Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

caiso.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 347 posts

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

#301

Post by kgabis »

epistasis wrote: post #236
cbmuser wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That’s a blatant lie. According to the Bundesnetzagentur which is the local regulator for the electricity grid, the number of times where they have to intervene on the electricity grid to stabilize it has dramatically increased due to the higher share…

> That’s a blatant lie. I can't read your link, so I don't know what you mean by "intervene to stabilize," but that actually sounds like a good thing, since the German grid has the least amount of downtime of any of its neighbors and is far better than the US. Here's an IEEE article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid... > Germany’s energy sector causes 350 million tons of CO2 annually, 50 F…

> What is the relevance here? Germany has always burned lots of coal. Adding renewables, just like adding nuclear, reduces that.

Germany is closing nuclear plants and replacing them with gas plants. Guess which one emits more CO2.

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

#302

Post by dmurray »

archi42 wrote: post #297
dmurray wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much more energy-efficient than building pylons and distribution lines, if you only need it once in a lifetime to deal with a hundred-year weather event, and outside that you have a use for the Powerwalls and the truck. It's not implausible something like this could be economically worthwhile, though as sokoloff points out it's not close to being there at current prices. Trucks full of portable generators and di…

"if you only need it once in a lifetime to deal with a hundred-year weather event" - I have two problems with that: 1. IIUC global warming means events like this become more likely. So for our parent generations this might be a once a lifetime event, but for us and future generations that thinking could be dangerously wrong. 2. You're seeming to assume the only reason for an interconnected grid might be cold weather…

I'm not arguing that Texas having an interconnector to the other US grids would be bad. I don't have the expertise on climate, power distribution or future energy need projections to have a strong opinion on that - though I can see it would have certain benefits.

Just saying that it's fallacious to argue that relying on an emergency solution instead of improved infrastructure to handle extreme cases is per se more expensive, without considering how often the extreme cases are hit.

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

#303

Post by adev_ »

kevindong wrote: post #27
jedberg wrote: post #2

I need more context. Is that a lot? Is that low? Is it a big change from before? In what direction?

The national US average is ~$104.50/MWh (1000 kWh = 1 MWh). So, it's about ~9 times more expensive right than than normal. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

I find the average already pretty expensive. You can find here the market price in Europe from the French dispatcher [^1] and it's around 30-40% cheaper depending of the country

[^1]: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche

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

#304

Post by Dma54rhs »

hristov wrote: post #164
lsllc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has Dinorwig Power Station which is a pumped storage hydro station to supply spot demand when it's time for tea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station But at the end of the day, it uses more energy than it generates due to the inefficiencies of pumping water up to the top of the mountain (basically, it's playing arbitrage with spot electricity pricing & demand).

By hydro i did not mean pumped storage hydro but ordinary dam hydro. It does not technically store energy but it is a very effective on demand power producer because you can turn it on or off at will (provided there is enough water in the reservoir). Also, it is very good for intermittent generation, because when you stop it, you can fill up the water in the reservoir and give yourself potential energy for the next t…

The geographical requirements are way too big for hydro, destroys nature, the possibility of disasters.

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

#305

Post by belorn »

addicted wrote: post #294
wahern wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevada or even Mexico could play regulatory arbitrage, build nuclear plants in their jurisdictions, and export the electricity to California. I suppose Mexico might be cheaper as Nevada lacks water, particularly in remote regions where there'd be the least local resistance. Baja California has the Pacific and the Gulf of California; Sonora has the Gulf of California. California's unique history of opposition to nucle…

Nuclear is more expensive than wind or solar with way higher upfront investment and way higher lead time to start generating money. And in the US, thanks to NIMBY politics, there’s no solution for long term waste disposal either.

nuclear does not need to compete with wind or solar. Build as much wind and solar that is possible, and don't let nuclear investment impact solar or wind investments.

Nuclear compete with energy generated from fossil fuel, either locally or bought from neighbours, and future battery technology. The waste problem of nuclear is a problem, but not as big as the waste problem of fossil fuels.

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

#306

Post by Dma54rhs »

nielsbot wrote: post #252
cbozeman wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck using solar cells when they're covered by 2-3 inches of snow.

Guess you need solar panel de-icers. Are those a thing?

They do exist but for a homeowner it's not that hard to go to the roof and clean the cells and roof either?

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

#307

Post by apexalpha »

dmurray wrote: post #285
apexalpha wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratz, you just invented the possibly least energy efficient way to construct interconnected grids. But in all seriousness, this is why the entire world interconnects their grids as much as possible: arbitraging energy needs (/ cost).

It's much more energy-efficient than building pylons and distribution lines, if you only need it once in a lifetime to deal with a hundred-year weather event, and outside that you have a use for the Powerwalls and the truck. It's not implausible something like this could be economically worthwhile, though as sokoloff points out it's not close to being there at current prices. Trucks full of portable generators and di…

People keep saying that this is somehow a "once in a lifetime" event in Texas, even though the last one was in 2011.

Plus, being interconnected gives you the opportunity not just to prevent grid failure, but to sell and buy electricity to arbitrage the price, which will be increasingly important in the future due to renewable energy intermittency.

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

#308

Post by konjin »

imtringued wrote: post #282
konjin wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and suggesting elaborate solutions like nuclear power. The root cause is extreme weather events which will will get more of. Non-renewables are not affected by the wind and sun. Since we don't want to go extinct by pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere we are left with nuclear. I don't understand how people can want to return to feudalism where…

The evidence is stacked against centralized power production. Centralized power production is highly unreliable. Nuclear power stops working during freezing weather and very hot weather where flow rates in rivers drop. Gas stops working when pipelines freeze. Coal plants are the primary cause of death via power generation because their pollution is worse than just CO2. Meanwhile people spend a lot of effort on predic…

>The evidence is stacked against centralized power production.

Ok, show me.

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

#309

Post by maxerickson »

dbjacobs wrote: post #210
ardy42 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 900/Mwh is 90c per kwh, national average is about 14. Higher cost states are around 20c with Hawaii near 30c. And IIRC, electricity in Hawaii is so expensive because they generate most of it with diesel.

Actually the bulk of generation is from oil with 25% or so from renewables [1]. So our power prices is heavily influenced by oil prices. Each island is also its own isolated electric grid, so reliability is not great and shifting renewables to other islands isn't possible currently. Unfortunately, the ocean is deep between the islands and connecting them would probably cost close to a billion dollars all in. A bit of…

$100-$200 a year per person over a few years is pretty affordable.

$0.50 a day for more reliable power.

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

#310

Post by orwin »

baybal2 wrote: post #244
nimos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

900/Mwh is 90c per kwh. Normal wholesale is about 5-7c. Retail national average is about 14. Higher cost states are around 20c with Hawaii near 30c.

90c per kwh in crunch time is still comparably cheap in comparison with much of the world. I've been in countries where cooking 1 dish on electric oven will cost you $1. Much of Europe has price hovering in between 30c to 50c during day hours normal usage, and easily more than double of that during extreme peaks like ones you have in Texas now.

https://www.jechange.fr/energie/electricite/guides/prix-elec...

In France its 18c during peak hours and 12c at night. Retail obviously.

It's a bit higher than i remember, but still.

Post reply on HN