Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid • Hacker News Board

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#61

Post by thinkcontext » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

If you wait for power prices to be negative (or merely lower than usual) you are not getting an economic return on the money you put into the desalination plant when it is not running. Think about it, if you get a 100M Euros loan to make a desalination plant, how long will it take to pay that off if you only run your plant a few hours per day vs 24 hours per day. Whether it makes economic sense depends on the difference in power prices, the capacity factor, and the ratio to capital cost.

Germany has been attempting to make it work by turning the surplus electricity into hydrogen gas (and then maybe to something else, methane, diesel, ammonia, etc) by splitting water.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#62

Post by pandasun » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #2

Last time there were "weird" issues with power someone was gaming the system: Enron. Something about this article just seems off to me, something isn't right from a technology point of view, and I suspect someone is manipulating things. (No, I do not have evidence. Just a feeling like this isn't such a hard problem to solve technically.)

I suspect the same thing. There's NEVER anything in this industry that is a coincidence. You might not get a lot of people agreeing with you right now, but just wait a few months and your comment will be spot on.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#63

Post by TomK32 » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

time to spin up some giant flywheels.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#64

Post by istjohn » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

I suspect it would be difficult to find an energy-intensive process with sufficiently low capital costs that it would make sense to only operate--recouping some of the costs--when energy rates are negative.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#65

Post by amluto » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

floatrock wrote: post #48

DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

Capital costs vs. marginal costs. You're going to build a $100M desalination plant and run it for three hours a day? That's a ton of money sitting idle most of the day, far more than what is recovered with zero operating costs. (This is called the utilization factor -- how long a piece of equipment is used vs. staying idle) Ideally you want useful processes with low capital costs and expensive marginal/energy costs.…

I wonder if a less efficient desalination plant would be cheaper. The modern efficient plants use RO with pressure exchangers, I think. Maybe a flash distillation plant or an RO plant without pressure exchangers would be economical to operate intermittently.

But desalination may be a poor example in general. It’s not actually very energy intensive, at least compared to the value of potable water in an urban location.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#66

Post by mechagodzilla » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

mac01021 wrote: post #51

nostrademons wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely a short-term problem. There are plenty of ways to fix it (besides the one you mention, just shut down coal & oil power plants for good and replace them with technologies like natural gas or hydro that can easily react to spikes in demand), but all of the fixes require capital investments and time to build factories & tooling. Basically this is a problem because a bunch of existing incumbents are probably…

Is the responsiveness of an oil plant so different from a natural gas plant? Why? They're both essentially a furnace fueled by a flow of combustible fluid, right?

They are similar, but outside of small islands few people use oil for power generation due to the high cost compared to natural gas.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#67

Post by chronomex » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

mac01021 wrote: post #51

nostrademons wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely a short-term problem. There are plenty of ways to fix it (besides the one you mention, just shut down coal & oil power plants for good and replace them with technologies like natural gas or hydro that can easily react to spikes in demand), but all of the fixes require capital investments and time to build factories & tooling. Basically this is a problem because a bunch of existing incumbents are probably…

Is the responsiveness of an oil plant so different from a natural gas plant? Why? They're both essentially a furnace fueled by a flow of combustible fluid, right?

Natgas is a turbine engine directly; coal and oil uses a boiler running a steam turbine.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#68

Post by rwcarlsen » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #54

rwcarlsen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low/negative prices (caused largely by various regulation/policies) have been putting a lot of economic pressure on existing nuclear power generation - sometimes causing it to close [1]. Generation that is largely replaced by natural gas plants. So maybe this very non-free-market state is actually not helping make forward progress on what many would consider to be one of the most important issues relating to energy -…

An energy industry where the bulk of energy production is wind & solar with natural gas plants to handle peak demand spikes is significantly more environmentally friendly than an industry where the bulk of production is oil & coal with a few nuclear plants thrown in.

Neither of the alternatives you propose are what we currently have or are where we are currently heading (IMO). As long as we are speculating - I think a future with good storage tech and 100% solar+wind would be better than one with gas plants thrown in the mix. If climate change is as big a deal as people claim, than why would we sacrifice existing non-carbon-emitting capacity for natural gas? We don't currently have anything remotely resembling a largely renewable grid nor the technology to even accomplish it at scale.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#69

Post by bluGill » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:47 PM UTC

verisimilitude wrote: post #31

DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

I believe aluminum is nicknamed "solid electricity" due to the ore purification process or somesuch; which dovetails well with the strategy you outline here!

Unfortunately it doesn't. Aluminum needs a lot of electricity, but it needs to be consistent for several hours. It takes a lot of energy true, but the furnaces need to be at operating temperature. You can't just turn them on and off, there are startup and cool down times that need to be accounted for.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#70

Post by cbdumas » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 8:47 PM UTC

petermcneeley wrote: post #25

Can someone with a microecon background explain how this is possible? (My guess is that consumption is somehow completely independent of unit price and that its also inelastic?)

No microecon background but I worked in an energy adjacent field for a while. One of the big issues here is that there is a huge price/cost mismatch. Consumers are billed a flat price at all times of the day and year (mostly), but the cost of producing 1 kWh of energy varies enormously throughout the day. This dynamic has always been true to some extent, but a huge increase in distributed solar generation has exacerbated this problem considerably in some places.

In most (all?) cases utilities cannot actually set their own price structures without sign off from regulators, so the onus is essentially entirely on utilities themselves to level out their costs (with storage or more flexible generation).