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California solar power output sometimes exceeds predictions
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoThis seems to be a temporary problem until green electricity has the capacity and is cheap enough to be used year-round. Natural gas is so much cheaper on a $/BTU basis, but perhaps with enough solar capacity (or other green sources) that wont be the case much longer. It would be great if I could keep cool and warm using electricity alone.
- drwl 9y agoHappened in Texas too
- jalayir 9y agoCould excess power from CA be exported to Mexico or Central America?
- mullen 9y agoTransmission is an issue for that long of a distance.
- iak8god 9y agoI've heard that desalination of seawater is not a practical solution to drought because it's too energy-intensive. Does this change when energy temporarily costs less than $0/unit?
- skybrian 9y agoSort of. There are California cities that already have desalination plants. It's okay for retail users on the coast (who are okay paying a bit more). Agriculture is different. They rely on much cheaper prices and besides, you'd have to transport it uphill.
- logfromblammo 9y agoThat reminds me of the old engineering joke. What's the best way to transport a million kg of water? Build a cloud. If you're thinking statewide, you could just evaporate seawater, and it's eventually going to rain out somewhere in the mountains.
- floatrock 9y agoIt's also very capital-intensive. Ideally you would want a useful energy-intensive process with low capital costs so coming online during these peaks but staying idle for the other 80% of the day has minimal impacts. I wonder if hydrogen generation would be more along the lines of what you're thinking. Hydrogen is an energy store not an energy source -- it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than you get out. But that just means it's a type of battery. It seems conceptually simple to produce... if a plant can be made simple enough (low enough capital costs that the idle time matters less), I wonder if hydrogen generation/burning has been studied as grid-level storage to do this kind of time-of-day energy arbitrage. (With the amount of interest in grid-level storage and by the law of markets-are-efficient, presumably someone has run the numbers...)
- thaumasiotes 9y agoIt's not true in the first place. Arab states, and Israel, make heavy use of it; desalinated water is easily affordable for US residents. What makes US desalination impractical is not the cost of desalinating, but either or both of: - the cost of building a plant in the first place - the availability of cheaper fresh water
- webnrrd2k 9y agoSouthern California, for example, dumps most of it's rain water into the ocean. I'd bet that capturing some of that would be much cheaper in the long run. it's not hard to come up with some creative solutions... How about a giant bag or huge tanks out in the ocean for holding the water, instead of building dams. Or injection wells to replenish the water tables during the rainy season, pumping it out during the rest of the year. It just seems weird that millions of gallons of fresh water gets dumped into the ocean, and nothing is done to capture even some of that water.
- Caveman_Coder 9y agoFor a heavy price yes, but it also depends on the EHV transmission lines going from SCE/San Diego southward.
- kafkaesq 9y agoInfrastructure issues aside -- given the current political climate, that's highly unlikely. "First they come and take our jobs. Now they want us to give them free power!"
- skybrian 9y agoSeems like some local industry would be able to use this? Or maybe turn on some air conditioning or hot water heaters.
- politician 9y agoMaking ice is good way to bank cheap power at a company-scale because they can use it to offset AC later.
- digikata 9y agoIf Tesla can really put up grid storage modules as fast as they claim, shouldn't this just be a big opportunity to print money? Get paid to charge the batteries on surplus surges, get paid to supply power at night discharging them...
- hobolord 9y agoseems like a good opportunity, but how much would it cost for these storage units?
- fweespeech 9y agoIf 65 days of the year you charge and 300 days you don't, it likely isn't cost effective. Peak time is also during the daytime which means baseload power sources like Gas/Hydro/Nuclear/etc. are likely fulfilling demand at night just fine. Most likely you are charging during winter and discharging during heat waves in the summer which may not be a viable business model despite the large delta in energy prices. At least that is my understanding, I'm not an expert. xD
- ChuckMcM 9y agoYes. The "obvious" question when reading an article like this is "Why pay someone to take the power, why not just turn off a gas or coal fired plant?" There are some obvious restrictions around that (like the plant would need to be in the general area of the grid where power was coming from of course) but the issue according to the PUC is that "cycle time" which is the amount of time it takes to turn off a power plant and then turn it on again, is longer than the "event time" where you get an over power event transient. Grid storage nicely addresses both of these issues because it can absorb the extra energy (charging) and when the grid storage units are charged you can safely turn off a power plant because even if the power suddenly dips for what ever reason the grid storage can cover that loss while the power plant is restarting. If you reach the point where you have enough grid storage to completely cover the variance between day time and night time power demand, then things get even more efficient as you switch to that storage a 'primary' and then cycle on plants as needed to top them off.
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- djrogers 9y agoAnd yet our rates keep going up, which encourages less electricity usage and higher adoption of personal solar installations. Seems like this is going to be a pretty rough cycle for the power companies to navigate if they aren't allowed to change their business models...
- paulsutter 9y agoThey should pump water uphill during these surges. California hydropower is constrained by rainfall, so the dams and generators already exist. Pumps cost less than batteries and this process has about an 80% roundtrip efficiency
- azurezyq 9y agoWell, solar farms in CA are mostly in deserts, where hydro reservoirs are not that feasible.
- DiabloD3 9y agoPower can be transmitted to areas inside of CA that already have hydro reservoirs or ones at higher elevations can be built.
- rootusrootus 9y agoSince it's already wired up to the same grid, does the storage have to be near the generating plant?
- azurezyq 9y agoI think the point of paying AZ to take excess power is to lower the load on CA grids. So long distance transmission cannot solve the immediate problem.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- iak8god 9y ago> So long distance transmission cannot solve the immediate problem. Then how is it getting to AZ?
- spangry 9y agoIn most cases the answer is "no, but it helps". Close physical proximity reduces transmission loss (both inward and outward). And hydro storage requires a very specific sort of topography. If you have fortunately built solar energy plants near these sites, great! Otherwise you will probably have to build new transmission infrastructure (likely HVDC), which costs money.
- esturk 9y agoI'm sure there's some business opportunities that can be taken to alleviate this surplus. There's a generation of people that have been groomed to use their electrical appliances during the night time wether to do laundries or wash dishes because they would be charged less from energy providers. In recent years, people are doing their charging at home in the middle of the night. But perhaps this can flip around. Imagine laundromats that charge cheaper for drying or washing during the day vs during the night. Cheaper electric car charging during the day. Business opportunities that benefit everyone simply by changing some habits.
- thephyber 9y ago> I'm sure there's some business opportunities that can be taken to alleviate this surplus. You need to be able to message the energy consumers (most likely smart versions of large appliances) within minutes notice. I think you would have to have appliances ready when you leave home in the morning and set the power price at which you are willing to run it. Right now, I don't think most large appliances support such a system. Perhaps home assistants (Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomePod, etc) would be the right place to integrate these settings, but you would still need the assistant to be able to interact with your dishwasher / clotheswasher / Tesla Powerwall. At the moment, we are adding solar to the grid faster than we are adding smart appliances that are capable of deciding when to use power, based on the current market price of power.
- webnrrd2k 9y agoThis strikes me as a viable usefor IoT-style appliances. Or maybe IoT outlets. Also, I bet a swimming pool could be cooled down when power is cheap, and the chilled water pumped through a heat exchanger as air conditioning.
- sna1l 9y agoCalifornia should use the power to mine bitcoin!! :)
- HillaryBriss 9y agothis is the best answer. we should contact Jerry Brown.
- mahyarm 9y agoMaybe the could make our PG&E bills not be (very quickly) .30/kwh and instead follow the .12/kwh average of the USA during these peak times.
- aeturnum 9y agoAlternative title: Solar power output exceeds most optimistic predictions. It seems like a non-story for a burst-y power source to occasionally produce more power than we need.
- scribu 9y agoYeah, the more interesting aspect was that new traditional power plants are still being built, despite the glut of solar.
- palewire 9y agoI work at The Times on the team behind these stories and FYI we did a whole previous investigation focused on just that http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-capacity/ http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-capacity/
- mostlyskeptical 9y agoExact. If California had a consistent excess of solar they wouldn't need so much from the Hoover dam.
- dang 9y agoCool, we'll use your idea to rephrase the title above.
- ej_campbell 9y agoThe headline on the LA Times is spot on. Could that be used instead? California invested heavily in solar power. Now there's so much that other states are sometimes paid to take it
- dang 9y agoI was under the impression that some users felt this title was misleading; if so, changing it back will just provoke more objections.
- WalterBright 9y agoIf the consumer electricity rates were adjusted dynamically, I bet that would soak up the extra power. For example, one could charge one's electric car when the power cost is very low.
- Camillo 9y agoReading these articles is like listening to five year olds arguing. "These guys says it's enough!" "These other guys say it's not!" "But what if it's cloudy?" You can picture the journalist holding a toy microphone and nodding intently at each source, the argument going entirely over their head. The entire argument revolves around the distribution of power usage and of power generation throughout the day and throughout the year. So why not explain that for your readers? Show us charts with that information? Tell us how much energy is produced by solar on the cloudiest days? Show us a chart of power usage over solar power production over the last year, and tell us the minimum and maximum percent? At least explain the difference between minimum, maximum and average production, and when each of those matters! But no, none of that. We get a graph showing the increasing share of solar generation, and another with absolute figures of the curtailed solar capacity. And a bunch of pictures and animations, of course. This is what innumeracy looks like.
- cuckcuckspruce 9y agoThis article was produced by a newspaper for a region where butt implants are a thing and the hottest gossip is what stars are fucking each other. This article was not read by the majority of its intended audience, and even if it was, was not understood by a majority of those that read it. Asking for it to contain more information is silly given those facts.
- Brakenshire 9y ago> This is what innumeracy looks like. I don't know whether it's innumeracy so much as lack of time, and also the specific expertise (not just ability to understand numbers, but expertise in this specific area) to be able to understand the information. For a general reporter (not an 'energy correspondent' or something similar) the article you're proposing would take at least a week of study and research, probably more, this 'he said, she said' stuff can be knocked off in a few hours.
- cuckcuckspruce 9y agoNot only that, but the results couldn't fit in a tweet so people could retweet it over and over again like masturbating monkeys, so in the mind of legacy media, why produce it?
- apo 9y agoWhat a difference 16 years makes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
- intopieces 9y agoWasn't that crises entirely manufactured though?
- NicoJuicy 9y agoThis isn't abnormal, other examples. Paying the chemistry industry for shutting down energy intensive operations during low electricity periods Transfers between countries in Europe and fines when your electricity prediction is off ( it costs a lot) Useless spending power on hot days for not blasting the net because of solar power Lower costs at night for using electricity It's not as easy as it looks, solar power really puts an additional stress on our net, definitely in the beginning of the 'electricity usage behavior shift'. Read more about the reason why electricity is unstable in some countries : http://infoboxdaily.com/3-african-countries-with-erratic-power-supply-apart-from-ghana/ http://infoboxdaily.com/3-african-countries-with-erratic-pow... - didn't find anything better Source: done a project for 'Electricity usage prediction' in Belgium with one of my previous employers.
- jessaustin 9y agoI wondered whether TFA would ever get to the cause of this waste, and eventually it did! Once state regulators approve new plants or transmission lines, the cost is now built into the amount that the utility can charge electricity users — no matter how much or how little it is used. Oh, so that's why they kept building natural gas plants that don't get used most of the time! If you've ever been to a PUC meeting, you've seen corruption at its most brazen. "Citizens' groups" entirely funded by utilities and telcos wait their turn to dutifully read the prepared statements, the commissioners dutifully thank them, and then they go to work with the rubber stamp. It doesn't actually matter that power plants get built in a timely fashion or actually operate more than a small percentage of the time, the rate-payers are already on the hook. The only way a utility executive gets a bonus is by saddling the public with CWIP charges, so that's what they scheme to do every working day. No coal, gas, or nuclear plant should ever be built by forcing the public to do the job of investors. If investors can't be found to support a plant that supposedly will generate for decades, maybe we should listen to the market? [EDIT:] Great article, though, because it tells the whole story, and that seems rare anymore.
- KekDemaga 9y agoI don't understand so when a natural gas plant is built they adjust rates upward? Isn't that the opposite of supply and demand?
- AdamJacobMuller 9y agoYes, but, this is not an open market, this is the CPUC and they have a captive audience they can force to pay whatever they want to force them to pay.
- jessaustin 9y agoThere is very little competition in electrical utilities. The theory is that in order to prevent competing electric lines from being built, government must control prices. However, many utilities still have private investors, who want prices to go up. Since existing prices already pay these investors a fair return, they have to find a more objective reason than "we want more money". Often this takes the form of unnecessary capital spending, the costs of which can be inflated and passed on to captive customers. After all, if the capital spending (e.g. on a power plant) were necessary, it would itself generate a return (e.g. by selling power) that would attract investors. The public is victim of the principal-agent problem when public utilities commissions approve such arrangements. This has led to a situation in which California and other states have more generation capacity than they need.
- EGreg 9y agoSolar panels can also decentralize energy generation, letting communities be more resilient and prevent global blackouts.
- jartelt 9y agoThe sad part is that many people will read the title and use the article to say "solar power is ruining everything and is a waste of taxpayer dollars!" But, when you actually read the article you realize that the utilities are the issue because they keep building natural gas plants and transmission lines rather than just investing in storage, demand response, or other technologies that add more flexibility to the grid.
- blizkreeg 9y agoIs this just a function of how many households in CA get 100% of their power from solar currently? I got an email recently from PGE where I can opt into and decide the % of my power that comes from solar. Does the state generate enough power to move over every household to solar?
- mickrussom 9y agoIll tell you what. Every single bulb is LED, tv plasma-> led, all appliances and fans upgraded to energy efficient, all HDDs->SSD, all lights on sensors, no heating used, no AC used, and my bills are bigger here in CA than ever. So if there is a glut of power I can also say that datacenters pay less than people in homes and its not cheap to charge electric cars, in fact, they are charging more per kwh and changed a lot of free charging stations to pay-for/metered. As a little guy in a brutal tax bracket its too bad all this energy progress hasnt helped out with the bills.
- the8472 9y agoUtility companies usually have load shedding agreements with industrial consumers that can tolerate power supply temporarily going down. Is the inverse - consuming above than average and building up heat, chemical stock or whatever they usually do that lets them ride out supply slumps - too difficult? It seems extremely wasteful to pay another state just to have them power down their solar farms.