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California has huge amounts of excess renewable generation nearly every day, especially in spring and fall. Last April the grid operator curtailed 1.47 million
by while_true_ 2mo ago
California has huge amounts of excess renewable generation nearly every day, especially in spring and fall. Last April the grid operator curtailed 1.47 million MW/hrs of renewables, or about 2 GW per day. That's excess power the grid did not accept due to no demand. (source: https://www.caiso.com/documents/key-statistics-jul-2026.pdf https://www.caiso.com/documents/key-statistics-jul-2026.pdf)
In my mind the ideal solution is in addition to daily BESS time-shifting is seasonal time-shifting: long term storage of April excess for use in July.
- fooblaster 2mo agoI think you had me until you mentioned long term storage. How do you store significant amounts of energy across seasons? I'm just not aware of anything other than pumped hydro power that has anywhere near the cap as capacity to do such a thing.
- hdgvhicv 2mo agoGreen hydrogen. Generate hydrogen from water during excess times and convert back later on.
- fooblaster 2mo agoIs is actively done at scale? I suspect not given the amounts of batteries being installed.
- hdgvhicv 2mo agoNo because there’s lower hanging fruit. We’re still burning dinosaurs on windy days and in summer, seasonal storage is a long way down the list.
- rsynnott 2mo agoIs this curtailment due to overproduction, curtailment due to inadequate _grid_ capacity, or some mixture? In Ireland there's now a _lot_ of curtailment, but it's mostly driven by inadequate grid capacity (wind power in particular expanded quicker than the grid could).