Solar Passes 100% of Power Demand in California [Updated] | Hacker News Reader

Solar Passes 100% of Power Demand in California [Updated]

cleantechnica.com

54 pointsnathandaly16 comments

It's awesome to see the duck curve finally easing in an area with a lot of battery storage. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next few years brings -- hopefully fossil fuel demand in California get decimated. 2024 consumption of natural gas for electricity consumption should see a large decline once the full data is out.

And then this needs to spread to other states. The ones with lots of sunshine first, and then the ones with lots of wind and offshore wind (we're starting to see major buildouts off the East Coast.) It gives me a lot of faith in humanity that we're making real progress on these problems.

Good luck trying to get it in the Appalachians or like minded states. You’ll have to use some appeal other than science to get any traction.

I'm assuming the appeal is going to be financial.

agree this is awesome and congrats to all.. electric vehicles are just starting however as a percentage of road miles. Expect electricity demand to continue to increase steeply?

The good news is that electric car charging will be mostly done whenever power is cheapest and demand is lowest so it should be the easiest possible extra demand for the grid to support.

Is that true?

If a homeowner has a home charger, and comes home from work and immediately plugs their car in, won't the charging start right during peak demand? I guess there could be software in cars that tells them to delay charging past evening peak demand, but I guess there will be a mechanism for the car owner to bypass that.

Why are you talking as if this "could exist"?

It already exists in almost every EV...

This syste exists in the UK and is available to consumers.

See https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/charge-anytime

I'm a homeowner with a home charger. When I get home I plug in. It doesn't usually start charging until way late in the evening. Currently it's just on a timing schedule I set up once, but soon it'll be linked to my electric provider to automatically shift to whatever is an off-peak time for them and I'll get a discount on my bill. In the end I can still tell it to just go ahead and charge but typically it's going to sit there overnight and I can normally go a few days between charges anyways.

Pretty much every recent model EV can do this on its own. Many EVSEs (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment, the "charger") that have any level of smarts can also do this. My EVSE is just a dumb one, it just tells the car it's capabilities and it's up to the car to choose when to charge.

Adding an EV to my house didn't change my peak usage at all.

> I guess there could be software in cars that tells them to delay charging past evening peak demand, but I guess there will be a mechanism for the car owner to bypass that.

The most widely adopted EVs in the US and elsewhere have had this feature from the start.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-76995CE...

https://www.nissanusa.com/experience-nissan/news-and-events/...

https://www.wheelsjoint.com/how-to-schedule-charging-on-hyun...

Norway's vehicle fleet is now 25% EVs and their per capita electricity usage is the same it was a decade ago[1]. Oil infrastructure uses a ton of electricity, and California refines most of the oil it consumes because of its geography and unique fuel blend. EVs may actually reduce California's overall electricity usage.

[1] https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table/08313

oh - this is new to me.. great to see it

The logistics of containerized batteries is hard to overstate.

You have a near commodity item produced in volume. That can be shipped anywhere via standard means. And installed where convenient. As in next to existing power infrastructure and where the permits and land use are grandfathered in. Bonus, generally quiet and don't pollute.

I'm still waiting for the day I can easily find them online with a more explicit price than "contact us".

You can DIY store 10kWh+ of solar in your water heater:

https://www.pvh2o.com/

When I plug data for LA into the simulator I get a payback of 1.4 years.

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