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NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

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Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#81

Post by dillondoyle »

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 wish we had more of this.

Read an article from my state today about a local utility that was created specifically to get local control and more sustainable energy.

But their proposed large scale solar farm was denied a zoning change because some town thought it was bad idea to remove ( a tiny amount of ) farm land.

The util contractor even said they would still water the land (dumb this is a desert) and have sheep.

https://coloradosun.com/2022/03/08/delta-county-rejects-dmea...

Insane to me.

Is there any proof that for profit incentives actually lower costs without effecting safety, reliability, and sustainability?

Texas stands out as proof it doesn't. And even when it's semi-regulated when the profit is fixed % it just incentivizes the wrong thing when we need to scale down/build more sustainable.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#82

Post by mardifoufs »

liketochill wrote: post #72
mardifoufs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah Quebec seems to have the lowest (?) Carbon intensity on the map. Hydro power is just amazing, and I'm glad we had very forward looking PMs back in the 60-70s who pushed for massive hydro projects even when the costs were gigantic. There's still so much hydro potential in the province that isn't being used though. Makes me wonder if it would be possible to build up our hydro capacity specifically for export inste…

And yet everyone is critical of current mega projects that are being built now that will benefit future generations. Site C in BC Muskrat falls in NL/Labrador Keeyask in Manitoba. All while We benefit from paid down mega projects from decades ago that our predecessors had the grit to fund and build

Yes that deeply saddens me honestly. I had a friend work on the Site C turbines and what an amazing project. Just massive

As an immigrant it's amazing to see the complacency and also the hostility that some here have towards infrastructure development when in my home country it's probably the thing we'd want the most

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#84

Post by jodrellblank »

nickt wrote: post #36
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's a similar facility at Dinorwig in Wales. It's important not only to handle the load of all the kettles being switched on at half-time (what they refer to as "TV pickup", an almost 3GW increase in demand), but it's also a "black start" site. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start

It used to be, but not anymore, according to a Tom Scott video and interview with people working there. The National Grid used to look at the TV listings and put Dinorwig on standby for busy times, but there's so many TV channels and streaming options now that there isn't so much of a coordinated sharp spike of the whole country doing something at the same time. Its main use now is in balancing calm moments of solar and wind power generation, apparently.

Source:

- https://youtu.be/6Jx_bJgIFhI?t=210

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#85

Post by jodrellblank »

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…

Is it possible to scale that trade down to something one could do at home, without much equipment and therefore not require much in the way of planning permission? Scale that transaction down 1/3000th to get £100 for the trade. If you could do that every day it would set you up for a yearly pre-tax income of £36k; instead of trading 1GWh the trade would be 333KWh, equivalent to 1.2 Gigajoules.

Solve the Pumped Hydro storage equation E = mgh (Energy = mass * gravitational acceleration * height) for 1.2e9 = mass * 9.81 * 2 meter lift => 60 Megagrams of water => 60 tons of water lifted 2 meters will do it.

Water is ~1 ton per cubic meter, that's 60 cubic meters, about a 4x4x4 meter cube. Twice the volume of a small outdoor pool. And it would need enough pumping power to move it two meters in half an hour for one settlement period. One millimeter per second. That seems infeasibly huge. (Even scaling it down another 1/10th is 6 tons of water which is large. maybe if it could be lifting a cubic meter of Iron, 8 tons, by one meter, it could be £5/day or £1500/year. A tenth the size again it would never pay for itself, and now I'm almost at the systems of dragging lumps of rock on rails up a slope to store energy and letting them roll down to release it).

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#87

Post by mepiethree »

infogulch wrote: post #50

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 outag…

For electric power it’s an especially tricky physics problem; you can’t overproduce power, or things will just blow up. Grid operators must perfectly balance supply and demand at every moment of every day and electricity moves at the speed of light, so the electricity powering your lights was a hunk of coal or a gust of wind within the last nanosecond.

large scale batteries could make the jobs of grid operators like me soo much easier.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#88

Post by smrz »

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!

Another random cool thing about Gilboa is it's host to fossils of the oldest forests on Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilboa_Fossil_Forest

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#89

Post by matdehaast »

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…

We in South Africa have a single state owned energy producer, Eskom. We consistently have power cuts (load shedding) to prevent grid collapse, it has the highest head count per MWH produced and is in total disarray.

I definitely believe having multiple independent producers makes a huge difference for competition and ensuring energy stability

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#90

Post by mahidol »

The trading activity that happens on these (namely via FTRs or Financial Transmission Rights) is a massive trading sector in itself, although the barriers to entry and the idiosyncrasies keep most people away.

Source: My first internships were crunching analytics on this very ISO at a prop shop.

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