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California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

latimes.com

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

#301
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ARENH program originated with EU liberalization efforts. https://fsr.eui.eu/regulated-access-to-incumbent-nuclear-ele...

I read your link and I don't see why you say originated. This is a French law. My understanding is that EDF wanted to take a stake in a German energy producer and to approve such a takeover the EU as the market authority required some type of market liberalization of the French energy market. France chose to use the mechanism of ARENH. This isn't an EU thing.

It's a French law to comply with EU requirements.

That's usually how that works. The EU makes rules and national parliaments create local laws to comply.

Of course they could have chosen another way to comply, for example breaking up EDF. But they didn't want to do that, probably for good reasons.

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

#302
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure disinformation. EDF is generally highly profitable while at the same time delivering cheap, reliable power. 2023 was the one exception, due to the energy crisis and its interaction with the ARENH program that forces EDF to sell power from nuclear at a fixed low price (usually way below market). Even if it needs that power itself. So in 2022, it still had to sell this power at 4 cent/kWh, and then had to buy that…

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-agrees-issue-...

That has no bearing on the truth of what I wrote.

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) ---- --------…

They don’t even plan enough replacements to keep generation constant as aging plants are decommissioned

Evidence?

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

#304
post #3

> California hasn’t issued an emergency plea for the public to conserve energy, known as a Flex Alert, since 2022. Feels like that statement deserves to be contextualized with weather data. There were a few summers leading up to that where all of the major metro areas shared concurrent record high heat days, and sometimes coincided with poor air quality from wildfires (meaning more people closed their windows and ran…

Or 3 days ago in Palm Springs, California, and my power was shut off for 2 hours even though it was only 92 degrees outside.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Fukushima generally attributed to the Tsunami or to nuclear power?

Does that really matter? The cleanup costs are still socialized. It is time we move on from the fossil tradition of socialized losses on private profits [1] and instead let the nuclear industry bear their true insurance cost. No externalizing of costs like today. [1]: https://www.imo.org/en/about/conventions/pages/international...

It does if you complain that a hydropower disaster had a different proximate cause, which the person I replied to did.

The whole intermittent renewables scam is private profits and socialized losses.

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

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Knowing about the duck curve and taking advantage of the essentially zero marginal cost of solar, can't most folks just crank down their AC temps at 11 or noon such that there's no end-of-day demand ramp? I know folks in Phoenix who are on a time-of-day plan and they max out the AC overnight and then barely use it during the day (same goal, just they don't have solar)

This is indeed what I do when it's going to be very hot (105+) out.

I run the AC down to 64 overnight, and it's usually comfortable until well into the afternoon before it starts running at 73-74.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

The point of my top-level comment was that we don't actually know that. Not yet.

I'll be thrilled if that's the case. I'll also be very surprised.

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equipment dies and needs to be replaced. When that happens a more energy efficient unit is usually available and is often the best option for replacement. That's the whole other side to this curve which isn't seen very clearly in grid analysis.

This definitely plays a huge factor. Even people who get airco for the first time are already beginning with a different mindset. They also tend to run the units very conservatively because they aren’t used to living in an air conditioned space and often find it uncomfortable after a certain point. I moved to Western Europe from a US state where airco is mandatory. I purchased a split unit here and on the worst summe…

What's the kWh price in these two places? That's a huge variable.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that really matter? The cleanup costs are still socialized. It is time we move on from the fossil tradition of socialized losses on private profits [1] and instead let the nuclear industry bear their true insurance cost. No externalizing of costs like today. [1]: https://www.imo.org/en/about/conventions/pages/international...

It does if you complain that a hydropower disaster had a different proximate cause, which the person I replied to did. The whole intermittent renewables scam is private profits and socialized losses.

Not sure why you got so worked up?

Then I suppose nuclear power is also a scam given thant 45% of the capacity in Sweden was out last week and we all know how it went for the French during the energy crisis. [1]

The electricity grid is fundamentally running on marginal cost. How will you force everyone with rooftop solar and home batteries to buy horrendously expensive new built nuclear power when they can supply their own electricity?

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fra...

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does if you complain that a hydropower disaster had a different proximate cause, which the person I replied to did. The whole intermittent renewables scam is private profits and socialized losses.

Not sure why you got so worked up? Then I suppose nuclear power is also a scam given thant 45% of the capacity in Sweden was out last week and we all know how it went for the French during the energy crisis. [1] The electricity grid is fundamentally running on marginal cost. How will you force everyone with rooftop solar and home batteries to buy horrendously expensive new built nuclear power when they can supply the…

Who is worked up? You seem to be. Why?

I am just correcting misinformation and disinformation.

And no, you suppose incorrectly.

Intermittent renewables are a scam, because they get to privately reap benefits and socialize their costs, particularly their intermittency.

They can be useful, as long as they have to bear the costs of being intermittent. That means at minimum no feed-in priority and no fixed and/or guaranteed feed-in prices. Ideally, they would be required either (a) provide guaranteed power or (b) only be allowed to feed in after all the reliable plants.

Well, (b) would imply (a), so let's go with that.

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