211–220 of 273 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% renewables for their data centers . In the same way that Apple's total power is still partly dirty I'd think some of their offices won't be running entirely off the grid.
It isn't just data centers, they're going to hit 100% renewables for global operations. From Google's 2016 energy report: "And in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations..."
This story is clearly political.
My thoughts exactly :) It's not like "politics" has the same impact that the latest season of Game of Thrones has, or the latest Futball results. Law and government define how businesses can operate, and public sentiment for or against a cause can make a company look good or bad and thus garner regulatory scrutiny or passivity.
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Price = where supply and demand cross. If there's no wind, supply goes down, so with constant demand prices will go up! That's disregarding second-order effects (e.g. other providers marking up their prices to make bigger profits, or the wind-power provider increasing its prices in the future to make up for the lost income and provide a nice return on investment).
There are a lot of people selling and buying oil, thus changing the price every second. But there's no person looking at the wind and wager at what the "wind price" would be! You can never change your price if you wrote it in the CONTRACT, Google would be stupid if they don't cover it in the contract and let their Wind Farm builder change the price, because it makes zero sense.
I have never heard before a theory that greater market participants necessarily increase volatility. Can you cite a source for this please?
Is anyone discussing _reliability_? as in Google/Apple/etc are making this move not just "to be green" but to ensure that they do have power without being subjected to the whims & issues of providers when they're just one of many customers? When you have literally hundreds of millions (billions?) of customers, you want to ensure your own resources are absolutely reliable (within your, not someone else's, requirements…
This is pretty awesome, Google is definitely leading the industry here. One of the more interesting things I learned while working for Google was the intricate way in which the "grid" is managed by a separate but co-operating set of entities. Google disrupted that happy bunch by creating a wholly owned subsidiary that was a licensed power company[1]. That gave it standing to buy from and sell energy to the grid and i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My thoughts exactly :) It's not like "politics" has the same impact that the latest season of Game of Thrones has, or the latest Futball results. Law and government define how businesses can operate, and public sentiment for or against a cause can make a company look good or bad and thus garner regulatory scrutiny or passivity.
Hilarious that pointing out to techbros that a political story is political gets you flagged and killed. More indication that what HN means by "politics" is "anything techbros don't like thinking about".
This story is clearly political.
My thoughts exactly :) It's not like "politics" has the same impact that the latest season of Game of Thrones has, or the latest Futball results. Law and government define how businesses can operate, and public sentiment for or against a cause can make a company look good or bad and thus garner regulatory scrutiny or passivity.
No politics on HN this week I thought?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks. Does this mean that Google is essentially subsidizing the cost of producing renewable energy, and if so, does that then mean that the consumers of the renewable energy end up paying less because of said subsidy? I'm just trying to follow where that money is actually going and how it's actually shifting overall usage from fossil fuels to renewable.
Renewable project developers want long term power purchase agreements (PPAs) so they have predictable revenue for projects they plan to develop. These are agreements that go something like "for the next 15 years, we agree to buy up to X megawatt hours per year from your project for Y dollars per megawatt hour." There are other ways to sell output from renewables (like bidding output directly into the electricity spot…
Effectively renewables have an externality cost of their own: they make "reliable" sources of power much more expensive.
Imagine that wind/solar power supplies 25% of the grid's needs - this means 75% of the time you need a gas power station to fill in the lulls in production. Fine.
Then imagine you triple the amount of renewable energy on the grid to 75%. The gas plant is now only operational 25% of the time, but still requires capital cost of construction and maintenance to be ready to go. Ok, it doesn't need as much fuel but apart from that you have tripled the cost of the plant.
So the problem is that it becomes uneconomic to build the electricity generation that stabilises the grid and makes it possible to have any renewables in the first place.
We're now seeing huge premiums being paid to companies by the various electricity grid operators to cover this problem. This then goes on ratepayers bills to cover "distribution" or "grid reliability". And it then turns out your $0.03/kWh wind is not actually that at all and gets more distorted as more wind gets generated.
We need better energy storage options before renewables really will fulfill their promise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks. Does this mean that Google is essentially subsidizing the cost of producing renewable energy, and if so, does that then mean that the consumers of the renewable energy end up paying less because of said subsidy? I'm just trying to follow where that money is actually going and how it's actually shifting overall usage from fossil fuels to renewable.
Renewable project developers want long term power purchase agreements (PPAs) so they have predictable revenue for projects they plan to develop. These are agreements that go something like "for the next 15 years, we agree to buy up to X megawatt hours per year from your project for Y dollars per megawatt hour." There are other ways to sell output from renewables (like bidding output directly into the electricity spot…
Effectively renewables have an externality cost of their own: they make "reliable" sources of power much more expensive.
Imagine that wind/solar power supplies 25% of the grid's needs - this means 75% of the time you need a gas power station to fill in the lulls in production. Fine.
Then imagine you triple the amount of renewable energy on the grid to 75%. The gas plant is now only operational 25% of the time, but still requires capital cost of construction and maintenance to be ready to go. Ok, it doesn't need as much fuel but apart from that you have tripled the cost of the plant.
So the problem is that it becomes uneconomic to build the electricity generation that stabilises the grid and makes it possible to have any renewables in the first place.
We're now seeing huge premiums being paid to companies by the various electricity grid operators to cover this problem. This then goes on ratepayers bills to cover "distribution" or "grid reliability". And it then turns out your $0.03/kWh wind is not actually that at all and gets more distorted as more wind gets generated.
We need better energy storage options before renewables really will fulfill their promise.
Wondering if any residential provider in the world is offering a service where you can say "sell me only renewables". There'd probably be a cost associated with this, but I think I'd have to consider it if it were available locally.