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Originally Posted by Noodle Wazlib
I'm not sure what that guy is saying, but there was a story out recently that CA is producing so much excess renewable energy it's having to pay neighboring states to take some so that the electricity doesn't overwhelm its energy grid or whatever.
For one thing California has overbuilt natural gas power plants because of the way in which utilities are paid. They get guarantees when they build a new power plant. In general we have a glut of power at the moment. But, the amount of supply and demand of power varies and the market responds. A few times the supply has been so much higher than demand that there has been a risk of overloading the grid. Shutting down power plants and restarting them can be wasteful and expensive. During some of those times no one else really needed power either, but Arizona could take it and shut down some production and some California utilities had to pay them to do it.
It's partly a problem because there is really too much oversupply right now, but there has to be some in order for the system to be reliable, so even in a perfectly designed system it's possible to have to pay someone to take power.