Solar value deflation undermines solar economics

As solar generation grows to a meaningful share of a power grid, the market value of its output can fall faster than its production cost — the "value deflation" thesis from Taming The Sun: because solar plants all produce at the same midday hours, each additional plant depresses the price every plant earns, potentially plunging solar's value below even a gently falling cost of production and stalling further deployment.

For (strongest version as argued in the notes): In Chile, a boom in solar installations produced an afternoon power glut that pushed prices toward zero — and power sold for free cannot repay a plant's construction cost no matter how cheap that cost is. Germany's experience suggests integration is expensive even for wealthy grids: months of preparation and a doubled reserve fleet to ride through the March 2015 eclipse, plus roughly $20 billion (as of the book's mid-2010s reporting) in transmission, distribution, and smart-grid upgrades. The author's conclusion: solar's current economic appeal could be a poor predictor of its future prospects, and less wealthy grids face steeper versions of the same costs.

Against (as recorded in the same notes): Battery storage costs are falling in parallel with solar — driven partly by electric-vehicle demand — and the combined cost of panels plus batteries might undercut fossil alternatives by around 2030, in which case midday surplus is stored rather than dumped and value deflation is blunted without major grid redesign. Systemic responses (grid buildout, utility reform, storage, new flexible demand) are the book's own prescribed remedies, implying the ceiling is a policy failure mode, not a physical law.

Nuance: This is not a Bitcoin claim, and the book does not mention Bitcoin. Its relevance to PQR debates is that value deflation and curtailed or near-zero-price midday generation are the grid-side premise behind the common argument that flexible, interruptible loads — Bitcoin miners among them — can monetize surplus renewable output. That mitigation argument is a separate claim requiring its own primary sources; nothing here verifies or refutes it. All figures in the supporting notes date from roughly 2015–2017, and the entry rests on a single owner-research source, hence low confidence pending primary sourcing.

Common misstatements: "Solar is the cheapest electricity, so its continued growth is guaranteed." — The claim's whole point is that falling cost and falling value are different curves; cheap generation at hours of surplus can still be uneconomic. "Grid operators have already solved intermittency." — The German eclipse case shows management is possible but, per these notes, costly and preparation-intensive.