California Is Grappling With a Growing Problem: Too Much Solar (washingtonpost.com) 337
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles's urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed -- enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State's electricity. But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there's not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are "curtailed" -- essentially, thrown away. In response, California has cut back incentives for rooftop solar and slowed the pace of installing panels. But the diminishing economic returns may slow the development of solar in a state that has tried to move to renewable energy. And as other states build more and more solar plants of their own, they may soon face the same problems.
Curtailing solar isn't technically difficult -- according to Paul Denholm, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, it's equivalent to flipping a switch for grid operators. But throwing away free power raises electricity prices. It has also undercut the benefits of installing rooftop solar. Since the 1990s, California has been paying owners of rooftop solar panels when they export their energy to the grid. That meant that rooftop solar owners got $0.20 to $0.30 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity that they dispatched. But a year ago, the state changed this system, known as "net-metering," and now only compensates new solar panel owners for how much their power is worth to the grid. In the spring, when the duck curve is deepest, that number can dip close to zero. Customers can get more money back if they install batteries and provide power to the grid in the early evening or morning.
The change has sparked a huge backlash from Californians and rooftop solar companies, which say that their businesses are flagging. Indeed, Wood Mackenzie predicts that California residential solar installations in 2024 will fall by around 40 percent. Some state politicians are now trying to reverse the rule. "Under the CPUC's leadership California is responsible for the largest loss of solar jobs in our nation's history," Bernadette del Chiaro, the executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, said in a statement referring to California's public utility commission. But experts say that it reflects how the economics of solar are changing in a state that has gone all-in on the technology. [...] To cope, [California's grid operator, known as CAISO] is selling some excess power to nearby states; California is also planning to install additional storage and batteries to hold solar power until later in the afternoon. Transmission lines that can carry electricity to nearby regions will also help -- some of the lost power comes from regions where there simply aren't enough power lines to carry a sudden burst of solar. Denholm says the state is starting to take the steps needed to deal with the glut. "There are fundamental limits to how much solar we can put on the grid before you start needing a lot of storage," Denholm said. "You can't just sit around and do nothing." Further reading: The Energy Institute discusses this problem in a recent blog post.
Since 2020, the residential electricity rates in California have risen by as much as 40% after adjusting for inflation. While there's been "a lot of finger-pointing about the cause of these increases," the authors note that the impact on rates is multiplied when customers install their own generation and buy fewer kilowatts-hours from the grid because those households "contribute less towards all the fixed costs in the system." These fixed costs include: vegetation management, grid hardening, distribution line undergrounding, EV charging stations, subsidies for low income customers, energy efficiency programs, and the poles and wires that we all rely on whether we are taking electricity off the grid or putting it onto the grid from our rooftop PV systems.
"Since those fixed costs still need to be paid, rates go up, shifting costs onto the kWhs still being bought from the grid."
Curtailing solar isn't technically difficult -- according to Paul Denholm, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, it's equivalent to flipping a switch for grid operators. But throwing away free power raises electricity prices. It has also undercut the benefits of installing rooftop solar. Since the 1990s, California has been paying owners of rooftop solar panels when they export their energy to the grid. That meant that rooftop solar owners got $0.20 to $0.30 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity that they dispatched. But a year ago, the state changed this system, known as "net-metering," and now only compensates new solar panel owners for how much their power is worth to the grid. In the spring, when the duck curve is deepest, that number can dip close to zero. Customers can get more money back if they install batteries and provide power to the grid in the early evening or morning.
The change has sparked a huge backlash from Californians and rooftop solar companies, which say that their businesses are flagging. Indeed, Wood Mackenzie predicts that California residential solar installations in 2024 will fall by around 40 percent. Some state politicians are now trying to reverse the rule. "Under the CPUC's leadership California is responsible for the largest loss of solar jobs in our nation's history," Bernadette del Chiaro, the executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, said in a statement referring to California's public utility commission. But experts say that it reflects how the economics of solar are changing in a state that has gone all-in on the technology. [...] To cope, [California's grid operator, known as CAISO] is selling some excess power to nearby states; California is also planning to install additional storage and batteries to hold solar power until later in the afternoon. Transmission lines that can carry electricity to nearby regions will also help -- some of the lost power comes from regions where there simply aren't enough power lines to carry a sudden burst of solar. Denholm says the state is starting to take the steps needed to deal with the glut. "There are fundamental limits to how much solar we can put on the grid before you start needing a lot of storage," Denholm said. "You can't just sit around and do nothing." Further reading: The Energy Institute discusses this problem in a recent blog post.
Since 2020, the residential electricity rates in California have risen by as much as 40% after adjusting for inflation. While there's been "a lot of finger-pointing about the cause of these increases," the authors note that the impact on rates is multiplied when customers install their own generation and buy fewer kilowatts-hours from the grid because those households "contribute less towards all the fixed costs in the system." These fixed costs include: vegetation management, grid hardening, distribution line undergrounding, EV charging stations, subsidies for low income customers, energy efficiency programs, and the poles and wires that we all rely on whether we are taking electricity off the grid or putting it onto the grid from our rooftop PV systems.
"Since those fixed costs still need to be paid, rates go up, shifting costs onto the kWhs still being bought from the grid."
If there really is too much solar during the day . (Score:5, Insightful)
If there really is too much solar during the day, why are there special, cheap rates to use electricity at night? Why aren't the companies like PG&E asking the CPUC to change rates in such a way as to balance out this supposed surplus?
Yes, there are a few days where solar produces too much, but its limited in time. It's not the whole year. Note that the period shown in the graph (March to May) is the time of year that probably experiences minimum electricity usage in California: it's not so hot that A/C is used extensively.
What's really going on: investor-owned utilities and generators want to maximize profits and solar is getting in the way of that goal.
Re: If there really is too much solar during the d (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they really are producing too much. California periodically paying its neighboring states to take electricity during the day and then buying it back from them in the evening has been going on for a long time now.
I get that it's the "in thing" for progressives to defend every dumb policy decision this state makes purely on principle alone, but you wouldn't do that if you actually lived here. You literally can't even wipe your ass in this state without getting taxed, and nobody knows where that money even
Re: If there really is too much solar during the d (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would make things like Tesla power walls incredibly profitable. The problem is that the rate plan that is provided to the owners of solar panels pays them for electricity during peak production times, which is stupid.
Most newer solar panel installations that I know of have power walls installed with them so that you can sell your electricity to the grid during peak periods.
It's almost like they don't want to suggest a solution of simple economics. If the rate is negative, fine the rate is negative and people will collect money charging their batteries, and if the rate is $0.95 a kwhr people will dump power into the grid. I'm not sure what the fascination beyond making sure people don't cheap out and skip the battery packs.
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"Which would make things like Tesla power walls incredibly profitable"
V2G would be enormously helpful; I'm still surprised it's not a feature of every EV
Re: If there really is too much solar during the (Score:2)
V2G would be useful, but would shorten your EV's battery life. As one who leased a 2012 Nissan Leaf, I can tell you the last thing I wanted was more battery degradation. Could not return the car fast enough.
Also, I would need a huge car battery. Today my PV produced 123 kWh, and exported 107 kWh to the grid. Only 16 kWh were self consumed. Most consumption is during evenings and night, not daytime.
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The Leaf is a bit of a special case because it doesn't have thermal management but its had V2G from almost the beginning, i think mandated by the Japanese govt so it can help in emergencies.
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Problem is it's not a simple matter of making it a feature of the EV. You have to get permitting, which is expensive as hell in California, not to mention installing the additional appliances and wiring needed. And then of course, there's the whole matter of your car often being on the road or parked somewhere else when other people in the house might need it to be parked in your garage.
It's just not something many consumers will either demand or use.
Re: If there really is too much solar during the (Score:2)
Your statement about the problem is incorrect . Most rate plans niw have peak hours in the evening. My ETOU-C is 4-9pm peak every day. There is not much solar production during those hours on most days.
A battery would prevent dumping the solar electricity into the grid when there is excess, storing it, and dumping it during peak hours, or self-consuming it whenever it is you need it.
Batteries are quite expensive, though, and don't last as long as solar panels. I would need at least 5 Powerwalls for 1 day o
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I'm seeing a lot of hybrid solar installs. Not just Tesla PowerWalls, although those are the most popular, to the point where people locate them outside their homes to show them off to the world, but I've seen people build large battery banks from cells from Aliexpress that are tested and have a BMS attached, and use those with a decent charge controller/inverter. This allows one to charge their batteries, and once the batteries are topped off, feed the grid, which is arguably the best you you can have fr
Re: If there really is too much solar during the d (Score:5, Informative)
No, they really are producing too much. California periodically paying its neighboring states to take electricity during the day and then buying it back from them in the evening has been going on for a long time now.
I accept that.
You literally can't even wipe your ass in this state without getting taxed.
I do it just fine. What part of California are you in?
nobody knows where that money even goes
Here you go. https://ebudget.ca.gov/budget/... [ca.gov] . If you want more detail, go here: https://www.calcities.org/reso... [calcities.org]
we know 100 billion of it is being spent on a high speed railway to nowhere.
The intent of the project is to connect the LA Metro region with Sacramento and the Bay Area. The extent of actual *highspeed* rail, though is intended to go between Merced and Bakersfield (where people would prefer to zip by at max speed anyway). You can see the map of current stations and sections being constructed here: https://www.buildhsr.com/ [buildhsr.com] . It's really quite fascinating the lengths they have to go through to ensure the rail is grade-separated.
there's going to be a 150 some odd billion dollar budget deficit next year
Historically, California runs a surplus: https://calmatters.org/explain... [calmatters.org]
it's going to keep getting even bigger as more and more people who apparently "aren't paying their fair share" keep leaving while the state only increases its spending
That's related, but not exactly correct. Half of California's income taxes come from California's top 1% wealthiest residents. A whole lot of their income is based on the capital gains tax and thus the performance of the stock market. The market wasn't great, so tax revenue expectations had to be be adjusted downward and cuts have to be made to be more inline with actual tax revenues.
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Where on earth did you get that 25% figure from? That actual figure is 70-80% with some sites claiming as much as 87%. It is on par with batteries and has a lower cost per GWh of electricity stored. However your incremental storage capacity bumps are very large, aka each new site does a lot.
Re: If there really is too much solar during the d (Score:2)
The peak rates used to be during the day. As a solar user who uses most electricity at night, I was able to zero out my PG&E bill even though my PV was only covering 60% of my usage on an annual basis.
This was the case for many years. Maybe until 2017.
Now the rates are inverted. For solar users, the peak rates are 4pm-9pm. Most solar customers don't have panels facing west, and have little to no generation during those hours, even during the longest sunshine days of the year. So, even those on NEM1 or N
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California is a special case with tons of sun days each year. Btw I live in Austria which has way less sunny days, but by adding a battery to my PV panels on the rooftop I have full energy autarky around 8 months per year, I imaging california or most of it can reach 11 months with such a setup!
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What's really going on: investor-owned utilities and generators want to maximize profits and solar is getting in the way of that goal.
Bingo! When earnings are at stake, media and social networks are utilized.
Neural reflexology: issue activated like a Manchurian Candidate with a persistent cookie
Pumped Hydro (Score:5, Informative)
This is one of the advantages of pumped hydro energy storage. It has a very large capacity to store excess energy when available and supply it when needed. With efficiency of about 80% it is less efficient than some battery types, but it usually has a higher storage capacity than most battery installations.
https://www.sdcwa.org/projects... [sdcwa.org]
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Is there a desalination system that is cost effective to only run when there is excess power? Or is the hardware cost high enough that you want to run it 24/7?
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Electricity is a major cost of desalination. So you're right, the question is whether it's cheaper to run the plant when electricity is expensive, such as during a demand response event, or idle it during that time.
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Bitcoin/crypto mining also would solve this. Run miners when the rates turn negative, turning the excess electricity into compensation. This is economic incentive could replace the curtailed net metering discounts and preserve the ROI parameters needed to continue the solar build out.
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We could also use that cheap electricity to desalinate water or train AI models. [slashdot.org]
Desalination plants are expensive. It's silly to build one and then only run it for 50 hours per year when energy prices go negative. You wanna run it 24/7, but then it's baseload and contributes nothing to solving the surplus energy problem.
AI data centers are even more expensive. They need clean, reliable baseload power.
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Desalination is a good idea. So is wastewater treatment.
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Pumped hydro energy storage needs mountains and rivers, we have quite a lot of those and also pumped hydro powerplants over here in the Alps, but then you need also a ton of water for it, which california obviously does not have, a quite interesting concept would be to have something like gravity towers which you could use as battery system, but on the other hand you have batteries also!
Going green never really was a problem of production, panels are cheap, it always was a problem of how to store the excess
Time will tell... (Score:2)
When I stop hearing about brown outs due to excessive AC use then I'll believe it.
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When I stop hearing about brown outs due to excessive AC use then I'll believe it.
RTFA. The brownouts are in the summer. The excess solar is in the spring.
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Well there you have it. I guess they should change the title from: "California Is Grappling With a Growing Problem: Too Much Solar" to a more honest title like "California has excess solar capacity in the spring but how will they address brown outs in the summer".
Good explainer on how Solar works with the grid (Score:3)
Grady from Practical Engineering recently posted a good video on the challenges of hooking solar to the grid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Politics (Score:2)
I've been saying for years (Score:2)
that LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) is only one side of the equation. Solar has had a low LCOE for several years now, but if you're a business running a solar farm, LCOE isn't what you care about -- profit is what you care about! Profit depends on the cost of solar panels, but it depends just as much on the value of the electricity you are selling to the grid. If the price tends to be near zero (or heaven forbid, negative), profit is dead and the power plant is not worth building.
Wind and solar are the
Bundling fixed costs into per-KWH ... (Score:3)
The entire problem stems from the fact that the per-KWH charge is actually some gross amalgam of actual cost to deliver an additional KWH plus fixed costs like (in theory anyway) keeping the grid maintained. The fixed costs increased even as the per-KWH price of generation tanked and so the inflated per-KWH rates drives solar adoption until they finally decided that you can't recover the delivery charge part.
Instead, the evenhanded to do it would be to actually align the fixed portion of everyone's bill to the fixed costs of the grid (e.g. they would go way way up) and the usage based part of to the marginal cost of generation (e.g. they would go way down). Then you wouldn't need "special" rules for solar that counts against your usage at all -- the desired policy would fall out totally naturally.
The other enormous benefit would be that shifting the bills to fixed and slashing the rates per-KWH would massively favor environmentally friendly policies like EVs and electrification of heating and water heaters. At the current PG&E rates, those things are money losers (even with huge tax credits!) whereas in a world of 10Â/KWH power, an EV would be 3x cheaper per-mile than gas and pay back in ~5 years without a tax credit. The carbon emissions benefits would be enormous and would fall out naturally.
To me, the fact that the industry and the State pretend to be environmentally-conscious but won't do the basic thing to promote electrification is illuminating. Draw your own conclusions.
High quality problem (Score:5, Interesting)
There's plenty of solutions to this "problem". How about let the market decide what to do with all that access energy by letting more people/entities participate in the market? Then we'd see what economies would spring up around this problem.
Just some thoughts:
Really doesn't take much imagination. And especially when we could see this "problem" coming from 10 years away. Why on earth would we be curtailing that energy?
charge for the connection., (Score:2)
Um, excuse me? (Score:2)
We should be using the excess electricity (Score:3, Insightful)
Selling solar to PG&E (Score:5, Informative)
I kind of gave up the dream of selling my spare solar power back to PG&E. They don't really pay me much under Net Energy Metering and Net Surplus Compensation (NSC). They're billing residential customers around 40-50 cents per kWh [live.com] but they only pay a whole sale rate of a 4.256 cents [pge.com].
I still do net metering to offset my usage. But the idea that I'm going to some how break even with these guys isn't possible anymore, not after they jacked rates so much in the last several years.
I did end up getting a whole house battery, mostly as a backup. The math doesn't work out where it's going to save money in my situation. While the utility bill is lower with a battery than without. The amount doesn't actually cover the cost of the battery for the life of the battery. As for the "life" of a battery, I'm going by the manufacturer's 12 year warranty.
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I did end up getting a whole house battery, mostly as a backup. The math doesn't work out where it's going to save money in my situation. While the utility bill is lower with a battery than without. The amount doesn't actually cover the cost of the battery for the life of the battery. As for the "life" of a battery, I'm going by the manufacturer's 12 year warranty.
If your cost is 40-50 cents per kWh, I’m assuming you are running on that whole house battery every single day/night and allowing the solar to recharge it?
At those rates, I wouldn’t merely be using a 12-year warranty. I’d be proving it.
A breakthrough in energy storage is badly needed (Score:2)
Renewable energy has made stunning advancements in the time I've been a Slashdot reader. In the early 2000s a situation like this seemed utterly impossible within my lifetime. Now here we are 20 years later with sometimes too much renewable energy on hand. It's amazing.
I think it's only getting more and more obvious now that for renewables to really take over steady/dependable energy generation duty, some affordable and dependable method of reliably storing excess energy during sunny or windy days needs
LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue isn't that solar isn't the solution to energy needs --if anything things issue shows that solar can generate enough power in a distributed manner to solve everyone's energy need. The problem is the way in which the transition is taking place and the need to pay fixed cost of the utility companies that are too big to fail. This "hostage crisis" is more reason to double down on solar, than have to keep paying the extortionist power companies.
Pipe it to the data centers (Score:2)
Didn't I just read that data centers are using HUGE amounts of power and requesting coal stations be re-ignited? For heaven's sake instead of throwing that power away divert it to data centers and charge for it. California makes no sense to me. They push for green energy until it starts to hurt the green backs in their pockets. Their solution? Throw it away.
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California makes no sense to me. They push for green energy until it starts to hurt the green backs in their pockets. Their solution? Throw it away.
"It's not easy being green!"
-- Kermit Frog
Electricity prices do not go negative from solar (Score:2)
You can turn solar off on the spot with not detrimental effects. There's never a reason to pay someone to take solar electricity. Electricity prices go negative from other sources of energy which can't stop producing electricity or would incur a cost greater than what they pay to take the electricity. Nuclear, for example, cannot follow the load quickly.
Setup some electric aluminum smelting plants (Score:2)
Simple solution (Score:3)
Alternative headline (Score:2)
"Free rides can't last forever".
When the market is saturated, your return on each product diminishes.
But you're still getting free electricity!
Subsidies for solar were always going to be short-lived and rather pointless for the grid beyond a point - you want them to pay you for electricity they literally cannot use?
It's why when I started my little amateur installation at home, I didn't ever care about "feeding back" to the grid. I'd really rather not be tied to the grid at all, even for feeding back. It
The problem is that they wont lower prices (Score:3)
costs of generation vs distribution (Score:3)
So someone is out blaming solar when it's hardly the problem and if it really were the problem the solution is spreading out 7-14kWh batteries on homes with solar.
But instead, we see massive mega battery stations getting funded by State and Federal agencies and being put out in the boonies so expensive distribution lines need to be installed or upgraded. A win for the utilities and even more costs to the consumers.
Home storage using LFP batteries are the way to go for flattening the solar output curve and eliminating the 4-9p high energy usage bump.
LoB
BULLSHIT (Score:3)
SDG&E were paid decades ago to underground their residential service. Nada
San Diegan’s are still waiting. While politicians, commissioners, state and generators hide behind their Strawman arguments, the whining is deafening as their rates keep ratcheting-up.
Solar installed, based on saves and paybacks at the time, have been gutted by change after change in rulings, rates and fee restructure.
Californian's need to direct State representatives to re-cast a solar-forward electricity policy going forward. The goal of which is distributed solar power generation, augmented by wind purchased out of state and incorporates private-public actors to facilitate a stable grid system. Massive battery storage farms, Tesla-style Autobidder rate management and fixed-fee generator contracts should guarantee investor ROI
Solar and battery technologies are destined to become cheaper and cheaper due to mass adoption while wind, hydro, thermal and nuke remain relatively high cost corner-case solutions. Californians are surfers. Failure to catch this third wave of technology destines them to rate-slavery by regulatory capture.
Before solar energy Californians made a sport out of seeing who could go longest without turning on their furnaces. Typically, doubling their energy bills. This seems to be a way of life for State, generators and politicians going forward
Re:Solid leadership, Gov Newsome (Score:4, Insightful)
The CPUC directors are all Newsome appointees. The Commission loses millions of dollars a year from their accounting. It seems like perhaps if they were paying attention, they could have foreseen this problem arising as the solar input steadily increased over the past 20 years.
It's a regulatory agency. How are they supposed to turn a profit?
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Bribes, usually.
Payola, Dinner, 4th of July Parties, Golf, Bohemian Grove, an autographed picture of Fabio...
Re: Solid leadership, Gov Newsome (Score:2)
You misunderstand -- they're paying attention. But telling people that we need less solar doesn't get votes. You know what gets votes? Telling your constituents that under your leadership the state is producing more green energy than ever!
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I thought part of the problem was that they have base load generators other than solar that can't just be shut down completely. So they shut down solar instead, burning natural gas to produce power instead of using the "free" solar power. So a different way to see this problem is that they are burning natural gas even when they don't need the power it produces.
Yes, because the largely grid following inverters for the solar can't replace the spinning machines providing the real inertia to keep the grid stable.
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Well you cannot shut off base load and there are times when solar cannot deliver and batteries cannot backup enough (aka every night for instance) you can achieve night self sufficiency in private residental homes via batteries which are big enough, but most people who have PVs do not have them!
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So what do you do after the sun goes down?
Wind turbines, hydro, stored energy, gas, and nuclear (Diablo Canyon recently received a 5-year license extension).
Re:Now who saw that coming? (Score:5, Informative)
Adding more solar is good. We need more.
TFA talks about prices going negative, but that happened 21 days last Spring and only for one or two hours. 98% of the time, it isn't a problem.
There are many solutions:
1. Storage: Pumped hydro and/or peaker batteries.
2. Long-distance HVDC to sell the surplus to other states.
3. Variable pricing. I currently charge my EV from 2-4 AM, when prices are lowest. I'm happy to switch to mid-afternoon charging if PG&E gives me an incentive.
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Mine crypto.
Purify wastewater.
Generate hydrogen or synthetic fuels.
Etc.
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If you invest in a mining rig, will you want to leave it idle 98% of the time?
Same for an osmotic purifier. They are expensive and need steady baseload power to be cost-effective.
Neither is effective as demand peakers.
Hydrogen generators are cheap and can suck up a lot of power, but you need to store the H2 and find a market for it.
Re:Now who saw that coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the condition today. If Cali keeps scaling out with more solar panels, there will be even more excess power output.
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Hydrogen generators are cheap and can suck up a lot of power, but you need to store the H2 and find a market for it.
So, you have a grid connection, a source of cheap water and a hydrogen generator. The finding a market would be nice, but the other simple answer is to add a hydrogen powered electricity generator (either engine or fuel cell, though hydrogen friendly combustion engines seem to be coming on the market big time and fuel cells are expensive). You then build the biggest storage tank you can and put hydrogen into it when electricity is cheap and use it to make electricity when it's expensive.
That means there's a
Re: Now who saw that coming? (Score:4, Insightful)
I vote for hydrogen production. As well a synthetic fuel for sectors that can't do without (eg long haul aircraft), hydrogen is also needed to make ammonia for fertiliser. In a carbon free world, we're going to need a lot of green hydrogen.
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Nah people are still mining away. It's not very sexy though, not compared to maybe 13-14 years ago.
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"Long-distance HVDC to sell the surplus to other states"
It's been about a dozen years since I 1st heard about the proposed Tres Amigas SuperStation which, for a little while, showed promise of breaking ground.
At one point I even tweeted to Elon Musk & Tesla that they should get in on it but....well....they had other priorities.
Re: Now who saw that coming? (Score:2)
Mid-afternoon charging is only practical if you work from home. Or use charging at your employer, hopefully for a token amount or for free.
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Well, this is actually something I've predicted for a while now.
If solar becomes predominant enough, it actually flips the idea of night-time power being cheaper. At which point the logical time to charge your car switches to the daytime, probably at work.
Put enough chargers together, with smart enough network management, and you should be able to soak any excess periods just by topping off "All" the EV batteries at that time. As well as powerwalls, BESS systems, and other such storage systems.
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Mid-afternoon charging is only practical if you work from home.
That's millions of people.
Or use charging at your employer
Lots of people do that too.
Re: Now who saw that coming? (Score:2)
I don't think millions of people have EVs yet, at least not in the US. Many don't live in single family homes and can't have their own solar PV. And it's still a small but growing minority of employers offering EV charging.
Most of these things are changing except SFH growth. And solar growth in CA has basically halted with NEM3.
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1. Storage: Pumped hydro and/or peaker batteries.
Hydro: mountains with lakes at both the top and bottom are in very short supply.
Peaker Batteries: I think a giant slice of the next 20 years of battery research will be centered on making batteries that don't have Lithium (and to a lesser extent Cobalt, Nickel, and a few other things) in them. Lithium-Iron-Phosphate was a great advancement in cheaper (although a bit worse in some categories besides energy density, like cold weather response) batteries, but we really need good rechargable batteries that don'
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Any battery technologies that can get us more energy per mass, energy per cubic volume, less use of rare earths, so China isn't a bottleneck, safety, ease of recycling, charge/discharge cycles, and safety is a good one. One advance may not change everything, but it adds up.
Then, there are different chemistries for different purposes. For example, who cares about energy density by weight for stationary batteries, while on a plane, weight and volume are major factors.
Of course, solar cells and their output
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Maybe some reversible nuclear process, if that is even feasible.
If we don't manage to use electricity to merge neutron stars, it's probably not feasible. Until then it's like making gold from lead by nuclear processes: doable, but the price per atom is not market compatible.
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Battery research: Already happening. Have you read about sodium-ion? Supposed to be a lot cheaper than lithium chemistries, last longer. Main downside is that they're bigger and heavier per kWh, but for grid storage, who cares?
I'd really love to hear Telsa announce Sodium batteries, but I haven't heard enough to know if it's just the money arrangements with whoever aren't in place, the fabrication arrangements aren't in place, or there's a long term suitability reason.
They only store about 2/3rds the power by weight and volume. Which means that a 300 mile car becomes 200 miles with sodium. Battery pack is ~30% as much though. Given Tesla's upscale market position (for EVs)...
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I think the GPP meant Tesla producing sodium batteries for grid or home storage, not for vehicles.
Sodium doesn't make sense for vehicles.
But if we use sodium for static storage, a lot more lithium will be freed up for EVs.
Not a fuel (Score:2)
Low weight is great for things people carry around, but the way EV builders are pac-manning up Lithium from mines, it's surprising it hasn't gone up in price like a rocket.
Because, it's not a fuel?
Yes, demand on lithium is increasing as manufacturer of battery-powered devices ramps-up.
But the lithium in a battery powered device is merely a one time inital affair. Once the battery has been built you don't need any more lithium over the life time of the battery. There's no need to constantly pump more lithium into an EV for it to function.
Contrast this with the fossil fuel pipelines.
That's why switching to EV hasn't had an as dramatic effect on Lithium prices as ICE have had on
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Though another note on #3: In Phoenix, it is a thing to register your smart thermostat with either APS or SRP to voluntarily ease up on your AC on-demand by the power company in exchange for a monthly incentive. *Maybe* you're asking for something similar here, but SRP and APS are both pretty tech savvy companies (likely not a coincidence that Phoenix one of if not THE most reliable grid in the US) where my understanding of PG&E (my rents here have always included utilities so I've never had an account
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Why? They don't even need it. California is the only state in the region that can't figure out how to run a power grid. Or anything else for that matter. Bottom line is nobody buys electricity from California, it's always been the other way around in my lifetime. In fact California is highly dependent upon the Palo Verde plant.
Noticed it was Texas whose power failed utterly leaving hundreds to freeze and die, not CA.
But what do you expect from Texas, with #31 in per capita college grads
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Why? They don't even need it. California is the only state in the region that can't figure out how to run a power grid. Or anything else for that matter. Bottom line is nobody buys electricity from California, it's always been the other way around in my lifetime. In fact California is highly dependent upon the Palo Verde plant.
Noticed it was Texas whose power failed utterly leaving hundreds to freeze and die, not CA.
But what do you expect from Texas, with #31 in per capita college grads
I recall rolling blackouts in CA, causing older people die of heat related issues, and at least one or two to die from their medical devices not having grid electricity.
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Re:Now who saw that coming? (Score:4, Informative)
They're or you're doing variable pricing wrong if you're not already charging when the price is negative...
Wholesale prices are negative.
That is not passed down to the consumer level.
When PG&E is trying to shed excess power, they are still charging me the normal high daytime rate. I have no incentive to help them soak up the surplus.
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Re: Now who saw that coming? (Score:2)
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13 kW? [Re: Now who saw that coming (Score:3)
...I still pay about $2500 a month and my rate never goes negative. Itâ(TM)s $0.26/kw off peak all the time.... [I assume you mean per kW-hr, not kW?]
Yow! $2500 a month divided by $0.26 per kW-hr comes to 9600 kW-hr per month. For a 30 day month, 24 hours in a day, that's 13 kW?!
Average California household energy use [energybot.com] is 542 kW-hr per month. You are expending 18 times the energy of an average house even after installing solar???????
Did you slip an order of magnitude somewhere, or do you live in a mansion and running the air conditioner with all the doors and windows open?
Re: Now who saw that coming? (Score:4, Informative)
I live in BC, Canada. Energy cost is typically 10c/kWh
Energy costs me at most, 40$/mo, I live in an apartment with only a fridge and one desktop computer running continuously. If I minmax the desktop for a month (eg AI training,) it will go up to $45. No AC
My mom used to have a hot tub, it was $200/mo on a 100A service. She recently got rid of it. Heating water and keeping it heated year round turns out is as expensive as having 8 baths a day. Also no AC.
Solar is impossible in both places, I can't install solar cause I'm in an apartment building I don't own. My mom can't install solar because she's surrounded by a literal forest.
The farther south you go on the continent, the more expensive it is to cool. The father north you go, the more expensive to heat. The goldilocks zone is roughly Washington state, where it costs you little to heat and cool. However the flatlands of Alberta and Montana tend to have higher extremes. Texas is super hot during the summer, you would die without AC. Alaska is super cold year round, you would die without heat. The weird thing about Alaska is that it's so far north you alternate between "days of no sunsets" and "days of no sunrises" So the thermal extremes are higher.
Where as Southern California and Texas, the extremes are far less. It's either consistently hot, or consistently cool, never cold except during weird climate events.
Re: Now who saw that coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right, we don't. We don't need careless companies who start massive fires due to negligence and then ask politicos to raise prices so they fix the issue. They don't fix the issues and just pay their C suite and whatnot more. So yeah, we don't need that kind of bullshit. And when there is a power outage for maintenance that last 6 or 7 hours ... yeah, thanks. I'll keep my solar and my battery.
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Re: Now who saw that coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to living with communists. Sen Joe McCarthy was right to be weary of them. Maybe the wrong approach though.
Very respectfully Sir, if you want to be against communism and it's tenets, I can totally respect that. But Please do not ever, and I mean EVER, bring up that piece of shit Fascist Joe McCarthy if you wish to be taken seriously. Like the Fascist Orange man after him, Joe did not care one iota about Communists, he just cared about power and who he could scapegoat to get it. People forget the damage he did to America, much like Orange headed goon is doing to America now.
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I'm guessing you're talking about Trump?
A fascist??
You're calling a guy who cut citizens' taxes and allowed/helped them keep their 2A rights (guns) a fascists?
Wow...he's gotta be the worst one in the world at it...or perhaps he got the wrong dictionary definition of fascist.
At least by historical standards.
*sighs*....Today's un-informed Youth. Is Trump a "Classic" Fascist? No. But he is a Fascist. Unlike the revolutionary's of old, Trump is not advocating a Fascist Society/ideas for the "Good" of humanity, he was/is doing it for his own narcissistic needs. I.E. it is the means to an end, which is dictatorial power and economic benefit for Trump. Please don't be under the illusion that Trump cut taxes for you. Trump doesn't care about citizen's taxes. He cut his OWN taxes for his OWN businesses and his OWN ben
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Yep, I saw them.
I saw a protest that got out of hand with a some of the people being violent.
That that were violent, should be charged, but I do have a problem with those that merely went inside (especially those that video shows the cops LET in and welcome
Re: Now who saw that coming? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing you're talking about Trump? A fascist?? You're calling a guy who cut citizens' taxes
Mostly his tax cuts went to rich people, I'm afraid. And, since he didn't cut spending (in fact, he increased spending [crfb.org]), he essentially just shifted the tax "cuts" on the credit card, meaning we'll pay later.
and allowed/helped them keep their 2A rights (guns) a fascists?
Not something Trump did anything about one way or another, although it is a part of the Republican platform
Wow...he's gotta be the worst one in the world at it...or perhaps he got the wrong dictionary definition of fascist.
Dictionary definition of fascism doesn't say anything about tax cuts or the second amendment. Dictionary definition of fascism includes authoritarian government, cult of the leader, strong nationalism, and "being extremely proud of country and race".
e.g., Stanley defined fascism as "a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed communists, Marxists and minorities and immigrants who are supposedly posing a threat to the character and the history of a nation" (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org])
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Re:Now who saw that coming? (Score:4, Informative)
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]:
"Data showed that failure to winterize power sources, principally natural gas infrastructure but also to a lesser extent wind turbines, had caused the grid failure,[15][16] with a drop in power production from natural gas more than five times greater than that from wind turbines. "
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They should just install more batteries.
Batteries are not currently cost-effective.
We need sodium batteries for grid storage.
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Has there been a recent breakthrough making them viable, or is this more of a "but Japanese made one big farm" narrative that keeps going around the internets?
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"We need sodium batteries for grid storage"
Japanese utilities were using NaS (sodium-sulfur) batteries decades ago.
Why didn't they catch on?
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You are not good at this. A good yo momma joke ...
"You're mom is so fat, she uses highway 101 as a slip n' slide."