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California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

solarpowerworldonline.com

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Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#61

Post by mschaef »

kelnos wrote: post #7

The grid operator cited is the California Independent System Operator. How much of CA's electricity consumption is fed by that operator? In the article they mention 23GW from wind and solar. A quick search says in 2018 CA's electrical generation capacity was 80GW (which I assume has only gone up). So this 97% is a bit misleading, no? It doesn't represent 97% of total CA electricity usage... it's less than 30%?

> A quick search says in 2018 CA's electrical generation capacity was 80GW (which I assume has only gone up). So this 97% is a bit misleading, no? It doesn't represent 97% of total CA electricity usage... it's less than 30%?

Their full installed generation capacity is 80GW, but there's huge variability in actual load. As I write this, current load is around 21GW, on a range of between 18.7GW and 27GW over the day. It gets into the 40's in the summer.

https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx

There's a significant need for reserve capacity to deal with this load variability, as well as plant failures, etc.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#62

Post by jhgb »

Arubis wrote: post #12

Article doesn't get into this level of detail, but I'd be interested in how they define "renewable". Does it include hydropower, which is renewable but has strong non-carbon-related undesirable environmental consequences? Is burned trash "renewable"?

Hydropower actually has strong carbon-related undesirable environmental consequences, but probably not to such an extent in California as it does in Africa and South America. You'd have to find dam-specific data to verify that for Californian dams, though. It's not like with coal where burning 1 kg releases 3.6 kg of CO₂ no matter where you burn it. Emissions of a dam per kWh produced depend at the very least on its surface area, depth, water temperature, biomass inflow etc., all of which are dam-specific.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#63

Post by GloriousKoji »

pmalynin wrote: post #2

Then why is it so damn expensive. Honestly one of the reasons I can’t wait to own a house is to purchase enough solar panels and batteries to give a huge middle finger to PG&E and go off-grid

As a Californian I think the electricity itself is pretty cheap at ~9cents/kwh but the total delivery costs are 3x that.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#64

Post by imachine1980_ »

vmception wrote: post #56
kelnos wrote: post #7

The grid operator cited is the California Independent System Operator. How much of CA's electricity consumption is fed by that operator? In the article they mention 23GW from wind and solar. A quick search says in 2018 CA's electrical generation capacity was 80GW (which I assume has only gone up). So this 97% is a bit misleading, no? It doesn't represent 97% of total CA electricity usage... it's less than 30%?

> “If California is to have any hope of getting to 100% renewable energy on an August day in the future ... it will take 100 GW more energy produced by solar. Halting the progress of rooftop solar makes that goal impossible" I'm also confused by the scales here. How are they praising the use of 15,000 MW (15GW) and 8,000 MW (8 GW) in one sentence, in an article about 97% of California's energy being used, and saying…

not all california energy is produce in california california fo example pays to nevada if don't remember wrong to, shut down their panels to make their output higher than it is for example, or like this articule say pay other state to buy their electric excess output meaning the technically could be true

article: California invested heavily in solar power. Now there's so much that other states are sometimes paid to take it https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-solar/

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#65

Post by cinntaile »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #32
kelnos wrote: post #7

The grid operator cited is the California Independent System Operator. How much of CA's electricity consumption is fed by that operator? In the article they mention 23GW from wind and solar. A quick search says in 2018 CA's electrical generation capacity was 80GW (which I assume has only gone up). So this 97% is a bit misleading, no? It doesn't represent 97% of total CA electricity usage... it's less than 30%?

April 3rd was a sunday, and probably a very sunny one, with temperatures in ranges where a lot of people don't really need AC nor electrical heating. What do you do when it's not sunny, very cold/hot, no wind, and businesses and factories are open? Somehow we talk a lot about solar, and not enough about nuclear.

It's the title of the article after all. We could talk about Intel as well, but it's not relevant.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#66

Post by strainer »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #32
kelnos wrote: post #7

The grid operator cited is the California Independent System Operator. How much of CA's electricity consumption is fed by that operator? In the article they mention 23GW from wind and solar. A quick search says in 2018 CA's electrical generation capacity was 80GW (which I assume has only gone up). So this 97% is a bit misleading, no? It doesn't represent 97% of total CA electricity usage... it's less than 30%?

April 3rd was a sunday, and probably a very sunny one, with temperatures in ranges where a lot of people don't really need AC nor electrical heating. What do you do when it's not sunny, very cold/hot, no wind, and businesses and factories are open? Somehow we talk a lot about solar, and not enough about nuclear.

You need forms of storage for that. The conundrum can be turned on its head - "What do you do when you have nuclear and the businesses and factories are closed ?" You either simply waste nuclear capacity that you've paid and waited years for to be built - or you need forms of storage to make use of it. Both Nuclear and Renewables really want storage, they will compete for it. If you can only make use of 60% of a nuclear plants capacity, you're price per unit is 100/60 more than the 'base-load' ideal that it was sold for. And another thing future nuclear plants will have to run alongside - is more and more renewable supply since renewables are cheaper and faster to build. We will have a situation where almost all demand is met by renewable supply eventually, and before that situation the demand left nuclear will decrease from 70,60,50,40,30...% - that's even without storage. How many decades do you expect it will take before those plants built with contracts to run for half a century or more, become pointlessly uneconomic ?

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#67

Post by mschaef »

tomohawk wrote: post #53

What a meaningless stat. What is the minimum capacity that renewables are guaranteed to provide? That's the number that matters.

> What is the minimum capacity that renewables are guaranteed to provide?

Zero... same as any other technology. ie: Texas lost around 25GW of needed NatGas capacity in Feb 2021, not to mention the failed coal, wind, and nuclear that also occurred during that event. (Texas had similar shortages in 2011 and 1989.)

> That's the number that matters.

You need to take a portfolio view when thinking about energy supply issues... reality is both your number and their number matter.

What 97% does mean, is less consumption of two finite resources, namely the ability of the atmosphere to absorb carbon and the amount of carbon we have available to us to burn.

Of course, it also means there's a need to either scale the rest of the generation in the ISO down to 3% or export the excess to a neighboring market. Larger base load plants, particularly nuclear, are very bad at lowering their output (Which is why sometimes wholesale electricity prices are negative. These are generators willing to pay people to take their power so they don't have to shut down or otherwise reduce output.)

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#68

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

swid wrote: post #22
haliskerbas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been trying to do the math for my own home, are solar panels actually cash flow positive, once you account for efficiency decrease overtime etc.? It always seemed like one barely breaks even in 2 decades

Sounds about right for the power only, but you also probably get a battery with it to deal with power outages… I don’t know how to price the utility of that, but it’s why I bought solar.

35k for a 8kwh, 24kwh battery storage system. ~15k in credits?

Solar loan ends up at 175 a month. I got in before the recent ridiculousness around fuel prices. I'm sure I'm net positive at this point but haven't done the precise math.

One addition I'm considering, is some bitcoin/ crypto rigs to take care of excess power during the peaks. Even with my batteries, I produce a lot of extra power and don't get paid spit from the power company, and what I do get I can only use as credit.

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/-bitmain-a...

Thing costs ~1.25k, but at ~$10/ day it will pay its self off in a quarter.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#70

Post by Retric »

vmception wrote: post #59
Retric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California August requires a lot more electricity due to AC than April. Seasonal demand differences can be huge, and why a lot of maintenance for nuclear reactors etc take place in the spring and fall.

I'm catching on. Is there not enough space in central valley for this? is there too much loss transporting that electricity to population centers?

In theory moving electricity 1,000 miles can have minimal transmission losses. Unfortunately California’s grid lacks the infrastructure to support significant long distance transmission.
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