4 ms·

As far as I am aware, Texas offsets the volatility of renewable with carbon based energy. Those renewable are not viable in a world with no carbon based energy.

by cm2187 2y ago

As far as I am aware, Texas offsets the volatility of renewable with carbon based energy. Those renewable are not viable in a world with no carbon based energy. https://grid-analytics.ece.utexas.edu/chart/fuel-type-generation https://grid-analytics.ece.utexas.edu/chart/fuel-type-genera...

bryanlarsen 2y ago
Yes, they mostly use carbon energy to offset volatility. That doesn't mean that there aren't other viable ways to do so.
- cm2187 2y ago
  Like what? Energy storage would push the combined price of renewable way beyond nuclear. You would need an alternative source of energy that is 1) on demand, and 2) which does not cost much when it is not activated. Not sure what that would be.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    California pays 4 cents per kilowatt hour for solar + storage.
    - cm2187 2y ago
      That's storage for a few hours to smooth the volatility intraday. Nothing like the sort of storage capacity you would need if you don't have an alternative source of energy when there is no wind for a week.
      - bryanlarsen 2y ago
        Your original comment was talking about the volatility.
        cm2187 2y ago
        No wind for a week is the volatility of renewable. And that's a common occurence. You can easily have 3 weeks without wind.
ben_w 2y ago
Texas would be a lot less vulnerable to such volatility if they got out of their own way and connected their grid properly to either (or both) of America's east and west grids.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  "Plan to link Texas ERCOT electric grid to southeastern U.S. states is in the works." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38861358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38861358 https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-...
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Of the five links between this comment and the other, I can only access one of them. Interchange domain is blocked, khou is access denied, dallasnews is a paywall. What I do hear about is this (possibly outdated, I'm increasingly noticing the references there are not kept up to date) claim on Wikipedia: > On October 13, 2009, the Tres Amigas SuperStation was announced to connect the Eastern, Western and Texas Interconnections via eight 5 GW superconductor links, although the Texas Interconnection does not intend to connect for regulatory reasons. The Eastern Interconnection withdrew from the project in 2015, rendering the project moot. Construction was never started.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/texas-will-add-more-grid-batteries-than-any-other-state-in-2024 https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/texas-wi... ("Texas will add more grid batteries than any other state in 2024.") https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/how-texas-became-the-hottest-battery-market-in-the-country-energy-storage https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/how-texa... ("How Texas became the hottest grid battery market in the country") https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/12/texas-power-grid-batteries/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/12/texas-power-grid-bat... ("As brutal heat tests Texas’ power grid, batteries play a small but growing role in keeping the lights on") https://www.utilitydive.com/news/batteries-texas-consumers-683-million-january-day-january-winter-freeze-aurora/717083/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/batteries-texas-consumers-6... ("Batteries saved Texas consumers $683M during 2-day January freeze: Aurora Energy Research") https://web.archive.org/web/20240707022007/https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://web.archive.org/web/20240707022007/https://www.eia.g... (EIA 12 month forward looking generator deployment; scope to Texas and gray icons, which indicate battery storage) vel0city's recent comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40504630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40504630: "Texas has 6.3GW of battery capacity installed largely in the last three years and is on track for another ~15GW (a bit over 20GW total) by the end of 2024. There's 141GW of battery projects in the queue for connection to ERCOT, with a large chunk of that coming online in 2025 and 2026." If you look at California, what happens is that renewables grow rapidly, pushing out fossil generation (coal first, and then fossil gas, as fossil gas is more flexible from a generation perspective wrt throttling and commodity cost). At some point, you arrive at a situation where your spot prices drop below zero during daylight hours (as you're generating power in excess of grid demand, renewables can bid to give away the power or curtail, fossil gas and coal cannot, they'll take the L to keep spinning while paying for fuel and the per hour O&M costs). This is when battery deployment takes off, as batteries can charge when power is almost free, and discharge in the evening hours after sunset when it is profitable to do so. You can see California's ~10GW of batteries "breathe" daily in the data doing this. This revenue, combined with grid services (synthetic inertia, black start capability readiness [jump starting fossil generators during a grid outage]), makes batteries a strong economic proposition from an investment perspective. Battery firmed renewables compete directly with fossil gas from a cost perspective. As of ~6 months ago, Texas had 100GW of solar in ERCOT’s interconnect queue, in comparison to ~65.8GW of fossil gas generation and ~14.3GW of coal generation currently operating. Even assuming worst case capacity factor (20% hypothetical vs 25% actual per https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/2022-monthly-us-solar-capacity-factors-underscore-winter-doldrums https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...), 75GW of solar with a storage component is enough to push that coal generation out of the mix. It's also unlikely solar deployments stop or slow down. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601878 ("HN: Lazard: IRA brings LCOS of 100MW, 4hr standalone BESS down as low as US$124/MWh") https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost... ("Lazard 2023 Levelized Cost Of Energy+")

by cm2187 2y ago

bryanlarsen 2y ago

Yes, they mostly use carbon energy to offset volatility. That doesn't mean that there aren't other viable ways to do so.

cm2187 2y ago
Like what? Energy storage would push the combined price of renewable way beyond nuclear. You would need an alternative source of energy that is 1) on demand, and 2) which does not cost much when it is not activated. Not sure what that would be.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  California pays 4 cents per kilowatt hour for solar + storage.
  - cm2187 2y ago
    That's storage for a few hours to smooth the volatility intraday. Nothing like the sort of storage capacity you would need if you don't have an alternative source of energy when there is no wind for a week.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Your original comment was talking about the volatility.
      - cm2187 2y ago
        No wind for a week is the volatility of renewable. And that's a common occurence. You can easily have 3 weeks without wind.

ben_w 2y ago

Texas would be a lot less vulnerable to such volatility if they got out of their own way and connected their grid properly to either (or both) of America's east and west grids.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
"Plan to link Texas ERCOT electric grid to southeastern U.S. states is in the works." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38861358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38861358 https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-link-texas-ercot-electric-grid-to-southeastern-us-states-is-in-the-works/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-...
- ben_w 2y ago
  Of the five links between this comment and the other, I can only access one of them. Interchange domain is blocked, khou is access denied, dallasnews is a paywall. What I do hear about is this (possibly outdated, I'm increasingly noticing the references there are not kept up to date) claim on Wikipedia: > On October 13, 2009, the Tres Amigas SuperStation was announced to connect the Eastern, Western and Texas Interconnections via eight 5 GW superconductor links, although the Texas Interconnection does not intend to connect for regulatory reasons. The Eastern Interconnection withdrew from the project in 2015, rendering the project moot. Construction was never started.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/texas-will-add-more-grid-batteries-than-any-other-state-in-2024 https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/texas-wi... ("Texas will add more grid batteries than any other state in 2024.") https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/how-texas-became-the-hottest-battery-market-in-the-country-energy-storage https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/how-texa... ("How Texas became the hottest grid battery market in the country") https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/12/texas-power-grid-batteries/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/12/texas-power-grid-bat... ("As brutal heat tests Texas’ power grid, batteries play a small but growing role in keeping the lights on") https://www.utilitydive.com/news/batteries-texas-consumers-683-million-january-day-january-winter-freeze-aurora/717083/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/batteries-texas-consumers-6... ("Batteries saved Texas consumers $683M during 2-day January freeze: Aurora Energy Research") https://web.archive.org/web/20240707022007/https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://web.archive.org/web/20240707022007/https://www.eia.g... (EIA 12 month forward looking generator deployment; scope to Texas and gray icons, which indicate battery storage) vel0city's recent comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40504630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40504630: "Texas has 6.3GW of battery capacity installed largely in the last three years and is on track for another ~15GW (a bit over 20GW total) by the end of 2024. There's 141GW of battery projects in the queue for connection to ERCOT, with a large chunk of that coming online in 2025 and 2026." If you look at California, what happens is that renewables grow rapidly, pushing out fossil generation (coal first, and then fossil gas, as fossil gas is more flexible from a generation perspective wrt throttling and commodity cost). At some point, you arrive at a situation where your spot prices drop below zero during daylight hours (as you're generating power in excess of grid demand, renewables can bid to give away the power or curtail, fossil gas and coal cannot, they'll take the L to keep spinning while paying for fuel and the per hour O&M costs). This is when battery deployment takes off, as batteries can charge when power is almost free, and discharge in the evening hours after sunset when it is profitable to do so. You can see California's ~10GW of batteries "breathe" daily in the data doing this. This revenue, combined with grid services (synthetic inertia, black start capability readiness [jump starting fossil generators during a grid outage]), makes batteries a strong economic proposition from an investment perspective. Battery firmed renewables compete directly with fossil gas from a cost perspective. As of ~6 months ago, Texas had 100GW of solar in ERCOT’s interconnect queue, in comparison to ~65.8GW of fossil gas generation and ~14.3GW of coal generation currently operating. Even assuming worst case capacity factor (20% hypothetical vs 25% actual per https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/2022-monthly-us-solar-capacity-factors-underscore-winter-doldrums https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...), 75GW of solar with a storage component is enough to push that coal generation out of the mix. It's also unlikely solar deployments stop or slow down. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601878 ("HN: Lazard: IRA brings LCOS of 100MW, 4hr standalone BESS down as low as US$124/MWh") https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost... ("Lazard 2023 Levelized Cost Of Energy+")