Comment on Texas Senate passes bill requiring solar plants to provide power at night

millie@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Providing power at night is much more reasonable than forcing an equal/backup gas plant.

  Requiring solar to have 2-4 hours battery backup power is a great way to expand grid while still keeping existing plants around. Peaker/backup plants have always had a business model based on high rates. If the law says a solar project must buy into a legacy plant and promise to keep it ready for backup, it’s not totally crazy, as long as it can charge extortionist rates when it is needed. It doesn’t reduce benefit of battery storage, paired with larger solar array.

  inventive new ways to store energy.

  100 hour storage, like iron air batteries, is cheap but not as economic as mature battery technologies for power arbitrage. Still, if there is a regulation to have 18-48 hours of power reserves, then it is an ok solution. The problem with long term storage with solar is that if you get 6 hours of sun in a day, half to charge, half to sell directly, you only add 6 hours, even if most days you wouldn’t draw down 6 hours at night due to lower demand.

  Hydrogen electrolysis is another solution to monetizing overproduction. It can be done more cheaply with methane than water, and still be zero emissions, zero capture and sequestration, with marketable carbon black solid as byproduct. Keeping a bit of H2 onsite, with a fuel cell as backup, or NG electric plant, can be profitable, but all depends on how much you have to pay for backup, and how much profit from use.

  Introducing V2G service that pays EV owners to be “the backup” in addition to battery arbitrage revenue is another path, that will happen soon enough, but where some kind of regulatory obligation to have it, makes it happen with more commitment.

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  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This bill explicitly excludes batteries and storage of power. This just makes it so solar companies have to match their production with fossil fuel purchases.

    It is to stop or slow expansion of renewables, as companies will essentially have to additionally and directly invest in fossil fuels to expand their industry.

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    • humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Very sad. I get that the grid does need backup/resilience power and someone needs to pay for it, but adding a new FF plant of equal capacity is going well beyond backup needs. A simpler solution would be to tax renewable power in wholesale market such that it funds “payments for backup readiness” as needed, and tax goes down as less of it is needed.

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