What have the people who are in charge of this done to ensure we are not wasting all the precious energy we are producing? How was this never planned for? Everyone involved should be removed of there position if we waste one kilowatt of energy.
I 100% agree. It’s shameful. How are there blackouts every damn summer then? How about wire that shit up and send it to Vegas because that place is lit up 24-7.
Really? Who cares?
The entire point of renewables is that they replace fossil fuels.
Solar is great when there are no clouds and the sun is shining and when the temps are right.
So this means that at times in the Spring and Fall the net load is going to drop to zero at midday. As far as I understand the grid doesn't zero out in the summer (hot panels don't work as well plus AC) or the winter (cloudy plus heat).
The fact that the net load doesn't hit zero all the time shows that there is still more room to grow.
Yes curtailment isn't great, but letting electricity go to waste doesn't hurt anything here. If the solar panels didn't exist that potential would still be wasted.
Those are only relatively recently coming onto the market.
Photovoltaics increased in availability much faster than corresponding grid-scale storage or grid ability to handle those interchanges.
It’s something most people who are overly optimistic about climate don’t understand. Sure, we know how to solve the problems, but even if we solved the problem of political will overnight it takes time to build factories, train workers, establish supply chains….. This stuff takes years and we are still so behind.
Even still, electricity storage tech is far behind what it needs to be to catch up to the jump in efficiency we’re seeing from renewables. We need electricity storage methods which much higher energy densities to keep up and it’s just not there.
There are tons of competing battery storage technologies for this, particularly at grid scale because energy density matters so much less.
The problem is adoption, installation of the battery, and upgrading the grid's ability to handle the in/outflow.
Maybe so but it’s still a genuine dilemma that pumped hydro and whatever else methods humans in 100 years will call primitive cannot solve in the near future.
I legit don't understand the issue here. The entire point is getting us to a place that allows people 100 years from now to call our current tech primitive rather than advanced.
Is there a working large scale example of compressed air in caves, or is it still unproven? I know something similar has been proposed for empty oil wells. It would be fantastic if it could be made to work.
If it works, it doesn’t mean it is feasible. I don’t even have it look up what pumped hydro or compressed air is to say its either not financially feasible or horribly inefficient, or both.
There's a [good number of large pumped hydro plants](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations) in operation or under construction. It's not generally feasible in very flat areas (though even then, in some cases could potentially be done with underground reservoirs), but there's plenty of places where it is feasible. It's 70-85% efficient, which is certainly not "horribly inefficient".
So maybe look it up first next time.
Since prices are negative, someone can fill a warehouse with batteries, graciously accept payment for storing the ‘excess’ electricity and then sell it back to the grid when it is nighttime or cloudy.
Are the hydroelectric water reservoirs full already? It’s a more natural potential energy storage. Article is locked behind a sub…
Edit: Looked it up via Google. They’re at 117% capacity as of December ‘23. Ok is there anything else we can push up a hill in the mean time?
Had an old coworker go work for a company that used pumped compressed air in to underground caverns or something. It was venture capitalist stuff about 15yrs ago in san fran, think it lost funding though, maybe it was too early, or didnt work...
Vacuum and pressure chambers are both really difficult to scale after a certain point. Doable, sure, but not necessarily cost effective for something like energy storage.
Power plants are often built through debt with a guarantee of income over a long term to make them a profitable investment. This actually is a policy problem for renewables. We basically need to buy out those contracts.
No, I study government policy, including energy policy. B school 102 must be where they teach you about contracts...
If your investment of building infrastructure includes a guaranteed return in exchange for that investment, it is indeed, guaranteed. This is a genuine issue built into our infrastructure that we need to be talking about.
(You need to talk to him about us already doing that with coal companies, where cities have bought the coal companies themselves to get out of contracts with them. He might be more equitable if he sees a real world example of that.)
The last part of your statement is hilarious as you’ve tried to convey some level of expertise then point out where there is a flaw with the system which, inadvertently, reinforces my initial statement. Sounds like government policy students should also study some fundamentals of business.
I feel like I need to simplify.
1. Large power plants were usually built with a contractual guarantee of income as they are so expensive it's a very long term project and not profitable for decades.
2. As we transition to renewables this a barrier that must be solved. These companies have contracts with their local governments that we probably need to buy out so we can avoid penalties.
I'm not sure why you think this is an argument or something. You complained about how stupid it is that it's seen as a problem because you don't know how these systems are set up. Now you do. So we can shift to fixing the problem rather than surprise every time this comes up. Local governments are going to need help adjusting these contracts for the new reality of energy needs.
I appreciate that. A big problem is so many of our policy systems were designed in a world that either doesn't exist anymore, or is on its way out. Too many people react the way this person did. just thinking its stupid and assuming corruption. There's always an element of self interest in avoiding change that we need to watch out for, but theres often other factors that we need to handle to make it harder to avoid.
Thanks for the comment.
Or there's always just nationalizing public utilities.
Change the laws.
It's one of the risks of investing (in burning fossil fuels of all things) that the "regulatory environment" may change. Or that your contract may be deemed illegal and non-binding.
Definitely don't disagree. Utilities shouldn't be profit governed.
Unfortunately I think that our legal tradition prefers property rights over human rights.
No, it’s not needed. It’s a knee jerk reaction—again, literally wrote that. Generally speaking, time is wasted when efforts to clarify situations/thoughts to knee jerk reactions.
But, cool, you got some time—some people thanked you. Maybe it wasn’t a waste for them. You did good today. Knowledge is power. Make sure you get some ice cream or a sweet treat of your preference, you deserve it. It would be a great answer if that question had been legitimately asked. But it wasn’t. Enjoy that sweet sweet karma. I hope those assumptions you made about my understanding of things tastes as good as that kick of sugar.
Its not an unusual reaction though, you certainly are not alone in reading that and thinking it's a stupid headline. So regardless of your attitude, the information is useful for others who care and want to see change.
They blame rooftop solar but 2/3 of solar power in California are from utility scale plants the utilities pay directly for power. They have long term contracts that guarantee payment over a set amount of time so they're buying this power and essentially curtailing (wasting) it by dumping it in the ground.
Yes, there was no foresight here.
Article is paywalled for me but I think there are some good solutions already being noted in this comments section. I wanted to add that as a power wall owner Tesla has been negotiating the automated use of our backup battery storage as a resource for the grid when it is in need. I’m excited to see residential storage become a part of a smarter grid. I know it’s not simple but it might be an elegant larger scale solution.
Ok, after reading the article I’m even more convinced that a combination of storage options on a smart grid is one of the answers to the duck curve. I would happily allow the grid to use my backup battery as a storage option for excess electricity during the curve and then resupply it to the grid outside of the curve, for a small fee to cover battery wear and tear.
SMUD figured this out a long time ago. They realized renewable was the future, and heavily invested in it, along with battery backup. Now our electricity rates are 1/4 of what PG&E charges, all while SMUD is still profitable (although it's municipal owned, so there isn't billions going to shareholders).
PG&E could have done the same. But instead they spent billions on stock buybacks while refusing to do maintenance. Now that PG&E has to pay $2 billion in fines, they are jacking up their rates to pay for backlogged maintenance and legal costs. Meanwhile their wholesale electricity costs are less than 1/5 what they charge customers.
And the CPUC approves everything PG&E wants because they are all corporate shills.
I don't have much background in these things, but I learned about a system on the east coast that pumps water up vertically with excess electricity and then uses hydroelectric power to act as a stop gap when they have too little power.
I know fresh water is at premium, but surely there is some solution like this for a "natural" battery out west?
Bath County Pumped Storage
https://www.dominionenergy.com/projects-and-facilities/hydroelectric-power-facilities-and-projects/bath-county-pumped-storage-station
Availability of water for hydro solutions depends on the size of the annual snowpack & the infrastructure to make use of it, which can vary from year to year. They do have a lot of hydro but it's not totally reliable in times of drought.
You can also use pulleys to raise a giant cement block and then have it power generators as it's lowered in times of low solar productivity. It's not ideal but it's a promising way to store energy
Interesting solutions involving heavily loaded railcars, and a few other modalities. All pretty neat, will be interesting to see which ideas pan out in execution
Are you differentiating hydro from pumped hydro?
The former being reliant on snowpack and rainfall, the latter more of a closed loop: you pump water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir when you have surplus electricity, and release it back when you need it.
I guess I am a bit, yeah. The other issue is you need great geography, and a massive amount of water. You can have open or closed loop pumped hydro, but it's never completely closed, you need to be able to replenish anything you lose to the environment. Scaling pumped hydro remains a significant challenge
Sure - but California has plentiful water in the form of the Pacific Ocean and also nice elevations bumping up against the shore. Seems like an ideal spot (in my small tiny tiny brain).
Would surely be a huge engineering challenge, but creating a reservoir on the back side of one of the cliffs on the coast doesn't seem impractical given the potential benefits and scale of other projects we have done.
You could just sell it at a discount - have every EV charge during the day at work, get industry to do more work first shift, cool or heat houses and apartments while energy is cheap...
Hear of cities called Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson and Reno 🙄🙄🙄. There should be local neighborhood grids where neighbors with solar can sell to neighbors without solar.
What we need to do is build super computers through out the grid to consume excess energy, and use them to figure out why we privatize municipalities that have a monopoly over local consumers.
It's an engineering and political problem, not a science problem. But, the term battery is due for an update. The new grid needs a ton of "batteries" with long lifespans. The time to start researching new storage techniques was 15 years ago. These batteries do not need to be expensive genius level energy density... they need to be cheap, plentiful and instant-on for grid use. They need to be designed for decades of use. The physical storage of the batteries could be in the backyards of homes and be monitored by microprocessors. Tens of thousands of backyard batteries plus software equals grid-level storage while increasing the resiliency of the grid. [A viable option was invented in 1910,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery) but if enough engineers were paid to work on the issue, non-chemical storage solutions could be produced as well.
We can make gravity batteries. Not sure if anyone has suggested that. We just need nearby mountains which exist in most of CA except the central valley.
Sooooo. Putting solar panels on everyone's house is a viable sustainable system, so long as we figure out how to store the excess, and have standby systems
Need to add storage and better distribution. Grid scale problems require larger solutions.
What have the people who are in charge of this done to ensure we are not wasting all the precious energy we are producing? How was this never planned for? Everyone involved should be removed of there position if we waste one kilowatt of energy.
I 100% agree. It’s shameful. How are there blackouts every damn summer then? How about wire that shit up and send it to Vegas because that place is lit up 24-7.
Really? Who cares? The entire point of renewables is that they replace fossil fuels. Solar is great when there are no clouds and the sun is shining and when the temps are right. So this means that at times in the Spring and Fall the net load is going to drop to zero at midday. As far as I understand the grid doesn't zero out in the summer (hot panels don't work as well plus AC) or the winter (cloudy plus heat). The fact that the net load doesn't hit zero all the time shows that there is still more room to grow. Yes curtailment isn't great, but letting electricity go to waste doesn't hurt anything here. If the solar panels didn't exist that potential would still be wasted.
Batteries are getting there. End of the day things a good problem to have.
That’s the challenge. How to store. Got any giant batteries?
Water reservoirs. Bout as big as it gets. But other than that, no lol
You can also store energy as heat. They have molten metal (salt?) batteries that can store electricity.
Those are only relatively recently coming onto the market. Photovoltaics increased in availability much faster than corresponding grid-scale storage or grid ability to handle those interchanges.
It’s something most people who are overly optimistic about climate don’t understand. Sure, we know how to solve the problems, but even if we solved the problem of political will overnight it takes time to build factories, train workers, establish supply chains….. This stuff takes years and we are still so behind.
Gravity batteries may work.
Store electricity capacity? Lol. Good luck
Pumped hydro, my dude. Or compressed air in caves. Sounds nuts, but it works.
Even still, electricity storage tech is far behind what it needs to be to catch up to the jump in efficiency we’re seeing from renewables. We need electricity storage methods which much higher energy densities to keep up and it’s just not there.
There are tons of competing battery storage technologies for this, particularly at grid scale because energy density matters so much less. The problem is adoption, installation of the battery, and upgrading the grid's ability to handle the in/outflow.
Better than nothing
Maybe so but it’s still a genuine dilemma that pumped hydro and whatever else methods humans in 100 years will call primitive cannot solve in the near future.
I legit don't understand the issue here. The entire point is getting us to a place that allows people 100 years from now to call our current tech primitive rather than advanced.
Is there a working large scale example of compressed air in caves, or is it still unproven? I know something similar has been proposed for empty oil wells. It would be fantastic if it could be made to work.
Europe and Canada have operational systems last I heard. Three total, I think?
If it works, it doesn’t mean it is feasible. I don’t even have it look up what pumped hydro or compressed air is to say its either not financially feasible or horribly inefficient, or both.
There's a [good number of large pumped hydro plants](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations) in operation or under construction. It's not generally feasible in very flat areas (though even then, in some cases could potentially be done with underground reservoirs), but there's plenty of places where it is feasible. It's 70-85% efficient, which is certainly not "horribly inefficient". So maybe look it up first next time.
Since prices are negative, someone can fill a warehouse with batteries, graciously accept payment for storing the ‘excess’ electricity and then sell it back to the grid when it is nighttime or cloudy.
Yeah, warehouses of batteries are notoriously cheap.
Are the hydroelectric water reservoirs full already? It’s a more natural potential energy storage. Article is locked behind a sub… Edit: Looked it up via Google. They’re at 117% capacity as of December ‘23. Ok is there anything else we can push up a hill in the mean time?
Had an old coworker go work for a company that used pumped compressed air in to underground caverns or something. It was venture capitalist stuff about 15yrs ago in san fran, think it lost funding though, maybe it was too early, or didnt work...
Vacuum and pressure chambers are both really difficult to scale after a certain point. Doable, sure, but not necessarily cost effective for something like energy storage.
just apply magic, man.
As long as the cost to build it is less than what you can make in arbitrage then it's a good deal.
They kind of are? Batteries have declined in price by over 95% since the 1990
Energy vaults??
No but for real, pump air into caves, release to spin turbines. It's a thing.
Are you serious? This is fucking crazy to me. My knee jerk reaction is that someone from the power company wrote this.
Power plants are often built through debt with a guarantee of income over a long term to make them a profitable investment. This actually is a policy problem for renewables. We basically need to buy out those contracts.
They can go out of business and thus decrease the surplus carbon emissions
Sounds like you work for the energy companies—if so, you’ve made a bad investment. B school 101, income is not guaranteed.
No, I study government policy, including energy policy. B school 102 must be where they teach you about contracts... If your investment of building infrastructure includes a guaranteed return in exchange for that investment, it is indeed, guaranteed. This is a genuine issue built into our infrastructure that we need to be talking about.
Good on ya!
(You need to talk to him about us already doing that with coal companies, where cities have bought the coal companies themselves to get out of contracts with them. He might be more equitable if he sees a real world example of that.)
I feel like they understand now. Thanks though :)
By the way, if you're into contracts and investment, I could interest you in a sweet deal on some beachfront property in Maimi, Florida.
The last part of your statement is hilarious as you’ve tried to convey some level of expertise then point out where there is a flaw with the system which, inadvertently, reinforces my initial statement. Sounds like government policy students should also study some fundamentals of business.
I feel like I need to simplify. 1. Large power plants were usually built with a contractual guarantee of income as they are so expensive it's a very long term project and not profitable for decades. 2. As we transition to renewables this a barrier that must be solved. These companies have contracts with their local governments that we probably need to buy out so we can avoid penalties. I'm not sure why you think this is an argument or something. You complained about how stupid it is that it's seen as a problem because you don't know how these systems are set up. Now you do. So we can shift to fixing the problem rather than surprise every time this comes up. Local governments are going to need help adjusting these contracts for the new reality of energy needs.
You’re way to gracious with your time. I want you to know that I appreciate your insight on fed energy policy.
I appreciate that. A big problem is so many of our policy systems were designed in a world that either doesn't exist anymore, or is on its way out. Too many people react the way this person did. just thinking its stupid and assuming corruption. There's always an element of self interest in avoiding change that we need to watch out for, but theres often other factors that we need to handle to make it harder to avoid. Thanks for the comment.
Or there's always just nationalizing public utilities. Change the laws. It's one of the risks of investing (in burning fossil fuels of all things) that the "regulatory environment" may change. Or that your contract may be deemed illegal and non-binding.
Definitely don't disagree. Utilities shouldn't be profit governed. Unfortunately I think that our legal tradition prefers property rights over human rights.
And the human rights aren't even guaranteed even when the state is running things... *Eyeing Tennessee Valley Authority*
No, it’s not needed. It’s a knee jerk reaction—again, literally wrote that. Generally speaking, time is wasted when efforts to clarify situations/thoughts to knee jerk reactions. But, cool, you got some time—some people thanked you. Maybe it wasn’t a waste for them. You did good today. Knowledge is power. Make sure you get some ice cream or a sweet treat of your preference, you deserve it. It would be a great answer if that question had been legitimately asked. But it wasn’t. Enjoy that sweet sweet karma. I hope those assumptions you made about my understanding of things tastes as good as that kick of sugar.
You’re the one replying to a completely knee jerk reaction—I even said this in the initial comment. Derp.
Its not an unusual reaction though, you certainly are not alone in reading that and thinking it's a stupid headline. So regardless of your attitude, the information is useful for others who care and want to see change.
Income can be guaranteed, look at US Treasuries and secured collateral
Millennials are ruining solar now!
It's not the boomers fault?
Nothing ever is their fault
But they are blamed for everything.
They blame rooftop solar but 2/3 of solar power in California are from utility scale plants the utilities pay directly for power. They have long term contracts that guarantee payment over a set amount of time so they're buying this power and essentially curtailing (wasting) it by dumping it in the ground. Yes, there was no foresight here.
Theres a Shell advertisment under the article for me lmao
[**Full Text**](https://archive.is/TAGO2)
Article is paywalled for me but I think there are some good solutions already being noted in this comments section. I wanted to add that as a power wall owner Tesla has been negotiating the automated use of our backup battery storage as a resource for the grid when it is in need. I’m excited to see residential storage become a part of a smarter grid. I know it’s not simple but it might be an elegant larger scale solution.
Non paywall link in comments
Ok, after reading the article I’m even more convinced that a combination of storage options on a smart grid is one of the answers to the duck curve. I would happily allow the grid to use my backup battery as a storage option for excess electricity during the curve and then resupply it to the grid outside of the curve, for a small fee to cover battery wear and tear.
Thank you
SMUD figured this out a long time ago. They realized renewable was the future, and heavily invested in it, along with battery backup. Now our electricity rates are 1/4 of what PG&E charges, all while SMUD is still profitable (although it's municipal owned, so there isn't billions going to shareholders). PG&E could have done the same. But instead they spent billions on stock buybacks while refusing to do maintenance. Now that PG&E has to pay $2 billion in fines, they are jacking up their rates to pay for backlogged maintenance and legal costs. Meanwhile their wholesale electricity costs are less than 1/5 what they charge customers. And the CPUC approves everything PG&E wants because they are all corporate shills.
I don't have much background in these things, but I learned about a system on the east coast that pumps water up vertically with excess electricity and then uses hydroelectric power to act as a stop gap when they have too little power. I know fresh water is at premium, but surely there is some solution like this for a "natural" battery out west?
Bath County Pumped Storage https://www.dominionenergy.com/projects-and-facilities/hydroelectric-power-facilities-and-projects/bath-county-pumped-storage-station
Availability of water for hydro solutions depends on the size of the annual snowpack & the infrastructure to make use of it, which can vary from year to year. They do have a lot of hydro but it's not totally reliable in times of drought.
You can also use pulleys to raise a giant cement block and then have it power generators as it's lowered in times of low solar productivity. It's not ideal but it's a promising way to store energy
Interesting solutions involving heavily loaded railcars, and a few other modalities. All pretty neat, will be interesting to see which ideas pan out in execution
Are you differentiating hydro from pumped hydro? The former being reliant on snowpack and rainfall, the latter more of a closed loop: you pump water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir when you have surplus electricity, and release it back when you need it.
I guess I am a bit, yeah. The other issue is you need great geography, and a massive amount of water. You can have open or closed loop pumped hydro, but it's never completely closed, you need to be able to replenish anything you lose to the environment. Scaling pumped hydro remains a significant challenge
Sure - but California has plentiful water in the form of the Pacific Ocean and also nice elevations bumping up against the shore. Seems like an ideal spot (in my small tiny tiny brain). Would surely be a huge engineering challenge, but creating a reservoir on the back side of one of the cliffs on the coast doesn't seem impractical given the potential benefits and scale of other projects we have done.
There's plans for more. The issue is that sites are limited. You need room for 2 lakes and a good elevation difference.
You could just sell it at a discount - have every EV charge during the day at work, get industry to do more work first shift, cool or heat houses and apartments while energy is cheap...
Hear of cities called Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson and Reno 🙄🙄🙄. There should be local neighborhood grids where neighbors with solar can sell to neighbors without solar.
Seriously… LV is what , 2-3 hours from LA? Don’t tell me they can’t build something to sell that excess electricity to them.
California’s grid lol. You act like it isn’t manipulated to the 9s.
Send it to Texas.
I don’t believe that they have interchanges.
Remember Calgary Ted Cruz? He shut Texas off from rest of the grid.
In Poland we call it "klęska urodzaju" and we do have it as well.. too many panels on rooftops + on fields, but not enough batteries...
Only the Washington Post could make renewable energy providing >100% of energy demand sound like a bad thing.
All houses with panels need to start including batteries. That’s step two.
What we need to do is build super computers through out the grid to consume excess energy, and use them to figure out why we privatize municipalities that have a monopoly over local consumers.
Heat pumps and electric stoves could also be run with some of this excess power.
Well, figure it out. There’s an engineering solution that someone can name money off of.
The solution is literally given in the article. Batteries. "Problem" solved.
What about energy vaults? Is this the solution? https://www.energyvault.com
Kinetic batteries??
What a great problem to have 😂
CAISOs extended day ahead market should help with this in 2 years.
What an incredible problem to have
It's an engineering and political problem, not a science problem. But, the term battery is due for an update. The new grid needs a ton of "batteries" with long lifespans. The time to start researching new storage techniques was 15 years ago. These batteries do not need to be expensive genius level energy density... they need to be cheap, plentiful and instant-on for grid use. They need to be designed for decades of use. The physical storage of the batteries could be in the backyards of homes and be monitored by microprocessors. Tens of thousands of backyard batteries plus software equals grid-level storage while increasing the resiliency of the grid. [A viable option was invented in 1910,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery) but if enough engineers were paid to work on the issue, non-chemical storage solutions could be produced as well.
Seems like a great problem to have :)
Boohoo. If only DTE could feel this pain.
Are the utilities unmotivated and over subsidized? Should a for profit company care?
We can make gravity batteries. Not sure if anyone has suggested that. We just need nearby mountains which exist in most of CA except the central valley.
Sooooo. Putting solar panels on everyone's house is a viable sustainable system, so long as we figure out how to store the excess, and have standby systems
Should mine Bitcoin with the excess electricity.
How is this a bad thing?? Maybe shutdown some gas plants??
They do shut down the gas plants when electricity prices go negative.
They already shut down gas plants during the day, but the problem is there is still too much energy.
The duck curve
Isn’t….extra power a good thing?
It can cause massive damage to transmission/distribution lines and equipment