In the article they mention 23GW from wind and solar. A quick search says in 2018 CA's electrical generation capacity was 80GW (which I assume has only gone up). So this 97% is a bit misleading, no? It doesn't represent 97% of total CA electricity usage... it's less than 30%?
Right now, 3PM in California, the CAISO demand shows around 21GW of demand. http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/index.html
Note that CAISO's peak, ever, was 50GW. (PDF) http://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory....
The "installed capacity" of 80GW I believe is the number if you add the theoretical max of all hydro, solar, wind, gas peaker plants, etc. But each source will never simultaneously be at max, so we never get close to this 80GW number. https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo....
California de-rates solar by less than, say, the UK since Cali has a lot of air conditioning load which is coincident with insolation whereas summer days are the low-load periods in the UK.
The capacity before de-rating > capacity after de-rating > highest anticipated load > actual load on a normal day.
Their full installed generation capacity is 80GW, but there's huge variability in actual load. As I write this, current load is around 21GW, on a range of between 18.7GW and 27GW over the day. It gets into the 40's in the summer.
https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx
There's a significant need for reserve capacity to deal with this load variability, as well as plant failures, etc.
80% of California and part of Nevada also. Don't confuse the grid operator with the utility. Those are separate entities.
The ISO is the market maker for electricity - ultimately responsible for keeping supply and demand on the grid in balance. They contract with numerous entities to achieve that.
The utility is responsible for some combination of generation, transmission, distribution, and billing, depending on where you are located.
There are many other players in the markets, including spinning reserves, independent generators, demand aggregators, community-choice-aggregators, and some that play multiple roles.
I'm also confused by the scales here. How are they praising the use of 15,000 MW (15GW) and 8,000 MW (8 GW) in one sentence, in an article about 97% of California's energy being used, and saying they need 100 GW in the next sentence and being sad they can't put it on rooftops. In an article showing a photo of a solar cell field in a vast, desolate, arid region of central valley.
Or I could spend over 4 times as much to buy a social media site.
Decisions, decisions.
A major part of that equation is there is a lot of land in the US available for under 2,000$/acre, however spending more is a tradeoff to reduce the need for longer distance power transmission etc.
PS: 10B for 100GW at 30% capacity factor for 20 years is 10,000,000,000$ / (100,000,000kW * 0.3 * 24h * 365 * 20) or 0.2c/kWh ignoring interest. So, I think you messed up your estimate somewhere if you think that’s uncompetitive.
Path 65 (aka Pacific DC Intertie) is a 3.1 GW line connecting the hydroelectric dams of Washington and Oregon to Los Angeles.
Path 27 (Intermountain DC) is a 2.4 GW line connecting LA to a big-ass coal plant in Utah that is being shifted to wind+solar+natgas+hydrogen.
Path 66 is a set of AC lines that combine for 4.8 GW from Oregon to Southern California.
The map of solar production shows a compromise between building it in the most efficient place vs where demand and incentives is located. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Stat...
article: California invested heavily in solar power. Now there's so much that other states are sometimes paid to take it https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-solar/
Also, solar generation is highest during march/April. Cooler temps and good angles. Demand is lower too, as temps are good for people.
Renewables never reach capacity, well your solar might for a peak moment, but then it will drop as the sun drops.
For example - you have a 200 MW wind farm, you might only be able to produce 10MW at that moment. The capacity is 200MW, the generation is 10.
Also the 3rd was a Sunday in spring - no office workers, less demand, not a heating or cooling day in a lot of California, ie a lower energy day than say a week day in summer where the temp is 105 in the Central Valley.
> Rooftop solar advocacy group Save California Solar said although this milestone should be celebrated, California’s renewable energy progress is better measured by conditions on a hot August summer day than a cool April spring day. Renewable peaks typically occur in the spring, due to mild temperatures and the sun angle allowing for an extended window of strong solar production.
What do you do when it's not sunny, very cold/hot, no wind, and businesses and factories are open?
Somehow we talk a lot about solar, and not enough about nuclear.
Still better to have too much power than not enough... Especially if eg. Russia decides to close the gas pipe, or if americans decide to "bring democracy" to another middle eastern state and that disrupta oil delivery.
We've sidetracked nuclear for decades now... The best time was decades ago, and the second vest time to build some new ones is now.
That makes no sense to me.
Nissan Leaf: $17K after tax incentives, $27K before.
Gas is $5/gallon. You can buy 5400/gallons for the price of an unsubsidized leaf.
Assume a leaf-alike ICE car gets 40 miles per gallon. It will go 216K miles for the unsubsidized retail price of the leaf.
Leaf batteries last at least 100K miles, and cost about $6K.
The purchase cost of the ICE car, and 216K miles of motor oil, engine and exhaust work have to be under $6K ($12K if the leaf batteries need to be swapped twice) or the leaf is cheaper.
Additionally, battery degradation appears to be primarily related to high speed charging. In decade old battery packs that were not charged at extreme rates like 2C or above, you rarely see significant degredation. Grid scale operators will almost certainly manage their battery farms to limit the C rate to optimize battery life and long term profits.
I can't exaggerate the maintenance burden for the turbines, because I didn't claim what it is, beyond that it exists. We'll have to compare it to new nuclear plants before stating which becomes uneconomical.
Solar degradation is commonly estimated at 20% in 25y, but then we get inverter failures on top of that which account for ~80% of issues in home installations. Batteries are commonly estimated to lose 20% capacity in 10y. All of those stack up too. Again - we'll have to compare the actual numbers which we don't have yet.
isn't that the major consumer?