The energy world has many complex charts but only one looks like it might waddle off the page and into a pond.
The duck curve has become an unlikely mascot of the challenges of integrating solar power into electricity grids as power demand fluctuates during the day.
Rising in the morning as households and businesses power up, it dips around midday before surging steeply in the late afternoon and evening when people return home to cook, watch TV, and turn on their lights. This daily pattern of electricity demand appears to follow the curves of the belly and neck of a duck. In Australia, the graph is sometimes called the “emu curve”. Originally coined by the grid operator in California, the duck curve has spread to all continents except Antarctica.
For users of electricity, the duck curve signals something else: a shifting landscape of costs, constraints, and competitive opportunities. Understanding the curve – and how to respond to it – can open the door to smarter energy use, new revenue streams, and greater resilience in the electricity supply system.
Just as the sun begins to set, electricity use spikes. Solar power drops off quickly and other power sources must ramp up rapidly to fill the gap.
At its core, the duck curve illustrates a growing mismatch between electricity supply and demand over the day, especially in grids with a high share of solar energy.
Into this pattern, enter solar power. During the middle of the day when the sun is high, solar generation floods the grid with cheap electricity. This decreases the need for electricity from other sources, effectively carving a deep dip into the net demand (defined here as total demand minus solar production). But here’s the twist: just as the sun begins to set, electricity use spikes. Solar power drops off quickly and other power sources must ramp up rapidly to fill the gap. This sudden surge in demand is the steep neck of the duck.
In visual terms, if you plot net demand over time, the graph looks like a duck: a high belly in the morning, a sagging middle during peak solar hours, and a steep neck in the evening. The more solar power on the grid, the more pronounced and potentially problematic, this shape becomes.
The duck curve signals real operational headaches for those managing the power grid. First, there’s the issue of ramping up to meet the steep evening rise in demand. This increase requires conventional power plants, often gas-fired turbines, to increase generation very quickly. Not all generators are designed for this kind of flexibility. Nuclear or coal plants are better suited to steady, continuous output and struggle with rapid changes. This can lead to reliability concerns or increased costs from operating more agile (but possibly more carbon-intensive) peaker plants.
Second, there’s the problem of overgeneration at midday. When solar output is high but demand is relatively low, as happens during the day, supply can exceed what the grid can accommodate. Thermal plants (coal, nuclear) are slow to adjust output. So, to maintain system stability, grid operators may need to curtail solar generation, effectively wasting clean energy. Alternatively, electricity prices may turn negative, where generators must pay to stay online. (See our previous article ‘Opportunities for consumers with a new generation of negative prices.’)
A recent event in Spain and Portugal illustrates this problem. On 28 April, 2025, both countries experienced a sudden, widespread blackout when 15 gigawatts of generation dropped offline within five seconds. At the time, solar power made up around 55% of Spain’s electricity supply, which was an unusually high share. While the precise cause of the massive blackout is still under investigation at the time of writing, former regulators and grid experts pointed to the system’s heavy reliance on non-controllable (because weather-dependent) solar generation and a lack of sufficient firm, dispatchable alternative sources. Some suspect that oversupply or a sudden drop in solar output (possibly due to fast-moving cloud cover) triggered the blackout. The incident highlights how even mature grids are believed to be vulnerable to solar-driven variability if flexible capacity or storage is not in place to absorb the shock.
Third, the duck curve introduces volatility and uncertainty into grid operations. Paul Davis at PCI Energy Solutions writes: “As renewable energy sources like solar and wind power become increasingly prevalent in power generation, net load forecasting becomes more challenging. Net load forecasting refers to predicting the electricity demand after accounting for the electricity generated by renewable sources.”
The rapid transitions between low and high net demand complicate forecasting, pricing, and dispatching decisions. This increases costs not only for utilities and grid operators but also for businesses purchasing electricity in wholesale or time-sensitive markets.
“By better-aligning consumption with solar availability, companies can reduce their exposure to volatile energy prices while contributing to a more stable grid.”
While the duck curve poses challenges, it can also create opportunities for energy-intensive businesses, innovators in clean tech, and companies developing energy management solutions.
Load shifting and demand flexibility
Companies with flexible operations can shift energy use from high-price periods (late afternoon and evening) to low-price periods (midday, when solar is abundant). This practice, known as load shifting, helps reduce energy costs and contributes to grid stability.
Examples include data centers or cold storage facilities that can pre-cool during the day, industrial processes like smelting or grinding that can operate during peak solar hours, and commercial buildings adjusting HVAC systems to pre-heat or pre-cool based on time-of-use pricing.
The Australian telecommunications company Telstra is planning the locations of its data centers to best take advantage of frequently occurring negative prices. The head of energy at Telstra, one of the country’s largest electricity consumers, says the growth of negative pricing events on Australia’s main grid is not the problem it is often portrayed as, saying it “should be viewed as a ‘gift’ to business that invites them to be flexible with demand.”
The crypto mining company MARA has acquired a 114 MW wind farm in Texas to use curtailed and negative-priced energy directly on-site.
By better-aligning consumption with solar availability, companies can reduce their exposure to volatile energy prices while contributing to a more stable grid.
Energy storage
Energy storage systems, especially batteries, can help companies benefit from the duck curve. Norway’s Statkraft, for example, indicated it would retain its battery assets even as it sells off some wind/solar farms because greater price swings and negative prices make flexible assets attractive. Companies that invest in on-site storage can capture cheap electricity during midday, store it, and then use or sell it during the evening peak when prices rise.
Beyond simple cost savings, storage can support participation in electricity markets or ancillary services. For instance, companies can provide grid balancing, earning revenue from their stored energy. Emerging forms of storage, like thermal energy or hydrogen, also offer sector-specific advantages.
Increasingly, businesses are also joining so-called virtual power plant (VPP) platforms that aggregate small-scale storage and flexible demand across multiple sites and turn them into coordinated energy assets.
Onsite solar and smart controls
With tools like predictive analytics, time-of-use optimization, and dynamic control, companies can automatically decide when to use, store, or export their solar energy. This reduces energy bills, limits curtailment, and can open new revenue streams, especially in regions with dynamic pricing or feed-in tariffs.
Smart energy platforms are also increasingly integrating with building management systems and industrial controls, allowing companies to fine-tune their operations in real-time.
Participation in demand response programs
Demand response programs offer financial incentives for reducing or shifting electricity use during periods of grid stress. As the duck curve deepens, these late-afternoon hours are increasingly valuable.
Businesses can participate directly or through aggregators who manage flexibility across multiple clients. Demand response can be as simple as dimming lights or cycling air conditioning, or as complex as adjusting industrial production schedules.
This turns energy flexibility into a new asset – monetizable and increasingly strategic.
New business models and services
Finally, the duck curve is fostering innovation. Companies are developing aggregation platforms that bundle demand-side flexibility and storage, are offering solar-aligned tariffs that reward daytime usage; and are building new services that help businesses monitor, forecast, and optimize their energy consumption in line with grid needs.
What was once just a technical problem for grid operators has become an ecosystem of emerging solutions and opportunities.
Managing the duck curve is not just a matter of technology, it also requires smart regulation, market design, and infrastructure investment to mitigate its effects. By making electricity prices reflect the actual cost of supply at different times of day, time-of-use and dynamic tariffs encourage customers to adjust their consumption patterns. Midday solar is cheaper, while evening peak power is more expensive, which creates a clear financial incentive for electricity consumers to adjust their usage to flatten the demand curve.
Between 2019 and 2024, California increased its battery storage capacity more than tenfold. Many regions also offer subsidies or market access for battery storage, smart devices, and demand-side flexibility. These assets help balance supply and demand without the need to build new peaker plants. Some jurisdictions have even reclassified storage as a grid resource, opening the door to participation in capacity markets and grid services.
Grid operators are rethinking how electricity markets work. They are rewarding fast-ramping resources that can quickly respond to changes in net demand and updating reserve requirements to account for solar variability. In some cases, markets are being redesigned to allow real-time dispatch and five-minute pricing, helping integrate more renewables and better reflect the true value of flexibility.
Finally, building a more interconnected grid helps spread out the duck curve. When one region has excess solar, it can export power to another still ramping up demand. Investments in transmission, regional market coordination, and cross-border balancing mechanisms are essential to this strategy.
Those that can flex their operations, store energy wisely, or simply shift a few processes into the sunshine hours will be better positioned to manage risk.
The duck curve signals a fundamental shift in how power is supplied and consumed. Businesses need to understand and engage with it. Those that can flex their operations, store energy wisely, or simply shift a few processes into the sunshine hours will be better positioned to manage risk and unlock new value.
In the end, it’s not about avoiding the duck but about learning to work with it. And in the energy transition, those who learn to paddle with the current, rather than against it, might just glide ahead of the competition.
Shift flexible loads to midday
Take advantage of low-cost, solar-heavy hours by adjusting energy-intensive operations where possible.
Invest in energy storage
Store cheap electricity during the day and use (or sell) it when demand and prices peak.
Deploy smart energy management
Use analytics and automation to optimize consumption, storage, and grid interactions.
Participate in demand response
Monetize operational flexibility by supporting grid stability during peak periods.
Explore new business models
Engage in virtual power plants and aggregation platforms or offer energy services aligned with solar dynamics.
Should you lead or follow, move fast or slow, go it alone or seek partners? Here’s how to get the key decisions right when aiming for a sustainable transformation....
Despite headwinds from policy shifts and market pressures, the clean energy transition is gaining pace. Here are five key insights for business leaders on where it stands in 2025....
Explore first person business intelligence from top minds curated for a global executive audience