Why building in overcapacity at solar power plants makes so much sense
An interesting article in Quartz, “It’s time to start wasting solar energy”, illustrates the energy industry’s mindset change from one of investing just enough to cover demand and then passing on expensive infrastructure overheads to consumers, to being able to produce a surplus at no extra cost. In other words, the economics of abundance applied to energy.
For some time now, the fall in the cost of solar panels — by some 90% over the last decade — has meant that the most expensive parts of a solar energy plant are the land and the frames that hold panels in place. Solar energy is now the cheapest in history. Moreover, solar is not dependent on moving parts that wear out, and production can be managed with software, without the need to maintain turbines or furnaces. Even the land where solar panels are installed can be creatively put to other uses.
We are now at a point where we should be overbuilding capacity at solar energy farms, something we would never do in the case of a conventional power plant. Understanding that it is cheaper to continue to build in excess even when there is no market at the present is the key to understanding energy. Furthermore, we are not only talking about cheaper panels, but also about advances that allow, for example, the generation of energy when the sun is not…
