101–110 of 137 posts
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We had capacity blackouts in 2020. https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/...
Yeah, I was part of those. Sometimes living in CA feels third-world, and due to completely preventable maintenance items.
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Since batteries are always the issue... How inefficient is mechanical storage? For example using electricity to just raise a heavy mass then as that lowers it can produce power. It seems that would be cheap to build at scale with the chance for almost unlimited storage. I have to assume there would be a more than 50% loss through the process, hope someone on hn can comment. Maybe it's not worth it when you can tap in…
> How inefficient is mechanical storage? The density is the problem. If you raise a 25,000kg mass by 100m, that's 24.5MJ, or roughly the energy contained in one kilogram of coal. Or 6.6kWh (standard meter units) of electricity. (and that's on the input side, not accounting for losses)
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Solar is actually super super hard to install right now, because tariffs are in an uncertain space, so nobody knows if, should they import, if they are are going to get a bill in the next 12 months for past sales that's 1x-2x the cost of the import (I forget the exact factor). This sort of protectionism isn't even buying us a bunch of local solar panel production, unfortunately. I'm not a free-market purist, and am i…
There’s about 100GW of solar generation in ERCOT’s interconnect queue at the moment. If there is uncertainty, utility scale developers aren’t signaling it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32071998 > As of 30 September [2021] developers had 100.3GW of solar capacity in the queue, 42.4GW of utility-scale battery storage, 22.5GW of wind, 13.5GW of natural gas and minor amounts of other technologies such as biomass.…
This seems mad - is that built and not connected, or just awaiting permitting?
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There’s about 100GW of solar generation in ERCOT’s interconnect queue at the moment. If there is uncertainty, utility scale developers aren’t signaling it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32071998 > As of 30 September [2021] developers had 100.3GW of solar capacity in the queue, 42.4GW of utility-scale battery storage, 22.5GW of wind, 13.5GW of natural gas and minor amounts of other technologies such as biomass.…
Since batteries are always the issue... How inefficient is mechanical storage? For example using electricity to just raise a heavy mass then as that lowers it can produce power. It seems that would be cheap to build at scale with the chance for almost unlimited storage. I have to assume there would be a more than 50% loss through the process, hope someone on hn can comment. Maybe it's not worth it when you can tap in…
Flywheels are also pretty good short term, but supercapacitors mostly do their job better these days. That said they are competitive, and technological changes could nudge them into more use. Just making your wind turbine really large gives a flywheel effect, e.g., so again if you already have a spinning thing they are often worth it.
HN is obsessed with the TX power grid....why?
It's an interesting case of one area trying to stay independent and deregulated, then failing in basic areas like low costs, and maintenance, leading to serious issues in recent winters. With certain media trying to turn the management failures into an anti-wind campaign thus not making things better. Honestly it's an interesting trainwreck to observe from far away. Shame that it affects real people locally. In case…
With natural gas and nuclear, there would never be a power shortage in Texas. But for some reason people are obsessed with ugly, bird killing windmills and giant solar farms.
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CA has had blackouts, not for lack of power, but recently, rather for liability reduction vs wildfires sparked by woefully behind the times maintenance of the grid.
We had capacity blackouts in 2020. https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/...
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-10-06/califor...
The surprising inference from me, as an energy layman, is that solar output coincides with periods of peak demand. Obviously this is seasonally adjusted, but in an era when the Saudis have solar contracts being supplied for $10USD/MWh [0], the potential profits for a solar provider at periods of peak demand seem more than sufficient to encourage investment, especially with interest rates still at a historic low for b…
Yet Texas doesn't have such a policy statewide. Because a simple money saving idea got politicised and lots of people got convinced they were subsidizing liberal elites, rather than paying their neighbours for providing a useful service.
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Grid connection, land use permissions (i.e. local planning). The latter is very easy in rural Texas so just the former really.
Don't forget about environmental studies and approval.
Two weeks ago I even threw together a simple Twitter bot[0] because I was annoyed with some of their communications there. This datadog dashboard has been around for a while - it shows up on energy Twitter somewhat frequently when the Texas grid is having issues.