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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

#141

Post by mikeyouse »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #131
derriz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity prices are set by the French government not the wholesale cost or cost of production. Which is why EDF - the operator of the French nuclear fleet - regularly posts massive losses. Like the €18 billion loss in 2023. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/02/17/france-s...

2022, not 2023. That was due to one time effect of corrosion repairs. For 2023 and 2024 EDF was profitable, with net income of those two years exceeding that 2022 loss.

And I’m generally a nuclear proponent but one of the worst investments the French utility made was investing in the UKs reactor debacle at Hinkley C.

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

#142

Post by steve_taylor »

Gigachad wrote: post #72
nodesocket wrote: post #66

"leaving rolling blackouts behind..." I'll take this bet CA blackouts aren't over.

Adelaide, Australia used to have constant rolling blackouts, including a state wide blackout once. After that, Tesla (pre insanity era) built a grid battery storage system which essentially fixed the problem. I'm sure there were other improvements to the grid at the same time. But these days the grid is incredibly stable while also being majority solar and wind powered. The battery is able to buy and sell power daily…

By the time that blackout occurred, the grid was already quite stable and rolling blackouts were a thing of the past. The state-wide blackout was the result of a severe storm, which included lightning, gale-force winds and three tornadoes, taking out critical transmission lines, combined with inadequate protection circuits not set up to account for lightning strikes. When the state failed over to the Victoria interconnect, the interconnect shut down because the load was too high. So although the grid was stable, it had some failure points that were exposed during this severe and unusual storm.

The battery array was just one measure taken to increase grid resilience in such a scenario. The general idea was to have an instantly dispatchable electricity supply ready to go at any time while bringing gas-powered electricity online. A nice side effect of the battery is that it flattens out wholesale price spikes and makes a bit of money for itself in the process.

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

#143

Post by jeffbee »

rconti wrote: post #53
khuey wrote: 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…

Statewide grid demand is somewhat declining because distributed small-scale solar is massive. It now has an aggregate capacity of 20GW. This is usually ignored by people who are only looking at ERCOT v. CAISO grid statistics. Texas basically doesn't have any small-scale solar.

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

#144

Post by theultdev »

nodesocket wrote: post #66

"leaving rolling blackouts behind..." I'll take this bet CA blackouts aren't over.

Yeah I mean, aren't most of the blackouts controlled?

Not the lack of supply but shutdown on purpose due to the risk of power lines causing fires?

Seems burying them would be a more effective use of money if you're trying to solve blackouts.

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

#145

Post by andbberger »

and there was a huge fire at the moss landing plant which left heavy metals and god knows what else raining down onto sensitive marine mammal habitat. kayak up elkhorn slough and you'll encounter dozens of otters, seals... less than a kilometer from the battery plant.

I don't think we're going to be appreciating the environmental consequences of that accident for years. heavy metals don't decay, they'll be there forever.

a pox on david brouwer and his faux environmentalism, and the politics and economic machinations that ever proposed solar and batteries as an alternate to baseload fission plants. (in fact brouwer did his damage long before solar was ever practical, so he has even less ground to stand on)

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

#146

Post by andbberger »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #73
qaq wrote: post #36

CA has strange pockets of pretty well setup infra. Like Carlsbad has a desalination plant, and a modern standby ng power plant

I wish we’d put some desal plants in the north of the state and start feeding into the CA aqueduct and unlocking more Central Valley farmland

farming with desal water is insane. even with abundant power.

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

#147

Post by foobarian »

sgustard wrote: post #106
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…

Quebec has them both beat. Hydro rules! https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CA-QC/5y/yearly (To be transparent, there's controversy around calling hydroelectric renewable.)

Hydro does rule. Top 8 power stations are hydro right now. And the top power station has been a hydro for over a hundred years now. Very cool! Three Gorges has capacity of 22.5 GW.

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

#148

Post by idreyn »

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…

These maps are such a cool resource, thanks for sharing!

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson

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

#149

Post by rconti »

jeffbee wrote: post #143
rconti wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Statewide grid demand is somewhat declining because distributed small-scale solar is massive. It now has an aggregate capacity of 20GW. This is usually ignored by people who are only looking at ERCOT v. CAISO grid statistics. Texas basically doesn't have any small-scale solar.

Are you saying Texas doesn't have much rooftop solar? That's surprising. I suppose largely due to low electricity costs making the investment not worth it? (And, I suspect, secondarily, utilities not really incentivizing it)

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

#150

Post by streptomycin »

cheema33 wrote: post #110
xondono wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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..

> Or we could treat nuclear rationally and stop increasing the price three orders of magnitude past diminishing returns Who is we here? Do you have examples of any countries having successfully done what you are proposing?

China https://x.com/bataille_chris/status/1981476968202752109
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