Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 285 posts

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#181

Post by antisthenes »

Brakenshire wrote: post #174
protonfish wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think this could be fixed simply by cooling the home lower than optimal at peak solar, plus some thermal storage.

You just have to reduce the cost of electricity in the middle of the day and the market will find 1000 ways to make use of it. Another example is that large scale electric car charging stations already use batteries to trickle charge through the day, and then dump electricity when a car needs it. If there are big cost differences in electricity through the day, it strengthens their business model to do arbitrage, cha…

As another comment pointed out in the thread, Germany's aluminum manufacturers are already taking advantage of negative energy prices and scaling production up and down at least 25% during peak energy producing hours.

Residential users and smaller companies will eventually find ways to make use of such energy in a similar way.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#182

Post by ZeroGravitas »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #161
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you think these negative prices are a bad thing? I think they're an efficient use of market based tools to ensure that the group who can reduce the input to the grid does so, and to incentivize electricity production that can meet the flexible demands of the grid (e.g. slow ramping coal would be penalised over fast ramping gas without any regulation needing to specifically target the coal and the…

Negative price signals that cause solar or wind production curtailment is essentially throwing clean energy away. Negative prices are a helpful market signal, but must be combined with battery storage requirements.

Negative price signals encourage people to use that excess energy as they are paid to do so at exactly the times that solar or wind are overproducing.

They are the solution to that problem, not part of the problem.

As for batteries, there needs to be an economic incentive for people to invest in deploying batteries (or any other type of storage). Negative prices are that incentive. Negative prices don't need batteries, batteries need negative pricing.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#183

Post by jhayward »

Reason077 wrote: post #180
_ph_ wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is important to note, that here in Germany, wind and solar does not quite reach 100% of our energy consumption yet - I think it has done so only once on a public holiday. The more frequent overproduction comes from high wind/solar output combined with the output of power plants which can't be shout down quickly enough, that is coal/nuclear. If those would be replaced by gas plants with faster reaction times, a muc…

Coal power plants can ramp up and down pretty quickly in response to demand. Not quite as quickly as gas, but generally quick enough to respond to changes in renewables supply when operated as "spinning reserve". Nuclear plants, of course, can not.

There are plenty of coal plants that absolutely can not ramp up and down in less than many hours, and will lose money as they do so.

There are also many nuclear plants perfectly capable of "load following", responding in the time frame of minutes to 10's of minutes to load changes.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#184

Post by [deleted] »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #182
toomuchtodo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative price signals that cause solar or wind production curtailment is essentially throwing clean energy away. Negative prices are a helpful market signal, but must be combined with battery storage requirements.

Negative price signals encourage people to use that excess energy as they are paid to do so at exactly the times that solar or wind are overproducing. They are the solution to that problem, not part of the problem. As for batteries, there needs to be an economic incentive for people to invest in deploying batteries (or any other type of storage). Negative prices are that incentive. Negative prices don't need batterie…

[deleted]

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#186

Post by hinkley »

pkulak wrote: post #166
coryfklein wrote: post #133

Selling solar back to the grid has one major problem that, fortunately, doesn't plague windmill installations: The Duck Curve [1]. The problem is that peak energy usage now occurs after sunset . So no matter how many solar panels you stack on your home, around 6-7 PM the coal, oil, and gas power plants all have to spin up to their max capacity. Your solar panels are new less likely to _replace_ a coal power plant, al…

You need a surprisingly small battery to shift use a mere 4 hours. This is why we need market rates for power, for everyone. If I have a bunch of panels and my power is worthless at 2pm, that's fine. A small battery system will pay for itself quickly if that power is worth peak at 6pm. Or maybe I set my car to charge in the early afternoon? Maybe when I install my system, I put my panels facing West instead of south?

Not so small when you're shifting power for your entire customer base. Even a small metro area power company is going to be over a million customer hours there.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#187

Post by coryfklein »

rnosov wrote: post #178
coryfklein wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you quote costs here? How much will it cost me to install a battery that lets me come home from work, turn on the air conditioner for 3-4 hours, run 2 loads through my washer and dryer (cause I have 3 kids), do a load of dishes, all while running the water heater, lights, etc? Does a single $4,000 power-wall do that? And if it is merely saving me the cost differential from electricity at noon and electricity at 6…

Is it that hot in your area that you have to run air conditioner for 3-4 hours after sunset? Typically solar output correlates really nicely with the need for air conditioning. Washing and drying could be done say on a weekend ( during daylight hours ). Many water heaters come with an integrated storage tank for hot water so they can actually be used as a form of energy storage. That leaves lights in your example and…

The hottest time of day is 3:00 PM and, due to heat-lag, the hottest time of day _inside_ a house is a little bit after that. Since I set the thermostat higher while I'm gone during the day, this means the house can be roasting by the time I return and require 3-4 hours of AC for it to get more manageable.

And no, our washing and drying can not be done on a weekend. We have 3 kids and if we waited for a weekend to do our laundry then that is the only thing we'd be doing all Saturday long.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#188

Post by hinkley »

boxcardavin wrote: post #136
dschuetz wrote: post #120

I'm sorry, stupid question, but exacly how much power do those big ones generate? 20 times more than what? This actually most crucial tidbit isn't even covered in that article, or am I blind?

The biggest ones produce over 5 megawatts at peak capacity, I think someone has built over 10 megawatts but I'm not sure. 5 megawatts is a pretty useless figure for most people to imagine, and I think imagining it in units of homes-powered isn't great either because we don't have a sense of the heat or kinetic energy equivalent because our homes are quiet machines. A 260 horsepower car (think new minivan) at full thr…

Wikipedia says the Vestas V164, with upgrades, is the largest at 9MW.

As someone else said GE has a 12MW in development, and I swear I've heard announcements about 10MW and 11MW prototypes.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#189

Post by coryfklein »

antisthenes wrote: post #177
coryfklein wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you quote costs here? How much will it cost me to install a battery that lets me come home from work, turn on the air conditioner for 3-4 hours, run 2 loads through my washer and dryer (cause I have 3 kids), do a load of dishes, all while running the water heater, lights, etc? Does a single $4,000 power-wall do that? And if it is merely saving me the cost differential from electricity at noon and electricity at 6…

It would be more efficient to cool the home while you're not there than to turn on AC immediately after you come home from work in a hot home. > run 2 loads through my washer and dryer (cause I have 3 kids) Surely you don't run 2 loads through your washer and dryer _EVERY_ day, do you? Do your children change clothes every 2 hours? Do you change bedding and towels every day? Point being, I can come up with incredibly…

> Surely you don't run 2 loads through your washer and dryer _EVERY_ day, do you?

No, but I need to be able to _any_ day, and honestly for us doing 2 loads a day happens very often - it's not an edge case for us. If you're befuddled as to how that is possible, join the club.

As for shifting our day's schedule around electricity rates, good luck bringing that idea up with my wife.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#190

Post by hadlock »

rnosov wrote: post #178
coryfklein wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you quote costs here? How much will it cost me to install a battery that lets me come home from work, turn on the air conditioner for 3-4 hours, run 2 loads through my washer and dryer (cause I have 3 kids), do a load of dishes, all while running the water heater, lights, etc? Does a single $4,000 power-wall do that? And if it is merely saving me the cost differential from electricity at noon and electricity at 6…

Is it that hot in your area that you have to run air conditioner for 3-4 hours after sunset? Typically solar output correlates really nicely with the need for air conditioning. Washing and drying could be done say on a weekend ( during daylight hours ). Many water heaters come with an integrated storage tank for hot water so they can actually be used as a form of energy storage. That leaves lights in your example and…

It's not uncommon for outside temperatures in Texas to stay above 80F (27C) until midnight during the summer months. The modern homes there are designed to stay sealed, rather than open windows for ventilation at night. Running AC every ~45 minutes until morning is considered the norm.
Post reply on HN