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Solar Power In California

Cheerful Charlie

Cheerful Charlie

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/power-ca...le-electricity-prices-negative-201511935.html

[FONT=&quot]California’s solar installations are feeding so much power into the grid that they have driven wholesale electricity prices at times as low as zero — or even below, meaning the companies that generate power pay utilities to take it. It is an environmental success story that is beginning to pose unexpected technical and financial challenges.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week that utility-scale solar energy supplied nearly 40 percent of California’s power needs for the first time at midday on March 11.

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Interesting. All those Faux talking heads that love to sneer at renewable energy are fulla shit.
[/FONT]
 
How are these companies going to pay their employees if if they're paying utilities to take their power? That's something to sneer about. Go Faux---
Ever drive across your own state? Those windmills get to be eyesores after awhile. Serious eye pollution. Go Faux---
And this looks to be a great reason to end these obscene tax credits. Go Faux again---
Oh those poor coal miners and their starving babies.
Can't even afford diapers.
They're fulla shit.
 
This is not a good thing. Certainly not for the environment or for consumers.

Negative wholesale prices force baseload power plants to close; leaving the less efficient, more expensive, rapid response plants to make up the slack when the sun sets, and wholesale prices spike back up.

Intermittently negative prices and large price swings through the day are indicative of a problem, not a victory.

IMG_2426.JPG

Notice the prices of electricity when solar is online. Then notice the peak when the sun begins to set. Also, notice what comprises that peak - imports (unspecified, but assuming these are from neighbouring states like Arizona, mostly gas or coal) and thermal (burning stuff - mostly gas or coal).

If you want to get that fossil fuel use down, you need baseload nuclear power; all solar power achieves is to distort the market in ways that favour gas rather than nuclear for the evening peak in demand.
 
Negative price for solar makes no sense. Solar unlike nukes can simply be stopped at any time.
Nukes can't be stopped so it's literally cheaper to pay someone to take your electricity than thinking of ways to dump it.
 
barbos said:
Negative price for solar makes no sense. Solar unlike nukes can simply be stopped at any time.
Nukes can't be stopped so it's literally cheaper to pay someone to take your electricity than thinking of ways to dump it.
Click to expand...

It wouldn't make sense unless the market were set up for it to make sense.

Utility scale solar gets a big tax credit. On the order of $20 per MWh IIRC. Much of "distributed solar" is probably on rooftops and has no idea what the price is anyway.

Generally if someone is running during a negative price hour it's because a) they get a payment elsewhere to do so b) they can't easily and quickly shut down and come back up.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/power-ca...le-electricity-prices-negative-201511935.html

[FONT="]California’s solar installations are feeding so much power into the grid that they have driven wholesale electricity prices at times as low as zero — or even below, meaning the companies that generate power pay utilities to take it. It is an environmental success story that is beginning to pose unexpected technical and financial challenges.[/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#26282A][FONT="]The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week that utility-scale solar energy supplied nearly 40 percent of California’s power needs for the first time at midday on March 11.

-----

Interesting. All those Faux talking heads that love to sneer at renewable energy are fulla shit.
[/FONT]
Click to expand...

I recently received an email from my power company asking if I would be interested purchasing solar power. It was not a detailed proposal but it basically said that the price of my solar power would initially be higher than the current rate but the price would be guaranteed for 20 years and eventually that price would be cheaper than the conventional power. I declined their generous offer.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/power-ca...le-electricity-prices-negative-201511935.html

[FONT=&quot]California’s solar installations are feeding so much power into the grid that they have driven wholesale electricity prices at times as low as zero — or even below, meaning the companies that generate power pay utilities to take it. It is an environmental success story that is beginning to pose unexpected technical and financial challenges.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week that utility-scale solar energy supplied nearly 40 percent of California’s power needs for the first time at midday on March 11.

-----

Interesting. All those Faux talking heads that love to sneer at renewable energy are fulla shit.
[/FONT]
Click to expand...

This again?

It's not a sign of environmental success, but rather of environmental failure. The solar power isn't reliable enough to take the other generators offline, thus you have them running at minimum throttle and burning fuel for no benefit.
 
This whole operation should be looked at from an energy not a monetary perspective. Also, try to nudge incentives along that direction very mildly. The current incentives are pretty crappy.
 
Wat? I don't understand these arguments against the use of solar power. First let me elaborate as a solar powered southern CA Edison consumer:

I still get all of my power needs from the power company. I sell all of the power generated by my solar panels back to them. While that often generates a credit, I do not get paid for solar generated power over and above what I use (annually). So it does me no good to consistently generate 2000 kWh per month while I only use 1000 kWh because at the end of our relationship, whatever credits I have earned disappears. On the contrary, I have to pay a minimum of $10 per month to stay hooked up to the grid in order to allow this power transfer to take place.

Until Tesla or some other manufacturer develops batteries that are efficient and small enough to house in order to get solar producers off the grid, this is the arrangement that everyone is CA is stuck with. So SCE generates credits during the day (but isn't paying the full amount of credit to consumers) and then generates the power at night (or when it's cloudy).

How is this bad for the economy again?

aa
 
Alcoholic Actuary said:
Wat? I don't understand these arguments against the use of solar power. First let me elaborate as a solar powered southern CA Edison consumer:

I still get all of my power needs from the power company. I sell all of the power generated by my solar panels back to them. While that often generates a credit, I do not get paid for solar generated power over and above what I use (annually). So it does me no good to consistently generate 2000 kWh per month while I only use 1000 kWh because at the end of our relationship, whatever credits I have earned disappears. On the contrary, I have to pay a minimum of $10 per month to stay hooked up to the grid in order to allow this power transfer to take place.

Until Tesla or some other manufacturer develops batteries that are efficient and small enough to house in order to get solar producers off the grid, this is the arrangement that everyone is CA is stuck with. So SCE generates credits during the day (but isn't paying the full amount of credit to consumers) and then generates the power at night (or when it's cloudy).

How is this bad for the economy again?

aa
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to, but the argument made here was that the environmental impact is not necessarily good since the imported power has to make up the difference when the sun sets, and the imported power is very dirty. Essentially, without clean base load energy like nuclear or hydro, the environmental effects can be a wash or even a net negative. The devil is in the details, I'd imagine. But that is the argument.
 
J842P said:
Alcoholic Actuary said:
Wat? I don't understand these arguments against the use of solar power. First let me elaborate as a solar powered southern CA Edison consumer:

I still get all of my power needs from the power company. I sell all of the power generated by my solar panels back to them. While that often generates a credit, I do not get paid for solar generated power over and above what I use (annually). So it does me no good to consistently generate 2000 kWh per month while I only use 1000 kWh because at the end of our relationship, whatever credits I have earned disappears. On the contrary, I have to pay a minimum of $10 per month to stay hooked up to the grid in order to allow this power transfer to take place.

Until Tesla or some other manufacturer develops batteries that are efficient and small enough to house in order to get solar producers off the grid, this is the arrangement that everyone is CA is stuck with. So SCE generates credits during the day (but isn't paying the full amount of credit to consumers) and then generates the power at night (or when it's cloudy).

How is this bad for the economy again?

aa
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to, but the argument made here was that the environmental impact is not necessarily good since the imported power has to make up the difference when the sun sets, and the imported power is very dirty. Essentially, without clean base load energy like nuclear or hydro, the environmental effects can be a wash or even a net negative. The devil is in the details, I'd imagine. But that is the argument.
Click to expand...

I can understand that, but how is it different if I generate no solar power. Assuming SCE has the capacity to store the solar energy collected and offsets the 'dirty' energy with it, isn't that an improvement over 24 hour 'dirty' energy? Is the argument really 'solar sucks because you can't use it at night.' ?

aa
 
Alcoholic Actuary said:
J842P said:
I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to, but the argument made here was that the environmental impact is not necessarily good since the imported power has to make up the difference when the sun sets, and the imported power is very dirty. Essentially, without clean base load energy like nuclear or hydro, the environmental effects can be a wash or even a net negative. The devil is in the details, I'd imagine. But that is the argument.
Click to expand...

I can understand that, but how is it different if I generate no solar power. Assuming SCE has the capacity to store the solar energy collected and offsets the 'dirty' energy with it, isn't that an improvement over 24 hour 'dirty' energy? Is the argument really 'solar sucks because you can't use it at night.' ?

aa
Click to expand...

Why are you assuming that SCE can store energy? Most utilities and grid operators can't (the only exception being where pumped storage hydro is available).

Power is either used as and when it is generated, or it is wasted. Negative wholesale prices indicate that the grid has more power being supplied to it than it can use, and that the grid operators are a tively penalising generators for being online, because their production is doing more harm than good.

The graph I posted earlier shows how valuable power generation is throughout the day; and it shows that solar power has negative value - ie there's now so much of it that it's literally worse than useless.

a certain amount of solar power can be a good thing - and a negative wholesale price when the sun is shining is a clear indication that the amount that is installed exceeds that threshold, and is no longer of any value.

Meanwhile, the market distortion that the negative price causes is incentivising less efficient rapidly dispatchible power, while disincentivising more efficient but less dispatchible options. So not only is the power generated by solar useless; it is also harming the environment.

The solution here is to develop cheap and efficient mass storage. Despite the hype, this is not only not yet possible; it's not even close to becoming possible.

Absent such a storage solution, it is better for the environment and for the efficiency of the grid to shut down some Solar capacity, and to generate most of the baseload requirement from nuclear and hydro power.

The storage capacity of a typical electricity network is approximately 20 milliseconds of supply, a value that can be rounded down to zero for most practical purposes. Your conclusions are based on a false assumption.
 
repoman said:
This whole operation should be looked at from an energy not a monetary perspective. Also, try to nudge incentives along that direction very mildly. The current incentives are pretty crappy.
Click to expand...

The price being driven to zero or even below is clear evidence the current incentives are too big, not too small!
 
Alcoholic Actuary said:
Wat? I don't understand these arguments against the use of solar power. First let me elaborate as a solar powered southern CA Edison consumer:

I still get all of my power needs from the power company. I sell all of the power generated by my solar panels back to them. While that often generates a credit, I do not get paid for solar generated power over and above what I use (annually). So it does me no good to consistently generate 2000 kWh per month while I only use 1000 kWh because at the end of our relationship, whatever credits I have earned disappears. On the contrary, I have to pay a minimum of $10 per month to stay hooked up to the grid in order to allow this power transfer to take place.

Until Tesla or some other manufacturer develops batteries that are efficient and small enough to house in order to get solar producers off the grid, this is the arrangement that everyone is CA is stuck with. So SCE generates credits during the day (but isn't paying the full amount of credit to consumers) and then generates the power at night (or when it's cloudy).

How is this bad for the economy again?

aa
Click to expand...

The problem is that solar forces the utilities to supply a more uneven demand. Uneven demand means gas generators and it means running generators at idle a lot because they take too long to start up when needed. Think of how much your gar guzzles (on a mpg basis) while stuck in stop-and-go traffic. That's what your panels are doing to the power grid.

- - - Updated - - -

Alcoholic Actuary said:
Assuming SCE has the capacity to store the solar energy collected and offsets the 'dirty' energy with it, isn't that an improvement over 24 hour 'dirty' energy? Is the argument really 'solar sucks because you can't use it at night.' ?

aa
Click to expand...

And why don't you assume they have a perpetual motion machine while you're at it?

Their storage capacity is basically zero!
 
Loren Pechtel said:
repoman said:
This whole operation should be looked at from an energy not a monetary perspective. Also, try to nudge incentives along that direction very mildly. The current incentives are pretty crappy.
Click to expand...

The price being driven to zero or even below is clear evidence the current incentives are too big, not too small!
Click to expand...
You need to look at average price of solar electricity is being sold which is positive.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/power-ca...le-electricity-prices-negative-201511935.html

California’s solar installations are feeding so much power into the grid that they have driven wholesale electricity prices at times as low as zero — or even below, meaning the companies that generate power pay utilities to take it. It is an environmental success story that is beginning to pose unexpected technical and financial challenges.The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week that utility-scale solar energy supplied nearly 40 percent of California’s power needs for the first time at midday on March 11.

-----

Interesting. All those Faux talking heads that love to sneer at renewable energy are fulla shit.
Click to expand...

This again?

It's not a sign of environmental success, but rather of environmental failure. The solar power isn't reliable enough to take the other generators offline, thus you have them running at minimum throttle and burning fuel for no benefit.
Click to expand...
The benefit is that they come on when it gets dark. What are the total emissions of solar and conventional power during the day verses just the conventional during the day?

Your complaint would be like complaining about people being paid not to grow crops in order to maintain the needed infrastructure for a strong agriculture system.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
The problem is that solar forces the utilities to supply a more uneven demand.
Click to expand...
Highest demand is during the work day. Solar is greatly quelling the work day demand!
Uneven demand means gas generators and it means running generators at idle a lot because they take too long to start up when needed. Think of how much your gar guzzles (on a mpg basis) while stuck in stop-and-go traffic. That's what your panels are doing to the power grid.
Click to expand...
Show us the math. Show us how using less gas over the period of a day is a bad thing, emission wise. Seriously, your argument is ridiculous. You are whining that because the gas plants are running just to stay on, we are somehow losing.

We are burning much less gas, thanks to solar.
 
I see this as an incentive to pour funding into energy storage development.
 
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