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The US has majorly been transitioning to both natural gas AND renewables. In fact, practically the only facilities being built for the last decade have been wi

The US has majorly been transitioning to both natural gas AND renewables. In fact, practically the only facilities being built for the last decade have been wind and solar and in massive quantities. If you look in the generation queues of the various RTO/ISOs (organizations that manage which units run and at what level for large parts of the grid) the only thing expected to be built is even more wind and solar along with storage. Multiple GW of wind capacity is being added each year, so it isn't slowing. Why is this happening? It's complicated, but it's basically economics at this point. What problems do we face? Well, sometimes wind and solar aren't available. You can solve this in three ways. The first is to have thermal generation respond when the wind/solar dips. This can be tricky as thermal generators (outside of natural gas) weren't designed to move that fast. They were designed to run near max for most of their life. Natural gas peakers are more effective here. Another option is storage, which can hold you over until you get more wind/solar again. However, we would need a massive amount of storage built for this to be effective. A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway, but practically speaking, the demand doesn't participate today. In actuality, I expect a combination of all of that to become common place and it is what the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been pushing for.

alehul 6y ago
> A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway I don’t think any of these solutions are viable to prove we can be reliant on renewables, and this one especially would not resonate with a populace. Just at a consumer level, think of everything you use power for on a daily basis. It’s a cornerstone of modern life, and you can’t expect society to backtrack.
- 7thaccount 6y ago
  I agree it would be unpopular, but it's what the US has been pushing towards for a long time with deregulation and it's the dream of the economists as the prices should be more transparent and optimal.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
    In my country we already have a system where the price of electricity fluctuates hourly depending on supply and demand. The result for individuals: many people just subscribe to a flat rate from the electricity companies to avoid the uncertainty and pay the same predictable price each month (but of course, this predictable price comes at a significant markup with respect to the "free market" price). The rest of us go with the fluctuating price but just don't bother, because we are not going to spend substantial amount of time every day looking at how the prices evolve to decide when we turn stuff on or off. So we just read the bill every two months, not even making an effort to understand it, grumble a bit and go on with our lives. I suppose there may be some people who actually try to optimize, but I don't know any - from what I know, people short on income tend to go with the flat rate because they can't afford the uncertainty. I don't know how it works in industrial applications. I do know that some industries (e.g. steel) complain about the fluctuating prices because they operate 24/7, and basically they reaction is that if the government doesn't subsidize their electricity bill, they'll just close and go to some other country. So my guess is it's not really working either.
    - 7thaccount 6y ago
      Interesting comment. Thank you! Does anyone have an automated system in place that would automatically curtail yourself when price gets above X at Y time?
      - Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
        The theory was that such systems should exist, but I haven't heard of any at the moment and Google doesn't seem to find any either. And this is several years after the system was implemented.
Retric 6y ago
The most economical option is it have a massive oversupply of wind and solar as their significantly less expensive than any alternative. You can model this as (cost per kWh of cheapest alternative) / (cost of rentable per kWh) = marginal oversupply you want. So, if hypothetically Solar was 2c/kWh and peaking natural gas was 6c/kWh then you would want to add more solar until 3kWh of new Solar only offset 1kWh of natural gas with the other 2kWh being wasted. Which does not mean 2/3 of total solar energy would be wasted. Further, storage and energy markets also complicate things. However, it does illustrate why you want an over supply of the cheapest option even if not all of it gets used.
- 7thaccount 6y ago
  There is a problem with the massive oversupply idea though. It assumes wind locations are fairly randomized and I don't think that is entirely true. Meaning you can build more in area "x", but if it isn't blowing a quarter mile away, it probably isn't blowing near you either. Think of this more as a conceptual argument. Now oversupply would help if it's just blowing a little bit I suppose.
  - mmm_grayons 6y ago
    Exactly. The big blocker to a full-scale rollout of renewables is storage and it has been this way for years. We're still facing the problem of the duck curve, which has been known for years: wind and solar peak at the wrong times because peak load is actually in the evening.
  - Retric 6y ago
    It doesn’t matter if supply sinks up 1:1 because demand doesn’t. If solar always produced the same energy evenly form exactly 10AM to 6PM EST for some parts of the day you could have an over supply of solar and at other parts of the day you would have an under supply. The same is true on the weekend vs weekday. Even seasonal power demand is less in spring and fall than summer and winter due to heating and cooling. Though when selecting individual locations for wind, different locations favor different time of the day. And of course solar output varies significantly east/west and based on local weather conditions. That all gets modeled ahead of time and in practice get reflected in market rates.

alehul 6y ago

> A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway I don’t think any of these solutions are viable to prove we can be reliant on renewables, and this one especially would not resonate with a populace. Just at a consumer level, think of everything you use power for on a daily basis. It’s a cornerstone of modern life, and you can’t expect society to backtrack.

7thaccount 6y ago
I agree it would be unpopular, but it's what the US has been pushing towards for a long time with deregulation and it's the dream of the economists as the prices should be more transparent and optimal.
- Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
  In my country we already have a system where the price of electricity fluctuates hourly depending on supply and demand. The result for individuals: many people just subscribe to a flat rate from the electricity companies to avoid the uncertainty and pay the same predictable price each month (but of course, this predictable price comes at a significant markup with respect to the "free market" price). The rest of us go with the fluctuating price but just don't bother, because we are not going to spend substantial amount of time every day looking at how the prices evolve to decide when we turn stuff on or off. So we just read the bill every two months, not even making an effort to understand it, grumble a bit and go on with our lives. I suppose there may be some people who actually try to optimize, but I don't know any - from what I know, people short on income tend to go with the flat rate because they can't afford the uncertainty. I don't know how it works in industrial applications. I do know that some industries (e.g. steel) complain about the fluctuating prices because they operate 24/7, and basically they reaction is that if the government doesn't subsidize their electricity bill, they'll just close and go to some other country. So my guess is it's not really working either.
  - 7thaccount 6y ago
    Interesting comment. Thank you! Does anyone have an automated system in place that would automatically curtail yourself when price gets above X at Y time?
    - Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
      The theory was that such systems should exist, but I haven't heard of any at the moment and Google doesn't seem to find any either. And this is several years after the system was implemented.

Retric 6y ago

The most economical option is it have a massive oversupply of wind and solar as their significantly less expensive than any alternative. You can model this as (cost per kWh of cheapest alternative) / (cost of rentable per kWh) = marginal oversupply you want. So, if hypothetically Solar was 2c/kWh and peaking natural gas was 6c/kWh then you would want to add more solar until 3kWh of new Solar only offset 1kWh of natural gas with the other 2kWh being wasted. Which does not mean 2/3 of total solar energy would be wasted. Further, storage and energy markets also complicate things. However, it does illustrate why you want an over supply of the cheapest option even if not all of it gets used.

7thaccount 6y ago
There is a problem with the massive oversupply idea though. It assumes wind locations are fairly randomized and I don't think that is entirely true. Meaning you can build more in area "x", but if it isn't blowing a quarter mile away, it probably isn't blowing near you either. Think of this more as a conceptual argument. Now oversupply would help if it's just blowing a little bit I suppose.
- mmm_grayons 6y ago
  Exactly. The big blocker to a full-scale rollout of renewables is storage and it has been this way for years. We're still facing the problem of the duck curve, which has been known for years: wind and solar peak at the wrong times because peak load is actually in the evening.
- Retric 6y ago
  It doesn’t matter if supply sinks up 1:1 because demand doesn’t. If solar always produced the same energy evenly form exactly 10AM to 6PM EST for some parts of the day you could have an over supply of solar and at other parts of the day you would have an under supply. The same is true on the weekend vs weekday. Even seasonal power demand is less in spring and fall than summer and winter due to heating and cooling. Though when selecting individual locations for wind, different locations favor different time of the day. And of course solar output varies significantly east/west and based on local weather conditions. That all gets modeled ahead of time and in practice get reflected in market rates.