Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped • Hacker News Board

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#21

Post by pc86 » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

aleksandrm wrote: post #11

nimbius wrote: post #3

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote mo…

> its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.

We're not in California, but while most people are working from home at my company, there are still 10 or so employees at the office. So as far as electricity usage it's basically business as usual. Most (80%+) of my friends work for similar companies where a small group is at the office so everything is still on, but a lot of people are working from home all day on top of that.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#22

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #20

nimbius wrote: post #3

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote mo…

> Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Serious question, why is the answer to this not a slightly-but-not-much-more-polite version of "That's ridiculous, be quiet." and moving forward?

Because the representatives with authority will get voted out by these folks. You have to dance around them, or find technical mitigations to the silliness (substation facades, suboptimal siting, more expensive underground transmission, etc).

It's why you're seeing a rapid uptake in battery storage by consumers in California; it's a hack around regulatory and utility failures (and you get a federal tax credit if it charges primarily from your rooftop solar, which is mandatory on new CA residential construction).

It is ridiculous, and people who are ridiculous must be negotiated with (unfortunately!). I don't know what the solution is besides applying constant pressure in the appropriate direction.

Disclosure: This information comes from my own research, as well as first hand accounts from electrical linemen friends in NorCal upgrading infrastructure.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#23

Post by qppo » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

java-man wrote: post #4

The sooner we switch to solar and grid battery storage, the better. There should be no excuse whatsoever not to do that now. What reasoning is holding us up?

> What reasoning is holding us up?

People turn their lights on when the sun goes down, and efficient energy storage is the holy grail.

Also fun back of the napkin math with overestimates, if we have a totally efficient Li+ battery with 0.25 kWh/kg energy density, and converted all the world's 40 billion kg of lithium in the crust and oceans to batteries, we'd get roughly 10 TWh of energy storage capacity. Which is enough to power California for 19 days (we generate around 200TWh annually).

In reality we only have access to a tiny fraction of the world's Lithium reserves, batteries aren't that efficient, they're heavy, dangerous, and all that makes for an expensive technology ill suited for grid energy storage (and alternatives like lead-acid are even worse).

Energy storage on the grid is going to look more like dams and reservoirs in the mountains than battery arrays. Even that's not great, ideally we'd invest more into nuclear energy for generating clean power on demand.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#24

Post by dehrmann » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

java-man wrote: post #7

jjoonathan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time and money.

I doubt it: Musk installed 129MWh battery plant in Australia that already saved the consumers over $100M. There must be another reason. [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8082841/Elon...

MW is a funny unit in this context. Apparently Daily Mail meant MWh.

> It provides a total of 129 megawatt-hours (460 GJ) of storage capable of discharge at 100 megawatts (130,000 hp) into the power grid, which is contractually divided into two parts:[20][needs update]

> - 70 MW running for 10 minutes (11.7 MWh) is contracted to the government to provide stability to the grid (grid services)[21] and prevent load-shedding blackouts[13][22] while other generators are started in the event of sudden drops in wind or other network issues. This service has reduced the cost of grid services to the Australian Energy Market Operator by 90%.[23]

> - 30 MW for 3 hours (90 MWh) is used by Neoen for load management to store energy when prices are low and sell it when de

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

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#25

Post by floatingatoll » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #20

nimbius wrote: post #3

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote mo…

> Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Serious question, why is the answer to this not a slightly-but-not-much-more-polite version of "That's ridiculous, be quiet." and moving forward?

The US legal system allows a great many delaying tactics if you can afford filing fees and base your case on statements that cannot be proven with certainty. The legal system is often set up to require either certain proof or expensive multi-year reviews to overcome such objections, and they are used with great success by coordinated groups of NIMBY folks.

Laws could be passed to sidestep all of this and support infrastructure growth, but those laws would trigger the same attacks from coordinated groups NIMBY, who happen to often be wealthy single-family homeowners, and thus more often than their competition have captive lawmakers to resist any effort they disapprove of.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#26

Post by fulafel » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

etimberg wrote: post #18

dehrmann wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solar I can't seem to find it right now, but someone in another post noted that peak power demand in California is several hours later than peak solar production, so supposing you have storage, it doesn't really matter what the source of the energy is. > grid battery storage I'm really curious if this is more or less expensive than adding production capacity.

California is famous for it's duck curve [0] where peak load & peak solar generation are not correlated. There are many possible solutions, some are technical and some are not. I am currently building one of them [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve 1. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/opus-one-tests-...

That's still a pretty easy situation compared to many places where the storage need is over months and not fractions of days. (Though those places can often do a lot shifting with hydro)

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#27

Post by war1025 » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

genericone wrote: post #12

aleksandrm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.

Plenty of businesses are still open, and AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Maybe not at human comfort levels, but they still need to run them for the whole building.

> AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold.

Serious question: How was this handled in pre-AC times?

Is it just an issue because buildings are much better sealed than they used to be, or is there more to it than that?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#28

Post by dehrmann » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

java-man wrote: post #8

philipkglass wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid scale battery storage only became practical in the last few years. Now there are a lot of projects under way but they'll take time between approval and completion. One notable example from last week: "Vistra approved to build a grid battery bigger than all utility-scale battery storage in the US combined" The past month has been littered with news of exceptionally large battery storage developments, yet none in…

Does not have to be one giant storage plant. The installation could be decentralized: [0] https://phys.org/news/2018-02-tesla-australia-homes-power.ht...

Centralized is cheaper to install and maintain, though. Rather than dispatching an electrician to a home every time its battery has a problem, a farm keeps electricians on-staff and replacement parts in-stock. Installation is cheaper for the same reason.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#29

Post by fulafel » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

java-man wrote: post #4

The sooner we switch to solar and grid battery storage, the better. There should be no excuse whatsoever not to do that now. What reasoning is holding us up?

Pricing and regulation, we need to get out of pretend flat-rate electricity ASAP. This will probably lead to generously overprosivisioning solar & wind + long distance HVDC transmission lines or energy storage for the overproduction.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#30

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

java-man wrote: post #8

philipkglass wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid scale battery storage only became practical in the last few years. Now there are a lot of projects under way but they'll take time between approval and completion. One notable example from last week: "Vistra approved to build a grid battery bigger than all utility-scale battery storage in the US combined" The past month has been littered with news of exceptionally large battery storage developments, yet none in…

Does not have to be one giant storage plant. The installation could be decentralized: [0] https://phys.org/news/2018-02-tesla-australia-homes-power.ht...

When the article calls this a "landmark plan", they mean it's an experimental new plan. Power technologies need to be well-tested, known to be reliable and efficient, if they're going to be deployed at scale.