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You have to find someone to buy this peak power.
by Iwan-Zotow 5y ago
You have to find someone to buy this peak power.
- adgjlsfhk1 5y agoexport it to California so they can desalinate more water?
- bilbo0s 5y ago1 the canals in question are already in California. 2 they have more than enough peak power to desalinate as it stands. Even in the case that they wanted more, there are better places to site those solar resources than on those canals. (Which canals they'd be better off not using in the future in any case.)
- ncmncm 5y agoThere are canals in places other than California. The best choices for where to site solar panel farms have not been established. Siting them over canals or floating in reservoirs, besides cutting evaporation and biofouling, makes them 3% more efficient; at 12 GW, that is an extra 360 MW you would not have got from them on a roof somewhere. Siting them over farmland also makes them more efficient (perhaps less so) but improves crop yield by reducing heat stress and (again) water loss.
- bilbo0s 5y agoYou don't get efficiency boosts from dry canals. Not thinking a little bit ahead is what got all those states into the mess they are in today. California should definitely not assume a future where those canals are in use, and then base their power generation on that assumption.
- ncmncm 5y agoHint: 3% less power is not the same as no power.
- bilbo0s 5y agoBut why not get MORE power via generation resources sited with an eye towards better logistical availability? Rather than trying to force the use of canals that will have no logical role in power generation in a future where said canals will likely be empty.
- ncmncm 5y agoThere will be an unlimited market for peak power. But excess power will go first into topping up whatever is the most efficient local overnight storage medium, such as batteries, pumped hydro or compressed air, drawn down last night if both local wind and long-distance transmission availability flagged. Longer-term storage will be less round-trip-efficient media where the medium is industrially valuable and shippable, such as hydrogen, ammonia, liquified air, or even methane, and tankage is very cheap. Local tankage will be needed for not much longer than until the next shipment arrives from the tropics, as is done now with oil and LNG. Synthesis equipment will run at all times except when the tanks are being drawn down, generating revenue. Power from long-distance transmission will usually be cheaper than drawing down on tanked storage that would then need to be re-filled, interrupting revenue. Desalination will find itself in difficult competition, at large scale, with industrial moneymakers and long-distance transmission, but in places it will be an important sink. But anyway California uses rather more than 12 GW during the peak of local solar generation.
- tenuousemphasis 5y agoUnpopular but feasible answer: bitcoin miners. They can be located anywhere there is power and internet. With Starlink, there can be internet anywhere.
- ncmncm 5y agoIt is a cheap and meaningless observation. In another decade, a bitcoin will be as valuable as a Cabbage-Patch doll.
- tenuousemphasis 5y agoI'll take that bet.
- jessaustin 5y agoIf only there were a way to benefit from certainty about the future value of a financial asset!
- labcomputer 5y ago(Almost) Free EV charging between 10am and 3pm.
- mojomark 5y ago> You have to find someone to buy this peak power. Use the solar energy to pump water back up from the outgoing damn flow.