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NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

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Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#61

Post by ZeroGravitas »

idiotsecant wrote: post #43
tialaramex wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pumped hydro is cool, but we already have more storage than we need, its called "not burning gas". And until we run out of opportunities to not burn gas, theres no real demand for storage. Hopefully well get there soon, but the more people say "we can't build more renewables until we have storage", the longer that is going to take.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#62

Post by cupofpython »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #17
thaway2839 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you be factoring in the cost of an accident (you can adjust the rarity of the accident to get your expected value) destroying the entire economic engine of the state? A lot of nuclear closures make no sense. Germany's indiscriminate shutting down of all the nuclear power plants in the country without waiting for renewable alternatives to be online was a bad idea. However, specific shutdowns do make sense. A nucl…

Will you be factoring in the healthcare costs associated with burning more diesel and natural gas? (Not even getting into the externalities of climate change.) --- I thought Kurzgesagt did a pretty good job of breaking this down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM . Basically, no matter how you look at it, nuclear is among the safest forms of energy we have, behind only solar, wind, and hydropower. Admittedl…

nuclear is also incredibly hard to build an accurate model for because the concern tends to revolve around the risk of human stupidity causing major issues.

on top of that, i feel like there is a lot of hand waving involved with the waste. if we really industrialized nuclear fuel worldwide - we would be creating a lot of nuclear waste. theoretically, this isnt a problem.

what id like to see, and may do one day if i run out of projects, is at what risk factor does nuclear equal fossil fuels. not, look how much better it is, but "this is about how dumb we would need to be in our handling of nuclear plants to cause about the same damage as our current system does"

making it apples to apples like that would make it much clearer.. % risk of this or that is tough to internalize for a lot of people. but is active sabotage of 1 out of every 10 plants necessary to be as bad as current energy? or is just 1 plant failing enough to make nuclear worse and we are just saying the likelihood of just 1 plant failing is astronomically small

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#63

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #47
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…

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 tr…

If the sawdust and twigs was just going to be dumped to rot, then it would give off methane, so similar to food composting, burning that output can be GHG negative. Its not going to be a primary source of power, because solar and wind are so ridiculously cheap and scalable, but every little bit helps in the short term. Once fossil fuels are elimanted it'll make sense to do other things with them, rather than burn them.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#64

Post by londons_explore »

tialaramex wrote: post #59
selectodude wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, consumers will likely be paying the capped price. (A regulator on behalf of) the British government sets a six monthly price cap, based on the actual prices from a historical six month period, ordinarily this cap just means that people who are too poor or too lazy to "shop around" for a better deal pay no more than this amount for their electricity, but because the UK uses a lot of natural gas to make electricity…

Which raises the question... Can I as a consumer put a big pump in my back yard to pump water uphill (paying the price cap), and then own a company that generates power from the water flowing down the hill, and get paid wholesale rates, profiting from the difference?

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#66

Post by nsomani »

Spooky23 wrote: post #12
woodruffw wrote: post #4

Tangentially related: New York is home to NYPA[1], the largest public power utility/authority in the United States. NYPA is entirely owned by the public, produces some of the cheapest (and greenest) power in the country, and is funded in perpetuity by bonds instead of taxes. Edit: This bond announcement[2] document claims that NYPA provides over 25% of NY's electricity and owns over 30% of the physical delivery infra…

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!

Yeah it's actually very common, it's called pumped storage. Many power pricing models will treat them identically to batteries given they also bid into what's called the "ancillary services market," which exists for reliability purposes to balance the grid when supply and demand don't perfectly match up. You can read about other types of storage on the PJM ISO website: https://learn.pjm.com/energy-innovations/energy-storage

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#68

Post by boringg »

idiotsecant wrote: post #45
boringg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Proximity matters to minimize losses and lower transmissions costs for economic viability of the plant.

Obviously Im not talking about the population being at the top of the mountain I'm talking about geological formations that are viable that are close to the marke in order for the value prop of energy storage from pumped storage to realized

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#69

Post by nsomani »

dahfizz wrote: post #41
chasd00 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but it's also about turning a profit, because you have to incentivize power producers to build pumped storage / batteries / etc. The ISO markets are unregulated in that respect, since the government doesn't build or control the power plants.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#70

Post by boringg »

pydry wrote: post #57
boringg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

China just finished the largest one in the world. It produces more power than a nuclear power plant. UK is building a huge one too.

How has hydroelectricity worked for china? Three gorges was a total cluster.
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