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You have two problems:

1) a lot of wind means there's too much power... that has to be used somewhere, that's why you have negative prices, to get someone to take that power off the grid and use it for something, sometimes useless, and someone has to pay for that

2) no wind means you still need gas, hydro, nuclear etc. powerplants, because you need power even when there is no wind and sun, so you need all the power generating capacity covered even without wind



they should just mine bitcoin with it


I know it's a joke, but the if you buy equipment to mine bitcoins, you don't let it sit idle waiting for those few times a year that electricity prices are low.

You computer will be obsolete before you've made a return on investment.

The same problem applies to H2, etc, if the process is rarely used and the setup to do the process is expensive, then it's cheaper not to.

A plant that can produce H2 from electricity might be more expensive than the value of the power discarded.


I'm sure people do.




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