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

California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 162 posts

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#41

Post by w0z_ »

mjamesaustin wrote: post #35
w0z_ wrote: post #20

Spent many decades in California... Somehow 100% renewable but the most expensive electric I've ever paid for. How much does 2000kWh cost again? Also, the most prone to fire-hazard because of above-ground electric. Remember when PG&E caused the most destructive wildfire in California history? Weird rub-it-out article IMO most likely paid for by some PAC. With all the money pumped into California power projects, it ne…

If you want to see a power grid truly without good pricing, reliability, or safety, look at Texas. Summer brings constant outages and market prices dozens of times higher than the norm. People were getting bills for thousands of dollars for a single family home in recent summers.

Hahahaha, okay. I'm in Texas now. I use a ridiculous amount of power to be honest mining in my single family home with A/C running all summer & heatpump during the winter. Care to explain? I've had more expensive bills in San Franciso, Alameda county just heating my home with way more temperate weather. I can provide actual data if you want. Outages? I've had more brown-outs & black-outs in California... the power system there is trash. I lived there for 30+ years LOL. I'de love to know the lore of your perception of the California power system... It's a monopoly. It's 3x more expensive. It's above-ground and caused the most damaging wildfire in California history. What am I missing? Have you lived there for so little-long?

That leaves me to my original question. How much 2000kWh cost in California again?

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#42

Post by akira2501 »

mjburgess wrote: post #34

I'm not sure how many want to hear this, but western deinstustrailization and shifting of domestic production to imports makes most of this irrelevant. In 20yr nigeria alone will have a larger population than the whole of europe, and is industrializing. Total carbon consumption by westerns is always rising due to shifting it to imports; and in any case, we're only 1bn people. Actually stopping carbon consumption by w…

> makes most of this irrelevant.

We do export a ridiculous amount of food and green technologies.

> and actually stopping climate change requires changing the industrialization trajectories of many non-western countries.

So.. colonialism by a new name. I had really hoped we grew out of this by now.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#43

Post by ReptileMan »

Kon5ole wrote: post #25
mgraczyk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most striking thing is how incredibly flat the line for nuclear is.

It's flat on all sides though. https://www.tvo.fi/en/index/news/pressreleasesstockexchanger... Nuclear makes for square supply curves which are kind of hard to handle, especially if you have a large percentage of your supply from a few reactors like they do in Finland.

Smelt aluminum

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#45

Post by flakeoil »

Roritharr wrote: post #19
callalex wrote: post #5

For a few minutes at low demand time. These kinds of over-grand claims are seriously harmful to the cause of promoting renewables because it makes it seem like we’re almost there and can stop caring. Just look at the excellent, accurate, and up-to-the-hour charts put out by the electricity market itself and you will see where and when the challenges we face still are. https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.…

Thank you, as a German paying absurd electricity prices I applaud this nuance.

The high price is probably more related to the fact that Germany relied on gas and oil from Russia in addition to closing down all nuclear power plants. Short and medium term this will show in the price.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#46

Post by stevenhuang »

nocoiner wrote: post #26
callalex wrote: post #5

For a few minutes at low demand time. These kinds of over-grand claims are seriously harmful to the cause of promoting renewables because it makes it seem like we’re almost there and can stop caring. Just look at the excellent, accurate, and up-to-the-hour charts put out by the electricity market itself and you will see where and when the challenges we face still are. https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.…

Are you sure it’s only a few minutes at low demand times? I checked a few days in April at your link, and if I’m reading the graphs right, it looks like renewable production exceeded demand for at least several hours in the afternoon for each of the days I checked. The headline on the original article seems unhelpful and perhaps deliberately misleading, but unless I’m reading the graphs wrong (quite possible!) this a…

This is also what I see. Solar exceeded demand for hours in the few days I saw.

I don't think parent actually clicked around in the link he provided.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#47

Post by darkwater »

ktzar wrote: post #9

Spain as a whole 45 million country with diverse geography and scattered population is producing 75 percent of its electricity from renewables and gas and carbon have been down to almost technical zero. It's rained a lot over the last month's and water reservoirs are used as battery. I made a website to track this: https://energy.antizone.online During the day, a huge chunk of the produced energy is sold to other cou…

> It's rained a lot over the last month's and water reservoirs are used as battery.

IN PARTS of the country. In other regions (Catalunya, Andalucia) there is an ongoing drought which is severely impacting everyone and yeah, hydro-electrical companies had done some, let say questionable decisions regarding their water reservoirs.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#48

Post by flakeoil »

mjburgess wrote: post #34

I'm not sure how many want to hear this, but western deinstustrailization and shifting of domestic production to imports makes most of this irrelevant. In 20yr nigeria alone will have a larger population than the whole of europe, and is industrializing. Total carbon consumption by westerns is always rising due to shifting it to imports; and in any case, we're only 1bn people. Actually stopping carbon consumption by w…

If solar and wind can be used economically in the west then of course developing countries can also use them. In fact, most of Africa has more sun-hours than typical western countries. Solar and wind can also be used where there are poorly developed electricity grids as it can be produced where it is consumed.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#49

Post by piva00 »

Roritharr wrote: post #19
callalex wrote: post #5

For a few minutes at low demand time. These kinds of over-grand claims are seriously harmful to the cause of promoting renewables because it makes it seem like we’re almost there and can stop caring. Just look at the excellent, accurate, and up-to-the-hour charts put out by the electricity market itself and you will see where and when the challenges we face still are. https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.…

Thank you, as a German paying absurd electricity prices I applaud this nuance.

I'd like to thanks the German government's policies for the past decades for making me pay absurd electricity prices since the Russian invasion started, even though I live in Sweden with 90+% of renewable electricity generation I'm forced to pay the highest spot price in the EU (aka, gas in Germany) because of Germany's decision to burn coal and gas all the way into 2022... The inertia on modernising Germany is starting to bite your neighbours.

Re: California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days

#50

Post by ktzar »

darkwater wrote: post #47
ktzar wrote: post #9

Spain as a whole 45 million country with diverse geography and scattered population is producing 75 percent of its electricity from renewables and gas and carbon have been down to almost technical zero. It's rained a lot over the last month's and water reservoirs are used as battery. I made a website to track this: https://energy.antizone.online During the day, a huge chunk of the produced energy is sold to other cou…

> It's rained a lot over the last month's and water reservoirs are used as battery. IN PARTS of the country. In other regions (Catalunya, Andalucia) there is an ongoing drought which is severely impacting everyone and yeah, hydro-electrical companies had done some, let say questionable decisions regarding their water reservoirs.

it's easier to move power than water :-) So as long as it's rained a lot somewhere, that can be used as a battery. Most hydro power plants are not in Catalonia or Andalusia (https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1jVN1LmOoTTqg3e...)
Post reply on HN