401–410 of 419 posts
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$0.07 here in Texas. Maybe you should move...
>$0.07 here in Texas. Maybe you should move... Where at? Is that wind power or just natural gas?
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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 cyc…
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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.
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> We had a huge electric kettle, which we used to produce district heating water. ...and you thought you were heating with renewable energy. You were not. Much of the "surplus" power on the grid comes from coal plants (especially in Denmark!) that can't throttle down, so someone burns coal, converts the heat to electricity at an efficiency of 40% or so, and you turn it back into heat.
> ...and you thought you were heating with renewable energy. No we didn't. As a mathematical modeller and software developer for their inhouse production optimization software, I was perfectly aware of what was happening. > Much of the "surplus" power on the grid comes from coal plants (especially in Denmark!) Most of the power plants owned by Ørsted are bio-converted and runs primarily on wood chips and pellets. Unl…
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Investment into traditional generating capacity is not a "poor investment choice." To the contrary, it's a necessary one. For better or worse, a fundamental premise of modern electric grids is that they should be able to meet all needs essentially 100% of the time. Electrical markets are then built on top of that basic guarantee. With current technology, that means you need sufficient generating capacity from traditi…
There are two things happening, both because of the negative externalities that traditional sources produce, but aren't factored in to prices. One is subsidies, the other is source prioritization both of which favor renewables. Plants that can provide that peaker gap on windless+cloudy days should be rewarded by the market by very high kwh purchase prices, but that's all. The current benefits that renewables receive…
So energy storage / building heavily underutilized plants is free in this theory?
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…
The only groups that can afford to do this, are one's who can use clean energy government subsidies to bid in their cost of production at below zero, and essentially pay to produce energy on the power grid.
If you think clean energy should get a preference on the powergrid for dispatching energy, that is fine, and many places in Europe do it well and reliably. However, in this case, real time energy markets are probably not the best reflection of what incentives are truly at play.
An example of this is that clean energy gets an unfair advanatage in that it's weaknesses are not exposed. It is good to provide an economic incentive for the generators to need to perform better.
An example of this is wind plants in NY. They get energy subsidies for producing power, but not necessarily producing power on the power grid. So they can create energy, and never supply anyone with it, and get subsidies per MW for this. You might think the best way for them to double their income by
1. getting subsidies and
2. actually getting paid back the real time energy price on the power grid
would be by supplying power when it's needed by buying batteries and putting that energy they create (when the wind is blowing at night for example, when noones needs it) into the power grid when demand is high, at maybe 5pm on a hot summer day when everyone has their ac cranking, but it turns out that costs money? And they are already getting free money. Some power plants are starting to do that, but they could have easily done that a decade ago.
I believe we should have clean energy, and do what it takes to get there, that's why I specialized in Electric Power, but I think the way it's currently set up in the real time markets creates some preverse incentives that hinders optimisation in the field.
While clean energy is nice (solar panels, wind turbines) they could use alot of improvement on their efficiency and integrate batteries into their substation design. Many do not because it is too profitable as it is.
It's also important to note the people getting paid these subsidies are venture capitol firms funding these clean energy substations. They are not green tree hugging people, and most of the companies have an incredibly diverse portfolio that does not reflect a loyal dedication to clean energy cause. The profits they receive from these government funding go back to VC firms to be reallocated to...well.. whatever they see fit and many times it has very little to do with powergrid stuff at all, much less clean energy. This is free money for venture capitalists...think about that.
It's a very interesting market because people's idea of ethics and moral rightness are able to blind some very basic abuses in the system that degrade the performance, reliability and overall amount of clean energy produced on the power grid.
Champagne problems...
You can go read more about how all of this works, but I understand it's actual work, and the topic is complex enough to span beyond stereotypical litmus test viewpoints on both convservative and liberal sides, which makes people immediately shut down. That's the best way for media to control people, is to polarize them so they are mentally too close minded to even explore the possibility that anyone in the field of "clean energy" might be engaged in corruption. (oh no! I thought only people who sell oil do that!).
Exposing pricing incentives to clean energy could encourage more generators to increase performance and reliability. Right now, they throw away roughly 70% of the energy and easily 30% of it could be saved and put into the grid and supplied to people if they had any reward/loss mechanism other than receiving flat government subsidies for simply existing.
To believe that clean energy doesn't need a proper incentive system like everything else is fine. Europe does this well, but then the discussion should center around whether real time energy pricing markets should exist at all. To me, it's debatable. I think the fundamentals are sound, but it's too complicated of a system for the average person to understand, so politics rules the compass for how much corruption is at play. That's never a good thing. We would probably be better off operating like how Germany operates.
Still, wind turbines and solar panels could do better on their energy efficiency...
Acting like clean energy generators should get a free pass, free funding and never be reviewed on performance or reliability metrics or incentivised to perform better is like saying "my child is a genius. He's two years old, but he deserves to be at Harvard. He doesn't need to do homework, or work at anything in his life/ He's my son, hes entitled to all the success in the world because he has "potential" and is objectively more gifted than the other competitors".
no, you need to work at things, and get better. Solar panels and wind turbines need to get alot better. They have gaping holes in their performance metrics, all which can be fixed if they could profit from getting better.
I challenge you to a test that requires holding more than one thought in your head for 5 minutes. Go find one clean energy company in the U.S. producing solar or wind. The actual company who funds it, and follow the subsidy money. Where does it go? Does it go to power your home? Go find out, tell me where it goes....
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There are two things happening, both because of the negative externalities that traditional sources produce, but aren't factored in to prices. One is subsidies, the other is source prioritization both of which favor renewables. Plants that can provide that peaker gap on windless+cloudy days should be rewarded by the market by very high kwh purchase prices, but that's all. The current benefits that renewables receive…
> The current benefits that renewables receive are aligned with the true costs. So energy storage / building heavily underutilized plants is free in this theory?
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> Aluminum needs a lot of electricity, but it needs to be consistent for several hours. Then Aluminium smelting is an excellent match for wind and solar. Quoting https://hal-mines-paristech.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-0052998... "Typical numbers in accuracy are an RMSE of about 10- 15% of the installed wind power capacity for a 36 hour horizon."
If I understand right, that figure is measuring the accuracy of a prediction of electricity production, not the constancy of the production. We can't smelt aluminium with no power even if we have predicted that there'll be no power.
So the coal plant needs someone who will buy power when it's cheap, and not use (much) when its expensive. Apparently an Aluminium smelter fits the bill nicely. I presume it uses enormous of amounts of power to disassociate the Al(OH)3 but needs only a small amount of power to keep the pots at operating temperature which is not particularly surprising as the pots can be thermally insulated.
Maybe the above claim that Aluminium can't tolerate rapid changes in available electricity is true, but it sounds odd. Coal fired plants often "trip out" - meaning the generator drops off line without warning. This is an unpredictable change that happens much faster than the sort of unreliability we see from renewables - it's a huge change that happens in milliseconds. And it's not uncommon: https://leadingedgeenergy.com.au/coal-fired-generators-trip/ Again, the Aluminium plants seem to cope with this extreme unreliability just fine.