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Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

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Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#81

Post by photoGrant »

lsllc wrote: post #71

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthqua…

Yep, we definitely have learned from all our mistakes. Bad actors and the internet of things won’t come close. Right?

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#82

Post by jeffbee »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #22
bob1029 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 90c/KWh. Arguably very expensive rate for electricity. Not sure if related to the Texas/ERCOT grid situation, as the DC tie-ins are not that substantial.

In California it’s about 30 to 40 cents kWh during normal times.

The average price paid for residential^W power in California last year was 16 cents, not 30, not 40.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#83

Post by mnklo »

lsllc wrote: post #71

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthqua…

Renewables are more than capable of supplying "base load". What you're referring to is a fallacy.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#84

Post by acidburnNSA »

rtpg wrote: post #80
lsllc wrote: post #71

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthqua…

Gas-based electrical generation is what are failing right now! They are failing left and right! If 100% was gas there would be more problems, not less. Wind and Solar is pulling above planned generation right now. If you believe your logic, time to go all-in on wind + solar.

Wind and solar are above planned generation right now, which was 0. In ERCOT wind has been making less than 6 GW out of 33 GW installed for over 7 days straight [1]. Natural gas is pulling almost all the weight right now, as you can see. So no, not time to go all in on wind + solar.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/EEbf5lM.png (screenshot from EIA, original data here: https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/e...)

Your first statement is partially true. The ERCOT "planners" expected their gas capacity to basically always be there, and the fact that 30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out.

But the remaining gas is pulling almost all the weight keeping people alive so we shouldn't neglect that.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#85

Post by ed25519FUUU »

jeffbee wrote: post #82
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California it’s about 30 to 40 cents kWh during normal times.

The average price paid for residential^W power in California last year was 16 cents, not 30, not 40.

We paid 33 cents / kWh on the bay area last year. Not sure how the rest of CA is doing.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#86

Post by epistasis »

PostThisTooFast wrote: post #37

We should be busily building nuclear plants. This isn't going to get better otherwise.

Nuclear plants are the worst possible way to reduce energy costs. They are also incredibly massive single points of failure, so they tend to reduce reliability compared to more distributed smaller generation units. Germany, for example, has seen reliability increase massively as they shift towards more distributed renewables, even though it's not a super high penetration level.

As we shift to more renewables and start to install more and more grid storage, and even home storage, reliability will increase massively. Those people with solar and batteries that can island their homes are completely fine the past few days.

We have a much more modern, cost effective, and scalable set of technologies now than we did in the 1970s. I don't see how nuclear can compete on any level, as it's incredibly inefficient and has proven that it can't scale in the modern world.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#88

Post by acidburnNSA »

mnklo wrote: post #83
lsllc wrote: post #71

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthqua…

Renewables are more than capable of supplying "base load". What you're referring to is a fallacy.

I'm sorry but it's not that simple, as you can see clearly right now. Between Feb 9 and Feb 17th wind and solar energy delivery has been a very small fraction of capacity, less than 10%. To do baseload over a period of 8 days with that kind of resource would require roughly a 20x capacity overbuild and some kind of ridiculous battery. It's just not practical. Most realistic scenarios these days have lots of wind and solar and some overnight batteries, and rely on large mostly-idled capacity of gas to get through the black-swan events like this. Though obviously this approach has challenges as well.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#89

Post by tidalpowercool »

srswtf123 wrote: post #52
toomuchtodo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Substantial amounts of solar coming online in Hawaii, causing the utility to carefully manage additional distributed solar installs [1]. Still expensive because there is much diesel and coal generation (~2GW) left to displace. [1] https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/clean-energy-hawaii/integra... (red = saturated local electrical infra)

Are there any realistic power generation options from tidal/ocean power? Seems like that might be great for Hawaii — if it isn’t still the realm of science fiction?

I saw a marketing video for one company that was deploying a prototype to do this a few days ago. I'm unable to remember the name or find a link.

I think it was somewhere in oceania that they were installing the protoype in. The unit looked sort of like (this)[https://imgur.com/a/ymulbWF] but wider and in hd of course.

By wider I mean it looked more like a catamaran style boat and the one in the imgur link is more like a monohull boat. The one in the video which they deployed maybe 15-30 yards off shore from a beach was where they installed it and it had branding from their company on the side and some bright yellow accents.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#90

Post by kelnos »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #85
jeffbee wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average price paid for residential^W power in California last year was 16 cents, not 30, not 40.

We paid 33 cents / kWh on the bay area last year. Not sure how the rest of CA is doing.

> Not sure how the rest of CA is doing.

The parent provided a figure: 16 cents.

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