This opinion piece is more optimistic than the previous one I shared: (Gigawatts is power output at one instant. From the graph, it looks like it dropped steadily to reach near-zero in a few...
This opinion piece is more optimistic than the previous one I shared:
At press time, for 39 of the past 47 days (through April 23), supplies of WWS [Wind, Water, Solar] electricity have exceeded demand on the grid. On April 20, WWS supply peaked at 148.3 percent of demand (see top chart below). About half of the excess electricity each day is exported to other Western U.S. states; most of the rest is stored in batteries. Some electricity is even thrown away due to lack of demand. Battery electricity is then used to provide electricity for California’s grid at night. On April 21, nighttime battery electricity output reached a new record of nearly 6.5 gigawatts on California’s grid. That is the equivalent of the output of more than seven nuclear reactors and one quarter of the maximum grid demand during all seasons except summer, when demand can double at night.
(Gigawatts is power output at one instant. From the graph, it looks like it dropped steadily to reach near-zero in a few hours.)
That solar output does not even include most of California’s rooftop solar output, which supplied about 12 percent of electricity generation in the state last year.
...
The string of days that have reached 100 percent WWS has so far occurred only during the end of winter and much of spring, when temperatures have been mild and solar output has been high. Electricity demand during summer can double because of heavy air conditioner use. Whether there will be days that reach 100 percent WWS during summer this year is yet to be seen. With the future growth of both utility-scale and rooftop solar, however, California will ultimately provide 100 percent WWS during summer daytime hours as well. Solar, though, provides electricity during the day only. Nighttime demand can be met by a combination of using batteries powered by daytime solar, offshore wind, shifting more hydropower production to night hours, and setting electricity prices so that demand shifts to daytime.
....
[W]hy are California’s electricity prices high? California has the third-highest natural gas prices in the U.S. and still uses that fossil fuel for backup electricity. In addition, utilities have passed on to customers the costs of the San Bruno and Aliso Canyon gas disasters, gas pipe retrofits, wildfires caused by transmission line sparks, and burial of transmission lines to reduce such fires.
Comment box Scope: information, personal reaction Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I guess the numbers speak for themselves. Reaching 100% renewable generation needs at some point...
Comment box
Scope: information, personal reaction
Tone: neutral
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
I guess the numbers speak for themselves.
Reaching 100% renewable generation needs at some point for 39/47 of the past days is a great foundation.
The graph of April 20 shows a low of about 50% generation from renewables compared to total demand. That is a best-case day right now. TBH, that is pretty good. But we still have a ways to go.
Interesting to see how quickly battery storage peters out once engaged. Still an important part of the grid for sure.
I think California is on a good track here. Every year renewable generation goes up. (and this chart shows that growth going a few years further back and really demonstrates the change in general.) Wind and solar growth account for the vast majority of those increases, and both technologies are expected to get cheaper and more efficient over time—especially solar, and despite the state’s recent pricing fiasco.
The solutions the article pitches about changing hydro generation to a mostly nighttime thing, for example, sound reasonable to me.
So many reasons to be optimistic about CA energy sustainability and security. Always glad that we have such a visionary state in the union.
I'm not sure how much stock I want to put in any commentary by Mark Jacobson, but there's still some good info in the piece. I would consider it possible, maybe even likely, that those two are...
I'm not sure how much stock I want to put in any commentary by Mark Jacobson, but there's still some good info in the piece.
Detractors claim that the growth of renewables in California has resulted in high electricity prices. California has the third-highest electricity prices in the U.S. To the contrary, the growth of WWS in California has prevented prices from rising further. This effect is demonstrated by high WWS generation but low electricity prices in other states: Of the 11 that have higher annual-average production of WWS as a percent of demand than California, 10 are among the 25 states with the lowest electricity prices. Five are among the 10 states with the lowest prices.
So why are California’s electricity prices high? California has the third-highest natural gas prices in the U.S. and still uses that fossil fuel for backup electricity. In addition, utilities have passed on to customers the costs of the San Bruno and Aliso Canyon gas disasters, gas pipe retrofits, wildfires caused by transmission line sparks, and burial of transmission lines to reduce such fires
I would consider it possible, maybe even likely, that those two are related and perhaps causal.
I feel that in the past Jacobson's analysis has been too focused on looking at macroscale values of total electricity produced and total consumed without factoring in the system stability of the grid as a cost metric. Which leads to this apparent paradox of California having very expensive power despite having all this cheap renewable energy.
I assume some of the high costs are from penny-wise-pound-foolish policies, likely due to state and utility bureaucracy. Like the forest fire a few years ago caused by a high voltage line cutting...
I assume some of the high costs are from penny-wise-pound-foolish policies, likely due to state and utility bureaucracy. Like the forest fire a few years ago caused by a high voltage line cutting through supports after a decade or so. It would have been so much cheaper to just check the lines properly. But the amount of land and customers PG&E covers is huge. Smaller organizations, in my personal experience, are higher-trust and more able to make informed decisions.
There are a couple of municipalities in the Bay Area that have broken away from PG&E and I’m told their power is far cheaper.
I don't know who Mark Jacobson is. What makes you sceptical about his analysis? I do think this part is not the strongest part of the piece, but what do you see as the positively correlated or...
I don't know who Mark Jacobson is. What makes you sceptical about his analysis?
I do think this part is not the strongest part of the piece, but what do you see as the positively correlated or possibly causal link between the high prices and renewables use?
I can imagine that the inability of a utility to throttle back supply results in energy that has to be sold when demand is saturated, resulting in the forced sale of energy at low prices and difficulty making the debt servicing payments. This might make the utility raise prices across the board. But I'm just guessing, at this point.
Mark Jacobson is a professor from Stanford who has been working on this 100% renewables roadmap for many years now. He wrote a version of it back in 2014-2015 which Bernie Sanders sort of adopted...
Mark Jacobson is a professor from Stanford who has been working on this 100% renewables roadmap for many years now. He wrote a version of it back in 2014-2015 which Bernie Sanders sort of adopted as his preliminary climate policy during his Presidential run. As a result of the heightened visibility of his work during that time, other researchers tool a look at that paper, and came back with several critiques which they published in a response paper.
The troubling event is that Jacobson responded by suing some of the authors of the response paper for defamation, claiming their paper defamed him by pointing out those errors. The lawsuit was eventually withdrawn, but I find it very suspicious that Jacobson filed a lawsuit against the scientists who criticized his findings, which prevented them from speaking openly about their critiques. In a business setting when you use a meritless lawsuit to silence your opposition, it's called a SLAPP suit, and it's illegal. I think if Jacobson had carried out his lawsuit in its entirety, it would have been guilty of doing the same.
Personally I don't think anyone who would be willing to use legal chicanery to covern up valid criticisms should be trusted as a reliable source of information.
My thought regarding the high electricity cost is that solar panels and wind turbines do not provide inertia in the way that synchronous generators do, so in order to maintain good frequency stability the grid operator is supplementing renewables with lots of reserve power natural gas and turning that on when appropriate. But peaked plants charge more for electricity since they know they are not on all the time an they charge more when they are on to make up the difference. So you're paying a premium for gas power, but since gas is making up your inertial load you end up running it all the time like it's baseload.
I don't know if I would say synthetic or virtual inertia are interchangeable with inherent physical inertia. That commentary by Stephen Stroul distinguishes virtual inertia from FFR, but its still...
I don't know if I would say synthetic or virtual inertia are interchangeable with inherent physical inertia. That commentary by Stephen Stroul distinguishes virtual inertia from FFR, but its still fundamentally a decoupling of the inverter frequency from the grid frequency.
Thanks! It seems that is exactly what happened: "Jacobson withdrew his lawsuit in February 2018, two days after a court hearing on the defendants’ special motion to dismiss pursuant to the D.C....
Thanks! It seems that is exactly what happened:
"Jacobson withdrew his lawsuit in February 2018, two days after a court hearing on the defendants’ special motion to dismiss pursuant to the D.C. Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) Act." (Wikipedia)
That inertia would lead to higher rates seems odd too. Is the "Emulated Inertia" discussed here ineffective or not widely implemented?
This opinion piece is more optimistic than the previous one I shared:
(Gigawatts is power output at one instant. From the graph, it looks like it dropped steadily to reach near-zero in a few hours.)
...
....
Comment box
I guess the numbers speak for themselves.
Reaching 100% renewable generation needs at some point for 39/47 of the past days is a great foundation.
The graph of April 20 shows a low of about 50% generation from renewables compared to total demand. That is a best-case day right now. TBH, that is pretty good. But we still have a ways to go.
Interesting to see how quickly battery storage peters out once engaged. Still an important part of the grid for sure.
I think California is on a good track here. Every year renewable generation goes up. (and this chart shows that growth going a few years further back and really demonstrates the change in general.) Wind and solar growth account for the vast majority of those increases, and both technologies are expected to get cheaper and more efficient over time—especially solar, and despite the state’s recent pricing fiasco.
The solutions the article pitches about changing hydro generation to a mostly nighttime thing, for example, sound reasonable to me.
So many reasons to be optimistic about CA energy sustainability and security. Always glad that we have such a visionary state in the union.
I'm not sure how much stock I want to put in any commentary by Mark Jacobson, but there's still some good info in the piece.
I would consider it possible, maybe even likely, that those two are related and perhaps causal.
I feel that in the past Jacobson's analysis has been too focused on looking at macroscale values of total electricity produced and total consumed without factoring in the system stability of the grid as a cost metric. Which leads to this apparent paradox of California having very expensive power despite having all this cheap renewable energy.
I assume some of the high costs are from penny-wise-pound-foolish policies, likely due to state and utility bureaucracy. Like the forest fire a few years ago caused by a high voltage line cutting through supports after a decade or so. It would have been so much cheaper to just check the lines properly. But the amount of land and customers PG&E covers is huge. Smaller organizations, in my personal experience, are higher-trust and more able to make informed decisions.
There are a couple of municipalities in the Bay Area that have broken away from PG&E and I’m told their power is far cheaper.
I don't know who Mark Jacobson is. What makes you sceptical about his analysis?
I do think this part is not the strongest part of the piece, but what do you see as the positively correlated or possibly causal link between the high prices and renewables use?
I can imagine that the inability of a utility to throttle back supply results in energy that has to be sold when demand is saturated, resulting in the forced sale of energy at low prices and difficulty making the debt servicing payments. This might make the utility raise prices across the board. But I'm just guessing, at this point.
Mark Jacobson is a professor from Stanford who has been working on this 100% renewables roadmap for many years now. He wrote a version of it back in 2014-2015 which Bernie Sanders sort of adopted as his preliminary climate policy during his Presidential run. As a result of the heightened visibility of his work during that time, other researchers tool a look at that paper, and came back with several critiques which they published in a response paper.
The troubling event is that Jacobson responded by suing some of the authors of the response paper for defamation, claiming their paper defamed him by pointing out those errors. The lawsuit was eventually withdrawn, but I find it very suspicious that Jacobson filed a lawsuit against the scientists who criticized his findings, which prevented them from speaking openly about their critiques. In a business setting when you use a meritless lawsuit to silence your opposition, it's called a SLAPP suit, and it's illegal. I think if Jacobson had carried out his lawsuit in its entirety, it would have been guilty of doing the same.
Personally I don't think anyone who would be willing to use legal chicanery to covern up valid criticisms should be trusted as a reliable source of information.
My thought regarding the high electricity cost is that solar panels and wind turbines do not provide inertia in the way that synchronous generators do, so in order to maintain good frequency stability the grid operator is supplementing renewables with lots of reserve power natural gas and turning that on when appropriate. But peaked plants charge more for electricity since they know they are not on all the time an they charge more when they are on to make up the difference. So you're paying a premium for gas power, but since gas is making up your inertial load you end up running it all the time like it's baseload.
I don’t know how far along it is, but batteries are starting to be used to provide “synthetic inertia.” Also, hydroelectric power can still be used.
I don't know if I would say synthetic or virtual inertia are interchangeable with inherent physical inertia. That commentary by Stephen Stroul distinguishes virtual inertia from FFR, but its still fundamentally a decoupling of the inverter frequency from the grid frequency.
Thanks! It seems that is exactly what happened:
"Jacobson withdrew his lawsuit in February 2018, two days after a court hearing on the defendants’ special motion to dismiss pursuant to the D.C. Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) Act." (Wikipedia)
That inertia would lead to higher rates seems odd too. Is the "Emulated Inertia" discussed here ineffective or not widely implemented?