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California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

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Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#111

Post by telotortium »

tuetnsuppe wrote: post #20
bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

Batteries are absolutely destroying demand for natural gas in California: https://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/calif...

How does this graph consider that 2024 isn’t over, yet, unlike the other years? Otherwise looks promising. Edit: just saw this is only for April of each year. But similar question: can we extrapolate from April to say November or not?

You can't directly extrapolate from April to November. April is generally the optimal month in California for renewable generation (days are long enough, rainy season is drawing to a close, not too cold or hot, and summer fog from the oceans hasn't started), so the graph is definitely showing the best case. Nonetheless, with more battery installs, we can almost certainly bank the majority of power needs all year round in California.

Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#112

Post by telotortium »

skhunted wrote: post #85
jmugan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to see the world in such stark terms. There is plenty of silliness everywhere.

Not all silliness is equal or equally stupid. The Texas legislature routinely calls for secession when a Democrat wins the Presidency and votes to stymie federal aid to other states while demanding federal aid for themselves. I don’t see the world in stark terms except where appropriate. You do believe cases exist where such views are warranted right? I happen to think that Texas qualifies.

California demands just as much federal aid, and perhaps more - they budgeted assuming that COVID-era federal funding would last forever, until they were recently forced to cut after having to face their absurd assumptions. San Francisco's city government also attempted to boycott working with any contractor in 30 states based on their political views, until it was forced to relent due to not being able to find contractors at an acceptable price.

Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#113

Post by theptip »

cogman10 wrote: post #69
theptip wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is zero chance that a mega-project like pumped hydro can be undertaken in the US in the current regulatory environment. NEPA review allows even clearly green projects like solar and wind to get bogged down in environmental review lawsuits. A project with major environmental impact like destroying an entire valley ecosystem to build a dam would be DoA.

It's not just nepa. Citizens really don't like pumped hydro which negatively impacts it's ability to be deployed (you need local permits as well as federal). Bear lake Idaho has been talking about putting in pumped storage since the 2000s. On paper, it's pretty much the perfect geography for it. However, various concerns from the impact on local fishing to the impacts on the lakebed have ground that process to a halt…

Yep, agreed. We probably need new chemistries to get the seasonal storage potential of pumped hydro. But I’m quite bullish on batteries in general, it seems while folks have been gnashing teeth on how expensive they are, a substantial proportion of renewables installs in the US include 4-6H of battery capacity, which at least substantially helps with the duck curve.

Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#114

Post by cogman10 »

theptip wrote: post #113
cogman10 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just nepa. Citizens really don't like pumped hydro which negatively impacts it's ability to be deployed (you need local permits as well as federal). Bear lake Idaho has been talking about putting in pumped storage since the 2000s. On paper, it's pretty much the perfect geography for it. However, various concerns from the impact on local fishing to the impacts on the lakebed have ground that process to a halt…

Yep, agreed. We probably need new chemistries to get the seasonal storage potential of pumped hydro. But I’m quite bullish on batteries in general, it seems while folks have been gnashing teeth on how expensive they are, a substantial proportion of renewables installs in the US include 4-6H of battery capacity, which at least substantially helps with the duck curve.

> We probably need new chemistries to get the seasonal storage potential of pumped hydro.

Yup. It might be possible to overbuild solar/wind to solve the problem (just need enough juice to offset the night). Won't be possible with current chemistries to have enough power to cover cloudy days or snow-covered solar panels.

> it seems while folks have been gnashing teeth on how expensive they are

This to me seems like a fixed perception based on outdated information. Batteries were quite expensive and required loads of rare earth/horrible chemicals to produce... 30 years ago when NiCd was fairly prominent. Now they are dirt cheap and due to get even cheaper with sodium ion coming to market. We are already manufacturing TWh of batteries yearly. Enough that we could theoretically have a full day backup everywhere in 10 to 20 years without any growth in manufacturing capacity.

Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#116

Post by skhunted »

telotortium wrote: post #112
skhunted wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all silliness is equal or equally stupid. The Texas legislature routinely calls for secession when a Democrat wins the Presidency and votes to stymie federal aid to other states while demanding federal aid for themselves. I don’t see the world in stark terms except where appropriate. You do believe cases exist where such views are warranted right? I happen to think that Texas qualifies.

California demands just as much federal aid, and perhaps more - they budgeted assuming that COVID-era federal funding would last forever, until they were recently forced to cut after having to face their absurd assumptions. San Francisco's city government also attempted to boycott working with any contractor in 30 states based on their political views, until it was forced to relent due to not being able to find contr…

California gets much less in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes. California is much larger population wise than Texas and as such it isn’t surprising that they need more federal aid. California also doesn’t vote against federal aid to states in disaster situations.

Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#117

Post by dzhiurgis »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #105
dzhiurgis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NZ recently scraped Lake Onslow seasonal hydro storage. My estimate it was about 100x cheaper per kWh when compared with Powerwall.

Can you provide background and/or context as to how and why this decision was made?

New government (that Elon Musk himself congratulated) has terminated tons of projects and rolled back some laws:

- Removed EV subsidy

- Scrapped Lake Onslow seasonal pumped hydro storage

- Removed generational smoking ban (made it to 18yo like most countries)

- Gave 50% discount to heated tobacco products (aka IQOS)

- Gave a tip whose projects will be fast tracked

- Reduced housing insulation minimums

- Terminated new inter-island ferry project to replace aging ferries (tbh this one was getting out of proportion)

- Reintroduced tax interest write-off for landlords who rent their houses

- Removed free school launches for poorest country schools

Their goal was to end government spending, but giving $2b+ to countries richest people seems opposite.

And to give them credit here's couple of good things that will definitely help property market:

- Ability to import abroad-certified building supplies (atm there's a building supply monomopoly)

- Ability to build up 60sqm backyard homes without consent

- Densification plans

Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#118

Post by toomuchtodo »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #117
toomuchtodo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide background and/or context as to how and why this decision was made?

New government (that Elon Musk himself congratulated) has terminated tons of projects and rolled back some laws: - Removed EV subsidy - Scrapped Lake Onslow seasonal pumped hydro storage - Removed generational smoking ban (made it to 18yo like most countries) - Gave 50% discount to heated tobacco products (aka IQOS) - Gave a tip whose projects will be fast tracked - Reduced housing insulation minimums - Terminated ne…

Oof. Good luck over there.

Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#119

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #98
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Baseload" clearly exists. There is a minimum load on the grid that it never falls below, which can be satisfied by constant-output generation methods that aren't as well suited to varying output, but also don't vary output and so can't don't create a shortfall when low output periods in variable sources last for longer than the usual amount of time or coincide with high demand. > The sum of a bunch of intermittent s…

Or you burn a small amount of gas when these rare occurrences happen to coincide. I suggest we call the periods that solar/wind/hydro/batteries can cover "baseload", as apparantly if you do so, you can pretend that the other energy being generated at non-baseload times does not matter, and simply declare victory with a job half done.

> Or you burn a small amount of gas when these rare occurrences happen to coincide.

But this presents a different problem: Instead of having to maintain several hundred GW of natural gas plants that you use on a daily basis, you now have to amortize the same cost even though they're only being used five days a year. At which point the incremental cost of building the same capacity in nuclear, which generates power 100% of the time and allows you to avoid not only the natural gas plants but that amount of solar and storage, is looking pretty good.

Re: California Grid Breezes Through Heatwave with Batteries

#120

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #96
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, we want them to use electricity for heat instead. Heat pumps are quite efficient and natural gas emits CO2. But contrary to air conditioning load, heating load is inverse to sunlight, so we need a way to supply that electricity at night .

Heat pumps are so efficient that you can take the gas you were going to burn in homes to heat them, burn it in generators (losing about 50%), send it across long wires (losing a few percent more) and still come out ahead. If you only need to do that at night, you're another 2x ahead. If you then remember that wind, hydro, nuclear and (the main subject of this discussion) batteries exist, further reducing the times yo…

> Heat pumps are so efficient that you can take the gas you were going to burn in homes to heat them, burn it in generators (losing about 50%), send it across long wires (losing a few percent more) and still come out ahead.

Coming out ahead by a few percent still means you need to displace the large majority of the current heating load with some form of electrical generation that can reliably supply a large amount of power at night.

> If you only need to do that at night, you're another 2x ahead.

You're not, because the significant majority of heating load is at night, because it's colder at night. Also, the night is longer than the day in the coldest parts of winter, and that's the time you need to spec the grid to be able to handle.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't electrify heating, but it means we're probably better off generating that electricity with nuclear, which is reliable and generates power at all times, than trying to somehow use solar to supply nighttime power in winter.

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