Nature Catalysis, Published online: 20 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41929-026-01583-y Electrocatalytic technologies may need to operate intermittently to maximize economics, switching off when electricity prices are high. This dynamic operation, however, leads to prohibitively accelerated catalyst degradation. Here, a controlled power-down strategy is tested over 750 hours with negligible catalyst degradation. Techno-economic analysis finds that dynamic operation can indeed benefit process economics, but only in electricity markets with large price fluctuations.