If only we could use that extra power to make methane for later power plant useage

https://terraformindustries.com/

> What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it

This is already a thing in some places. Or, sometimes, because the grid can't _take_ it. Here's a dashboard for Irish energy production: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/all/solar/?duration=month - on the wind and solar you'll notice that on big days, actual production is usually way below forecast production. This is sometimes due to actual mis-forecast, or due to renewable production being high enough that it meets total demand. But usually it's that the _grid_ can't take it; there is demand, but no way to get it there.

It's a chicken-egg problem, of course; you're not going to build excess grid capacity in the hopes that someone one day builds a wind farm, so in practice grid upgrades trail renewable sources.

And eventually that arbitrage will be big enough to justify a pumped hydro/gravity/iron-air storage.

Not the future, now.

Most Australians now get free power for three hours a day because there is simply so much.

This is the way.

Solar harvest time.