9 ms·

Sometimes, a Greener Grid Means a 40k% Spike in Power Prices

49 points by Bostonian 7y ago

superfluousText 7y ago
"The road to a world powered by renewable energy is littered with unintended consequences" Yes, entirely unlike a world powered buy fossil fuels, which has provided no surprises whatsoever and continues to go off without a hitch.
- Arbalest 7y ago
  idk, the consequences have really only been a surprise to people who are willfully ignorant. Can't argue the going off without a hitch though. edit: I interpreted the comment as sarcastic, and responded to the opposite of the explicit as implied by the sarcastic comment. Kind of forgot that it was written that way and thus that it could be interpreted to mean I might be saying it has gone off without a hitch.
  - peteradio 7y ago
    mmmm lead
- ianai 7y ago
  Pretty sure you’re being sarcastic.
davidw 7y ago
That's a pretty big incentive to try and bring in new sources of greener power, isn't it?
- yardie 7y ago
  It’s also a great incentive to upgrade your infrastructure and upgrade buildings. I’m noticing a lot of office buildings in my area have switched to white rubber roof seals instead of black asphalt.
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/zKUak http://archive.is/zKUak
- raws 7y ago
  thanks
jb_s 7y ago
This is energy industry FUD In Australia the complete opposite happens. Extremely hot days cause coal and gas plants to fail https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/31/what-happened-to-our-electricity-system-in-the-heat-coal-and-gas-plants-failed https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/31/what-h... Whereas renewables have been causing power prices to occasionally fall to $0. https://reneweconomy.com.au/electricity-prices-across-the-grid-fall-to-zero-as-renewables-reach-44-share-77635/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/electricity-prices-across-the-gr...
- roenxi 7y ago
  Prices falling to 0 isn't a good thing; it means there is too much power and nothing to use it for. Nobody wants that, it is pointless. The people building the capital will make a profit over the year, so consumers will make up for the 0s with higher prices when there is not enough energy. And over the long term $0 prices potentially lead to building less infrastructure leading to blackouts. Basically we know the average price is not going to be 0. Therefore, 0 prices signals variance. Variance is pretty much always risky and expensive in big infrastructure; and the electricity market is a good example. It can hopefully be managed to only be a minor inconvenience but it is certainly not a positive for anyone. It does signal that there is a golden window to, eg, run a desalination plant. If anyone takes advantage of that opportunity then it would be a win, but the symptom of that happening would be non-0 prices. EDIT Also, coal plant failures in hot weather are probably a symptom of them not being maintained. Australia has already seen a Labor-Green coalition in federal politics; you'd have to be an idiot to spend money maintaining a coal plant in that political environment. Better to let them run down and try to extract money from the government in a crisis situation which seems to be the current strategy.
  - ianai 7y ago
    All it takes is a reasonable storage of that energy for later use. I saw a crane design that didn’t require any major tech.
    - roenxi 7y ago
matahwoosh 7y ago
Yes, renewable energy like wind and solar are intermittent, so we will need to invest (a lot) more into energy storage. So far storage has been expensive and need to drop a lot, so it can reach mainstream [1]. [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/08/12/new-us-study-finds-renewable-energy-storage-costs-need-to-drop-90/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/08/12/new-us-study-finds-re...
- ianai 7y ago
  Good news https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/ https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surpris...
  - andromeduck 7y ago
    Looks cool but I just don't see this ever getting to grid scale unless it could be integrated into natural geography like a shear cliff face to give it much greater capacity and throw. Especially with days or weeks of storage like we'd need to cover 2-3 standard deviations of renewable output.
  - tasty_freeze 7y ago
    The diagram seems a bit silly. They say the concrete weights are the most expensive part of the system. So many of those blocks go through a small elevation change (or none, in the case of those on the bottom layer).
    - imtringued 7y ago
      Most "gravity" batteries don't consider the cost of the weight. So far the only two types of viable gravity based energy storage systems are pumped hydro storage and hydraulic hydro storage since both take their weights from the surrounding environment. I will admit that the crane idea is at least fixing the flaw of most gravity batteries requiring a separate generator per weight. Doubling the length of the crane arm increases the capacity 4-fold.
  - einpoklum 7y ago
hobolord 7y ago
> Clean energy advocates point to batteries as a solution to renewables’ intermittent nature Not just batteries, but an efficient grid that uses all the resources in an optimal manner. This was always the goal in creating microgrids, to be able to not rely on the main grid unless required, and when required the main grid would be able to perhaps use another microgrid's resources.
- qroshan 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure, the conditions that would lead one's switch to main grid would be similar to everyone resulting overloading the main grid which pretty much the article is alluding to. It matter diddly squat if I save 5c an hour if I have to pay $1000 / hour during over load
- ocschwar 7y ago
  When controlled through TCP/IP, every air conditioner, ice maker or refrigerator can function as a battery.
jachee 7y ago
I take everything from Bloomberg with a big chunk of ice cream salt, because they are, quoting John Gruber: "... the publication that published “The Big Hack” last October — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true."
andromeduck 7y ago
IIRC the 40% renewables in California only work because we can page from British Columbia's hydro reserves when we have a shortfall and then sell it back for cheap to let them recover. I'm not sure you can go much higher right now without building more dams or retrofitting more of them for pumped storage and there's been enough opposition to recent hydro expansions to make it seem nonviable for the path to 100.
- ocschwar 7y ago
  Renewables in CA are difficult because when the sun sets, electricity demand is high, but there's no source of solar power to the west. (And coastal wind in CA is hard since the costal shelf drops much deeper than on the East Coast.)
  - sieabahlpark 7y ago
    Why would it be more during night? It's much cooler at night compared to the day when AC is used at most buildings.
    - blake1 7y ago
      The solar ramp-down is faster than the AC ramp-down. If you have a dumb thermostat, it runs the AC a fraction of the time which is a function of the outside temperature. However, the temperature stays elevated some hours after sunset, but the solar supply drops off quickly some hours before sunset. Solar supply is pretty well matched to AC demand except for a big mismatch a few hours around sunset. Consider California. Currently, this mismatch is taken up by fossil fuel plants and imports, but the solar demand drops off so fast that they have real difficulty in ramping up as needed. Batteries are a major part of the solution, but another part is improved transmission of wind from states to the east. This will cost less than you might think. California might use 800GWh daily; and yes, installing 800GWh of battery capacity would be prohibitively expensive. However, the wind picks up in the evening just a few hours after the sun goes down, so the batteries really just need to shift some excess power from midday to the evening. When I last calculated this, the additional transmission + batteries would cost around $40 billion. Interestingly, smart thermostats can make this worse: devices with a home/away mode allow the house to warm up when no one is inside because the owner doesn't want to pay for cooling that they won't enjoy. However, as all of these owners return home after work and school, this creates a demand spike; also, the AC units on these houses, which have been allowed to warm up, now need to run far longer into the evening. Really, the home/away feature is a little bit of a hack: the real goal is to minimize cost with some constraints on the temperature, and the utility ought to pay owners to shift their demand forward from evening to midday. This is like getting paid to store energy temporarily. So some combination of demand shifting---either with smart-er thermostats or batteries---adding other generation sources like wind, and some additional transmission, mean that California really can get to 100%. It will not be free, but it seems like the cost is less than $100 billion. Now in Texas, the situation is somewhat reversed. There is too much wind generation, and not enough solar, but the upshot is similar.
tzs 7y ago
Isn't some of this due to Texas' Amish approach to the national grids? What I mean by that is that Texas has little interconnection with the rest of the country. Like the Amish, they mostly only use electricity they make themselves [1]. Unlike most of the rest of the country, this means that when demand is much higher than local capacity they can't import from other states, and when demand is lower than capacity they can't export the excess. So they get big price swings. [1] It's largely a myth that the Amish do not use electricity. What the Amish avoid is tying their infrastructure too closely to the outside. Tying into the grid would be too close, but they generally are OK with electricity generated locally by solar panels, windmills, or gas powered generators.
einpoklum 7y ago
Sometimes, a greener grid means you will be struck by lightning. It's true! If the power cables move from one place to another, a lightning strike could hit you instead of some power cables. Also, sometimes a greener grid means you will fail to win the lottery. A news item about the grid may distract you from putting down the correct numbers!
ptah 7y ago
sound like texas is doing it wrong tbh
bananatron 7y ago
Low tech magazine has a good writeup on energy stability and security as it relates to green energy: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/12/keeping-some-of-the-lights-on-redefining-energy-security.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/12/keeping-some-of-th...

49 points by Bostonian 7y ago

"The road to a world powered by renewable energy is littered with unintended consequences" Yes, entirely unlike a world powered buy fossil fuels, which has provided no surprises whatsoever and continues to go off without a hitch.

Arbalest 7y ago
idk, the consequences have really only been a surprise to people who are willfully ignorant. Can't argue the going off without a hitch though. edit: I interpreted the comment as sarcastic, and responded to the opposite of the explicit as implied by the sarcastic comment. Kind of forgot that it was written that way and thus that it could be interpreted to mean I might be saying it has gone off without a hitch.
- peteradio 7y ago
  mmmm lead
ianai 7y ago
Pretty sure you’re being sarcastic.

davidw 7y ago

That's a pretty big incentive to try and bring in new sources of greener power, isn't it?

yardie 7y ago
It’s also a great incentive to upgrade your infrastructure and upgrade buildings. I’m noticing a lot of office buildings in my area have switched to white rubber roof seals instead of black asphalt.

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/zKUak http://archive.is/zKUak

raws 7y ago
thanks

jb_s 7y ago

This is energy industry FUD In Australia the complete opposite happens. Extremely hot days cause coal and gas plants to fail https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/31/what-happened-to-our-electricity-system-in-the-heat-coal-and-gas-plants-failed https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/31/what-h... Whereas renewables have been causing power prices to occasionally fall to $0. https://reneweconomy.com.au/electricity-prices-across-the-grid-fall-to-zero-as-renewables-reach-44-share-77635/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/electricity-prices-across-the-gr...

roenxi 7y ago
Prices falling to 0 isn't a good thing; it means there is too much power and nothing to use it for. Nobody wants that, it is pointless. The people building the capital will make a profit over the year, so consumers will make up for the 0s with higher prices when there is not enough energy. And over the long term $0 prices potentially lead to building less infrastructure leading to blackouts. Basically we know the average price is not going to be 0. Therefore, 0 prices signals variance. Variance is pretty much always risky and expensive in big infrastructure; and the electricity market is a good example. It can hopefully be managed to only be a minor inconvenience but it is certainly not a positive for anyone. It does signal that there is a golden window to, eg, run a desalination plant. If anyone takes advantage of that opportunity then it would be a win, but the symptom of that happening would be non-0 prices. EDIT Also, coal plant failures in hot weather are probably a symptom of them not being maintained. Australia has already seen a Labor-Green coalition in federal politics; you'd have to be an idiot to spend money maintaining a coal plant in that political environment. Better to let them run down and try to extract money from the government in a crisis situation which seems to be the current strategy.
- ianai 7y ago
  All it takes is a reasonable storage of that energy for later use. I saw a crane design that didn’t require any major tech.
  - roenxi 7y ago

matahwoosh 7y ago

Yes, renewable energy like wind and solar are intermittent, so we will need to invest (a lot) more into energy storage. So far storage has been expensive and need to drop a lot, so it can reach mainstream [1]. [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/08/12/new-us-study-finds-renewable-energy-storage-costs-need-to-drop-90/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/08/12/new-us-study-finds-re...

ianai 7y ago
Good news https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/ https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surpris...
- andromeduck 7y ago
  Looks cool but I just don't see this ever getting to grid scale unless it could be integrated into natural geography like a shear cliff face to give it much greater capacity and throw. Especially with days or weeks of storage like we'd need to cover 2-3 standard deviations of renewable output.
- tasty_freeze 7y ago
  The diagram seems a bit silly. They say the concrete weights are the most expensive part of the system. So many of those blocks go through a small elevation change (or none, in the case of those on the bottom layer).
  - imtringued 7y ago
    Most "gravity" batteries don't consider the cost of the weight. So far the only two types of viable gravity based energy storage systems are pumped hydro storage and hydraulic hydro storage since both take their weights from the surrounding environment. I will admit that the crane idea is at least fixing the flaw of most gravity batteries requiring a separate generator per weight. Doubling the length of the crane arm increases the capacity 4-fold.
- einpoklum 7y ago

hobolord 7y ago

> Clean energy advocates point to batteries as a solution to renewables’ intermittent nature Not just batteries, but an efficient grid that uses all the resources in an optimal manner. This was always the goal in creating microgrids, to be able to not rely on the main grid unless required, and when required the main grid would be able to perhaps use another microgrid's resources.

qroshan 7y ago
I'm pretty sure, the conditions that would lead one's switch to main grid would be similar to everyone resulting overloading the main grid which pretty much the article is alluding to. It matter diddly squat if I save 5c an hour if I have to pay $1000 / hour during over load
ocschwar 7y ago
When controlled through TCP/IP, every air conditioner, ice maker or refrigerator can function as a battery.

jachee 7y ago

I take everything from Bloomberg with a big chunk of ice cream salt, because they are, quoting John Gruber: "... the publication that published “The Big Hack” last October — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true."

andromeduck 7y ago

IIRC the 40% renewables in California only work because we can page from British Columbia's hydro reserves when we have a shortfall and then sell it back for cheap to let them recover. I'm not sure you can go much higher right now without building more dams or retrofitting more of them for pumped storage and there's been enough opposition to recent hydro expansions to make it seem nonviable for the path to 100.

ocschwar 7y ago
Renewables in CA are difficult because when the sun sets, electricity demand is high, but there's no source of solar power to the west. (And coastal wind in CA is hard since the costal shelf drops much deeper than on the East Coast.)
- sieabahlpark 7y ago
  Why would it be more during night? It's much cooler at night compared to the day when AC is used at most buildings.
  - blake1 7y ago
    The solar ramp-down is faster than the AC ramp-down. If you have a dumb thermostat, it runs the AC a fraction of the time which is a function of the outside temperature. However, the temperature stays elevated some hours after sunset, but the solar supply drops off quickly some hours before sunset. Solar supply is pretty well matched to AC demand except for a big mismatch a few hours around sunset. Consider California. Currently, this mismatch is taken up by fossil fuel plants and imports, but the solar demand drops off so fast that they have real difficulty in ramping up as needed. Batteries are a major part of the solution, but another part is improved transmission of wind from states to the east. This will cost less than you might think. California might use 800GWh daily; and yes, installing 800GWh of battery capacity would be prohibitively expensive. However, the wind picks up in the evening just a few hours after the sun goes down, so the batteries really just need to shift some excess power from midday to the evening. When I last calculated this, the additional transmission + batteries would cost around $40 billion. Interestingly, smart thermostats can make this worse: devices with a home/away mode allow the house to warm up when no one is inside because the owner doesn't want to pay for cooling that they won't enjoy. However, as all of these owners return home after work and school, this creates a demand spike; also, the AC units on these houses, which have been allowed to warm up, now need to run far longer into the evening. Really, the home/away feature is a little bit of a hack: the real goal is to minimize cost with some constraints on the temperature, and the utility ought to pay owners to shift their demand forward from evening to midday. This is like getting paid to store energy temporarily. So some combination of demand shifting---either with smart-er thermostats or batteries---adding other generation sources like wind, and some additional transmission, mean that California really can get to 100%. It will not be free, but it seems like the cost is less than $100 billion. Now in Texas, the situation is somewhat reversed. There is too much wind generation, and not enough solar, but the upshot is similar.

tzs 7y ago

Isn't some of this due to Texas' Amish approach to the national grids? What I mean by that is that Texas has little interconnection with the rest of the country. Like the Amish, they mostly only use electricity they make themselves [1]. Unlike most of the rest of the country, this means that when demand is much higher than local capacity they can't import from other states, and when demand is lower than capacity they can't export the excess. So they get big price swings. [1] It's largely a myth that the Amish do not use electricity. What the Amish avoid is tying their infrastructure too closely to the outside. Tying into the grid would be too close, but they generally are OK with electricity generated locally by solar panels, windmills, or gas powered generators.

einpoklum 7y ago

Sometimes, a greener grid means you will be struck by lightning. It's true! If the power cables move from one place to another, a lightning strike could hit you instead of some power cables. Also, sometimes a greener grid means you will fail to win the lottery. A news item about the grid may distract you from putting down the correct numbers!

ptah 7y ago

sound like texas is doing it wrong tbh

bananatron 7y ago

Low tech magazine has a good writeup on energy stability and security as it relates to green energy: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/12/keeping-some-of-the-lights-on-redefining-energy-security.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/12/keeping-some-of-th...