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

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

#91

Post by bryan0 »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #43
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re doing it because they went bankrupt over $30B in liability from not preparing in this fashion. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/business/energy-environme... > PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January 2019 after accumulating an estimated $30 billion in liability for fires started by its poorly maintained equipment. One of the blazes, the 2018 Camp Fire, killed scores of people and destroyed the town of P…

A large part of why they're doing it because they're guaranteed a certain percentage return on investments. There's ways to fix this problem without a $25bil investment, but you won't make nearly as much profit on that.

what's a better, cheaper way to fix the wildfire problem?

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

#92

Post by VintageCool »

Retric wrote: post #70
vmception wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

California already has some big long-distance transmission lines.

Path 65 (aka Pacific DC Intertie) is a 3.1 GW line connecting the hydroelectric dams of Washington and Oregon to Los Angeles.

Path 27 (Intermountain DC) is a 2.4 GW line connecting LA to a big-ass coal plant in Utah that is being shifted to wind+solar+natgas+hydrogen.

Path 66 is a set of AC lines that combine for 4.8 GW from Oregon to Southern California.

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

#93

Post by Aachen »

no-dr-onboard wrote: post #26

Disclaimer: this comment is not about environmentalism or even the environmental impact. I’m not wading in those waters with HN. It’s difficult to see this as a net positive given the financial hardship brought about to even make this headline a reality (note that even the headline is misleading and requires context). It’s a bit like the person who goes out and purchases a vehicle, spends countless hours away from hi…

The only reason we are where we are is because people are choosing the cheapest path rather than going through financial hardship and working on it countless hours. (Which I wouldn't recommend, either, of course; there is also a middle way.)

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

#95

Post by throwawaylinux »

CrimsonCape wrote: post #24
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the title should be - CA generated 97% of electricity from renewable energy for a brief moment on April 3?

No, because joebob's interpretation is wrong.

How so?

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

#96

Post by analyte123 »

This is a cool milestone, but it belies the current state of CA renewables, shown here at a very fine grain (data not current, need to go back a week): http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html

To summarize, CA has to burn a lot of natural gas and import a lot of (mostly non-renewable) electricity from other states at night, and even more in the shoulder periods at morning and evening. Only untold billions in new batteries at the expense of ratepayers, and (barring storage breakthroughs) new nuclear or geothermal generation will fundamentally change this situation.

A cool thing is that you can see grid demand drop hard during the days when behind-the-meter rooftop solar is on.

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

#97

Post by tomohawk »

mschaef wrote: post #67
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 issu…

So we can't make engineering calculations because black swan events throw all that out the window? That doesn't seem like a winning strategy.

Power grids require serious engineering, not magical thinking, if they are to be economical and reliable.

If windmills do not provide base load power, then what will? Something will, and that something will need to be built, and that something will cost money, and that something will have a level of reliability.

It is not peak capacity that is important in engineering these things, and it isn't average capacity either. Engineering based on those will give you a very unreliable power grid, kind of like what California has now.

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

#98

Post by m463 »

jweir wrote: post #10
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

You do not pay market rate for electricity. Texas does allow consumers to pay market rate for electricity, you may have heard about last winter people getting bills in the several thousands of dollars when prices spiked. CAISO was 97% renewable for only a moment, not the entire day. The 3rd was a Sunday, not a peak day. And the average price for energy for the day was $30.77 (day head) $27.1 (real time) for TH_SP15_G…

> You do not pay market rate for electricity.

however it should be ... vaguely ... related.

In california it is not. it's easy to pay 40-50 cents/Kwh (~$500/MWh)

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

#99

Post by NelsonMinar »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #3
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

It's honestly insane how PG&E is going bankrupt despite charging 35 cents/kWh. Where is all the money going??

$0.35 would be a bargain. It's more like $0.40 / kWh, it's complicated depending on which rate plan you have and what time of day / year you're using power. https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra...

Meanwhile my neighbors 30 miles away are paying half that rate to SMUD. https://www.smud.org/en/Rate-Information/Compare-rates

As a bonus, SMUD doesn't generally kill people and burn down cities.

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

#100

Post by everybodyknows »

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…

Earlier rooftop solar discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30193521

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