With regards to the wasted energy that is potentially made by the panel but unused, that doesn't offset any other power production since the power wasn't going to be used anyway
Of course the power is used. It's in the grid, and every power source has to be compensated by a power sink, otherwise you have instable grid = blackout if the deviation is too big
Are you assuming the panels are grid-tied? I may have missed that in the article, the setup sounded very off-grid to me at which point the power potential is lost if not used immediately.
