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California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

latimes.com

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Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is a mixed bad, they also lead the world in new coal power plants. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

And smashing everything in Nuclear, whilst America turns to fossil fuels. Much as I am against autocracy and oppression, china is doing very well at improving their energy sector.

The US system of decades of environmental review before any energy project can maybe proceed can also be considered a form of oppression.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#63
The electricity mix in France is still way cleaner than in California:

- France: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/5y/yearly

- California: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/5y/year...

And their kWh costs less than 20 Cents in the standard plan:

- https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of...

They even offer flex prices going down as low as 12,32 Cents/kWh.

Nuclear power rules.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#64
post #27

I don't really care if the power stays on for five-nines as long as I'm still paying 61¢/kW-h for it :/ https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/resid...

PG&E's corruption is laid bare by Silicon Valley Power, which serves the town of Santa Clara, charging less than half what PG&E does for the house a few blocks over [1]. [1] https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees

I will only put this down once because I repeat it in many threads and I'm sure people are tired of hearing it, but the reason that isolated municipal utilities are offering great prices locally is that they are free-riding on things that PG&E ratepayers bought.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#65
> they burn extremely hot and cannot be extinguished with water, which can trigger a violent chemical reaction. The blaze emitted dangerous levels of nickel, cobalt and manganese

> In the first six months of this year, CAISO’s grid was powered by 100% clean energy for an average of almost seven hours each day.

emitted dangerous levels of nickel, cobalt and manganese

100% clean energy

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#67
post #53
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There were a few summers leading up to that where all of the major metro areas shared concurrent record high heat days, and sometimes coincided with poor air quality from wildfires (meaning more people closed their windows and ran AC even if they wouldn't have otherwise.) This is underselling it, if anything. The multi-day heatwave around Labor Day 2022 extended across most of the western US, not just California. T…

Yep. The previous high was in 2006(!). Overall, statewide energy consumption seems to be flat or declining. In 2020, there were extremely high heat days in August, with wildfire smoke covering the state. Thankfully I was out of town, but my wife was suffering, unable to cool the house OR open a window. In 2021 or 2022 I finally broke down and bought a window-mounted AC unit for my office, as I work from home. In 2024…

Equipment dies and needs to be replaced. When that happens a more energy efficient unit is usually available and is often the best option for replacement.

That's the whole other side to this curve which isn't seen very clearly in grid analysis.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is a mixed bad, they also lead the world in new coal power plants. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

And smashing everything in Nuclear, whilst America turns to fossil fuels. Much as I am against autocracy and oppression, china is doing very well at improving their energy sector.

[deleted]

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Texans will keep losing power during winter storms due to lack of regulations.

This is ignorant culture war politics and/or anti-Texasism. I should point out that cold temperatures place a huge demand on the grid because consumers don't want to winterize for the marginal once-a-decade blizzard any more than utilities; around half our homes have relatively inefficient resistance heaters as opposed to furnaces. We have a lot more growth in the past few years than most other places, both in relati…

Considering how much the Texas state government has been illegally trampling its own residents’ rights recently, mostly for the sake of private corruption, and backed by incredibly bad faith anti-social rhetoric, perhaps reflexive anti-Texas-elected-officials-ism is a reasonable baseline position.
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