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Betty2theWhite t1_jdbi15c wrote

Reply to comment by ghostsintherafters in Maine's Energy future by mainething

People leading you away from just solar panels are your friends. Solar panels can't fix the world right now, we don't have adequate energy storage, especially in Maine where we have massive needs for power at the exact times solar stops producing. The duck curve just doesn't allow for it

In fact I'd argue only adding solar panels wouldn't change prices at all. Power plants are super costly to shut down and start up, and they have set flexibility in how much or little output they can sustain. So we can't just shut them off when the solar panels start producing and turn them back on when we need the power, and it turns out we consume the most power right before and right after solar panels produce.

All a massive solar panel project would do, right now, is flood the market with power at the times we need the least amount of power.

Now lunar panels, that's what we need.

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seanwalter54321 t1_jdc19tu wrote

You’ll get downvoted but you seem to be the only one here that knows what they’re talking about. The price per MWH will actually go in the negatives making you have to shut down your main power suppliers when the suns out, then a cloud goes by, these things drop their output by 70% and now all the sudden things need to be up and running again. Without battery storage these things are creating disasters for grid stability.

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Betty2theWhite t1_jddgbbd wrote

I did get down voted, but I'm an engineer so I'm used to people only respect my opinions on these matters when they have to pay me for them.

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