Paying YOU To Use Electricity?

Did your parents ever yell at you for wasting electricity? You know, for keeping the TV and the radio on at the same time? Or not turning your light off when you leave a room? Mine did. I was the child of a thrifty family.

So, naturally, this would drive my mother to drink: apparently, there is so much energy being generated by wind and nuclear power, that electricity has become ‘cheaper to use than free’ for certain people. Check this:

In west Texas and Illinois, when the wind blows at night and nuclear plants run around-the-clock, power generators produce more electricity than people need. This oversupply “has forced electricity prices into the negative range,” an expert explains—meaning that some customers are paid to use electricity.

Energy companies are experimenting with ways to store this excess energy, such as with compressed air. Pacific Gas and Energy can be done by “pumping compressed air into an underground reservoir, using mainly wind energy produced during non-peak hours, and then release it to generate electricity during periods of peak demand”. However, it’s going to take 5 years to develop this technology. As of now, there’s no technology in place, so all of this energy is going to waste. Is this drastically unsustainable? What do you think?

Posted by:

Steve Romain