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NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

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Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're not going to get a wholesale contract for the electricity from a swimming pool full of water moved once a day. I have no idea where you even go to get the contract, but if you remember that lobby "meeting" scene from "The Big Short" you've got the idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUC1BuH_Gdo

By the time you're moving enough water to get a wholesale contract to sell your power, you're also going to need to buy enough electricity that you had to sign a wholesale contract for that and now you're just another small energy storage company, you are competing with the hollow mountain and all the startups who've bought a lot of batteries and a building on an industrial estate near a big transformer. You could doubtless make some money, this is a growing industry and enthusiasm goes some distance but you aren't going to get away with having a capped consumer supply contract and then selling that as wholesale electricity.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#102
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those trees are farmed for burning. So the wood is renewable - Every X unit of time, the earth renews that supply of wood. Renewable does not mean without carbon dioxide, although this is a carbon neutral process (CO2 taken out of the atmosphere when the trees grow, and released back as they burn).

are you sure? as I understand it, trees are farmed for wood and the waste (twigs, bark, and bits that are not able to be used in construction) are burned.

This is how it's sold but the numbers don't work.

Take Drax in the UK. Every year Drax buys 14 million tonnes of wood, dries it, and then burns it to produce electricity. This is "renewable" energy and they get subsidised.

But wait, does the UK use so much wood that 14 million tonnes of it is waste like you're imagining ? No of course not. Drax imports whole forests of foreign wood, shipped in, to feed this process, these are labelled "waste" but they aren't any different than any other forests.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#103
post #70
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was it a total disaster in an objective way anyone would have to agree with, or was it a total disaster from a particular viewpoint they may not share?

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#104

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...

The problem with growing trees (or other biomass) for energy isn't that it isn't renewable, it's that the power/area is very low. A second and almost as important problem is the large amount of water it consumes (by transpiration). PV is an order of magnitude more efficient at converting sunlight to usable energy and uses little or no water.

Biomass ultimately can be useful for relatively minor uses (chemical feedstocks, perhaps aviation fuels), mostly as a carbon collector rather than an energy source.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#105

The all-Europe equivalent is ENTSO-E[1], which has down to 15-minute granularity (depending on operator I think) data for every generation unit in Europe. There's a similar platform for the gas network too[2] - only daily data but it does have a map interface where you can see the main transmission pipelines across the continent. I work in energy markets analytics, so grab data from these on a regular basis for SMEs.…

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Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Fossil fuels have enormous global risk, so that's not bad for nuclear.

The problem is that nuclear is competing against renewables, not fossil fuels. So, new nuclear needs an argument for why it's better than renewables, not why it's better than something that's on its way out anyway. The usual arguments, intermittency of renewables and land use, don't work well when examined closely, at least when justifying new nuclear power plants.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#108

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!

Hey I did as well. I always thought it cool and as kids wondered if we swam in there if we get sucked up the hill at night. Had loads of fun at the community pool there as well.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYPA is unfortunately not green where it counts - their anti-nuclear stance in lockstep with Cuomo has led to NY needing to build three new natural gas power plants to compensate for losses from shuttering nuclear. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/nyregion/indian-point-pow... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-utilities-nypa-energy-ind... NYPA hasn't been very c…

Certainly. I wish they would build more nuclear power, invest in more offshore wind farms (NY has plenty of eligible coastline), and all around do just about anything other than build more natural gas plants.

You’re not building a windmill on MY coastline.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#110

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 is an incredible technology. I’m glad that chemical battery technology is advancing, but I would love to see more construction of this sort!

There are some projects that want to repurpose old mines for pumped storage.
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