"I'm not going to pay them to produce power for them, so I was left with no option but to turn the power station off because I couldn't afford to keep it going," he said.

According to Mr Scouller, the new PPA offered to him by Ergon Energy would cost him more than $10,000 extra a month.

"Most of the day, they're offering me a minus figure for the power, so in effect, that means I have to pay them to produce power for them," he said.

When there is too much power on the grid, it has to be dumped safely. Fluctuations in output from solar can be a problem without infrastructure like batteries to even it out. It sounds like Ergon Energy believes this solar farm is causing more difficulty than benefit for them.

this is going to catch a lot of people out

Most of the day, they're offering me a minus figure for the power

if you’re on amber you get to see this in real time:

Cheap residential solar is flooding the network during the day essentially making it worthless because coal (and to a smaller extent gas power plants) can’t switch off so they have to pay to export power sending the price negative

the tide has changed so quickly, on the one hand Australians deserve a round of applause for rolling out so much solar so fast, but all previous demand for solar at this stage is gone, we need far more storage now

I've thought for a while that all solar feeders should switch off their feeds to bring power retailers to a better deal. We've reached the point where the national grids depend on residential solar, but they in-turn treat those feeds like an inconvenience.

Great, just what the renewables rollout needs. But in reality, why aren't all three parties in this article coming together and saying -

'this is obviously an overabundance of electricity issue during the day, lets inject community and business, and on Solar farm batteries strategically placed throughout our community.'

This seems like a surmountable problem, and good problem to have for Ergon. If its a case of too much electricity being produced.

What a bad article.

Solar alone creates an overproduction situation anywhere if there is enough of it.

This is why grid batteries are so profitable right now. Even if you don't have your own power production charging when the power is cheap and discharging when expensive can make a lot of money. More still if there is a frequency or congestion market which I don't know Australia has.

The power plant owner is seeing the energy market change, same as the power company.