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

California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 363 posts

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#191

Post by rkomorn »

ziotom78 wrote: post #188
sgustard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec has them both beat. Hydro rules! https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CA-QC/5y/yearly (To be transparent, there's controversy around calling hydroelectric renewable.)

What strikes me is the fact that nuclear power has received an incredible amount of backslash after the Chernobyl incident (a few thousands deaths) and the Fukushima incident (one disputed death), but hydroelectric power is considered a "good" source of energy despite a few incredibly deadly incidents: - Banquiao (China, 1975): between 26.000 and 240.000 [1] - Derna (Lybia, 2023): between 6000 and 20.000 deaths [2] -…

And the environmental impact up and downstream (both for failure cases and regular operation).

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#192

Post by sciencejerk »

slashdave wrote: post #182
FridayoLeary wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are intermittent and therefore unreliable. Also unless california has gone for lots of redundancy the would also be displacing fossil fuel power plants. Again i'm not trashing renewables, because what's wrong with free energy. What i am doing automatically is wondering why batteries are a better option then traditional power stations. California does have much more expensive electricity then anywhere else,…

You are being contradictory. Solar is not intermittent (the sun shines every day). Making your grid reliable is expensive, thus drives costs.

The sun does not shine 24 hours a day. Therefore, if you want to run a power grid 24 hours a day, you need expensive batteries to hold energy collected during peak production. Fossil fuels can be burned continuously, lessening the need for energy storage

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#194

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

cbmuser wrote: post #63

The electricity mix in France is still way cleaner than in California: - France: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/5y/yearly - California: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/5y/year... And their kWh costs less than 20 Cents in the standard plan: - https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of... They even offer flex prices going down as low as 12,32 Cents/kWh. Nuclear power…

The French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power.

3 is 7x over budget and 12 years late on a 5 year construction program.

The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.

Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies.

Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026. And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix.

A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#195

Post by qaq »

andbberger wrote: post #146
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we’d put some desal plants in the north of the state and start feeding into the CA aqueduct and unlocking more Central Valley farmland

farming with desal water is insane. even with abundant power.

why ? at scale desal water via solar looks to be very reasonable thing ?

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#196

Post by Loic »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #177
jeffbee wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the hail, I suppose.

I never thought about the impact of Texas hail storms on solar energy. Is there an industry standard practice to shield the panels during hail storms? Or do they use stronger glass? I am curious to learn more.

Tracker systems with "hail stow"[0] mode. They bring the panels as vertical as possible.

[0]: https://www.energy.gov/femp/hail-damage-mitigation-solar-pho...

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#197

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

ziotom78 wrote: post #188
sgustard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec has them both beat. Hydro rules! https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CA-QC/5y/yearly (To be transparent, there's controversy around calling hydroelectric renewable.)

What strikes me is the fact that nuclear power has received an incredible amount of backslash after the Chernobyl incident (a few thousands deaths) and the Fukushima incident (one disputed death), but hydroelectric power is considered a "good" source of energy despite a few incredibly deadly incidents: - Banquiao (China, 1975): between 26.000 and 240.000 [1] - Derna (Lybia, 2023): between 6000 and 20.000 deaths [2] -…

I think this line of thinking comes from a westernized world where all water is controlled.

Many dams have been built around the world not for power generation, but to control flooding. The power generation is a secondary concern.

In aggregate dams have saved far more lives, by managing flood waters.

The great thing in 2025 is that we don’t need either the dam or nuclear risk for our electricity needs.

Just build renewables and storage and the risk for the general public is as close to zero as we can get. The only people involved in accidents are those that chose to work in the industry installing and maintaining the gear.

We should of course continue to focus on work place safety but for the general public the risk of a life changing evacuation, radiation exposure or flood from dam failure does not exist.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#198

Post by matthewdgreen »

diordiderot wrote: post #186
cheema33 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or we could treat nuclear rationally and stop increasing the price three orders of magnitude past diminishing returns Who is we here? Do you have examples of any countries having successfully done what you are proposing?

> Do you have examples of any countries having successfully done what you are proposing? France pre 21st century, China, Korea, Poland.

Does anyone have actual numbers on what France’s nuclear fleet cost? I thought it was somewhat shrouded in mystery due to government and national security subsidies.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#199

Post by matthewdgreen »

teruakohatu wrote: post #82
whiterook6 wrote: post #81

When they say their battery storage capacity is 15,000 MW, do they mean MWh? Because watts are time-independent, or rather, they're like speed to Joule's (watt-hour's) distance.

I struggle to understand why journalists consistently failed to use Wh as a unit of power. People generally can understand it because it is how they are billed and how appliances are rated. Even on HN people will defend not using Wh because there is some grid or city in the USA that bills differently.

Battery storage is always measured in the amount of power that can be delivered (Watts). Secondarily it’s measured in the number of hours that power can be delivered (hours, which is almost always about 4.) To get MWh you multiply watts times hours. This is standard in the industry and has nothing to do with reporters.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#200

Post by L-four »

radu_floricica wrote: post #180
MaxL93 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that most of EDF's massive losses are due to the ARENH. The European Union insists that EDF must sell energy at very discounted prices, so that third-party "providers" can make an entry on the energy market. The idea was that they would eventually sell their own energy supply, but most just pocketed the difference between the dirt-cheap energy & what they charged customers, then ran away the moment…

So that's an European thing? huh. We have this in Romania - a couple years back when the war in Ukraine started just as the green deal took effect, the gov started spending like crazy on subsidizing energy. But they did it in a convoluted way with a layer of intermediaries that basically were allowed to invoice the state for price differences from arbitrary price levels. Almost "I'd like to sell at twice the price bu…

No it's a neoliberal thing. Rather than the government doing the thing. They hand out massive subsides and hope it gets done.
Post reply on HN