This doesn't surprise me in the least. Look at what's been happening in Germany for a few years now in respect to their struggle with maintaining the power plants. The risk of course is people accuse the power company of being greedy but to be honest they can only operate so long they have a minimum number of customers buying power. Coal and nuclear plants cannot just be turned off and on like your light switch at home, they take weeks if not months to heat them up or turn them off.
So when a ton of solar comes on the market, it drops the rates during peak times but doesn't supply power during darker days and night time. Baseload plants must always operate at a fixed level in order to be economical. If the baseload plants were not there most factories would not be able to operate, so we have a problem of how fast can we switch to solar and even if everyone put panels on their roofs what then? Where will the extra capacity come from? The average server farm needs a steady power supply that is reliable; the ones that do run on "green" power usually get their power from lager utility companies with diversified or steady power supplies, however those don't exist everywhere. I don't know of any large power generating dams in Hawaii.
It's great that so much solar power has come on-line but what does someone like myself do? I don't have solar panels on my roof, so when the local power company goes under will you supply me power from your solar panels?
Slashdot Mirror
Suckers will still be born everyday and fools will still be parted with their money. The more things change the more they will stay the same.
And has been going on steadily for the last 2 decades?
This doesn't surprise me in the least. Look at what's been happening in Germany for a few years now in respect to their struggle with maintaining the power plants. The risk of course is people accuse the power company of being greedy but to be honest they can only operate so long they have a minimum number of customers buying power. Coal and nuclear plants cannot just be turned off and on like your light switch at home, they take weeks if not months to heat them up or turn them off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load_power_plant
http://www.ipautah.com/data/upfiles/newsletters/CyclingArticles.pdf
So when a ton of solar comes on the market, it drops the rates during peak times but doesn't supply power during darker days and night time. Baseload plants must always operate at a fixed level in order to be economical. If the baseload plants were not there most factories would not be able to operate, so we have a problem of how fast can we switch to solar and even if everyone put panels on their roofs what then? Where will the extra capacity come from? The average server farm needs a steady power supply that is reliable; the ones that do run on "green" power usually get their power from lager utility companies with diversified or steady power supplies, however those don't exist everywhere. I don't know of any large power generating dams in Hawaii.
It's great that so much solar power has come on-line but what does someone like myself do? I don't have solar panels on my roof, so when the local power company goes under will you supply me power from your solar panels?