Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
...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
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.
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.
Water, unlike electricity, can be stored. Quite easily. You just need a big hole.
It's not that bad an idea. The plants are not labor-intensive, they are just capital-intensive - once the pumps and membranes are in they only need monitoring and occasional replacement, it's almost entirely automated. There's also a convenient correlation: The need for fresh water is greatest in summer when days are long, and especially when cloud cover is low. Exactly the conditions in which solar is most capable. It's also very easy to run the plant at reduced capacity - they are essentially just a simple low-capacity desalinator repeated thousands of times, and each one can be turned off individually on a time scale of seconds.
Don't think of it as a plant running a tiny percentage of the time. Think of it as a plant running at 100% capacity in summer, 80% in spring and autumn and 60% in winter. With exceptions when the sun is good for a few hours to add more water to the tanks (which need not be valley-flooding reservoirs), so it can then be scaled back down again when the clouds return.
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.
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
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.