We have got to stop using alternating current. HVDC to the home is clearly the future. Isn’t anyone working on this?
'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
21–30 of 92 posts
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#22If you're reading this and the cost prohibitive part of this story doesn't make sense you have to understand how far forward the Texas grid is when it comes to renewables. There have been many occasions where the cost of power in Texas has gone negative. (see: https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/understanding-negative-pr... ) For this to happen there are a lot of factors that come into play but it indicates a downward…
So this is where the right leaning (and quite reasonable, in the long term) observation should be: there's a business opportunity to build and deploy storage capacity with grid stabilization the top feature.
That takes vision (which isn't always there), but also time. Perhaps also recognition in the regulatory ecosystem that this is needed, so that the business case (ie, build it and they will pay for it) is there.
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, California just needs to increase its battery storage capacity some more. (This week they announced storage systems now already have over 10,000 megawatts in capacity — "about 20% of the 52,000 megawatts the state says is needed to meet its climate goals.") https://ca.news.yahoo.com/california-battery-storage-increas...
"10,000 megawatts" is not a measure of storage capacity.
For some reason grid storage reporting always seems to use a power metric instead of storage metric, which makes no sense to me. I've seen this in a half dozen stories, and found that even the government reports do this. I think it stems from someone reusing a column to represent both storage and power across generators and batteries.
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#24When there is a voltage or frequency disturbance on the grid, caused by lightning strikes or equipment failures, ERCOT expects power generators to “ride through” the disturbances and continue producing power. But inverter-based resources such as wind, solar and batteries — especially the oldest ones — may sometimes not be able to ride through the disturbance and could “trip” > offline and disconnect from the grid. Th…
I wonder what the expense of adding things like flywheel type storage to renewable grids is?
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
That will be a tough game to chase long term as batteries need to be removed and replaced regularly. Assuming the storage capacity needs continue to grow, CA would need to replace larger and larger stocks of batteries on the scale of 5-15 years depending on what kind of warranty the battery manufacturers are providing.
Batteries don’t have to be the traditional ones we use and think of. They can be things like pumping water up a hill and releasing it to spin a turbine or using rocks storing heat. The storage capacity can be added, it’s just don’t going to be banks of lead or lithium batteries
California is already planning a giant off-river reservoir that will be dependent on pumping to fill. If it could be set up to kick in instead of curtailment it could be a win win.
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#26There is an unfortunate tunnel vision focus on renewables when the real goal should be deep decarbonization. The reason is obvious when you realize that people of a certain generation (who are in power now) don't like nuclear energy because 'nuclear' was the bogeyman while they were growing up. They are dragging the rest of us down with them into an era of unstable and unreliable power at huge expense.
Politicians have been pushing nuclear power for years. It's 5x more expensive than solar or wind but in America the military hates the idea of not having it around to share costs with.
Nuclear subs, nukes, aircraft carriers, etc. need a nuclear industry.
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#27When there is a voltage or frequency disturbance on the grid, caused by lightning strikes or equipment failures, ERCOT expects power generators to “ride through” the disturbances and continue producing power. But inverter-based resources such as wind, solar and batteries — especially the oldest ones — may sometimes not be able to ride through the disturbance and could “trip” > offline and disconnect from the grid. Th…
I wonder what the expense of adding things like flywheel type storage to renewable grids is?
Storage appears to be paying for itself so people are installing it as fast as they can.
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#28Australia went through this very same propaganda when a once in 100 year lightning storm caused a big grid interconnect failure, and a large part of an entire state was without power for weeks [1] The Politicians at the time spun it as being caused by evil renewables, and the damage was done. A huge percentage of the population still believes that renewables cause power outages, cause prices to go up, and are the wor…
Alberta is the same. The playbooks is the same the players are a bit different. Resistance to change and embedded incentives are the cause. Its tiring to watch us repeat the same things over and over again.
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, California just needs to increase its battery storage capacity some more. (This week they announced storage systems now already have over 10,000 megawatts in capacity — "about 20% of the 52,000 megawatts the state says is needed to meet its climate goals.") https://ca.news.yahoo.com/california-battery-storage-increas...
"10,000 megawatts" is not a measure of storage capacity.
Don't they pretty obviously mean "10,000 MWh"? Or am I missing something
Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
That will be a tough game to chase long term as batteries need to be removed and replaced regularly. Assuming the storage capacity needs continue to grow, CA would need to replace larger and larger stocks of batteries on the scale of 5-15 years depending on what kind of warranty the battery manufacturers are providing.
Batteries don’t have to be the traditional ones we use and think of. They can be things like pumping water up a hill and releasing it to spin a turbine or using rocks storing heat. The storage capacity can be added, it’s just don’t going to be banks of lead or lithium batteries
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) makes it extremely difficult to build new pumped storage facilities. It's possible in principle but will take many years to get through the construction permits and inevitable lawsuits.