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America's dramatic shift from gas power plants to batteries
- coffeebeqn 2y agoNeeds a CDN
- pstrateman 2y agoTheir example is California, where electricity prices are about 0.40-0.65/kWh. Sole source advanced cycle natural gas plants are about 0.08/kWh. That's quite a lot of cost.
- imbusy111 2y ago60%+ of cost on my bill in northern CA is delivery, not generation. Which is dumb, cause it's a fixed cost charged as variable, but that's a separate discussion.
- pstrateman 2y agoThe 0.08/kWh includes delivery, it's more like 0.04/kWh without delivery.
- fyrn_ 2y agoWell, that's just not what you are actually charged for delivery in California.
- caf 2y agoIt's done like that to try and approximately apportion the cost based on each user's use of the infrastructure. The cost is almost entirely driven by peak use though, so what would actually be "fairer" (or at least more cost-reflective) is to charge the transmission cost based on your individual contribution to peak demand on the infrastructure. People kind of hate that though because it's difficult for most consumers to predict or control their contribution to peak demand, and for the same reason it doesn't drive behaviour change / more efficient use of the infrastructure as much as you'd like. In the end it'd probably still be about 60% of your bill anyway.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoSome industrial users are charged in this way, and that's another driver for battery adoption as you can avoid the peak spikes with batteries locally in the same way the larger grid does.
- andoma 2y agoFWIW where I live in Sweden the delivery is charged based on peak usage also for residential customers. Based on average of top three peak kWh/h in a month.
- hackerlight 2y agoIowa has more renewables as a proportion than CA yet has lower electricity prices than the national average. There are a few examples like this. Raw retail prices are not an accurate reflection of anything. You actually have to do your homework properly.
- AdamN 2y agoExactly. The price of Coke is based on where you're buying it not on the production cost.
- pstrateman 2y agoIowa and California are on the same grid. They're both the exact same resource mix because it's the exact same grid. Here's the resource mix https://feature.wecc.org/soti/topic-sections/resources/index.html https://feature.wecc.org/soti/topic-sections/resources/index... The difference in cost is entirely contracting and last mile transmission.
- hollerith 2y agoA quick glance at this next map will show that Iowa is not in WECC (although Idaho is): https://www.wecc.org/_catalogs/masterpage/wecc/Images/WI-Map-260.png https://www.wecc.org/_catalogs/masterpage/wecc/Images/WI-Map... Also, just because 2 states are interconnected doesn't mean that the interconnects have enough capacity for electricity sources to be fungible.
- pstrateman 2y agoYou're right they're on the eastern interconnect, which is even larger and harder to reason about. Edit: After the 2003 blackouts the Eastern interconnect got much more... connected https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/UnitedStatesPowerGrid.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/UnitedSt...
- tech_ken 2y agoSeems more like .26-.46/kWh[0] And at a quick glance that seems more likely (to me) to be a response to capital cost spikes after all the wildfires as well as higher labor costs for the state, rather than because they are shifting to batteries[1]. The delivery layer is definitely bloated though, I agree with you there. Personally I think that's a regulatory capture problem. [0]https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices_selectedareas_table.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices... [1]https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices_selectedareas_table.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...
- hedora 2y agoI honestly think PG&E is going to collapse. It’s $0.49 / kWh here, which means our power bill would be $600-1000 per month if we didn’t have solar. Full off the grid with propane backup costs less than $80K. ($20K each for panels, batteries, install and generator — I’m wildly overestimating intentionally). At $600 per month, it takes 11 years for cutting the cord to pay for itself. More realistic estimates lower that to under 5-6 years. Having said that, there are ecological reasons to give them free electricity from our batteries and excess solar. However, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s cheaper to just build your own power plant and not do business with them. Ultimately, someone needs to pay for grid maintenance, and, given the current insane market distortions, there’s hardly any economic incentive for individuals to continue to do so.
- morsch 2y ago2000 kWh per month is crazy. Presumably that includes an electric car? Otherwise I don't even
- lotsofpulp 2y agoCooling (and heating) a 2.5k+ sq ft home with 10ft+ ceiling and open foyer will get you there easily.
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- epistasis 2y agoEdit: misread comment, please disregard!
- tech_ken 2y agoSeems lower than CA right now: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices_selectedareas_table.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices... I believe historically that hasn't always been true, but I'd bet that after all the bad press Texas utilities are eager to keep their prices as low as possible. In about 20 years I'm guessing we'll find out if that's because they've been skimming off their capital costs or what
- pstrateman 2y agoI didn't say that, it's from batteries and solar and wind. Pretty in Texas is 0.02/kWh right now at wholesale. https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/contours/rtmLmp.html https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/contours/rtmLmp.html
- mjamesaustin 2y agoI'm on LADWP and my rate is .19 per kWh, so you're off by 2-3x. Many municipal power companies are even lower. If you're comparing using PG&E rates, I don't think a utility that has to pay off damages from causing one of the largest wildfires in history is a good metric for comparing costs of different sources of electricity.
- saagarjha 2y agoI don't think the utility is the one paying off damages here.
- whimsicalism 2y ago[flagged]
- katbyte 2y agoUtility just passes the cost onto the ratepayers
- spywaregorilla 2y agoThey're paying significant damages. And it drives them to bankruptcy repeatedly. But at the end of the day there's just one grid.
- saagarjha 2y agoYes and then they turn around and immediately charge us, so it doesn’t seem like it is doing much.
- spywaregorilla 2y agoThere's no "turning around". You're in a place with a problem. The utility is not capable of wishing that away.
- megaman821 2y agoPeaker natural gas plants aren't that cheap. Batteries are competitive with peaker plants.
- infecto 2y agoThis article did not touch on it that well I think. Its less about replacing gas plants and more about replacing the peaking plants. I know this is true in Texas at least. A lot of sites are adding battery systems to replace an older peaker. Its very cost effective.
- mjamesaustin 2y agoI expect batteries will replace peaker plants entirely. They're superb at delivering precise on-demand power in bursts, which is exactly the role those plants used to fill. They also pair exceptionally well with solar power, because grid demand is highest in the few hours around sunset, and batteries can store the extra solar during the day to meter out over that peak period after the sun sets.
- dachworker 2y agoWhat about all the people saying that the longevity of these batteries is too short?
- hackerlight 2y agoAny such argument needs to accurately account for the relative ease of recycling lithium ion batteries, and the existence of batteries with significantly longer lifespans like iron air, compressed air (eg Hydroster) and pumped hydro
- DeathArrow 2y agoWhat is the cost of recycling lithium ion, how long it takes? How much "iron air, compressed air (eg Hydroster) and pumped hydro" does cost?
- sofixa 2y ago> relative ease of recycling lithium ion batteries It's so easy there are no actual working recycling facilities for lithium ion facilities. Multiple projects to do so, including two only in Sweden, but nothing in operation. So maybe it's not economically viable?
- epistasis 2y agoThere are functioning recycling facilities, the primary problem is the lack of input batteries to be recycled. Right now the input is mostly defective batteries from production lines. See for example Redwood Materials: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-18/redwood-material-s-nevada-ev-battery-recycling-facility-attempts-to-rival-china?leadSource=reddit_wall https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-18/redwood-m... Given the expense of shipping materials long distances, it's quite likely that recycling will be far cheaper than processing from freshly obtained materials. But it remains to be seen what innovations will happen in the mining space or in the recycling space to change that balance.
- trashtensor 2y ago> That’s helping to reduce system costs. Costs go down, prices go up every 6 months. Can't explain that.
- fransje26 2y agoPlease think about the poor shareholders..
- unixhero 2y agoHey! There are pension funds in there, how dare you. /end humour
- littlestymaar 2y agoThat's exactly why they are there BTW, making sure that people's pension depends on the results of the financial market is an efficient way to prevent any action targeting the financial apparatus.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- api 2y agoNow look up how much houses cost to build anywhere but the West Coast and maybe parts of the Northeast, and the cost per mile of California’s new high speed rail vs almost anywhere else. It’s not a technical problem. The technology is fine.
- chickenbig 2y agoThe article seems to mix storage capacity and instantaneous power. Lithium batteries tend to be able to discharge their stored energy in perhaps 1 to 4 hours (for instance the Tesla Megapack is between 2 and 3 hours to discharge). Yes batteries are great at flattening the evening peak, when prices presumably spike upwards. That appears to be a good use-case, cycled once a day. Eyeballing the second graph there appears to be around 25 GWh of storage participating on that day, which makes is last equal in terms of energy delivered grouped by type (excepting coal which does not appear to have a line on the graph despite being on the key). Most interesting is the large amount of imports.
- api 2y agoI hardly ever see a popular science article about any kind of energy that gets units right or understands what they mean. Usually they can manage when it’s a conventional power plant by parroting how many “homes” it could power. If it’s anything else forget it.
- LUmBULtERA 2y agoPart of the problem is the source data. In one example the article mentions a battery is 680MW and has 4 hours of discharge. But most of the source data is a LBNL Interconnection Queue report that does not have that data available (the Council of Economic Advisors seems to be using this). I know the source report does not have this data because it is not published in the report and the lab does not have it (I’ve asked them).
- chickenbig 2y agoWell, I've eyeballed the capacity of the storage in the system from the graph at around 25 to 30GWh. The CAISO website does allow downloading per-day CSV files of the 5-minute power on a per-day basis. There is also the question of behind-the-meter batteries which presumably do not show up (neither generated solar nor evening peak consumption saved).
- epistasis 2y agoWhen talking about grid storage, "capacity" refers to power, not to energy, because grid assets are almost universally identified primarily by their power. Changing this tradition for storage assets would be far more confusing than the correct terminology which is used in the article. There's an entire industry, with highly trained professionals, advanced curriculums, etc. etc. etc. that run the grid. It's old technology, but it is still technology. They have chosen to measure battery storage assets primarily by the power capacity, because that's the most important metric for how grids are actually run in practice. Every single time that outsiders are introduced to the grid, there's always some comments that assume that the grid people or the journalists somehow got the usage of MW and GW wrong, but it's actually how it's used in practice by the real engineers who run these things. I have had many many discussions on HN and other forums going over this, but I have not yet found the language to concisely convince people of this fact (and my comment is mostly addressed to other readers of the forum, not to you directly).
- geetee 2y agoThere are a couple of these facilities being planned near me right now. They're receiving immense pushback from people concerned about lithium fires.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoThis isn't a realistic concern is it? I mean, compared to the pollution and fire risks of a plant that literally burns fuel when in use?
- AdamN 2y agoYeah it's totally stupid. We already have fire risk from transformers, oil storage, and especially gas storage: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-12/freeport-lng-blast-created-450-feet-high-fireball-report-shows https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-12/freeport-...
- geetee 2y agoI checked out a Facebook group for a neighboring town's fight against this, and I don't think logical reasoning works. They're too busy praising Florida's HB 1645.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoThat’s a new excuse for nimbys, nice.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- HPsquared 2y agoIt's like the memory hierarchy. Always good to have a new level.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]