In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles’s urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed — enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State’s electricity.
But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” — essentially, thrown away.
"These are not insurmountable challenges," said Michelle Davis, head of global solar at the energy research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables.
Over 15 years ago, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory were in the midst of modeling a future with widespread solar power when they noticed something strange.
With lots of solar power on a given electricity grid, the net load - or the demand for electricity minus the renewable energy - would take on a "U" shape.
Sky-high demand in the morning would be replaced by almost zero demand in the middle of the day, when solar power could generate virtually all electricity people needed.
In recent years in California, the duck curve has become a massive, deep canyon - and solar power is going unused.
"Under the CPUC's leadership California is responsible for the largest loss of solar jobs in our nation's history," Bernadette del Chiaro, the executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, said in a statement referring to California's public utility commission.
Beyond the sunny West, many states are still trying to ramp up rooftop solar power and extend its reach beyond affluent households.
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