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Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

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Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#41

Post by bryanlarsen »

buckle8017 wrote: post #34
nemomarx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you expand? I'm not sure I get it. isn't then having a wider interconnection better for stability and to handle solar? they can share cheap power in gluts and pull in other sources at night and so on.

The energy mix of the physical grid (the western interconnect in this case) is what matters for stability. (in places with limited transmission this is more complicated but at a state level it's approximately true). articles like this talking about high solar or wind in one state are tricking people into thinking we're can actually increase inverter power sources past about 25-30%. local power authorities power mix d…

What do you mean by "inverter power sources"? A new build cost optimal power grid would get 90-98% of its power from solar, wind & batteries per Ember Energy.

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#42

Post by epistasis »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #36
mekdoonggi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And eventually that arbitrage will be big enough to justify a pumped hydro/gravity/iron-air storage.

Pumped storage utility is tied to duty cycle. You want one cycle per day with some overage, not one cycle per year. A lot of the cost scales with storage volume. If you look at the pumped storage projects built and under construction in China, they are all daily focused.

To play devil's advocate: there are also some limited opportunities to retrofit large reservoirs with some amount of back-pump, when there's a sufficient reservoir at the bottom site. Not a ton, but a bit. However even those opportunities, that already have massive dams, may not be economically feasible because solar panels are just so damn cheap.

Solar's zero marginal cost generation, with cheap capital costs, requires rethinking a lot of the economics of electricity generation. Not paying for fuel changes so much, and it will take a while for people to internalize this.

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#43

Post by ericd »

epistasis wrote: post #27
kansface wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or possibly the return of some heavy industry?

I think the challenges for heavy industry aren't as much the cost of energy, as it is the capital cost, and a workforce that has lots of options for higher paying jobs. Heavy industries are usually pretty low on the value chain in economies. They do not provide much return on capital, compared to the high tech options and service options that are available in the US, but not available anywhere else in the world. The…

Well, manufacturing capacity was the basis of US military dominance, which was the underpinning of the post WW2 US-led world order. That's pretty clearly eroded, and we're not sure we could win in a war against China, especially not a full-on war of attrition, and they're not sure about that either, and so they're steadily getting more willing to throw their weight around geopolitically, trying to get a setup that's more favorable to them. The difference in shipbuilding capacity is staggering, for example. Even if each of our ships had a 10-1 kill ratio, we'd still run out of ships first.

My read on why we want it back, anyway. I'm sure there are other reasons, too.

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#44

Post by s1artibartfast »

dylan604 wrote: post #22
mekdoonggi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And eventually that arbitrage will be big enough to justify a pumped hydro/gravity/iron-air storage.

Except the water is in short supply, so where's that magically coming from? The Great Salt Lake is shrinking and specific to Utah. Just look at Lake Meade and Hoover Dam as an example.

moreover, If you built a pumped storage facility on lake Meade, it would have greater height and power from release the lower the lake was

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#45

Post by bluGill »

epistasis wrote: post #27
kansface wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or possibly the return of some heavy industry?

I think the challenges for heavy industry aren't as much the cost of energy, as it is the capital cost, and a workforce that has lots of options for higher paying jobs. Heavy industries are usually pretty low on the value chain in economies. They do not provide much return on capital, compared to the high tech options and service options that are available in the US, but not available anywhere else in the world. The…

There is a tremendous amount of money in those high capital costs enterprises. High tech can make you a lot of money, but you can also go bankrupt when everyone buys from your competitor - just like everything else. The world needs the things that heavy industry makes, and despite the large capital costs they are valuable. People are still making a lot of money in those industries - even if it is less than the silicon valley can make.

Also industry is only low value so long as someone friendly to you has it. The world really worried about China climbing that latter because they are making some political moves that could lead to war. Maybe they won't, but China clearly is building a powerful military and they are not friendly to the freedoms that the US and western Europe likes. If it comes down to war we need heavy industry.

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#46

Post by buckle8017 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #41
buckle8017 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy mix of the physical grid (the western interconnect in this case) is what matters for stability. (in places with limited transmission this is more complicated but at a state level it's approximately true). articles like this talking about high solar or wind in one state are tricking people into thinking we're can actually increase inverter power sources past about 25-30%. local power authorities power mix d…

What do you mean by "inverter power sources"? A new build cost optimal power grid would get 90-98% of its power from solar, wind & batteries per Ember Energy.

solar is an inverter power source

electricity from a DC to AC inverter instead of a direct an generator powered by steam

yeah a grid that was more than 30% inverter sources (which includes batteries) would likely fail randomly. the big spinning metal in the stream generators provides literal inertia to the grid, flywheels can replace that but those also cost money.

solar panels are cheap... of you want 200-400v DC, but if you want a national scale grid with 99.9999% uptime... they're actually not

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#47

Post by bluGill »

epistasis wrote: post #37
8note wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't get it! What's the appeal? its the k shaped economy. the big opportunities are great if you can get into them, but otherwise all there is is serving coffee to the wealthy. People are already poorer without a ladder or fulfilling work at the bottom

I could see that, if people actually wanted to work in those jobs in large numbers. Yet, poll after poll shows that people don't want to work in the jobs, they just want heavy industry and manufacturing to return to being a big part of the US economy. People understand that these jobs are worse than what's currently available, yet for some reason want them here.

I want those to be automated. I don't want anyone to have to work in a steel mill - it is hot dirty work that wears out your body. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. However those plants are mostly automated and I know we will need them in some worst case scenarios.

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#48

Post by toomuchtodo »

buckle8017 wrote: post #46
bryanlarsen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "inverter power sources"? A new build cost optimal power grid would get 90-98% of its power from solar, wind & batteries per Ember Energy.

solar is an inverter power source electricity from a DC to AC inverter instead of a direct an generator powered by steam yeah a grid that was more than 30% inverter sources (which includes batteries) would likely fail randomly. the big spinning metal in the stream generators provides literal inertia to the grid, flywheels can replace that but those also cost money. solar panels are cheap... of you want 200-400v DC, b…

Battery storage provides grid stability services (frequency and voltage response, broadly speaking) within milliseconds at a lower cost than thermal generation.

TLDR System Diagram: Renewable generatorsBattery storageTransmissionBattery storageElectric consumers.

https://ember-energy.org/chapter/the-rise-of-batteries-plus-...

Potential analysis of current battery storage systems for providing fast grid services like synthetic inertia – Case study on a 6 MW system - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23521... | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.est.2022.106190 - Journal of Energy Storage Volume 57, January 2023, 106190

> Large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) already play a major role in ancillary service markets worldwide. Batteries are especially suitable for fast response times and thus focus on applications with relatively short reaction times. While existing markets mostly require reaction times of a couple of seconds, this will most likely change in the future. During the energy transition, many conventional power plants will fade out of the energy system. Thereby, the amount of rotating masses connected to the power grid will decrease, which means removing a component with quasi-instantaneous power supply to balance out frequency deviations the millisecond they occur. In general, batteries are capable of providing power just as fast but the real-world overall system response time of current BESS for future grid services has only little been studied so far. Thus, the response time of individual components such as the inverter and the interaction of the inverter and control components in the context of a BESS are not yet known. We address this issue by measurements of a 6 MW BESS's inverters for mode changes, inverter power gradients and measurements of the runtime of signals of the control system. The measurements have shown that in the analyzed BESS response times of 175 ms to 325 ms without the measurement feedback loop and 450 ms to 715 ms for the round trip with feedback measurements are possible with hardware that is about five years old. The results prove that even this older components can exceed the requirements from current standards. For even faster future grid services like synthetic inertia, hardware upgrades at the measurement device and the inverters may be necessary.

(this paper is ~3 years old, state of the art has advanced in that time from an improvement perspective)

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#49

Post by bluGill »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #28
Rover222 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large-scale battery storage is already expanding rapidly, and is way cheaper than pumped storage.

pumped storage is still significantly cheaper for seasonal storage. The cut off is about 2 weeks now -- if you need to pull from storage more than twice a month batteries are cheaper. If you need to pull from storage less than twice a month pumped storage is cheaper.

The problem with pumped storage is most of the places we can use it are already taken and have been for years.

> pumped storage is still significantly cheaper for seasonal storage

Only because most of the costs have been financially depreciated long ago. Try to build a brand new dam nearly anyplace and the costs will be much higher.

Re: Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

#50

Post by bluGill »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #26
dylan604 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the water is in short supply, so where's that magically coming from? The Great Salt Lake is shrinking and specific to Utah. Just look at Lake Meade and Hoover Dam as an example.

The water requirements for pumped hydro for seasonal storage is a lot less than for generation. - pumped hydro reuses the water in a loop rather than sending it downstream like generation - pumped hydro only needs to produce power a few times a year rather than 24/7/365 like generation.

Only if there is a very large lake at the bottom. If that lake doesn't exist then you have to build it at great cost. You also lose a lot to evaporation if you do this.
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