content: There are a few factors at play here that make the electricity market seem very strange compared to other markets.  Solar can only be produced during daytime. The amounts of energy being produced and purchased are so immense that making batteries large enough to store them is unfeasible. Local governments exercise some control on energy prices, it's not a totally free market. Australia is temperate, so it doesn't use large amounts of energy for heating or cooling. We don't have a cheap, efficient way of transporting energy across very large distances -- say, from Australia to even the closest point of Asia.  Taken all together, this means that if the solar farm produces more energy on a day than the local market needs at a price point mediated by local government, it can't store it or sell it to other countries, either. It might as well shut down.