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California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

electrek.co

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Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#141

Post by mjburgess »

akira2501 wrote: post #87
mjburgess wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industrial emission of CO2 is the main factor; there's not much deindustrializing economies can do beyond deindustrailizing. And, of course, pat themselves on the back as they do so. There's zero economic, social or political cost to western policies at the moment and they arent reducing CO2 emissions. It's very much "green theatre". The goal is to stop the actual levels of Co2 ppm from rising. This is all fairly mea…

> The goal is to stop the actual levels of Co2 ppm from rising At all? There's no acceptable ceiling here? We're just going to slam the door on the entirety of Africa yet again?

Up to you, do you care about global Co2 levels or not?

The rate of Co2 emissions is itself increasing y-o-y. We're still accelerating.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#142

Post by connicpu »

akira2501 wrote: post #28
connicpu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear makes for great base generating capacity because it has an incredibly stable output, but that also means the line needs to be kept flat or tons of energy will be wasted.

> or tons of energy will be wasted How do you mean? Nuclear power plants can scale with demand. They're primarily steam generators and those feed turbines. You have many mechanisms you can use to control total power output in these systems. In the sense that you're wasting fuel lifetime, to a certain extent, but I imagine that also varies with the level of reactivity currently allowed in the vessel by the control rod…

Other commenters also pointed it out, but ramping down a nuclear reactor is not an easily reversed process. After a ramp down the fuel needs a certain amount of time before it can be ramped back up again. The output can be modulated, but it's a process that must be performed over a long period of time.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#143

Post by rasz »

ktzar wrote: post #9

Spain as a whole 45 million country with diverse geography and scattered population is producing 75 percent of its electricity from renewables and gas and carbon have been down to almost technical zero. It's rained a lot over the last month's and water reservoirs are used as battery. I made a website to track this: https://energy.antizone.online During the day, a huge chunk of the produced energy is sold to other cou…

Spain and Portugal did something incredibly smart - both went against EU and won right to cap gas price for power production. That way MWh price is 1Euro in Spain right now while 56 in Germany 74 Italy. This one simple trick fixed their grid. Gas turbines no longer generate 24/7 while charging premium and skewing whole market.

https://euenergy.live

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#144

Post by toast0 »

soco wrote: post #98
jillesvangurp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is indeed very inflexible. You can't really turn it off easily or cheaply. The only time it goes down is for maintenance. Typically for extended periods of time when that happens. However, battery is improving the capacity factor of renewables; especially solar by allowing two things: - when there's too much of it, you can charge batteries with energy that would otherwise be curtailed/wasted. - when there's n…

The way I understand it, there's a lot of talk about more solar and more wind and more whatever, but much less talk about more cabling between regions. Or maybe it's happening just doesn't make the headlines? Because even today we could scrap a few more percents by simply redistributing better the energy where it's needed...

Increasing grid connectivity is certainly happening, but it's not very exciting. You see news about new large undersea connections. There's news from time to time about the Tres Amigos interconnection facility between the US grids in the east, west, and Texas (mostly delays, unfortunately). News here and there about better connectivity between north and south england. Local news about local projects (my area is wiring some leaf substations into a ring; very exciting for me, not much for anyone else; although the why is to provide reliability to a charge an electric ferry that carries 200 cars, so maybe a little exciting?).

A lot of times connectivity impacts site selection of projects. A wind farm needs to have good wind, reasonable neighbors, and access to loads. There's articles about not being able to build more wind in northern england because there's not enough transmission infra to get the power where it needs to be.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#145

Post by ac29 »

baseline-shift wrote: post #38
callalex wrote: post #5

For a few minutes at low demand time. These kinds of over-grand claims are seriously harmful to the cause of promoting renewables because it makes it seem like we’re almost there and can stop caring. Just look at the excellent, accurate, and up-to-the-hour charts put out by the electricity market itself and you will see where and when the challenges we face still are. https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.…

This is incorrect. It is not for a few minutes! We are way way past that at this point. The renewable generation meeting the total demand is over most of the day. Because of solar PV, the cheapest generation now, the daytime electricity supply is actually more than we need in California. Solar farms (and also wind farms)get curtailed here due to supplying more than the grid can take at times; this is usually for seve…

> The renewable generation meeting the total demand is over most of the day

The article says renewable supply exceeded demand for “0.25-6 h per day”. This is great, but its not most of the day.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#146

Post by ta1243 »

cm2187 wrote: post #121
raphaelj wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always forget that a mostly nuclear grid also require a some kind of storage or demand scalability.

Why? All modern nuclear reactors do load following. I believe it’s even an EU requirement. And certainly the practice in France. Nuclear costs the same thing whether you use it or not. If you meet the peak energy demand with nuclear you might as well save the construction of intermittent renewables.

Meeting peak demand with Nuclear (including the maintenance time) increases the cost of nuclear to even higher levels than it currently is.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#147

Post by CodeWriter23 »

fragmede wrote: post #75
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #69

Try that in August

In California? We'll see this August, but if last August is anything to go by, it'll be fine. https://www.caiso.com/Documents/SummerMarketPerformanceRepor... page 22 December, on the other hand, is a bit of a problem

The peak loads in the document you present are 2x what the article claims was supplied by renewables.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#148

Post by adrianN »

rasz wrote: post #143
ktzar wrote: post #9

Spain as a whole 45 million country with diverse geography and scattered population is producing 75 percent of its electricity from renewables and gas and carbon have been down to almost technical zero. It's rained a lot over the last month's and water reservoirs are used as battery. I made a website to track this: https://energy.antizone.online During the day, a huge chunk of the produced energy is sold to other cou…

Spain and Portugal did something incredibly smart - both went against EU and won right to cap gas price for power production. That way MWh price is 1Euro in Spain right now while 56 in Germany 74 Italy. This one simple trick fixed their grid. Gas turbines no longer generate 24/7 while charging premium and skewing whole market. https://euenergy.live

Gas turbines only run when no cheaper alternative can satisfy demand.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#149

Post by adrianN »

binary132 wrote: post #137
ktzar wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear doesn't scale quickly. It already adapts from 4GW to 7GW in Spain, but it does it slowly and ahead of weather conditions. What is needed is more co-located battery storage, and more gravity (solid or water) storage.

Maybe I don’t understand the requirement, but can’t a constant-rate supply provide stored power for peak demand and support baseline consumption off-peak?

If you build all the storage and peak capacity anyway you might as well use renewable power to fill the storage, it’s cheaper than nuclear.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#150

Post by adrianN »

the_third_wave wrote: post #123
wffurr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uranium is not a renewable resource. All of the uranium on earth was formed in another star’s supernova and seeded in the proto planetary nebula before the earth coalesced.

That's why you use a fast neutron (breeder) reactor to extract up to 90% of the potential fissionable "fuel" from that uranium instead of just a few percent. Another option is the use of thorium of which is there is ca. 3 times as much. By the time both uranium and thorium run out there'll either be practical fusion energy or one of those new battery technologies which are always popping up.

Now we just have to invest a few hundred billion for a few decades until er have practical commercial breeder reactors, while still burning coal and gas while we wait and see whether the engineers can figure it out.
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