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California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

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Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#211

Post by usrn »

WalterBright wrote: post #210
usrn wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to live in a place that does that, my power consumption over the course of the day is pretty consistent. We already do that for industrial power consumers how are most capable of changing the time they put load on the grid.

> I don't want to live in a place that does that Would you prefer rolling blackouts like California has? Would you prefer paying much higher electricity rates for all those peaker plants and grid storage batteries?

I'd prefer the cheap LNG and nuclear power where I live now. Power cost fluctuating over the course of the day would mean cutting back on critical stuff since I already optimize my power consumption pretty well. Maybe I could cut power to my refrigerator/freezer at night but I prefer having it cold on the small chance that there is a blackout the next day.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#212

Post by throwaway2037 »

standardUser wrote: post #167
idiotsecant wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, having too much power without storage is exactly as bad as not enough. That's how the physics works. It's a zero sum game or it's lights out for the grid. It takes a lot of smart people and simulations to do a semi decent job of walking that tightrope day after day after day. Overproduction is a huge problem, as evidenced by the frequent negative power pricing of CA solar

"No, having too much power without storage is exactly as bad as not enough." That makes no sense to me.

I agree. The excess can be used to produce hydrogen gas (for heavy industry) from splitting water.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#213

Post by doikor »

onion2k wrote: post #189
ploxiln wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electrical power is fungible, but the time it is available is not. There is usually near-peak power usage just after sun-down. So while a large amount of "clean" power was generated in the middle of the day and sold to other states, after sun-down a significant portion of the power used in the state was "un-clean". Even if California made it the final 3% to reach 100% renewable energy (by the headline metric), it wil…

Even if California made it the final 3% to reach 100% renewable energy (by the headline metric), it will still depend on a significant amount of non-renewable energy for significant parts of every single day (or else it will have blackouts). It's not like you can ramp a coal-fired or nuclear power station up and down on a whim either though. It takes time and planning to modify the output if you don't have storage ca…

> It's not like you can ramp a coal-fired or nuclear power station up and down on a whim either though.

At least nuclear you can relatively fast. In terms of KW/min change rate faster then most gas peaker plants. It is not done much outside of France though as the operating costs of a nuclear power plant are pretty much identical when operating at 5% or 100% output.

edit:

German nuclear power plants also used to do load matching.

https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...

Source for the KW/min change rate of nuclear vs CCGT/coal

https://snetp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SNETP-Factsheet-...

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#214

Post by adrianN »

tomp wrote: post #183
WalterBright wrote: post #177

If electricity is cheaper to generate when the sun is shining, the retail price of electricity should reflect that. In fact, the retail price should fluctuate minute by minute, so that demand can be shaped to match supply. Trying to match variable supply to a fixed retail electric rate is certain to cause energy gluts and shortages. For example, I'd be happy to charge my electric car during price minima, heat the ele…

> If electricity is cheaper to generate when the sun is shining, the retail price of electricity should reflect that. This would be amazing. It would quickly turn the population off further investment in solar and other unreliable, unpredictable sources of energy and prove that nuclear is the only viable green power.

We can predict the weather reasonably well. As the penetration of renewables increases, eventually storage will start to make more economic sense. It is likely that renewables with storage will be cheaper than nuclear. It is virtually certain that we can build renewables and storage much faster than nuclear.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#215

Post by WalterBright »

usrn wrote: post #211
WalterBright wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to live in a place that does that Would you prefer rolling blackouts like California has? Would you prefer paying much higher electricity rates for all those peaker plants and grid storage batteries?

I'd prefer the cheap LNG and nuclear power where I live now. Power cost fluctuating over the course of the day would mean cutting back on critical stuff since I already optimize my power consumption pretty well. Maybe I could cut power to my refrigerator/freezer at night but I prefer having it cold on the small chance that there is a blackout the next day.

It'd mean you could take advantage of cheaper rates to spend overall less money. Fluctuating rates means you'll spend overall less money.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#216

Post by adrianN »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #212
standardUser wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No, having too much power without storage is exactly as bad as not enough." That makes no sense to me.

I agree. The excess can be used to produce hydrogen gas (for heavy industry) from splitting water.

If you have the infrastructure to produce hydrogen at scale you pretty much automatically have the infrastructure to store excess renewable production. That makes the "baseload!!" argument for nuclear moot.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#217

Post by KarlKemp »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #23
joebob42 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation is that this was a low demand moment where that 27gw was more or less equal to the demand (e.g. a demand trough not a renewable output spike).

So the title should be - CA generated 97% of electricity from renewable energy for a brief moment on April 3?

No. The whole day was the „brief moment“.

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#218

Post by ben_w »

Ekaros wrote: post #182
outside1234 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was only 97% for a brief Sunday afternoon - not at night not even a major portion of the day

Oh how I wait for the days of using solar to heat my home during blizzard night... People posting these headlines make it seem like utopia.

I don’t know where you live, but the Californian power grid is part of the Western Interconnection that goes from the Mexican-American border to half way through Canada[0]. Are blizzards in the USA ever that big?

As for “at night”, it is possible to get batteries of household scale. Plus insulation is getting better and cheaper, so the power required to maintain any given temperature isn’t as high as it used to be.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection

Re: California grid set record of 97% renewable power on April 3

#219

Post by pjc50 »

WalterBright wrote: post #186
robbiep wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wholesale price does fluctuate minute by minute. The grid and the average consumer/retail user is not yet sophisticated to take advantage of what you propose. We know this because until recently, this ‘ideal situation’ that you propose was available by a company called Griddy, that went balls up when their consumers got absolutely slammed during the Texas snowstorms, and the idea of having the wholesale price if…

Oh, I know about the Texas example. It wasn't the concept that was bad, it was the implementation. The implementation needs to be coupled with meters where you can set a max price you'll accept. Any system where you sign a contract that says you'll pay any price to turn on a lamp is idiotic, and so are the people who sign such contracts. (The wholesale prices fluctuation does little to affect demand, because the dema…

> The implementation needs to be coupled with meters where you can set a max price you'll accept.

Systems where your house goes dark and cold in the middle of a blizzard are never going to be popular no matter how "rational" they are.

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