Californians are paying billions for power they don't need | Hacker News Reader

Californians are paying billions for power they don't need

latimes.com

103 pointsblondie9x74 comments

Critics agree that some excess capacity is needed. And, in fact, state regulations require a 15% cushion. California surpasses that mark and is on pace to exceed it by 6 percentage points in the next three years

Hmmm... as soon as I hit this point in the article I really lost a lot of enthusiasm to keep reading.

The article throws out all these shocking stats about too many power plants, show a scary graph where the supply keeps going up even though demand if flat. Frightening!!

The they readily admit that a 15% surplus in generation capability is a good thing! In fact it's a requirement by law. Suddenly a 21% excess doesn't seem all that scary.

Yeah, this is just California staying ahead of a potential problem. Good for the people in charge.

So we have a 50% buffer against our legal threshold and for very little money. That's just good planning.

Why do you want a 50% buffer on the 15% buffer?

And it's not very little money. It says $6.5 billion more, which I think is an annual number.

If there's a legal requirement, I would be uncomfortable being right on the edge of it.

In any case, the problem here seems to be that regulatory approval for additional plants is supporting Public utilities like PG&E who have guaranteed returns over independent companies who don't have guaranteed returns. It looks like we need the ability to exempt proposed projects from the guaranteed returns in order to fix the misaligned incentives here.

You seem very confused.

the regulators here made the legal requirement

It's not like an independent set of experts in charge made it. California made it, and in fact, most experts (in the very same article) seem to think it's "pretty rich".

The regulators made the legal requirement, so saying "it's good the regulators are doing this because it's a legal requirement" is super-circular logic when the very same regulators made the legal requirement.

No, you're right. When I first read it I completely misunderstood.

A 50% buffer on top of the buffer that was already increased by 50% above what was already considered a safe buffer, against the advice of experts? But are you sure 21% excess capacity will be enough? It's barely over twice what people consider a sane margin of error; maybe it should be 40%. Or 80%! Safety first, right?

Or maybe it should just be 10% like a normal state would have?

> and for very little money

Did we read the same article?

At the scale of California being 6 percent over requirements is an enormous waste.

And not having capacity means millions of people and $$ wasted. Pick one.

Since it takes much time to build a plant they plan ahead.

We already have a 15% cushion as the article and the parent comments state. That is plenty for any conceivable jump in demand. A large state like california does not change that fast. And all the present technological trends are for lower demand, not higher.

What? CA.gov projects more energy usage in the future[0]. So does the US govt, and the EU govt and the IANA and basically everyone.

Suddenly the decade it takes to make a new power plant doesn't seem that far away.

[0] http://docketpublic.energy.ca.gov/PublicDocuments/15-IEPR-03...

Edit: added a link to a source, also frustrated I cant use my browser's 'copy link' because Google link tricks.

Thanks for the link.

If you look at CED high demand, CA today already has almost 10% excess of the projected 2026 peak demand (projected is between 65-70, lets say 69MW, per the LA times capacity is 75MW). High demand makes it's own set of assumptions about the efficacy of self generation and economic growth, and I'd be interested to see if they redid this in 2016 (based off how much they overestimated in 2014 and lowered their expectations in 2015).

I did not fully digest this document but based off a brief skim I don't think this document disagrees strongly with the LA times article. Clearly there are more plants coming online, but that today we have 10% excess of the high end of a 10yr projected forecast, I think is part of the articles point (although I think the main point of the article is about how regulated utilities are benefiting from this, at the cost of consumers and non-regulated utilities).

What do you do when your aging nuclear plants go offline?

Power plant siting and buildout takes a decade -- there's no "just in time" option!

It's extraordinarily difficult and expensive to bring on new generation in California (and most of the US in fact). California's total population has increased by 50% in 30 years. They're adding half a million people per year net. They're going to need all the power they can get over the next ~20 years, as California rapidly shifts to electric vehicles and their population continues to expand.

Suddenly a 21% excess doesn't seem all that scary.

California has 39 million residents. 15% over needed capacity is already a lot of excess, and bumping it to 21% is pretty ludicrous.

How would your comment change if they had 390 million residents or 390,000 residents?

A heat wave would still put every AC into service.

Less than 60% of California households have AC compared to 80% across the US. The excess capacity necessary would seem to be smaller if this were a large contributing factor.

Source: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/sta...

Its in particular ridiculous, as temperature negatives could be easily stored- ice cellars.

Can you show a citation or credential to justify your position?

Can he site the article? It quotes a researcher saying "Traditionally, 10% is just fine."

I think the real question (not addressed by the article) is how much projected surplus there is as older plants reach their scheduled closure dates. Especially given the experience at San Onofre where the plant was closed early due to unexpected problems, it's reasonable to consider capacity if the 2.2 GW at Diablo Canyon goes offline before the current schedule of 2025.

There's also San Onofre, which ended up being decommissioned before expected.

I'm sure you mean MW. Diablo Canyon supplies about 8.5% of the states energy.

> I'm sure you mean MW.

Unlikely, 2.2MW is pretty much nothing, it's the nameplate capacity of a single relatively large wind turbine (but not a huge one, the current record-setter is the 8MW Vestas V164). Even in SMR few commercial design go that low, there's only ABV (3~10MWe) and the quite odd ELENA effort (68kWe), but most designs are 2~3 digits electrical.

Diablo Canyon has a nameplate capacity of 2240MWe over two reactors, which is about 2.2GW.

This cali, land of air conditioners. That it keeps a greater cushion to cover heatwaves is to be expected. Washington or oregon wouldnt need such a cusion as thier hot seasons are more mild. Direct comparison of state laws ignores the physical realities for which those laws are written.

Less than 60% of Californians have air conditioners at home, as opposed to 80% of Americans. So, you seem to be missing a comparison to the 47 other states whose AC ownership percentage is strikingly higher.

Yes, but look to the use of them. California is hotter than other states. It is also subject to heatwaves in the south, short periods of intense heat which are uncommon elsewhere. People in LA basically live in AC during such times. Washington state may have more machines but doesn't get the heatwaves and so doesn't need the same reserves.

I was surprised how low AC usage in residential homes is in LA compared to many cities on the East Coast. I guess that a city which is rather hot year-round has less need for AC compared to cities that are very hot for only a few months per year. It allows building differently.

High energy prices could also play a role.

At least for the first one, this definitely plays into it. Average winters in NYC top out at 38-42 degrees, compared to LA bottoming out at 48-49. LA can get away with less insulation, so they don't need to worry about buildings trapping as much heat during the summer.

I couldn't tell from the article: is the 6% excess attained while running plants at _less_ than optimal output?

So would California be even more above the threshold with the turn of a dial?

Quite a lot of modern politics seems to be making sensible but mildly complex solutions seems stupid, wasteful or malicious. Once you recognize the pattern you see it everywhere.

Another big chunk is taking a number that applies at a national scale and referring to it out of context so that it seems unfeasibly large.

Quite a lot of modern politics seems to be making sensible but mildly complex solutions seems stupid, wasteful or malicious. Once you recognize the pattern you see it everywhere.

That's a great and very important point, I think. Oversimplification goes hand-in-hand with populism – essentially the promise of simple, elegant (and ultimately unrealistic) solutions to complex problems.

It was particularly evident in the UK during the recent EU referendum.

I've described Brexit as "anti-globalisation riots for the over-50s" before. "Smash the system" is a very tempting slogan, but then you realise that the "system" is also a life-support system.

Or compare it to the temptation to want to re-write a complex software system. It's very hard for the rewrite to retain all the features and it's nearly always very expensive.

The national average for renewable energy use is 13% but in California it's 30%. Renewables are awesome but subject to clouds or lulls in the the wind so you need to run a renewable heavy grid with more excess capacity compared to one where only the demand side fluctuates unexpectedly.

In the future we can hope to add more short term storage and long range transmission lines to smooth this out.

But in the short term I"ll take that trade.

The scary graph talks about aggregated demand, not peak.

Things go to shit if you approach 1:1 supply:demand ratio on a single day in a single region. Idle gas plants in particular are expected -- that's your cushion.

I'm sure there is excess given the knee-jerk to the brownouts a few years ago. But I'd like to see a response written by an engineer who understands electricity in CA.

I think you are missing the point of the article. It lays out a case that this excess power generation is done for the profit of some regulated utilities, such as PG&E.

For example, it mentions a power plant that was shut down because of it's excess capacity while another plant, which benefited PG&E, was allowed to come online. Secondly you mention 15% as a good thing, ignoring the article's mention that 15% itself was controversial, as higher then normal.

You mock "show a scary graph where the supply keeps going up even though demand if flat. Frightening!!", but I don't understand why. This is a fact that demand is going down, so why should power plants keep getting added, to the point we are shutting DOWN power plants for excess capacity.

The article cites multiple experts who argue that this is an excess of power generation, including multiple people on the PUC board. These people surely have some conception of future anticipated growth. And also we pay 50% more per kwh then is the average, which is money going into pockets of regulated utilities.

And yet despite this, somehow you have decided the bigger number is better, no matter the actual cost. I honestly cannot understand how you read the article and come up with your conclusion, based off no cited expertise yourself.

The fact that your comment is on the top baffles me even more, as if everyone here has decided for the day they are suddenly experts in utility planning. It is possible of course you have some more knowledge about WHY this is needed e.g. some demand spike you anticipate. Yet to dismiss it all in bad faith, with no real argument other then 21 > 15, is just ridiculous to me.

It's all a matter of perspective and how you interpret numbers. I can also say: "15% is standard surplus according to regulation, but California is generating 40% (6/15) more than the standard surplus". Now that seems like a bigger number.

"The they readily admit that a 15% surplus in generation capability is a good thing! In fact it's a requirement by law"

???? they quote experts saying it's very rich and unnecessary, and that they'll be exceeding this by over 40%.

As for "requirement by law", the same regulators are the ones who made the law.

So that's a super-circular argument.

In 1999, I worked in IT, and one of the graphs we had on our "big board" was a feed from the CA power grid, showing utilization vs peak generation capacity. We had to keep an eye on it because if usage got to close to capacity, the state would start rolling blackouts, which might shut down the server room in our office, so we had to be ready and shut down any non-critical machines so that the rest could shut down after switching to the UPS.

It was not a good time. It's also important to remember that these things take a long time to build, so they were still being approved when solar was expensive and server rooms were still expanding.

I think it's a good thing that they are over provisioned and anticipating future growth. I would assume that generation will get closer to the demand curve over time as it levels out.

If you're referring to the CA electricity crises of 2000/2001, these were caused by Enron manipulating energy supply.[1]

Smartest Men in the Room is a great book about Enron's history.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

But not the subsequent ones?

"the ISO has imposed short rotating outages in 2004, 2005, 2010 and 2015, mostly related to unexpected transmission line or power plant outages during periods of unusually high demand." - Rueters

That sounds like an issue of transmission capacity and redundancy, not energy production.

At that time yes, but the point was being too close to peak generation is cause for concern, so having an overhead is a good thing and hard to predict in the timescales it takes to approve and build a power plant.

I am tangentially in this space in that we build tech that allows for demand response capabilities, specifically for mini-split and other air conditioning systems (https://flair.co, shameless plug).

This article seems to be missing some important details that are rather relevant in statements of 'capacity' and 'demand'. Specifically, demand is dynamic with energy 'rush hours' at certain times of the day and lows at others. One reason that this is relevant is that often times these companies build 'peaker' plants to handle the rush hour loads that may be present significantly less than 1% of the time. Its not that you neceisarily need to speak to this phenomena but treating demand as a static number leaves a bunch of things unclear. For instance, what is the average over capacity and what is the excess capacity at peak demands.

Another thing that was missing to me - electric cars and gas systems. At the moment a decent amount of space heating, water heating and cooking systems require gas but arguably as we begin cleaning our power sources, it will make less sense to use gas and having more electric capacity will make making this sort of decision or switch much easier. Not to mention safer given the massive gas issues in southern california recently...

In terms of electric cars - I haven't seen the growth numbers or how much anticipated load there is but it seems like electric cars over the next 10 years may add a nonnegligable load to the grid. This is also complicated as the solar generation capacity and localized storage (power walls and other similar at home batteries) markets are just starting to get interesting. I would love to see a more comprehensive story with numerical predictions about where additional loads and suppliers are headed instead of bickering between industry veterans. It seems like depending upon how those shake out, this excess capacity could prove even more foolish than some are arguing or it may seem forward looking. Interesting article but missing some of the more dynamic and relevant questions so making a more conclusive judgement is limited at best imho.

Completely anecdotal, but among apartment-dwellers, I doubt electric cars will take off as much as one might expect.

I live near the Palo Alto-Los Altos-Mountain View border, and I've lived in two apartment buildings, one of which was just built (I was the first to move into my apartment, 12 months ago). My first place had no electric vehicle charging at all, and the second has a total of four spots, which aren't shared.

I already have my own electric meter for my apartment, and I'd be perfectly happy to pay for a second meter at my carport, but I don't see that happening soon, and so that makes me wary to buy an electric car.

"For residential leases signed, renewed or extend on or after July 1, 2015, landlords are required to approve a tenant’s written request to install an electric vehicle charging station at the tenant’s parking space if the tenant enters into a written agreement which includes requirements regarding the installation, use, maintenance and removal of the charging station, requires the tenant pay for all modifications, and requires the tenant to maintain a $1,000,000 general liability insurance policy. The charging station and modifications must comply with all applicable laws and covenants, conditions and restrictions. The tenant is required to pay the cost associated with the electric usage of the charging station. The landlord is not required to provide the tenant with an additional parking space in order to comply with this law. This law does not apply: (1) when parking is not included as part of the rental contract; (2) to properties with fewer than five parking spaces; (3) to properties subject to rent control; (4) when 10% or more of existing spaces already have electric vehicle charging stations."

http://www.kts-law.com/electric-vehicle-charging-stations-fo...

It doesn't cover all cases, but its progress.

I wonder about this article. Natural gas plants are mostly fuel cost over their lifetime. It's common to run natural gas plants only during peak periods, and startup and shutdown are straightforward. There's nothing wrong with 47% utilization of a natural gas plant.

I'm happy having lots of redundancy in electric power. California has earthquakes, wildfires, and droughts. Keeping the power on through those is worth a little extra cost.

Also, think of it as being electric car ready.

The article doesn't address this, but the interactive graphic does: 831 out of 1170 California power plants (71%) are operating at less than 1/3 of capacity.

That's about normal. The peaking plants shut down off-peak. Last night's California power demand was about 20GW at minimum. Peak today is about 30GW. The historical peak (Jul 24, 2006, hottest day recorded in California, with 38 heat-related deaths[1]), was 50GW. Generating capacity has to be sized for that peak.

[1] http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_North_American_heat_wave

Initially you mentioned that 47% is fine, now <33% utilization is also fine, okay, but what kind of utilization isn't?

Generating capacity is needed based on the peak, not the average. On the peak hour of the peak day, you'd like to have 15% more nameplate capacity than you're using. Some stations will be out of service for maintenance, and something may fail.

PJM training on this: [1]

[1] http://www.screencast.com/t/9qPkoGacrnm

Excess power is kind of like garage space. If there's any available, we'll usually find some to take.

The amount of potential energy from rooftop solar is insane. It's so powerful and cheap that in my home buying selection I'm avoiding homes with obstructed south-facing rooftops.

Rather than building plants we should be expanding the "dumb" residential grid to handle many, many more kW of residential solar and fairly subsidize the owners who feed it.

Rooftop solar is already oversubsidized by net metering in many places. I would be much more for it if rooftop solar could guarantee capacity (and therefore actually reduce infrastructure costs on the grid) and was paid the wholesale instead of retail costs for electricity but as it is the utility companies are losing money for all the power that goes on the grid and that money is only going to people rich enough to buy dollar panels. I haven't talked to someone recently but last time I checked residential solar was often inefficient compared to commercial solar and a subsidy for the rich

The issue as you say in the beginning is capacity. Part of the solution is certainly energy storage (and here's tons of innovation happening here, ala tesla batteries etc). The other part is smartening the grid to utilize the most power when it's the most available.

I can imagine a desalination plant that cranks during the hottest part of the day when electricity is cheapest, and slumbers during the night.

Of course most of these problems are usually issues of economics. When it becomes cheaper to do it then it will happen.

The problem right now is that if you look at it economically rooftop solar doesn't make a lot of sense and is mainly being driven by subsidies (which are being paid for by everyone else). My guess is that large scale commercial solar will end up generally more economical than rooftop solar.

$1 billion is about $30 per California person.

So Californians can spend a billion without it being much of an emergency.

Doesn't mean they should be happy with waste/poor regulation, just that billion isn't all that impressive a benchmark given the population of the state.

And it isn't exactly self evident that it is "power that they "don't need." Increasing power production would reduce costs for everyone, which would be great for consumers, especially the poor.

The way generation is regulated, excess capacity doesn't necessarily reduce rates (the utility gets approval to increase rates to cover the capital cost of generation).

Producing more energy than it's possible to consume and then "splitting the bill" is especially a tax on the poor, since they will feel the 50% difference in price that article mentions, more than anyone.

The article says $6.5 billion and an extra $60 per person.

Excess power in California? Sounds like a good time to build a desalination plant.

Maybe electricity rates in California should be dropped to increase demand. The state has one of the highest electricity rates in the country [1].

[1] http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/204.htm

I fully recommend The Grid by Gretchen Bakke. It goes over this subject in great detail.

Link: https://smile.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Ener...

I wonder, if there were more data center capacity in the state, would that help?

For example, take Tracy, or some of the land around SR 46 west of Lost Hills: If a cloud provider built facilities there, that would add a fairly constant draw on the state's power supply, with some small flexibility[1]. I wonder if that would be enough to reduce CA electricity prices (as weird as that might sound).

[1]: In the case of AWS, imagine if there were a power shortage, they could respond by massively increasing spot prices, causing load shedding, and allowing hardware to shut down.

Not saying the article is perfect, but I'm seeing the same one or two counterarguments presented over and over again in almost identical fashion. Am I paranoid or are we being astroturfed?

My dream is solar shingles, like what they advertised late last year, and a Tesla house battery, but my electricity costs are $50/month, maybe $60 if I decided to get lazy and use my heater downstairs in the morning. And this is for a reasonably-sized home in the SF Bay Area. Even if I got AC (I currently don't have it), it still might not be enough to justify solar panels. I think I would have to convert all my gas appliances to electricity, and then it would push me into territory that would justify them.

Solar panels can still make sense, you can sell the excess energy you don't use. The amount you currently spend doesn't really affect how profitable solar panels can be. It's rather a concern if you want to be independent of the grid.

So basically a regulated public utility used its position to build plants to push independents out of the market all the while knowing the capacity wasn't needed. It was a power play supported by the regulating committee that should have said no.

The first step in fixing such issues is to block those companies protected by status of being public utilities from contributing to political campaigns.

The issue not covered by the article from what I can see is, how much of this is baseload power and no peak power or variable (renewable)

I'm not sure how the author managed to write this article without mentioning that California imports over 33% of its electricity every year. Up from only 25% net imports 6 years ago.

I would be happy if we could just turn off coal[1] rather than these plants.

[1] http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/tracking_progress/docume...

Californians are paying a lot of money for things they don't need. A high speed train, subsidies for dairy and what not.

Early 2000s Californians were having rolling blackouts. Was it really bad planning or due to Texas energy crooks Enron?

Higher energy prices lead to less electricity use which leads to less greenhouse gas emissions.

So Tim Burton's second Batman movie?

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