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Comment by foobar1962 | Hacker News Reader

foobar1962·

> But, you know, there are several (already known, developed) methods of handling this (big batteries, utilities being able to turn off your solar like they can currently remotely control my thermostat).

That was the point of the article: the solar CANNOT be switched off, it's dumb. That's what's causing the problem, all the dumb solar.

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Interesting because I've got a box to just shut off my power. If I don't pay my bill the company can shut off my power. Seems to me that the power company should be looking at ways to handle the free power generation the public is providing and being the storage utility, otherwise the homeowners can just start storing it themselves and cut the power company out of the picture entirely.

Energy storage is a lot harder than it sounds, particularly at scale. Typical solutions are pumping water uphill in hydro stations: not particularly efficient, but it's easy to do on demand.

Western Australia is very flat (especially the bit near all the people). And pretty dry (though the bit near all the people is not so dry). There's nowhere to pump water to, and not much water to pump.

However, there is a huge demand for fresh water, and lots of available seawater. You could just soak up excess power by using it for desalination, which is power-hungry.

But that doesn't benefit the mining industry, so no-one in WA govt will think of it.

I'm curious, what's normal to do with all the waste from desalination?

The concentrated salt water is pumped back into the sea. Doesn't seem to be too damaging to the environment. See:

https://theconversation.com/desal-plants-might-do-less-damag...

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