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As solar capacity grows, duck curves are getting deeper in California
- datadrivenangel 3y agoTitle: "As solar capacity grows, duck curves are getting deeper in California" HN title is exactly backwards, but gets at the insight that the operator demand in California is almost at zero -- or neutral -- during the day due to behind the meter solar.
- boringg 3y agoRight, I read this as the duck curve had inverted back to a neutral load curve. To be fair though I feel like I may be fairly familiar to the duck curve compared to most people.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoThis graph (and "net load" generally) includes the subtraction of both behind and in front of the meter solar, as well as wind. Doesn't really affect the point though. Worth noting that this graph represents the single worst/best day of the year, when demand was lowest and supply highest. The trend over years is obvious but sadly we're not as close to carbon free power in California as this would suggest if you assumed it was an average day.
- kccqzy 3y agoNote that demand being at zero doesn't mean we are shutting down power plants. Nuclear, for example, is baseload and basically never shuts down. But California does export a lot of energy when the net demand is low. And of course charging batteries is an even bigger part of it.
- zer00eyz 3y ago>> is baseload and basically never shuts down https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/understanding-negative-prices-in-the-texas-electricity-market/ https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/understanding-negative-pr... Renewables like solar and wind have already changed our grid so dramatically that "baseline" is sometimes finding ways to dump power off the grid. Texas going negative is a harbinger of things to come. The duck curve, the uneven generation of solar and wind, means that "baseline" solutions like nuclear (and coal) aren't responsive or flexible enough.
- AutumnCurtain 3y agoSo what's the answer to smoothing out supply and demand peaks here? More and better batteries? Wind, hydro, etc? All the above?
- zemvpferreira 3y agoDynamic pricing! Get a little smartness in front of large consumption appliances and charge much less when there's too much power. The answer will create itself without any need for breakthrough technologies. (I hope)
- bequanna 3y agoThe current low hanging fruit for demand response would be industrial customers who have some ability to scale up/down power usage.
- vineyardmike 3y agoIt seemed like we were inching towards this with smarthome tech, but now we’re losing ground. Nest was pretty revolutionary at the time with their “learning” thermostat, but aiui most smart thermostats don’t bother with real smartness. Google/nest just spun off their energy team, Ecobee was bought out by a home energy company, so hopefully we’re seeing a new generation of smart energy companies coming.
- miguelazo 3y agoExactly, or at least have more tiers of pricing based on the time of day. I visited another state and was pleasantly surprised to see four time windows that shift based on season. In Southern California, there are only 2, and I doubt most customers have even been transitioned to a TOU plan. So dumb.
- skybrian 3y agoBatteries, hydro, and natural gas (peaker plants) all help directly. Wind isn't really "dispatchable" in the sense that the grid operator can't ask for more wind. I don't believe nuclear power ramps up very easily, and in any case it has to run as much as possible to pay for high capital costs. Power that's going to be on standby much of the time needs to be cheap to build. Anything that usually generates power in the evening will help some, though. Also, the grid operator being able to schedule demand helps too. Things like water heaters and air conditioning can be run in advance and turned off at peak times.
- kylehotchkiss 3y ago> presenting challenges for grid operators. Don't worry, they've planned their revenge: https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/state-regulators-hear-from-residents-concerned-about-sdg-es-proposed-income-based-fixed-rate https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/state-regulators-hear... At least SDGE (and maybe more utils?) are proposing income based fixed rates so that solar homes will have to pay more. I have no issue with fixed grid access fees so that solar users can pay their part, but grid access fees should be equal for every household and the utilities need to figure out how to stop being so profitable and serve their communities
- s0rce 3y agoI don't think grid access fees should be equal personally. Why does someone in a condo in San Jose pay the same as someone in a remote Sierra foothill community (ex. Omo Ranch) with extremely high fire danger which is leading to enormous utility costs. Many of those people might be able to be off-grid if there was incentive (ie. high costs of grid access). You find more off grid homes in Alaska where connection is simply not feasible due to remoteness.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoThe current proposal is the exact opposite. The condo owner with higher income would be paying far more. The fundamental issue is further complicated by the government involvement in infrastructure expansions and funding. In your case, if the government passes a funding bill to bring power into remote communities, why should citizens pay again?
- bequanna 3y agoIsn't it already more expensive for remote customers? Electricity bills are typically separated into generation, transmission and distribution.
- philipkglass 3y agoRemote customers have to pay more to get connected to the grid in the first place, but the higher maintenance costs for low density grid service aren't passed along on an ongoing basis. The problem is that electricity prices in California historically lumped a bunch of infrastructure costs into the per-unit costs for a kilowatt hour of electricity. This was an implicit subsidy for anyone whose costs to the electricity system came disproportionately more from infrastructure maintenance than from energy consumption. It has become a growing problem in recent years as rooftop solar has proliferated, since solar households are (mostly) still connected to and reliant on the grid but are consuming much less energy from the grid. The most straightforward solution would be to split out energy consumption and infrastructure charges and bill each customer for their actual infrastructure needs and energy consumption. This is politically unpalatable because it would raise costs more than average for low-energy-consumption customers (typically lower income households). The better solution that wouldn't hurt lower income households would be to change billing like proposed above but offer state financial assistance to low-income households in proportion to the old implied subsidies. This way the economic distortion would end but low-income groups wouldn't suffer. I don't know why California didn't do this. The worse solution that California has selected is to charge households a fixed connection charge according to income rather than according to infrastructure costs. This maintains the economic distortions of the old billing system since it means that there is no incentive to avoid wasteful infrastructure. If you're affluent and you're going to be soaked on electricity service either way, you might as well live in a big sprawling rural property since you'll not get any economic benefit from living in more infrastructure-thrifty urban or suburban housing.
- AlphaSite 3y agoIsn’t this the case for energy storage technologies? Store excess generation duri bc periods of low demand and sell them back during peak load?
- s0rce 3y agoGrid attached storage is growing and is also a good use of used cells repurposed from EVs (vs. direct recycling and recovery of metals) when their capacity is degraded beyond usefulness for mobile applications they remain valuable for stationary use. Report for CAISO is here: https://www.caiso.com/Documents/2022-Special-Report-on-Battery-Storage-Jul-7-2023.pdf https://www.caiso.com/Documents/2022-Special-Report-on-Batte... Looks like capacity has grown to >16 GWhr last year.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoWhere do you see 16gwh? I am always confused by how CA reports energy storage in GW, not GWH. The number I see most often is 6GW for California storage capacity.
- s0rce 3y agoRight side of Figure 2.2.1
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI still don't understand why GW would be capacity, and GWh is duration. I would think capacity would be gigawatt-hours, and max delivery rate would be gigawatts
- s0rce 3y agoFrom a grid operator perspective its capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity Capacity = Maximum Power Output Capacity is the amount of electricity a generator can produce when it’s running at full blast. This maximum amount of power is typically measured in megawatts (MW) or kilowatts and helps utilities project just how big of an electricity load a generator can handle.
- Analemma_ 3y agoPV solar has been pulling away from CSP in terms of cost, but I wonder if the deepening duck curve means CSP could claw its way back? AIUI one advantage of CSP is that in theory you can heat the working fluid at one point of the day but actually use the energy later.
- Symmetry 3y agoHopefully people are looking for productive ways to use intermittently free electricity.
- NAHWheatCracker 3y agoI guess it depends on your opinions of what's productive, but bitcoin mining is obvious.
- mschaef 3y agoAny large scale interruptible compute, for that matter.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoYou would think so, but not really, because you still have to pay for the hardware but then you're only using it a small fraction of the time. Where it works well is in the opposite direction: You buy the hardware and use it 90%+ of the time but shut it down during a supply shortfall. Then you're making good use of the hardware and helping to amortize the cost of additional generation capacity but save the grid from running out of power in an emergency.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- RangerScience 3y agoWas just thinking that! I know that, for example, Iceland does a lot of the world's aluminum smelting (ore gets shipped in from Australia, for example) b/c the cost of electricity is so low (all the geothermal). Edit: For socal, desalination seems like a good option. Also maybe something involving the recent updates to lithium mining in the Salton Sea...? No clue how much power that takes, and, it sounded like it was paired with geothermal plants, so...
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
- xnx 3y agoWhen solar is abundant, homes should be pre-cooling as low as any occupants can tolerate. Example: 85 degree day, homeowner is at the office, cool the home to 64 degrees when the sun is shining, so that there's less cooling necessary when the owner walks back into the home at 5:30.
- NAHWheatCracker 3y agoHow quickly does heat naturally increase in a house that's been cooled like that? I've only lived in apartments, but I guess it gets back to equilibrium with outside temperature in a few hours once AC is turned off. I guess a couple hours of cheap cooling in the middle of the day might save an hour of expensive cooling later, if it's timed right. I'm interested if there have been any studies or maths to back it up and quantify the effectiveness.
- spywaregorilla 3y agodepends on insulation
- jacquesm 3y agoIn part, but that's not all of it. The bigger driver is the amount of thermal mass.
- coolsunglasses 3y agoUsing the house as a thermal battery (heat or cold, dealer's choice) works great in my house but my house is so well insulated that we have CO2 problems. Planning to setup a fresh air intake with an ERV to mitigate this.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoI mean that's going to depend heavily on insulation, light insulation, how many device you have generating heat (computers, servers, refrigerator, tv), and how many times you enter/leave your place. In a well insulated place with airlock-style entrance (even just a mudroom with solid insulation on both doors) where you're blocking out sunlight and not running a ton of electronics, it could easily take hours and hours.
- MilnerRoute 3y agoThis article is from last June, with statistics on the graph only through May of 2023.
- kccqzy 3y agoThe CAISO (California independent system operator) website has really good visualization that's updated frequently. For example, yesterday (2024-01-25) the net demand in the afternoon dropped to as low as 3.3GW. Then within about three hours the net demand increased to 23GW. It's also obvious that the net demand trend only subtracts utility-scale solar that is directly visible to the utilities. Home solar has definitely dampened demand and this is apparent in the demand curve.
- erikcw 3y agohttps://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx
- ZeroGravitas 3y agohttps://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx#section-net-demand-trend https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx#secti... is the specific chart that corresponds, showing "net demand". And note the graphs truncate above zero depending on content. Activating the "show solar and wind" option adjust this in this case.
- roenxi 3y agoWorth bearing in mind that as of 2022, California also has the second highest retail electricity prices in the US [0] (behind Hawaii, which seems fair enough). Their policies are a bit suspicious, they seem to be leading to bad outcomes. [0] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
- outside1234 3y agoWe are also the richest state by a lot of measures so higher prices from that higher standard of living should almost be expected
- iopq 3y agoNew York is the richest state by GDP per capita
- lotsofpulp 3y agoIncome is a better proxy for “richer state” than GDP per capita: https://dqydj.com/income-by-state/ https://dqydj.com/income-by-state/ At every percentile I checked, Californians have higher incomes than New Yorkers.
- iopq 3y agoExcept for 70th percentile and below down to the 40th percentile
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThanks for the correction! The graph disappears for me around the 80th, so I didn’t know you could click in the invisible part and still see numbers. I assumed the trend continued. The differences, however, are pretty minor (a few hundred dollars to $1,500 at most from what I spot checked), whereas in the differences are thousands and tens of thousands of dollars after the 80th percentile. So it seems like the top 20% in CA earn sufficiently more than the top 20% in NY to far outweigh whatever extra 30% to 70% in NY earn.
- miguelazo 3y agoLook at the Time of Use plans that CA IOUs have on offer and you can see why this is happening. Most of them only have 2 modes: high and low, with only 4-9 as peak. If they actually wanted to manage the duck curve, they could easily put a steep discount at the hours when the problem is most pronounced, and promote EV charging, laundry, etc be done during those hours. This is just another example of the IOUs failing to innovate, their captured regulator doing nothing about it, and ratepayers continuing to pay more for all of it.
- bradleybuda 3y agoMarket solutions based on price signals?!? It’ll never work in California!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jondwillis 3y agoToU isn’t even available for everyone, I was rejected even though I could benefit.
- miguelazo 3y agoWow! Who is your utility?
- bagels 3y agoBattery backup seems like a great way to divorce yourself from the grid and solve this duck problem, except for the cost. Whole house backup batteries are, for some reason much, much more expensive than electric vehicles despite not needing any of the car parts (motor, wheels, seats, chassis, etc.) Comparing the Tesla Powerwall $9,200/13.5kWh ($681/kWh) vs Model 3 Battery: $14,000/75kWh ($186/kWh) Why is there such a premium for house batteries, when there are even less engineering constraints on them? Obviously there are inverters to pay for, but that can't explain a 4x difference in price?
- UncleOxidant 3y agoNot sure why the prices are so much higher when compared to EV batteries, but now that Na-ion batteries are in production we should see a significant reduction in prices for house backup battery systems over the next few years - 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of Li-ion. And while Na-ion has less energy density it's probably better suited for home power backup (less likely to catch fire, works better in low temps, for example) where you don't care about the extra weight.
- anonuser123456 3y agoSodium ion batteries don't have the same longevity as LFP in their current form (2-3k cycles vs 4-8k cycles), so they are not really an economical replacement at this point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- UncleOxidant 3y agoWouldn't batteries used in a home power backup situation be rarely cycling? (unless you completely go off grid as the earlier poster was suggesting)
- maineldc 3y agoIf the battery is being used to address the duck curve, it cycles approximately every day.
- locallost 3y agoThis will only increase worldwide. We are moving from a demand driven to a supply driven grid, as predicted years ago by people like Amory Logins etc. Especially because in most countries the actual cost of electricity is only a small fraction of the actual price. If you can use rooftop solar to charge your car it's several times cheaper.
- Angostura 3y agoFeels like this is an opportunity to offer consumers attractive export rates in the evening peak so they force-discharge excess battery storage
- surajrmal 3y agoFor the most part, I believe most folks with solar in California don't have batteries. Those that do, don't have enough battery to last themselves through the night. The correct policy almost certainly seems like the one which incentivizes them to use their battery at night rather than the grid. As much as people hate it, NEM 3.0 provides those incentives. A policy which has folks exporting battery energy to the grid rather than using it themselves would simply be less efficient unless they have more solar+ battery than they need for themselves, which is really just rewarding rich folks who can over build. In particular rich neighbors will end up generating more power than they need, still destabilizing the grid.
- Angostura 3y agoHow it works in the UK at the moment is there are particular times when the grid knows it is going to be under severe load. Typically it gives about 6 hours warning. Consumers can then charge up their batteries from the grid and reduce load/force discharge during a (usually) 1 or 2 hour slot. It's designed to reduce the need to crank up old coal-fire power stations. I realise this a bit different to the every day duck-curve, but interesting nonetheless
- anovikov 3y agoWeirdly, it's not seen as a problem at all in Europe while we have same or higher proportion of electricity from variable renewables, and lower from fossil fuels here.
- petre 3y agoThe problem is that we don't have enough transport infrastructure to distribute it where it's needed, so what do you do with the excess capacity, smelt aluminium?
- anovikov 3y agoI think eventually this problem will be solved mostly by reducing transportation distances as solar will be wider distributed so on average power will travel a shorter distance. It's not some terribly fantastic amounts of power we are talking about. Full decarbonisation of EU will need only about 5x more renewable electricity than today. In any case, 2050 plan does not call for any drastic increase in transmission capacity. Don't forget that power output from hydro can be greatly increased if needed - total amount of energy produced can't because water in dams is finite - but peak power can be increased rather cheaply.
- test6554 3y agoGrid operators need some power intensive process on the demand side that they can switch on in the middle of the day and switch off at night. Something they can switch on only when needed and ramp up quickly. That or energy storage.
- jcalvinowens 3y agoMy solar panel inverters have this wonderful bug where they refuse to generate power for the rest of the day after a 5-minute power outage. I hope that's the exception rather than the rule...
- wdr1 3y agoDumb question: Why can't we store the excess capacity midday for consumption during the evening? E.g. using using solar to pump reservoirs to a higher elevation then hydropower during the day? I know they do it with natural lakes[1] but couldn't we simply do this more? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/02/climate/hydroelectric-power-energy.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/02/climate/hydro...