Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 419 posts

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#121

Post by rpearl »

dalbasal wrote: post #49
DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

I imagine something like this would happen, if this is a "real" economic phenomenon rather than a quirky price/billing system. I think that it's something like that though, a goof in a not-quite-designed collection of old energy funding/billing setups and newer green energy stuff. Otherwise there'd be someone just consuming electricity for pay. I don't think this is "retail."

the point is that "just consuming" the electricity is nontrivial. Suppose you've been paid to take some number of megawatt hours of energy. Okay: What do you do with it? At the least useful, you have to safely convert it into heat it without damaging something. More useful would be storing it. If you know how to solve that, yeah, you will make money.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#122

Post by hectormalot »

jabl wrote: post #73
mac01021 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the responsiveness of an oil plant so different from a natural gas plant? Why? They're both essentially a furnace fueled by a flow of combustible fluid, right?

NG plants tend to use gas turbines, which can ramp very quickly indeed. Steam plants are a lot slower (thermal stresses and whatnot). Very little electricity is produced with oil, BTW. Steam plants are usually coal or nuclear.

Note: many bigger gas plants are combined cycle, the exhaust of the gas turbine generates steam in a waste heat boiler for a steam turbine. Often multiple GTs on a single ST.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#123

Post by mikec3010 »

amluto wrote: post #74
DoctorOetker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they used electricity to deionize salt water, the salts are already dissociated into positive and negative ions, so pass a current through the water, and every now and then raise the electrodes out, mechanically scrape it off or reverse current in dump brine to remove the ions...

Doesn’t work. By the time you’ve moved any non-negligible amount of ions, you’ve built up an insane amount of charge and hence voltage. That voltage will be impossible to work with, not to mention many orders of magnitude higher than the voltage needed to split water into H2 and O2. One mole of singly charged ions is ~1e5 Coulombs. At an insanely high capacitance of 1 Farad (which you’ll never see in such an applicat…

Could you store electrical energy this way more efficiently than pumped hydroelectric? Like make a capacitor the size of a wastewater storage tank?

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#124

Post by rapnie »

thinkcontext wrote: post #61
DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

If you wait for power prices to be negative (or merely lower than usual) you are not getting an economic return on the money you put into the desalination plant when it is not running. Think about it, if you get a 100M Euros loan to make a desalination plant, how long will it take to pay that off if you only run your plant a few hours per day vs 24 hours per day. Whether it makes economic sense depends on the differe…

Yes, hydrolysis could be a good solution. Create hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could also be used in hydrogen cars that we have been talking about for decades.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#125

Post by sandworm101 »

floatrock wrote: post #48
DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

Capital costs vs. marginal costs. You're going to build a $100M desalination plant and run it for three hours a day? That's a ton of money sitting idle most of the day, far more than what is recovered with zero operating costs. (This is called the utilization factor -- how long a piece of equipment is used vs. staying idle) Ideally you want useful processes with low capital costs and expensive marginal/energy costs.…

In the oil market, stabilization of price occurs only because a handful of countries (really just Saudi Arabia) maintain extra capacity. They don't run their capital assets at 100%. This is where capitalism fails. You need one absolute authority, some autocrat who doesn't care that their processing plant isn't running at 100%, who is able to react instantly without making new capital improvements. This is the place for a state-owned market participant, either on the supply or consumption side.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#126

Post by weberc2 »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

Bitcoin mining. This may or may not be a sincere suggestion.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#127

Post by nostrademons »

swebs wrote: post #108
nostrademons wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An energy industry where the bulk of energy production is wind & solar with natural gas plants to handle peak demand spikes is significantly more environmentally friendly than an industry where the bulk of production is oil & coal with a few nuclear plants thrown in.

I'd much rather have solar/wind/nuclear than solar/wind/gas.

I would too, but that's not a possible combination. The issue is that at any given moment, the amount of electricity produced must equal the amount consumed. Solar and wind have production curves that are defined by the sun and wind, and typically peak early morning (for wind) and mid-day (for solar), which are often not the times of peak demand. So when everyone turns on their lights, TVs, stoves, and laptops in the evenings, there needs to be a quick-responding power plant to meet the excess demand. By far the preferred technology for this is a natural gas turbine, because it's one of the few technologies that can adjust its output within seconds. Nuclear power plants take several hours to days to respond to shifts in demand, because the control rods must be moved, the nuclear chain reaction must speed up, it needs to generate more heat, that heat needs to boil water, and the steam needs to make its way to the turbines.

There's more information in the wikipedia pages for "base load", "load following", and "peaking" power plants:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant

Interestingly, solar-thermal is apparently coming online as a potential technology for peaking power plants, which could reduce the need for natural gas.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#128

Post by mpax »

swebs wrote: post #108
nostrademons wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An energy industry where the bulk of energy production is wind & solar with natural gas plants to handle peak demand spikes is significantly more environmentally friendly than an industry where the bulk of production is oil & coal with a few nuclear plants thrown in.

I'd much rather have solar/wind/nuclear than solar/wind/gas.

Afaik the problem is that the currently installed nuclear generators cannot stop their operation in the middle of a fuel cycle.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#129

Post by petermcneeley »

floatrock wrote: post #92
petermcneeley wrote: post #25

Can someone with a microecon background explain how this is possible? (My guess is that consumption is somehow completely independent of unit price and that its also inelastic?)

Energy markets are some of the most complex set of competing incentives I've worked with. You're not going to get a simple microecon theory, because it's actually many different related markets interacting with each other and fighting often conflicting policy goals. Here's a good lecture that dives into some structures and why it's complicated: https://youtu.be/tsfBewWIF9c?t=21m47s (this is the market structure bit,…

From the video - "no profits for anyone in the energy market if you take this far enough, which is where we need to take it to meet the legislative requirements"

This doesnt sound complex. It sounds like this is intentional.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#130

Post by nostrademons »

darawk wrote: post #60
nostrademons wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An energy industry where the bulk of energy production is wind & solar with natural gas plants to handle peak demand spikes is significantly more environmentally friendly than an industry where the bulk of production is oil & coal with a few nuclear plants thrown in.

Yes, but we want the coal to be displaced. Not the nuclear.

Coal already has been displaced. The reason there's less of a downturn is because there's a lot less of it to begin with:

https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/

There's 20x more nuclear than coal energy in New England. Proportionally, the drop in coal energy (~50%) was a lot more than the drop in nuclear energy (~15%).

Post reply on HN