NERC Assessment Identifies Largest Threat To Grid: Energy Policy

[Snagglefoot]

In

Yep. OT coverage tonight & tomorrow. Already worked Sunday through Wednesday on days so it's a 72hr week this week. Next month I'll only have one day off from the 7th through the 21st. Will be nice once we bring on another senior dispatcher/supervisor (think interviews are next week).

You're correct about the over penetration of renewables. The CAISO duck curve is getting pretty steep going into the evening ramp.

View attachment 174824

Interesting. It seems that the entire grid is supplied by solar for a moment each day. Can someone elaborate on that? That’s almost 20 G of solar for a brief moment.

 

[PandaBear]

Folsom is lovely at night.

You're doing good work. Freq indicates 59.984 here on the other side of the Western Interconnection (0136pdt).

After 27 years of the business, I can't believe we've painted ourselves into this corner.

I fear it will take repeated large scale outages to shed light on the issue and the corrections needed.

Best of luck, keep crossing ACE!

Or excessive surge pricing now that everyone is forced into time of use plan. If people are told 4pm-9pm will cost them $1/kwh and other time would cost them 30c/kwh, they will finally see what is it all about. I was just arguing with my wife about solar panel after NEM2.0 and she got upset and refuse to listen about duck curve.

 

[PandaBear]

To eliminate all fossil fuels, we still need storage for the daily peaks and valleys though, perhaps bio gas from wastewater treatment can handle some peaks as well? If we got some serious standards for reusability and recyclability of batteries, perhaps small distributed battery storage at renewable sites would work well too?

Storage of electricity has always been and likely will be the biggest problem in our society. I don't see how a need guarantees a cheap solution. You only poop so much and there's only so much bio gas can produce into the grid. Being biogas it will have the same problem with natural gas peaker plant, either be expensive and inefficient, or won't ramp up fast enough for the duck curve.

I still think if we are to continue with solar, the only way is not to soak up all the day time output and release them back into the same form of energy into the grid at the duck curve. What we should do is either create demand for electricity to use at another time, doesn't have to be back into grid or home electricity. If we can make ice (or melt molten salt) and then let the ice melt (or let the molten salt freeze), that's a pretty cheap way to control climate. If we can charge EV during those time for a good price and then just drive the cars whenever, that's another good one. When and if EV can hold a few days worth of driving range it is a pretty good way to soak up cheap electricity, even if it doesn't release back to the grid.

I don't think grid scale battery even if it is cheap like LiFe would be cheap enough to bring to large scale. We need to shift loads by the biggest amount, which is climate control (AC).

 

[MVAR]

In

Interesting. It seems that the entire grid is supplied by solar for a moment each day. Can someone elaborate on that? That’s almost 20 G of solar for a brief moment.

That's total generation, not just solar. There are AGC units online but they are limited. It's days like the one pictured where prices are negative, CAISO is encouraging load increases in real time & beginning to curtail these PV plants.

 

[MVAR]

Here is a good discussion from the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources:

ICYMI — Manchin: This EPA Won’t Let Electric Reliability Inconvenience Their Anti-Fossil Agenda.

www.energy.senate.gov

 

[MVAR]

All it means is that storage hasn't lived up to the hype.....yet.

I'm curious. With excess capacity why isn't it being sent to the east coast and vice versa?

I'll expand on this a bit better. In the 1970's we separated into our interconnections due to AC oscillations. There are DC interties between the interconnections, just not AC. I have also heard there are some phase shifting transformers getting ready to be placed into service that would tie the Eastern & Western together but haven't heard anything about those in a couple years.

 

[MVAR]

Wait until all these power companies have built up their infrastructure under the pressing of the Government....the PSC in your state can't stop those 2x rate increases then. The power companies are about to say to the rate payers "Time's up! Pay us the money!"

I have a feeling it will be FAR more than 2x rate increase if we keep going down this path. As a matter of fact, it was projected back in 2017/18, from a large NorCal utility, a 100% reliable grid utilizing the most current "green" technologies available would have a retail end user cost of $5/kWh. That is over 10x the current cost of said utility.

That is also making a 100% reliable grid to end users, not that there wouldn't be outages, just not customer outages.

 

[MVAR]

Storage of electricity has always been and likely will be the biggest problem in our society. I don't see how a need guarantees a cheap solution. You only poop so much and there's only so much bio gas can produce into the grid. Being biogas it will have the same problem with natural gas peaker plant, either be expensive and inefficient, or won't ramp up fast enough for the duck curve.

I still think if we are to continue with solar, the only way is not to soak up all the day time output and release them back into the same form of energy into the grid at the duck curve. What we should do is either create demand for electricity to use at another time, doesn't have to be back into grid or home electricity. If we can make ice (or melt molten salt) and then let the ice melt (or let the molten salt freeze), that's a pretty cheap way to control climate. If we can charge EV during those time for a good price and then just drive the cars whenever, that's another good one. When and if EV can hold a few days worth of driving range it is a pretty good way to soak up cheap electricity, even if it doesn't release back to the grid.

I don't think grid scale battery even if it is cheap like LiFe would be cheap enough to bring to large scale. We need to shift loads by the biggest amount, which is climate control (AC).

I'd have to go looking again but if I recall correctly, battery storage is only viable without subsidies when prices are >$600/mWh.

There's plenty of other technologies available that don't involve PV, wind & battery storage

 

[MVAR]

I am intelligent enough to recognize a problem, not intelligent enough to offer a viable solution. I'd suggest nuclear power, but people that are smarter than me, know that solar and wind are much better.

Here in FL, FPL has taken steps to make the local powerlines more robust for hurricanes. Amazingly, we now have regular daily brown-outs. Often one leg only. Despite thinking the two are not related, they are. As the powerlines are now so high, the tops of the pine trees interfere with them. Whereas before, the pine tree tops were above the lines.

Are these the distribution lines & not transmission? It's my understanding that FPL is mainly breaker & a half with point to point lines & only about 3 T-Taps on their transmission system. This makes all load more reliable as if a line trips, they've only lost a pathway, or a leg of a pathway.

 

[MVAR]

And that's the problem with letting ideology win over engineering and common sense. If you over-build a technology to the point that it displaces cleaner baseload supply, you are doing it wrong. The goal should be to displace peakers, not clean baseload.

Solar hasn't eliminated the need for baseload, it's simply that over-supply of solar is being allowed to pointlessly displace baseload in some jurisdictions, and those jurisdictions also happen to generally have absolutely insane electricity prices and rolling blackouts/brownouts.

Furthermore, then you have the issue with winter. If you displace clean baseload during the summer, and that capacity is removed from the system, you are going to really have a fun time when it's -30C and solar CF is in the toilet.

Here's Ontario's solar profile for 2022 for example (note the different axis scales for solar and demand):
View attachment 174876

Here's wind, note the gaping chasms during the winter period where demand spikes and wind is AWOL:
View attachment 174877

And here's nuclear. Even in a year with TWO VBO's (both scheduled for low demand periods) and multiple units down for refurbishment, it tracks extremely well with demand:
View attachment 174878

I'll post this article again as it goes pretty well with your post here. Sorry, playing catchup on this thread.

ICYMI — Manchin: This EPA Won’t Let Electric Reliability Inconvenience Their Anti-Fossil Agenda.

www.energy.senate.gov

 

[MVAR]

 

[MVAR]

 

[IndyIan]

Here is a good discussion from the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources:

ICYMI — Manchin: This EPA Won’t Let Electric Reliability Inconvenience Their Anti-Fossil Agenda.

www.energy.senate.gov

Well, I think it comes down to the fact that the vast majority of experts believe that ignoring man made climate change is likely going to cause such havoc with the weather, paying almost any amount of money to develop and implement low greenhouse gas technology to reduce the climate chaos in the future, is worthwhile now...
So far it seems most of the large temperature rises are at upper latitudes with few people and little agriculture, but when the agriculture regions see similar average temperature rises of 5-6F and we lose a few harvests per decade, then shuttering coal fired plants will seem quite cheap in comparison.
Unfortunately I think we are going to find out how expensive climate change is going to be, in the next 30-40 years and for a couple hundred after that at least...

 

[MVAR]

Well, I think it comes down to the fact that the vast majority of experts believe that ignoring man made climate change is likely going to cause such havoc with the weather, paying almost any amount of money to develop and implement low greenhouse gas technology to reduce the climate chaos in the future, is worthwhile now...
So far it seems most of the large temperature rises are at upper latitudes with few people and little agriculture, but when the agriculture regions see similar average temperature rises of 5-6F and we lose a few harvests per decade, then shuttering coal fired plants will seem quite cheap in comparison.
Unfortunately I think we are going to find out how expensive climate change is going to be, in the next 30-40 years and for a couple hundred after that at least...

I have several climatologists here where I work. NOAA is on the floor directly below me as well. I'm going to avoid a political discussion here as this isn't the site for it. I'll just advise you not to believe the vast majority of what you read on the topic. If people want to have a discussion about pollution, that's a legitimate discussion to have. Man made climate change is not.

 

[IndyIan]

I have several climatologists here where I work. NOAA is on the floor directly below me as well. I'm going to avoid a political discussion here as this isn't the site for it. I'll just advise you not to believe the vast majority of what you read on the topic. If people want to have a discussion about pollution, that's a legitimate discussion to have. Man made climate change is not.

Why is man-made climate change not a legitimate discussion topic? It should be a scientific discussion based on data, the accuracy of climate modelling, and the risks vs rewards of various green house gas management goals and strategies.

 

[MVAR]

Why is man-made climate change not a legitimate discussion topic? It should be a scientific discussion based on data, the accuracy of climate modelling, and the risks vs rewards of various green house gas management goals and strategies.

Because it's a political discussion & not a scientific discussion. What gas or vaper has the greatest impact on temperatures? Is it CO2? No. It's water vapor & it's not even close. How much reporting have you noticed about oceanic volcanic activity? Very little. I'll let you take that and run with it if you choose.

I discuss this topic with professionals on a fairly regular basis. It's a taboo topic here at work as well but commonly known.

If you wish to look into historical data on your own, you can only use USA data as the US was the only reliable source for tracking until post WW2. USA began accurate tracking back in the 1860's for agricultural needs. Here is a link if you wish to do some of your own research on historical temperatures:

https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=sto

Sorry if I seem uninterested on a debate about this topic. I've found too many people, on both sides, to treat this topic closer to a religion or cult than are willing to have an actual discussion. It's also a topic that is specifically funded to release the majority of data in limited formats due to a very large attempt to push an agenda. Even in the .gov site I linked, you'll find certain data points relating to the hottest year on record, 1936, to be conveniently missing.

 

[OVERKILL]

My exceptionally limited understanding of how power grids work is Nuclear is really only good for base loads. Perhaps if we had more nuclear then there would be more other stuff left for peak demand? Maybe others smarter than me can comment.

Nuclear plants can operate in modes other than baseload, but US regulation prohibits a lot of things that are allowed elsewhere. For example, in a blackout, US plants have to SCRAM, our plants in Canada don't. So, our plants can be used to black-start the grid, yours can't, by virtue of regulation. We can't vary reactor power levels anymore here in Canada to follow load (we did in the 70's and 80's) so we just use steam bypass (just at Bruce) to reduce output in blocks, which is less elegant. You can use both technologies, reactor power level maneuvers and steam bypass, to very quickly, and very elegantly, follow load if you have enough nuclear capacity to do so. Most places, that's not an issue that they have to contend with.

Both Germany (RIP) and France use(d) their nukes in non-baseload operation. There are many papers on this subject if you'd care to read them, but you can see the fluctuation in France's output in this pic:

If you go to the Electricity Maps site, click on France, move the slider from "LIVE" back to 8:00AM and watch the nuclear bar, see how output is varied over the day to follow demand.

Of course that would require the clown show in DC come up with a long term solution on how to manage the waste, which doesn't seem possible.

Well, it would involve them choosing a site, we already know what the solution is, Finland has completed their DGR and folks from Canada recently visited it to get a sense of what ours will look like when completed.

 

[Cujet]

My exceptionally limited understanding of how power grids work is Nuclear is really only good for base loads.

That is an absolutely fantastic point! Which brings up an argument I've heard from others, what if the Nuclear Power Plant makes so much excess power, that when available, it can be used for, CO2 capture, carbon and oxygen disassociation, desalinization, and even the production of hydrocarbon fuels from the CO2 capture?

It brings up the the point that with a significant excess in energy, other work can be done.

 

[PandaBear]

That is an absolutely fantastic point! Which brings up an argument I've heard from others, what if the Nuclear Power Plant makes so much excess power, that when available, it can be used for, CO2 capture, carbon and oxygen disassociation, desalinization, and even the production of hydrocarbon fuels from the CO2 capture?

It brings up the the point that with a significant excess in energy, other work can be done.

Having excessive energy still doesn’t make it free. Unless it gets paid to capture CO2 it can’t do it forever.

Assuming that we really gets nearly free energy like we gets free oxygen, we will likely build a lot of data center for AI, smelt aluminum, build a city there, like how Buffalo NY becomes an industrial city before electricity is available.

 

[OVERKILL]

That is an absolutely fantastic point! Which brings up an argument I've heard from others, what if the Nuclear Power Plant makes so much excess power, that when available, it can be used for, CO2 capture, carbon and oxygen disassociation, desalinization, and even the production of hydrocarbon fuels from the CO2 capture?

It brings up the the point that with a significant excess in energy, other work can be done.

Having excessive energy still doesn’t make it free. Unless it gets paid to capture CO2 it can’t do it forever.

Assuming that we really gets nearly free energy like we gets free oxygen, we will likely build a lot of data center for AI, smelt aluminum, build a city there, like how Buffalo NY becomes an industrial city before electricity is available.

This is why TVA built Raccoon Mountain (and why Ontario is looking to build Meaford). If you can sock excess nuke or hydro baseload into PHES during lower demand, you can then use that very cheaply procured capacity to displace expensive peakers during the day.