Why solar farms are being turned off when the sun is shining
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- čas přidán 8. 05. 2024
- Why solar farms are being turned off when the sun is shining
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I'm glad my rooftop solar is ON to reduce my electric cost.
People like you need to be disconnected from the grid. If you want to use solar, you should not be allowed to take power from the grid just when it suits you.
Over 30 years ago, I lived in Dallas, Texas, where the local power company incentivized office towers being built to incorporate large tanks for the storage of chilled water for use when demand was peaking to reduce their peak demand drawdown. One building I recall had a tank on its 40th floor - comprising the entire 40th floor - where it chilled a massive tank in the off-peak periods for use in the air conditioning system in the hottest part of the day. This wasn't considered an environmental measure but a pragmatic way to reduce the massive peak demands during a typical Dallas summer day. Since the water would be recycled and chilled nightly, the only significant ongoing cost was pumping the water to the chillers and back to the reservoir. If some Texans could figure this out in the 1980's, why is it not a common practice wherever midday temperatures are high? Yes, the building sacrificed a floor (which would have been lost anyway just for the chillers), and the tank was not cheap, but it seems so obvious a solution...
I saw somewhere that a new city would have both district heating AND cooling, so they could centralize the energy usage, and then you could have storage tanks there. Moving the heat from the cold part to the warm part would make even more sense. Before I saw your comment, I was thinking turning the water to ice stores a lot of "cold" potential.
Texas maybe getting close to having enough solar and wind to get to 4 pm in the day that electricity is fairly cheap because of the supply . That mostly gets you to close of business for most workers .
What you are left with is from 4 to 9 pm where alternative sources to solar must be utilized . Wind can peak into sunset so that's a bit of help . Storage is gaining popularity but is still a small percentage . So the generators are turned on over night which is considered your lowest cost for electricity production but this may change with more EVs coming into the market and charging overnight
Sounds like an excellent, forgotten technology.
You could also have more bi facial panels orientated East/West too supply more in peak morning and evening periods!!!
Conservatives will ban bi only cis can be legal
That's always been the problem; wind/solar create most energy when people don't need it, and stop working when they do. We need sustainable energy: energy production that can be sustained, when the sun goes down, the wind stops blowing, and the subsidies dry up.
Or just place half facing east and half facing west even during the midday the panels produce som electricity but the peak will be early in the morning and late afternoon
@@user-jb2om7cm8m stationary storage - LFP, sand, salt, concrete, carbon blocks
Hi Sam; just want to say thank you. You are killing it. Helping us to stay informed is a great calling and it is much appreciated.
I worked for a big mining company in Canada. We got paid by BC Hydro for reducing our electricity consumption. They even paid half the salary of a specialist engineer overseeing reduction initiatives. Now isn’t that an incentive!
Home battery backup is the big push now to offset energy company shenanigans such as pulling back net metering agreements and shutting down solar grid input. Get batteries now before crackdowns on Chinese solar backup batteries become the next trade crisis du jour.
So simple. Scarcity is profit.. destroy surplus to preserve the price. That is how govts and industrialists works. Eff the consumers.
Right on Sam 🙂 Smart Hot water Systems: Larger Tanks with profiled temperature control. Heat the tank up hotter at midday and if the tank is big enough no more power is needed, if it does, use a lower temperature setting. Hybrid inverter and larger batteries. 10kWh is too small. 20 to 40kWh, preferably sodium or other low cost storage.
Definitely, CATLs sodium low cost batteries are a game changer
Did a year-long research project about this (:, Energy storage is a vital solution to alleviating curtailment of renewables as due to renewable generation being highly intermittent frequently there is excess renewable generation to demand leading to significant curtailment. In Texas in particular about 9% of all solar and 5% of all wind in ERCOT(Texas) is curtailed. These numbers will continue to increase if more energy storage isn't deployed. Currently, Texas does have over 6GWH of installed battery storage and is commissioning more every few months which will help reduce curtailment. Texas utilizing a free market for electrical generation helps battery storage's economic implementation as they are extremely helpful at providing ancillary services to the grid and can react faster to changes to grid frequency than practically any other generation source.
If all buildings would change their temperature settings to make the workers more uncomfortable, we could use more solar. If more drivers didn't care about unintended acceleration, we wouldn't have so many auto recalls. The problem with solar is the same problem as unintended acceleration. It's there when you don't want it, and it's not there when you need it. Batteries can solve the issue, but at HIGH cost, which is never included in the 'low" cost that solar is always quoted at.
Just live in surplus. Not so hard. And move electrical loads to align Time-of-Use and Time-of-Production. No batteries required for that. Building heat, cooling, refrigeration, freezers, hot water, EVs, and other loads can all be moved to Solar Time-of-Production.
The reality is that solar panels being switched off earlier than gas power plants. Although the sequence should be other way around.
Peak PV solar production could be used to charge EV batteries and discharge them back into the grid at high consumer load time. Also domestic water with heat pumps is a good way to store the energy.
Time to release V2H or V2G, it’s madness not to use car batteries.
@@tonystock856 Why not have an off peak electric rate that the utility could
switch on when excess is available in the middle of the daylight hours?
Could be similar to the water heaters that were charged when the utility
had excess...
If only more than 1 state actually allowed V2G/V2H...
@@firstbigbarney Quite correct. First expensive heat pump lasted 10 years, 2nd heat pump failed after 6.7 years with a gas leak. Cost of repair meant I fitted a standard HWS at $900 and upgraded house PV to run it 9am - 3pm. Simpler and more reliable. We could give renters and low income people low cost hot water if we wanted to share this bonus solar energy.
It's bloody batsh!t crazy turning it off when it can be saved
Search world wide renewable energy curtailment annually and it'll be a fkn eye opener!
And then search backlog of world wide renewable energy projects waiting to connect to the grid!
When you ad those up? The world right now if everything was allowed to be connected and all battery storage activated.
Would be well over 50-60% for global renewable energy capacity. Right now as in TODAY not some future far off mumbo jumbo date!
Cali alone for example could be 80% or more off fossil fuels between its remaining nuclear, renewables, geo thermal&bess.
If all projects already built and permitted connected to the grid. 😏
We still give tax and other incentives to the fossil fuels industry...
I agree, END all subsidies and incentives, let the marketplace determine the most efficient method (with REASONABLE regulation but governments have a need for "mission creep." It's not solar nor wind (if you end the subsidies). Nor is it batteries. Where does all that money go? Politician pockets and Political friends. Obama handed out billions in subsidies and as far as I know, EVERY ONE of those businesses later declared bankruptcy. We still have the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) that was created in the 1930 to bring power to the rural farms in the Tennessee Valley. Then they decided they would add cable TV, and then internet... today the TVA spends BILLIONS to give big corporations low cost loans... THAT'S mission creep... and a total waste of taxpayer's money, but the politicians get BIG "donations" from those same corporations...
trillions of dollars every year. i believe its 5 trillion in 2024. and the republicans are panicking because the solar rebates, in total , are already up to 600 million for 2024.
Time for me to get an off-grid set of panels.
You don't need to be off grid, just off grid at the times of YOUR choice. Gives you the reassurance of still having a backup if your batteries are emptied.
You are so right. Unfortunately also true for Germany. For large commercial storage you have to pay the net fees twice. If that would be changed, addition of battery storage would skyrocket
If you do the same with all freezers and refrigerators to allow them to run extra cold during solar peak and them let them take a breather during the peak hours. Smart water heaters would also be a good way of saving energy.
Having spent a lot of my time in an Engineering Office I would like to point out that half the people working there are women and they have a different temperature tolerance than men. Cooling the offices a few degrees lower prior than "nominal" will bring a lot of complaints, good luck with that.
Excellent commentary. Well said that man.
The best solution is to get your own solar panels + batteries. You're not at the mercy of the grid and you won't waste the extra solar energy.
Thanks!
This why we need giant underground salt battery storage to capture this. If there is that much surplus - we are losing an opportunity. Can you imagine safe secure shielded from the elements large storage of electricity ?
America has plenty of deserts and plenty of open spaces and still rely on coastal and oil instead of nuclear (not that nuclear waste to essentially boil water) or the sun.
As always, follow the money.
True. But politicians are not the smartest people around and can get too political and have vested interests.
California could use excess electricity during the day for running desalination plants to produce water.
Why would you not run a smaller less expensive plant to produce the fresh water needed?
Sam, jthis might make a good vid. USA here. The electricity market is organized national-level bunko. Electric Utilities are forced to pay producers a lot more money for electricity during periods of peak demand. It is often dozens of times more than the base rates. ENRON died, the pricing methodology remains. It obviously creates a huge problem when the attorneys, consultants, company execs, etc. don't get paid massive amounts of the "peak demand pricing" money. That is the problem with EV's here: anything that adds to the peak demand pricing forced upon us by the very-broken electricity markets significantly increases the peak demand pricing (which should be illegal but it isn't).
As I recall the justification for vast number of street lights initially had to do with the inability to turn down massive generators for a few hours at a time. Corporate greed was no being discussed at the time. I have no idea if the flexibility of conventional generation plants has improved...
What you need is smart metering. If the users can take advantage excess power with lower costs of this power and then avoid higher costs when the electric power is in short supply. In California peak solar electricity prices is actually negative mid day.
For commercial buildings, thermal storage is not a new concept at all. Quite commonly, cooling towers that are used through water jacket transfer to chill the HVAC loads are often run at night to additionally cool the water reservoir a few degrees while there is little heat load from the building. The cost is some evaporation and electricity to pump the water through the cooling towers to remove heat from the water reservoir. Old school stuff here with a new twist. Cheers!
We need to build better energy management policies at every levels of governments... focus on efficiency and save our communities from ruin, climate crisis. we have all the tools& technologies to make major changes to our world, neighborhoods.
It’s coal,coal,coal in Australia both for internal consumption and export. It’s big business and no politicians have the bravery to tackle it so take the easy option turn off the solar rather than the coal or gas.
The key takeaway here is that energy companies chase profits over efficiency. They are not incentivised to use cheap solar energy, while they are getting huge subsidies on their existing generating stations...(worldwide around $7 trillion annually)...
and how could they be incentivized?
California didn’t solve the problem…Tesla did!
BP Oil is buying ALL Tesla charging stations. Wonder how that is going to go...
Tesla gave free batteries and got no subsidies?
You are insane.
@@raoultesla2292 Better check again! They’d like to buy it but it’s not for sale sucker!
@@chris27gea58 Crazy like a fox!
“Markets chase profit, not efficiency.”
What a disgusting waste of investment into renewables and less than useless policy makers failing on policy!
There are only market based profits to chase if there are inefficiencies or incentives to drive them/attract them. It isn't a binary one or the other
Why not use surplus power to create H2? IT can either be stored, or injected into NG pipelines at up to 20%. The stored H2 can then be either burned in turbines for peak loads or put through stationary fuel cells at very large scale.
The problem is that they don’t want us to have cheap or free energy, they want a profit.
Wind and solar have always been curtailed to meet the demand at the moment. With increasing battery storage this will occur less and less. This is now happening. So this video is really looking at an old problem that is being solved. Governments have to regulate the electricity grid so that it does not crash.
Solar power tends to get curtailed because there are certain geographic locations where solar is optimal, but the transmission lines going to those areas are insufficient to get the power out - therefore the solar is curtailed to avoid grid destabilizing events. Transmission is much slower and difficult to build, with a lot of zoning and NIMBY issues.
HVDC coast-to-coast underground along the Interstate Highway routes takes care of that.
Diamonds have historically been kept off the market to keep prices diamond outrageously high. Then they convinced women that artificial diamonds are inferior even though they can't be differentiated from "real" diamonds.
I live in the Florida Panhandle and my electric bill averages about $100/month. It's hard for me to justify solar expenditure.
Great report Viking. I hope your next report doesn't claim 'the market' will save us though which has been your default position up until now.
The thing is we have to save ourselves and a crucial part of that effort is to get government (that is supposed to be an expression of our will as citizens) to promulgate the right policies, subsidies and strategies in order to realise the goal of cleaner and more efficient energy generation. Governments, moreover, must make efforts to better align incentives to that goal as well as other related goals, e.g. to further the growth of solar and wind manufacturing industries locally.
The grid needs more storage
The customers need to get smart controls to match their consumption to the availability of energy.
Don't you guys have TOU rates? This would be the price signal to turn AC on and off, as well as incentivize more batteries. People will figure it out.
Indeed, corporations chase profits. What you forget to add to this statement is that governments work for big business, not its citizens. And if you think that installing environmentally unfriendly batteries will make the situation any better, i've got a beautiful beachside property with sweeping ocean views in Broken Hill you may like to buy.
Sam, I may not be understanding you, but I thought you said during peak load hours when the sun is shining a company could reduce its air conditioning load and that would reduce the amount of solar energy that had to be turned off. Actually you want the companies to use the solar energy when the sun shines and cut back when the sun goes down.
This continues to occur in California, but it is due to the transmission line infrastructure not keeping pace with the installation of these huge solar farms. I have a neighbor that works for CALISO, the group that controls the California power grid, and he told me that some of these solar farms are turned down to 70% capacity because of transmission line constraints. Hopefully this infrastructure will be built up to stay ahead of generation in the near future
This is true.
The problem is when we have too much solar in the energy system, we get negative energy prices because too much energy can break the whole system, ie blackouts because things break. A friend of mine has solar panels, and several times he have had to shut them down because of negative price during peak hours. He (and others) had to pay to deliver solar to the grid! It is a real issue. To much flimsy solar power delivered to the grid is a problem, clouds passing overhead makes the delivered power go up and down like a kid playing with the light switch. That behaviour is really bad for the grid, and so you have to have a stabilizing control mechanism, yes it can be batteries, but all that adds complexity and cost. That might not be a problem in Australia where you don't have dark winters and -20 degrees C a couple of months every year. Batteries cant sustain a country for months, so you have to have a backup system able to power the country during those dark months (nuclear). So, now you are paying for two different power systems, where you only use one at full capacity a couple of months per year. So the cost of the backup system has to pay its annual cost during a couple of months which makes the electricity expensive. If it was me I would tax the shit out of solar so it's not affordable, that way I could spread the cost of nuclear over the whole year lowering the price of nuclear. There is a difference you know, we want solar because we like it, but we need nuclear to not freeze to death in the winter. Need wins over like.
Cheers mate
Air conditioners have to be run on cold water. And ice. Ice is a great storage for cold.I can absorb many times
More heat than just plain cold water, produce hot water as a by-product.
If all buildings would change their temperature settings to make the workers more uncomfortable, we could use more solar. If more drivers didn't care about unintended acceleration, we wouldn't have so many auto recalls. The problem with solar is the same problem as unintended acceleration. It's there when you don't want it, and it's not there when you need it. Batteries can solve the issue, but at HIGH cost, which is never included in the 'low" cost that solar is always quoted at.
Actually, the grid would be balanced in no time if the market were allowed to do it's thing.
Just live in surplus. Not so hard. And move electrical loads to align Time-of-Use and Time-of-Production. No batteries required for that. Building heat, cooling, refrigeration, freezers, hot water, EVs, and other loads can all be moved to Solar Time-of-Production.
I hope that some industries will be developed to use excess, inexpensive solar power. Refining of aluminum and copper are simple examples that would work now. These (if I remember properly) could use the power when available and be easily shut down.
Another obvious use would be desalination. Just stop pumping when the power is not available.
In the longer term the excess power could be used for hydrogen generation or direct carbon capture.
There is no reason for this capacity not be be used.
since there is excess production, negative prices and so on the most obvious option would be to make synthetic fuel.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 What I'm saying is that there are lots of profitable uses for excess power. Aluminum and copper production has long used excess power and been used to stabilize the power grid by supplying a load that can be dropped for when other demands come on line. Or so I'm told by people at BPA. This means that they pay less for power that is not continuous. Desalination water produces a valuable resource, depending on location. H2 production, but only when there is demand. Same for direct carbon capture. There are lots of uses for excess power not jus fuel production.
@@charlie2640 yes and no. The aluminum production must be continuous, it cannot stop a few hour or days and resume when there is sunny. The same for copper production.Most of those power hungry plants are situated near to some big power plants usually hydro and to some shipping terminals because they need large amounts of raw materials and the shipping of the products. They are not suited for renewables which are quite dispersed reqiring a lot of infrastructure to transport the energy and can have days of outage.
The fuel can be easily produced by the hydrogenation of plastics, trash or any waste organic material, process known by dozens of years. The hydrogen can be produced intermittently because it can be stored and the fuel is very useful everywhere while the copper or aluminum while useful are not produced in every country or region.
The absurdity of having an electricity market which is driven by individual power suppliers optimizing their revenue. to shareholders. A zero profit State Owned Enterprise that optimises the whole power generation system would be far more effective.
Problem with solar is that it doesn't generate at night so you need coal or gas to maintain supplies through the night. You can't just turn a coal-fired power plant on and off like a light switch, so you need it running through the day to keep it on hot standby. Solar, however, can be turned off easily. The cost of grid-scale battery storage in immense, it would bankruot solar farm operators overnight to install it. Building management systems which control HVAC systems already operate to maximise the comfort of occupants and minimise running costs. They shouldn't have to adjust it to fit in with what electricity suppliers want.
I propose to make the price of electricity dependent on the local voltage. My voltage at the meter reaches up to 250V when there is lots of sun/wind down to 210V when there is not. This allows easy automation on any local level to switch on/off all kinds of loads and storage!
Inverters do that. You cannot vary the voltage like that unless you want to destroy everything. Instead the Inverter regulates its power according to the network frequency. If the network frequency goes up the Inverter throttles the power. We are talking about small variations (50 +-0,2 Hz)
Actually you can, because the voltage already changes depending on supply and demand. What I propose is to base the momentary energy price upon the momentary voltage. This incentive people to use energy when there is more supply than demand and this is easy to automate.
That is a good idea to use solar power more efficiently without a big cost to anyone. When batteries are in place to store the oversupply of energy during sunny days will not be necessary to alter the buildings temperature
You've completely misunderstood what's happening. *Given the infrastructure that we have now*, if you don't curtail solar during the middle of the day you will have to shut down the coal plants (because you can't turn them down below about 50% without having to shut down). If you do that, you won't be able to start them up in time to meet the evening peak, and you will have a blackout.
Adjusting the air conditioning moves things a little bit, as do batteries. But you have to do the maths and look at the quantities of energy involved before you tout something as a "solution" to the problem.
Looking at the big picture and using reason are not strengths of the renewables fanatics. Many of the comments say "just use some big batteries". Unfortunately, big batteries cost big bucks, which are never included in the "low cost' of wind and solar.
We’re on the cusp of CATL et al giving us affordable batteries and solar for home storage where most of us could go off grid even here in the U.K. 365 24/7
Adequate battery storage should be built near the solar farm. Transmission costs would be reduced and no curtailing is needed. If the company that runs the solar farm also operates the batteries they would be able to profit in the evening by releasing the excess energy from the battery.
The problem is that batteries are EXPENSIVE. "Low" solar costs are always quoted without battery storage. Solar is sort of like unintended acceleration on a car. You don't want your car to be out of control; you throttle it. "Oh, you want your car to be in control while you are driving? Sure, we can accomplish that. Just install this battery that will double the cost of your 'low-cost' car."
Yeah that’s true - batteries are still expensive at the moment. But maybe solar farms could get a return on investment with using the batteries as a peaker plant. If Sam and others are correct these peaker plant batteries make a good return on investment in just a few(?) years after installation. Would be good to fact check this if anyone here has any evidence.
One thing which I would like to see is the use of batteries for power storage made from elements other than lithium. Lithium must be reserved for use in cars and planes, where their mass advantage can be realized. For static applications let’s use alternative elements for power storage.
That's got to be the best one i've heard yet.Quote " climate change is caused by market failure ".Even if that were true it would be incomprehensibly stupid to leave it up to the market & private businesses to fix the problem.A bit like leaving it up to the banks to fix a global economic crash.
Sam I am surprised that on a channel that focuses so much on EVs you neglected to mention one obvious solution.
Encouraging EVs to charge during the day when there is lots of solar rather than at night when electricity is mostly provided by coal.
There are a few simple ways of doing this.
1) solar sponge tariffs that have very low or zero electricity prices during times there is excess solar.
2) Encouraging businesses & car parks to install EV charging ( even STD power points) to allow workers to charge during the day.
Also we could follow the lead of Western Australia & change the controlled load (off peak hotwater) times from overnight to the middle of the day.
In summer it's almost 100 by 10:30 in the morning and is still in the 90's at midnight. But for a/c I'm gonna pay 800 bucks a month but I'm comfortable
Sam, this is a bad idea because on cloudy days those buildings that lowered their temperature 1 degree will be consuming more FF power so the net effect will be higher emissions. For those solar farms being curtailed I don't feel sorry YOU SHOULD HAVE BUILT A BATTERY PLANT TO SOAK UP YOUR EXCESS.
The problem is not excess solar during the day it's lack of renewables at night, wind farms are only taking off and particularly offshore wind (if they get past the NIMBYS), we've got next to no hydro on the mainland so batteries dispatching daytime solar are the best option
The problem is that batteries are EXPENSIVE. "Low" solar and wind costs are always quoted without battery storage. Solar and wind are sort of like unintended acceleration on a car. You don't want your car to be out of control; you throttle it. "Oh, you want your car to be in control while you are driving? Sure, we can accomplish that. Just install this battery that will double the cost of your 'low-cost' car."
@@dzcav3 not if you're selling electricity stored in those batteries that otherwise would have been curtailed from your solar farm. And you're sellng it when the price is highest i.e. in the evening hours
no incentive to make energy affordable, no profit in affordability and if it is they will waste it to charge more.
Not only did we not fix it. But pg&e is raising rates by 30% this year. And they forgot to tell you I guess. Counties are even pulling solar permits
This will only encourage more batteries. Long term the legacy power generators will not be able to compete.
Off grid is the way to go. No more dependence on governments and/or energy companies.
Use the excess electricity to super heat or cool a dedicated heat battery such as sand, oil, or water. Then during the morning and even use it to regulate the building's temperature. Controlling an entire building ghat way may be uncomfortable.
...pure capitalism has always been an inaccurate model of behavior.
I love your enthusiasm for the cause. Don’t stop!
If there is no use for the electricity and no where to store it, then generation is not needed. It's exactly the same in any electricity generation - gas, coal, hydro, solar, wing, geothermal. If the power isn't needed, generators get turned off until needed
Nothing to see here
Wrong. Poor planning, resulting in the lack of adequate transmission lines (at least here in Texas) is a huge problem. Excess power cannot be moved from west Texas to the major metro areas of the state. This is a energy issue, as well as a political problem, created by the oil & gas industry .
They won’t turn off the gas here as that would make of electricity dirt cheap, too many backhanders and profiteering for the filthy rich to do that.
The issue is not that there is no demand it's that the coal and gas fired power stations are still pumping when the solar is turned off, of course it's not impossible to turn the screw on the fossil fuel plants to churn out less or more power but it's a whole magnitude harder to regulate the output of the fossil fuel generators than renewables which have essentially zero shut down and startup delay or costs.
We need to invest far more into storage options for renewables so we can kick the coal and gas habit.
@@TB-up4xi I've kicked the coal and gas habit already with my home solar, battery and EV.
Yeah that is what we are told. Trust me while I continue to pick you pocket. Shame.
👍👍
All the batteries in EVs are also a huge opportunity to level demand through vehicle to grid in times of peak demand and grid to vehicle charging in times of peak supply. I expect that in Australia you have electric energy costs that vary with time of day or with supply and demand? In some countries, people are paid to use electriciy when supply is much more than demand. Here in British Columbia, Canada, we are just begining to have optional time of day rates for residential customers, which will help people who frequently charge their EV at home.
Make hydrogen as the default offramp for surplus energy. Easy money.
The only time a market can theoretically be efficient is when there are no externalities. We are, of course, drowning in externalities such as pollution, climate GHG pollution, and health care excesses due to our toxic environment created by the energy market. In California there is massive curtailment due to the energy utilities not wanting to invest in the needed batteries that would create the context Tony Seba has long stated. Building efficiencies are important, but they are also an independent variable requiring their own planning.
As someone who has worked in the California utility industry, I will simply state this: The politicians have no freaking idea how to run the electricity market. Grand Schemes of batteries and transmission lines are pipe dreams. It can take over a DECADE to just get the permits for a new transmission line and even then, lawsuits can delay building them for another decade or two. Then they made it even worse!
Before it was outlawed, the power in Southern California used both nuclear and hydro to their best advantage of each: San Onofre Nuclear plant would run all night and Hoover Dam would turn off its generators, allowing the water to be STORED behind the dam. Nuclear plant fuels decay if you use them or not, so the overnight BASELINE power was supplied by the nuclear plant. Ditto with the morning peak (people getting up in the dark, turning on lights, heaters, and fixing breakfast/business turning on lights and powering up computers and heating the building)... As temperatures rise to an afternoon A/C peak, the nuclear plant would also ramp up its output. On really hot days, and normal days as commuters arrived home, turning on more A/C units and ovens to cook dinners, Hoover Dam would begin releasing water through their turbines to pick up whatever difference the nuclear's peak couldn't handle. Regulators hated that system, trying for decades to kill the nuclear option. They finally did. And THEN they took over ownership/control of the electrical grid. The power companies don't want to risk hundreds of millions of dollars to try building transmission lines they won't even own and many times the permits never get approved (and the regulators refuse to allow the power company to pass along the cost of the permitting process that fails. California is the picture postcard of an over-regulated State. Heads I win, tails you lose... why won't you build a thousand miles of new power grid? Duh.
Which brings up the question: Why don't the utilities want to invest in a future that will make them healthy (less polluted air), wealthy (long run), and competitive (with Big Oil)? Could it be they get hurt politically, short term because of Big Oil conspiring with govt.? Of course! Do you still favor govt. created monopolies, "for the common good" in the face of reality?
@@1voluntaryist I am way outside what is considered acceptable. I see the necessities of human life, such as air, water, food, etc., to also include electricity. If a person in an OECD country does not have electricity, they are likely homeless and have a short anticipated lifespan. Making profit on electricity is a statement of we will let you live if you pay us + profit. There are many utilities that are pure cost recovery, i.e. nonprofit. They work just fine. The standard argument is that we need investors to keep the stock price up so that we can get good interest rates on our bonds. That is pure nonsense. Government is like a poorly run nonprofit and it has no trouble floating A rated bonds. I'm a capitalist, but I don't believe in profit on monopolized basic necessities of life. For something like power distribution there has never been competition, for the obvious reason of it not being realistic to have duplicate infrastructure. Since the 80s or so, we gained a technology that allows that duplication. It's called renewables. Everyone can be their own power company. The utilities, particularly where I live, hate it, and do everything in their power to inhibit the possibilities.
@@arleneallen8809 The roads used to be multi-infrastructure, mail delivery, courts, charity. It's competition that stimulates innovation, or just steady progress. Ask anyone who grew up in the USSR about the difference before collapse and after. Communists turned into capitalists, came to capitalist America and were disappointed.
Water is an essential good, but that doesn't mean it justifies an elite forcing by law, i.e., deadly threat, some to forfeit their property right to their money. That assumes that if it wasn't provided, some would die of thirst. Social Welfare programs used to be funded by voluntary donations. Then, "the Law" stole money to compete with charities and the charities began to dwindle, welfare suffered, became invasive, harmful, abusive to all who got caught in it's trap. Now we have 5th/6th generations, e.g., indigenous Americans, suffering more social problems than any other group, AFTER receiving the MOST welfare. Welfare is not free, not charity. It is paid for by blood money. Everything govt. does is done with bloody money. Govt. consumes first, then distributes what's left. If nothing remains, govt. borrows, committing others to debt.
Another necessity is food, supplied by a huge private infrastructure, AND govt. interference, reducing the food available by causing great waste by stopping charity of the leftovers. If exposed, those who defend this deadly mess would ignore the dead, the suffering, completely, with the claim, "but they mean well". Anyone who initiates violence against the innocent FOR ANY REASON, is wrong, immoral, or confused.
@@1voluntaryist Can't disagree. When I was young I'd tell myself they mean well. That's gone. My goal is to stay out of the way in the years left.
Markets chase profits not efferences" , I am adding that to my quotes list.
If you just finished the video and are planning on rewatching because you think you missed the part that explained, in a way that makes sense, how solar farms are being shut down, save yourself the 9:20 minutes, because there was none.
Europe subsidizes solar and wind to the tune of $250 billion. Europe could have built 10 over budget Vogtle nuclear power plants. This would have produced about the same amount of electrical power as all the solar and wind build and it would be despatchable power night day and winter. Or maybe 50 Korean NPP in six years. For some reason I am having trouble understanding the economics here.
The Labor Government now admits that we need gas to firm up renewables, plus gas is our second biggest export earner.
The utilities have always had the ability to shut down grid tied inverters they just increase the hertz and the inverter will shut down automatically.
Not if you disconnect from the grid FIRST ! (which is what I do)
need more storage capacity to soak it up when its available.
Running the ACs at such a high rate during the cheapest time of day will damage the heat pumps.
I think the switch off has to do with power overload...
Curtailment tends to happen during shoulder seasons, mostly in spring, sometimes a bit in fall. But it really doesn't happen all that often. Even before batteries, in California, significant curtailment only happened across a few hours on a few days each year (mostly in spring).
Batteries do reduce curtailment greatly... the whole idea is to store the excess energy in the day and load-shift it into the evening and (eventually) overnight. But the very nature of how renewables work guarantees that there will never be a perfect balance, ever. In fact, this is true for fossil fuel generation as well, in the form of generation reserves.
But if you think about it logically, some curtailment is actually desirable. It is always better to have an excess in energy than to have an excess in demand. That's the key point... curtailment is not really a boogie-man. It's just the fossil equivalent of having a bit of reserve capacity.
My off-grid system is curtailing daily at this time of year. The batteries fill up, there's plenty of energy... it curtails the input to match the load once the batteries are full. Fairly straight-forward and always a good situation to be in.
-Matt
California's current electricity sourcing: natural gas 38.5%; large hydro 21.1%; imports 18.9%; wind 7.5% nuclear 5.0%; geothermal 3.4%; batteries 0.0%; and assorted other minor sources. Green energy ain't working all that well.
The integration of AI with smart devices to ramp demand, and shift loads is the longterm answer.
We need every device with high power consumption to be smart, and available for centralized control.
Also devices that store energy, like vehicle batteries, powerwall's and other grid connected batteries.
Many small shifts, minute by minute, like increasing the output a few percent on a million AC units can help soak up the excess solar power. With real time control, our consumption, and industry will breath...in harmony with the sun and wind resources. Could be quite beautiful.
But as was mentioned, designing in excess capacity, to have closer to adequate most of the rest of the year is good practice, not a flaw. Finally, with cheaper better batteries, and profit motive, anywhere adding batteries to balance loads is needed...it will eventually get them.
The "market" is a good compass for a shopkeeper, not for a state. Australia has become a laboratory of capitalism... Poor you.
There is a nifty way to prevent curtailment, and that is to disconnect from the grid during the peak solar hours (10am-3pm). Once you are disconnected, no-one from the outside can arbitrarily turn off your solar when THEY feel like it. In my case, after I disconnect using the Tesla App on my iPhone (it is really easy to do - 1 click, and 1 swipe), all the juice from my solar goes into a Tesla battery for all night use - ready for when the sun comes up the next day. (Basically the same as what is happening in California). Using my battery to power the home all night eliminates paying peak rates from 3pm to 11pm, and for the rest of the night as well. It is such a no brainer I'm amazed the state govt has not mandated it for all homes, just like they did with smart meters...
Hi Greg
Is it as easy to reconnect using your phone?
@@nick0047 Sure is, just swipe left instead of right.
Thanks, will connect my phone to it tonight.
Hi Greg ,connected just now and yes I’m off grid charging the battery, thanks for the heads up👍🏼
@@nick0047 G'Day Nick. Glad I could help. Do you have a Tesla vehicle as well ? If so, (and you have a version 3 wall connector) there's a new feature called 'charge on solar' in the Tesla App. Let me know if you need more info...
As I've said before. This is an issue of politicians being owned by fossil fuel and utility companies. Jack Rickard did a video about this 5 years ago. If our governments truly wanted to eliminate the fossil fuel industries they would do everything possible to create massive energy storage systems for the massive excess energy amounts generated in whatever form those storage systems have to take. They can't though because the energy companies own them. Here in California a bill to charge everyone a minimum flat rate of about $24/mo plus a per kwh charge has just passed. They will lower the cost/kwh about 12%. The utility companies proposed that bill a couple years ago and Gov. Newsom allowed it to be voted on. This is after the utilities were able to gut the net metering agreements and get rate increases. So for those of us who actually try to conserve energy our bills can go up. PGE net profit for 2023 = $2.2 billon. As long as utility companies are allowed to be profit based organizations, Tony Seba's dream of God energy will never be realized.
The De Beers business model
We are not going to change policies anytime soon. Education is the way. Not enough is done in Australia to educate young people about waste.They just dont get it?
This is the result of the transmission grid not being updated to distribute the available supply. Recabling and new HVDC transmission lines will go a long way towards reducing this issue.
Storage is a little more complicated because the most cost effective long term storage solution has not yet been settled on. Dozens of technologies have been proposed but not yet demonstrated to be the best. The market is waiting for an obvious winner.🥇
Insulate the home properly and it won't need the complex energy management. You're making it too complex and all these systems must be maintained.
A Net Zero home depends upon technology like solar panels, but it's possible to build without almost no ongoing technology
A Passive home designed for a 200-year life almost makes solar panels obsolete - but it's a home that only tge wealthy can afford in 2024.
Homes in the Middle East desert climates used this technology 3,000 years ago. It uses the temperature differential between the deep soil and the night/day to an advantage. Twenty feet down the ground stays a constant temperature year round - sixty feet us better.
Here in South Texas the deep ground temperature is 72 F, which is ideal for most people.
Once fusion power is perfected none of these systems will be needed.
They could also direct the excess energy to Bitcoin miners. And, as the they keep getting stifled by government, the free market eventually will drive them to do that.
Of course solar should be shut off when there is too much power. We need to reduce electrical costs when there is an excess. Companies should use for energy intensive processes. Make prices dependent upon demand minute by minute and it will be solved. We can use batteries or change demand based upon cost. Heat water is when cost is low.
Electric car ,buses and trucks is great way to suck up solar production...Simple make an app and call all of users whwn youur solar plant have excesiveproduction of electric energy.
Tesla Megapack batteries
What's the point of going green then?
evening mate
💯🌈💚