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> 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No offsets shenanigans. Oil prices might be too high today if this is about to hap

> 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No offsets shenanigans. Oil prices might be too high today if this is about to happen to most new factories in the world. No mention of exporting kWh during the summer days and importing during winter nights? Still good as every kWh of solar is a kWh of gas not burnt.

mlyle 4y ago
> No mention of exporting kWh during the summer days and importing during winter nights? Almost certainly a great deal of this. But > > No offsets shenanigans. Means they're not entering some shady arrangement with someone else that is doing green things and doing accounting magic to claim it's about the same. It's much harder to play games when you're talking about netting zero on-site. > Still good as every kWh of solar is a kWh of gas not burnt. This is becoming much less true in many places with a lot of solar, e.g. California.
- iso1631 4y ago
  Is California not able to export electricity? The lowest I see in thee last week was 3.1GW of natural gas for CISO. Similar amount to the lowest gas usage last June and July (2.7GW I think on June 19) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/CISO https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    IIUC it's complicated. Because the grid is, fundamentally, still storage-starved (though that's been improving in recent years), even with export the CA energy companies run into grid over-saturation problems on clear, sunny days. Eventually losses catch up with you pushing the power geographically far enough; they couldn't, for example, power the entire United States off of enough California solar. So I naively suspect the issue is either exporting just saturates the adjacent grids too or other power companies are loathe to crash their prices by letting their grids saturate and therefore use whatever restrictions are allowed against exporting to keep CA's surplus off their grids.
    - iso1631 4y ago
      Except the data seems to show that California Independent System Operator (CISO) has not had a single hour where Gas hasn't produced at least 1GWh of electricity, even in the height of the day in the height of summer with the lowest demand, not even close Maybe there are local bottlenecks inside the CISO network, but that's a very separate problem.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        Interesting. That makes me wonder if the gas plants have to operate at some minimal output level because they can't go all the way into cold shutdown without risking grid integrity should something unexpected happen. Except that I was under the impression that gas-plants, in general, are bootstrappable plants and can kickstart themselves from a cold shutdown.
        namibj 4y ago
        Not all are bootstrap-capable, and many do co-generation for district heating, which can power absorption heat pumps for cooling in the summer. Also a gas turbine core that's spinning can modulate power in seconds, unlike one that has to first be brought up to speed with external power (even if that's from batteries, or an on-site diesel (like AFAIK in the case of the black start capability of the downtown power plant in Wuppertal Barmen)).
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Ultra high voltage lines can reach all the way to the east coast with 10% losses and supposedly about 10 cents per kWh for construction and maintenance. And that's AC, which HVDC might beat. So it seems to me like you could power the US off california solar if they had enough.
      - nonethewiser 4y ago
        That’s pretty incredible to think about. I didn’t think that was feasible.

mlyle 4y ago

> No mention of exporting kWh during the summer days and importing during winter nights? Almost certainly a great deal of this. But > > No offsets shenanigans. Means they're not entering some shady arrangement with someone else that is doing green things and doing accounting magic to claim it's about the same. It's much harder to play games when you're talking about netting zero on-site. > Still good as every kWh of solar is a kWh of gas not burnt. This is becoming much less true in many places with a lot of solar, e.g. California.

iso1631 4y ago
Is California not able to export electricity? The lowest I see in thee last week was 3.1GW of natural gas for CISO. Similar amount to the lowest gas usage last June and July (2.7GW I think on June 19) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/CISO https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  IIUC it's complicated. Because the grid is, fundamentally, still storage-starved (though that's been improving in recent years), even with export the CA energy companies run into grid over-saturation problems on clear, sunny days. Eventually losses catch up with you pushing the power geographically far enough; they couldn't, for example, power the entire United States off of enough California solar. So I naively suspect the issue is either exporting just saturates the adjacent grids too or other power companies are loathe to crash their prices by letting their grids saturate and therefore use whatever restrictions are allowed against exporting to keep CA's surplus off their grids.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    Except the data seems to show that California Independent System Operator (CISO) has not had a single hour where Gas hasn't produced at least 1GWh of electricity, even in the height of the day in the height of summer with the lowest demand, not even close Maybe there are local bottlenecks inside the CISO network, but that's a very separate problem.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      Interesting. That makes me wonder if the gas plants have to operate at some minimal output level because they can't go all the way into cold shutdown without risking grid integrity should something unexpected happen. Except that I was under the impression that gas-plants, in general, are bootstrappable plants and can kickstart themselves from a cold shutdown.
      - namibj 4y ago
        Not all are bootstrap-capable, and many do co-generation for district heating, which can power absorption heat pumps for cooling in the summer. Also a gas turbine core that's spinning can modulate power in seconds, unlike one that has to first be brought up to speed with external power (even if that's from batteries, or an on-site diesel (like AFAIK in the case of the black start capability of the downtown power plant in Wuppertal Barmen)).
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Ultra high voltage lines can reach all the way to the east coast with 10% losses and supposedly about 10 cents per kWh for construction and maintenance. And that's AC, which HVDC might beat. So it seems to me like you could power the US off california solar if they had enough.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      That’s pretty incredible to think about. I didn’t think that was feasible.