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One problem is that solar's peak is too early in the day to match peak demand in most of the US (including Texas). Texas's electricity usage typically peaks aro
by _delirium 7y ago
One problem is that solar's peak is too early in the day to match peak demand in most of the US (including Texas). Texas's electricity usage typically peaks around 4-6pm in the summer, while photovoltaic output peaks around 12-2pm. There is some storage, but you would need a lot more to line those curves up. A cost-effective way to shift the solar peak to about 4 hours later would definitely help on a lot of days.
For the curious, you can browse the demand curves day-by-day here: https://www.eia.gov/realtime_grid/#/summary/demand?end=20190812&start=20190714®ions=0000000000000000001 https://www.eia.gov/realtime_grid/#/summary/demand?end=20190...
- Dumblydorr 7y agoDemand response can load shift cooling onto times when solar is more abundant. DR is criminally underused and will be one of the top ways we will utilize renewables going forward.
- ip26 7y agoHell, you can even use DR to shift electric water heating to free up scarce power during peak A/C load.
- PietdeVries 7y agoYou can shift the solar peak at least by one hour when importing electricity from California is possible... In Europe there are a lot of international power cables that help redistribute power across the region and that seems to work quite well (fingers crossed).
- scolson 7y agoThe Texas power grid is isolated and cannot routinely import power. It can in very temporary and emergency situations, but they do not as a matter of course to avoid federal oversight. So while the US Western grid can time shift one hour in the way you describe, Texas is isolated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/ https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-...
- patentatt 7y agoYup, because ... Texas. In the entire country there are 3 roughly independent systems: East, West, and Texas. Maybe they’ll reconsider given these incredibly high prices?
- scolson 7y agoThere have been instances where the power spot price has gone negative, too. They have not had major outages. I don't see why they would reconsider.
- _delirium 7y agoThere's definitely an opinion in Texas that ERCOT is more reliable than the other two US grid managers, so it's popular to remain independent for that reason as well (besides the political reasons). Both the Eastern [1] and Western [2] Interconnections have had major grid-management incidents that took down large portions of the grid in cascading failures, and some analysts think further incidents are likely [3], while the Texas grid has never gone down. There is some support for expanding the capacity of the asynchronous DC interconnects, though, which would let Texas import & export more electricity to the other two grids without tying itself to them directly. It already does a modest amount of that, but the current DC links don't have very high capacity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 [2] https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river-history/blackout https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river-history/bla... [3] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/14/5604992/us-power-grid-vulnerability https://www.vox.com/2014/4/14/5604992/us-power-grid-vulnerab...
- cannonedhamster 7y agoYeah Texas just has rolling blackouts every other month. Totally reliable and not considered an outage how?
- teraflop 7y agoAs far as I'm aware, there have been no rolling blackouts in Texas since the last major incident in winter 2011. Got a source?
- khuey 7y agoIt's possible in theory but California is a net importer pretty much all of the time.
- SaintGhurka 7y agoYou should be able to shift it by 45 minutes just by locating the solar generation in El Paso since it's 500 miles west of the major population centers and 700 miles from the eastern border. Sunset in El Paso is at 7:51 today (mountain time). Sunset in Longview is 8:05 (central time). El Paso also has more reliable sunshine than Austin and Dallas and Houston.
- Brakenshire 7y agoEven with 4 hours of battery storage solar should be substantially cheaper than gas peakers. There also should be a huge amount of opportunity for demand side behaviour. For instance someone coming home at 6 could precool their house at 3 and save money, we just need to make that easier for consumers.
- seniorThrowaway 7y agoPre-cooling your house at 3 in the Texas summer will last until about 3:30 at the latest.
- ceejayoz 7y agoThat's particularly frustrating, because effective building techniques for keeping houses cool in hot climates have existed for millennia.
- imglorp 7y agoThe problem is all those ancient tech items require long term thinking, such as shade trees, masonry, insulation, subterranean, etc... This sounds more like a cultural shift from cheap and fast stick-built: they're spoiled by that mentality but paying the price now.
- todd8 7y agoYeah, but I don't want to do this: The town where people live underground: Welcome to Coober Pedy [1]. :( [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFA-OB-nJ_I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFA-OB-nJ_I
- ceejayoz 7y agoNo one said you have to go anywhere near that far. Thicker, solid walls with more thermal mass that soak up the overnight cool to release throughout the day. Better insulation and air sealing. Trees, roof overhangs, and shade cladding to prevent direct sunlight from hitting the house. "Just add a bigger AC" has been the approach for far too long, and it's not sustainable.
- _ph_ 7y agoPointing the panels more westward could fix this with only little losses in peak efficiency.
- mrfusion 7y agoSeems silly but I’d imagine a lot of places could use the lower rates during peak solar to precool the buildings. My house only heats up about two degrees per hour with the ac off. In theory I could precool by ten degrees and coast until the evening.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoDo you live in east/mid Texas? That sounds like some super great insulation if you are only accumulating 2 degrees an hour during a hot humid Texas summer.
- mrfusion 7y agoSimilar latitude actually. My house is concrete block though so it tends to resist temperature change a bit. Also keep in mind large buildings will resist temperature changes even better than houses due to their size. Less surface area per volume.
- vonmoltke 7y agoMy house in Dallas only rose by about one degree per hour during the day when the A/C was off, even on the hottest days. It was pretty well-insulated, and the large trees around it helped. > humid Texas summer This is probably the warped idea of "humid" I got from growing up in South Florida, but Dallas was rarely ever humid.
- humanrebar 7y agoDallas is relatively humid, but not Florida, no. It also doesn't have the constant sea breezes and incidental rain that most of Florida enjoys.
- shliachtx 7y agoHouston is as humid as it gets though.
- londons_explore 7y agoBuild your houses out of stone rather than wood, and they'll have a 10+ tonne thermal mass. Just a few inches of insulation around that on all sides, and the temperature barely varies day to night.
- SEJeff 7y agoThis is where stationary storage (via batteries) makes a lot more sense. In Australia, the same problem exists, but they have an giant ozone hole so even more UV hits the surface. Tesla deployed what (at the time) was the biggest battery storage project in the world. They built a 100MW/129MWh battery setup with their Powerpacks. In another part of Australia, they're deploying a "virtual power plant" by equipping up to 50,000 homes with individual home battery backups via Tesla's Powerwall product. The grid operator will be able to tap into each of these batteries to redirect power to the grid or shift load off of the grid whenever they see necessary. This is resulting in massively improved prices for electricity in South Australia where they had a lot of rolling blackouts (due to the heat) last summer. The newly released Tesla Megapack https://www.tesla.com/megapack https://www.tesla.com/megapack seems like a slam dunk for this sort of thing. You store that crazy amount of sunshine that is excess in batteries and use them that evening or the following morning. The economics of this approach are becoming more and more realistic due to better technology and better manufacturing.
- humanrebar 7y agoThe problem in urban Texas is that all the asphalt and concrete acts as a stationary heat battery. Counteracting that is a huge part of the problem. They could use batteries and air conditioning to do so, but it's likely the return on investment would be higher figuring out how to provide more shade even in non residential areas.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoIt's a shame we can't convert that heat to electricity in some efficient way.
- imglorp 7y agoPV solar roadways are a total bust, but I do wonder about liquid loops under the asphalt. If you need a source of cold to create a temperature gradient vs the road, you could always pull from geothermal next to the roadway collector.
- 7y ago
- chaosbutters 7y agoDoesn't it make sense then to send the power eastward while max generating it and then import power from the west later in the day when you need it? You could theoretically leverage the time differences and peak usage/generation. I understand there is losses in transmission but seems like a good juggling act
- jdavis703 7y agoThe Texas grid is not integrated with other states. I'm guessing breaking this "independence" is a tough political sell.
- londons_explore 7y agoPower arbitrage between non-connected grids is a thing in the rest of the world. I'd be very surprised if nobody is doing it to/from Texas. It would require DC/AC convertors, so there is a slight energy loss, and fairly significant upfront capital cost.
- lern_too_spel 7y agoIf the utility offers TOU billing, more solar installations will point west, shifting peak supply later in the day.
- enlyth 7y agoI looked at the chart you provided, and calculated the difference between 12-2pm and 4-6pm usage, which seems to be only 13%. Is this really such a huge hurdle in itself? I'm curious, not trying to be dismissive.
- srmatto 7y agoI think Chillers with ice storage could be used to handle this somewhat. They already are used for that purpose to buy power off peak prices and then distribute the cooling when its needed thus de-coupling the supply and demand somewhat. This is mostly just armchair speculation on my part however.
- satya71 7y agoIf they required/subsidized better insulation, they could pre-cool the buildings to a bit lower than optimal temperature and have a huge thermal reserve. But it's Texas, so...
- tth3uoku 7y agoAll new residential construction is required to meet International Residential Code energy efficiency provisions. The State Energy Conservation Office provides funding opportunities to support efficiency programs and loans for public institution retrofitting projects. There are many programs requiring, subsidizing, and incentivizing energy efficiency: https://programs.dsireusa.org/system/program https://programs.dsireusa.org/system/program What do you mean by it's Texas?
- jhayward 7y agoCommercial solar plants in Texas take advantage of the market by aligning themselves a few degrees off the optimum for total power, so that they can produce better in the heavier demand/higher spot market rate time periods in the evening. A few percentage points lower in total mWh produced but more profit.
- closeparen 7y agoSo maybe people should cool their homes while away at work, assuming they’re insulated enough to then need less cooling after work.