That's a good article although I don't agree with the concept necessarily. As do many experts in this field such as Amory Lovins etc.
I don't have a problem with the information in the article. What they are saying is accurate in that the more supply you have, the less you make from it.
Where I reckon they're wrong is they are talking about how the grid operates now. A peaking grid where prices vary wildly depending on demand.
A future grid won't work that way ultimately. That said, it's going to take quite a long time to get to that point.
We are already seeing renewables curtailed. That is, they generate too much at certain times for the market to handle. At the moment it is mostly infrastructure driven and lack of storage. We have already seen periods where the electricity price goes negative because of too much supply.
That is a clearly unsustainable situation going forward.
So, because of the intermittency of renewables we have to use storage. But not just to store excess but to also flatten the price.
Ideally, if there were no peak power prices, life would be much easier for business. If the price was flat regardless of the time of day, businesses would operate quite differently.
Peaks are created by a lack of generation. In a widely distributed, very flexible, fast acting smart grid, peaks will largely be a thing of the past. A whole grid that can respond in milliseconds to demand will flatten prices.
Technologies like ev charging will automatically provide load at times of low demand once again flattening the load demand.
That is what renewables plus storage offers. Flat power prices. Once you have flat power prices you can adjust them according to manage profits which can be regulated.
However, the article is correct in that we may not get to 100% renewables. A recent report by the Grattan Institute argues that we ought to aim for 90% net zero emissions earlier ( 2040 ) and then mop up the last 10% as technology allows. They argue that the cost of trying to get to 100% might not be practical. They add the caveat that technology might change in that forecast period and change that prediction of course.
https://grattan.edu.au/report/go-for-net-zero/
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