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

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 419 posts

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

#181

Post by rpearl »

dalbasal wrote: post #177
rpearl wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the point is that "just consuming" the electricity is nontrivial. Suppose you've been paid to take some number of megawatt hours of energy. Okay: What do you do with it? At the least useful, you have to safely convert it into heat it without damaging something. More useful would be storing it. If you know how to solve that, yeah, you will make money.

I don't think it's that difficult, depending on how much power you're talking about. You could literally attempt to boil the ocean, if you want to be ambitious. Heat your pool, for a domestic application.

Okay, go for it then. Good luck!

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

#182

Post by lovemenot »

sandworm101 wrote: post #125
floatrock wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

In the oil market, stabilization of price occurs only because a handful of countries (really just Saudi Arabia) maintain extra capacity. They don't run their capital assets at 100%. This is where capitalism fails. You need one absolute authority, some autocrat who doesn't care that their processing plant isn't running at 100%, who is able to react instantly without making new capital improvements. This is the place f…

This idea may be outdated. USA has been considerably undermining Saudi's traditional role of swing producer. Not through their centralised market control, but by having many intensely capitalistic shale operations, each with profitable capacity at a different price-point. Each one quickly toggles on/off when the market price crosses its own threshold.

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

#183

Post by komali2 »

>It’s left the utilities complaining that they can’t earn the returns they expected for their investment in generation capacity.

The "solution" to this "problem" is, rather than investing in a green production method, to desperately cling to existing investments by sending lobbyists to the government to convince them that Clean Coal is the future.

I love the line at the end of "The Big Short," I can't remember it verbatim but it was something along the lines of how "once again, like we've always done, we're going to seek out the short term gains and cripple long term ones, for no good reason."

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

#184

Post by roenxi »

citrablue wrote: post #79
floatrock wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

A desal plant is a useful thing and can be run around the clock off traditional energy sources. The "free energy" hours would help lower the costs. I can even imagine a SETI-like application where people who over-generate power are able to donate it to causes of their preference...

But if you are using traditional energy sources to run it all the time, it is no longer 'solving' the problem of burning off excess energy during peak renewable times.

Someone is having to build a lot of highly wasteful, redundant infrastructure.

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

#185

Post by gpm »

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…

Another idea along the same vein is temperature control. Say the comfortable range is 20 to 25 degrees. Normally air conditioning in the summer cools to 25, once electricity becomes free it could turn on and start cooling towards 20, storing that power in the form of cool air. In the winter, buildings with electric heating could do the opposite towards 25.

These systems spin up quickly (at least in residential homes) and are a substantial fraction of our energy use.

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

#186

Post by infogulch »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

> It’s left the utilities complaining that they can’t earn the returns they expected for their investment in generation capacity. Good. That's a well functioning market economy. Those who make poor investment choices need to feel the sting of losses else the market fails to work correctly.

Not only is this good, this is great! Hitting negative energy rates just incentivizes more and better storage technologies to accelerate. We need more grid-storage online fast and nothing could incentivize storage tech more than being paid both ways for electricity management. Get paid for storing it during the day and get paid for delivering it at night. It's not the best case for power plants right now, but once this new grid storage market settles the double-incentive will go away and things will even out a lot more.

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

#187

Post by notatoad »

prostoalex wrote: post #176
sandworm101 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the oil market, stabilization of price occurs only because a handful of countries (really just Saudi Arabia) maintain extra capacity. They don't run their capital assets at 100%. This is where capitalism fails. You need one absolute authority, some autocrat who doesn't care that their processing plant isn't running at 100%, who is able to react instantly without making new capital improvements. This is the place f…

Stabilization? https://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil.aspx?timeframe=10y

just because there is fluctuation, doesn't mean there's nothing stabilizing it.

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

#188

Post by fungi »

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…

desal plants cost billions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Desalination_Plant#C...) and produce toxic byproducts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Environmental)

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

#189

Post by WalterBright »

I'll suggest again that the solution to this is to charge variable prices to the consumer based on the supply. For example, I pay exactly the same rate, 24/7. Of course this will result in a mismatch of supply and demand.

A lot of electricity demand can be shifted to when the supply is cheapest.

When the supply varies wildly, like solar and wind do, there's a giant impedance mismatch when demand is charged a fixed price.

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

#190

Post by notatoad »

This seems like an opportunity for all that currently-useless "smart home" tech that companies are so eager to sell. I don't need smartphone notifications from my internet connected washing machine to tell me when the laundry is done, because i know when i started it. But if i could load the washing machine and tell it to switch on when the cost of electricity dropped below a certain threshold, and it would actually save me money, then suddenly the smart home would actually be providing some value.

unfortunately, as far as i know not only is there no consumer tech that does this, but energy companies don't make real-time pricing available to all but the largest consumers.

Post reply on HN