There is never surplus power with a network of a few "turn it on as needed" intensive industrial uses like haber-bosch reactors for ammonia, dessalination plants and electrolysis for aluminium or other metals...right?

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[–] Raxiel@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Lately, quite a few people* in the UK have been enjoying negative domestic electricity prices with the recent high winds in the North Sea. They always find something to use it for, either extra laundry or using electric heaters rather than gas for space heating. I know big chunks of spinning iron are needed for grid frequency control, but if having to pay generators to curtail their output is the cost of having adequate redundancy, it should at least start with the fossil fuels.

Right now gas is providing 2.3GW out of the nations 33.3GW demand (18GW domestic renewables) coal is completely off. A few days ago I saw it as low as 1GW which I'm pretty sure is as close as it can get to idle standby.

*I don't have a battery, and I have a family that always wants to use the most power in the evening peak, so I'm not one of them, but export at least covers import in the summer months

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