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A big factor is that battery storage wasn't there technologically until recently. You could cover Arizona in solar, but that just pushes the price of power dow

A big factor is that battery storage wasn't there technologically until recently. You could cover Arizona in solar, but that just pushes the price of power down during daytime hours to $0. It doesn't help during the pinch times of late afternoon through sundown, when everything is still really hot, but solar produces significantly less. We need tons of batteries to store the excess solar from mid-day until the evening. Those batteries are being built very fast, but at the scale we need them, it will still take years. This story is also a good illustration of why local government matters. National races get most of the media attention, but your personal day-to-day is more affected by your local government.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
It's politics [1] [2]. > Republicans expanded their majority on the utility commission to 4-1 in 2022 and have taken steps since then to reverse clean energy mandates. Most recently, the panel voted 4-1 to sunset rules that required regulated utilities to set energy efficiency requirements and get 15 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2025. > This story is also a good illustration of why local government matters. National races get most of the media attention, but your personal day-to-day is more affected by your local government. Arizona is getting what it voted for. At the generation capacity amounts needed to replace fossil generation (a handful of GWs, 15k-20k acres of leased land assuming ~4.5k-5k acres per GW of solar capacity) [3], this is simply a lack of desire and will. Someone else in the thread mentioned peaker plants; utility scale batteries are cheaper than peakers in most (but not all) cases [4] [5]. [1] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/02/12/arizonas-180-on-renewables-00140940 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/02/12... [2] https://www.eenews.net/articles/can-arizona-revive-its-bipartisan-clean-power-mandate/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/can-arizona-revive-its-bipar... [3] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-SW-AZPS?wind=false&solar=false https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-SW-AZPS?wind=false&s... [4] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-systems-30-cheaper-than-rival-gas-peaker-plants-for-firming-renewables/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-syste... [5] https://www.cesa.org/replacing-fossil-fueled-peaker-power-plants-with-battery-energy-storage/ https://www.cesa.org/replacing-fossil-fueled-peaker-power-pl...
- HumblyTossed 2y ago
  > Republicans expanded their majority on the utility commission to 4-1 in 2022 and have taken steps since then to reverse clean energy mandates. This infuriates me. They're being oppositional simply for the sake of being oppositional. Fuckers.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Feelings on this topic are warranted, climate change and all that jazz (parts of India are hitting 52C/126F today). With that said, success is inevitable based on current trajectories, but very unpleasant there will be substantial unnecessary effort to get there. Humans gonna human, keep on grinding. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61242 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61242 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2024.01.16/chart2.svg https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2024.01.16/chart2.s... https://www.wri.org/insights/clean-energy-progress-united-states https://www.wri.org/insights/clean-energy-progress-united-st... https://news.duke-energy.com/releases/responding-to-growing-demand-duke-energy-amazon-google-microsoft-and-nucor-execute-agreements-to-accelerate-clean-energy-options https://news.duke-energy.com/releases/responding-to-growing-... https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/05/22/huge-1-2-million-panel-wyoming-solar-farm-gets-green-light-to-build/ https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/05/22/huge-1-2-million-pan...
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Additional citation: https://apnews.com/article/record-heat-deadly-climate-change-humidity-south-11de21a526e1cbe7e306c47c2f12438d https://apnews.com/article/record-heat-deadly-climate-change... ("AP analysis finds 2023 set record for US heat deaths, killing in areas that used to handle the heat")
  - MattGrommes 2y ago
    Exactly. It's one thing to have objections to some climate policy, it's another to explicitly try to block future projects. God forbid we actually learn something and change our behavior in the future.
londons_explore 2y ago
If the majority of electricity use is air conditioning systems (at 6pm on a hot day, it is), then you're better off to have some chunk of users with thermal storage instead. Thermal storage systems have a big chunk of concrete or tank of water under the house which can be cooled or heated by the air conditioning system. Then, at peak power demand times, that hot or cold is transferred to the living space of the house. It effectively allows time-shifting of power use. It also lets you buy a smaller AC unit, since the AC unit can be operating 20+ hours a day, yet providing more cooling in the daytime and less at night when the need is lower. Currently such systems cost more due to their novelty, but I am reasonably confident that if hour by hour electricity pricing becomes common, they will soon be widespread (in new builds at least, probably not worth retrofitting). More complex versions of the same system allow many sources and sinks of heat - eg. they can heat/cool waste water, heat/cool the roof, heat/cool the ground under the house, heat/cool the outsides of the walls or the air outside the house. That means clever software can maximize efficiency - for example by radiating heat to the sky at night, dumping heat into north-facing walls in the daytime. Then, in the winter when it's cold it can scavenge heat from south facing walls.
greenthrow 2y ago
Pushing the cost of power to $0 during the day seems worthwhile still. And panels keep making power until the sun is very low. LFP batteries have been around for morr than a decade. We just foolishly haven't pursued it in the US due to the fossil fuel industry's grip on our government and much of this country's misinformed populace.
ip26 2y ago
If power prices were negative at 5pm, I’d be pre-cooling my house like mad before the sun went down… in other words, demand can shift and houses can act as energy storage.
- alfiopuglisi 2y ago
  The are negative wholesale, not for the private end user unfortunately.
  - secabeen 2y ago
    Yeah, or they just tell the solar plants to "curtail" production and not deliver power that they are generating.
Suppafly 2y ago
They are part of the nationwide grid right? They don't really need to store it, just put solar everywhere, dump the excess into the grid and purchase from the grid when solar isn't available.
- secabeen 2y ago
  They're part of the western grid, which helps some, but the sun is up broadly, so if Arizona has excess power, so do California, Nevada, and other Western states. Likewise, if they need power in the evenings, so do those other states as well so then additional generation is needed, or batteries that can be depleted in lieu of more expensive non-Solar generation.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

It's politics [1] [2]. > Republicans expanded their majority on the utility commission to 4-1 in 2022 and have taken steps since then to reverse clean energy mandates. Most recently, the panel voted 4-1 to sunset rules that required regulated utilities to set energy efficiency requirements and get 15 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2025. > This story is also a good illustration of why local government matters. National races get most of the media attention, but your personal day-to-day is more affected by your local government. Arizona is getting what it voted for. At the generation capacity amounts needed to replace fossil generation (a handful of GWs, 15k-20k acres of leased land assuming ~4.5k-5k acres per GW of solar capacity) [3], this is simply a lack of desire and will. Someone else in the thread mentioned peaker plants; utility scale batteries are cheaper than peakers in most (but not all) cases [4] [5]. [1] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/02/12/arizonas-180-on-renewables-00140940 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/02/12... [2] https://www.eenews.net/articles/can-arizona-revive-its-bipartisan-clean-power-mandate/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/can-arizona-revive-its-bipar... [3] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-SW-AZPS?wind=false&solar=false https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-SW-AZPS?wind=false&s... [4] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-systems-30-cheaper-than-rival-gas-peaker-plants-for-firming-renewables/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-syste... [5] https://www.cesa.org/replacing-fossil-fueled-peaker-power-plants-with-battery-energy-storage/ https://www.cesa.org/replacing-fossil-fueled-peaker-power-pl...

HumblyTossed 2y ago
> Republicans expanded their majority on the utility commission to 4-1 in 2022 and have taken steps since then to reverse clean energy mandates. This infuriates me. They're being oppositional simply for the sake of being oppositional. Fuckers.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Feelings on this topic are warranted, climate change and all that jazz (parts of India are hitting 52C/126F today). With that said, success is inevitable based on current trajectories, but very unpleasant there will be substantial unnecessary effort to get there. Humans gonna human, keep on grinding. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61242 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61242 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2024.01.16/chart2.svg https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2024.01.16/chart2.s... https://www.wri.org/insights/clean-energy-progress-united-states https://www.wri.org/insights/clean-energy-progress-united-st... https://news.duke-energy.com/releases/responding-to-growing-demand-duke-energy-amazon-google-microsoft-and-nucor-execute-agreements-to-accelerate-clean-energy-options https://news.duke-energy.com/releases/responding-to-growing-... https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/05/22/huge-1-2-million-panel-wyoming-solar-farm-gets-green-light-to-build/ https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/05/22/huge-1-2-million-pan...
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Additional citation: https://apnews.com/article/record-heat-deadly-climate-change-humidity-south-11de21a526e1cbe7e306c47c2f12438d https://apnews.com/article/record-heat-deadly-climate-change... ("AP analysis finds 2023 set record for US heat deaths, killing in areas that used to handle the heat")
- MattGrommes 2y ago
  Exactly. It's one thing to have objections to some climate policy, it's another to explicitly try to block future projects. God forbid we actually learn something and change our behavior in the future.

londons_explore 2y ago

If the majority of electricity use is air conditioning systems (at 6pm on a hot day, it is), then you're better off to have some chunk of users with thermal storage instead. Thermal storage systems have a big chunk of concrete or tank of water under the house which can be cooled or heated by the air conditioning system. Then, at peak power demand times, that hot or cold is transferred to the living space of the house. It effectively allows time-shifting of power use. It also lets you buy a smaller AC unit, since the AC unit can be operating 20+ hours a day, yet providing more cooling in the daytime and less at night when the need is lower. Currently such systems cost more due to their novelty, but I am reasonably confident that if hour by hour electricity pricing becomes common, they will soon be widespread (in new builds at least, probably not worth retrofitting). More complex versions of the same system allow many sources and sinks of heat - eg. they can heat/cool waste water, heat/cool the roof, heat/cool the ground under the house, heat/cool the outsides of the walls or the air outside the house. That means clever software can maximize efficiency - for example by radiating heat to the sky at night, dumping heat into north-facing walls in the daytime. Then, in the winter when it's cold it can scavenge heat from south facing walls.

greenthrow 2y ago

Pushing the cost of power to $0 during the day seems worthwhile still. And panels keep making power until the sun is very low. LFP batteries have been around for morr than a decade. We just foolishly haven't pursued it in the US due to the fossil fuel industry's grip on our government and much of this country's misinformed populace.

ip26 2y ago

If power prices were negative at 5pm, I’d be pre-cooling my house like mad before the sun went down… in other words, demand can shift and houses can act as energy storage.

alfiopuglisi 2y ago
The are negative wholesale, not for the private end user unfortunately.
- secabeen 2y ago
  Yeah, or they just tell the solar plants to "curtail" production and not deliver power that they are generating.

Suppafly 2y ago

They are part of the nationwide grid right? They don't really need to store it, just put solar everywhere, dump the excess into the grid and purchase from the grid when solar isn't available.

secabeen 2y ago
They're part of the western grid, which helps some, but the sun is up broadly, so if Arizona has excess power, so do California, Nevada, and other Western states. Likewise, if they need power in the evenings, so do those other states as well so then additional generation is needed, or batteries that can be depleted in lieu of more expensive non-Solar generation.