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

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

#61

Post by danans »

deviantbit wrote: post #49
cranky908canuck wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One would think, but Biden is looking at imposing a 30% excise tax on crypto miners. This is directly targeted at Texas, to slow further development and growth in that state. Crypto has been one of the largest drivers for renewable energy in Texas, and now they want to put a dagger in it. Investors are watching closely at putting any money into the grid because of the Biden administration. If that tax goes into effec…

> One would think, but Biden is looking at imposing a 30% excise tax on crypto miners. This is directly targeted at Texas, to slow further development and growth in that state.

It's not about targeting Texas.

It's because the economic value returned to society (in GDP, jobs, etc) from the energy consumed by crypto is less than for energy consuming activities like manufacturing, especially considering the environmental cost of generating that power (which won't all be renewable for a while).

This electricity-hungry onshore manufacturing boom is being boosted by legislation like Biden's CHIPS act, which is a big thing in Texas, and is being heavily promoted by Texas's governor:

https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/business/Texas_CHIPS_Act...

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

#62

Post by icehawk »

ssl-3 wrote: post #31
hirsin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Its fine as long as the amount of time it can provide rated output is longer than it time it takes to bring replacement generation capacity on line.

I don't care how long my UPS will actually last as long the holdover time is long enough to cover the time it takes to deal with all of the foreseeable problems in starting up the backup generator.

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

#63

Post by ssl-3 »

danans wrote: post #60
hirsin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> For some reason grid storage reporting always seems to use a power metric instead of storage metric Grid scale batteries are used primarily for real time demand management, and therefore their most relevant property is how much immediate power they can output and for how long. If they were only described in terms of energy (i.e MWh) without separating the power and time components, then it wouldn't be clear how muc…

>their most relevant property is how much immediate power they can output and for how long.

You listed two properties there.

Only one of these two properties is present in a figure that is solitarily presented as "10,000 megawatts."

We can tell this because only one property is presented.

And because it is a very-clearly ambiguous and singularly-useless instance of a unit that sees frequently-erroneous use, we do not know if this singular figure relates to "how much" or if it relates to "how long."

It probably relates to one of them, I'd suppose.

However... we do know that it cannot relate to both things, as-presented. The singular property presented can't even be extrapolated to relate to both things.

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

#64

Post by ssl-3 »

icehawk wrote: post #62
ssl-3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Its fine as long as the amount of time it can provide rated output is longer than it time it takes to bring replacement generation capacity on line. I don't care how long my UPS will actually last as long the holdover time is long enough to cover the time it takes to deal with all of the foreseeable problems in starting up the backup generator.

I don't think that grid-scale batteries are working with consumers on the grid in the same way that your home UPS is with you in your house.

Perhaps most-obviously: Consumers who are suddenly running on grid-scale batteries have no idea that this is a thing that is happening. There's no signal for them to shut their stuff off -- automated, or not.

It's a whole different paradigm than your UPS under your desk is: With your UPS, your system(s) receive a signal that things are running on local battery, and you've elected to configure things to use that signal to order an automated shutdown.

But, again: That doesn't happen with the grid-scale batteries under discussion -- at all. You're comparing apples to dildos here.

(Which is not to say that grid-scale batteries offer new opportunities for power cuts, because the opposite of that is true. It is instead just to say that unknowingly using grid-scale batteries is nothing like monitoring a local UPS is.)

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

#66

Post by pfdietz »

pydry wrote: post #26
yawaramin wrote: post #13

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.

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.

I don't think nuclear weapons themselves need a nuclear industry, as in an industry for making nuclear reactors, at least in the major nuclear powers. They already have all the plutonium they need. The US hasn't made new plutonium for nuclear weapons in decades.

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

#67

Post by 0xBDB »

cranky908canuck wrote: post #48
singhrac wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This doesn't seem to be getting the exposure it deserves --- please give links, I'd like to see! You seem to be implying that "the featured article" [1] is not giving that exposure (which is my sense as well). [1] looking for the shorthand for the original link that started the discussion, thinking that 'TFA' is correct, is this in the HN FAQ?

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/battery-storage-texas-relia...

It appears (not an expert) that Texas leads the country by such a margin in renewables that increasing battery storage an order of magnitude in 3 years was sort of a drop in the bucket.

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

#68

Post by pydry »

pfdietz wrote: post #66
pydry wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think nuclear weapons themselves need a nuclear industry, as in an industry for making nuclear reactors, at least in the major nuclear powers. They already have all the plutonium they need. The US hasn't made new plutonium for nuclear weapons in decades.

A lot of the supply chain and skills base is shared between the nuclear military and commercial nuclear.

The military's needs are not quite as straightforward as "take plutonium put it in a box". They need nuclear engineers, parts for PWRs, etc.

This is why the US government pushes nuclear power heavily in spite of it 5xing the cost of civilian electricity.

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

#69

Post by grecy »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #57
grecy wrote: post #4

Australia 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…

As a resident of that state it was frustrating to see the media and political narratives both untruthful and in alignment. Even the impressive images of a downed giant 'giraffe' transmission tower[0] wasn't enough to convince those who wanted the anti-renewable narrative to be true. Apparently 20 towers collapsed in total. Surely a more decentralised grid (a grid of micro-grids?), more easily facilitated by smaller a…

Without a doubt.

I'm also sure the sun rising is a tad more reliable than a coal plant.. at least for another few billion years.

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

#70

Post by danans »

ssl-3 wrote: post #63
danans wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some reason grid storage reporting always seems to use a power metric instead of storage metric Grid scale batteries are used primarily for real time demand management, and therefore their most relevant property is how much immediate power they can output and for how long. If they were only described in terms of energy (i.e MWh) without separating the power and time components, then it wouldn't be clear how muc…

>their most relevant property is how much immediate power they can output and for how long. You listed two properties there. Only one of these two properties is present in a figure that is solitarily presented as "10,000 megawatts." We can tell this because only one property is presented. And because it is a very-clearly ambiguous and singularly-useless instance of a unit that sees frequently-erroneous use, we do not…

> The singular property presented can't even be extrapolated to relate to both things.

Both things aren't equally important.

The energy capacity of the battery isn't provided for the same reason that coal plants don't specify the size of their coal piles or hydro plants don't specify the potential energy storage capacity of their reservoirs.

Power is the most relevant property to the real time operation of the grid, and the specification of power (and not energy). The grid operators need to know how much power a battery (or other generation source) can provide, and for how long. That tuple what any dispatchable energy source ultimately bids onto the real-time electricity markets.

The energy storage capacity of a battery is a function of what energy market it is designed to fit into.

For example, a battery that primarily functions in the frequency regulation market (modulation of supply and demand every few seconds) doesn't need a lot of storage capacity, but needs high power output. In contrast, a battery that shifts supply over the course of a single day might need more capacity (4 hours).

From the grid operator's perspective, the storage capacity is an implementation detail of the particular power source, or at least a secondary consideration.

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