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California Has So Much Solar Power That Other States Are Paid To Take It (mic.com)
"On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power," reported the Los Angeles Times. Mic reports:
California is generating so much solar energy that it is resorting to paying other states to take the excess electricity in order to prevent overloading power lines. According to the Los Angeles Times, Arizona residents have already saved millions in 2017 thanks to California's contribution. The state, which produced little to no solar energy just 15 years ago, has made strides -- it single-handedly has nearly half of the country's solar electricity generating capacity...
When there's too much solar energy, there is a risk of the electricity grid overloading. This can result in blackouts. In times like this, California offers other states a financial incentive to take their power. But it's not as environmentally friendly as one would think. Take Arizona, for example. The state opts to put a pin in its own solar energy sources instead of fossil fuel power, which means greenhouse gas emissions aren't getting any better due to California's overproduction.
The Los Angeles Times suggests over-construction of natural gas plants created part of the problem -- Californians now pay roughly 50% more than the rest of the country for power -- but they report that power supplies could become more predictable when battery storage technologies improve.
When there's too much solar energy, there is a risk of the electricity grid overloading. This can result in blackouts. In times like this, California offers other states a financial incentive to take their power. But it's not as environmentally friendly as one would think. Take Arizona, for example. The state opts to put a pin in its own solar energy sources instead of fossil fuel power, which means greenhouse gas emissions aren't getting any better due to California's overproduction.
The Los Angeles Times suggests over-construction of natural gas plants created part of the problem -- Californians now pay roughly 50% more than the rest of the country for power -- but they report that power supplies could become more predictable when battery storage technologies improve.
So why not take that excess electricity and make hydrogen out of it?
Seriously, they should instead focus on subsidies for energy storage.
As to solar, they should simply require that all new buildings of 5 stories and less, have enough on-site AE to equal or exceed the average monthly energy used of the HVAC.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The journalist is (a) clueless about energy production and (b) a careless writer.
Just one example of the latter: "free" is not "paying other states to take it". Which is it? I'm not going to bother to look, but what crappy writing and editing.
Maybe you should actually bother reading. From the article:
Why does California have to pay rather than simply give the power away free?
When there isn’t demand for all the power the state is producing, CAISO needs to quickly sell the excess to avoid overloading the electricity grid, which can cause blackouts. Basic economics kick in. Oversupply causes prices to fall, even below zero. That’s because Arizona has to curtail its own sources of electricity to take California’s power when it doesn’t really need it, which can cost money. So Arizona will use power from California at times like this only if it has an economic incentive — which means being paid.
In my opinion the article is actually pretty good.
It's starting to happen already, but it will take some time to get enough storage capacity installed to catch up with the amount of solar power already on the grid.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Can some Slashdotter in the know advise on how Californian's are storing energy for use in the night? I am meant to understand that there are a number of options; Molten Salt, pumping water up a mountain and later utilizing gravity, compressed air in rocks or under the sea and of course batteries.
It might not be 100% environmentally friendly, but it's more environmentally friendly than most alternatives. Anyway this has no relevance to the article, which is more about managing solar energy production and the transition to it from an infrastructure completely based on fossil fuel.
California companies are locating their data centers in neighboring states to take advantage of those state's cheaper power.
...on those 14 days in March, electricity customers paid exactly the same price for electricity as they did the other 17 days in March, so how did that help the consumers in California?
Likewise, customers in the state that got 'free' electricity from California also paid exactly the same rate for electricity every day in March.
So I ask, who benefitted from all that 'free' excess solar electricity? I can tell you who suffered because of all that 'free' excess solar electricity, every consumer of electricity in California, because the utility company is required, by law, to pay a premium price for every solar generated KWh fed into their grid, whether they need it or not, whether or not they can resell it.
Ken
Well, use batteries or flywheels but those lose energy with time.
Or maybe, spend the electricity to pump water to a sealed tank in the mountains and let the water flow down later to power a turbine when you need electricity.
There are many ways but none is perfect...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Negative prices happen everywhere, and it has little to do with solar.
For example, today at 5:00AM in Chicago, electricity prices were negative.
https://hourlypricing.comed.com/live-prices/
"Just one example of the latter: "free" is not "paying other states to take it""
Uh, to the other states, that is exactly that - free money and power. Where in your brain did this malfunction occur?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Fuel Cells are just not cost effective at this time. According to NREL, they will be, around 2025. Until then, they are a joke.
OTOH, excess electricity can and should be stored in batteries, EVs, even weights that slide down the side of a mountain, or simply thermal. The later would be IDEAL at any manufacturing site that is dealing with high temps.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Also, when there is to much sun solar plants can be disconnected and just not feed the grid.
Wow.
Most solar plants (either domestic, built on private residences, or commercial) are private, and were built to generate profits for the owner based on the premium price utilities - by law - are required to pay for every KWh they feed into the grid.
Every KWh that CA utility paid someone to take was paid for at a premium. California utilities had to pay a premium for electricity it couldn't use, then had to pay someone to take that excess to save their power grid from damaging overload.
Ken
Why are the reporters always writing such a nonsense?
You feed power into the grid: it needs to be consumed. Or you can not feed it in.
And: I guess the solar power was teleported to Arizona, to prevent "overloading a wire"?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Disclaimer: I am not an environmental scientist; I am just another random commentor on a pseudo-anonymous Internet news-aggregator site, like you are; not warranties implied or otherwise on anything I'm about to say.
That being out of the way.. RE: 'Hydroelectric storage of excess energy production': The only possible problem I see with using this technique to store excess produced energy, is environmental; we'd most likely be creating pairs of man-made lakes to make this work, and building new hydroelectric dams and pumping facilities. While those are mature technologies, and relatively benign, our energy needs never seem to decrease, they only ever seem to increase, so over time we'd be building more and more of the same to keep up. At that point we're changing the ecology of large tracts of land in an increasing number of locations, and I'd be a little concered we'd be throwing the ecology of those areas out of balance. Aside from that, I'd also be a little concerned about destroying the natural beauty of what would likely be some of the most spectacular places in California, too. While I think it's a viable technology, I think we need think carefully about what we're doing and what the alternatives are (of which there are several).
It's harder than you think, any sort of 'storage' will be either potentially highly toxic (as in batteries), require lots of investment (like hydro) and take up lots and lots of space. Given California is already paying a premium for their energy, I don't think they want to invest in even more 'waste'.
Given more energy is going to consumed in the future, it's probable that anything they start building now is never going to be used 5-10 years down the road when it will be completed.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Pump water storage is a pretty solid technology as it can store massive amounts of potential energy. But like many things it only works properly under circumstances where you have an abundance water available and also have the space to store that water. And then again we're talking about California here, where you can get fined for wasting water during the rather frequent draughts. Well, at least that's what the internet tells me. I don't live actually there so your mileage may differ.
"Why are the reporters always writing such a nonsense?"
If anyone here is an expert in writing "a nonsense", it's you, you fucking mouth-breathing retard.
You don't feed "power" into the grid you mongoloid. The load consumes power. If you can't supply it, it doesn't disappear.
Just one example of the latter: "free" is not "paying other states to take it". Which is it? I'm not going to bother to look, but what crappy writing and editing.
"You can have all the junk in my yard for free, I'll give you twenty bucks to clear it for me." Me think you no understand English good.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, sea water could possibly be used...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
That would cost more than giving it away or dumping it to ground.
In my opinion the article is actually pretty good.
Because you don't grasp that the following is wrong.
CAISO needs to quickly sell the excess to avoid overloading the electricity grid, which can cause blackouts.
The power is actually transported to Arizona via "the electric grid" ... and usually you simply disconnect the power plant if you can not get rid of the power ... no thread of overloading or black out (facepalm).
Oversupply causes prices to fall, even below zero.
And this is absolute nonsense.
The price goes below zero because the power company has only 3 choices:
a) disconnect a part of the solar power (probably with contracts forcing to pay for the not used power anyway), which might make it complicated to reconnect it (getting it in phase etc. or having "special protocols")
b) powering down a fossile plant, with the problem that they already know that they have to power it back up close to nightfall, which might cause costs (more costs than "selling" the excess power for a negative price)
c) giving the power away, for a negative price, which is bottom line a lower loss than the costs in a) or b)
There is no "market force" that drives power prices into the negative, that idea is absurd.
So: the article is complete bullshit, but you find it informative.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Given more energy is going to consumed in the future, it's probable that anything they start building now is never going to be used 5-10 years down the road when it will be completed.
As people love to point out, the demand graph of solar doesn't follow the supply graph, so there will also be use for storage.
even on a part time basis
That's the problem. They only have excess power for a few minutes on some days. It doesn't make sense to build a desalinization plant to deal with that.
Like The Starlost episode Mr. Smith of Manchester ...
https://youtu.be/JP18WQfEtyM?t...
'70s cheese
Mostly random stuff.
Space isn't an issue - the storage doesn't have to be be urban areas. The big problem is upfront cost. Even just the batteries are expensive, and then you have all the management electronics and construction on top of that.
Pumped storage works very well indeed - if you've got the landscape for it. It's very location-sensitive.
California has mountains, sure. But in order to pump water up mountains, you don't just need mountains; you also need water. California has regular shortages of water -- for example, the years 2012-2016.
Electricity is stored in wires. If the wires get full, the solar panels no longer work correctly. The excess energy has to be drained so feedback from the solar panels doesn't damage the sun.
If you went to journalism school, you would know these things.
If power costs could actually go negative, someone would be building the world's largest heating element as a way to get rid of it.
Could, but rather not. Sea water is rather corrosive, and it's full of horrid organisms that clog up the machinery. You can use seawater for pumped storage, it just means higher maintenance costs. It's also not usually convenient from a landscape perspective - you need a steep slope for pumped storage, like a good hill or small mountain, which you seldom find in a conveniently coastal location. When you do, it's usually in an area prone to erosion.
Seawater pumped storage has been done experimentally, but all large-scale commercial facilities use freshwater.
I am wondering why they have to ship the power to a neighboring state instead of letting me run my AC and pool for free until the crisis is over. My utility bill routinely breaks over $600/month (both gas and electric) from PG&E in the summer.
Oh, wait. I'm in Northern California. That means they can use my water all they want but something like sharing their excess energy must be illegal. Rather than do that they would prefer to break California in two so they don't have to pay taxes to redwood trees or something. What was I thinking.
Correct, the non market force is externallized subsidies from government imposed Renewable Portfolio Standards.
For example, I run a wind farm and I produce renewable energy. I sell my production credits to a Utility that nets my "green" electrons with their fossil electrons, which raises the percent to meet the standard. The utility avoids a fine, which creates extra value for my green energy. The market rate is $40 to $60/MW for green energy credits. My incremental production cost is zero since my fuel (wind) is free, but if my unit is offline, I lose the opportunity to make another $60. A fossil unit would go offline at wholesale price of zero, but I am making money from externalized credits. Therefore my marginal total cost is really -$60/MW, that's the point where I should shut down.
Now in an oversupply situation like Spring and Fall when heating and cooling demand is low and production is high, if the total supply still exceeds demand, and all the supply has negative market costs, the negative offer becomes the marginal price for the whole market. A normal generator is paying the grid to take its energy instead of shutting off, but the renewable is still making money.
That's why you see that Illinois nuclear units are shutting down. We built a ton of wind next to them getting lots of renewable credits. In oversupply situations, the wholesale price goes to zero or negative, and the nuke can't shut down (it takes a week to cycle), so they take it in the shorts.
It's harder than you think, any sort of 'storage' will be either potentially highly toxic (as in batteries), require lots of investment (like hydro) and take up lots and lots of space
"Toxic"? As opposed to fossil fuels or uranium which are just so amazingly safe? Most batteries are recyclable (including lithium batteries) - the only issue is whether it is economical to recycle them. We're looking for the least worst option and everything indicates batteries + solar/wind are likely a major part of the least worst options. Any toxicity from batteries is easily justified in the face of the alternatives.
Hydro simply isn't an option in most locations. It's fine where it's available but the capacity for it is limited and regional.
Because sensationalist headlines get more reads, and because journalists are usually under tight time constraints that do not allow them to do in-depth study.
J school grads don't drive, but here goes:
I think it's like a parking lot. If you keep driving cars in after the lot is full, you have to double and triple park them. Eventually they get so heavy that the ground collapses and causes an earthquake. Just like too much electricity causes a blackout.
Now do you understand?
Just for the record: The sun is still there when you think it is night time, it is just harder for you to see.
Which is why much effort is being directed toward interconnecting disparate grids (and yes, interconnecting has its own downsides).
Why do some people believe that all the crap out there is put out from Russia? There are enough skeptics out there in all countries.
So why not take that excess electricity and make hydrogen out of it?
And do what with the hydrogen? There isn't enough demand or storage capacity and certainly no relationship between the production of the excess energy and need for hydrogen.
It's not waste if it's a closed system.
3. explain to taxpayers that solar energy is only available during the day and sunny days are more productive than cloudy ones. I realize most children innately understand this already, but politically brainwashed adults have lost their reasoning skills.
If you went to engineering school, you would know these things
FTFY
Ken
...then how's that gonna help Alabama?
Subsidies. That's what we learned in J-school. The only hope for places like Alabama is subsidies. And education so Alabama's children can learn enough to move to a place with running water. Not Manhattan though. Maybe Queens.
You need simply follow the money to understand why that will never happen.
Power utilities are required to buy every KWh generated by solar panels at a premium price regardless of their need (or lack thereof) for the electricity, if a solar plant owner reduces the solar power they generate, they are the ones losing money - why would they choose to do that unless they are going to be compensated for the electricity they choose not to produce?
Ken
so there will also be use for storage
Not necessarily. As long as it's cheaper to give the electricity away or dump it to ground then there's no use for storage.
solar energy is only available during the day and sunny days are more productive than cloudy ones
Yes, that's the problem. Why you would pay for such an inconsistent source, then pay again to cover up that problem is what you need to explain.
Yes, but that's very unlikely. For instance, if I use my electric car in the garage as grid storage, the incremental cost for me is almost zero.
You can also tug down giant floats that rise up, running the motors in reverse to generate electricity. They don't even need to come all the way up or go all the way down.
California has regular shortages of water -- for example, the years 2012-2016.
it would have been nice if they had huge water storage facilities up in the mountains....
You can't engineer a new sun. We need to raise awareness so we don't destroy the one we have.
I didn't mean to say that pump water storage wastes water. But given the circumstances in California, they do not have that much water available during months with a lot sun hours. Storing seawater could work for the coastal regions if they find adequate space for it.
The solar industry is propped up by regulations that deny utility companies the ability to refuse electricity they don't need from either distributed or utility-scale sources. The guarantee that every KWh generated by a solar source will be bought - at a premium - is what convinces investors to back them, but that same regulation increases consumer costs since at times of over-production the utility is running non-solar power plants that can't be spun down as needed, and simultaneously buying unneeded solar power at a premium.
The moment power companies can refuse to buy unneeded solar power is the moment the solar industry stops growing, and electricity prices will start coming down.
Factor in subsidies for manufacturing plants, subsidies for construction/installation of panels, etc. and solar energy in America lives in a special, politically-built protected market.
Before anyone goes off on 'oil industry subsidies' - I've never heard of the gov't cutting a check to cover half the cost of an oil refinery or offering loan guarantees on oil rigs, and the gov't certainly doesn't guarantee oil companies that every gallon of fuel they bring to market will find a buyer at a guaranteed price.
Ken
storage is the simple answer and most children will understand that...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Hydro? In California? I don't think so.
The simple solution is to build a few large bore (2m diameter), high pressure pipes up into lakes in the rocky mountains. Drop them down to pumping stations with holding ponds. During the day when you have excessive solar, you pump water from your holding pond up into the lake at something like 3000 feet differential elevation. At night, when you need power, you let the water discharge down into your holding pond. Designed right this system will recover about 85% of the energy stored. If you are worried about evaporation, you can cover your ponds with ping pong balls (reduces evaporation by 90% plus.)
If you pump that water at 1m/sec up for 6 peak sunny hours per day, from the Bernoulli equation we know that the stored energy would be Volume rate * density * acceleration due to gravity * height of lift * time or:
3.14 m^3/sec * 1000 kg/m^3 * 9.81 m/s^2 * 1000 m * 6h * 3600 sec/h = 665 GigaJoules of stored energy or (*.85 efficiency) ~157MWh of recoverable electricity per day. You would need around 68,000 cubic meters of water to work with (about 6.8 Hectares) in a lake (or you could build 5 holding ponds at elevation that were 20m deep x 30m wide.)
Most natural gas power plants in California generate around this number. The main reason that 10 of these hydro lift systems aren't built post haste is all the environmental nuts that would lose their shit over human beings building pipelines in California and/or using a lake for anything other than squatting next to while meditating...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Because you don't grasp that the following is wrong.
CAISO needs to quickly sell the excess to avoid overloading the electricity grid, which can cause blackouts.
The power is actually transported to Arizona via "the electric grid" ... and usually you simply disconnect the power plant if you can not get rid of the power ... no thread of overloading or black out (facepalm).
It's only wrong if you can either quickly and easily store the excess energy, or quickly and easily throttle output to avoid overloading. Obviously you don't grasp both options are currently not available...
Oversupply causes prices to fall, even below zero. And this is absolute nonsense.
The price goes below zero because the power company has only 3 choices: a) disconnect a part of the solar power (probably with contracts forcing to pay for the not used power anyway), which might make it complicated to reconnect it (getting it in phase etc. or having "special protocols") b) powering down a fossile plant, with the problem that they already know that they have to power it back up close to nightfall, which might cause costs (more costs than "selling" the excess power for a negative price) c) giving the power away, for a negative price, which is bottom line a lower loss than the costs in a) or b)
There is no "market force" that drives power prices into the negative, that idea is absurd.
The claim is that California has to pay to get Arizona to use up its surplus energy, and the claim is correct: this is exactly option c) which you describe. As even you describe, once you decide to go route c) you effectively have a negative price.
So: the article is complete bullshit, but you find it informative.
I'll stick to my opinion.
California has solar subsidies while Arizona does not. Or at least the subsidies are more attractive in California than Arizona. When California has a lot of sun but not enough demand it is in the best interest for California solar power producers to pay the solar power producers in Arizona to reduce output.
In other words California taxpayers found themselves in the interesting situation of subsidizing Arizona solar power.
Some may ask why fossil fuel plants don't just cut back output. The reason is that the boilers in those plants need to be kept hot because allowing them to cool means getting their steam back is very expensive, that is fuel burned for no energy produced. They need to keep the turbines spinning and so on or they risk damage to the equipment. It's cheaper for them to pay Arizona to take their power than throttle back for short periods. Longer lasting reductions in demand are more readily apparent and can be accommodated in their fuel burn rates.
In other words California taxpayers are paying higher energy rates with the solar subsidies but not seeing any real reduction in CO2 output.
What about natural gas peak power plants? Can't those be used? Sure, but as pointed out in the articles the solar funded lobby is using "new math" to show that the solar power output is exceeding growth in demand so therefore fossil fuel plants should be shutdown. They neglect to point out the minute by minute shifts in demand in their calculations which leads to the interesting situation we have, needed to pay Arizona to take power only to buy it back later.
In other words California taxpayers are paying their government regulators to create a state grid in which the electric ratepayers often have to pay for their electricity twice.
This is what solar energy subsidies have bought us, expensive and unreliable electric grids. I can hear it now, "What of the fossil fuel subsidies?" Those should go away too and for the same reason.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It's only wrong if you can either quickly and easily store the excess energy, or quickly and easily throttle output to avoid overloading. Obviously you don't grasp both options are currently not available...
Actually both options are available but considered more expensive than giving the energy away for free and paying on top of it.
And: the energy which obviously would overpower the grid, is nevertheless transported via that grid to Arizona.
I'll stick to my opinion.
Then you are probably not very smart.
The claim is that California has to pay to get Arizona to use up its surplus energy, and the claim is correct
No, the claim was: not doing so would overpower the grid, while in fact the energy is just transported away with exactly that grid.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Assuming there is an excess energy issue, desalinate (and maybe clean) the sea water first. That kills a second bird with the same stone. You still get to re-use some of that power later, and you get more clean drinking water in a drought ridden area. win/win?
Look for anything that costs too much due to energy use to be feasible, and do it. Ex. Open a steel mill and only run it when power is dirt cheap or free.
This is really a very very temporary problem. Giving away power for free will quickly find uses for it. Charge up cars during the day; put batteries or flywheels in each building to offset nightly usage; run CO2 sequestration services (CCS); turn waste into oil; run recycling plants; power a railgun to put stuff into orbit; etc.
Going directly back to the water pumping example, it's used because it's easy and well understood, but you could lift anything up and let it fall back down. Ship rocks up the side of a mountain on a conveyor belt or mining carts or whatever, and let them generate power on their way back down at night.
I suspect that the real truth is that it's not really excessive. There's a temporary imbalance, and they've found a sort of pressure relief. Later, they'll put that to use more effectively. Hopefully, no one builds a long term business around the prospect of this monetarily free energy.
Obviously the power costs where negative, so what is your point?
In Germany/Europe that happens every few days.
However negative prices are usually "one hand is washing the other" deals. If I sell you a few GWh for a negative price today, chances are you sell me some a few days later.
In Europe we have many interconnected grids, basically a super grid spanning from UK, parts of north Africa, over Siberia into Mongolia and north China.
The big power companies simply play amoung each other the game who is getting the short stick and has to overproduce and sell. The "loser" is switching every few days and bottom line no one is losing anything.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well that thread was funny :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Charge controllers are supposed to adjust the output of the PV array to the load. In my home system, when the grid goes down the output of the arrays reduced from grid + house Load + battery charging to house load + battery.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Desalination would be an ideal 'peak absorber' use to shave off the high points in a fluctuating power supply in a state with a long-term shortage of water. But good luck getting California to issue permits for something this obvious before the end of this century.
Pumped storage is a specific example of "potential energy storage". If you are short on water, but have hills and rocks, you can raise and lower the rocks for energy storage. Electric motors can drive containers of rock uphill on rails or via cable to store energy, then bring them back downhill to release it.
If there was over construction of plants then prices would drop. But California is so heavily regulated on pricing
No, the Times is right and you just explained why they are right. The regulation got it wrong. After Enron they over-corrected and incentivized over-capacity to cover peak loads that, for all practical purposes, never happen.
BTW, if you had bothered to read the article instead of just instantiating your ignorance you could have added value to the discussion instead of wasting everyone's time and that poor schmuck's moderation point they wasted on your post.
It's only wrong if you can either quickly and easily store the excess energy, or quickly and easily throttle output to avoid overloading. Obviously you don't grasp both options are currently not available... Actually both options are available but considered more expensive than giving the energy away for free and paying on top of it.
I never claimed they are not available, I claimed they are not quickly and easily available, which you agree with since otherwise it would not be more expensive...
And: the energy which obviously would overpower the grid, is nevertheless transported via that grid to Arizona.
If you think the problem is the overall amount of energy entering the grid, you are completely missing the point. You can likely put even more energy into the grid as long as it gets consumed, What you cannot do is put into the grid more grid that gets consumed. If you remove the transport toward Arizona you get exactly that, and a grid with a big problem.
I'll stick to my opinion. Then you are probably not very smart.
Maybe, or maybe you are completely missing the point with your idea that "since the grid is able to transport it away, it should be able to hold it without overloading".
The claim is that California has to pay to get Arizona to use up its surplus energy, and the claim is correct No, the claim was: not doing so would overpower the grid, while in fact the energy is just transported away with exactly that grid.
Again, as long as the power is consumed, you have no problem. If more power enters the grid than it gets consumed, you have a problem. "Transported away" from the point of view of California's grid is just another form of consumption , which evidently is a cheaper solution than reducing input or increasing consumption in some other way.
Environmentalists also oppose the construction of reservoirs.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
When you say something stupid like "in fact the energy is just transported away with exactly that grid" you're not understanding that this is only possible because Arizona has decreased their own generation, giving that energy a place to go.
It's important that demand and generation be closely matched at all times. California produces a surplus of energy and needs to export it or their power grid (as a whole) will overload, but California cannot curtail their own generation enough to match their own demand.
This whole thing works because Arizona is decreasing their own power output, getting the total generation between the two states to match total demand between the two states. If they didn't cooperate, there would be no place to export the power to and the grid (as a whole) would overload.
=Smidge=
You didn't explain about the blue smoke!
That kills a second bird with the same stone
No. You aimed it in the right direction but the stone deflected off the first bird and left the second alone, and it turns out the first bird was stone resistant.
Deslainating is incredibly energy intensive. You won't be desalinating water and then pumping it into storage only to later make electricity from it. You may as well just heat up some large resistor banks to burn off the power or shut down the solar panels. Also desal plants are expensive to make and are not suited to batch processes. So not only will the scheme not work, but you'll pay a lot of money to not see it work too.
Look for anything that costs too much due to energy use to be feasible, and do it. Ex. Open a steel mill and only run it when power is dirt cheap or free.
Oh my god NO!. That's far worse than the desal example. When power goes out at a steel mill it becomes a multi-million dollar event where you have the privilege of replacing a lot of damaged equipment. You can't batch run a steel mill. You can't even safely shut them down without doing any damage.
Some of your latter examples make more sense. Especially the ones which deal with storage or one shot (pun intended) energy users.
It's not zero/one. The greatest electricity demand is on hot days, during the daytime. You can equate solar energy with air conditioners.
OK a new size TV
Other than nuclear there are really no consistent sources of energy. We make them consistent due to engineering in of storage, feed surge and levelling, and careful planning ahead.
Removing the engineered storage component of only solar is dishonest. Remind me again what the USA stores in fossil fuels to ensure stable supply in the market? 700million barrels of oil or something like that, not to mention the amount laying in tankfarms around the country. I know the local coal power plant has a quite small footprint compared to the mountain of coal reserves they have laying beside it to sure if there's a supply issue it won't affect operation. This is quite the opposite for solar where the battery storage system fits in a shipping container for a solar grid covering an entire football field.
You feed power into the grid: it needs to be consumed. Or you can not feed it in.
And what part of that is inconsistent with what was written? You see the thing about a grid is, it's a grid. The transmission of electricity in certain directions puts strain on those transmission lines. So you could feed in solar power, or not feed it in. If you feed it in you could trip and cause a blackout. OR you could pay someone behind you in the other direction to consume more power instead so you still feed it in but it doesn't go over the same part of the grid.
Being specific will cause people to tune out. Writing stories is hard.
Many energy heavy industries ramp up production to coincide with hours where electricity is cheap but simply leaving plants idle or heavily underutilized on the chance there might be some free electricity would most definitely be a money loosing enterprise
Fuel Cells are just not cost effective at this time. According to NREL, they will be, around 2025. Until then, they are a joke.
In regard to portable fuels cells, specifically cars, there is a problem that there are only 36 places in all of the continental US where you can tank up -
(https://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html)
Which makes it hard to sell a hydrogen car, because there is no demand and there is no demand because there are no stations, which both feed into slowing development of better cells, because there's no market.
One way to punch out of this mess is for California to start making hydrogen, and give small hydrogen fueling pumps to any gas station that will take one, and now it becomes possible to sell cars, leading to a possible way forwards.
I myself looked into buying the Honda Civic GX, a from-the-factory natural gas vehicle. The problem was that I could never go farther than half a tank from my house (where I would put in my own pump) because there was no place to reliably buy fuel.
I realize that the technology is still limited, but CA. is spending money to give away power, why not do something useful at home with it? According to the comments above, there would be some use for a few combined desalination/electrolysis plants which would be able to make Hydrogen, Oxygen, potable water, and delicious algae rich salt as needed.
By charging and discharging your car batteries for uses other than moving your car, you would be consuming charge/discharge cycles on your relatively expensive batteries designed for your automobile rather than batteries designed for fixed location storage (which would likely be cheaper as weight and compactness and certain safety considerations would be substantially less costly for the fixed location storage batteries.).
The cost of what you describe can be a very expensive replacement of your electric car batteries or substantial reduction in resell value of your electric car. That's quite a bit above zero.
Using batteries from electric cars for fixed storage after the batteries don't hold enough of a charge for automotive use might be more cost effective (both financially and environmentally) than discarding and recycling them.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I recently read about a cool inverted version of this. You put bigass balloons in the ocean down a hundred feet, and use the excess energy to inflate them. When you want your energy back, you are using the pressure from the water to drive the air out and run a turbine. I think it's in testing somewhere, Spain perhaps?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
With more solar and wind power, this problem will become worse, and I don't expect batteries to help that much.
One solution would be grid friendly appliances. There are plenty of things that don't need power at a precise moment. Water stays hot for a few hours in boilers, you don't necessarily need your laundry right now, and if you have an electric car and have 12h to charge it and it takes only 6, it can be any 6 hours. Appliances can be made so that they run perferably when supply is high and demand is low. This information can be sent via power line communication and trigger relays.
Of course, it should go with price incentives. Make the price vary for the consumer depending on the time.
Was holding the California state in ramson, shutting down their power grid to strong arm their governor into some bad deal. This action was helped by the activities of soon-to-be-governor Arnold Shwarzenegger in a well documented hotel meeting. Now California has too much solar power. Fuck you Texas!
Solar power is available every day, there is no need for the day to be "sunny", just for there to be light. Northern European countries like Denmark where they do not have many "sunny" days produce a lot of solar power without problem. The myth that you need "sunny" days was produced by those who want to denigrate alternative power and who do not understand it.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
You really sure employees are going to work for a steel mill that pays them "sometimes"?
I never claimed they are not available, I claimed they are not quickly and easily available, which you agree with since otherwise it would not be more expensive...
No, you claimed the article is "informative" when it is wrong.
But perhaps we are cross talking each other?
If you think the problem is the overall amount of energy entering the grid, you are completely missing the point. You can likely put even more energy into the grid as long as it gets consumed,
That is actually what I wrote in my first post in this article (not as an answer to you)
So? What does "overload" mean? It means wires are melting or other bad stuff is happening.
And? That is NEVER going to happen. Because you can offline the solar plants, shut down fossiles or what ever.
So: The article was wrong!!!
If more power enters the grid than it gets consumed, you have a problem.
In theory yes, in practice not, as that is in practice never happening because the safeguards automatically disconnect power plants then. Facepalm.
Transported away" from the point of view of California's grid is just another form of consumption , which evidently is a cheaper solution than reducing input or increasing consumption in some other way. /. ers here in this threat.
Exactly. And that is not written in the article but was written by me and other
And the main point, see "overload" above is: obviously the grid is not overloaded by the surplus energy. Obviously there is no black out.
So about what are you arguing? You think the article was well worded when it in fact is full of nonsense? Sorry, then you have a low standard on journalism.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
California is generating so much solar energy that it is resorting to paying other states to take the excess electricity in order to prevent overloading power lines. According to the Los Angeles Times, Arizona residents have already saved millions in 2017 thanks to California's contribution. The state, which produced little to no solar energy just 15 years ago, has made strides -- it single-handedly has nearly half of the country's solar electricity generating capacity...
> California Has So Much Solar Power That Other States Are Paid To Take It
This happens all the time with any power source. Here in Ontario the spot price for the nuclear plants goes negative through the spring and fall all the time and has for decades. This is a basic concept in grid management - it's a GOOD thing this happens, as it provides a financial incentive to equalize the grid.
> Take Arizona, for example.
Take Arizona, please.
> The state opts to put a pin in its own solar energy sources instead of fossil fuel power, which means greenhouse
> gas emissions aren't getting any better due to California's overproduction.
Uhhh... If they're buying solar from Cali, that means they are lowering their greenhouse gas emissions. Duh.
> The Los Angeles Times suggests over-construction of natural gas plants created part of the problem
Meh. NG is a super-good source when mixed with solar, because it's spin-up time is short enough to track clouds on a large basis. Only hydro is better.
Germany... underwater energy storage
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Pump water storage is a pretty solid technology as it can store massive amounts of potential energy. But like many things it only works properly under circumstances where you have an abundance water available and also have the space to store that water. And then again we're talking about California here, where you can get fined for wasting water during the rather frequent draughts. Well, at least that's what the internet tells me. I don't live actually there so your mileage may differ.
California does pump water back into the San Luis reservoir at night with spare base load electricity. Assuming there is enough water in the river, there is no reason they could not do that during the day while they're experiencing a surplus of solar. Of course, there would probably be huge environmental impacts from this due to the fact that the reservoir would not be letting any water out for a 24 hour period potentially.
From TFA: "Californians now pay roughly 50% more than the rest of the country for power."
And from the TFA: "California is generating so much solar energy that it is resorting to paying other states to take the excess electricity in order to prevent overloading power lines."
Are we too brain dead to put these two statements together and realize that this is not a technological problem, it is a political problem? Why are Californian's PAYING EXTRA for electricity that is not being delivered to them, but instead being sent to Arizona FOR FREE along with a check to add insult to injury?!?!
Lower the damn price being gouged out of local Californians on that electricity and let local people find good uses for it for goodness sake! The corruption and retardation of California just blows my mind... You people in California should be demanding someone be held criminally accountable. Instead, you're shrugging and saying someone needs to invent better storage technology. WTF?
Pump water storage isn't even viable where the systems are already built and are a sunk cost. The maintenance costs are just too high. The existing ones are maintained as insurance policies. Utilities buy the right to use their capacity at very high cost. The hydro power from these is then occasionally used while a turbo fan gas generator comes on line or while a large industrial user is convinced to shed load. We currently have no electricity storage technology that is profitable at even the extreme swings in electricity prices today. (chemical batteries degenerate before providing enough charge/discharge cycles to pay for themselves). Worse still for an investor is if a viable storage system was invented today it would decrease the swing in price and might not then be profitable or a future improvement would decrease the price swing before the capital cost of the first generation storage was paid off. Until something is invented that would be profitable at 5-10 cents I don't see anything being deployed at scale.
No, you claimed the article is "informative" when it is wrong.
It's not wrong, you are clearly misunderstanding the problem.
But perhaps we are cross talking each other?
Likely....
That is actually what I wrote in my first post in this article (not as an answer to you) So? What does "overload" mean? It means wires are melting or other bad stuff is happening. And? That is NEVER going to happen. Because you can offline the solar plants, shut down fossiles or what ever. So: The article was wrong!!!
The article never says there are no other technical solutions, it actually mentions them. The issue is that they are less practicable than just paying other states to consume the excess output. From the article I guess you still didn't read:
Utility officials note that solar production is often cut back first because starting and stopping natural gas plants is costlier and more difficult than shutting down solar panels.
Complicating matters is that even when CAISO requires large-scale solar plants to shut off panels, it can’t control solar rooftop installations that are churning out electricity.
Again, the article was not wrong, it mentions the options you claim it didn't and explains why the other option was chosen instead.
In theory yes, in practice not, as that is in practice never happening because the safeguards automatically disconnect power plants then. Facepalm.
If you disconnect a power plant you have a pretty big drop in power. Unless that drop in power happens to closely match the oversupply (very unlikely), guess what you get? A power outage. These safeguard exists but cannot be used to regulate power, they exist as emergency.
Exactly. And that is not written in the article but was written by me and other /. ers here in this threat.
Again, you didn't read the article: it definitely explains all options and why they chose paying Arizona instead. I won't bother to quote it again, read it yourself.
And the main point, see "overload" above is: obviously the grid is not overloaded by the surplus energy. Obviously there is no black out.
So about what are you arguing? You think the article was well worded when it in fact is full of nonsense? Sorry, then you have a low standard on journalism.
If you did bother actually reading the article you would understand the problem and why that particular solution was chosen, which you do not. I don't understand your prejudice against it, maybe you don't like the chosen solution, the conclusion the article draws or the facts it exposes, but this doesn't make it "nonsense" or "bad journalism". Read it with an open mind and try to inform yourself before judging.
Time to build a major pumped hydro battery then.
How about "Grandfather clock" energy storage: most buildings have enormous weight. By lifting them a little we can store great amounts of energy and vice versa by lowering them a little we can recover the energy. So, if there is a special hydraulic cradle built into foundation, a building can store additional energy in small variations of its rise. For daily fluctuations it would suffice.
And here I am paying up to 45c per KWh for the same energy, thanks to the same power grid. It is more then triple the national average, and I could use some extra power for my A/C during the hot days (we had several scorching heat waves in the recent weeks).
California seems to have very bad incentives in terms of public utility development, and we seem to be paying (literally) for it.
They have such a surplus that they have to pay other States to take it, but somehow Californians pay 50% more than everyone else? How does that make sense? If supply is that much higher than demand, Californians should be paying next to nothing! How did they break a market so badly?
There are many ways but none is perfect...
We don't need perfect. We just need effective. At the moment, we're still very much in the Stone Age when it comes to storing power in bulk.
However, it's exactly situations like California that cause progress to be made. There's an incentive (don't waste/pay for removal of) excess power and an opportunity (figure out how to store excess power). The incentive means that California is likely to create a supply of money for to address this problem, the opportunity means that the supply of creative people willing to address the problem is going to increase. Where two such supplies intersect, the results are often tangential and all sorts of unforeseen benefits may arise - even new industries created.
It certainly beats sitting around and sniping "sure, you've got energy now, but what about when the Sun Goes Down? What then, eh?"
By charging and discharging your car batteries for uses other than moving your car, you would be consuming charge/discharge cycles on your relatively expensive batteries designed for your automobile rather than batteries designed for fixed location storage (which would likely be cheaper as weight and compactness and certain safety considerations would be substantially less costly for the fixed location storage batteries.).
The cost of what you describe can be a very expensive replacement of your electric car batteries or substantial reduction in resell value of your electric car. That's quite a bit above zero.
Using batteries from electric cars for fixed storage after the batteries don't hold enough of a charge for automotive use might be more cost effective (both financially and environmentally) than discarding and recycling them.
Actually, there's a quite simple way to analyse this.
Take the price (P) for a battery replacement.
Take the number (A) of charge certified by a battery during it's lifetime.
Take the price (U) that you'll get by selling your used battery.
(P - U) / A = C
C is the cost of the battery per charge.
If you receive more than C per cycle so they can use your battery, you'll make a profit.
Elok
My fault for bad writing, I meant headline, not article.
And my standpoint remains: eye catching danger implying phrase: overload, power outtage. Both is wrong.
There was never any danger and there never will be any.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well, the real problem is too much fossil baseload, not too much solar. That baseload is polluting California and the planet. California's current grid generation mix is no longer what its grid needs; it needs more flexible fossil power and less baseload generation. There's no technical requirement at all that baseload be provided by baseload power plant.
That's the real story here; the solar is not generating anything like as much as California's demand even when it's running at peak output.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Of course California could curtail their own production. Facepalm.
They did not want to, because despite the negative price, that was the cheapest option.
The term 'overload' is simply wrong, sorry. It is a fear monger term that does not apply to power grids.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We already do that. We literally spin down the turbines at the hydropower dams at times when there is too much solar and wind. The water just builds up behind the dam, storing as potential energy (and kept for irrigation uses). Most of the seawater to drinkable water plants spin up to full capacity at the same time, as the energy is cheaper, and there is always a need in California for that.
While we do have regional grids, there are interties between power regions, so they WA/OR/CA systems can be disconnected in the event of hack events or major quakes or fires, if need be.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fairly sure the seawater to drinkable water plants in California don't output highly toxic output.
We spin them up to full production when there is too much solar and wind in the system, and spin down the turbines on the hydropower dams in the BC-CA region, so that the water level rises behind the dams. Thus, at times of excess power, we are effectively storing the energy as ... water. Water as output, and water as stored energy.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I hear there are some old engineers who designed the Oroville dam spillways who will work for cheap from their assisted living facilities so engineering costs might be reduced.
Knowing something of how California maintains their infrastructure, I suspect the spillway failure was do to lack of maintenance and inspection rather than engineering. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Despite what the wikipedia article says, that was a inspection and maintenance failure because of a disconnect in who relies on the dam, the central valley, and who is responsible for maintaining it, ultimately the LA water district). What isn't mentioned is that it took a year for them to fabricate a new gate, and then they made it too short so they had to make another one.
The power (and water) problems of California will not be solved until the politics are repaired and that is not going to happen.
Charge variable rates during the day to control demand and make this data available to every metered consumer in real time and the problem will solve itself. Then if there is enough demand for high priced power, then the money will become available for infrastructure investment. The rent seekers and politicians will hate this though. The Greens will not like it much either.
Note this this solution is the opposite of the whole "deregulation" thing which lead up to the Enron power crisis. The politicians were just as much if not more responsible for that fiasco yet I did not see any of them criminally charged.
solar energy is only available during the day and sunny days are more productive than cloudy ones
Yes, that's the problem. Why you would pay for such an inconsistent source, then pay again to cover up that problem is what you need to explain.
Oh, that one is easy. It is easy to pay for it when using other people's money and the rents are very profitable no matter how much wealth is destroyed.
I know the local coal power plant has a quite small footprint compared to the mountain of coal reserves they have laying beside it to sure if there's a supply issue it won't affect operation. This is quite the opposite for solar where the battery storage system fits in a shipping container for a solar grid covering an entire football field.
A football field worth of solar is just not all that much on the industrial power scale so the storage system which fits into a shipping container is proportionally small.
Proportionally small compared to what? You could fit an amazing amount of battery storage in the area of a coal storage that is typical of any coal power plant, and that would do wonders for a 1000+ hectare solar PV site.
But all of this is irrelevant since the relative scales are what matters and IMO Solar PV farms and huge battery banks are a dumb idea. There are plenty of examples of off grid houses using solar. There have been for a long time. The only difference is that it's starting to make financial sense to do so even if you have a grid connection in many places.
I can't wait for CA baseload to start going out if businesses. When the state has no baseload, the smart States will laugh at California. Dumbest group of people on the planet. They will get exactly what they deserve.
No worries, the California politicians can just pass a law forcing the baseload plants to continue operating.
Intermittent energy sources are _hard_ on grids and political rules which force grids to take such sources as first priority at high prices has led to situations such as South Australia's February blackouts where renewables dropped out but were predicted to come back quickly - too quickly for a backup power plant to pay its firing-up costs, so the company operating it declined to hit the start button.
South Australia is a canary for what may happen to the rest of the world.
Intermittents are heavily subsidised both directly (government funding, preferential feed-in tarriffs) and indirectly (not having to pay for grid rebuilds to handle highly complex+unpredictable power flows, plus not having to pay for backup fossil-fuel plants - which cost a lot in maintenance to run even if they're sitting idle 95% of the time).
California's decision to force storage systems is a good thing and other jurisdictions will follow through sooner rather than later - preferably with the costs of this being handed back to the generators. You will hear the screaming from wind operators about this in particular as large turbines have a nasty habit of shredding their gearboxes or catching fire, to the point where even with subsidies the only way to reliably make money from them is to keep them stationary and collect payments from the operators to not connect to the grid (The going rate in the UK for this is ~UKP 30k per month per 2MW turbine)
Pumped-hydro is about the most ideal form of grid storage, but there are suitable locations left to build such things.
Batteries _seem_ the next obvious choice (Aquion's sodium/"saltwater" batteries seem better suited than LiIon - better deep discharge characteristics and not a fire risk, with flow batteries being brilliant for GW-scale systems), but I was surprised to see how far flywheel storage has evolved in the last 20 years. The flywheel systems I'm familiar with are only good for 30 seconds or so, but some of the newer designs are intended to hold the output of a medium-large solar farm for 4-6 hours and feedin when grid demand is highest.
Surprisingly, California has a several mature pumped-storage systems including one tied into the Oroville dam (the one that was in the news recently).
Most of these mechanical gas-compression/expansion systems are_extremely_ inefficient.
When a gas is compressed it gets hotter, when it's decompressed it gets colder (Boyle's laws, remember them?)
If you lose heat on the compression storage side, then it usually has to be added back in during decompression or the regulating mechanism freezes up and/or you'll only get half (or less) the expansion you expected.
This issue is why all those "compressed air cars" always turn out to be noisy & expensive toys. The amount of energy practically available from the tanks is far lower than the inventors ever want to admit to and keeping the heat of compression or increasing pressures starts running into engineering stress issues such as the tanks exploding.
Underwater balloons _might_ work if there's sufficient water flow around the balloons to act as a heatsource during decompression but the odds are pretty good that overall efficiency will be extremely low when scaled up to practical sizes (and deepwater is generally only a few degrees above freezing)
Why am I still paying 24+ cents per kilowatt hour in CA then?
Because the politicians you elected made it law that you do so for your own good.
an integrated control system to control the generation and distribution of electric power. If there is an excess of solar power then shutdown hydro and ramp down fossil power production. And do the opposite when there is a shortfall of solar.
If only there was some indicator of value which could be used to control supply and demand in a market with distributed active participants.
"Assuming there is enough water in the river, there is no reason they could not do that during the day while they're experiencing a surplus of solar. "
Apart from the surprising amount of time it takes to move from "generator" to "pump" mode (spin down, reverse, etc) and the waterflow required to keep spinning reserve units operating. To do it the way you're suggesting would probably require dedicated pumping plant and the overall costs of operating most pumped-storage plants are already such that they're only used for peaking work.
Most of the money being plowed into intermittent resources (wind+solar) and providing backup for it would be better put into nuclear plants, with extensive R&D into Molten Salt systems - which unlike conventional nuclear systems can load follow at least as fast as hydro plants. The subsidies paid out to renewables operators each year would easily pay for several nuclear generators of the same size (with more consistent and close-to-nameplate output instead of under 20% over a year(*)) and R&D for molten salt has been starved for 40 years. (MSRs are more-or-less "inherently safe" compared to traditional nuke designs, which in turn are 300,000 times safer than coal and 10 times safer than wind, with even the 1960s experimental design being more or less impossible to abuse in the ways that brought us TMI/Chrnobyl/Fukushima and others and the lack of radioactives in water means far lower risk of nasties getting into the biosphere (Salts freeze at 400C, so any leak will either seal itself or not go far, vs a steam or water leak in current technology. They boil above 1400C, so they don't need pressurisation - no steam explosion risk if things corrode.))
(*) The average 2MW turbine puts out full power for about 14 hours - per YEAR. If you can achieve 400kW average annual output then you're doing extremely well - and of course to match the nameplate output of a 800MW nuke you'll need 400 turbines, but in reality it's more like 2400 turbines, allowing for the 20% and downtime for maintenance. My suspicion is that if MSRs and in particular LFTRs reach commercial viability, wind and solar farms along with battery storage systems will end up as abandoned relics of a past that didn't work out.
"chemical batteries degenerate before providing enough charge/discharge cycles to pay for themselves"
Aquion claimed that they have beaten this, but they've gone chapter 11 whilst getting the technology to market - which is a shame considering the battery tech is non-toxic and doesn't burn. Yes it's not dense enough for EVs but density doesn't matter for stationary (traction battery) operations.
"The greatest electricity demand is on hot days, during the daytime. You can equate solar energy with air conditioners."
And with sensible building designs you can cut down power demand from ACs instead of having to brute-force the cooling.
Power prices will rise to ensure that anyway
"One way to punch out of this mess is for California to start making hydrogen, and give small hydrogen fueling pumps to any gas station that will take one, and now it becomes possible to sell cars, leading to a possible way forwards."
Hydrogen is an absolute _bitch_ to store. It doesn't just permeate the pipework and escape, it embrittles that pipework (and the cylinders) on the way out - and that's without the added issue of stress cracking caused by constant pressure cycling of the tank and system.
The posters saying that the best thing to do with hydrogen is to use it as soon as it's made weren't doing so for spurious reasons. Even methane (CH4) is difficult to work with in pressurised systems.
Hydrogen cars aren't popular because they're halo projects. They're halo projects because carmakers and fuel vendors don't want the liabilities that come with exploding tanks and associated shrapnel shredding anything that happens to be nearby. They will never be a mass commercial option - if you have the energy to make hydrogen from water (it's usually made by reducing methane) then you have more than enough energy to tack on a few carbon atoms and make propane or octane, which are easier and safer to handle.
Of course California could curtail their own production. Facepalm.
They did not want to, because despite the negative price, that was the cheapest option.
Production is not controlled by the state. When we talk about "California" and "Arizona" we are not referring to these areas as governmental regions, but only as geographical ones.
Of course generation companies in California reduced their output if they were able to. They, too, get paid their negative electrical rates. The problem is all of the power sources throughout the California region could not be collectively reduced enough to prevent grid overloading, so they had to cooperate with a neighboring region to distribute the excess power.
Maybe you don't understand what "overloaded" means, or what happens if the power grid becomes overloaded?
If you put X megawatts into the grid, it will consume/dissipate X megawatts. It has to, because energy must be conserved. So what exactly happens to that energy when you put in more than is consumed?
Short answer is, voltage starts to increase, which in turn drives more current through whatever is completing the circuit. The tolerance is just a few percent and there's only a very slim safety margin on top of that (if any, as the age of the grid might mean more load has been connected to some parts than it was originally designed for).
So if you overload it badly enough - put in too much power - you start to trip breakers. That can be catastrophically bad, since a tripping breaker at a substation can suddenly detach tens or hundreds of megawatts of load from a grid system that is already producing too much power. The result is a cascade of failures right up the hierarchy that results in widespread blackouts.
Here's a real example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
=Smidge=
The problem is all of the power sources throughout the California region could not be collectively reduced enough to prevent grid overloading,
Of course they could!!
But they simply did not want to.
Because exporting it to Arizona with a negative price was cheaper!
The is no "grid overload", that is a stupid term of the article writer.
Your example wiki article has nothing to do with an "overload" that could not be handled, facepalm.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Of course they could!!
No, they couldn't. You can't just turn power plants off.
Because exporting it to Arizona with a negative price was cheaper!
The price is the same; that's how fungible markets work. Maybe you can take a few minutes to understand how and why electricity prices go negative before wasting any more of our time...
The is no "grid overload", that is a stupid term of the article writer.
No, it's a real thing. You just don't know what you're talking about.
Your example wiki article has nothing to do with an "overload" that could not be handled, facepalm.
It's a perfect example of a local overload causing a failure cascade resulting in widespread power loss. An excess of power input destabilizes the grid and the whole thing comes crashing down. The key is to keep the power input and power consumption balanced, which in that particular example didn't happen because of a software glitch.
=Smidge=
You don't need to switch the powe plant off.
You only need to disconnect he plant from the grid.
And if the plant is a fossile one, you disconnect the generators from the steam.
The rest of your post is as idiotic as the previous ones.
Hint: to sell energy for a negative price to a different region/country, you need to make a desicion, set up the deal on a kind of stock market, wait for a buyer, and switch the grid to transport it that way.
That takes (an) hour(s).
I suggest to read something about how power grids work, instead of spreading your bullshit here.
Hint: I worked nearly ten years for one of the mayour power companies here.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You only need to disconnect he plant from the grid.
You don't think switching tens of megawatts of power on and of from the grid is going to cause problems?
Hint: to sell energy for a negative price to a different region/country, you need to make a desicion, set up the deal on a kind of stock market, wait for a buyer, and switch the grid to transport it that way.
https://www.cleanenergywire.or...
Hint: I worked nearly ten years for one of the mayour power companies here.
I'm not convinced you're even ten years old, let alone been involved in the industry that long.
=Smidge=
I'm not convinced you're even ten years old, let alone been involved in the industry that long.
That is your problem not mine.
Why don't you read the link you gave?
It clearly says exactly the same thing I did in my previous posts, facepalm.
But perhaps you find a link for California :D so I have something interesting to read, as I don't know how you trade power there.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You can't engineer a new earth. We need to raise awareness so we don't destroy the one we have.
FTFY also...
Ken