this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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[–] Salah@hexbear.net 12 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Energy prices being driven into negative territory means that energy providers (and thus households with solar panels) have to pay for energy they provide to the electricity grid because the grid is almost at capacity. It’s a measure to discourage electricity production and encourage energy use for these periods.

Solar energy has the characteristic that it provides lots of energy during a sunny summer day, less in winter and none at night. So it’s not a constant or controllable flow like nuclear or fossil energy. To be able to completely switch to green energy, (afaik) either the grid capacity has to be increased tenfolds, or energy suppliers need huge batteries to store energy during supply spikes. Batteries are not super durable and their production not green at all so that has to be taken into account when determining the ecological footprint and material cost of solar energy.

This all is not to say that solar is comparably bad to fossil energy, I’m just explaining the hurdles that need to be taken care of when switching to solar.

[–] red_giant@hexbear.net 13 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Oh what a shame I guess it makes economic sense to nationalize utilities then

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 5 points 3 hours ago

For the national economy sure, but if we are talking about ROI on buying out power plants, hard to imagine a worse time for that.