SoCal has a huge amount of wind and solar right now. Utility sized battery installations are going in to deal with the electricity production gaps.
Comment on U.S. solar will pass wind in 2025 and leave coal in the dust soon after
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
That’s actually a problem.
All realistic plans for 100% renewable (or even 95% renewable, which is substantially easier) rely on a multipronged approach of wind, water, solar, and grid upgrades. Each one has upsides and downsides, but you can use the upsides of one to cover the downsides of another. Combined, you get a reliable grid based on intermittent but cheap sources.
Capitalism sees this plan and decides to deploy the one with the best immediate ROI. Which happens to be solar. Problem is that you can’t just rely on solar. The grid is hitting limits where electrical production is sending prices to basically zero at certain times, but not able to provide enough the rest of the time. That will shift the economic incentives. Eventually.
It’ll figure out what researchers have already written down, but it’ll take too long to get there.
spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Even home battery solutions. We have solar panels & a Powerwall. Were part of a Virtual Power Plant along with around 1500 other Powerwall owners in the region. During peak usage in the summer all our PowerWalls feed back to the grid so that our utility provider doesn’t have to spin up expensive (and dirty) peaker plants. We get paid a premium for the power we provide during these events.
I saw articles here on Lenny just a month or two ago that Tesla successfully tested a VPP in California that consisted of 100,000 PowerWalls.
spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The ones they’ve installed near us are Siemens and the only reason we even know they exist is we went by often during installation. The cabinets are now hidden behind a high wall. I’m guessing they’re going in all over the place. Strange that I’ve never seen them mentioned in the news anywhere.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 3 weeks ago
While your power company is taking your power from your battery, where does your power to power your house come from?
IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Our house is still powered by the panels and/or battery as well. We typically use 1 to 5 kWh, and during these events the batteries are discharging up to 10 kWh. Whatever we don’t use goes to the grid. Last year we received a payout of $1450 for 45 hours worth of energy, probably in the neighborhood of 300-350 kWh.
AceBonobo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Is it? Wind is 10% and solar is 4%
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Yes, and we’re already seeing prices go negative with that mix. This shouldn’t happen (at least not very often) if it’s built properly.
AceBonobo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well that’s an average and it will differ greatly with seasons. What percentage is problematic?
whereyaaat@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
It’s not really a ‘problem.’
If push came to shove, we could just wait before putting the panels online.
Fairgreen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Batteries
Mihies@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
What batteries exactly? The capacity required is huge.
axexrx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They can be distributed though. I Install solar, most of the systems we install with batteries end up selling back a significant portion of their charge to the grid (iirc our system wide average is 40% nightly resale)
So not only is each house with a battery not using grid power at night, its powering almost half of an equivalently sized house.
Granted, batteries are still on the expensive side, so these systems aren’t coming enough ( I think we’re at ~10% of our systems have a battery)
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
A competent government that believes in basic science, would give tax breaks to encourage this.
Mihies@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Yeah, that’s a step in correct direction, but can you guarantee that everybody can be powered 24/7 through renewables/batteries, specially during winter? Unless that’s the case you still need a shit-ton of non-renewable energy that’s coming either from fossil fuels or nuclear. And if you want to avoid (co2) emissions, then you need nuclear to cover everybody, and if you have nuclear then it has to run 100% 24/7. OTOH if you don’t have nuclear, you’ll emit all sort or crap during those periods. And so on. Also, it’s not just that batteries are sort of expensive, they are big. Also you are talking houses, but masses live in apartments where placing solar panels or batteries isn’t possible (at least in quantity).
betanumerus@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
No one will ever have the idea of simply having more batteries right? It’s all in capacity not quantity, because quantity would be to easy right? Got it.
Mihies@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Where do you have TWhs of batteries? As you said, both quantity and capacity matters, when lower capacity you need bigger battery which is harder to put somewhere.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 3 weeks ago
Also not renewable and have short lifetimes, kinda the opposite of what the push for “renewables” is supposed to be about lol.
Mihies@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Are you taking about batteries?
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Batteries are nice, but they’re insanely expensive at this scale and ruin the entire point of helping the environment. Carbon emissions from huge batteries are unbelievable.