Mirnotoriety writes: Amid the growing warmth and increasingly volatile weather of an approaching summer, Australia passed a remarkable milestone this week. The number of homes and businesses with a solar installation clicked past 4 million — barely 20 years since there was practically none anywhere in the country. It is a love affair that shows few signs of stopping.

And it’s a technology that is having ever greater effects, not just on the bills of its household users but on the very energy system itself. At no time of the year is that effect more obvious than spring, when solar output soars as the days grow longer and sunnier but demand remains subdued as mild temperatures mean people leave their air conditioners switched off.

Such has been the extraordinary production of solar in Australia this spring, the entire state of South Australia has — at various times — met all of its electricity needs from the technology.

[…] [T]here is, at times, too much solar power in Australia’s electricity systems to handle.