom is slavery" like stuff.

Don't mix it with the popular use of Orwellian, meaning a surveillance state. But his book was about much more than that.

Re:Central planning failure

[Anonymous Coward]

With solar it's actually quite simple: You turn off the inverters. The solar panels don't break if you don't consume the electricity. Of course there's a capitalist incentive not to do that and to give away the electricity instead. If you can't make a buck, at least you can prevent the competition from making a buck.

Re:Can we have this problem, please?

[MountainLogic]

Has happened on a small scale in the US. In central Washington, where the dams on the Columbia River and an abundance of wind power occasionally produces a "perfect storm" of spring snow driven runoff from the Cascade Mountains driving the dams to max production and spring winds producing more renewable power than the region can export with existing transmission lines the result was predictable with zero cost exchange power and conflict over who gets to export their power. The region already has a large pumped storage facility on the Columbia complex, but we still need more storage and transmission capacity.