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NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

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Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#41

Post by dahfizz »

chasd00 wrote: post #32
Spooky23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up near this NYPA facility, which is a really interesting energy storage idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blenheim%E2%80%93Gilboa_Hydroe... Basically, they built a reservoir on top of a mountain, and pump water up there during off peak times. When NYC hits peak demand, they let the water flow down. Essentially a giant water battery!

is there enough difference in price to actually turn a profit doing that?

Its not about turning a profit, but running the grid. You have to meet demand. The options are basically to build pumped storage to smooth out supply and demand, or build more peaker plants to meet demand spikes.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#42

Post by dahfizz »

tialaramex wrote: post #40
chasd00 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is there enough difference in price to actually turn a profit doing that?

It depends, but in some cases certainly. https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main That top left graph is showing you the (notional) system price for grid electricity in the UK. The x axis is settlement periods, which are 30 minutes long, thus period 14 on that graph ends 0700 local time, before many people are awake, system price was £0 per MWh. You want it? Have it. The evening peak a few hours ago was £327 per MW…

Admittedly, this is in the UK where electricity is ~10x more expensive at peak.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#43

Post by idiotsecant »

tialaramex wrote: post #34
Spooky23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up near this NYPA facility, which is a really interesting energy storage idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blenheim%E2%80%93Gilboa_Hydroe... Basically, they built a reservoir on top of a mountain, and pump water up there during off peak times. When NYC hits peak demand, they let the water flow down. Essentially a giant water battery!

There are a good few pumped storage sites in the world, here's the one most convenient for me to visit (now that COVID-19 precautions have eased) in Scotland: https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/ It isn't practical to build mountains, so you need to find some natural mountains you don't mind cutting a big hole into, with a pre-existing lake at the top, at the bottom, or ideally both, and then spend a lot of money buildin…

The infrastructure cost is not nearly the burden that the regulatory process is. Building any kind of hydroelectric in the United States is a massive political and bureaucratic undertaking. If you plan on building pumped storage you better set aside a decade or two of constant effort to get through that process. Once you have that part done the actual building of it is comparatively simple. I am an engineer in hydro and would absolutely love the chance to be involved in more pumped storage projects but they are quite rare for that reason, despite being a perfect match for what our grid currently needs (much more storage!)

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#44

Post by dahfizz »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #23
reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biosphere carbon is carbon neutral. If you grow a tree, pulp the tree, and burn the tree, the amount of overall carbon available has not changed as the process of growing new trees will reuse the same carbon. Ignoring external energy costs, obvs. It's a little weird to think about but those wood burning plants are mostly taking the production waste of lumber processing and using it for fuel, similar to wood pellet gr…

Huh! I guess it depends on whether those trees will actually end up being repopulated. I'm still not sure I'd put it in the same class as solar energy for that reason (not arguing against it as a power source), although perhaps solar generates so little the distinction is meaningless?

Tree farming is pretty common, both for lumber and biomass fuel. NY state has over 300,000 acres of tree farms. https://www.nytreefarm.org/about/

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#45

Post by idiotsecant »

boringg wrote: post #26
Spooky23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up near this NYPA facility, which is a really interesting energy storage idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blenheim%E2%80%93Gilboa_Hydroe... Basically, they built a reservoir on top of a mountain, and pump water up there during off peak times. When NYC hits peak demand, they let the water flow down. Essentially a giant water battery!

Pumped storage - always interesting highly doubt it will be realized in any real meaningful way (might be some interesting one off projectS). We've stopped building dams and its too difficult to site close to markets.

Whether it's close to markets or not is not particularly relevant. I am a engineer at a utility whose power mix is primarily hydroelectric and whose customer base is primarily not at the top of a mountain in a steep canyon river. That's what transmission lines are for! With the increasing role of regional ISO likes the subject of this article those transmission networks only get more efficient.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#46

Post by selectodude »

woodruffw wrote: post #8
londons_explore wrote: post #5

Right now, the marginal price is $36/MWh. Over in England, the marginal price is $268/MWh. [1] When the price of energy is 7x higher, businesses cannot compete. Everything takes energy to use or make. Yet few economists look at the price of energy when deciding which nations will rise and which will fall. Perhaps they should. [1]: https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main

I assume that the UK is like the US in providing separate commercial electricity rates, so I'm not sure that there's a meaningful comparison to be made directly here.

Those are wholesale rates, literally everybody will be paying more than that. Business will be paying less of a premium.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#47

Post by Swenrekcah »

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #19
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #18

Why is power produced by wood (which I assume means burning wood) listed alongside solar in "other renewables"? I guess technically trees are renewable? I assume burning them releases CO2 though...

Biosphere carbon is carbon neutral. If you grow a tree, pulp the tree, and burn the tree, the amount of overall carbon available has not changed as the process of growing new trees will reuse the same carbon. Ignoring external energy costs, obvs. It's a little weird to think about but those wood burning plants are mostly taking the production waste of lumber processing and using it for fuel, similar to wood pellet gr…

However, while carbon neutral from trees would have been great in the past and hopefully will be again in the future, right now it’s not our saviour because it takes decades to rebind the carbon in a new tree and we don’t have decades anymore.

So it’s like natural gas, a marginally better thing than coal and oil but still not great.

Same with carbon offsets from planting trees, it might be fine to require planting trees for every flight or something but it really should not be used to “offset” the emissions because it won’t.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#48

Post by idiotsecant »

londons_explore wrote: post #5

Right now, the marginal price is $36/MWh. Over in England, the marginal price is $268/MWh. [1] When the price of energy is 7x higher, businesses cannot compete. Everything takes energy to use or make. Yet few economists look at the price of energy when deciding which nations will rise and which will fall. Perhaps they should. [1]: https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main

You should also consider that the whole idea of a network of large independent system operators is part of the reason why power can be cheap in the US - you can dispatch the most economically viable generation source over a wide area. The UK is roughly equivalent to a mid-sized US state in terms of energy market (roughly half the market of California, for example). Having the UK act as it's own electrical balancing authority and responsible for it's own power contracts is remarkably inefficient. The prices reflect that. In a sane world all of Europe would be under a common balancing authority that could dispatch power economically based on the generation and load across the entire region. The US is moving in this direction, we've already got several very large BAs and will eventually be under a single authority or a few very large regional authorities.

This is one of those many cases where the politics of the situation and the physics of the situation go to war and the politics wins.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#49

Post by londons_explore »

idiotsecant wrote: post #48
londons_explore wrote: post #5

Right now, the marginal price is $36/MWh. Over in England, the marginal price is $268/MWh. [1] When the price of energy is 7x higher, businesses cannot compete. Everything takes energy to use or make. Yet few economists look at the price of energy when deciding which nations will rise and which will fall. Perhaps they should. [1]: https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main

You should also consider that the whole idea of a network of large independent system operators is part of the reason why power can be cheap in the US - you can dispatch the most economically viable generation source over a wide area. The UK is roughly equivalent to a mid-sized US state in terms of energy market (roughly half the market of California, for example). Having the UK act as it's own electrical balancing a…

The UK already has power interconnects with lots of Europe, and all trading is done in a half-hourly market, so effectively a power generator in greece is competing with a power generator in scotland on price. Obviously as soon as the interconnects are full to capacity, that is no longer the case...

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#50

Post by infogulch »

The past few years have shown that our infrastructure -- electricity, fuel, shipping, etc -- is more fragile than we expected. We're running on very thin margins, which is efficient!, but not very durable.

These systems should have a larger buffer for variation than what they run at now, and we should regularly exercise their flexibility. A chaos monkey for infrastructure perhaps. It will be a pain to deal with outages in normal times, but much less of a pain than being surprised by their inflexibility in the middle of some other crisis.

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