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'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

houstonchronicle.com

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Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#31
post #23
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Yep.

It's a measure that makes perfect sense for conventional electricity production: 10,000MW of aggregated coal generation can hypothetically produce 10,000MW more-or-less indefinitely, as long as it keeps being fed things like fuel, water, and maintanence.

But it doesn't make any sense at all, by itself, for energy storage: A net 10,000MW battery might be able to produce 10,000MW, but for how long can that output be sustained? Unlike a group of coal plants, it absolutely cannot do this indefinitely; at some point, that battery will become completely discharged.

It takes at least two figures to describe a working bucket of energy (whether that bucket is Lithium cells or pumped storage or whatever): The capacity (megawatt-hours is a fine figure here, and units like Joules also work), and the maximum input/output (and plain megawatts works fine for this part). Using only one figure doesn't really describe anything at all.

I don't know when or why we stopped doing this, but it's misinformative in a way that leads to a bad generalized understanding of the these concepts with the populace that is actually paying for all of this stuff.

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#32
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"10,000 megawatts" is not a measure of storage capacity.

Don't they pretty obviously mean "10,000 MWh"? Or am I missing something

Do they?

I see people use Watts and Watt-hours and mix them interchangeably all the time. Even people who absolutely know better than to do that.

But the two units mean very different things, and either unit can be used to describe one aspect of a battery.

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#33
post #2

If 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.

There’s plenty of battery being deployed for ancillary services in Texas (frequency response, 30 minute, etc).

They are getting paid tons to do it and it’s been coming online for years.

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#34
post #2

If 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…

Maybe you are talking about something different but isn't price frequently negative across much of the southwest during the day?

https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/prices.html

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#35
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is also going negative quite often now. Instead of dropping prices and encouraging usage during those times they curtail. The utility model is completely broken. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=60822

As A CA resident living under the thumb of PGE I have to say that nothing shocks me any more. The current PGE rates basically redline a whole portion of the state. Gray Davis got run out of town on the back of Enron's nonsense. The fact that there is abject lack of fall out from the current pricing is, outrageous.

Isn't most of the PGE charge transmission not generation?

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#36

There 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.

That only really holds true if disruptions in the carbon cycle are the fundamental root cause. Carbon seems extremely important no doubt, but I've never personally bought the idea that the health of the entire planet can be boiled down to a single, analytical metric. I've also yet to be convinced that, even if it truly is all about carbon, we understand the problem so completely that we know how to intervene precisel…

> I've never personally bought the idea that the health of the entire planet

It’s not the health of the entire planet that’s at stake. It’s the habitability of the inhabited parts of the planet for humans. The earth will be just fine.

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#37

There 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.

I am pro-nuclear as a concept but it seems to not economically viable -- look to the last plant to open in the US - Vogel being billions and over budget and in no way cost-competitive: https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-...

If nuclear is going to ever succeed economically it would have to be via Small Modular Reactors that can be built en mass rather than bespoke power plants. And even there, the price pressure from renewables is making that debatable.

An irony here is that nuclear promised energy that was "too cheap to measure" but renewables are actually delivering on that.

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#38

Earlier 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...

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.

That is assuming all batteries are lithium-ion, but the state is going for a larger mix of storage tech.

As just one example, iron-air batteries:

> The CEC is supporting this project through its Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) program, a fund dedicated to accelerating the implementation of non-lithium technologies offering 8+ hours of energy storage. Form Energy will use the grant funds to develop and operate the project, and PG&E will provide land and an interconnection point at the substation site.

https://formenergy.com/form-energy-awarded-30m-grant-from-th...

Stationary storage is a different ballgame, with different trade-offs

i.e. you can trade density for cycle count or cost

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#39
post #3
post #2

If 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…

California is also going negative quite often now. Instead of dropping prices and encouraging usage during those times they curtail. The utility model is completely broken. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=60822

Curtailment is often a decision of the generator (I don’t know CAISO specifics but I would be surprised if it wasn’t ultimately a generator decision).

If I asked you to generate power for -$15/MWh, you would refuse to do it because it would cost you money. 0 > -15.

The utilities not charging negative time-of-rates is a separate decision.

Re: 'Catastrophic grid failure' a possibility for Texas solar/wind/battery storage

#40
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As A CA resident living under the thumb of PGE I have to say that nothing shocks me any more. The current PGE rates basically redline a whole portion of the state. Gray Davis got run out of town on the back of Enron's nonsense. The fact that there is abject lack of fall out from the current pricing is, outrageous.

Isn't most of the PGE charge transmission not generation?

in most of US the cost of residential power is almost entirely in the delivery, not the generation. If folks knew how much they were being fleeced they'd lose their minds.
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