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I am very worried that the article is true. Like everyone, I want clean energy. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford an EV (I’m on my third Tesla; happy

by efitz 3y ago

I am very worried that the article is true. Like everyone, I want clean energy. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford an EV (I’m on my third Tesla; happy owner since 2015). BUT I am extremely concerned that we are destroying the resilience of our energy grid. Case in point was the Texas cold snap the other year. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine and hailstorms and tornadoes happen. I’m extremely concerned that situations like occurred in Texas, and brownouts like have become common in California, are going to become the rule rather than the exception. It’s not just about creature comfort. People tend to die in cold spells when heat is not available. And if we’re all driving electric but there is no charging available, then food can’t get to stores, and people can’t get to stores to buy food, and DoorDash cannot bring food to you, and you go hungry. The bottom line is that you cannot replace fossil fuel energy with green energy unless you have truly massive power storage, which we don’t. You can ADD green energy to fossil fuel without reducing resilience, until you start turning off the fossil fuel plants. Plus fossil fuel plant generation capacity is relatively inelastic; you have to plan ahead for capacity increases (eg increase deliveries of fossil fuel, which means increasing production of fossil fuel, etc.). You can’t just “turn on” a coal plant when it gets cold overnight or you have a week of rain or a hailstorm takes out a solar farm.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago
Wasn't the Texas disaster caused by perverse incentives and not grid composition?
_ea1k 3y ago
> I’m extremely concerned that situations like occurred in Texas, and brownouts like have become common in California, are going to become the rule rather than the exception. That connection is tenuous at best. Think about it, CA struggles the most on the hottest days of summer. Those aren't days that lack sun. They have made some dumb choices, but a lot of the blame on renewables is misguided.
labster 3y ago
I think you’re blaming the wrong things. Climate change is stressing all electrical grids, but it’s obviously worse in Texas where there are no interconnections to the rest of the US. Fossil fuel plants were not resilient in the face of the Texas cold, while solar was. If they had interconnections to another grid, well, it was sunny in California at the time. Storage is a highly tractable problem, and people are making money in energy arbitrage today.
thelastgallon 3y ago
This false narrative must die. There will be lots of energy storage coming online very soon, at zero cost to the grid. All the EVs are sitting idle 23 hours/day. They can store energy when it is negative and car owners can get paid for it[1]. They will supply energy back to the grid when needed -- replacing natural gas peaker plants and get paid for it[2]. The grid will evolve into best grid we can have, distributed, decentralized and resilient. This fearmongering of renewables is like let us stick with circuit switched networks, because we don't understand packet switched networks. Just like the underlying telecom infrastructure changed to packet-switched networks, this change is inevitable, clean, and profitable to all car owners. [1] Energy prices go negative 200 million times/year and growing: https://archive.ph/nFsOk https://archive.ph/nFsOk [2] Tesla Electric customers report making as much as $150 a day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-report-making-150-day/ https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo...
- efitz 3y ago
  Bullshit. EVs do not stay plugged in all the time. So the idea that they will be free capacity is a pipe dream. But let’s say that they do. My EV has a 100kwh battery (when brand new). The average household power usage in Florida where I live is 1500kwh/month, or 50kwh/day (obviously few people charging EVs). So assuming 100% efficiency, and assuming the pessimistic California brownout length of 2 hours (average is 1-2 hours), my EV could power 24 homes during one brownout before being fully discharged. Less than one percent of homeowners own EVs, and only about a quarter percent of renters, so we’re looking at having well less than a quarter of the power we need just for residences, assuming every EV was plugged in. Add in commercial power usage and the fact that people will still want to get around and you’ll find that EVs are not a viable power storage system. And they couldn’t have helped in TX where the outage was up to 17 days in some areas.
  - thelastgallon 3y ago
    You keep pushing a false narrative of renewables failing in TX. Those failures are fossil fuel failures. More than half of ERCOT’s winter generating capacity, largely powered by natural gas, was offline due to the storm, an estimated 45 gigawatts, according to Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/texas-grid-fail-natural-gas-coal-nuclear-18163855.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlins...
Loocid 3y ago
>Plus fossil fuel plant generation capacity is relatively inelastic; you have to plan ahead for capacity increases (eg increase deliveries of fossil fuel, which means increasing production of fossil fuel, etc.). You can’t just “turn on” a coal plant when it gets cold overnight or you have a week of rain or a hailstorm takes out a solar farm. Thats only true for coal. Gas plants can be very flexible.
abathur 3y ago
Capacity lost during winter storm Uri was due to power infrastructure that wasn't sufficiently winterized, and that shortfall was broad across the energy mix. Most of the unexpected capacity offline was actually natgas. This is unambiguous in even an analysis commissioned by the Texas Oil and Gas Association: https://docs.txoga.org/files/2644-4-22-21-enverus_txoga_winter-storm-uri-natural-gas-analysis.pdf https://docs.txoga.org/files/2644-4-22-21-enverus_txoga_wint... Page/slide 21 is particularly instructive on this point. If you believe anything else, you need to take a pretty critical look at whoever's been disinforming you on this topic and why.
ragebol 3y ago
Coal and gas unburnt because of solar and wind generation is still energy stored. The rate at which you consume/burn it is less constant and if renewables deliver eg. 30% of power on average over a year, you need 30% less burnable stuff, which is a win. No need for brownouts, especially in winter when solar is low already and fossil plants would already take most of the load.
VintageCool 3y ago
The Texas grid has been buckling because of extreme weather events and rapidly increasing load. Texas broke electricity demand records 11 times last summer [2022] and 9 times this summer. The rapid deployment of renewables and grid-scale batteries is saving the Texas grid from brownouts and blackouts. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-power-use-hits-record-again-amid-heat-wave-2023-08-09 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-power-use-hits-record... Grid-scale batteries have also been saving California from blackouts. Back in 2020, the California grid wasn't able to handle the peak demand of 46.8 GW during a heat wave and resulted in blackouts. But in 2022, thanks to the rapid deployment of several GW of additional batteries, California weathered a peak of 51.4 GW without issue. https://www.icf.com/insights/energy/battery-energy-storage-blackouts-california https://www.icf.com/insights/energy/battery-energy-storage-b...
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  GW hours of batteries you mean?
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    California's utility batteries can supply 5GW for a few hours. In the morning today they were charging at about 2.8GW and then early evening output peaked at 3.5GW. They're basically competing with natural gas peaking plants. You could argue they're buying natural gas power in the morning for cheap and selling it in the early evening when it's expensive.
    - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
      Oh okay. I’m curious what the capacity is.

by efitz 3y ago

teaearlgraycold 3y ago

Wasn't the Texas disaster caused by perverse incentives and not grid composition?

_ea1k 3y ago

> I’m extremely concerned that situations like occurred in Texas, and brownouts like have become common in California, are going to become the rule rather than the exception. That connection is tenuous at best. Think about it, CA struggles the most on the hottest days of summer. Those aren't days that lack sun. They have made some dumb choices, but a lot of the blame on renewables is misguided.

labster 3y ago

I think you’re blaming the wrong things. Climate change is stressing all electrical grids, but it’s obviously worse in Texas where there are no interconnections to the rest of the US. Fossil fuel plants were not resilient in the face of the Texas cold, while solar was. If they had interconnections to another grid, well, it was sunny in California at the time. Storage is a highly tractable problem, and people are making money in energy arbitrage today.

thelastgallon 3y ago

This false narrative must die. There will be lots of energy storage coming online very soon, at zero cost to the grid. All the EVs are sitting idle 23 hours/day. They can store energy when it is negative and car owners can get paid for it[1]. They will supply energy back to the grid when needed -- replacing natural gas peaker plants and get paid for it[2]. The grid will evolve into best grid we can have, distributed, decentralized and resilient. This fearmongering of renewables is like let us stick with circuit switched networks, because we don't understand packet switched networks. Just like the underlying telecom infrastructure changed to packet-switched networks, this change is inevitable, clean, and profitable to all car owners. [1] Energy prices go negative 200 million times/year and growing: https://archive.ph/nFsOk https://archive.ph/nFsOk [2] Tesla Electric customers report making as much as $150 a day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-report-making-150-day/ https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo...

efitz 3y ago
Bullshit. EVs do not stay plugged in all the time. So the idea that they will be free capacity is a pipe dream. But let’s say that they do. My EV has a 100kwh battery (when brand new). The average household power usage in Florida where I live is 1500kwh/month, or 50kwh/day (obviously few people charging EVs). So assuming 100% efficiency, and assuming the pessimistic California brownout length of 2 hours (average is 1-2 hours), my EV could power 24 homes during one brownout before being fully discharged. Less than one percent of homeowners own EVs, and only about a quarter percent of renters, so we’re looking at having well less than a quarter of the power we need just for residences, assuming every EV was plugged in. Add in commercial power usage and the fact that people will still want to get around and you’ll find that EVs are not a viable power storage system. And they couldn’t have helped in TX where the outage was up to 17 days in some areas.
- thelastgallon 3y ago
  You keep pushing a false narrative of renewables failing in TX. Those failures are fossil fuel failures. More than half of ERCOT’s winter generating capacity, largely powered by natural gas, was offline due to the storm, an estimated 45 gigawatts, according to Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/texas-grid-fail-natural-gas-coal-nuclear-18163855.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlins...

Loocid 3y ago

>Plus fossil fuel plant generation capacity is relatively inelastic; you have to plan ahead for capacity increases (eg increase deliveries of fossil fuel, which means increasing production of fossil fuel, etc.). You can’t just “turn on” a coal plant when it gets cold overnight or you have a week of rain or a hailstorm takes out a solar farm. Thats only true for coal. Gas plants can be very flexible.

abathur 3y ago

Capacity lost during winter storm Uri was due to power infrastructure that wasn't sufficiently winterized, and that shortfall was broad across the energy mix. Most of the unexpected capacity offline was actually natgas. This is unambiguous in even an analysis commissioned by the Texas Oil and Gas Association: https://docs.txoga.org/files/2644-4-22-21-enverus_txoga_winter-storm-uri-natural-gas-analysis.pdf https://docs.txoga.org/files/2644-4-22-21-enverus_txoga_wint... Page/slide 21 is particularly instructive on this point. If you believe anything else, you need to take a pretty critical look at whoever's been disinforming you on this topic and why.

ragebol 3y ago

Coal and gas unburnt because of solar and wind generation is still energy stored. The rate at which you consume/burn it is less constant and if renewables deliver eg. 30% of power on average over a year, you need 30% less burnable stuff, which is a win. No need for brownouts, especially in winter when solar is low already and fossil plants would already take most of the load.

VintageCool 3y ago

The Texas grid has been buckling because of extreme weather events and rapidly increasing load. Texas broke electricity demand records 11 times last summer [2022] and 9 times this summer. The rapid deployment of renewables and grid-scale batteries is saving the Texas grid from brownouts and blackouts. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-power-use-hits-record-again-amid-heat-wave-2023-08-09 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-power-use-hits-record... Grid-scale batteries have also been saving California from blackouts. Back in 2020, the California grid wasn't able to handle the peak demand of 46.8 GW during a heat wave and resulted in blackouts. But in 2022, thanks to the rapid deployment of several GW of additional batteries, California weathered a peak of 51.4 GW without issue. https://www.icf.com/insights/energy/battery-energy-storage-blackouts-california https://www.icf.com/insights/energy/battery-energy-storage-b...

teaearlgraycold 3y ago
GW hours of batteries you mean?
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  California's utility batteries can supply 5GW for a few hours. In the morning today they were charging at about 2.8GW and then early evening output peaked at 3.5GW. They're basically competing with natural gas peaking plants. You could argue they're buying natural gas power in the morning for cheap and selling it in the early evening when it's expensive.
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    Oh okay. I’m curious what the capacity is.