Riding the duck curve: A strategic guide for companies in the evolving energy landscape

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.