Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 363 posts

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

#91

Post by bradlys »

potato3732842 wrote: post #75
bradlys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminally overpriced. We're not getting shit for it either. God forbid you live in any of the more woody parts of California either. You'll have to have your own battery or generator anyway. As someone who plans to live in the Santa Cruz Mountains long term, I will be going completely off grid as PG&E will just cut power forever rather than fix anything.

>I will be going completely off grid as PG&E will just cut power forever rather than fix anything. Depending on where you live you, your neighbors and/or your predecessors likely a) voted for people who wrote laws to make that illegal b) sneered at anyone who wouldn't want to be on the grid.

It’s a capitalist run power grid in CA. It’s a publicly traded company. Nothing more capitalist than making my own power when the competition sucks ass.

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

#92

Post by xondono »

mrtksn wrote: post #89
cbmuser wrote: post #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…

Good luck building nuclear in non-generational timescales and at reasonable prices. The future is solar simply because these electricity catchers from the sky fusion are mass producible goods that you can just keep pumping and pointing it to the sky in matter of days at dirt cheap prices.

> Good luck building nuclear in non-generational timescales and at reasonable prices.

Or we could treat nuclear rationally and stop increasing the price three orders of magnitude past diminishing returns..

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

#93

Post by RedShift1 »

dmix wrote: post #46
bradlys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminally overpriced. We're not getting shit for it either. God forbid you live in any of the more woody parts of California either. You'll have to have your own battery or generator anyway. As someone who plans to live in the Santa Cruz Mountains long term, I will be going completely off grid as PG&E will just cut power forever rather than fix anything.

Why is PG&E so poorly run? I don't live there, just follow the news and their name comes up constantly in negative press.

Greed and no competition.

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

#94

Post by pas »

alecco wrote: post #71
cbmuser wrote: post #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…

Nothing to be proud of. Dangerous ancient reactors owned by an almost bankrupt company about to be nationalized. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/02/03/the-long...

if they can run them safely they should. is ASN not trustworthy?

they are doing reviews every 10 year, and as they get older they can increase the frequency of reviews.

also the article mentions no dangers with regards to the reactors.

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

#95

Post by Gibbon1 »

whiterook6 wrote: post #81

When they say their battery storage capacity is 15,000 MW, do they mean MWh? Because watts are time-independent, or rather, they're like speed to Joule's (watt-hour's) distance.

Utilities are used using MW when discussing supply and demand. Because balancing that is critical. So power is what they care about when discussing grid connections.

The billing side and customers are concerned with total energy. So kwh.

Journalists typically don't know the difference. Which is why they list storage capacity in watts. They don't know any better and they don't care.

Far as I can tell multiply the watts by 4 hours to get watt hours.

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

#96

Post by bolangi »

teruakohatu wrote: post #82
whiterook6 wrote: post #81

When they say their battery storage capacity is 15,000 MW, do they mean MWh? Because watts are time-independent, or rather, they're like speed to Joule's (watt-hour's) distance.

I struggle to understand why journalists consistently failed to use Wh as a unit of power. People generally can understand it because it is how they are billed and how appliances are rated. Even on HN people will defend not using Wh because there is some grid or city in the USA that bills differently.

Because American literacy in math and hard sciences has only declined over the decades since the post-Sputnik spurt that benefited my generation. Journalism as practiced today doesn't require scientific literacy or rigor, or at least, they are secondary to the purposes of the writers' employers.

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

#97

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

ajross wrote: post #86
teruakohatu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to understand why journalists consistently failed to use Wh as a unit of power. People generally can understand it because it is how they are billed and how appliances are rated. Even on HN people will defend not using Wh because there is some grid or city in the USA that bills differently.

Uh... "Wh" is not a unit of power. Watts are units of power. Watt-hours measure energy. Probably journalists are getting this wrong for the same reason you are.

I do not know why this particular one gets engineers so annoyed. Energy and power are synonymous in conversation with normal people. There is very little real world scenarios where people would be exposed to the precise meanings -of course everyone gets it wrong.

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

#98

Post by Braxton1980 »

nandomrumber wrote: post #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

>100% clean energy

Who said that?

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

#99

Post by bolangi »

ajross wrote: post #86
teruakohatu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to understand why journalists consistently failed to use Wh as a unit of power. People generally can understand it because it is how they are billed and how appliances are rated. Even on HN people will defend not using Wh because there is some grid or city in the USA that bills differently.

Uh... "Wh" is not a unit of power. Watts are units of power. Watt-hours measure energy. Probably journalists are getting this wrong for the same reason you are.

The commenter was right that the correct unit is Wh, then slipped up. Does gasoline contain power? Do "high-power" Li-ion batteries? In common parlance, power and energy are used interchangeably. I believe people writing about science should hold themselves to a higher standard, but there is always something more important.

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

#100

Post by Braxton1980 »

zanon234 wrote: post #11
metabagel wrote: post #2

> California and Texas are constantly trading places as the top state for battery storage.

I think Texas will stay ahead for the foreseeable future. California keeps shooting itself in the foot with regulatory hurdles and permit issues.

What's some examples of this that Texas doesn't have?
Post reply on HN