They should sell the excess to neighboring states
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Washington post: Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem.(not really)
- Thread starter Slayven
- Start date
OP
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Tech and sun ain't going nowhere, might be worth it to invest. Build it out all the way to texas, you know...just incase
There'd be a fair amount of loss travelling that far out and if the states in-between got wise they'd do the same, only cheaper. They should build north, not a lot of sun up there.
There's def an issue there when the prices can't justify the cost of the infrastructure needed to sell the stuff.
Almost like power providers and distributors should all be part of the government.
Part of the issue is that people like the money back as it lowers their bills even further. The big problem is there's so much supply that prices drop to the point it's not even worth selling back to the grids. That's why they're trying to get people to put in batteries, so they can sell back when supply lags at night and in the morning.
I'm all for it, or at the very least better price capping and maintenance/future proofing requirements
PG&E & SCE have a shit ton of institutional power an very little check on them from the state
I'd love to see more grid scale battery systems, even in the wacky gravity battery sense. The local scale is cool and all for folks that can afford it, but there's no good reason it shouldn't be done at grid scale as well
yeah this creates problems for the energy market (I stress market there) because it's not set up to handle a lack of scarcity like this
for example, a similar thing has been happening across Australia (unsurprising since it has a lot of sunny weather like California). most of the day is covered by solar, so traditional forms of energy like Coal struggle because they get undercut by lack of demand (given you're competing with a negative price)
the margins on some forms of energy are so bad they can't handle tolerate competing with abundant solar energy even for part of the day. even worse for them a lot of people can buy inverters and batteries and basically drastically reduce or even eliminate their reliance on the grid even during night.
for example, a similar thing has been happening across Australia (unsurprising since it has a lot of sunny weather like California). most of the day is covered by solar, so traditional forms of energy like Coal struggle because they get undercut by lack of demand (given you're competing with a negative price)
the margins on some forms of energy are so bad they can't handle tolerate competing with abundant solar energy even for part of the day. even worse for them a lot of people can buy inverters and batteries and basically drastically reduce or even eliminate their reliance on the grid even during night.
Is not just capitalism but also physics, it's really difficult to balance grid supply and load, look into Navier Stokes. Even in the society of socialists' dreams you'd have this problem
I thought I read or heard somewhere that grid level battery systems either don't exist or aren't feasible at this scale.
Like we need to invent some new way to store this much energy.
Not with the new transmission lines being made nowadays. The carbon fiber ceramic lines allow for lossless transmission hundreds of miles up to 12x electricity over the current lines. Swapping over to newer lines like those from TS Conductor are one of the simplest parts of modernizing the grid. Throw in some thermal battery banks for medium term energy storage and you've exponentially increased the electric capacity of the grid for pennies in the dollar
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My understanding is that battery chemistry or chemistry-based storage solutions don't quite work at that scale or at least are very inefficient. But things like pumped storage actually, though wacky, work pretty well for it.
Thermal storage is getting huge too, sand and steam "batteries"
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New thermal batteries and energy storage solutions are being developed today than at any time in the history of electricity. Everything from metal salt batteries for long term energy storage to thermal batteries that offer energy storage in massive quantities with sustained energy output.
The article discusses this. Generally when a grid is overloaded you don't get to benefit and "sell" that excess. You are forced to pay other providers to take some. It's a great benefit for nearby states like AZ.
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This has been a "problem" in the Netherlands for a year or so, after everyone invested in solar panels.
On one side, it's a problem for certain neighbourhoods with lots of panels, where excess supply of electricity results in panels automatically turning off (because otherwise you would exceed the maximum voltage allowed). So then you have the bizarre situation when there is a lot of sun but you panels don't work and you still need to pay for your electricity.
The proper solution for this is home batteries (expensive), neigbourhood batteries (expensive) or much bigger power lines between areas (extremely expensive).
But it is also a problem for traditional electricity producers (coal & gas) which can't compete with the low energy prices around those particular moments in time. But you still need them during winter and cloudy days. This is another problem which needs to be solved soon-ish.
On one side, it's a problem for certain neighbourhoods with lots of panels, where excess supply of electricity results in panels automatically turning off (because otherwise you would exceed the maximum voltage allowed). So then you have the bizarre situation when there is a lot of sun but you panels don't work and you still need to pay for your electricity.
The proper solution for this is home batteries (expensive), neigbourhood batteries (expensive) or much bigger power lines between areas (extremely expensive).
But it is also a problem for traditional electricity producers (coal & gas) which can't compete with the low energy prices around those particular moments in time. But you still need them during winter and cloudy days. This is another problem which needs to be solved soon-ish.
This. So many things we could have used that 97b budget surplus for rather than sending people Visa cards.
Sodium-ion batteries were touted for grid-scale systems but they had been difficult to develop. They had have less energy density than lithium-ion but eventually should be a lot cheaper per kW-hr to buy. They are finally being produced but not in large enough quantities yet. Today, you can buy small-ish batteries (say for backing up your medical equipment at home) and I've seen a few Chinese EVs with them. I assume house-sized and grid-scale will be out this year or next? I'm surprised they are being put into EVs before being used in something like a Powerwall. I guess EVs are more lucrative even accounting for the lower energy density? But they are available now, at least.
Until there's better storage solutions, why not just set a minimum energy price?
Yeah, the pumped storage is what I heard about as a possibility. You use the solar power to pump water up like the side of a mountain during the day and then at night the water runs down spinning turbines to create power.
The scale of the power we need to store is massive.
I don't think this is true anymore.
California already has over 7000 MW in energy storage on the grid. That number was only 770 MW at the start of 2020.
You can go to the CAISO website and see battery storage in action as it goes into negatives during the day (batteries charging), and then go into positive supply (discharging) as solar begins to drop in the evening: http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html#section-renewables-trend
They just need to keep adding more storage if they want to get to carbon-free, and there's already quite a bit in the pipeline. Plus there is planning for a massive new offshore wind farm underway as well.
This will truly become an amazing new period in science and technology. Because with all that extra electricity we may see more energy intensive developments occur (hopefully something more useful that Bitcoin mining). Like desalinization for example. Whenever you hear the negatives for desal, it's always "it needs too much energy to work".
And yet I still end up with a $1,600 bill because I'm in western Queensland and have only Ergon as my supplier 🙃 so apparently such large increase in solar powering the grid, yet also prices apparently have to go up as well to accommodate the "electricity gap" from using less coal.
Though, it's why I pushed our local council to go towards running the town on a solar battery farm. Drop down the price of electricity and you have a big reason for people to move out to the middle of nowhere to beat cost of living.
This is why the Democrats and Joe Manchin have been pushing for permitting reform. It's basically the "Part 2" of the Inflation Reduction Act that makes the whole thing work. Shift excess green energy around when it dips in other areas. We supposedly have verbal commitment from Republicans to bring it to a vote, but I don't think it's happened yet?
I read a few weeks ago that the main reason why California eased back on solar incentives was because it was putting an unfair cost burden on lower income families. The people that go solar are predominantly higher income and PG&E was raising rates on everyone else to cover the loss in customers.
I think that's true, but it's also a symptom of PGE not being able to maintain its profits with residential solar and thus increasing costs on all.
In Sweden those with solar has the opporunity to sell excess power to the electric grid company - but the rates are abysmal - so the result is that people increase their elecric usage in the summer - to not have it go to waste - hence not being so ecological all in all, despite solar being green.
as people has said in this thread - the ability to store power is not economically sound. I read an article about an engineer that had constructed a hydrogen converter system in his basement to store energy. He had both the skills and the money to do it, but of course - thats not something everyone can do.
as people has said in this thread - the ability to store power is not economically sound. I read an article about an engineer that had constructed a hydrogen converter system in his basement to store energy. He had both the skills and the money to do it, but of course - thats not something everyone can do.
Most interstate projects require federal intervention but this is something our government should be investing in.
There is no law preventing it but a it stands states are not in the business of producing and selling electricity. So it would require the private electric companies to do so. Assuming the infrastructure is there.
There are absurdly cheap ways to store energy. Thermal sand is one of those. Pumping water is another, with the secondary body at a higher elevation. Another variant on potential energy style is lifting weight with energy and dropping. There's also pressurizing caverns/caves/underground and releasing for energy. Energy companies also have been and will use the distributed home batteries to release power to grid as necessary, if owner approves.
There's so many cheap, powerful options - they just need to be executed which is the current (heh) issue.
Well no time like the present to start working on all that. It could help, especially in the summer, alleviate the effort all of the states (assuming other very sunny states start selling electricity too) make in producing energy and use up much less resources per year.
Unfortunately money, lobbying and lack of federal aid keep it from getting off the ground.
Feel like I was reading something about incentives, such as buy back, is going down in some areas as solar increases and it's making the investment for home owners a harder sell.
It does seem like the next stop in this is incentivizing in-home/building energy storage but I suspect that will also quickly reach peak.
It does seem like the next stop in this is incentivizing in-home/building energy storage but I suspect that will also quickly reach peak.
This is true, but you wouldn't have the "profit motive" in the way of trying to come up with workable and beneficial solutions for all.
Like all infrastructure the power grid should absolutely be in public ownership.