Generation is being built faster than transmission can be upgraded. Interconnection queues stretch years deep. The result is the now-familiar duck curve: massive midday solar surpluses with nowhere to go, followed by a steep evening ramp that strains the same grid the surplus could not relieve.
Across mature solar markets — CAISO, ERCOT, Iberia, the Australian NEM, and the fast-scaling LATAM and MENA grids — operators are watching utility-scale solar plants curtail GWh-by-GWh and clear at zero or negative prices during the very hours those assets were built to monetize.
Capital deployed against generation is producing zero marginal revenue during the windows it was designed for. Waiting for transmission upgrades is a multi-year horizon that bondholders, sponsors, and asset rotation funds cannot accept. The supply/demand mismatch is a permanent feature of solar-led decarbonization, not a transient growing pain.