California Declares Grid Emergency
rigzone.com
rigzone.com
Good intentions doesn't make a good government. California politicians seem to have a lot of good intentions on homelessness, jail reform, education, healthcare, but the reality is just an awful hell zone.
Edit: a typo
France 69.0%
Ukraine 55.0%
Slovakia 52.3%
Belgium 50.8%
Hungary 46.8%
The one nuclear plant in California makes 10% of the entire states electricity. And last night the state assembly voted 31/1 to not prematurely shut it down as planned.
And we don't fear russia bombing Ukraine's WECs
Oh and nuclear fission used in breeder reactors is just as renewable as the fusion fuel in the sun that powers wind/solar/hydro/bio. We can make 100% of the world's primary energy for 4 billion years with nuclear before running out of fuel.
It was interesting to see (thanks, Europe) how nuclear power plants are still somewhat susceptible to global climate change, since they require vast amounts of water below a certain temperature to run.
Nuclear plants can also be cooled with nearly zero water usage, using dry cooling (dump heat straight to air basically with air radiators). This is more expensive, but may make sense as climate change kicks in. It's perfectly doable and safe.
Today creating hydrogen from solar and burning it in a turbine is competitive with new built nuclear. Not that anyone suggests it for anything else than emergencies, since the round trip efficiency cost would be ludicrous.
Yet everyone just says "ok nuclear is the most expensive and always will be no matter what"
Add in a carbon fee and a low-carbon capacity market and all of a sudden nuclear would be the cheapest.
Markets are human constructs that are currently woefully messed up and leading us in dangerous directions.
Transmission lines are not but comparing how many HVDC lines you can get for the difference between renewables and a single nuclear reactor is laughable. This is not even mentioning the cost that has gone into building the current grid in a hub and spoke model around big centralized producers.
Not that we need to throw it away, but it is worth mentioning when talking nuclear. Especially new builds.
Power 2 X makes storage solved at costs lower or in line to nuclear. Not that anyone would accept those costs.
The real interesting research which is currently happening is around grid forming inverts. Being able create a country wide grid without any synchronous producers or coupling.
The way people argue about it, no it absolutely not. CAISO generates about 25,000 MWd in a day. If you just use LCOE you would say, ok let's take the LCOE in $/MWh, convert to $/MWd and multiply them for each energy source. Wow look how cheap 100% wind and solar are!
But oops they totally missed the fact that oops in Winter they have to build at least 4x capacity to fill up the shockingly large amount of chemical batteries (hundreds of skyscrapers full) and wires during the windy/sunny periods, and then rebuild all of this stuff every 25 years. Now it looks very expensive and crazy.
The 92% capacity factor nuclear plant running for 80 years is looking good.
Wind and solar alone are the cheapest forms of energy as tents are the cheapest form of housing.
Many studies suggest that a good mixture of hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar are the ideal. Let's not rule out nuclear due to current market quirks.
That is 24 giga watt hours from a kg or uranium. The article says California is set to "top 48 gigawatts" on some days. If it stayed at peak usage all year 48 * 24 * 365 / 24 = 17,520 kg of uranium for constant peak California consumption.
That seems like a lot until you think about how much oil it saves
That same capacity would require 26 Diablo canyon equivalent stations or only 30.5 sq.mi. [2]
Of course, Greater Los Angeles area itself is 33,954 sq.mi, so if we assume 10% of that are roofs, parking lots and other structures that can be covered with a solar panel setup somehow (big assumption, but this is a thought experiment after all), we’d have close to 1/2 of the total already covered. Add other populated areas in CA and things don’t look so outlandish with some combination of Nuclear/storage/solar.
The big question is whether we have the social cohesion to pull this off or not. The train from LA to SF mess has me worried here…
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Mo... [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
You also have to consider what you need to get that 1kg of U-235 and building your huge power plant. This is called doing a life-cycle analysis. In that it has been shown the wind power is by far the cheapest in terms of material use, and solar and nuclear is about equal.
> The TMR (total material requirement) of nuclear power generation is significantly lower than that of thermal power generation and is similar to that of renewables. On the basis of the low greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear power generation, like renewables, it can be considered favorable not only from the global warming perspective but also from a resource use perspective.
"Life cycle resource use of nuclear power generation considering total material requirement"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965262...
Not only this, but while making other aspects of life worse or more expensive, it will also make the environment worse. Anyone who feels 'middle class' in CA has enormous buying power for consumer goods, and an obvious one for this problem is a gas/propane generator. When the accepted wisdom is for all the California suburbanites to have generators as buffers against unreliable power grids, the environment loses.
Solar and Wind have been the biggest suppressor for developing longer term base load. Why would anyone who is remotely sane take a risk to develop base load power when politicians shift priorities on whatever the flavor of the day is. This has been going on for decades which is why we are now where we are. Base load generation takes a significant commitment and requires long term planning, but current politics place a high penalty on anything requiring a long term commitment.
Talk about a tragedy of commons :p
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
My reading suggests that this won't impact anything that you should consider plugging your house into. Instead, it's targeting stuff like this:
https://www.harborfreight.com/generators-engines/generators/...
However, that model is twice as expensive as the one harbor freight was selling before the bill passed. The old one wasn't an inverter, so the frequency / voltage would drift around when the load changed, and couldn't be used with computers (or modern appliances). It wouldn't surprise me if they slapped a catalytic converter on it while they were upgrading the electronics.
Been though those, I don't really think "storm knocks out power lines" is the kind of problem people are talking about when it comes to grid reliability though. No amount of coal is going to keep the line from getting cut.
Once we have a bunch of storage, and are used to doing grid ops on lots of intermittent generation sources, grid reliability will go up because a power line going down will have lots of potential mitigations that are not possible today.
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/dangerous-heat-causi...
https://www.wdrb.com/news/a-southern-indiana-utility-warns-r...
I'm from EU, a relatively "cold" (French Alps at 1030m) place but definitively not that cold (peak cold -25℃/-13℉ in early morning, -8/10℃ (14/18℉) during the day between January and February), with a new home witch means well insulated, with a proper VMC, water-water heat-pump etc, and well... The MINIMUM load during night and early morning is around 1kW. IF Sun shine during the day, well, the load is not much an issue from 9h30 AM to 3 PM, but for the rest is on grid.
Of course old homes heat with gas/oil/wood/* so need far less electricity (still IME a bit more than 2-300W base load though) BUT apart of wood coupled with large hot water storage (to been able to sleep instead of charging wood every hour) if you are not living in a relatively cold place I doubt you have a 6-12 month gas/oil/wood reserve at home and during such "cold episode", being very rare so far, getting new "fuel" would probably be not that easier...
I've made a small p.v. with lithium storage as a very expensive UPS for the house, being relatively autonomous in summer I hardly can be autonomous in winter: in some RARE winters like the last one where Sun shine almost all day I can survive a day to the next cutting the heating depending on battery SOC, but in case of a day without enough Sun light I'm still on grid or on emergency generator backup... Having a real autonomy IME is more a dream than something feasible, at least something feasible at human prices because spending the price of a house just in batteries who might last at maximum 10 years for some rare episode is not really a sustainable price...
About natural gas: if the outage is widespread I doubt you can get it: who pump it in the pipeline without energy?
Natural gas has not gone out here for a while and is a much larger issue if it did. Gas company would have to come out and lit all the gas appliances. I assume they spend a lot to prevent that cost and can use themselves to power their infrastructure.
Sure, but they were (and still are?) like so because normal climate conditions do not demand that. Being able to sustain "any climate" is damn expensive, giving a certain margin while designing a home is natural, the home itself have a value, but going much further it's simply too costly at best. Now, insulation is good BOTH for hot and cold, but for instance if with mild insulation and p.v. you can live well because it's hot only during the sunny day you hardly invest in real insulation.
Beside that during a snowstorm a p.v. does not produce so if you have a battery you can recharge it on a generator, but no more than that. It's far cheaper to run than a 24/7 generator online, but it's still roughly expensive and demand a significant quantity of fuel you normally do not have at home.
About natural gas, well, I suppose their infra are designed to be "a bit" disaster proof, but how much and how in realty it's hard to tell up front. I remember for instance that a day in my original town a flood happen and for some reasons water penetrated the piping infra. Gas completely stops for two days. They have had some water pumping systems for condensation and other phenomenon but it wasn't ever used and even those who have designed it have designed for clear water without mood and sand. Apparently an event that break a pipe and push water in the net was not much assessed. Most physical infra, even critical ones, never have nor can afford doing Chaos Monkey things on their systems...
Some of them also require non-trivial time to build.
I have a self-made p.v. with storage, I dream to being able just to integrate car's inverter power demand with p.v. inverter available capacity: most cars do not even offer MQTT/ModBUS communications to slowly regulate power demands. Just to regulate my hot water heater (a modern Daikin heat-pump) depending on p.v. available energy I have to craft some absurd home-assistant automation because NO ONE at Daikin really know what does it means "a solar-ready heat-pump" and no one who produce p.v. inverters really think that perhaps it's a good idea offering a good API to regulate devices in the house for maximum self-consumption.
Potentially we can improve self-consumption by more than 10% with just let's say +10USD per high-power device, no such thing exists on sale. The best you can get are "smart switches" who power-on or off devices with crappy automation and power routers with a smart meter if you have to limit injection to the grid.
Potentially cars can be used coupled with a fixed p.v. system and a small storage (for when you are not at home, but still need power for fridge and co) with a canbus open and universal API. Potentially. I'm curious if even find ONE BEV on sale who do that just with an open API...
BTW the "ecosystem" is not there IMO because no one who design such systems use them, really. I have a modern Daikin hot water system formally "integrated with the solar" etc. It's not integrated AT ALL, people who sell it do not even know how to use it's crappy ModBUS interface and that is designed just to tweak it's functioning based on the current energy price from the grid NOT depending on a p.v. system and that's one of the state-of-art new gears...
Essentially IMO no one have ever tried to tackle nor maximum self-consumption nor autonomy.
And this is the very first issue. The second issue is that nobody ever try to push standards. They sold crap in a state in the past we would have call "early stage prototype" as a finished product.
Given actual prices no real revolution can happen in technical terms.
I am not claiming you are wrong but this sounds like something I would expect to read as a scenario in an upper middle class southwest african nation. Not something in one of the world's largest economies.
From a reliability perspective, all recurring load is beneficial, as it increases the overall capacity of the grid, insulating it from demand shocks, such as cooling during heatwaves.
But increased base load that can be easily time-shifted is _massively_ beneficial to the grid.
Nuclear needs a ton of water for cooling which might also be a problem in the desert. AFAIK that's one of the reasons why France's nuclear plants are struggling currently.
https://www.dw.com/en/french-nuclear-plants-break-a-sweat-ov...
Just because the measures are suspended doesn't invalidate the reason for them in the first place. To endanger the rivers ecosystems isn't really helpful
https://twitter.com/DolanGeraldine/status/156439235330088960...
Their choices are to start building reactors now, suck it up and remove sanctions against Russian energy or massive de-industrialization and back to the dark ages.
The only way to survive is massive wind, solar, storage, and transmission.
France could have led the way, but when they started building Flamanville last decade, they discovered that they nuclear doesn't really fit modern economies that well.
And with half their reactors offline for extended repairs right now, France has been a big part of Europe's energy crunch.
Macron has only proposed up to 14 new reactors, and there's no way they will come online before 2040.
Nuclear is a solution from the past, we need to build for the future.
https://balkangreenenergynews.com/hungary-to-build-paks-ii-n...
Ironically, Russian reactors would reduce dependence on Russian gas. That kindof hurts my brain.
That leaves China and South Korea as the only groups left with know how. And China is probably out for similar reasons. South Korea has had a few corruption issues but maybe they have fixed those.
I still have questions about whether advanced economies should be generating power from giant, complex construction projects when their manufacturing productivity is so massively dominant over construction prductivity. But I would love to be proven wrong about advanced economies' ability to build nuclear economically.
South Korea just singed a deal with Russia. They are going to build nuclear plant for Egypt: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220828-russia-south-kore...
CA is very far down a good-intention-paved road, and not all of it is related to nuclear per se.
It does work if you actually listen to the engineers that know what they're talking about. Renewable deployments need significant overcapacity, and have to be paired with grid expansion to average over regional variability, and energy storage to average over temporal variability.
Overbuilding should be no big deal because renewables are super cheap right now and that's something that can be done immediately. Grid expansion and storage were just not getting the attention they needed, but at least I see indications that storage is getting some investment now.
Physics doesn't give a crap about your feelings.
> Just a few years ago, the notion that battery storage would play a key role in California’s energy future was seen by many as a quixotic dream for an emerging technology not yet reliable or cost-effective enough to be counted on.
> But in the past year alone, as California accelerates its transition to a carbon-free electric grid by 2045, there is a growing appreciation that battery storage has arrived in a big way, that it is performing well and playing an increasingly greater role in the state’s energy future.
> Mainzer called the influx of battery storage capacity on the grid over the past year “an incredible growth curve, an incredible success story,” adding that “We’ve entered a golden age of energy storage here in California.” The ISO now has more than 3,160 MW of battery storage connected to the grid and is expected to add another 700 MW by the end of June.
progress but still a drop in the bucket.
There is a lot of battery storage planned for California.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/03/14/californias-solar-mar...
The grid wasn't built in a day, and it won't be changed in a day.
That might be true with stockpiles of already-mined uranium, but we can definitely mine more uranium.
If half of the energy spend demonizing nuclear was spent on modernizing it, SMRs would be a long solved problem.
It's the ultimate "stop hitting yourself" :p
But no, everyone has their one true source of planet saving energy (that they have a financial interest in) and every cent that goes to any other is destroying humanity or treason that should be punished by death.
The grid of the future will have a bit of everything, and between now and then it will have a range of temporary forms to ease the transition.
For that matter, unless environmental groups are putting saboteurs inside construction projects around the world from France to China to the US, then environmental groups can't really be blamed for the failures of the past 20 years, either.
Personally, attempting to construct new nuclear, after the lessons of 1980s construction, is a big "stop hitting yourself" move as wel.
"The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the second best time is now."
A: Climate change will kill us all. Let's dismantle our socioeconomic system to prevent it!
B: How about nuclear power?
A: I don't want nuclear power!
A: I want to dismantle our socioeconomic system!
Saying green energy just doesn't work is bullocks. Solar works great, can run your AC basically for free during daytime. It's not a complete solution, but it definitely will create less stress on the grid.
a) renewables provide the most power when power is used the most (during the day when the sun is shining to run a/c)
b) charging EVs at night will balance the grid
I don't think you can do B with A, right?
Of course having something useful is better than not having it.
The issue is, that a lot of people seem to be interested in replacing more-useful things (nuclear which provides power during the day for a/c and power at night for EVs) with less-useful things (solar which only provides power during the day).
On homelessness, for example, that is largely a problem of California's own making. At every step the state has decided to make homes more expensive and turn homeowners into a landed gentry. As part of this, the loudest NIMBYs basically dictate what can and can't be built in the state. I would not be surprised if those NIMBYs have also been hard at work stymying necessary grid infrastructure in the same way they stymied affordable housing and high-speed rail.
Nuclear energy's downfall is a complicated subject with factors outside of California's control. Even if California wanted nuclear today, they would have to get past a whole host of regulatory and financial barriers they don't meaningfully control. It's the sort of thing the federal government needs to decide to start paying R&D on again.
What evidence do you have for this? It seems to me that the intentions of most California politicians are motivated by what causes people to vote for them. But their voters are a mostly captive audience, since they have such little choice in the matter - what are they gonna do, elect a “semi-fascist MAGA Republican?” Of course not!
So California politicians can do whatever they want, because their base will vote for them to beat any Republican. That means they just need to beat opponents from their own party in primaries, where they take positions on issues that are generally far outside of mainstream preferences. They’re optimizing for pleasing the extremists in their party, not for implementing whatever “good intentions” they might claim to have.
For example the recent special election for California State Assembly 17th district seat (San Francisco) was between Matt Haney and David Campos.
Campos is very much in the progressive camp, and doesn't believe in things like "supply and demand".
Haney used to be in the progressive camp, but he's the kind of politician that adapts his views to what he thinks will get him elected. So over the past few years he's shifted more towards the moderate camp, and ran on a much more moderate platform.
So, what you end up having is a far left group, and then more of a center left.
Then at the local level you have stuff like Shasta county almost getting taken over by far right groups: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-12/shasta-c...
Don’t forget nuclear isn’t compatible with our reality either: it’s politically infeasible to implement nuclear because everybody is scared of it. It’s also extremely expensive upfront.
We are simply in the awful transitionary phase right now. It's not like starting up another Virgil C. Summer or Vogtle would have made a difference today.
> Much of the resistance towards 100% Renewable Energy (RE) systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]–[282]; storage (battery, compressed air, pumped hydro)[40]–[43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]–[92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.
> With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios.
Isn't Californias times of peak electricity almost always in the daytime and in summer? And largely due to the need for air conditioning in many places during those times?
Why wouldn't widespread rooftop solar be able to deal with that?
In other words, nuclear fission power plants are not the solution, they even make the situation during a heat wave worse. I wish there was a silver bullet, but I fear this is not it.
For high temperature reactors (e.g. helium or molten salt), air cooling is trivial.
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/los-angeles-100-percent-renewa...
Note the reason nuclear isn't being considered is mostly that you'll get more GWH per billion spent on solar/wind/storage than you will per billion spent on any new nuclear facility (which would take at least ten years to build anyway, by most estimates).
Laws and borders are ephemera; California did not create this contemporary reality; the species did.
It’s easier to deflect than accept one’s role. I expect better of so-called adults; why buy the arguments of people contributing to the problem deriding others as the source?
Do less. Stop chasing incentives and buying into the nation state propaganda yourself then. Otherwise shut up with externalizing the blame; you’re part of the problem.
As for nuclear, it is disappointing that people can't see through PG&E's little tin cup scam. If we give them at least $1.4 billion, we will get at most 10 more years of Diablo. If we spend the same amount on wind, we'll get the same energy in the 10 years, and then we'll get 30 more years. It's a no-brainer and they should just kick PG&E in the teeth instead.
What are you talking about?
I recall our state being able to go to 55,000 MW before having to curtail consumption. Now we are declaring an emergency at 43,000 MW (yesterday’s peak, source CAISO website).
What we are dealing with here is failed public policy. I agree electrification is a good and noble goal. But it is quite obvious our leaders have declared certain changes necessary without creating a transition strategy. That or their unstated transition plan is a legislatively-induced crisis.
New nuclear power plants take around 20 years and $40B to build, each.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
In March 2022, CPUC approved a plan to add 18.8 GW solar, 6.7 GW wind, and 14.7 GW batteries by 2032 at 18c/kWh, reaching 73% renewables.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_California
43,000 GWh/y = 15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles
.24 KWh/m is for the latest Tesla 3 cars.
5GWh/y is from https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/how-...
>The main driver deterring PG&E from seeking a 20-year operating licence extension is the 2015 renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of producing 50% of its electricity from qualified renewable energy sources by 2030. PG&E’s model for the future cost of operating Diablo Canyon indicated that the cost per kilowatt hour was going to almost double, since the company would be forced to lower the amount of power it could produce from the plant in order to meet the state’s requirement. Dropping the capacity factor from the current 92% to say 50% would virtually double the price per kilowatt hour since costs are largely fixed.
>The state law which effectively dictates that by 2030 Diablo Canyon should operate at lower capacity each year and buy in power from intermittent renewables has apparently sealed the fate of the plant.
* Water
* Maintenance
* Security issues
Electrical Energy in Germany 2022-08-30
Coal 38,0%
Wind 14,9%
Gas 14,2%
Solar 11,4%
Biomass 7,9%
Nuclear Fission 6,9%
Others 6,8% (should be water and other resources)
Gas is intended only to fill short gaps. The plan is to increase wind-energy and solar-energy by a lot. While not controllable they are reliable. Nobody can cut off wind or gas. Another challenge is storing enough energy in hydrogen. Which is considered to be a good thing since some shift in recent years. We will need even more electrical energy for battery cars and for creating SAF/EFUEL for planes and the industry. The tricky part is doing the right thing, for the right reason, at the right time. Looking back that would've been done easy thirty years back ignoring short minded economic needs driven by capitalism. I still hope for progress regarding nuclear fusion because it could be so much better than fission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Crisis...
https://www.srf.ch/news/international/energiepolitik-frankre...
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/energiepreise-aktuell... # updated daily
This is not a factual statement, it's a religious statement.
"Green energy" has nothing to do with what is going on with this grid emergency.
The article is mostly about the prep work and conservation going on now to deal with the heat wave expected over the coming week. It all seems reasonable to me, exceptional circumstances need exceptional prep work and action.
In the larger scheme I think city planners are going to have to start accounting for weather events outside of the typical boundaries as more and more effects of climate change take hold.
I’m not going to point and laugh at CA, I hope you guys make it through with minimal interruptions.
If, and only if, you live in a place that provides you with the ability to overnight charge. So that probably excludes a vast majority of Californians who live in apartments or condos.
Charging cables are also pretty popular with thieves, since they contain a lot of copper and provide no inherent theft prevention, another minus for apartment/condo dwellers.
This will happen slowly at first, but exponentially increase.
And the inverse is true, too: as gas vehicles start to decline, gas stations will slowly start to decline, and then more and more quickly close. People will start to notice it's less convenient to find a gas station, and prices are less competitive.
This will all lead to a nice positive feedback loop for EVs and a negative feedback loop for gas cars.
> This will happen slowly at first, but exponentially increase.
A vast majority, in my experience, of apartment building owners barely provide basic amenities to their tenants... I'm not as optimistic as you on this growth, especially when locations with fast chargers (i.e. gas station equivalents) will exist.
When are you advocating people charge their cars again?
Last night I plugged it in around 8:30 PM. It started charging at 10:00 PM. It spent ~2.5 hours charging, finishing up its charge around 12:30 PM. It pulled ~6kWh of energy over those two hours, so it was charging at about 25A of power. Then about 15 minutes before I leave in the mornings, it preconditions the car and battery to the temperature I want using the home's energy. Its nice always getting in a comfortable car every morning regardless of how hot or cold it is.
I could have shifted this even a few hours later and it still would have easily met my needs. I could of had my car start charging at 4:00 AM and it would have hit my target charge by 6:30.
"Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true."
Power generation capacity with breakdowns by type and import for the state of California.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
The most fascinating point I saw is that the total power generation capacity effectively hasn't changed since 2001.
Energy demand over that time is down in the developed world - the UK for example peaked in 2005 at ~400 terrawatt-hours to ~330 terrawatt-hours in 2021 (with >10% increase in population).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/323381/total-demand-for-...
Edit: I dont expect this trend will remain, cars switching from liquid fuel to electricity and heating from gas to electricity is going to accelerate at some point and cancel the efficiency savings.
Or are they holding out for SMEs that don't need large volumes of water?
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1119778975/california-lawmake...
But too many plants have gone offline and not been replaced; generating capacity appears to be flat for ten+ years or more.
can anyone explain to me why cooling water is an issue for nuke plants? In areas with less water, can’t a coolant fluid be used with a compressor and fans powered by the reactor to cool the system down?
It would reduce energy yields but my intuition says the energy cost for cooling would be negligible compared to production.
Also, can’t coastal water be used for plants near oceans?
I just don’t understand how cooling is an issue.
from this article:
https://monarchpartnership.co.uk/nuclear-power-water-consump...
Away from the coast you can do dry cooling with almost no water, going straight to air. It's just more expensive so it's not done often.
In retrospect, bad planning.
You could build air-cooled power plants, but it's more expensive.
https://www.powermag.com/air-cooled-condensers-eliminate-pla...
You could build water-cooled systems with extra capacity, so that when the water in the river gets warm in the hot summer months, it would not cause problems for the for the cooling system. But it's more expensive than a capacity that is designed to be just-so.
A long time ago, once-through water cooling systems were banned in new generation, due to damage to water ecosystems. Retrofitting the cooling system was deemed to be in the 2010s, and other resources were planned to replace Diablo Canyon.
Since then, heat waves have gotten far far worse due to climate change, and climate change was not taken into account during the planning.
Since utility planning is typically at least five years lead time, there has been some adjustment, but not complete adjustment to the new reality we are facing.
California also suffered the disaster of the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak, which accelerated the shift away from natural gas generation.
It's unlikely that California will ever install SMRs, as they are far too away from deployment to be able to help with any problems. California needs new generation now, not in 2035.
Advanced geothermal is being deployed here, and in general I think geothermal has far far more potential on the future grid than SMRs.
I'm glad they fought back against the anti-nuclear industry trying to close it prematurely. Now they should extend it 20 more years.
The site is toxic anyway - locals dont mind it in 'their back yard', infrastructure is there, skilled workers are there, everything is there. Every existing nuclear site in the world should be thinking about sticking another couple of reactors on site!
It's not that toxic. I was just there a few months ago, hiking along the water in the Point Buchon Trail. It was beautiful, with wildlife everywhere. Pure unadulterated coastline teeming with life. At the very end you can catch a glimpse of the nuclear plant
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/in-your-community/loca...
In my hometown we had an experimental nuclear plant powering my childhood. It shut down in the 1990s and today is total greenfield. Sadly, now my hometown is almost entirely fossil fueled.
DECON takes at least 7 years, SAFSTOR 50+ years. 50% of the decommionings in the US are the slow kind.
If you are going for the quick kind, you have to take everything off site somewhere and stick it in a hole in the ground (or probably store it on another nuclear plant site) - and then that hole in the ground is radioactive.
Its likely when they decommission Diablo Canyon, they will turn off the power and post a guard at the gate for 50 years and not touch anything.
I don't understand people's attachment to nuclear. We have far better tech now.
The large transmission lines at DC are incredibly valuable, however. There should be 4-5GW of floating offshore wind built there, and 10-100GWh of batteries at the old DC site.
I'm not aware of what that could possibly be?
Per unit of fuel it produces the most energy of any commercially available fuel source by a tremendously large margin. It produces extremely little waste compared to any commercially available fuel source. And the waste it does produce is, again by far, the cleanest and safest waste to manage.
Fusion is probably the only energy source that would, theoretically, provide better returns but is likely still decades away from commercial availability.
So... what technology are you referring to?
That is a myth based on only looking at the latest few Western builds and totally ignoring progress in the following designs/builds:
Hualong One
APR-1400
ABWR
VVER-1000
The world is moving forward with large LWRs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...
There is an ocean along the California coast. Desalination is something they need anyways, so combo nuclear+desalination plants sound like a plan.
I think its very clear. There are actors that feeding into the hate because that fuels views/engagement to their platforms and keeps them in power.
From my old experience I could suggest buying diesel generator and have enough supply of diesel fuel to run it for a few days at least. Also few tonnes of coal, but that’s for cold climate.
He's clearly laid out the aspects he's talking about, too. If availability of electricity is something you prioritize, then the failure in that regard is significant. If you don't prioritize that, then recognize that you're probably in the minority.
I'm honestly not sure how where that falls on the spectrum of third world power reliability.
(Or more accurately, chose not to buy more efficient, less polluting versions of those things)
More EVs and V2G would go a long way to stabilize the grid.
The forecasting argument doesn’t hold water for me - California is the state trumpeting about global warming the longest; if this is because of GW and their own projections didn’t consider it, well…
I'd call that more than 'enough'.
Like if I gave you an ounce of ice cream, and an ounce of steak, and you complain about not having enough food, I don't get to say "but it's 50% steak, that's more than enough".
It's utter madness. This is 100% a problem of failed policy, zero planning and living in a fantasy world detached from reality.
I guess I would equate it to getting DDoS'ed. You might declare an "emergency" but put into practice plans you had for when this happened. It's the exception, not the rule. It's an "emergency" but it's planned for.
Would it be great if this didn't happen? Sure. But that there clearly are plans in place when it happens is a good sign. It's much better than if nothing was done. You'd still have the emergency, but with no clear plan of action.
The population of a single city in CA (LA) is twice that.
Not an apples to apples comparison.
Meanwhile, in California, you can't do certain things, like run a ship engine for power, most of the time because it causes unnecessary pollution that affects human health, but when this kind of emergency is declared, they relax those rules for a short period.
Other large states have also had power problems. Texas (where I live) nearly had to shut down its entire grid due to a hard freeze last year and we've been getting regular requests from the state's grid management organization to limit power consumption on hot days. But our climate change problems tend more towards droughts and hurricanes, which don't affect the statewide power grid very much.
* California imports about 25-30% of its electricity while Nebraska exports over 15%[1].
* California produces about 5 times as much electricity as Nebraska[2], with about 8 times the peak generating capacity[3][4].
* All of Nebraska's electric utilities are publicly owned[3].
* California relies more on hydroelectric power, which is more vulnerable to climate change[5].
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46156 [2] https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/?sid=US#/series/51 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Nebr... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Cali... [5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plant...
This seems to be a repeating talking point in regards to a number of issues these days.
Which is unusual to me as this is could also be a way to justify poor policy.
Are there plans & budget to upgrade the infrastructure?
Are there plans & budget to replace/update/install/negotiate new source of electric power?
(asking as I am not Californian.)
In the mean time we get to pat ourselves on the back and feel good for ditching those icky internal combustion engines!
On a more serious note - and people wonder how we end up where things like this get so dire? Here we go again!
When would that time be? I get home from work after 17:00/5:00PM. Plug in my EV, and set the air conditioner to a few degrees lower. I get up and leave for work at 7:00. EV cars with Level 2 charging take from 5h (Mini SE Hardtop) to 12h (Tesla Model S). The average is 8.6h, and median at 8h. [0,1] At Level 1 charging, the charging time can take days, depending on the vehicle.
> According to California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the California Energy Commission (CEC) and California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the state’s electricity grid reaches its peak level of usage between the late afternoon and early evening – a time frame in which electricity produced by renewable resources is less available and thus costs more to produce. The peak demand period is generally defined as the hours between 4 to 9PM ... [1]
With the above details, with the best case scenario on timing & charging, that means I must not plug in my vehicle before 9:00PM, but have to before 10:30PM.
If California is hoping that people will plug in their vehicles "at the right time", that is not a re-assuring strategy.
[0] https://www.carcareportal.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-charg...
[1] https://www.carcovers.com/carresources/how-long-does-it-take...
/s
(Yes, I realize that northern California can be snow-bound in the higher elevations)
Seriously though, I watch a few builders on YouTube, and the amount of insulation they put on spec homes is the minimal amount they can get away with. A shame, considering how you can get a home well enough insulated that you could heat it in a Canadian winter with a hair dryer.
My uninsulated 1930s house in Ohio holds heat better than my friend's Palo Alto apartment.
Say, after salary, taxes, food you have 1000 euros per month that you can spend. There are two houses, where in one, you can spend 500 on mortgage and 500 on energy bills, and in the other, you can spend 700 on mortgage and 300 on energy bills.
But if you just buy the house that has 500 on mortgage because "it's cheaper", it's not actually cheaper in total.
This should also interest banks that give people mortgages.
Also, if you rent that house out, if the energy cost is directly part of the rent, the house with the higher energy cost has a higher rent, hence it's less attractive. Again, market forces. So in reality, you can get more profit out of the house that has the lower energy cost, because in reality, the cost is not be passed directly to the renters.
The real problem is that the demand models did not account for a worsening climate at the pace that it is encountering record hot days. Though for that matter, almost nobody accounted for that, so it's hard to blame the grid planners too much.
https://www.energy.gov/oe/activities/technology-development/...
You could also ask people to reduce electric range cooking, electric dryer usage, etc, but that can be harder to describe and offer more inconvenience.
Also, most people with an electric car probably have another mode of transportation they can switch to.
TLDR Build more renewables, transmission, and battery storage; shift flexible loads to when renewable power is generating.
[1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO?wind=false&...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=california+solar+canals
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/x0wih4/california_mo...
[4] https://www.caiso.com/Documents/BriefingonRenewablesandEnerg...
Maybe they do maintenance at night and thats why they don't have excess capacity as one would normally expect?
If someone wants to dig into it, here's the data: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx
If they don't have the grid capacity to support what exists now with a small spike...how will they support a hundred million EVs?
EDIT: For everyone saying there's still 13 years until that happens.
CA hasn't increased it's energy capacity since 2001. People think energy prices are bad now try 13 years with 100 million EV's.
And by disallowing any source of cheap non-green Energy...democratic policies will essentially favor the rich who will be the only one's who can afford a 50,000 solar array to power a 30,000 EV. The non-rich will be on a bus with the homeless crazy people.
Sources and clear evidence directly from CA dept. of energy.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
Found this out from this poster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32676518
Wasn't there a recent article on this very site, titled along the lines of "Yes, the US electric grid can handle EVs"?
BTW, for the people shitting on California's ban, people seem to be forgetting that a number of automakers, including Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, have announced they are ending production of gasoline powered cars in... you guessed it, 2035.
This is about economics. The gas powered car will soon be dead.
When are you going to charge your electric cars again?
It’s the other way around. California is the biggest car market on the planet. All car makers target California (and to some extent Texas), so whatever California will buy, carmakers will build. And since California has outlawed gas cars by 2035, auto makers have declared they will stop making them by 2035.
If you're near the coast, open all windows at night when temps are low, and let the house get as cold as possible during the night.
In the morning, close all windows and cover them with blinds, and turn the A/C off during the hottest part of the day.
Don't open the fridge or freezer if possible, and keep lights off.
AC efficiency increases as temperature decreases.
You would have to deal with the fact that your house is now frigidly cold. Also, I can’t remember the last house I lived in California that had decent insulation - so that’s a major assumption.
I live up north now where insulation is a given, but when I lived in Louisiana, the houses were made from sticks. High ceilings, but no insulation anywhere.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014...
"Energy demand for climate control was analyzed for Miami (the warmest large metropolitan area in the US) and Minneapolis (the coldest large metropolitan area). ... The results indicate that climate control in Minneapolis is about 3.5 times as energy demanding as in Miami."
This is like saying "get to the breadlines early to be able to get your bread for the week"
> Newsom’s order temporarily loosens environmental regulations on gas-burning power plants, allowing them to run full-tilt during the heat wave, which the governor said could last for a week.
> The call for conservation comes hours before state lawmakers are expected to decide the fate of the state’s largest power-generating facility: the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. The two atomic reactors -- the last remaining ones in the state -- are scheduled to close by the end of 2025.
When reality meets bullshit, reality wins. Always.
And they just…squandered it. In like 15 years.
At some point does California look in the mirror and wonder if just maybe it wasnt those darn republicans after all?
What’s infuriating is watching Californian refugees flee the disaster that their policies created and then try to implement them those same policies in their new host states. I’m already seeing this happen in my state.
And who knows how many thousands of lives have been ruined as a result of his drug policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
This led to chronic budget deficits, which would often be papered over by issuing bonds, and a variety of "fees". Such as the hated auto registration fee, which was one of the grievances during the recall of Democratic governor Gray Davis.
Eventually we decided we had enough of Republicans, and Democrats gained a super majority in state congress. Now the state is running a surplus. I'm not claiming they have solved our problems, but at least we have money to build things again.
lol - surplus with a debt is just accounting fun and games. Keep deluding yourselves; I'm sure nothing bad - like not having enough power - will come from it.
[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/8/13563106/e...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Legislature#:....
Please don't post straight up lies to push your political agenda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_California_gubernatorial_...
Based on those results I think it is fair to say by general population they were still a red state to some degree. I concur though my math was off by a magnitude of probably a decade or more.
So you are arguing 8 years of a republican governor and 2 years of republican lead assembly vs 40+ years of a democrat governors and 40+ years both houses being controlled by democrats make CA republican lead?
Texas and California strike me as the sorts of states to one day just say "You know, fuck all y'all".
We do have a lot of nut jobs, particularly in low population rural states like Idaho, and they have ideas. One idea is to split off parts of California and Oregon into the state of Jefferson. Another was to split California into 6 states. All of these schemes just happen to give conservatives more power in the Senate, and are unlikely to ever happen.
I have no idea idea if California's peak is already in the past, but the trend isn't looking great.
When people start taking for granted, that's when they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Just some examples:
Prop 13[1] passed in 1978:
* requires a 2/3s majority in both chambers to raise tax rates * caps increases on property taxes to sub-inflation rates, incentivizes people to stay in their homes forever to keep their cheap rate * forces the state to rely more and more on income taxes, which are very unstable, so we see boom and bust years. CA will be coming up on a bust year now. * Shields home voters from any downside of their property value going up (higher tax rates you'd see in other states), so more incentive to NIMBY any new development in your neighborhood. * cities can get more tax revenue from commercial properties than residential so they are incentivized to build office buildings and not housing (see how well that's working out for San Francisco now)
Late 70s downzoning: * Across California many cities downzoned, severely limiting the height, density and types of housing that could be built. * I read the environmental impact report for the late 70s downzone of San Francisco and it specifically called out how this would increase housing costs unless the city significantly increased development in the industrial parts of the city. That didn't really happen, so here we are.
The proposition system in general * We vote on absolutely crazy things that I think should be left to legislators or bureaucrats. One thing that stood out to me as particularly weird was 2018 Prop 8[2] * This history of this system was to limit the power of the rail roads who'd bought many of the politicians, so it was a counter to a corrupt legislature. But then someone "innovated" and started paying people to collect signatures to get something on the ballot, and now it's used for all sorts of confusing and niche purposes.
In recent years we've been seeing actual progress on some of the housing related policy. I think organizations like CA YIMBY[3] get a ton of credit for that.
But I'm not sure what we'll do about Prop 13 or the proposition system in general. Prop 13 in general is kind of a 3rd rail in CA politics. But there has been some attempts to chip away at the edges that got close. 2020 Prop 15[4] came close to passing and would have addressed some of the issues in Prop 13 for commercial properties.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 [2] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_Limits_on_... [3] https://cayimby.org [4] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_15,_Tax_on_Co...