Because “I don’t care who you are! That’s funny right there!” by David Middleton
Solar power delivers more electricity than Californians can use from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and very little at before 9:00 AM and after 4:00 PM.
So CAISO has to shut in some solar power generation during the peak solar resource period of the day. The more solar power they add to the grid, the more they have to curtail…
AUGUST 24, 2021
California’s curtailments of solar electricity generation continue to increaseCurtailments of solar-powered electricity generation have increased in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) region, the part of the electric grid that covers most of the state. In 2020, CAISO curtailed 1.5 million megawatthours of utility-scale solar, or 5% of its utility-scale solar production.
Grid operators curtail electricity production from solar and wind generators when supply exceeds demand. In 2020, solar curtailments accounted for 94% of the total energy curtailed in CAISO. Solar curtailments tend to be greater in the spring months when electricity demand is relatively low (because of moderate temperatures decreasing heating and cooling demand) and solar output is relatively high. In the early afternoon hours of March 2021, CAISO curtailed an average of 15% of its utility-scale solar output.
[…]
Principal contributor: Lori Aniti
EIA
Meanwhile, sanity makes a rare appearance in California
California to open 5 natural gas plants to avoid blackouts
by Shelby Bracho, Friday, August 20th 2021California officials say five temporary gas-fueled generators will be set up around existing power plants throughout the state to avoid blackouts and boos the state’s grid.
This is a move in the opposite direction from California’s big push toward “green” renewable energy.
“We cannot keep the lights on without additional natural gas and the state’s been forced to go out and find it in an emergency situation,” said Assemblymember Jim Patterson.
Hopefully, this means no more flex alerts and rolling blackouts for people here in the Central Valley and across the state.
[…]
With a current price tag of $171.5 million, each unit will produce about 30 MW of power for a total of 150 MW powered by natural gas.
“Natural gas, you can turn it on when you need it, you can use it at any time of the day or night, it is readily available, it is relatively affordable and it burns relatively cleanly,” said Assemblymember Patterson, “California has been forced to do this because we now have growing demand on a grid that has flattening supplies and that has caused these flex alerts.”
DWR says the units will have the capability of running on an up to 75% hydrogen blend in the future, depending on hydrogen availability.
“So we’ll meet our current needs, and you know, we’ll have the capability to utilize in future fuel blends of hydrogen as we move forward in our clean energy goals,” said Ted Craddock, Deputy Director of the State Water Project with the DWR.
“My hunch is that this is not going to be temporary, my hunch is that this will be 150 MW that will be essential and necessary for a long time to come,” said Assemblymember Patterson.
[…]
Fox26News
Was this a typo?
California officials say five temporary gas-fueled generators will be set up around existing power plants throughout the state to avoid blackouts and boos the state’s grid.
Or will the “gas-fueled generators” literally boo “the state’s grid”?
I hope “I told you it would not work!” is prominently displayed near any California politician who sucked up to the greens.
Tattooed on the back of their necks?
So they know it’s hindsight?
Com’ on Man; it was that sudden change in hours of seasonal daylight that hit them unexpectedly. How was Mr. Patterson supposed to expect THAT?
Which is why grid scale batteries, pumped storage, domestic batteries.
Really, we already fixed this, just a question of the build out.
Vanadium oxides are highly toxic.
. . . and may lead to composing incomplete and grammatically incorrect sentences.
Like giffie and his pals!?
As are lithium oxides.
Good point. With the added bonus of unquenchable fires.
And inextinguishable fires.
…domestic batteries.
Hi Grifffo, If you have some of these in a typical wood base built dwelling of low income southern states American, where would you suggest it is safe to store these domestic batteries, which presumably have to be of a high capacity, i.e. lithium.
“Pfah! It’s merely money, and we all know money has no value when you’re talking about solar and wind power!”
Like most greens, griff doesn’t care, so long as it’s someone else’s money.
I think it’s of interest, special for griff believing it can’t never ever happen in Germany, but it did
On Saturday, August 14, grid operators disconnected several industrial plants from the power grid in the evening. The power generation could no longer cover the current electricity demand in Germany. The power supply was critical and it was no longer possible to secure the supply even by importing electricity.
Power supply for critical industrial companies disconnected from the grid
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/australian-aluminium-smelter-aims-to-switch-to-renewables/
In Australia, one of the major aluminium (note the 2 i’s, Americans) smelters is going for 100% renewables. Further reading of the article points out that they’ll have to have gas power plant backups, because, obviously, gas power actually works!
Intermittent/renewables backed by high-density energy reliables/affordables (in a climate neutral environment including clean combustibles, catalyzed, scrubbed).
And here in good old new Zealand, we have a smelter that has run for decades on 100% renewable hydro – but they are shutting it down, because it is uneconomic! Go figure. The irony of that is that the Manapuori dam and power scheme was vigorously opposed by environmentalists in the 70s, because it was flooding part of a National Park. Now, same green idiots, such as griff, are advocating for huge pumped hydro dams – which each require 2 lakes, and presumably dams. As David Middleton often remarks, you cant make this schist up!
New Zealand might as well be written off now. It has been getting more and more backward for year and finally elected a complete Fascist as the PM. Once you solve your political problems (believing socialism can function) then you need to hire some actual scientists.
I have no sympathy for you.
If you had been watching the daily news in New Zealand, you would know that opposition to our Marxist P.M. is growing. With her convinced stance that Covid will be eliminated, the stars are in alignment for a massive fall for her soon. Watch this space!
I hope you are right. Covid fascism is all the rage though. I imagine 3 water fountains: vaccinated, unvaccinated and dolts who believe in Russia colluuuusion like a certain simpleton troll on here.
The sooner the better
I hate her silly smile and her complete lack of intelligence
She rates in my book with Gretta
a mentally demented individual
I am sad to say NZ was once the 4th highest standard of living and now rates as a very low level third world country
The western world hates violence but has no problem shooting itself in the foot .
If a demented old political hack like Joe Biden can be installed as the most powerful leader on the planet, there are was to reappoint Comrade Ardern. There’s little doubt she is directly funded by Beijing. New Zealand has been flirting with socialism for a long time. It’s very popular with women and minorities.
I’d love to believe you, but I hey me doots.
Steady on there buddy, only marginally more than 50% of the population supported the Socialist loonies at the last election – and the gloss is tarnishing rapidly. They mucked about promoting various UN agendas, intent on achieving a race based aristocracy, instead of getting on with the more mundane tasks of looking out for the welfare of the majority of the population.
Donations to our biggest criminal gang, then to the Taliban, are handing ammunition to the opposition parties – although, it has to be said, they have been buying into some of the same climate crisis absurdity as the socialists.
There are genuine rumblings of discontent amongst the usually silent majority – and something very close to the French yellow jacket movement is emerging. And it is becoming very apparent to most of us that our current incarceration is due to a comprehensive cock-up of the vaccine roll out by the current bunch of incompetents. It is becoming more and more obvious that the current Government is superb at spin, and totally incapable of actually delivering on any program at all.
I look around the world, and I see many countries where very similar – or worse – idiots have been voted into power, by similar small margins. So, maybe you have no sympathy for us – but, coming from a still civilized country, despite our current travails, I have sympathy, in the literal sense, for perhaps you, and certainly all other people who are being misled by the current crop of arrogant, do-gooder, ignorant busybodies that seem to currently besetting our quiet enjoyment of life and freedom.
Despite your obvious dyspepsia, I wish you well
Excuses, excuses and more excuses is all you have except perhaps for your hope in rationality returning to your country. This has been coming for a generation … New Zealand has been flirting with socialism for a least that long … and now they have you by the nuts. I’ve watched exactly the same thing unfolding here in Canada, with our own embarrassing leader,Trudeau. He called an election Sunday, using covid gaslighting, to gain a majority. He’ll likely win. The socialists here in BC did the same last year to get their majority.
I’m not dyspeptic. I’m just telling it like it is. Conservatives have been living in a dream for 50 years while Marxism has made monumental strides … first taking over the women’s movement, public schooling and education,, most NGOs, immigration and now government.
Davidf, I think you highlight the problem we have in the UK where whichever party you vote for that is likely to form a government has signed up to all the global warming crap. In our sham of a democracy anyone standing as independent of the main parties has no chance of ever being elected, and it is 99% impossible to build a new party that could actually win. And currently only the electors in around 80 of our 650 constituencies will actually have an effect on the outcome given the set nature of the remainder. These 80 odd also have large immigrant communities which is bringing into our elections issues relating to the Indian sub-continent and making the main parties suck up to different groups.
Not everybody is mesmerised by the current government
They may not be mesmerized, but they are apparently cowed by it and clearly silent. Hell, I haven’t heard of any protests there at all. That indicates something, n’est ce pas?
The Brits changed the name of aluminum to aluminium in their tiny part of the world for no apparent rational reason. It seems so Australian to follow the Brits in their irrational choices but not in anything else;-)
Although many English words have changed, and Americans keep the old spelling, not this one. This one was a mistake, and has been continuing forever.
(Online etymological dictionary.)
(Thanks for the rabbit hole to dive into. Fortunately, it was not all that deep this time…)
Borium?
It’s on the shelf, next to the dilithium crystals!
Its called the English language, for a reason
Then what are they referring to when they say “American English?”
Somewhat like being in Glasgow. No, that’s probably unfair. I dont know why people get incensed by spelling or grammar drifting, as long as meaning is clear. Here in New Zealand the language has incorporated many words and expressions from Maori – we know what it means, and it becomes part of of the regional flavour.
Wasnt it Winston Churchill who said America and Britain were two cultures separated by a common language?
Ummm …. don’t you think it’s a bit gratuitous and unnecessary, in responding to an article about energy production, to feel the need to take a swipe at Australians’ speech impediments?
Although many English words have changed, and Americans keep the old spelling, not this one. This one was a mistake, and has been continuing forever.
Look at the Periodic Table, you will see all other Post-transition Metals in group 13 use the ending -ium.
Edit: the mistake was actually made by the guy who discovered it. First he called it Alumium, then in a book called it Aluminum, probably by mistake since the other similar metals he discovered like potassium and sodium end in -ium. He later corrected it to Aluminium. The error propagated, however.
Thanks for the education.
Had a Accounting professor from India at Wharton in Philadelphia.
He pronounced aluminum “alum-inium”. With the emphasis on the latter.
It took us dumb class attendees a couple of classes before we understood what he meant. Between accent and pronunciation a lot of meanings were lost.
The alum-inium discussion didn’t have relevance to accounting topics.
Great teacher. He was a teacher that went the extra mile to help us. all you had to do was ask.
Horrible test giver.
He loved incorporating his understandings of Western culture into his tests.
Which is why the entire class flunked his Bourbon and Scotch whiskey shots test because he misunderstood the terminology and us dummies were unable to relate his questions into accounting.
The retest avoided culture memes and asked accounting questions bluntly.
Scotch WHISKY is the legal spelling in Scotland, Great Britain, and beyond – the Irish spelling “whiskey” is also commonly used in the USA, but even there, it is only an acceptable alternative spelling of “whisky”. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms regulations use the spelling “whisky” as the correct legal term. Even some brands in the USA use the standard spelling which is favoured throughout most of the world.
Spelling in general was not standardised until after the mass printing of dictionaries, and in many cases, alternative forms are legitimately acceptable. Modern usage tends to be more relaxed with international variations being shared, and non-native speakers being confused.
You know, griff, California is Green, just down into the bones cores, and they plan natural gas plants, not batteries, domestic or gridscale, or pumped storage. Just to eliminate blackouts..
You can’t imagine that ? I can, very well even 😀 😀
Btw, who is we ?
You forgot unicorn farms.
Wish upon a unicorn transitioning over a Rainbow of inclusive exclusion the Green way, but people aren’t so green to take a knee to the sociopolitical consensus with “benefits” for Green investors.
Pumped storage requires water. Much of CA is in a drought. Desalination requires yet more energy.
Pumped hydro is not a technology that works reliably with no water to move back and forth.
Hydrogen also requires vast quantities of water !
and 70% hydrogen in the gas – dont they know Hydrogen explosive limit is from 5% to over 80% range in air
Oh well its only Californians – we will be having lots of Darwinian awards
Also lots of energy.
Some years ago, when my son was a student in Golden, Colorado, I went to the National Renewable Energy Lab located there (or in the next town over). They had a curious display on hydrogen generation. A solar panel powered by an incandescent light bulb operated a hydrogen generation device (actually an oxygen generation device, but they blew off the oxygen and kept the hydrogen) using water as the source of hydrogen. Then they burned the hydrogen to generate power to light another bulb! Really? How much energy was lost in the process? They did not tell the viewer.
I seem to remember from chemistry that hydrogen has the widest range of detonation of any gas.
Desalination plants and other mission non-critical and negotiable quality of life niches would actually be viable applications for Green technologies of the wind and solar kind. With one caviat: liability for environmental impact (abort the handmade tales) and no blood for rare earth elements. Well, two caveats.
The only reason California has water problems right now is because the State Water Board decided this year to drain 90% of the water from the reservoirs. Said reservoirs were full to overflowing in June 2019, with enough water to withstand a 5-year drought.
Again, that is a feature not a bug. Cannot have a climate problem if you don’t manufacture a climate problem. They have a script to follow….
And, what happens when high-salinity water gets pumped back into the ocean? When I was a young man I used to regularly dive for abalone. They are now rare and many of the places on the California north coast I used to dive are now off limits.
There are no desalination plants anywhere near the North coast. Saline pumped back into the ocean quickly dilutes, especially in light of the volume of water near-shore relative to discharge.
If the abalones are down in count, or things are cordoned off – it’s not from desalination plants hundreds of miles to the South.
I’m aware that there are no desalination plants on the north coast. I was using abalone as an example of a highly-valued marine organism that would probably be sensitive to salinity. I’ve seen no concerns expressed about the impact of waste water from desalination. Do you have a citation for your claim about it quickly diluting? Even sewage drainage has a local impact.
Desalination is also a process that benefits very little from continual operation; burstish-type use (for a few hours at a time) is perfectly fine. Seems a great way to use any excess power we might get here in CA. And since we have lots of reservoirs which are way down in level – banking that output should be achievable!
Fixed this? Really?
How many 100 kWH batteries would be required to provide the power of the 150MWH of power from the Gas Turbine Generators? A back of the envelope calculation would be this:
10 100kWH batteries provide 1MWH of power over 1 hour time.
1,500 batteries provide power for 150MWH to cover 1 hour of demand from the Gas systems.
To cover the 21 hours that the solar cells do not produce enough power to use will take 31,500 batteries. Each of these batteries weigh 1,500 pounds and degrade with each charge and discharge cycle. Thus the total weight for the batteries is 47,250,000 pounds and if you have to mine 50 pounds of material per pound of battery that means 2,362,500,000 pounds of material to make just the batteries. This is assuming 100% efficiency, which is not reality. Also to run at optimum life conditions you can only use a fraction of the power stored. Batteries are not an option. All of this for 150MW of power backup, something a single midsized high efficiency permanent gas plant can produce 6x over for a fraction of the cost.
To have pumped storage, you have to have water. Since you greenies want the water to go into the ocean, instead of being used for work and drinking, pumped storage is not an option.
And yes you can drain the batteries of people’s cars at night, they will be rather pissed when their car is dead and have no option as to getting to work.
The really pathetic part is that the rate payers will pay for the solar systems that provide power that cannot be used, the batteries that have a limited lifetime, reduce water available for consumption, and dead batteries when they need them. This entire system will be probably at least 20x greater than just building the gas generator in the first place. After 10 years the gas generator will still be running, the other systems will need to replaced, except for possibly the pumped storage which isn’t an option anyway since there is no water.
China and Russia are the top vanadium producers.
Instead of batteries, how about we put up a coal power plant? Mining of coal is much easier and it is USA local, and it creates American jobs.
California imports some coal-fired power from out-of-state. They are hypocrites of the first order.
Careful, Sid! Anymore talk like that, and you’ll end up on the no-fly lists!
Think of the delta smelt, and don’t spare the baby.
You also have to have 150MWH of excess electricity to charge up your batteries, per hour that you need it, and assuming 100% efficiency. According to the graphs, you won’t get that from the excess solar power except possibly very, very rarely. One more reason batteries are not the answer.
There’s also cost. 31,500 batteries at a cost of around $15,000/battery = $472,500,000.
And that’s just for the battery, can’t let those batteries get too hot or too cold. They stop working if that happens.
Also can’t keep the batteries too close together, otherwise when one catches fire, they all do. So there’s 10’s to 100’s of millions to build facilities to hold those batteries. Plus the power needed to properly take care of those batteries in order to decrease somewhat, the chances of one catching fire.
Finally there’s the cost of replacing batteries when they wear out. Let’s be generous and assume that they last 15 years each. That means you will have to replace 2,100 batteries each and every year. That’s an ongoing expense of $31,500,000 every year.
you forgot to mention the 100 of 1,000 of tonnes of Copper and plastic and steel for the cables and switches and switch boards etc
All of which materials (including the battery components) will be sourced through the use of fossil fuels.
As usual, “renewable energy” is anything but, and is 100% dependent on fossil fuels at the end of the day.
Is there some way to temporarily block griff so that he isn’t able to use his app to find out when there is a new post and jump in? That would level the playing against professional trolls and reduce the clutter at the top of the comments.
If everyone just ignored him it would also reduce the clutter.
Sure we fixed, it just like when Newton figured out how to transmutate metals. Even smart people fall for magical thinking.
Now, now… Give Griff the proper equipment, and he can make gold from lead.
At an estimated price of $200,000,000 per ounce.
Back before anyone knew about atoms, what would you think was going on when you mixed two metals and got a new metal?
This is ridiculous. Its not that it cannot be done. Its perfectly possible if… if you can build and install enough batteries.
The problem is how many you need, what they cost, and where the raw materials are going to come from.
Just figure out how many batteries, at what cost, will be needed to supply California overnight on calm days, in a totally wind and solar powered environment.
Then upgrade it to the US.
Then upgrade it to the real high volume emitter, China.
There are not enough proven reserves to make the batteries. There are not production lines to produce them. And there is not the money to buy them, nor the crews to install them.
Once again Griff is inventing imaginary solutions to what he believes to be the problem. But leave aside whether he is right about the problem, wind+solar+batteries is not the solution. Not even part of it. Its an engineering and financial impossibility.
And remember that even after you get through the impossible task of converting the electricity industry to this, you have only dealt with 30% or so of total emissions.
You cannot get there from here by this route.
Ask ourselves again, why is a belief in the coming apocalypse always accompanied by belief in remedies which cannot help? Sometimes, as with this, they are simply impossible to do. Other times they are too small to have any material effect. Other times they don’t make any difference to emissions.
I used to rather welcome Griff. He was a different voice, and he was an example of how this site differs so pleasantly from the intolerant idiots at Real Climate or Tamino.
But confronted with this sort of nonsense, I am finding it hard not to feel contempt for the intellectual dishonesty.
It might not be intellectual dishonesty. It could be a lack of intellect.
Disagree.Griff provides much needed comic relief without having to visit the other side. Griff comes here instead.
I’m inclined to support your way of thinking. If he is a paid troll, it makes sense they would use the best they have. From that we can determine the state of their cause without wasting time going to their sites.
Ya gotta admit; as a diplomat for the AGW cause he’s a damned sorry example. In fact their entire team are sorry examples.
Who says griff isn’t the best they have?
I’m saying it’s likely he is the best they have. I’ve noticed that each of the trolls shows up when his/her specialty is featured, with some cross over. For instance, one particular person always shows up when anything about the ‘hockey stick’ or “climategate” is mentioned.
“In fact their entire team are sorry examples.”
They don’t have much to work with. Assumptions and assertions are all they have, and you can only go so far with that.
We have a winner!
I might add preconceived conclusions and circular logic, though.
I agree and I would add that they’re repetitive, making it appear like scripted responses, the result of a committee.
One of the consequences of the Principle of Polarity — Opposites attract!
Griff is just a reusable professional skeet for the shotgunners. PULL
And, factor in the inflation in the cost as the raw material become scarce because of demand.
Not to mention multiplication of those inflating costs due to the constant need to replace the stupid batteries in time frames shorter than the period it will take to pay for the originals.
Dare I say it is not sustainable?! 😀
Build out grid scale batteries? With what physical resources?
CA has outlawed new pumped hydro.
Who is going to install domestic batteries? Inside the house/apartment? Inside the garage? Soon building codes won’t allow it.
Google this: “California AB 2514 and AB 2868” for your education.
IIRC, the CA utility mandate for for storage was interpreted by the regulators to require small, mostly local installations whereby Eagle Mountain Pumped Storage did not meet the criteria. After a bunch of searching on both laws, the Fed’s EIS & etc., I’m no closer to understanding the issues than before.
Pumped storage is discussed by CA, but apparently nobody can build anything new.
Just what California needs…a new way to burn down homes!
“grid scale batteries, pumped storage, domestic batteries.”
The devil is in the details (i.e. the engineering, economics, and environmental impact).
Here’s a satellite photo of the world’s largest Grid-scale battery installation at Monterey Bay-Moss Point, California. Look at what the battery (BESS) is plugged into for recharge.
(hint: that is not a solar farm)
So they burn natural gas to charge batteries, that then can discharge for 4 hours before they are depleted. Waste heat at the batteries during charge and discharge reduces efficiency to 95% of what is generated (by nat gas) gets available for return upon battery discharge. Why not just burn the gas when the power is needed and send it to the grid customers when needed and avoid the charging-discharging losses?
The fact that current Lithium batteries can expect about 2,000 cycles, if they do that every day, then batteries have to be replaced about every 5-6 years. Do you think grid scale Lithium batteries grow on trees? Or do they come from Fossil fuel intensive production chains?
Critical thinking is obviously difficult for someone brainwashed to believe in Green fairy tales.
In addition to the Green Fairy Tales, Moss Landing used to have a thriving abalone hatchery business where the abalone were quickly raised to commercial harvest size by using the old power plant effluent water to raise temperatures! Clyde’s comment above might not have become true if they were still in operation and there wasn’t massive overfishing and poaching of abalone!
As I recollect, when the DFG noticed a decline, they reduced the legal take. However, it was apparently too little, too late. However, it may also have been a decline in kelp beds caused by a population explosion of purple urchins, which in turn, may have been related to sewage effluent. The rebound of the sea otter population probably didn’t help!
I wasn’t aware that poaching was a significant problem.
McKay, in Renewable Energy without the Hot Air, estimated that to provide pumped storage for the UK on a sufficient scale, you would have to take over North Wales. Maybe he said the Lake District too, I don’t recall the specifics.
The point is the scale of the thing. In the UK where in the winter you normally have a week or so of high pressure, calm winds and almost no production from wind, and you also have very short days, you would need, to be safe, with about 10 days worth of storage.
Once again the problem is not that it cannot be done. It is perfectly possible. The problem is what it would cost to do it at scale. And also that when you have done it, you have only hit an area which does 30% of emissions for a country which is doing 1% of global emissions.
The costs are also not simply financial. You will have destroyed the finest landscapes in the country by a massive industrialization project.
You notice one curious thing about these ideas. They start out with a vaguely environmental focus. By the time you get through figuring out the specifics, they turn out to involve the destruction of huge areas of habitat and the industrial exploitation of currently conserved areas.
Follow the money. Who is funding these crazy ideas, and why?
Who is funding? The taxpayer.
Why? Politicians are getting reelected running of this crap.
My wife used to sell solar systems and here in BC there was the theoretical option to sell excess power to the state. I am pretty sure that every system sold (some were fairly large to isolated communities) failed prematurely because of battery issues (improper care, improper protection, charge regulator failure, etc). There are better batteries now that bring less frequent but bigger problems. Batteries seem to remain beyond the commitment level of the typical small player. If there was a viable solution for the big players, it would be in play all over California, the Mecca of green wokism.
California Legislature passed a law that mandates the 3 large electric utilites must install and maintain battery energy storage systems (BESS).
AB 2514 (2010) called for 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage capacity from the state’s three large investor-owned utilities by end 2020.
Then AB2868 (2016) upped this even more by another 500MW by 2024, and authorized the utilities to double the storage system charge on customer bills to pay for it.
The big utilities don’t object as long as they are allowed to keep passing the added costs and charges down to the customer.
This insanity won’t stop unless the voters throw the Democrats out of office. But the unions are so powerful with lots of money they keep buying TV, internet, and radio ads to dupe the voters with Green lies using sophisticated propaganda campaigns.
Grid scale batteries of the size needed don’t exist and never will.
Pumped storage is already being used everywhere it’s practical.
Domestic batteries, as has already been explained to you, will never be used for grid storage.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
The White Queen was a piker compared to griff.
Wonder why they don’t agree with you.
grid scale storage is BS
impossible to build a large enough system and the energy losses are huge
I know we can turn off griffs power that will save 25kWh per day
Where are those grid scale batteries, griff, exactly? And how much do they cost? And how much energy do they store for how long and at what cost? And how many would it take to replace the base load power plants that produce electricity while solar and wind produce little or nothing? And at what cost? Do the math and get back to us. And have a nice day.
Griff, you ignorant slut,
… so build it out already. It’s that simple, so just do it, right.
An unusually high Griff Number (Gn) for this thread. Prior to my remark, it’s 36.
Its now -60!
-87 at the moment, I think he’s aiming for triple digits.
Griff posted you Hypocrite you are supposed to save the planet and stop using your computer.
You are about as addled as the guy who can’t remember that he was elected president.
Now that’s unfair. At least the guy that can’t remember he was elected president has an legitimate excuse for being so addled (They don’t call him dementia Joe for nothing). griff has no such excuse.
Not that we are aware of or he would admit to.
Griff has to say what he says or the solar/wind morons won’t keep paying him to visit sites that shoot down everything the solar/wind morons keep lying about. Griff is an accomplished liar, but ungifted in any field of science known to man. He should pull his lip over his head and swallow.
Are they free yet?
Much better idea: synthesize Methane with the excess electricity.
” grid scale batteries, pumped storage, domestic batteries”
Or, you could go the simpler and greener route (no toxic batteries) and just build a gas fired station.
When you have to design an unnecessarily complicated system (with multiple possible points of failure) to back up your useless solar you know it’s rubbish.
And just how long will the ‘build out’ (whatever that means) take, griff?
“Really, we already fixed this, just a question of the build out.”
Actually, you already fixed everything, just a question of the build out. Right, griff?
That means, you have NOTHING well engineered and set when you push to implement any of your demential concoctions and when (not “if“!) the sh1t hits the fan you start to ask for money to try to find a kind of band-aid. Right, griff?
Is this your concept of science and technology?
Chuckle. We already fixed this, but…
Griffypoo, are you even vaguely aware of the SIZE of batteries that are required to support a city like Los Angeles?
Nah, I didn’t think so, but it’s not a battery that you can buy at Walmart.
Get some help with your problem of misconception of sizes required for such things, as well as the voltage (never mind wattage) required for Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago. Then let us all know that you did some due diligence on it.
Geezo Pete, Griffypoo, you’re really out of touch there, fella.
FACTS:
I started writing about the abject failure of grid-connected wind and solar power generation in 2002.
Wind and solar power do NOT contribute significant economic electric power to the grid. Both fail due to intermittency and diffusivity – they vary too much and take up too much land.
These are proven facts, yet trillions of dollars have been wasted globally on this green energy fraud.
I posted the following , probably circa 2010, for our idiot politicians and the mainstream media:
“WIND POWER: IT DOESN’T JUST BLOW – IT SUCKS!”
“SOLAR POWER: STICK IT WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE!”
Apparently that is still too complicated for most media and politicians.
Batteries give you minutes when you may need days or weeks = non-solution. Pumped storage in a relatively arid state with frequent multi-year cyclic droughts and frequent water shortages is pure stupidity.
The mining and construction required for every step of the worse-than-useless wind and solar power AND the non-solution “batteries” and “pumped storage” is and will be 100% dependent on fossil fuels anyway.
Better off just building the gas plants and stop wasting resources on virtue-signalling nonsense that wouldn’t make any difference even if the imaginary “climate crisis” was real (China, India and other so-called “developing” nations will see to that).
Says the guy that literally doesn’t understand how the electricity grid works, nor any of the storage technologies he mentions. This may be the stupidest thing that griff has ever posted, but it’s hard to be certain because his stupidity level is off the charts.
No, keep the gas and build more nuclear. And deploy WAY more desalination plants and use that excess power to run the desal, even if for just 3-4 hours a day.
We need reliable, affordable power 24/7 and we need water – this is a pretty logical solution to move to nuclear (reliable and affordable) and use intermittent sources (wind/solar) to dramatically scale up fresh water, since that is easily banked (in existing reservoirs).
Grid scale batteries and pumped storage are expensive stupidity. Sounds as though you have CO2 on the brain.
We just fixed this with nuclear power. It’s just a question of the build out.
What you mean we, White Man?
Grid scale batteries, huh? Like the Geelong, Australia unit that went up in a huge cloud of toxic smoke a few weeks ago?
Congratulations griff! A comment so incandescently stupid that you managed triple-digit negative votes. Impressive!
In which time period would you prefer to live your life?
[__] Benign low CO2 1675-1750
[__] “Dangerous” CO2 1950-2025
Now they just need to figure out how to turn the electricity that they can’t use into Hydrogen so that they can run it in the real generators when they actually need it.
So California isn’t any longer the renewable energy Caliphate ?
No, no, this is a TEMPORARY measure for an EMERGENCY. I’m sure none of those nasty temporary plants will still be there RSN.
It’s not clear if these “temporary” gas plants will be “permanently temporary” or “temporarily permanent.”
I’m betting on “permanent, but they don’t want to admit it,” personally.
The “renewable” fiasco is not even approaching a meaningful contribution (more than 75% still provided by other than wind and solar in 2020) and already has to be bailed out by fossil fuels to avoid blackouts. What does that say about the level of stupidity involved in adding MORE wind and solar?! Especially when they have essentially admitted that solar is already overbuilt for its primary generation times?!
Madness…
If the voters can dump Governor PrettyBoy then maybe start some road to recovery. But I’m not hopeful on the recall. Democrats in California have a very well developed Ballot Harvesting system they are ramping up to save Newsom from the voters.
Cal’s ballot harvesting laws allows “3rd parties” to collect and submit ballots to polling places. The Democrats have multiple NGO’s that are non-profits that get millions of dollars in “donations” (mostly from unions) to then organize and hire thousands of ballot collectors (temporary hires) come every election. All the Temp hires sign non-disclosure agreements on how they are trained and how they operate.
Then how these “ballot collectors” get their ballots via the mail out/mail in system is quite murky, by design. There are no real safeguards, by design, on ensuring voter integrity on these :”harvested” ballots that are truned in at polling stations to be counted.
So this what happens (see attached photo) in practice in California’s dirty Democrat Ballot harvesting system, a harvesting scheme that is now in full swing to save PrettyBoy Newsom’s butt.
C’mon Joel we all know a pipeline company can be hacked but it is IMPOSSIBLE to hack an election 🤓
No one has to hack anything as California Ballot Harvestors are allowed to drop off many boxloads of filled out ballots at polling stations. The polling station officials are required to accept the boxes of ballots and then they are counted with no ID verifications. That is California Ballot Harvesting. And there is no proof of any fraud.
Indeed it’s hard to prove fraud when the system is design to make verification impossible.
Indeed it’s hard to prove fraud when the system is design to permit fraud.
Fixed that for you.
“But I’m not hopeful on the recall. Democrats in California have a very well developed Ballot Harvesting system they are ramping up to save Newsom from the voters.”
Along that line:
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/300-recall-ballots-drugs-multiple-drivers-licenses-found-in-vehicle-of-passed-out-felon-torrance-police/
“Posted: Aug 23, 2021 / 02:56 PM PDT / Updated: Aug 23, 2021 / 02:57 PM PDT
Torrance police are investigating the discovery of hundreds of recall election ballots in a vehicle where a felon was found passed out with drugs, a loaded firearm and multiple driver’s licenses one week ago, authorities said Monday.”
end excerpt
California’s Democrat Elite are good at cheating.
I sure hope Larry Elder wins. 🙂
What are they going to do when over 2,000 MW vanishes as Diablo Canyon is shut down in 2024/25?
All they got to do is get rid of the solar and replace it with gas…problems solved.
Except of course for all the sunk costs, the recycling mess, the utterly destroyed land areas.
Actually, just don’t replace the solar over their short lifespans. Build nukes and FF plants.
Send the excess is power to Vermont. That Senator Bernie Sanders says.
Natural gas, you can turn it on when you need it, you can use it at any time of the day or night, it is readily available,
That is sooo new, I never heard or read about, like the light switch in the evening when darken ? Click, light on ? Unbelievable /sarc 😀
Democrat voters world view:
My food comes from the grocery store or McDonalds.
My electricity comes from an outlet in the wall.
My water comes from a shower head or faucet.
My free money just appears in my bank account and on an EBT card.
My rent is now free and the landlord can’t evict me.
Dumbing down the education system and even closing schools for scaremongering epidemics all makes sense when you consider the above. An informed, educated, armed middle class protective of their affluence and rights are a huge roadblock to Authoritarian Socialist-Democrats schemes.
As AOC said, why do we need cows? You can just go to the store and buy beef.
Joel,
Schools can’t stay closed down too long! Without wall-to-wall indoctrination, many students would learn to think for themselves; a very dangerous situation for the ASD schemes!
But this is still stupid because if these are temporary units they are likely to be less efficient and have greater emissions (NOX etc.) than permanent units.
They will be spread out so inefficiently undersized.
Thomas, the temporary units and the permanent units will be completely interchangeable.
That is to say, the temporary units will be permanent and the permanent units will be temporary.
It all makes perfect sense if you can avoid thinking too hard about it. Even more so if you can avoid thinking about it at all.
Well, it’s still California. You were expecting intelligence?!
I could be wrong, but I think California just had a light bulb moment.
I’m not so sure. It still sounds like they think this is a “temporary” solution that in the long term will be “fixed” by a larger scale application of the same lunacy that got the state to “blackouts” to begin with.
Wonder what they will do when they shut down Diablo Canyon?
I’m beginning to expect they won’t be able to do so. Assuming Newsom is kicked out, the main competitors say they will keep Diablo Canyon.
That’s encouraging to hear.
Only if they can get rid of Newsom. Which, considering the “ballot fraud,” er, I mean “harvesting” about to occur, is in doubt.
Looks like – from your plot – that every month in 2021, they used more solar power than in 2020. The “excess” capacity, is used to extend availability into less sunny hours, and the “curtailment” is an artifact of PLANNING, (someone hose down those burning ears at ERCOT).
Yes, good news on the gas. And they certainly should have had the extra peaker capacity for the parts/thousand events that will become more common, all over the CONUS. Let’s see, can I think of any state that recently lost over a hundred lives and hundreds of billions of $ because they didn’t do so? After being warned almost a decade earlier….
And H/T to Gavin, for reorganizing, and empowering CALGEM to push California natural gas storage infrastructure towards this century. It will come in handy, no doubt…
When the state is mandated to buy power from the solar plants, it’s hardly surprising to see the amount consumed increases year over year.
The usual motorized goal posts. Yes, the “state” is pushing solar, for very, very, good reasons. But the thrust of the article was about solar being built and not used. That is not the case.
As usual, bob either completely misses the point, or is desperate to change the point.
Of course the electricity is used. By law, they have to buy every kilowatt that’s produced. The more they build, the more they sell. That the power company’s are being forced to buy electricity that they can’t use is just another part of the scam.
There is not, and never has been any reason to go solar.
The tiny bit of warming that the world has seen over the last 200 years is entirely beneficial. The world needs much more CO2, not less.
“As usual, bob either completely misses the point, or is desperate to change the point.”
AGAIN, you are deflecting from my point, and even those of Mr. M. I disagree with your fact free claims, but 2 facts remain. In spite of Mr. M’s overlook, solar power use has INCREASED in California, year over year, AND unlike Texas, the state has planned for the increased capacity required to further build it out. Both with more solar – to extend the useful hours of it – and to improve the natural gas to electricity infrastructure, for those parts/thousand events where they will need it.
But, of course, why if the evil natural gas NEEDED.
In reality the solar IS NOT NEEDED, because all the generation capacity needed is in the NATURAL GAS generators.
And BTW BOB, who will have to pay to return the solar field destruction of the environment to its original state after they outlive their rent seeking (not useful or productive because solar and wind generation are not useful OR productive) lifespan? You NEVER answer that question.
The ratepayer/taxpayer, not Tom Steyer or the other billionaire who got rich off of the rent seeking!
“In reality the solar IS NOT NEEDED, because all the generation capacity needed is in the NATURAL GAS generators.”
California begs to differ. Why use up a finite resource for base loading, when solar is better in every way, in California? Natural gas is best for peak loads, and emergencies.
FMI, please find where I’ve ever called natural gas “evil”. Since I’ve spent most of my adult life drilling and producing it, I think it’s the ideal bridge fuel.
“And BTW BOB, who will have to pay to return the solar field destruction of the environment to its original state after they outlive their rent seeking (not useful or productive because solar and wind generation are not useful OR productive) lifespan? You NEVER answer that question.”
You have a fundamentally flawed understanding of renewable v hydrocarbon asset retirement obligations. Hydrocarbon fields are used as such once. Then, they must be abandoned and restored. So far, since the producers have been allowed to bond for pennies on the dollar for the actual costs, they unfunded liabilities in the 11-12 figure rang, just in the CONUS. These will be communized onto the rest of us, as were the comparable gold, copper, and coal costs. OTOH, since solar and wind sites are by definition, chosen for their wind and sun, they are assets unto themselves. They will be used over and over, for millennia. Yes, they will have haz materials to recycle/dispose of, but the amounts are tiny compared to the dozens of forms of hydrocarbon haz waste.
And in spite of their efficiency when run as baseline power at or near capacity they will most likely sabotage the gas plants making them seem more expensive by frivolously ramping them up and down every time a cloud passes overhead or there is a sudden burst of wind. Believing you are saving the planet is much more important than using resources and the environment wisely.
Handmade tales sell narratives and economic and environmentally deficient Green technologies.
Yet CA still mandates rooftop solar for all new (residential?) buildings.
Because intermittent/renewables, and a Green blight, backed by reliable, affordable green/organic and climate neutral alternatives, is not politically congruent (“=”) even in la la land, not for long. That said, perhaps a Green niche where the environment does not matter, and there are no mission critical applications or qualitfy of life considerations.
Solar power is worse than useless, it is detrimental to a grid’s reliability and greatly increases costs to deliver reliable power to customers.
When will the renewable insanity end? When people wake-up from the highly organized, coordinated Gas-lighting campaign on the climate scam, and they also see what is happening to their electric bills (skyrocketing per Hussein Obama).
It is a fun mental exercise to imagine the entire output of the PV facility going to desalinate and deliver water to the plant to wash the dust off the panels.
That’s called a self-licking ice-cream cone. It exists for its own benefit, no external utility.
Anyone who really understands all the issues and costs involved with renewable realizes solar PV and wind farms only exist to harvest subsidies and tax credits for the investors/owners. Any sunlight or wind power they harvest is just an after thought.
The obviousness of that statement occurs when people are told that frequently solar and wind farm operators are at times paid as much NOT to produce power as to produce power.
Yup! As I like to call wind and solar – “Mandate and Subsidy Farming.”
… But then you would need a grid-scale battery to stabilise the frequency, and a gas backup generator for cloudy days and night time desalination plant production. You could even run the gas generator at other times when there was high demand for electricity and connect it to the grid. That would make the “solar” facility useful. To reduce costs, you could miss out the solar farm, desalination plant, and grid-scale battery.
When God made man in his image, and on one of his bad days, he got totally mixed up and swapped some poor souls mouths and ass. Sad really.!
I hope the residents of Berkeley are watching where their natural gas is going.
Are these temporary plants or could they throw together some mirrors around them and call them Ivanpah Plant 2,3,4,5,6……
I ‘admire’ (NOT) the feeble green spin on their admission of unreliable renewable failure. Paraphrased:
“But in the future these gas turbines can be up to 70% hydrogen fired, so eventually clean and green.” REALLY? These people haven’t a clue.
And the entire PV electrical output goes into electrolysis for hydrogen production to feed the turbines to back up the PVs! A reverse perpetual motion machine.
Yes – then ask where the hydrogen comes from, and you’ll get a blank stare. Or maybe “Hummna hummna hummna” like Ralph Cramden when he knows he’s in deep caca.
There’s definitely some boosing going on somewhere.
It’s spelt with a z, not an s. But yup. In California. Pelosi’s fine wine.
I’m guessing a certain mood-altering herb disconnects them from reality better than fine wine. Just sayin’…
I think Boos is something like a Covfefe.
A exotic scary creature that only Democrats can see.
A fine Chianti served with fava beans when they [Pelosi] can afford them.
The reason California is avoiding the rolling blackouts is that the governor faces a recall vote next month. This is a completely political decision by Newsome to try not to get voted out. Another summer like last year and he’ll be toast for sure. Hopefully, the voters boot him and choose someone who cares about the citizens of that state and can do simple math.
Also, spare electrical power means they could desalinate some water.
hopefully the voters actually choose.
No pun intended?
Fakery seems to be a Californian specialty.
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA):
“In 2019, California’s net electricity imports were the largest in the country at 70.8 million megawatthours (MWh), or 25% of the state’s total electricity supply …… California utilities partly own and import power from several power plants in Arizona [Natural gas, nuclear power, and coal] and Utah [coal]”.
There is no electricity more expensive than curtailed electricity you have paid for but can’t use.
I wonder how exactly they “curtail” renewables. I hope it does not involve dynamite.
It’s not her choice, but rather Her choice: intermittent/renewable drivers. Perhaps they can sacrifice babies, a parent, too, to appease the social and Green gods to make the sun shine and the wind blow within range.
Wait – that’s it! The reason for all of California’s weather-related woes.
No active volcanoes to feed virgins to. 😀
I hope it does. “Curtail” those worse-than-useless pieces of junk permanent like.
Use the extra energy from solar and wind to produce Hydrogen!
I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic.
LOL.
Hey, maybe they can power one car with it.
From the above article:
“Solar power delivers more electricity than Californians can use from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and very little at before 9:00 AM and after 4:00 PM.”
Well, if that be the case, CA should lower the $/kWh pricing during those hours excess production so as to increase market demand.
Has that happened? No.
Why not? It’s not at all about economics, it’s about politics.
California already has the highest electricity prices in the continental United States.
In order to jam expensive electricity generated by unreliable, intermittent generation (i.e., solar and wind) down the throats of its citizens, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) is contemplating:
(1) Increasing demand response, which would adjust consumer demand when warranted
(TRANSLATION: TURNING YOUR ELECTRICITY OFF)
(2) Encouraging time-of-use rates, which better match consumer prices with real-time energy prices
(TRANSLATION: FORCING CONSUMERS/RATEPAYERS TO PAY EVEN HIGHER PRICES THAN THE NATION’S ALREADY MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTRICITY)
The dispatcher for any power company could have told you this 30 years ago. By twenty years ago he would not tell you that because the Power companies executives had drank the koolaid or decided that can make more money this way and if the dispatcher told you that he would have lost his job.
Winner! Give that man a seegar!
the fact is, you never can cut down the solar power !when sunshine, the electrical potential difference appears.
These will be a minor help with only 150 mw capacity. CA already has 80 gas peaker plants, totaling 17,300 mw.
see https://www.psehealthyenergy.org
Daily peak demand can hit 35,000 mw,
see https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/index.html
So an added 150 mw is about 0.4 percent of demand.
These 5 peakers may help the local power demand if they are far from the other gas power plants.
I’m more concerned about where the replacement power comes from when PGE shuts down the Diablo nuc., which generates 2,200 mw
The socialist mindset and worldview is born in a person when they think they can ignore and deny reality to such an extent they can live in a new world that progresses towards Utopia. But that Utopia cannot exist in the present world. The inflection point comes when reality either prevails or the socialist attempts to force Utopia to be imposed irrespective of the cost. As many climate rationalists have always said, intermittent solar and wind power must have parallel backup power and that cost must be accounted for when weighing the cost of green power. And guess who pays when the dream proves to be unsustainable? The customer and the taxpayer, most often one and the same person.
Well, gee, how very thoughtful of California to add gas-powered generators to its grid. I was getting worried there that the people there might have to go back to oil lamps and wood-fired stoves for lighting and cooking. <- sarc
It’s kind of strange to see such things coming up in the Real World. Now if they’d just clean up the mess that has become San Francisco….
Caliphonia is increasingly the Rube Goldberg of states.
Lithium batteries make some sense in mobile applications because lithium is the lightest solid element.
But why are we concerned with light weight for grid scale batteries?
Why not use the cheapest, more abundant elements? Weight would be an advantage. Discourage theft.
It just ain’t working – https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html
Does anyone know what happened to the concept of having large superconducting power storage rings/toroids? We were studying these for ground based laser power during the Strategic Defense Initiative. I recall there were some FAA issues with the extended magnetic fields, but progress was being made.
I wonder if anyone has given thought to the impact of the magnetic fields from tokamaks?
Hey you could use the same model in your home.. solar when the sun is shining and burn natural gas through a mirco-turbine to push a generator, (when the sun isn’t shining) while heating water and your house. An even more efficient system would use the dang futuristic BATTERY, (that does not exit…. closest thing is a superconductive magnetic energy storage system…. still too costly for home use). The problem with California is grid grid grid/utility. It always has been. No one other than the tax/vote hungry will be excited about non-hydrocarbon grid solutions, when hydrocarbon fuel is plentiful and affordable. As a home owner, there is no incentive to invest in high tech off grid solutions…the cost is contained…. no big margin to benefit from. Yet. if I wanted to do a green house. or hydroponics, or raise fish..etc…. even at these microeconomies of scale, I don’t get a very big bang for my grid electrify buck…. .this is where off grid solutions become profitable as long as my state hasn’t passed the carbon tax/Ban off grid legislation. These states have passed carbon taxes and ban off grid: California and the eleven Northeast states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia — that make up the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
Actually, 30 MW is rather small for a natural-gas-fueled generator. Most of the gas turbines used in commercial gas-fired power plants can produce between 200 and 250 MW, and most large power plants have several of them in parallel, which can be started and shut down in response to changes in demand.
If California truly wanted to reduce emissions, it would build more, larger natural-gas-fired power plants, which could handle the “base-load” power demand, and only use solar power during times of peak air-conditioning demand on hot summer afternoons. Natural gas only emits about half the CO2 per unit energy extracted as oil or coal, and also has extremely low emissions of sulfur oxides and particulates (real pollutants).
Gas-fired turbines can emit nitrous oxides (NO and NO2), but most of them can be eliminated using Selective Catalytic Reduction, where a small amount of ammonia is injected into the flue gases and passed over a catalyst, and the ammonia and nitrous oxides react to form nitrogen (N2) and steam, which are then released to the atmosphere. This technology has been around since the 1970’s, so it has been thoroughly proven to work.
The school children will noy be marched out to cry about the natural gas plants? That would be a switch.
They make it sound like it’s common sense to have some reliable energy available. Don’t they realise they’re destroying the planet?
/s
Natural gas, you can turn it on when you need it, you can use it at any time of the day or night, it is readily available, it is relatively affordable and it burns relatively cleanly,” said Assemblymember Patterson
This has been discussed here before. Natural gas plants large enough to be economically viable cannot simply be turned on. It takes quite a while to bring one on line and therefore must be kept idling (consuming natural gas) until the power is needed.
The smaller “temporary” plants won’t be cost effective and will keep electricity prices sky high (they already are in Californicus).
Are you saying that rooftop solar never sells power to the grid?
solar power means :Take off your pants and fart, to put butter on bacon
I could imagine living in the SW and using a solar array to power and air conditioning compressor, making it just big enough to power the compressor and nothing else. On a warm day, you can be pretty sure you’ll make use of all that power running the compressor during the hottest hours of the day. For anything else, it’s a complete crapshoot and the utilities should not be subsidizing this charade just to greenwash a system that doesn’t even work. Feed-in tariffs for solar generation have been a nail-soup-scam from the start.
The gas generator backup is a political thing. Gavin Newsom doesn’t want ANY blackouts to occur prior to the recall election. Watch them go away after the recall election on Sept. 14.
David,
For California Solar output, do you have the amounts of solar energy being sent to Nevada and AZ at loss, aside from the curtailments?
It probably includes some Nevada generation.
https://www.ferc.gov/industries-data/electric/electric-power-markets/caiso
I don’t know about electricity imported by CAISO. I would like to think that they can’t curtail production outside their jurisdiction.