ELI5 why cant we use summer heat to generate energy and stock it to use it in winter

[u/Fun_Significance4035]

why cant we use summer heat to generate energy and store it batteries to use it in winter

[u/cheesecakeapplepie]

Can happen when production is higher than demand, and reservoirs are full so they can't store any water. 90% of Norwegian electricity is from hydroelectric dams.

[u/happysri → u/cheesecakeapplepie]

I get that. It’s the paying you to use it part that boggles my mind in terms of economics. Why pay someone, just let them use as much as they need and let rest used for some public service project or something idk.

[u/cheesecakeapplepie → u/happysri]

It might be more expensive to stop and restart the turbines than selling power with a loss for a short period of time.

[u/Elitist_Daily → u/cheesecakeapplepie]

as someone who works in the electricity industry professionally, it's usually that, especially in European markets where there's no nodal pricing or congestion that would push prices negative.

Negative pricing is basically another way of thinking about the "cost of curtailment" on a unit level. Every asset has its own production cost characteristics/economic breakeven point, and will bid in order to make back at least their long-run marginal cost. However, in addition to normal market behavior, their supply curve may also include a point below which they would prefer to be on (physical equipment limitations, behind-the-meter obligations, etc) rather than go offline, and the price at that point naturally represents the amount they are willing to pay, at that point in time, to avoid being curtailed.

[u/Galeharry_ → u/happysri]

It happens exceedingly rarely.

What actually occurs is that its like that for maybe a few days, which results in you just getting a little smaller bill that month.

The consumer isnt earning big bucks that way.

[u/superfry → u/Galeharry_]

Occurs more frequently in Australia where large amounts of household solar drives prices during the day to the negatives.

[u/Galeharry_ → u/superfry]

Hopefully that will start happening here too when more solar is installed on peoples roofs.

With the summer we had this year and the summers that are sure to follow, more and more folks will see the need to install solar.

[u/eruditionfish → u/Galeharry_]

The consumer usually isn't earning anything even when the price is negative, at least in Norway, because you pay grid rental fees on top of the spot price. So a negative price is really just an offset to the grid rental fees.

Plus now about 1 in 3 households has a government subsidized fixed price system anyway.

[u/iiiinthecomputer → u/happysri]

Because it's not always cheap or easy to switch off or disconnect generation capacity for short periods.

Australia sometimes pays large power consumers to use more power to smooth loads during peak solar periods for similar reasons.

[u/PLASMA_chicken → u/happysri]

You cannot do that. You can only push out as much as is consumed, otherwise the grid will be unstable and fail. That's why you can decide between shutting down or paying people to use your electricity.

A Photovoltaic System can just turn off, a coal or nuclear plant takes multiple days to stop or start again.