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Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid

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Re: Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid

#131
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be so, but it remains the case that every wafer that comes out of a solar panel fab gets sold, with a large backlog of demand in every market. And the supply side is responding to that by building out capacity rapidly. Tariffs may or may not be "fucked up" as a matter of principle, but in practice they aren't a barrier.

They get sold, just not in the US, or specifically, Texas, as the original poster was asking. This hurts us in the US, quite a bit. And I wouldn't mind, if it meant that there was going to be a more robust US industry for panel production, as that would be fantastic. But the tariffs don't appear to be designed for that, but instead to benefit a few tiny manufacturers that are not expanding.

> They get sold, just not in the US, or specifically, Texas, as the original poster was asking.

I don't think that's correct. Or at least it seems to require evidence. On the whole the US solar market has been extremely robust, with dropping prices and rapid buildout. It's possible that we're somehow lagging the rest of the world somehow, but that seems unlikely.

Re: Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid

#132
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar capacity in Texas tripled since last summer . https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/heat-ener...

What does it take to setup a decent size solar farm? There’s a lot of cheap, flat, easy to develop land in far west Texas (Brewster county).

It doesn't take much honestly: https://www.erthos.com/

Re: Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid

#133
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> ego so big he made his rocket look like a sex toy not sure if you have noticed but rockets, misiles, bullets, skyscrapers are all phallic symbols. Sick burn against a person saying their phallus looks like a phallus though

Rockets ... looks like rockets, except in the case I correctly referred to. Thank you.

Re: Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid

#134
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

That’s not how water storage works though for example. You are forgetting that for every unit of mass raised 1 unit, you can add another unit of mass where the previous unit was. Thus you are getting a progression of 1+2+3+4…up to the height units of power stored.

The water tower in my town is several hundred feet tall (many units) and has a big bulb tank at the top. When you pump a gallon of water up into the tank, it is raised hundreds of feet and contributes a fraction of an inch to the total height of the water stored.

It's an actual implementation of energy storage, the water is pumped up there and then gravity distributes it, so there is a buffer if the pumps can't run for some reason.

Re: Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid

#135
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get sold, just not in the US, or specifically, Texas, as the original poster was asking. This hurts us in the US, quite a bit. And I wouldn't mind, if it meant that there was going to be a more robust US industry for panel production, as that would be fantastic. But the tariffs don't appear to be designed for that, but instead to benefit a few tiny manufacturers that are not expanding.

> They get sold, just not in the US, or specifically, Texas, as the original poster was asking. I don't think that's correct. Or at least it seems to require evidence. On the whole the US solar market has been extremely robust, with dropping prices and rapid buildout. It's possible that we're somehow lagging the rest of the world somehow, but that seems unlikely.

Why wouldn't massive uncertainty about prices hinder us? A strong market doesn't stay strong in the face of massive uncertainty about prices being 2x what they should be. Instead of massive growth, like all prior years, we are seeing contraction:

> The number of shipping containers delivering solar panels to American ports during the first three months of the year was down 17% from the prior quarter and 26% from a year earlier, according to research firm Panjiva. The drop came ahead of a March 28 announcement that the Commerce Department is looking into whether solar manufacturers used factories in Southeast Asia to circumvent American tariffs on imports from China.

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

This is the US messing up its solar industry with no productive gain.

Re: Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid

#136
post #68
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it take to setup a decent size solar farm? There’s a lot of cheap, flat, easy to develop land in far west Texas (Brewster county).

One thing I wonder about is how far can you be from population centers in practice? I remember hearing that you want to be close or else you lose a lot to transmission but that might not be at all true

You make the X vs Y call.

Assuming it is material, at some distance the cost of land (X) vs the transmission loss (Y), it becomes economical to choose X instead of Y

Re: Datadog dashboard for the Texas power grid

#137
post #107
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had capacity blackouts in 2020. https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/...

Small nitpick, they weren’t from lack of capacity it was reported as a planning problem. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-10-06/califor...

From the linked article,

A program known as convergence bidding, in particular, is meant to help keep electricity prices steady but instead “masked tight supply conditions” during the August heat wave, the analysis concluded.

and

Energy providers collectively under-scheduled the amount of electricity they expected to need.

This was definitely a lack of capacity.

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