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>I'm adding an entry for this. In a few years, I'll evaluate whether we experience "a wave of disaster" due to overtaxed energy grids in 2026-2027. We have bee

>I'm adding an entry for this. In a few years, I'll evaluate whether we experience "a wave of disaster" due to overtaxed energy grids in 2026-2027. We have been experiencing overtaxed grids for decades now. Rolling black and brown outs happen every summer on a hot, cloudy, still day. The issue isn't big-tech, the issue is that we're living in a fantasy where we can keep the grid running with renewables and no sign of terawatt hour batteries.

ggm 2y ago
I think you're battering round evidence to fit your own square hole. Batteries are coming on stream, and do not need to be TwH scale to provide incremental improvement and I don't personally think the outages are sheeted home to the rise of solar and wind alone. It's complicated.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  I've worked as a quant for a power company and had more data than god about what was happening in a continent wide grid. The instabilities in the grid are caused by renewables turning on and off at the drop of a hat the whole network over. That's on top of the complete lack of any stable base load at night that comes with renewables. I then build a continent wide physics based electrical network simulation down to the individual house. There is no way to keep the networks stable in the coming decades with more and more intermittent sources coming in. Large heavy spinning shafts are the only thing that's kept us from catastrophic failures and pretty much no one knows or cares. We're betting civilization on pixie dust and unicorn farts.
  - ggm 2y ago
    South Australia is going to find out. Synchronous condensers have been a thing since forever, batteries are moving into that space. Sure they started in FCAS but they now bid for some of the inertia stuff too. SA is of course connected to the Australian east coast grid and are securing supply from them, but they got islanded in a big storm, the gas fallback generators didn't work and they lost the grid. Now, they have built out for wind, solar and battery. They haven't had a significant fail yet. Those gas generators who failed, and who failed to do black start are in court over their contract. Building out and running more syncons seems like a low bar. I appreciate you work in the field. but, so do a bunch of people in the grid forming world who think it's entirely feasible to move beyond the base load model. Maybe they are all smoking pixie dust, but I think it's not clear you're right and they're wrong, because BOTH OF YOU have fucktonnes of experience and skin in the game, past and present. As a random asker (ie me), why is your input here better than the people doing the planning for the Australian east coast grid? https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/initiatives/engineering-framework/2024/quantifying-synthetic-inertia-from-gfm-bess.pdf?la=en https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/initiatives/engineering-fr... https://www.aer.gov.au/system/files/ElectraNet%20-%20System%20Strength%20Economic%20Evaluation%20Report%20-%2018%20February%202018.PDF https://www.aer.gov.au/system/files/ElectraNet%20-%20System%...
zahlman 2y ago
>Rolling black and brown outs happen every summer on a hot, cloudy, still day. Perhaps it's different in the US, but here in Toronto I've noticed the frequency and especially the severity of such events decrease over time. It's been 21 years since "the big one" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003). This year's biggest event was much less impressive (https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/07/16/power-outages-toronto-hydro/ https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/07/16/power-outages-toronto...), and that was caused by exceptional storms (https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/a-parade-of-storms-how-toronto-got-more-than-a-months-worth-of-rain-in/article_b4792d96-444c-11ef-b780-67cf81f0e86b.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/a-parade-of-storms-how-toro...).

ggm 2y ago

I think you're battering round evidence to fit your own square hole. Batteries are coming on stream, and do not need to be TwH scale to provide incremental improvement and I don't personally think the outages are sheeted home to the rise of solar and wind alone. It's complicated.

llm_trw 2y ago
I've worked as a quant for a power company and had more data than god about what was happening in a continent wide grid. The instabilities in the grid are caused by renewables turning on and off at the drop of a hat the whole network over. That's on top of the complete lack of any stable base load at night that comes with renewables. I then build a continent wide physics based electrical network simulation down to the individual house. There is no way to keep the networks stable in the coming decades with more and more intermittent sources coming in. Large heavy spinning shafts are the only thing that's kept us from catastrophic failures and pretty much no one knows or cares. We're betting civilization on pixie dust and unicorn farts.
- ggm 2y ago
  South Australia is going to find out. Synchronous condensers have been a thing since forever, batteries are moving into that space. Sure they started in FCAS but they now bid for some of the inertia stuff too. SA is of course connected to the Australian east coast grid and are securing supply from them, but they got islanded in a big storm, the gas fallback generators didn't work and they lost the grid. Now, they have built out for wind, solar and battery. They haven't had a significant fail yet. Those gas generators who failed, and who failed to do black start are in court over their contract. Building out and running more syncons seems like a low bar. I appreciate you work in the field. but, so do a bunch of people in the grid forming world who think it's entirely feasible to move beyond the base load model. Maybe they are all smoking pixie dust, but I think it's not clear you're right and they're wrong, because BOTH OF YOU have fucktonnes of experience and skin in the game, past and present. As a random asker (ie me), why is your input here better than the people doing the planning for the Australian east coast grid? https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/initiatives/engineering-framework/2024/quantifying-synthetic-inertia-from-gfm-bess.pdf?la=en https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/initiatives/engineering-fr... https://www.aer.gov.au/system/files/ElectraNet%20-%20System%20Strength%20Economic%20Evaluation%20Report%20-%2018%20February%202018.PDF https://www.aer.gov.au/system/files/ElectraNet%20-%20System%...

zahlman 2y ago

>Rolling black and brown outs happen every summer on a hot, cloudy, still day. Perhaps it's different in the US, but here in Toronto I've noticed the frequency and especially the severity of such events decrease over time. It's been 21 years since "the big one" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003). This year's biggest event was much less impressive (https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/07/16/power-outages-toronto-hydro/ https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/07/16/power-outages-toronto...), and that was caused by exceptional storms (https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/a-parade-of-storms-how-toronto-got-more-than-a-months-worth-of-rain-in/article_b4792d96-444c-11ef-b780-67cf81f0e86b.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/a-parade-of-storms-how-toro...).