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

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#101

Post by dane-pgp » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #6

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?

Grid scale battery storage only became practical in the last few years. Now there are a lot of projects under way but they'll take time between approval and completion. One notable example from last week: "Vistra approved to build a grid battery bigger than all utility-scale battery storage in the US combined" The past month has been littered with news of exceptionally large battery storage developments, yet none in…

The first 300-MW phase is planned for completion by the end of 2020, with the second, a 100-MW expansion expected to come a year later in 2021.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#102

Post by Gibbon1 » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

notJim wrote: post #91

qppo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Are you saying 19 full days of energy storage? Why do we need 19 days? Isn't it more like N hours per day, which can be recharged overnight and the following day? This seems like a very disingenuous presentation of this information.

I remember seeing academics analysis of various storage methods that showed how none of them could be scaled up to store 7 days worth of energy. And thus solar and wind were infeasible.

There were two problems.

One he was using 7 days worth of storage. It's true that in the fossil fuel industry 7 days of storage is standard. But that's because coal/oil/gas have supply chain issues to deal with. So he was intentionally increasing the required storage 10 fold.

The second. He studiously avoided any mention of thermal storage methods. Or using natural gas as a back up. Both of which can be scaled up to meet his 7 day storage requirement.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#103

Post by lisper » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

qes wrote: post #97

lisper wrote: post #47

Every year you hear about horrible heat waves and fires in California but I'm here to tell you from my first-hand experience that This Time It's Different. I've lived on the SF peninsula for 10 years. We bought a brand new spec house. It was built without air conditioning. The developer said we wouldn't need it. We installed it anyway because we came from LA and a house in California without A/C did not fit into our…

> For the first time in ten years Had your coolant pressure checked lately? Heat exchanger fins clean, clear, and straight?

I haven't actually had it checked but I'm pretty sure that the A/C is working just fine. While it is running it produces plenty of cold air. And although it is almost ten years old, it hasn't seen a lot of use during that time. Until now, that is.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#104

Post by Florin_Andrei » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #93

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they can vote. Yes, stupid people can vote. This is the main vulnerability of democracy.

Stupid people can also become a monarch or a despot, which is one of the problems of monarchism and despotism. I think that what you've found is a flaw with humanity, not with democracy.

> you've found is a flaw with humanity, not with democracy

Well, yeah. BTW, I didn't say I have a better idea, I merely pointed out an issue.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#105

Post by Baeocystin » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #47

Every year you hear about horrible heat waves and fires in California but I'm here to tell you from my first-hand experience that This Time It's Different. I've lived on the SF peninsula for 10 years. We bought a brand new spec house. It was built without air conditioning. The developer said we wouldn't need it. We installed it anyway because we came from LA and a house in California without A/C did not fit into our…

I live in Gilroy, and we've had 3 days of 105+ weather. When the house I live in was built, they put in a 3-ton unit, which was complete fine for the first 20 years my family lived here. I replaced it a few years ago with a 4-ton unit, and added extra blown-in insulation. It has barely kept up with the heatwave. Next is dual-pane windows, I guess. There are a lot of folks with less who are straight-out suffering. They re-opened the local library to function as a cooling center. Difficult to do during covid, but heatstroke is dangerous, too. Rough times.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#106

Post by khuey » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

f00zz wrote: post #96

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they can vote. Yes, stupid people can vote. This is the main vulnerability of democracy.

[edit: retracted]

This is called sortition, and the only common use of it in the US today is for drawing juries.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#107

Post by erulabs » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #20

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…

> Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Serious question, why is the answer to this not a slightly-but-not-much-more-polite version of "That's ridiculous, be quiet." and moving forward?

I looked into this recently in order to gather enough facts to educate an aunt who wasn't a 5g conspiracy person, they just asked "how do you know that it's safe?", which is always a fair question. I wrote a post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24103096

But the TLDR is that (in the example of 5G), the power levels were talking about amount to ~300,000x less power than what would be required to irritate your skin in a minor way.

Of course, it's always complex because sure, stick your hand in to a transformer and electromagnetism will do plenty of damage to you. Being against 5G or power stations because EMF "can do damage" is a bit like banning cars because jumping in front of a car "can do damage", except cars are _far_ more lethal and far less helpful than signal-carrying cables.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#108

Post by WWLink » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

meroes wrote: post #38

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 o…

Man, I can't imagine anyone NIMBYing new power poles lol. Old poles get scary, especially when they start leaning over. And then when AT&T was mounting giant ass DSL VRADs on poles too lol.

I'd be out there cheering on the linemen for replacing the old junk. :D

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#109

Post by ArtRichards » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

tln wrote: post #68

The article ends with: “If there’s really a problem and not just the ISO jumping the gun, it’s going to manifest tomorrow,” Mr. Marcus said. “Tomorrow evening, the wolf arrives.” What is that referencing?

He's talking about crying wolf today with no emergency, and then the wolf actually showing up tomorrow.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#110

Post by zbrozek » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #73

meroes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I do think the recent fires have nudged things towards more undergrounding. I'm familiar with some of the dialogue in similarly rural/affluent peninsula towns, and it's mostly a debate about safety versus cost to underground. There's an effort to underground the utilities near Foothill College by tapping into Santa Clara County Fire's funds for improved fire safety, since they're allowed to use these funds in that sp…

The justification is that there's a particularly high density and quantity of wiring around that fire station (one of two for LAH, IIRC) and that Moody is a major access route for emergency services and evacuation. A giant bundle of wires coming down across the road would strangle a response.

A simplistic napkin math computation says that the cost delta in electricity between what Santa Clara pays and what PG&E customers pay, times the amount of electricity that LAH residents consume would pay for the entire undergrounding in 5-6 years.

So to my mind, it seems like a simple argument in favor of a municipal power utility that charges PG&E rates until it pays off its infrastructure, and then charges a more reasonable rate thereafter. Of course this assumes that LAH could achieve Santa Clara levels of cost efficiency, but it doesn't seem crazy either.