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Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

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Re: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

#111
post #105
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Spinning Reserve is the on-line reserve capacity that is synchronized to the grid system and ready to meet electric demand within 10 minutes of a dispatch instruction by the ISO. Spinning Reserve is needed to maintain system frequency stability during emergency operating conditions and unforeseen load swings." http://www.caiso.com/docs/2003/09/08/2003090815135425649.pdf The poster isn't saying they're producing ener…

Spinning reserve ought to be replaced with batteries. I bet some of it could be replaced with batteries today with the utilities' customers saving money, aside from the sunk costs not then providing the proper return on capital to their investors.

Do you have any idea how big and environmentally unfriendly those batteries would have to be? Ready reserve is generally provided by peaking generators (the aforementioned natural gas turbines) and by hydro dams. There aren't many batteries that can provide hundreds of megawatts for hours at a time.

Re: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

#112
post #105
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Spinning Reserve is the on-line reserve capacity that is synchronized to the grid system and ready to meet electric demand within 10 minutes of a dispatch instruction by the ISO. Spinning Reserve is needed to maintain system frequency stability during emergency operating conditions and unforeseen load swings." http://www.caiso.com/docs/2003/09/08/2003090815135425649.pdf The poster isn't saying they're producing ener…

Spinning reserve ought to be replaced with batteries. I bet some of it could be replaced with batteries today with the utilities' customers saving money, aside from the sunk costs not then providing the proper return on capital to their investors.

Do you have any idea how big and environmentally unfriendly those batteries would have to be? Ready reserve is generally provided by peaking generators (the aforementioned natural gas turbines) and by hydro dams. There aren't many batteries that can provide hundreds of megawatts for hours at a time.

Re: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously speculative. Both battery tech and methods of local power generation technology is improving. At some point one can imagine a tipping point that it'll become a worthwhile investment for those that aren't super rich. The assumption is the utility companies will act to protect their levels of revenue and raise prices to compensate. This will result in more people investing in solutions. Rince and repeat…

There are many different regulatory environments, but the utility I worked at, where I wrote programs to calculate the hourly price of electricity, the utility made zero dollars from usage by residential customers. Residential customers payed a fixed rate to be connected, and every penny the utility collected for energy was remitted to the market operator. The utility also made no money on energy by large users, but…

so where does the utility make their money?!

Re: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

#114

Something that would be interesting: a map estimating the areas in which a typical suburban home roof covered with PV panels would produce enough energy to power a typical suburban home's worth of electrical usage, assuming some level of battery technology. I'm not actually sure what it'd look like. Seems like there might be a tradeoff between hotter areas, which have both higher PV output and higher peak electricity…

I'm an electrical engineer and I've done these calculations for my own home. The roof area of a 1200 sq ft ranch home is much larger than the surface area of solar panels needed to power the home. (in other words, your map would show pretty much all of north America). But covering all of a roof with solar panels is very expensive. The biggest problem is that the "typical suburban home" is ridiculously inefficient. In…

> Don't even consider solar panels until you've reduced energy needs first.

i suppose its good to watch out for unnecessary power usage (like keeping the lights on all the time), but i will not want to give up any modern luxury to save a bit of power. For example, if its hot, i will turn on the AC, or heater if its cold, take long hot showers/baths etc.

What i want out of a solar panel is so i can spam electrical appliances all i want.

Re: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

#117
post #109
post #4

Not to mention lumen per dollar increase rate of LED lighting, tablets that consume 4 watts, refrigerators that use half the power of the average installed fridge, etc. The falling prices of solar PV panels has been incredible. Most expected the price of $0.72 per peak watt to be reached in 2028, not 2013.

> Not to mention lumen per dollar increase rate of LED lighting The energy efficiency of LEDs still doesn't beat CFL, except for really really expensive LEDs.

> The energy efficiency of LEDs still doesn't beat CFL, except for really really expensive LEDs.

Not at all!

CFLs cost $1.74 per bulb with an efficacy of 64 lumens/watt [1]. LEDs cost $12.47 per bulb with an efficacy of 84 lumens/watt [2].

As far as LED bulbs go, $10-$15 per bulb is a pretty typical price. A more correct phase is "The average LED is 30% more efficient than a CFL, but costs 7x more." Anyway, both halves of your statement are wrong.

The big savings comes in flexability. LED bulbs are easily dimmable. Dimmable CFL bulbs are expensive and don't work well. LEDs can be turned off and on quickly without wearing them out. I go through a lot of CFLs in my basement, because the lights are turned on for three minutes at a time, several times a day. They actually burn out faster than the incandscents! Though in most cases it does not make sense to replace CFLs with LEDs yet.

Eventually it will, see Haizt's Law [3]. CFL tech has been improving too but not as fast. In 1980 florescent tech was at 34 lum/watt. Doubling every 30 years is a dead end.

[1] http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/100687000

[2] http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/204084366

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitz%27s_law

Re: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

#118
post #105
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Spinning Reserve is the on-line reserve capacity that is synchronized to the grid system and ready to meet electric demand within 10 minutes of a dispatch instruction by the ISO. Spinning Reserve is needed to maintain system frequency stability during emergency operating conditions and unforeseen load swings." http://www.caiso.com/docs/2003/09/08/2003090815135425649.pdf The poster isn't saying they're producing ener…

Spinning reserve ought to be replaced with batteries. I bet some of it could be replaced with batteries today with the utilities' customers saving money, aside from the sunk costs not then providing the proper return on capital to their investors.

LOL talk to an EE about the orders of magnitude involved, you're not going to like the answers.

The cheapest storage battery is simple lead acid figure a quarter per watthour installed. Or a KWh is $250. But with a 100% charge/discharge cycle the battery will be dead and need replacing in about 10 or so cycles. To get up to 1000 or so cycles (which is only 3 yrs daily cycles) means you only get to use about 10% of the capacity. Lets round up because rectifier/inverter gear, and buildings, and operators and their stuff, are not free. So you can guess about $3/watt of storage as an absolute best case, but probably more realistically a turn key battery storage facility would cost more like $4 and would depreciate fully in about half a decade.

Hydro turnkey is about $1/watt plus or minus massive corruption (what is the dollar value of the hetch hetchy valley of yosemite national park, etc?) Coal plants sell turnkey for a bit over $2/watt, natgas is arguably the most expensive around $6/watt. All of those last like 50 years, so divide those costs by about 10 to compare with a battery bank that only lasts at best 5 years.

Spinning capacity (well, sorta, in case of natgas) is around 10 times cheaper per KWH than batteries. You have to remember that power companies don't really care about pushing an agenda, more or less. There is no conspiracy, they just want to sell KWH. If they could install a battery bank instead of a natgas peaking plant, and keep huge profits, they most certainly would.

There are some interesting math problems too. If each stored utility grade battery costs $2500/KHW and the total overall worldwide battery industry is about $50B, that means if we abandon all other forms of battery use in the world and get rid of all laptops, cellphones, etc, we could build nothing but lead acid batteries at a pitiful rate of ... drum roll ... 20 megawatt hours of utility grade storage per year. Now since the batteries are scrap in 5 years, that means if in a Manhattan style worldwide project we focus the entire industry on utility grade storage, we can never store more than 100 megawatt-hours worldwide. Which if you assume a daily charge discharge cycle is about 10 MW continuous or about the capacity of ONE small gas turbine system. So its not as simple as going down to "batteries plus" and picking up a battery large enough to UPS a nuke plant.

Re: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

#119
post #118
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spinning reserve ought to be replaced with batteries. I bet some of it could be replaced with batteries today with the utilities' customers saving money, aside from the sunk costs not then providing the proper return on capital to their investors.

LOL talk to an EE about the orders of magnitude involved, you're not going to like the answers. The cheapest storage battery is simple lead acid figure a quarter per watthour installed. Or a KWh is $250. But with a 100% charge/discharge cycle the battery will be dead and need replacing in about 10 or so cycles. To get up to 1000 or so cycles (which is only 3 yrs daily cycles) means you only get to use about 10% of th…

The Fairbanks battery should provide some real world experience:

http://juneauempire.com/state/2011-04-17/fairbanks-battery-b...

http://www.gvea.com/energy/bess

They chose Ni-Cad (presumably for good reason).

Edit: Some numbers:

It's about 5 megawatt hours (varies somewhat based on draw, could stretch it to 6.5 MW-h for 15 minute runtime, less at higher draws).

Cost $35 million, so ~$7000 per KW-h of capacity.

Planning authorized in 1993, online in 2003.

Expected battery life of 20 years (maybe 30).

So a project that didn't seem to take up the entire manufacturing capacity of the battery industry managed to bring up 0.5 megawatt hours per year, with a lifetime of 20 years, half of your prediction of capacity production capacity (but at much higher cost than you started from).

Re: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

#120
post #105
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Spinning Reserve is the on-line reserve capacity that is synchronized to the grid system and ready to meet electric demand within 10 minutes of a dispatch instruction by the ISO. Spinning Reserve is needed to maintain system frequency stability during emergency operating conditions and unforeseen load swings." http://www.caiso.com/docs/2003/09/08/2003090815135425649.pdf The poster isn't saying they're producing ener…

Spinning reserve ought to be replaced with batteries. I bet some of it could be replaced with batteries today with the utilities' customers saving money, aside from the sunk costs not then providing the proper return on capital to their investors.

It sure could (in some places). Check out:

http://library.abb.com/GLOBAL/SCOT/scot271.nsf/VerityDisplay...

"An economically and ecologically more viable alternative to ‘spinning reserve’ – gas turbines kept running in case of an emergency – is battery back-up."

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