Solar Glut: Half of California's Solar Power Sometimes Goes to Waste, Research Shows (latimes.com) 39
Some days more than half of California's available solar power goes to waste, according to research from the California Institute for Energy and Environment. "In the last 12 months, California's solar farms have curtailed production of more than 3 million megawatt hours of solar energy," according to a data analysis by the Los Angeles Times — enough to power 518,000 California homes for a year.
And it was curtailed "either on the orders of the state's grid operator or because prices had plummeted because of the glut. The waste would have been even larger if California had not paid utilities in other states to take the excess solar energy, documents from the state's grid operator show." That means green energy paid for by California electricity customers is sent away, lowering bills for residents of other states. Arizona's largest public utility reaped $69 million in savings last year by buying from the market California created to get rid of its excess solar power. The utility returned that money to its customers as a credit on their bills. Also reaping profits are electricity traders, including banks and hedge funds. The increasing oversupply of solar power has created a situation where energy traders can buy the excess at prices so low they become negative, said energy consultant Gary Ackerman, the former executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum. That means the solar plant is paying the traders to take it. "This is all being underwritten by California ratepayers," Ackerman said...
The solar glut also means higher electricity bills for Californians, since they are effectively paying to generate the power but not using it. California's electric rates are roughly twice the nation's average, with only Hawaii having higher rates. Rates at Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric increased by 51% over the last three years. "Ratepayers aren't getting the energy they've paid for," said Ron Miller, an energy industry consultant in Denver. He calculates that the retail value of the solar energy thrown away in a year would be more than $1 billion.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's advisors and those who manage the state's electric grid say they are working to reduce the curtailments, including by building more industrial-scale battery storage facilities that soak up the excess solar power during the day and then release it at night. Officials in the governor's office declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement saying the curtailments are often because of congestion on transmission lines, rather than a statewide oversupply of power. The state has been spending heavily to upgrade transmission lines to ease the congestion. "It's also important to have extra energy resources available that can help the state during periods of extreme weather and historic heatwaves when demand is particularly high, which have happened the past few years," the statement said...
The commercial solar industry contends that the expansion of storage capacity to bank solar power will eventually eliminate the glut.
And it was curtailed "either on the orders of the state's grid operator or because prices had plummeted because of the glut. The waste would have been even larger if California had not paid utilities in other states to take the excess solar energy, documents from the state's grid operator show." That means green energy paid for by California electricity customers is sent away, lowering bills for residents of other states. Arizona's largest public utility reaped $69 million in savings last year by buying from the market California created to get rid of its excess solar power. The utility returned that money to its customers as a credit on their bills. Also reaping profits are electricity traders, including banks and hedge funds. The increasing oversupply of solar power has created a situation where energy traders can buy the excess at prices so low they become negative, said energy consultant Gary Ackerman, the former executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum. That means the solar plant is paying the traders to take it. "This is all being underwritten by California ratepayers," Ackerman said...
The solar glut also means higher electricity bills for Californians, since they are effectively paying to generate the power but not using it. California's electric rates are roughly twice the nation's average, with only Hawaii having higher rates. Rates at Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric increased by 51% over the last three years. "Ratepayers aren't getting the energy they've paid for," said Ron Miller, an energy industry consultant in Denver. He calculates that the retail value of the solar energy thrown away in a year would be more than $1 billion.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's advisors and those who manage the state's electric grid say they are working to reduce the curtailments, including by building more industrial-scale battery storage facilities that soak up the excess solar power during the day and then release it at night. Officials in the governor's office declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement saying the curtailments are often because of congestion on transmission lines, rather than a statewide oversupply of power. The state has been spending heavily to upgrade transmission lines to ease the congestion. "It's also important to have extra energy resources available that can help the state during periods of extreme weather and historic heatwaves when demand is particularly high, which have happened the past few years," the statement said...
The commercial solar industry contends that the expansion of storage capacity to bank solar power will eventually eliminate the glut.
Tax rebate helps (Score:3)
Having solar panels that you got for a discount helps. And there are some incentives now for battery storage. Which is good because PG&E doesn't really want to pay me much for my solar generation anymore.
Holy Moly (Score:3)
USD 0.37/kWh
And I thought we had it bad in Australia at USD0.21
Thats got to make for some mighty painful power bills.
There is so much grift in renewable energy.
Maybe Elon should think about nuclear instead or Mars!
supply charge (Score:2)
" it's pretty shit that you still have to pay a "supply charge" even when you're completely self-contained and off-grid... just because there are power lines going past your door." I don't, why do you?
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Maybe Elon should think about nuclear instead or Mars!
At much higher prices? Great idea!
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Wait, what? (Score:3)
Am I reading this correctly? California pays other utilities to take electricity it cannot use? How can that possibly make sense? Surely they can find a neighboring state (or Mexico) willing to buy the electricity?
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Am I reading this correctly? California pays other utilities to take electricity it cannot use? How can that possibly make sense?
California makes cents. Not sense. Why do you think they’re so broken.
Surely they can find a neighboring state (or Mexico) willing to buy the electricity?
Surely your geography skills aren’t that bad, but clearly they are. Arizona IS a neighboring state. The fuck are you gonna sell electricity to the Mexican cartel for? (As if that money would go anywhere else.)
Re: Wait, what? (Score:1)
Given that California is the largest state economy in the USA, that's a pretty dumb thing to say.
Instead try saying "I disagree with their stance on..." instead of the mental garbage you actually said.
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That is because you do not understand how a power-grid works.
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There's limited transmission capacity, so we can't export power to say, the east coast, and take advantage of the time difference to send them solar during their late afternoon/early evening.
As a result, to prevent grid overload, we either need to idle generation capacity, or pay people to do something with it. These people happen to be utilities in neighboring states and energy traders exploiting huge swings in spot power prices.
It is pretty silly if you think about it - we have consumers who would gladly
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The reason people don't "run their appliances during the day" is b/c this news piece is anti-solar propaganda. During this same period that electricity is "oversupplied" and at negative prices, CPUC is charging their customers almost 50 cents/kWh. Why would they pay neighboring utilities money to take the power but not their own customers?
If you stop and think about it for 5 seconds it's obvious there's crucial info missing here.
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Kickbacks? Graft?
If I were a ratepayer and being charged 0.50/Kwh at a point in time where I should be paying near zero, I'd have to ask... how much more expensive is the power that I'm using at other times that they'd be forcing me to subsidize it?
Certainly that runs counter to current trends:
https://energized.edison.com/s... [edison.com]
SoCal Edison is moving customers to time of use to incentivize things like timeshifting loads to off peak hours (apparently 9pm until 4pm).
LADWP still has its TOU set such that peak i
PGE's fault for not having time-shifting prices (Score:5, Interesting)
When prices go negative, PGE doesn't drop the cost of my electric power. If they did, I'd be running my AC and charging my car. Instead, I pay the same amount from midnight to 3PM. PGE can burn, like they made the state burn.
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Even if PGE (and other electric companies around the country), were to invest into battery stora
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They charge more for electricity during these periods of extreme oversupply than the rest of the country charges during periods of excess demand. Clearly there's extreme corruption going on.
Something is amiss. (Score:2, Troll)
Congestion-related curtailment is the dominant reason for curtailment.
What this really means is that CAISO [caiso.com] is refusing to build out the transmission lines in a timely manner and it's getting worse. Since CAISO is a shareholder driven organization, I wouldn't be surprised if the process is being intentionally retarded by fossil fuel investors.
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Transmission is a temporary solution and a bit of a waste.
All regions are still getting extra solar too, eventually the industrial regions will almost all the solar they need locally. Unless seasonal storage conversion (most likely into hydrogen) is centralized in existing industrial regions, the rural power doesn't need to be there in the future. The hydrogen conversion can be done decentralized where the power is, without HV grid expansion. Distribute the hydrogen instead.
For now just build out battery st
Distributed battery storage (Score:2)
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Two things need to happen. 1. The cost of solar installation needs to drop 50% to be comparable to the rest of the world. and 2. Battery prices need to drop. The latter is happening every year, although consumers are still being heavily overcharged compared to utilities. The former has yet to happen and probably never will.
If it weren't CA, Bitcoin could solve this (Score:2)
What a waste!
Bitcoin mining could solve this and monetize the unused energy -- oh right, it's California. So for political reasons, bitcoin is probably off the table. And so it's better to just throw all that power away?
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A cheaper and better use would be to capture the excess energy via gravity battery, pumped hydro, flow battery, compressed air, or thermal batteries. Reuse the stored energy after the sun goes down. Store it near the generation point so transmission-line congestion is minimized. That way all electrical customers benefit from the temporary overproduction.
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The official line is that they're working on it - installing battery and other power storage systems to soak up the excess power.
But remember that perfect is the enemy of "good enough". It may be cheaper to waste the power for a few hours a few days a year than to try to capture it, meanwhile the power is used handily the other 99% of the time it is operating.
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Anyone who would believe bitcoin bro's would restrict their energy demands to off-peak hours, or to "extra" supply, is an idiot.
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Bitcoin bro's are looking to make money though. They're not going to set up where electricity is 3X the price of elsewhere. If Texas will sell them energy at around 9 cents/kWh, and California wants 30, they'll go to Texas.
If the cheapest power plans involve electricity rates rising to over $1/kWh in select circumstances that only happen once every few years or so, they'll shut the servers off during those times.
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To be fair, the crapcoin assholes are all either idiots or scammers, and many are both.
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Bitcoin and other crapcoins do not only waste electricity and produce nothing in exchange...
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Bitcoin ASICs depreciate, they want high duty cycle power (or be paid to curtail their consumption).
Just shooting every bitcoin miner would solve far more problems.
If I lived in california (Score:1)
If I lived in California, I'd probably do solar+battery at home and disconnect from the grid unless it's absolutely necessary.
I am consistently and reliably informed that solar is cheap, so it should come to far less than the absurdly expensive 30c/kWh grid-connected Californians pay. (Right now I pay 12c CAD/kWh for hydro.)
It would a surprise to me if it's legal not be connected to the grid. I'd do the bare minimum, have the hookup, but leave the main (grid) breaker turned off.
Keeping the grid tie disconne
"Paying to generate..." (Score:2)
Not when it's all installed and set up... right? There isn't fuel to feed in and pay for. And I assume little extra work they'd not be doing for the current customers.
That's about 1% yearly production (6% solar) (Score:3)
"more than 3 million megawatt hours of solar energy" is 3000 gigawatt-hours.
Total utility-scale electric generation for California was 287,220 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2022, up 3.4 percent (9,456 GWh) from 2021.
Utility-scale renewable generation increased 10.2 percent (9,520 GWh) in 2022 to 102,853 GWh from 93,333 GWh in 2021.
Solar generation increased 24.1 percent (9,492 GWh) to 48,950 GWh in 2022 from 39,458 GWh in 2021.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data... [ca.gov].
This MUST happen in summer (Score:3)
So, I have 6kW of solar panels on my roof.
In July, I generated 1150 kWh. That's enough for my A/C, and will be enough for an electric stove and dryer when I replace my current gas ones.
In December, I only generated 450 kWh. That's nowhere near enough for a heat pump, electric stove, and dryer.
Batteries will not help that problem. They're fine for shifting power from the middle of the day to the evening (~3-4 hours of capacity). But shifting power from the summer to the winter requires *thousands* of hours of capacity. That's simply not affordable.
In comparison, adding more panels is relatively cheap. If I double the size of my system, I'd have enough in the winter months. But right now there's nowhere for that power to go in the summer, so it's going to get wasted. That's fine; it's still a good deal for me and for the planet.
On a larger scale, that's what's happening in California.
Re: This MUST happen in summer (Score:2)
We have 23 kW of panels on the roof. Peak summer month is over 4000 kWh production. Low winter month is under 1000 kWh.
Our electricity consumption is a little higher in the winter due to the need for heat in our EVs. About 2000 kWh/month
Home and water heating is still natural gas.
There is no way that batteries would help with seasonal adjustments to production and consumption. Connecting power grinds across hemispheres might help. There's gonna be some transmission losses.
Fail Logic (Score:2)
Why would prices go up if there's an *oversupply* of electricity? Idiots. Maybe don't just rewrite Newsom's corrupt utility-lobby propaganda.