Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd still rather see a surge in nuke generation and solar with storage How about wind?
Wind is good too!
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California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
291–300 of 363 posts
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
While usage of aircon during heatwaves stressing the grid is a valid concern, I think massive increase in solar could offset it. Solar will also generate maximum energy during sunny days with minimal cloud cover, meaning there shouldn’t be a shortage of energy if there’s enough solar. Since 2022 California has energy from solar by roughly 50%, while the population has decreased. Solar is now the biggest source of ene…
It doesn't solve the problem- its the end of the day when solar has ramped down that the crises happens. Its the duck curve. Where its still hot and air conditioning is still running hard. Solar depresses the energy demand during the middle of the day. Energy storage smooths out the load profile.
> It doesn't solve the problem- its the end of the day when solar has ramped down that the crises happens. Its the duck curve. Where its still hot and air conditioning is still running hard.
Isn't that scenario a problem only when the output from solar is insufficient to meet the aggregate demand?
From a naive point of view, it looks like this issue would be easily mitigated if supply from solar was increased enough to allow energy to be stored during peak hours so that it could be introduced back in the grid during sunset. Why is this scenario being ignored in a thread on how California is investing in battery energy storage?
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
> By my estimate (GPT5) You know treating a thing that makes stuff up as a source of truth is the same thing as making stuff up right? You might as well have written By my estimate (as revealed to me in a dream)
But is he wrong?
> is he wrong?
Yes.
“Nearly 75 players are active in the CAISO battery storage ecosystem. Top players include EIG Management Company, NextEra Energy, Arevon Energy, Hectate Energy, and Cultivate Power, all of which have eight or more projects underway” [1].
Tesla isn’t yet a player in utility storage. (They’re at the table, but only starting to bid, and they’re more or less politically fucked in America for the time being on that front.$
[1] https://blog.yesenergy.com/yeblog/the-caiso-energy-storage-r...
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#294One of my biggest pet peeves is when outlets talk about energy storage exclusively in terms of output and neglect to mention capacity. Does 15.7 gigawatts of storage mean 15.7 GWh? Capacity is as important, if not more important, than output.
Based on the following sentences from the article, it's probably 4 to 6 times more than 15.7 GWh (60 to 90 GWh, apparently): "Battery energy storage is not without challenges, however. Lithium-ion batteries — the most common type used for energy storage — typically have about four to six hours of capacity. It’s enough to support the grid during peak hours as the sun sets, but can still leave some gaps to be filled by…
From a grid perspective, the output (delivery) is typically more important than total capacity - because it's acting sort of like a power plant.
Power plants don't have capacity, really.
So you hear about the output GW, not the capacity GWh.
For battery plants, they might mention duration (4 - 6 hours), which makes converting to capacity in terms of GWh trivial.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
While usage of aircon during heatwaves stressing the grid is a valid concern, I think massive increase in solar could offset it. Solar will also generate maximum energy during sunny days with minimal cloud cover, meaning there shouldn’t be a shortage of energy if there’s enough solar. Since 2022 California has energy from solar by roughly 50%, while the population has decreased. Solar is now the biggest source of ene…
It doesn't solve the problem- its the end of the day when solar has ramped down that the crises happens. Its the duck curve. Where its still hot and air conditioning is still running hard. Solar depresses the energy demand during the middle of the day. Energy storage smooths out the load profile.
You’re in a thread about California adding record amounts of battery storage. These batteries charge at noon a discharge in the evening while demand is peaking. This smooths out the supply across the day so it can meet the demand.
California did struggle with the duck curve but it’s less of a problem now. When the next heatwave comes, evening aircon demand won’t be a problem.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they are free-riding on things that PG&E ratepayers bought Genuinely curious, how is that the case for Silicon Valley Power?
How do you think SVP buys energy from its contracted generators? They don't own transmission from those places (unlike SMUD which, to an incomplete extent, actually does own its generating assets and transmission lines). SVP pays regulated wholesale distribution rates to PG&E to get access to their contracted generators. But the process determining such rates ignores the way that wildfire liability is assigned to PG&…
> PG&E must serve every yokel in California no matter how far out, while SVP and other MUDs contribute nothing to rural electrification mandates
You can both be right about this. PGE is subject to rural electrification mandates.
However, the way those mandates get satisfied can vary tremendously in cost, and because by regulation investor owned utilities are compensated as a % of their capex spend, there is an incentive to use more expensive solutions, especially when those solutions induce greater dependency on their transmission infrastructure.
Furthermore, apart from expensive bespoke off-grid setups, there is inherently no competition in transmission in distribution. It's a natural monopoly.
AFAIK, municipal utilities do not have any say over how IOU monopolies deploy capital, so why should they be subject to those costs?
If we feel that rural communities deserve electrical service (don't we all deserve it?), then perhaps those should be publicly owned/financed through taxes and a competitive bidding process by private entities, not shunted into uneven electricity rates.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are not going to observe that in annual averages. As mentioned in my other comment, you can observe that very clearly in the energy production charts: https://gridwatch.co.uk/
Let's boil this right down: A new wind turbine is built and plugged into the grid. Does this cause more gas to be burned or less?
That's not what dfawcus is saying, he is talking about installed capacity, not consumption. If you build 1GW of wind, you need to also build 1GW of gas to make up for when there is no wind (and as you can tell from gridwatch, it's a common occurence). Otherwise blackouts.
[edit] and we might be talking at cross purpose here. I think most of the new capacity built now is to expand the production, rather than to reduce other forms of productions (in which case you might just keep around existing gas capacity if it was there, to your point).
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
CATL is claiming mass production of their sodium-ion batteries starts in December, with a target price of $10/kWh. If that ends up even partway true it'll completely change the economics of power storage.
> CATL is claiming mass production of their sodium-ion batteries starts in December, with a target price of $10/kWh. This got widely reported but there doesn't seem to be any source. I'll reference this video [1] to cover the claim along with a comparison to industry projections. Apologies for the video link but I don't have an article handy that addresses the topic as directly. [1] https://youtu.be/KjiqqafD_0w?t=861
You're right, I can't find any primary sources for this number. Yahoo[1] reports this number and attributes it to Bloomberg NEF but I can't find an actual article from Bloomberg with this number, or any actual target number in it.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-10-sodium-ion-battery-16505...
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
CATL is claiming mass production of their sodium-ion batteries starts in December, with a target price of $10/kWh. If that ends up even partway true it'll completely change the economics of power storage.
That's plain wrong, they have not announced that price target anywhere. There is speculation that it could be there target internally for the long term, but there is basically zero chance they'll start at that price and no guarantees they'll ever reach it.
You're right, I can't find any primary sources for this number. Yahoo[1] reports this number and attributes it to Bloomberg NEF but I can't find an actual article from Bloomberg with this number, or any actual target number in it.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-10-sodium-ion-battery-16505...
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
France? France is increasing its nuclear output. And planning to build new plants. (Expanding nuclear generation was prohibited by law up until March of 2023). The added renewables help to make the nuclear plants more efficient and profitable, by taking up a good amount of the variable demand.
France doesn't have any new reactors under construction. Its annual nuclear generation peaked in 2005: ~/git/iaea-pris % sqlite3 pris_data.db sqlite> select year, sum(electricity_supplied_gwh) from reactor_statistics, reactor_operating_history where reactor_statistics.reactor_id=reactor_operating_history.reactor_id and country_code='FR' and year > '1999' group by year; year sum(electricity_supplied_gwh) ---- --------…
France does not have any new reactors currently under construction because until March 2023, expansion of nuclear generating capacity was forbidden by law.
So even to build the one Flamanville 3 reactor, they had to shut down two older reactors in Fessenheim in order to not have an illegal increase in capacity.
Now that the law has been rescinded, they are planning 6 simplified EPR2 reactors, taking lessons from the fairly catastrophic EPR project FV3.
(Of course, even that catastrophic reactor will be more profitable than any intermittent renewable projects in, for example, Germany, but hey, the standards for what counts as "success" and what as "failure" are different for nuclear and for renewables).
France also currently does not need to urgently expand their nuclear fleet, so the schedule for the EPR2s matches those needs and the need to fully account for the problems with FV3. Instead, they are increasing the production of their existing fleet, both by operational upgrades and also by increasing use of intermittent renewables to cover variations in demand, allowing the nuclear fleet to run closer to fully rated capacity instead of having to load-follow.