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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

#231

Post by duckmysick »

pjc50 wrote: post #228
duckmysick wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the price of diesel in France higher now than at the time of the protests in late 2018? At one point this year it even passed 2 euros per liter. How come they aren't rioting now?

Rioting is tiring and there's an election happening right now through which they can express their preferences? Also these things tend to be "edge triggered rather than level triggered" - by a rise, rather than any absolute level.

There's a good chance France will reelect the president that was vilified during the riots.

I guess four years ago the cause of the price hike was different. But overall the situation seems worse to me now. I don't think the yellow vests accomplished much in the long term.

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

#232

Post by ben_w »

himinlomax wrote: post #226
ben_w wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know where you live, but the Californian power grid is part of the Western Interconnection that goes from the Mexican-American border to half way through Canada[0]. Are blizzards in the USA ever that big? As for “at night”, it is possible to get batteries of household scale. Plus insulation is getting better and cheaper, so the power required to maintain any given temperature isn’t as high as it used to be. […

> Are blizzards in the USA ever that big? At times of the year when there are blizzards, I seriously doubt the rest of solar installations in the US are going to be running anywhere near capacity.

First: So? PV is so cheap overcapacity isn’t unreasonable.

Second: My first visit to the USA, I saw people surfing in Asilomar on Christmas Day/Boxing Day and it remained warm and sunny throughout my stay in California, yet a few days into that trip New York was suffering a blizzard that Trump was trying to argue disproved global warming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2014_North_American_cold...

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

#233

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

midasuni wrote: post #201
onion2k wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if California made it the final 3% to reach 100% renewable energy (by the headline metric), it will still depend on a significant amount of non-renewable energy for significant parts of every single day (or else it will have blackouts). It's not like you can ramp a coal-fired or nuclear power station up and down on a whim either though. It takes time and planning to modify the output if you don't have storage ca…

TV pick-up used to be a thing when 17 million people watched Corrie in real time. Those types of real time viewing figures are limited to live England matches in the euros/World Cup, and very unusual events like the PM’s covid broadcast back in 2020 I’m surprised the US doesn’t have the phenomenon during the super bowl. I guess the lack of kettles and the main attraction of the Super Bowl being the adverts dampens it…

We have the Super Flush... when everyone goes to the bathroom at half-time and at the end of the game.

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

#234

Post by DocTomoe »

juki wrote: post #207
DocTomoe wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an European with a fixed-Euros-per-kWh-contract (with two prices, one for daytime, one for nighttime, the latter being a bit cheaper), I'm curious - which countries allow you to get a contract in which your electricity costs get updated daily?

Nord Pool covers a large part of Europe: https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/maps/#/nordic Your actual contract would be with some local electric company that uses Nord Pool (or some other provider).

Apparently, Nord Pool just is an electricity exchange market - I was aware those existed. I was more asking for a local electric company which changes prices daily (and allows me to know that before so I can adapt). At least in Germany, I am not aware of anyone offering that kind of contract, and I would love to see how that is implemented elsewhere.

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

#235

Post by DocTomoe »

WalterBright wrote: post #208
DocTomoe wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we would happily change to another system if it provided long-term price stability.

You'd be happy, but that happiness would fade after not too long. It was tried in the US in the 1970s, and produced long gas lines, shortages, and gluts. It's what always happens when the government engages in price fixing and supply fixing.

You mean like OPEC?

Also, I did not even mention price or supply fixing: prices can be stable for reasons outside governmental and/or monopolistic-evildoer's direct control.

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

#236

Post by aitchnyu »

WalterBright wrote: post #177

If electricity is cheaper to generate when the sun is shining, the retail price of electricity should reflect that. In fact, the retail price should fluctuate minute by minute, so that demand can be shaped to match supply. Trying to match variable supply to a fixed retail electric rate is certain to cause energy gluts and shortages. For example, I'd be happy to charge my electric car during price minima, heat the ele…

Are there any residential water heaters or ACs with "storage" that works till 4 pm and releases at 10pm?

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

#237

Post by juki »

DocTomoe wrote: post #234
juki wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nord Pool covers a large part of Europe: https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/maps/#/nordic Your actual contract would be with some local electric company that uses Nord Pool (or some other provider).

Apparently, Nord Pool just is an electricity exchange market - I was aware those existed. I was more asking for a local electric company which changes prices daily (and allows me to know that before so I can adapt). At least in Germany, I am not aware of anyone offering that kind of contract, and I would love to see how that is implemented elsewhere.

At least in Finland pretty much every electric company offers "pörssisähkö" contracts using either hourly or daily prices. Afaik they all provide an app to see the prices, or you can get them directly from Nord Pool.

Since German prices are on that map, I assume there are at least some companies doing that in Germany too.

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

#238

Post by himinlomax »

ben_w wrote: post #232
himinlomax wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are blizzards in the USA ever that big? At times of the year when there are blizzards, I seriously doubt the rest of solar installations in the US are going to be running anywhere near capacity.

First: So? PV is so cheap overcapacity isn’t unreasonable. Second: My first visit to the USA, I saw people surfing in Asilomar on Christmas Day/Boxing Day and it remained warm and sunny throughout my stay in California, yet a few days into that trip New York was suffering a blizzard that Trump was trying to argue disproved global warming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2014_North_American_cold...

> First: So? PV is so cheap overcapacity isn’t unreasonable.

You're assuming they have an infinite lifespan. They don't.

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

#239

Post by Symbiote »

WalterBright wrote: post #209
Symbiote wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weather across all of Europe (which is relevant for the pricing) is reasonably predictable.

Can it predict a day in advance every time the sun goes behind a cloud?

I didn't think of that (not much solar power in Denmark...) but my feeling is that it isn't really relevant on the scale of a country -- clouds move across many PV sites, covering one panel as they uncover the adjacent one.

The graphs at the start of this paper show fluctuations on 9 PV power plans in a 50km square, 49 plants in a 250km square, and 225 plants in a 500km square.

https://solargis2-web-assets.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/publ...

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

#240

Post by Buraksr »

Buraksr wrote: post #225
offmycloud wrote: post #148

Their math seems off. I really don't see how you get to 97% renewable when the state was burning natural gas to generate 2.8 GW of non-renewable power and had about 1.1 GW of nuclear at the time. There might be some funny math here where they assign all of the "dirty" power generated in the state to exports and can claim that that California is running on renewable power. Source: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/P…

I believe that what is happening is that the rated capacity of a power plant is its maximum output times its capacity factor. Say we have a solar plant that produces a maximum of 1 GW in optimal conditions with a .15 capacity factor. This plant is not a 1GW plant but a 150MW one. In general fossil fuels have capacity factors around .55, nuclear about .9, hydro about .4, and solar is between .1-.3 So you can imagine a…

I should have mentioned explicitly that:

average power = capacity factor * max power

Thus it is clear why nuclear is .9, it doesn’t vary much in its generation. The max is only a bit more than the average. Capacity factor is in some sense, but not exactly, the variability.

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