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

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

#251

Post by woodandsteel »

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…

One problem with this idea is that storage keeps getting cheaper, so a plan like yours that could be a good investment for present storage costs probably wouldn't make sense in a few years, and all that capital investment you hoped would be paid off over ten or twenty years would be lost.

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

#252

Post by psergeant »

WalterBright wrote: post #209
psergeant wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also: consumers with Powerwalls and other home storage options.

Heck, you could even go to town running an icemaker at noon when power is cheap, and set out trays of ice in the evening with a fan blowing over it. That can even be turned into an appliance that would be an accessory to your HVAC system.

#engineering

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

#253

Post by brandmeyer »

rwcarlsen wrote: post #37
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.

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 -…

The green fantasy of renewables + nuclear doesn't work with the current generation of nuclear power plants. US nuclear plants either run at 100% power, or they are shutdown for refueling. That's pretty much the only way they are economical.

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

#255

Post by brandmeyer »

mabbo wrote: post #86

Sounds like a great time to be building Tesla-style battery stations. Get paid to take in energy when it's flooded, get paid to output energy when it's not flooded.

When residential and small commercial customers can participate in the spot markets, this will happen.

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

#256

Post by woodandsteel »

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…

One reason I am very dubious about the various alternatives to batteries that so many people are proposing is that there are lots of very smart people with lots of money behind them who are working on the storage problem, and a good alternative would be worth many tens of billions of dollars. If there was a good alternative, we would be seeing it adopted on a huge scale. My conclusion is the only workable solution is batteries, either lithium-ion or flow.

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

#257

Post by nine_k »

WalterBright wrote: post #189

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 pr…

Night rates are a thing in some countries. I'm not sure it's implemented anywhere in the US, though.

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

#258

Post by salty_biscuits »

amluto wrote: post #65
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.…

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.

Even for RO the big expenses are running the pumps and fouling of the membrane, caused by high concentration of salt due to the high pressure used. If you weren't worried about throughput they last a very long time. You could use cheap electricity to pump water to a reservoir and use gravity as the pump for cheap RO. It isn't any different from any other source of off grid storage.

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

#259

Post by woodandsteel »

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 understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially

From what I understand, they recently have gotten cheap enough that they are starting to be adopted on a large scale.

And one advantage they have over many alternatives is they can respond instantly, so they can be used to deal with the momentary shifts in the supply-demand balance that all electric utilities experience on a daily basis. As a result they save a lot more money than just dealing with the daily cycle.

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