https://www.researchgate.net/figure...erent-appliances-per-household_fig1_290105581 I want to illustrate a problem with the distribution of solar electrical energy. Solar energy does not produce a predictable base level of production. The peak of its production on any given day does not occur at the same time as the predictable peak level of use. Take a look at the typical winter load curve. People use the majority of their energy at night. This is predictable because this is when they are at home, require lighting, heating, cooking, entertainment, etc. A solar array will generate its peak when the sun is directly overhead. At noon on this chart we can see that energy use is quite low in comparison to the peak load. We can overlay the two in a chart like this: Every part of the green line above the load line is wasted. Every part of the load line above the green line has to be generated by some other source. The way the power companies deal with this variance in use are three types of specialized production facilities. The first are base load generators. If we look at the first chart we can see that usage never dips below 1000MW. This would represent the base load. This base is typically provided by efficient generators that can produce low cost energy. The drawback is that they cannot be quickly turned off, and they cannot be quickly turned on. Some take days of startup to reach their operational generation amounts. The next type is an intermediate generator. These are not as efficient as the base load generators, but the trade off is that they are slightly more reactive. In the first chart the intermediate load would be the distance between the two troughs that take place at 5am and 3pm. This looks about 800 MW. The rest of the energy has to be produced by generators that can we quickly turned off and on. These are the least efficient types of generators, often powered by fossil fuels. Now I said before that the energy represented by the green line of solar is wasted in the second chart. What if we dump that energy on the grid? When we do that what we are doing is lowering the trough at that period of time. This causes intermediate load generators to have to go offline. It can cause base load generators to have to go offline. We saw this problem take place in California in 2018. The surplus energy on the grid has to go somewhere. Power companies running base and intermediate generators had to sell that energy at a negative price to prevent the grid from frying due to too much energy. This is directly related to the drop in base that takes place during the day when solar is feeding energy to the grid that people aren't using. By 2022 California experiences rolling blackouts due to lack of production. This is because the energy companies can't run their base & intermediate load generators due to the solar, and they don't have enough peak load generators due to their inefficiency. So what if we store that solar energy some way? The two main ways energy can be stored in large amounts are gravity & thermal. We can pump water up a mountain into a reservoir and let it flow down at night. It works. It also has environmental impacts. You need a mountain. You need to destroy that mountain's ecosystem to turn it into a battery. We could also use thermal energy. There are molten salt plants that take the energy of the sun and use it to melt salts that are then used to boil water which turns turbines. Where does that heat go when we're done with it? Right into the environment.
With 11.5% wind and 14% solar power today, California is addressing electricity shortages. With more water, hydro power has been turned on. The extreme dry spell had reduced power output in previous years. This was a significant factor in shortages. PG&E poorly maintained transmission lines, causing major outages due to forest fires in what was a record forest fire year. PG&E has undergone serious legal consequences and is working to ensure this doesn't happen again. There have been grid improvements. As noted in federal budget work, there needs to be grid improvement throughout the USA. The cost of shipping power across the nation needs to be reduced - besides improving national defense and natural threat defense. There is increasing solar and wind power with aggressive push for home solar, which can pretty much take homes off the grid if home battery is included. This pays for itself within a reasonable number of years. And, if new homes are built with this technology, it gets paid for as part of the 30 mortgage, while electricity bills are seriously reduced the first month onward. CA has mandated solar on new homes, apartment buildings and condos which are less than 3 stories. There are programs of using pricing to move usage out of peak usage periods. The target in CA is to be 90% carbon free by 2035.
The increase in solar production is what caused the problems... That's why California is penalizing selling energy back to the grid. That's why they are pushing for rich people to buy local energy storage. All the poor get out of the deal is unreliable expensive energy. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1142...ves-for-home-solar-worrying-environmentalists
You didn't read the article. The article doesn't identify the increase in solar production as a problem. EVERYONE with solar panels gets energy at cheaper rates, because they are generating their own. Even if they don't get full value for electricity generated during the day, they still win. Plus, the state spends a bunch of money on putting solar on people's homes, so there are a lot of lower income people with solar because of that. However, I don't trust the Public Utility Commissioners on this. They may have a somewhat legit direction, but they are reaping major profits from people's home solar in making this change. How did they decide the size of profit they should get?? Read the article you posted.
There's lot of free energy. You just have to know how to grab it. Solar cells, wind generators, tidal power plants, etc. Completely without witchcraft.
I did read the article. They aren't talking about the effect on the grid at all. I am. I included the article to outline the response to the effect on the grid. The response is directly intended to reduce the amount of solar energy supplied to the grid.
But, that is NOT why they said they did it. Their objective is to cause homes to become even more independent of the grid. Or, are you just calling them liars? There ARE legitimate questions, as per every policy change. For example, what do they plan to do with the extra revenue?
What do you think the difference is between: "Their objective is to cause homes to become even more independent of the grid." and "Their objective is to reduce the amount of solar energy supplied to the grid." Won't the first objective cause the second objective? Just look at the debate around the NEM code. https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/SearchRes.aspx?DocFormat=ALL&DocID=505449100 Those are the comments of a company interested in selling fuel cell storage systems. They detail exactly what I have been saying. More solar in the day means less available capacity at night. This guy's excited for that prospect because he gets to sell people batteries. Or you can see what a member of the public thinks: https://apps.cpuc.ca.gov/apex/f?p=401:65:::::: Clearly he thinks he's being pushed off the grid, not being granted independence... Not sure where he thinks the power he uses at night comes from. So why, make the change at all if the problem is just transmission lines, and not the fact that power companies are disincentivized to run base load generators 24x7?
The point was there has to be an exception in some circumstance, or else nothing would exist. These "laws" are based upon how we observe the world around us today. But if we try to answer where it all came from originally, there has to be some kind of exception. Religious people say it's god - I say that's ridiculous. I think Hawking had some other ideas I don't fully understand. But the point is what you call laws are actually guidelines for usual, contemporary circumstances. All that said, it's more a philosophical point than a practical one.
Yes, I don't really understand the state's objective with rates. And, the fact that their plan is to reap the benefits of people's solar investments by not paying the going rate for that electricity needs justification. California does help pay the costs of going solar for many people. One result is that there are a lot of people who got into solar without having the finances to buy a home battery. So for many people, cutting revenue to those with solar may not be justifiable approach if the intent is to get people to buy home storage that allows them to use more of their own generation capacity. I think you totally missed on your cited opposition by the green hydrogen company. They are a green hydrogen company that would like to replace diesel backup power generation with hydrogen fuel cells. They face headwinds, because the VAST MAJORITY of hydrogen used today is produced from large amounts of energy used to strip hydrogen from fossil fuels. In the main, hydrogen is a major GHG producing technology direction. That is counter to California's objectives. Writing law to benefit green hydrogen and NOT GHG hydrogen isn't trivial.
Laws of physics are laws, not guidelines. You do have a point concerning "contemporary circumstances". Earth gets its energy from the Sun. The Sun is not an endless supply. We are still totally subject to the laws of physics, including on energy. But, the sun will last so long that it's lifetime isn't a constant question. I don't like calling it a philosophical point, because that makes the laws of physics sound like they aren't actually laws.
If I'm to steel man the argument I would say their regulatory purpose is to more evenly balance the trend of supply and load. One of the problems they are trying to solve, as I have been trying to point out, is that solar supply occurs when people don't need it. This imbalances the grid. Compounding this problem is that solar suppliers remove energy from the grid at the same time and in the same general amount that everyone else needs it. Under the original model, solar suppliers were selling power to the power company at a time when power was abundant and at the same price as when power was scarce. That's an economy doomed to fail. Now to slay the steel man I would say that the regulators have policies aimed at solving other problems that cause the sum of their regulations to work at cross purposes to each other. They want to reduce overall energy use to help stabilize the electrical grid. They want eliminate certain type of energy use that are currently independent of the electrical grid, and force those people on to an already unstable electrical grid. Just those two priorities alone are fighting each other. Where's the benefit in paying a premium for energy that the power companies could be supplying more efficiently and more cheaply to everyone if they were able and allowed to keep more base generation units active during solar peak? Who is it a benefit to? Heck, in the old way, even the solar suppliers have to pay a higher price for the energy they pull from the grid when they aren't producing because that energy has to be produced by inefficient peaking generators. I'm not sure you're clear on what I'm aiming for. I don't think you could say I missed. I am totally for exploring all avenues of economizing energy production. Fossil fuels are an exceptional form of energy transport. There's a baby in that bathwater and people all clamoring to throw out the baby, the water, the bath, and burn down the bathroom because some water got on the floor. I'm totally for expanding the use of solar energy if that energy is used locally for loads that occur at the time the energy is produced. I'm totally for expanding the use of wind technology if that energy is used locally and for loads that occur at the time the energy is produced. I'm totally for nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, hydro-electric, geothermal, electro-chemical, bio-diesel, and whatever else you can think of to harness energy that can be used to improve the lives of people on this Earth. I'm not for going backwards in the hope that in some point in the future we'll figure out how to make a great leap forward. The point of using the commentary from the fuel cell company is that they stressed the need for grid stability, and that the expanding solar market is having a negative impact on that stability. These concerns speak to why these new regs in California appear to be punishing solar suppliers. It's not the case, or the motive.
Or batteries. LIthium ion batteries are used for grid-level storage now. Flow batteries or molten salt batteries will be a better option, one advantage being they don't use lithium or any scarce metal. They have to be very large to be effective, but that's not a problem if they don't have to move.
Lithium is not an efficient option for grid level storage. It's scarce, as you pointed out. So scarce that there isn't enough of it on the planet. The amount we do have is better resourced to portable energy. It currently has the best energy to weight ratio for electric storage, so that's what we should use to move stored electricity. Even so, it still doesn't hold a candle to the energy density of a 1 gallon can of diesel. Don't know enough about them to comment competently. Molten salt batteries present significant engineering problems. The salts are extremely corrosive. The infrastructure needed to transport the molten salt from the place it's heated by the sun to the place the heat is converted into electricity is extremely expensive with limited longevity. In short, you'll spend a lot on the pipes and you'll have to replace them often. Another problem is that salts like to form solid crystals. Solids don't flow well in transmission lines that are intended for liquids. And if either of the heat exchangers ever go offline allowing the salt to cool, well, you have a lot of rebuilding to do because there's no way to reheat the salt outside of the reactor. How long did the Crescent Dunes project operate before that happened?
A LiOn battery has about 200 Wh/kg Diesel has about 12,700 Wh/kg Our current use of diesel is about 27% efficiency, so we actually only have 3429 Wh/kg available to do work. What we can do with 1 kg of diesel, however, takes 17 kg of LiOn to do if you don't take into account the work needed to move the extra 16 kg. That's why your current electric vehicles don't have a lot of range. The more range you try to add, the more energy gets used simply moving the battery. A Tesla Y weighs 5302 lbs A Chevy Impala - 3680 lbs Tesla Y range approx - 300 miles. Chevy Impala @ 24 mpg - 400 miles.
If that's what the issue is, then the policy should be evaluated on the basis of whether it causes people to install home batteries, so they use that electricity themselves at off peak hours. Does this policy address that? I don't see any argument suggesting that a significant cut in people's solar income does that. It sounds much more like someone such as yourself who would like to see clean energy die. You missed, when you based your argument on a case that has nothing to do with this issue.
And?? What are you trying to prove with your car range idea? Industrial sized batteries are being used for various purposes, including moderating grid spikes. You need to read about the Hornsdale Power Reserve, a project of Tesla. Benefits to consumers, copied from WIKI: This is being done in the USA, too. As for home batteries, they can easily be sufficient to allow home generation to never be sold to the grid, while powering homes through grid spike periods. Tesla is using batteries in another way that moderates grid use. Their newer EV charging station direction is to charge industrial scale batteries at night grid rates and then charging cars at the going rate of electricity for the time of day. Tesla reaps a profit and grid managers are happy as public charging requirements are moved off of peak hours! They also have significant solar collection.
They say outright that that is their hope. https://www.integratesun.com/post/u...-3-0-how-it-impacts-your-solar-energy-savings Politicians pull regulation levers because they think they can control systems. They cannot guarantee outcomes, and often, like we saw with NEM 1.0, they produce unexpected negative consequences. Oye. Did I not just say that I want all energy systems to be exploited efficiently? Go ahead and use solar energy. Use it smartly. Don't use it to make energy when people aren't using energy. That's not smart. You don't see how a energy storage company citing grid instability due to the increase in solar supply has something to do with the issue of solar energy increasing grid instability due to the increase in solar supply? I would think it would cause you concern, since your complaint was they weren't all that green a choice to help stabilize the grid, and they were a firm interested in the intended goal of moving solar suppliers on to local storage options.
If the outcome they want is for people to invest in home batteries, they wouldn't take the approach of seriously reducing solar incentives. In fact, attacking solar power at a time when the state is strongly subsidizing home solar is a clear case of seriously poor decision making. Instead, they should be promoting home batteries. Perhaps the subsidies for home solar installation should be adjusted toward inclusion of home batteries. Remember that there are areas where new construction REQUIRES solar panels. Perhaps building codes need to be adjusted to require more than just solar panels - which these grid operators want to attack. We're rapidly growing homes and multiple living units with solar panels and not batteries. Attacking their benefits is not going to change that. Grid operators have to figure out how to live in a world where home solar is a significant energy source. Having more electricity use during after-work hours is not a new issue. This has been a challenge for grid operators for a long time, especially in areas where air conditioning is required. This has been a cause of brown outs long before home solar even existed. This new screwball approach is coming from power administrators that appear to be totally oriented to huge point source production. But, the fact of the matter is that solar and wind are more distributed than that, and are far cheaper than more gigantic point source alternatives - even if you refuse to consider climatology. Attacking home solar is just NOT acceptable.
Nobody, no corporation and no government has the power to suppress new methods of energy creation. Let's remember that is a totally absurd notion and avoid easy acceptance of conspiracy theories. There ARE known sources of energy that are not receiving investments and/or are not being used (or used extensively) for various concrete reasons.
It absolutely has. The absolute energy of the quantum vacuum is not the same as energy available to do work. The absolute energy at any point in any field cannot be measured. You can only measure the difference in energy relative to another point in the field. This difference is necessary for energy to flow. Energy must flow through a distance in order for work to be accomplished. The quantum vacuum is at maximum entropy. In order for a difference to occur in the quantum vacuum, energy must be used to create a difference in the field which would have the same magnitude as the energy you used.
