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I'm in California where we have tons of solar generation. For much of the state, solar generation slopes off sharply starting at 4PM and it's still hot. That'

by mlyle 5y ago

I'm in California where we have tons of solar generation. For much of the state, solar generation slopes off sharply starting at 4PM and it's still hot. That's when we tend to have the grid emergencies now. Houses with average insulation and pre-heated framing/attics can rise in temperature pretty quickly even if you've aggressively precooled the indoors.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Does your utility have a battery install incentive (Powerwall, LG Chem, etc) [1]? That’s typically what’s attempting to solve for the evening duck curve ramp in CA [2], enough storage to carry through from sunset to evening demand drop off. [1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/demand-side-management/self-generation-incentive-program/participating-in-self-generation-incentive-program-sgip https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene... [2] https://www.caiso.com/documents/flexibleresourceshelprenewables_fastfacts.pdf https://www.caiso.com/documents/flexibleresourceshelprenewab...
- mlyle 5y ago
  Yah, but it's not worth it even with incentive. It's cool for geek factor / having a major UPS and I may go for it for that reason. I think batteries-- distributed or as part of utility-scale deployments-- can help a bit but are not economical enough to use to solve this problem. It's going to take more of everything-- more solar overprovisioning, a lot more wind power, a fair bit of battery, more load shedding and demand pricing, more DC interconnect allowing power to be shipped large distances... and other stuff, like gas-to-power-to-gas and/or more nuclear baseload... to really let us move to an overwhelmingly renewable grid and have stable power. The issue, IMO, is that there's many different timescales/types of shortfall (very cloudy couple weeks in winter with no wind vs. daily duck curve)... and then there's the 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 events, too (heat wave in summer + overcast rolls in at 2:00PM trapping heat in all night with less insolation and little wind). Chemical storage can't blunt the longer timescale shortfalls much.

by mlyle 5y ago

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Does your utility have a battery install incentive (Powerwall, LG Chem, etc) [1]? That’s typically what’s attempting to solve for the evening duck curve ramp in CA [2], enough storage to carry through from sunset to evening demand drop off. [1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/demand-side-management/self-generation-incentive-program/participating-in-self-generation-incentive-program-sgip https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene... [2] https://www.caiso.com/documents/flexibleresourceshelprenewables_fastfacts.pdf https://www.caiso.com/documents/flexibleresourceshelprenewab...

mlyle 5y ago
Yah, but it's not worth it even with incentive. It's cool for geek factor / having a major UPS and I may go for it for that reason. I think batteries-- distributed or as part of utility-scale deployments-- can help a bit but are not economical enough to use to solve this problem. It's going to take more of everything-- more solar overprovisioning, a lot more wind power, a fair bit of battery, more load shedding and demand pricing, more DC interconnect allowing power to be shipped large distances... and other stuff, like gas-to-power-to-gas and/or more nuclear baseload... to really let us move to an overwhelmingly renewable grid and have stable power. The issue, IMO, is that there's many different timescales/types of shortfall (very cloudy couple weeks in winter with no wind vs. daily duck curve)... and then there's the 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 events, too (heat wave in summer + overcast rolls in at 2:00PM trapping heat in all night with less insolation and little wind). Chemical storage can't blunt the longer timescale shortfalls much.