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NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

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Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When including inflation, it's delivered at a cost of 2 billion dollars for 19 GWh of storage. $200 per KWh isn't exactly good, it's not even on par with lithium ion batteries.

2016 generation: -752 GW/h

But since it’s not a generation facility and has a 70% efficiency, that implies it stored and returned 2506 GWh of electricity. At peak retail prices where I am in California (absurdly expensive) that’s worth over 1.5 billion dollars. Obviously you won’t have retail pricing, the market is different and you have transmission costs, etc. but the economics are still surprising. 200 $/kWh might be perfectly fine for a safe, low-maintenance, environment friendly storage that can be used with no time constraints.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#112

Sweden has the coolest real time dashboard IMO [1] (scroll down to see prices of all areas and energy transported) [1] https://www.svk.se/kontrollrummet

I could be reading this wrong, but the entire country of Sweeden seems to be using less power than New York (16mw vs 18mw).

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends, but in some cases certainly. https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main That top left graph is showing you the (notional) system price for grid electricity in the UK. The x axis is settlement periods, which are 30 minutes long, thus period 14 on that graph ends 0700 local time, before many people are awake, system price was £0 per MWh. You want it? Have it. The evening peak a few hours ago was £327 per MW…

Is it possible to scale that trade down to something one could do at home, without much equipment and therefore not require much in the way of planning permission? Scale that transaction down 1/3000th to get £100 for the trade. If you could do that every day it would set you up for a yearly pre-tax income of £36k; instead of trading 1GWh the trade would be 333KWh, equivalent to 1.2 Gigajoules. Solve the Pumped Hydro…

A quicker way to get to the same conclusion is that storing 333KWh in a half hour settlement period needs a 666KW electricity feed, way more than a home supply.

Does make me wonder if elevators in tall office buildings lifting ~10 people per ton, dozens of people overall, up dozens of meters, could be arranged so their work starts at cheap time and finishes at peak time to regenerate money as they ride the elevator down.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to scale that trade down to something one could do at home, without much equipment and therefore not require much in the way of planning permission? Scale that transaction down 1/3000th to get £100 for the trade. If you could do that every day it would set you up for a yearly pre-tax income of £36k; instead of trading 1GWh the trade would be 333KWh, equivalent to 1.2 Gigajoules. Solve the Pumped Hydro…

you're also not accounting for the fact that the smaller pumps won't be nearly as efficient as big ones.

Deliberately so, because if it the numbers are still wildly far from plausible with an easy model of perfect efficiency, there's no point making a more complex model of heat loss and equipment purchase and install and maintenance costs.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nuclear is also incredibly hard to build an accurate model for because the concern tends to revolve around the risk of human stupidity causing major issues. on top of that, i feel like there is a lot of hand waving involved with the waste. if we really industrialized nuclear fuel worldwide - we would be creating a lot of nuclear waste. theoretically, this isnt a problem. what id like to see, and may do one day if i r…

Fossil fuels have enormous global risk, so that's not bad for nuclear. The problem is that nuclear is competing against renewables, not fossil fuels. So, new nuclear needs an argument for why it's better than renewables, not why it's better than something that's on its way out anyway. The usual arguments, intermittency of renewables and land use, don't work well when examined closely, at least when justifying new nuc…

First of all, we’re currently closing nuclear plants that would could otherwise have a lot of life left, so this isn’t merely about whether to build new plants. But putting that aside for a moment:

> The problem is that nuclear is competing against renewables, not fossil fuels. So, new nuclear needs an argument for why it's better than renewables, not why it's better than something that's on its way out anyway.

Is it, though?

From where I’m standing—wind and solar just can’t seem to produce enough energy. I mean, look at the top link. Solar doesn’t even get its own category. So we fall back on fossil fuels.

Nuclear seems to be the only non-carbon source of power we have today that is actually capable of generating electricity in the amounts our society needs. Build a few more nuclear plants, and boom, New York’s electricity could be CO2 free, in a few years!

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to scale that trade down to something one could do at home, without much equipment and therefore not require much in the way of planning permission? Scale that transaction down 1/3000th to get £100 for the trade. If you could do that every day it would set you up for a yearly pre-tax income of £36k; instead of trading 1GWh the trade would be 333KWh, equivalent to 1.2 Gigajoules. Solve the Pumped Hydro…

A quicker way to get to the same conclusion is that storing 333KWh in a half hour settlement period needs a 666KW electricity feed, way more than a home supply. Does make me wonder if elevators in tall office buildings lifting ~10 people per ton, dozens of people overall, up dozens of meters, could be arranged so their work starts at cheap time and finishes at peak time to regenerate money as they ride the elevator d…

The elevator is counter-weighted, there is electricity used whether you're going up or coming down, the point of the elevator is to change where people are, not generate electricity, so you're imagining an entirely new (and perhaps more dangerous) machine.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fossil fuels have enormous global risk, so that's not bad for nuclear. The problem is that nuclear is competing against renewables, not fossil fuels. So, new nuclear needs an argument for why it's better than renewables, not why it's better than something that's on its way out anyway. The usual arguments, intermittency of renewables and land use, don't work well when examined closely, at least when justifying new nuc…

First of all, we’re currently closing nuclear plants that would could otherwise have a lot of life left, so this isn’t merely about whether to build new plants. But putting that aside for a moment: > The problem is that nuclear is competing against renewables, not fossil fuels. So, new nuclear needs an argument for why it's better than renewables, not why it's better than something that's on its way out anyway. Is it…

> wind and solar just can’t seem to produce enough energy

"They are not producing enough energy, therefore they can't produce enough energy." This is an obviously wrong argument, since there is nothing preventing vast expansion of renewable capacity. The world is constantly hit by 100,000 terawatts of sunlight; total world primary energy consumption is 18 TW.

> Nuclear seems to be the only non-carbon source of power we have today that is actually capable of generating electricity in the amounts our society needs.

This is simply false.

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pumped storage is an incredible technology. I’m glad that chemical battery technology is advancing, but I would love to see more construction of this sort!

There are some projects that want to repurpose old mines for pumped storage.

I'm curious how that would work, given that mines are usually below ground. Or do you mean mountaintop mines?

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. I wish they would build more nuclear power, invest in more offshore wind farms (NY has plenty of eligible coastline), and all around do just about anything other than build more natural gas plants.

You’re not building a windmill on MY coastline.

Fortunately, it's not your decision[1].

[1]: https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/All-Programs/Offshore-Wind/Focus-...

Re: NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard

#120

Tangentially related: New York is home to NYPA[1], the largest public power utility/authority in the United States. NYPA is entirely owned by the public, produces some of the cheapest (and greenest) power in the country, and is funded in perpetuity by bonds instead of taxes. Edit: This bond announcement[2] document claims that NYPA provides over 25% of NY's electricity and owns over 30% of the physical delivery infra…

We in South Africa have a single state owned energy producer, Eskom. We consistently have power cuts (load shedding) to prevent grid collapse, it has the highest head count per MWH produced and is in total disarray. I definitely believe having multiple independent producers makes a huge difference for competition and ensuring energy stability

Eskom is in disarray because of affirmative action policies that prevent the hiring of qualified engineers, and ensure the creation of corrupt suppliers that do things like charge USD$18,000 for a broom. [1] [2] It has little to do with actual infrastructure and is more related to huge knowledge gaps and political corruption.

[1] https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/eskom-must-suspend-a...

[2] https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2021/11/16/eskom-bee-affi...

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