Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped • Hacker News Board

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#31

Post by drak0n1c » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

java-man wrote: post #4

The sooner we switch to solar and grid battery storage, the better. There should be no excuse whatsoever not to do that now. What reasoning is holding us up?

Anti-fossil fuel mandates imposed by the California legislature is part of the reason there is a shortage of power in various areas. Rushing the transition without enough alternative supply in place is a recipe for further problems.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-blackout-warning-11...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/08/15...

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#32

Post by dehrmann » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #26

etimberg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is famous for it's duck curve [0] where peak load & peak solar generation are not correlated. There are many possible solutions, some are technical and some are not. I am currently building one of them [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve 1. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/opus-one-tests-...

That's still a pretty easy situation compared to many places where the storage need is over months and not fractions of days. (Though those places can often do a lot shifting with hydro)

California gets 12% of its power from hydro, but I'm sure they're already shifting that production around to compensate for solar.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#33

Post by lykr0n » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

drak0n1c wrote: post #31

java-man wrote: post #4

The sooner we switch to solar and grid battery storage, the better. There should be no excuse whatsoever not to do that now. What reasoning is holding us up?

Anti-fossil fuel mandates imposed by the California legislature is part of the reason there is a shortage of power in various areas. Rushing the transition without enough alternative supply in place is a recipe for further problems. https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-blackout-warning-11... https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/08/15...

The article states that there was no such shortage...

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#34

Post by etimberg » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #26

etimberg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is famous for it's duck curve [0] where peak load & peak solar generation are not correlated. There are many possible solutions, some are technical and some are not. I am currently building one of them [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve 1. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/opus-one-tests-...

That's still a pretty easy situation compared to many places where the storage need is over months and not fractions of days. (Though those places can often do a lot shifting with hydro)

Yes, pumped hydro is a very efficient solution for long-term storage. Plus, it is quickly available when needed (on the order of seconds).

While the solutions seem simple, putting all the pieces together is the real hard part. It's pretty common to have no data available on the distribution grid and the sensors themselves are expensive and then you need all the related infrastructure.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#35

Post by jessaustin » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #3

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote mo…

Plausible, but then why is it happening in California and not in similarly NIMBYist states? Electromagnetism obsessives live all over the nation.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#36

Post by creato » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #35

nimbius wrote: post #3

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote mo…

Plausible, but then why is it happening in California and not in similarly NIMBYist states? Electromagnetism obsessives live all over the nation.

My impression is that california uniquely empowers individuals to obstruct projects with myriad legal mechanisms that are easy to initiate but expensive to fight.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#37

Post by philipkglass » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

qppo wrote: post #23

java-man wrote: post #4

The sooner we switch to solar and grid battery storage, the better. There should be no excuse whatsoever not to do that now. What reasoning is holding us up?

> What reasoning is holding us up? People turn their lights on when the sun goes down, and efficient energy storage is the holy grail. Also fun back of the napkin math with overestimates, if we have a totally efficient Li+ battery with 0.25 kWh/kg energy density, and converted all the world's 40 billion kg of lithium in the crust and oceans to batteries, we'd get roughly 10 TWh of energy storage capacity. Which is en…

Also fun back of the napkin math with overestimates, if we have a totally efficient Li+ battery with 0.25 kWh/kg energy density, and converted all the world's 40 billion kg of lithium in the crust and oceans to batteries,

You are confusing present estimates of lithium resources (a term of art used in the mining industry) with terrestrial abundance.

Your estimate of 40 billion kilograms roughly corresponds to the USGS estimate of world lithium resources in 2015 (39.9 million tons):

Mineral Commodity Summary, Lithium, 2015 [1]:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium...

Note that this year it has risen to 80 million tons:

Mineral Commodity Summary, Lithium, 2020:

Owing to continuing exploration, identified lithium resources have increased substantially worldwide and total about 80 million tons.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-lithium.pd...

And at the turn of the millennium identified resources were about 13 million tons:

Mineral Commodity Summary, Lithium, 2001:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium...

The Earth's mass changes negligibly over a few decades. The reason lithium resource estimates change so much over a short time is that people have put in the effort to identify and quantify specific sources of lithium. That's what converts preexisting geology from not-a-resource into what miners call a resource.

In generic geochemical terms, the Earth's crust is estimated to contain 17-20 parts per million of lithium by mass:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...

If the mass of Earth's continental crust is 2.1 * 10^22 kg, as given in [2], then lithium in continental crust masses about

(2.1 * 10^22) * (17 / 10^6) = 357,000,000,000,000,000

kilograms, or 357 trillion tons. There's another couple hundred billion tons of lithium dissolved in the oceans.

[1] USGS lithium statistics and annual reports from https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/lithium-statistics-and-inf...

[2] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.V33A1161P%2F/abs...

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#38

Post by meroes » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #3

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote mo…

I am a technician for xfinity in the bay area and NIMBYism a huge part too I would say. Huge portions of Mill Valley especially on and around Mt Tam had such bad poles and vegetation. Only the last 3 fire years did anything. But literally nothing gets approved besides exact replacement. Nothing gets put underground, or rerouted because (as I understand it) mostly NIMBY groups. And I believe ATT ultimately owns most of the poles, PGE maintains them + leases, and the rest (comcast, sonic, etc) just lease. Marin has the reputation in Xfinity as the worst maintained in the 9 bay area locales they work in.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#39

Post by genericone » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #27

genericone wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of businesses are still open, and AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Maybe not at human comfort levels, but they still need to run them for the whole building.

> AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Serious question: How was this handled in pre-AC times? Is it just an issue because buildings are much better sealed than they used to be, or is there more to it than that?

Building design has changed tremendously since the introduction of AC, the number of usable windows and ceiling overhead has drastically decreased in those regions traditionally needing them.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#40

Post by ISL » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #9

nimbius wrote: post #3

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote mo…

Not just substations, but the conductors themselves. The more current you run through a line on a hot, non-breezy and sunny day, the more it sags. Which leads to more resistance, which leads to hotter lines, more sagging. It’s a positive feedback cycle.

How does line-sag lead to increased resistance?

My understanding is that the mean-free-path of conduction electrons in even OFHC copper is quite short -- scattering on impurities is the dominant loss mechanism, not the boundaries of the conductor. Is the theory advanced above that the morphology of the wire matters, or is there another mechanism at work?