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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

#311

Post by shin_t »

chr4004 wrote: post #305
Moru wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heating a big, isolated water tank was pretty common when I was working in the industry 25 years ago. Power was much cheaper during night so you used that to heat the water tank and daytime you used that water to heat the building. Lately this has been available to private customers also, price by the hour. (Sweden)

Check out https://mixergy.co.uk which recently came out with a nice solution.

Yep and yesterday FullyCharged released a vid about it being on trials - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Z4JCoPAGc

An interesting note from the video is how they said they could detect the grid frequency from the plug to detect times of over supply and (in theory) that would be the right time to absorb some of that excess.

Some other interesting benefits (mentioned in the comments) about how it can periodically cycle the heat better than traditional water tanks to kill off bacteria.

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

#312

Post by krfsm »

MrQuincle wrote: post #304
bacon_waffle wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've got these in New Zealand - once you have a "smart meter" (which I believe most homes now have), then you can pick an electricity retailer like https://www.flickelectric.co.nz that bills you according to the current price. Flick provides an API to allow you to turn on/off loads when you see fit.

Do they have individual control per outlet? Those loads namely ask quite a bit of power. The last mile with respect to control in the sense of a smart switch or plug per device is the most expensive part till now. That, assuming you can for internet access use the smart meter connection or the consumer's WiFi.

It seems people reuse the API which is used by the app. An example: https://www.npmjs.com/package/flick-electric-api

So it provides pricing info, not any home automation.

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

#313

Post by robjan »

WalterBright wrote: post #218
WalterBright wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

During the winter, one can electrically heat concrete blocks during the day, they release their heat at night. (A concrete block makes for a pretty cheap "battery" !! )

We used to have exactly this in the UK, back in the day. They were called Storage Heaters and we had a special "Economy 7" tariff where energy was a lot cheaper at night when demand was the lowest.

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

#314

Post by mywacaday »

eloff wrote: post #236
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.…

Desalinization isn't a good example for the reasons you say, but theptip writes below that heating water in residential and commercial settings might be better. Since water once heated stays hot for a good while in the insulated storage tank. Also buildings can be heated with hot water instead of forced air, typically through pipes in the floor. Which is nicer because it keeps your feet toasty and doesn't dry out the…

This is the only valid reason I have heard for having smart household appliances.

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

#316

Post by carlmr »

caf wrote: post #241
notatoad wrote: post #190

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…

At least for the specific case of washing you can get most of the benefit by moving to a time-of-use tariff and scheduling the washing machine to run during the off peak time. (Washing machines do seem to use a surprisingly large amount of energy, particularly the ones that heat the water internally).

With a quick search I can't find any energy company in my area offering time-of-use tariffs. I remember in the 90s it used to be standard to have a cheaper night tariff. But there's nothing that actually does impedance matching through financial incentives.

By the second spot rates might be slightly too volatile for the average consumer to use, but what you could have is smart pricing mechanisms where you can e.g. lock in a rate for the next 1 or 2h and then your washing machine waits for the expected best rate in the day and with maybe a timeout when it starts anyway (if you need it).

That way you could usually get good rates when you start your washing machine in the morning and it waits a few hours, depending on price history.

This is just a case of simple enough statistics that they can be calculated on the smalles microcontrollers available. Those are already in most home appliances. If you now add Wifi capabilities (which also a lot of home appliances have), you could get the communication done.

For any smart appliance the marginal cost to implement this is zero. The investment cost is only the software.

You'd still need a company offering this.

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

#317

Post by layoric »

krzat wrote: post #301
ksolanki wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is insightful. The solution is probably to have a spot market for electricity that is accessible via an API so that smart AC or fridge or electric car charger can make use of it. This will encourage market for devices that can utilize the lower spot prices dynamically and keep the things more efficient overall (in steady state).

Instead of API, they could encode relative price directly into the power source.

It’s not an encoded price but some smart grid connected devices do use the frequency as an indicator of the grid has lots of demand (slightly lower frequency, generally higher price) or lots of supply (higher frequency, generally lower price).

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

#318

Post by dojomouse »

dojomouse wrote: post #228
mpax wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the cloudyness... Has anyone ever tried to levitate photovoltaics into the stratosphere? Blimpy-space-elevator kinda thing? Is such a thing even possible?

I looked into this in a lot of detail about 5 years ago. There were a couple of studies, and one somewhat-active company I saw (Stratosolar - didn't seem to be very well resourced/capable). My main focus was on aerodynamic modelling and panel positioning methods for various structure sizes, and the resulting LCOE. Main issues I found were: - Weather conditions in the stratosphere aren't well understood; most of the t…

Gah, what a formatting train wreck :-/ sorry...

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

#319

Post by undreren »

fuzzbuzz wrote: post #310
undreren wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but theptip writes below that heating water in residential and commercial settings might be better. When I worked at Ørsted, we did this all the time . We had a huge electric kettle, which we used to produce district heating water. But there are many more things you can do with surplus energy. You can make methane gas from pure CO2 and hydrogen when you apply electric power as a catalyst. The methane can then be ea…

A banal long term way of storing energy is to pump water up to some high ground. Whenever you need it, use a turbine to get the energy back.

That requires big water deposits up in the mountains, along with a dam.

Norway is having great success with this strategy on their hydro plants.

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

#320

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

dalyons wrote: post #287
matt4077 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN seems to have some macho fascination with nuclear power. Or at least that's the only reason I can think of why people would advocate for it, considering nuclear power is simply far too expensive. Yes, maybe the population at large lacks statistical understanding and needlessly fears nuclear power[0]. But it's still too expensive, as demonstrated by the complete lack of new construction. It'd be rather strange for…

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, it’s 100% about cost. It’s far too expensive, and the ROI horizons are far too long (multiple decades) Edit: and that’s only if you cut a nice deal where the state picks up the insurance tab, because private insurance markets aren’t going to.

> I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted

Probably the oddly aggressive "macho fascination" bit.

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