Comment on Texas Senate passes bill requiring solar plants to provide power at night
Amoxtli@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
The Hill tries to make backup energy as something that brings volatility and rolling blackouts, which makes no sense. Implying they believe that wind and solar should go without backup, and consistent generation at night, which is basically extra capacity. This seems like common sense legislation. If you are going to need to roll out back up generation in the future, might as well do it now, instead of later. This does a couple of things for the Texas GOP goal of increasing reliability, it increases the responsibility on solar and wind producers to address their own volatility, instead of dumping the volatility on ancillary services, which gain less revenue, because of their off-time, accommodating wind and solar. The concern for Texas Legislature is volatility, or intermittency.
As unpopular as your comment may be, it is likely correct.
Right now solar is so cheap during the day that they can bid a negative price on the market during the day making sure they are part of the mix. Here is a great article/video on it from Practical Engineer
Obviously solar doesn’t actually cost negative money to run, so this will require them to bid a more realistic price that will, in the long run, facilitate an actual conversion to green energy.
Dogyote@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
You don’t understand Texas’s powergrid. It’s a free market, there is little planning or foresight. Large scale power production is provided by hundreds, possibly thousands, of independent producers who can turn their production on as they see fit, in other words, when it’s profitable. Therefore backup generation for solar is already present. If there’s not enough, then the market will dictate how much to build and where. That’s how it works in Texas.
Free market, they can deal with it. Yes, it’s a dumb system, but thems the rules in Texas.
This bill is clearly designed to stifle renewable production in favor of fossil energy. Requiring one mode of production to have or purchase backup generation isn’t fair in the current market system. Do away with the market system first before putting a thumb on the scale.
Also preferred energy types? Energy types with the least amount of emissions should be preferred. Not gas, not coal, not oil, or whatever else Texas wants to burn.
Leeks@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Per the text of the bill solar producers could just claim maintenance every night.
Dogyote@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Ha, hey ERCOT, we gotta clean these panels every night, takes 15 hours.