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Once again, California exceeds 100% of demand on its main grid with
- jandrese 3y ago...wind, water, and solar. Bad news for companies that make their profit by burning dead dinosaurs.
- lispisok 3y agoeia.gov statistics disagree. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
- epistasis 3y agoEIA stats are pretty strong that fossil fuels are on their way out: >The US has posted its largest annual volume of new capacity in 20 years [with most of the growth coming from renewables] per @BloombergNEF using @EIAgov data https://twitter.com/ShanuMathew93/status/1779902695719006648 https://twitter.com/ShanuMathew93/status/1779902695719006648 > Solar and battery storage to make up 81% of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2024 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424#:~:text=February%2015%2C%202024-,Solar%20and%20battery%20storage%20to%20make%20up%2081%25%20of%20new,electric%2Dgenerating%20capacity%20in%202024&text=Developers%20and%20power%20plant%20owners,Preliminary%20Monthly%20Electric%20Generator%20Inventory https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424#:~:tex....
- lispisok 3y agoFossil production and consumption is still increasing. Once you get all new capacity coming online to 100% renewables then you have to start replacing existing fossil fuel capacity with renewables. It is a very big hill to climb
- zizee 3y ago> Fossil production and consumption is still increasing. Are you talking worldwide? Or in the US? Because in the US and many other advanced economies total energy consumption is still increasing, but the total amount from fossil fuels is shrinking. At a certain point it is going to no longer make economic sense to continue to build new fossil fuel based energy production (it already doesn't if externalities are accounted for). It is a big hill to climb, but as the saying goes, "people vote with their wallets". Economic forces are pretty hard to resist.
- philipkglass 3y agoAccording to the data on the page that you linked, https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/, fossil consumption is past its peak. You can download the data as a CSV file from the hamburger menu on the chart "U.S. Primary Energy Consumption by Major Sources." In the US primary energy from fossil fuel consumption was higher in 2007 than it was in 2022: 85.78 quads in 2007, 79.102 quads in 2022. Production is unfortunately still rising because fuel exports provide an outlet for production that isn't consumed domestically.
- mschaef 3y agoThe problem is what you'd expect - wind and solar are what are known as energy resources. They are not capacity resources. This is another way of saying what you already know - wind doesn't work in still air and solar doesn't work at night. This presents a handful of challenges: * Generators make a lot of their money when they run. WWS can displace thermal units, reduce their runtime/profitability and make them less economically viable. (Even though they currently provide essential services that cannot be replicated with wind or solar) * Solar falling off at night (or during an eclipse) requires thermal generation to step in to make up the loss. Just as an example, the eclipse cost TX something like 14,000MW of generation over four hours. That's ~25% of grid load around the time. They had to turn on 14,000MW of generation over two hours, turn it back off over the next two, and then ramp it all back up as night fell. This is not easy to do. * Wind and Solar are typically both distributed and remote. Power needs to be moved over long distances from many places. This adds both cost and complexity, but also the need for reactive support for voltage stability, etc. I tend to support wind/solar, but you shouldn't lose sight of the fact it's very complex to get it right.
- drewda 3y agoInstead of going to Twitter, just go directly to the source for up-to-the-minute and historical charts: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
- ro_bit 3y agoWhat does the "imports" chart mean? Is energy imported from outside the grid renewable?
- mschaef 3y agoIt means what it says - imported from a tie to another adjacent network. It can be renewable, but does not have to be.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoHistorically, this has been hydro from surrounding states (like Washington, but also from Canadian BC). I'm not sure what it is today given current water challenges.
- krasin 3y ago> Historically, this has been hydro from surrounding states (like Washington, but also from Canadian BC). I'm not sure what it is today given current water challenges. And coal from Utah. That's still huge at night.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoIf you look at the connection map, https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-United-States-showing-the-Eastern-Interconnection-the-Western-Interconnection-and_fig1_256064655 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-United-States-sho..., I guess the high capacity DC line that serves vegas could be siphoning some Utah power into socal, but there is much more capacity in the connectivity from Oregon and Washington. Reading more, there are two high voltage DC lines into SoCal: one from a coal plant in Delta Utah (2.4 Gw, not just from that plant, but let’s say majority coal), the other from a hydro conversion station on the Columbia in Oregon/washington (3.1 Gw). Looking at the map above it looked like the latter one terminated in Las Vegas but I guess it actually goes into SoCal.
- martinbaun 3y agoProbably gonna get downvoted, but the only sane solution is nuclear. Also, I don't want a nuclear power plant in my backyard. I know that's the problem :)
- neffy 3y ago5% nuclear vs 80% renewables on the chart linked. Really, the sane solution is the one that brings down the financial system (debt for existing oil plant and nuclear is substantial, and has decade long write down periods attached to it.)
- poniko 3y agoA mix is the best solution, a stable baseline of nuclear is great for stabilizing the grid. Just get rid of the petrolium, coal and gas.
- mschaef 3y agoA mix is the only solution at the moment.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoThey have one: Diablo Canyon. I understand there are issues, however...
- epistasis 3y agoThe problem isn't that nobody wants nuclear in their backyards, lots of people do (the people that already have nuclear in their backyard). The problem with nuclear is the same one that it's always been: it's too expensive. Nobody wants to go bankrupt. Meanwhile we have cheap batteries and super super cheap solar and wind to charge them.
- nradov 3y agoWhere are the cheap batteries? List prices are gradually coming down but availability remains limited for any large projects. And if you actually want to store a useful amount of energy, that takes a lot more than just a big box full of battery cells.
- johlindenbaum 3y agoBig supporter of renewables, but what's missing here is the make up of what's getting imported. The overnight baseline appears to still be majority imports from, I assume, non-renewables?
- epistasis 3y agoImports are only 20% of total generation. Of that, 58% are renewables/nuclear/hydro, 19% are fossil fuel, and 22% are unspecified according to this: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/2021-total-system-electric-generation https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
- gandalfian 3y ago"with renewables". (Not sure the headline makes sense without that?)
- macintux 3y agoHN automatically truncates subjects past some certain length.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dgrin91 3y agoHow does this stack up with the other relatively recent news that Cali was asking people to unplug their EVs because the grid couldn't handle it? Was that just due to the fluctuating nature of renewables (cloudy, windless days)?
- ilya_m 3y agoWhat recent news are you referring to? Does it put your concerns to rest: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/california-electric-cars-charge/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/california-electric-cars-c...?
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoI love how the answer is a defacto yes, and it still says mixed. They even say so in the first paragraph.
- striking 3y ago> The above-displayed meme was inaccurate. California did not tell "everyone" not to charge their electric cars. In reality, residents were asked to charge their cars at a time other than when the energy supply was limited.
- frumper 3y agoMany utilities have much better rates for charging off peak anyway.
- vineyardmike 3y ago(2021) > A voluntary alert advising Californians to conserve energy during a specific time frame was issued in mid-June 2021 to “help balance supply and demand” on the power grid during an extreme heatwave in the region. Unplugging electric vehicles during peak usage times was one recommended measure included in a list of power-saving strategies issued by the California System Operator.
- drdrey 3y agofor 0.25-6h per day… that’s a weird benchmark
- DarmokJalad1701 3y agoGood news for Casey Handmer. A bunch of this excess generation can be soaked up by methane generation. https://terraformindustries.com/ https://terraformindustries.com/
- windows2020 3y agoHow is this interpreted any other way than power generation is inadequate and temperamental sources are being used to accommodate the inadequacy and this won't work when conditions aren't right... like on a cloudy day?
- vineyardmike 3y ago> power generation is inadequate and temperamental sources are being used > this won't work when conditions aren't right... like on a cloudy day 30 of the last 38 days had 100% renewables covering demand. There was no power outages during the other 8 days. How is this interpreted in any other way than California renewables provide significant coverage of power demand, and California has the infrastructure for the other moments in time.
- jonhohle 3y ago> had 100% renewables covering demand. For between 15 mins and 6 hours. Last I checked there are 24 hours in the day. (Edit to add: I love solar. I have solar panels installed on my house. I sell more solar than I use from the grid. I also have to rely on grid power for 14-18 hours each day.)
- blackeyeblitzar 3y agoThe US needs to tax its biggest corporations heavily and funnel the funds into rebuilding its infrastructure sector, including the entire nuclear industry. That’s the only way we can have passively safe reactors everywhere.
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoPrice of power in California is 32c per kwh, in Virginia I pay 13c. Quick search shows at least 80% of my power comes from nuclear and natural gas, so it's not like we're putting out rediculous emissions over here. Just thought it was important to put into perspective the cost of this.
- otterley 3y agoThe price of electricity in CA is higher largely due to overhead, not input cost. (The price varies widely by the incumbent utility; PG&E is expensive, while Santa Clara power sitting right in the middle of their territory is 50% cheaper.) And if we all paid for externalities, the cost of fossil fuels would be much higher than they are.
- abeppu 3y agoI'm curious though how much of the price we pay for power in CA is because of power generation, versus how much goes to power distribution infrastructure and maintenance. The CPUC seems on course to a pricing change in CA which will see our price per kwh drop, but will introduce a new fixed fee just to be connected to the grid, under the claim that buildings which generally are powered by their own solar/batteries are not contributing to the cost of e.g. wildfire risk remediation and tree-trimming. But I haven't seen a clear analysis showing the breakdown of how much of costs go to proactive maintenance, vs generation, vs giant settlements for having burned whole towns, etc.
- renewiltord 3y agoSacramento has 14c/kWh in summer and 11.5c/kWh in winter and that's 1/3 nat gas and the rest hydro and renewable.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago6.8¢ here in Wyoming for wind imported from Idaho; regular is 5.6¢ [1]. Our power company is a local coöperative and doesn’t burn down half the state every decade. [1] https://www.lvenergy.com/energy-efficiency/learn-about-green-power/ https://www.lvenergy.com/energy-efficiency/learn-about-green...
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- dividefuel 3y agoHappy to see progress here, but days like today seem like easy targets for meeting demand with renewables: Most of the state seems to be between 55-75°F (low demand), cloud cover seems light, and the days are reasonably long (high supply). Again, progress is nice. But I'm still skeptical how well the state's grid can handle another major statewide heatwave, to say nothing about the transition to EVs.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoThat's the beauty of it: you just keep adding solar, wind, and batteries. And with battery cell manufacturing scaling up [1] [2] [3] [4], I would expect utility scale storage deployments to skyrocket (pushing out fossil generation). This was always the future, it simply arrived earlier than expected. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-12/china-already-makes-as-many-batteries-as-the-entire-world-wants https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-12/china-... | https://archive.today/8Dy4D https://archive.today/8Dy4D ("China Already Makes as Many Batteries as the Entire World Wants") [2] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/04/12/catl-unveils-first-mass-producible-battery-storage-with-zero-degradation/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/04/12/catl-unveils-first-ma... ("CATL unveils first mass-producible battery storage with zero degradation") [3] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/lithium-ion-battery-capacity-to-grow-steadily-to-2030 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... ("Lithium-ion battery capacity to grow steadily to 2030") [4] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61202 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61202 ("U.S. battery storage capacity expected to nearly double in 2024")
- ojosilva 3y agoHow about the development of large storage infrastructure? Any major efforts or breakthroughs there? That would be the "killer app" for these stellar renewable supply milestones.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoNot to my knowledge. You overbuild renewables and curtail in the low demand seasons. Fusion at a distance throwing off that power constantly. https://www.mr-sustainability.com/stories/2021/overbuilding-solar-wind https://www.mr-sustainability.com/stories/2021/overbuilding-... https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy/atlas-of-100-percent-renewable-energy https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy... https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/14/overbuilding-solar-at-up-to-4-times-peak-load-yields-a-least-cost-all-renewables-grid/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/14/overbuilding-solar-at...
- bcrosby95 3y ago> supply has exceeded demand for 0.25-6 h per day. Cool, but still a long ways to go.
- Ferret7446 3y agoMaybe that excess could have been used to offset the regular power outages we're seeing here in CA? The demand is zero when the power is out.
- george-in-sd 3y agoExcluding Nuclear/Hydro, 35% of California's energy is from intermittent energy. Germany is around 45% so there is room to grow. I suspect it will get more and more expensive to scale past 50% -- the state will be required to keep all of the non-intermittent energy infrastructure for cloudy days.