3 ms·

I must say I fail to see how any of this is all that new. Winter affects how much air conditioning and heating is needed - and probably even when people go to w

by creer 3y ago

I must say I fail to see how any of this is all that new. Winter affects how much air conditioning and heating is needed - and probably even when people go to work and return. You had to take that into account before solar issues. Now both consumption and production are affected by the season, sure, but that's still a known mechanism. Same for cloudiness vs air conditioning (and heating and lighting). But wait, in most places hydroelectricity availability has always been a factor. And THAT was already variable depending on the season (and anomalous seasons). So anyway, both production and consumption have always been seasonal and weather-dependent. With sometimes chaotic results when a winter is exceptionally mild like last winter in Europe, or strong. Not new either. And then on top of that, in places like the American West, the prices to import electricity from neighboring regions or states have sometimes been chaotic. Also something that had to be taken into account for peaking gas-powered generation.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
nobody is saying it is new in concept, but it is new in magnitude and impact.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> I must say I fail to see how any of this is all that new. The difference is the scale. Traditionally you had a particular amount of base load that would run all the time. Nuclear and coal. The load never dropped below their generation capacity so they never had to stop generating and making money to recover their construction costs. Then you would have natural gas peaker plants that only ran for part of the day, but they still ran pretty much every day. And these would also allow you to shut down base load plants for maintenance during the lower demand season. So they still got plenty of use. Now you want to have solar and batteries which can satisfy the demand 98% of the time -- meaning some backup system has to recover its costs out of the remaining 2% of the time. But that backup system doesn't just have to pick up the extra 10% load because it's extra hot today. If it's cloudy long enough for the batteries to run down and it's night, your output from that system is now zero, but you still have the entire load of the power grid to satisfy. Where does it come from? An entirely parallel generating system that only gets used 2% of the time? The alternative is to keep something like nuclear as e.g. 40% of the grid, and have it generate all the time as it does now. At which point that 40% of the generating capacity is more like 80% of the nighttime load and you're in much better shape to have to make up the last 20% than the entire 100%.
- creer 3y ago
  I think the article is not so much about how more difficult it is to price the energy of a gas peaking plant but instead about changing strategies by developers of such plants. There is the temptation to switch to battery plants now rather than later. There is the change in the equation that such plants used to be mostly priced by the energy provided (in contracted amounts) and that now they are more charging for contingency / continuity service. That is they are charging for a different service: not paid by the kW/hr but by the capability to produce on demand. And then subsidies, permitting, environmental concerns also are changing: easier to build batteries, hard to build gas. And lenders having to follow in the change in profitability mechanism.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > There is the temptation to switch to battery plants now rather than later. But this is the problem, right? They don't serve the same purpose. The battery plant allows you to store surplus solar generation during the day and use it at night. That's useful, but it's not the same thing -- because if it's cloudy for an extended period of time, you don't have surplus solar generation during the day, and your batteries are empty. What then?
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      Batteries can store energy from any source, with solar, wind, nuclear and hydro being top candidates as all might produce in excess of demand.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        The source isn't really the point. If you normally have 200GW of solar generation but it's cloudy so now you have 10% of that, you don't have surplus generation of any kind. The remaining power plants can't even cover the current load, the batteries are being discharged rather than charged and when they run out, what do you do?

by creer 3y ago

s1artibartfast 3y ago

nobody is saying it is new in concept, but it is new in magnitude and impact.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> I must say I fail to see how any of this is all that new. The difference is the scale. Traditionally you had a particular amount of base load that would run all the time. Nuclear and coal. The load never dropped below their generation capacity so they never had to stop generating and making money to recover their construction costs. Then you would have natural gas peaker plants that only ran for part of the day, but they still ran pretty much every day. And these would also allow you to shut down base load plants for maintenance during the lower demand season. So they still got plenty of use. Now you want to have solar and batteries which can satisfy the demand 98% of the time -- meaning some backup system has to recover its costs out of the remaining 2% of the time. But that backup system doesn't just have to pick up the extra 10% load because it's extra hot today. If it's cloudy long enough for the batteries to run down and it's night, your output from that system is now zero, but you still have the entire load of the power grid to satisfy. Where does it come from? An entirely parallel generating system that only gets used 2% of the time? The alternative is to keep something like nuclear as e.g. 40% of the grid, and have it generate all the time as it does now. At which point that 40% of the generating capacity is more like 80% of the nighttime load and you're in much better shape to have to make up the last 20% than the entire 100%.

creer 3y ago
I think the article is not so much about how more difficult it is to price the energy of a gas peaking plant but instead about changing strategies by developers of such plants. There is the temptation to switch to battery plants now rather than later. There is the change in the equation that such plants used to be mostly priced by the energy provided (in contracted amounts) and that now they are more charging for contingency / continuity service. That is they are charging for a different service: not paid by the kW/hr but by the capability to produce on demand. And then subsidies, permitting, environmental concerns also are changing: easier to build batteries, hard to build gas. And lenders having to follow in the change in profitability mechanism.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > There is the temptation to switch to battery plants now rather than later. But this is the problem, right? They don't serve the same purpose. The battery plant allows you to store surplus solar generation during the day and use it at night. That's useful, but it's not the same thing -- because if it's cloudy for an extended period of time, you don't have surplus solar generation during the day, and your batteries are empty. What then?
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Batteries can store energy from any source, with solar, wind, nuclear and hydro being top candidates as all might produce in excess of demand.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      The source isn't really the point. If you normally have 200GW of solar generation but it's cloudy so now you have 10% of that, you don't have surplus generation of any kind. The remaining power plants can't even cover the current load, the batteries are being discharged rather than charged and when they run out, what do you do?