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Comment on California just debunked a big myth about renewable energy

IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

California didn’t really debunk anything here. It’s a coastal state with plenty of wind and a predominantly warm, sunny, rain free climate. Of course renewables like wind and solar do well. The reliability concerns are usually more prevalent in areas that have much higher precipitation, and especially in climates that get snow.

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wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’d be more interested to know how things have been in the recent disaster scenarios. The fires have downed power infrastructure all over the place. Have renewables been a positive, negative, or no different in terms of keeping the power on for people?

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- RubberElectrons@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Shouldn’t be a big change, the transmission system is the same no matter the prime mover.
  
  When fires melted power lines near where I used to live in soCal, SCE would have trucks roll in, dig in new power poles and run the cable. Power restored within about a week, so long as they had stock on transformers.
  
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  - wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Right but, for example,
    
    most solar Inverters require a power supply to operate and define the switching frequency.
    
    Distributed storage and private generation may have enabled some areas to get by on reduced supply.
    
    Turbines and solar farms may have been in locations threatened by the fires or been damaged by ash / other debris.
    
    Repairing grid structure whilst the may be private batteries or generation online (damaged or not) might slow things down for safety reasons.
    
    Once the electrons are on the wires I agree with you, it’s all much the same. However there are other aspects and I expect we’re still learning the good and the bad.
    
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    RubberElectrons@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Sheesh I didn’t know the inverters may not run without a grid reference. Where have you seen that, what a terrible idea!
    
    LOL imagine they skimped on a 555 generating 60Hz when in local mode.
    
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SteveKLord@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
From the scientific journal directly sited in the article :

It’s true that solar energy is only produced when the sun is shining on solar panels. Likewise, wind energy is dependent on the ebb and flow of air currents. But the sheer volume of renewable energy being deployed, the ability to store that energy for longer, and to match demand with supply using software, creates a balanced grid.

According to BloombergNEF, lithium-ion battery cell densities have almost tripled, and costs have declined by almost 90% in the past decade – making it easier to smooth out the peaks and troughs of generation to meet the shifts and cycles of demand. Renewable energy sources themselves have dropped by as much as 82% over the same timeframe. Further improvements to both generation and storage will continue driving down costs, making renewable energy even more attractive to consumers.

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- IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Ok, but none of that mentions how they plan to account for panels buried under a foot of snow for half the year. That’s the source of the concern, not simply smoothing out daily peaks and valleys.
  
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  - SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The snow problem isn’t really that much of a problem if you build for that in mind.
    
    All the panels need is a small heat strip running through some part of it, maybe even behind the panel, added as aftermarket options, to melt it as it falls, and some sort of sensor to only kick heat on when it’s needed. They have things like that for led traffic lights already, so it would really just be repurposing something that already exists.
    
    Sure that uses some electricity, reducing the overall efficiency, but 90+% of the year it’s not actively snowing hard enough to need to kick the heat on, so that’s a minimal loss.
    
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    Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Could even make it a manual thing or periodic and dependent on the panel having reduced power generation during the day. Heat up the snow while the panel is angled and it will eventually fall off without needing to melt all of it. Then, the rest of the time you can just let it get cold.
    
    I wish my car’s wheel wells had that to periodically drop the slush/snow that builds up behind the wheels. Just needs to run for a little bit until the chunk falls off.
    
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  - Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Exactly! Like how hydro-power is a dead end and we shouldn’t invest in it.
    
    It’s like, “guys, you know there’s who cities that aren’t by a river, right?”
    
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  - SteveKLord@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The article is focusing on California as an example so that doesn’t seem entirely necessary but you could look to Norway to discover how they deal with this:
    
    Vertical Panels are one solution as are Snow Repellent Panels and heated solar panels
    
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