California Renewable Energy Legislation / Progress

[arisythila]

.....True? I guess what needs to happen is that Californians need to organize, come up with a coherent plan to address rising CO2 levels and elect representatives amongst themselves to address this issue that the market is unable to correct..... wait... did I just describe government? Weird. If there's a better way I'd love to hear it....

The market does work best in many areas... it's not so good in others. Like unwarranted wars, killing people, prisons, police, fire AND AFFORDABLE healthcare, CLEAN energy production, GOOD schools, etc etc.

Remember Co2 is the main food for all life on earth. Co2 is not a pollutant. It is VERY critical for life on earth today. Good start would be to separate Co2 from poisons. So how about separating poison from primary nutrient for all life on earth. This would be a very logical separation.

Would be best for the individual to take charge of their waste, and other things. Again relentless spending and stuff on government to take care of us will only cost astronomical levels, If we can decentralize it, and it all starts with the individual.

I personally purchase fruits, and I don't use plastic bags and stuff, When I purchase other things like meats, I try to go direct to the farm. Doing small things like this can greatly help. We've got local fruit farms here where we can go to pick our own fruits and stuff right from the plant.

Ride sharing, buses, etc etc.. There are quite a few things that government does offer to help cut down, and heck if you work for like the shipyards and stuff some of them provide transportation for individuals. Las Vegas does this quite a bit, large huge parking lots, and ride share to the strip where people work.

We just have to be mindful of what we do, not legislate what we think people should do. Change mindsets, instead of controlling mindsets.

 

[nwdiver]

Remember Co2 is the main food for all life on earth. Co2 is not a pollutant. It is VERY critical for life on earth today. Good start would be to separate Co2 from poisons. So how about separating poison from primary nutrient for all life on earth. This would be a very logical separation.

The dose makes the poison. Too much oxygen can kill. CO2 levels >350ppm starts causing problems and they get exponentially worse the higher the concentration. We're >400ppm now and headed to 500ppm. Too much CO2 is radiative poison to the biosphere just like too much oxygen is also poison.

Would be best for the individual to take charge of their waste, and other things. Again relentless spending and stuff on government to take care of us will only cost astronomical levels, If we can decentralize it, and it all starts with the individual.

I personally purchase fruits, and I don't use plastic bags and stuff, When I purchase other things like meats, I try to go direct to the farm. Doing small things like this can greatly help. We've got local fruit farms here where we can go to pick our own fruits and stuff right from the plant.

Ride sharing, buses, etc etc.. There are quite a few things that government does offer to help cut down, and heck if you work for like the shipyards and stuff some of them provide transportation for individuals. Las Vegas does this quite a bit, large huge parking lots, and ride share to the strip where people work.

We just have to be mindful of what we do, not legislate what we think people should do. Change mindsets, instead of controlling mindsets.

That's a quant mindset to have but it's not very effective when you're sharing the planet with ~7B other people. Climate change is a classic tragedy of the commons scenario. There's individual cost to address it but collective gain in solving it. We needs laws to reduce CO2 emissions just like we have laws to reduce littering.

 

[SageBrush]

Remember Co2 is the main food for all life on earth.

If you say so. I look forward to hearing about your health after a year of eating mostly CO2

 

[Doug_G]

Moved a bunch of posts to Snippiness.

Play nice, people.

 

[arisythila]

The dose makes the poison. Too much oxygen can kill. CO2 levels >350ppm starts causing problems and they get exponentially worse the higher the concentration. We're >400ppm now and headed to 500ppm. Too much CO2 is radiative poison to the biosphere just like too much oxygen is also poison.

Of course too much of anything is not good for us. Too much water, and we die, like you said oxygen poison is a danger mainly for divers, but if your receiving 100% oxygen could cause some problems.

But without Co2, plant life on earth would die. plant on earth die, and animals die, animals die, and guess what you're dead. Just how it works. It's also one of the reasons growers will often supplement their grow tents with Co2, because they can get larger yields...

Of course we have to find the right balance. I think we can agree with that no?

That's a quant mindset to have but it's not very effective when you're sharing the planet with ~7B other people. Climate change is a classic tragedy of the commons scenario. There's individual cost to address it but collective gain in solving it. We needs laws to reduce CO2 emissions just like we have laws to reduce littering.

Quaint? Just about as 'quaintful' as believe only wind, and solar will solve our problems alone. Fact of the matter if we will need to look at more than just wind, and solar to supply our needs, which is what Duke was saying above. Nuclear, wind, hydro, and solar would be a great shift for the United States. Solar and Wind only work if the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing, and hydro only works if the water is flowing. States that have these resources will need to export to states that simply do not have these resources.

of course its all hindsight now. Government has already killed the nuclear market for the petrol corporations. Only way to make nuclear doable, is by getting government out of that sector. But it is what it is.

 

[nwdiver]

But without Co2, plant life on earth would die. plant on earth die, and animals die, animals die, and guess what you're dead. Just how it works. It's also one of the reasons growers will often supplement their grow tents with Co2, because they can get larger yields...

Of course we have to find the right balance. I think we can agree with that no?

I agree that we need >280ppm CO2. Can you agree we NEED <350ppm CO2? No 'finding' of balance needed... CO2 flux was just fine before we started adding 40B tons/yr to the atmosphere. Going to 0 from fossil fuel use should be the target.

Quaint? Just about as 'quaintful' as believe only wind, and solar will solve our problems alone. Fact of the matter if we will need to look at more than just wind, and solar to supply our needs, which is what Duke was saying above. Nuclear, wind, hydro, and solar would be a great shift for the United States. Solar and Wind only work if the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing, and hydro only works if the water is flowing. States that have these resources will need to export to states that simply do not have these resources.

of course its all hindsight now. Government has already killed the nuclear market for the petrol corporations. Only way to make nuclear doable, is by getting government out of that sector. But it is what it is.

Plenty of posts in the nuclear thread as to why nuclear is not a viable option to solving climate change. The legislation allows for nuclear generation to meet the 100% RPS. My opposition is giving nuclear favorable conditions over wind or solar. Let the market work. If nuclear can compete with wind and solar... fine. If not, well... c'est la vie.

 

[mspohr]

Of course we have to find the right balance. I think we can agree with that no?

Ah yes! We agree. 400 is the right balance. More than that and we all die of climate disruption (ne Florence).

 

[nwdiver]

Interesting piece on Vox today;

Utilities have a problem: the public wants 100% renewable energy, and quick

 

[RubberToe]

Offshore wind power coming to California. We'll see how this goes litigation wise, but could be producing power in as little as 6 years:

Something New May Be Rising Off California Coast: Wind Farms

 

[SageBrush]

Offshore wind power coming to California. We'll see how this goes litigation wise, but could be producing power in as little as 6 years:

Something New May Be Rising Off California Coast: Wind Farms

My fingers are crossed but I've read that the military objects to development of all but very limited areas. I don't expect any major movement until the psychopathic moron in the WH is removed.

 

[RubberToe]

My fingers are crossed but I've read that the military objects to development of all but very limited areas...

Well, cables running from the surface to the ocean bottom to anchor the floating platforms would need to be avoided. You would think that a one mile "stay away" zone based on GPS coordinates would be adequate for any submariners lurking around who don't want to get tangled up. I don't imagine that the fish life will be very impacted. Maybe something swimming deep enough where there is minimal light might bump into the cables. Pretty hardy creatures down there so maybe no lasting ill effects.

The power cables along the floor coming back to land seem like a bigger issue. Anyone doing any kind of fishing where they are dragging the bottom could cause problems. But there are now undersea communication cables so there must be some kind of protocol in place to keep them from getting interfered with.

With California's long coastline, this could turn into a major new source of renewable energy. Will be interesting to follow over time. Maybe use some of the power once delivered to shore to run desalination plants to provide water? Solve a couple problems at the same time.

RT

 

[RubberToe]

Haven't posted my chart of the power numbers in over 10 months, so time for an update. I finally started tracking wind power which you will now see in the chart. I also added a 33% line of the total power to show where we are at WRT getting 33% of electricity from renewables in 2020.

If you look at the SPV chart, we are just coming up on the big summer peak. YOY values have been a bit weak lately, which I think has a lot to do with the weather being more rainy then typical the last few months:

I'm blaming the weather, because if you look at the peak SPV numbers for say April 2019 versus April 2018, there were 12 days with peak power over 10,000 MW versus 2 the prior year. And May so far is 8 versus 4. So as soon as the clouds clear up, SPV YOY gains will be showing some nice increases.

For sources of renewable power, they changed the format of what the ISO shows. Here is the most recent data I have in the thread prior to today. This was back from July 2017:

Here is the format that they are showing now:

New percentages based on the values above then are:
Solar: 52.7%
Wind: 29.6%
Small Hydro: 5.4%
Geothermal: 7.9%
Biofuels: 3.9%
Battery: 0.6%

The trend here is that SPV is continuing to increase share of renewables. That is going to continue until something like offshore wind starts coming online, or even faster build out of onshore wind.

Here is the single chart for just SPV power:

The curtailment story is that often times the renewable energy being generated need to be "curtailed" cause there is no place for it to go. There is a whole section of the ISO website reporting the level of curtailment over time. With more regional players getting into the Western Energy Imbalance Market, that renewable power will have more places to go. Of course, as more battery storage gets rolled out or people start charging their EV's from 1-4pm, then less curtailment will be needed. I think we will start to see programs for workplace charging where employers encourage charging during those periods. Wouldn't even be surprised to see utilities get involved in that process.

 

[RubberToe]

And here is the CNCDA data for the first quarter of 2019 showing EV's in California now capturing over 5% market share of all vehicles. This is the Model 3 effect in action. Gotta get these cars all plugged in during the day soaking up the "curtailed" SPV power!

 

[nwdiver]

Real Engineering produced an informative video outlining Californias challenges. 'Love' all the idiotic comments from the nuclear cult. The problem is a ~10GW ramp in the afternoon and more energy in the winter.... not exactly problems nuclear is well suited to solving....

 

[RubberToe]

Here is a comparison for July 17th, 2018 versus July 17th, 2019 for renewable production:

The 2019 chart shows much more curtailment, which looks to be mostly Solar PV. The Yellow slice at the top is I believe Ivanpah, solar thermal that they let run full bore. I think @nwdiver in a different thread, which I couldn't easily find, was making the case that it would be cheaper to build more Solar PV and let there be more curtailment versus trying to store every last produced MWh in batteries. The two charts above have different scales, so even though there was more curtailment in 2019, the overall renewable power was still higher.

June 2018 SPV was 3,038,305 MWh and June 2019 was 3,145,449 MWh. If you look at the ISO curtailment numbers, June 2018 was 19,332 MWh (0.64%), while June 2019 was 41,252 MWh (1.31%).

July of 2019 is shaping up to be pretty huge, and will pass the record 3,038,305 from last June, and maybe hit about 3,400,000 MWh. I'll post the new chart in early August when the July actual numbers are fully in. Huge increase over the previous July (2018).

RT

 

[nwdiver]

I think @nwdiver in a different thread, which I couldn't easily find, was making the case that it would be cheaper to build more Solar PV and let there be more curtailment versus trying to store every last produced MWh in batteries.

Yep; I was referencing a MN study which showed that as solar costs decline faster than storage it makes more sense to over build and curtail solar than to add storage.... to a point.

Minnesota study finds it cheaper to curtail solar than to add storage

This kind of piggybacks on concerns over 'clipping' when a PV system is oversized. You're losing the least valuable kWh. Last week we upgraded the PV system of a customer that had recently purchased an EV. His system now has an oversize ratio of 1.49 which is really at the upper limit of what's economically sensible but this can also be used to contrast more solar vs storage to shift generation to cover evening load. Reducing evening demand with storage would cost ~$1500 for 3kWh while the addition of ~1.2kW of solar has roughly the same effect for 50% less even though some of the production is clipped.

I hope that more people come to recognize that inverter saturation is a good thing and helps reduce the amount of storage that will be needed.

Original system: 4.43kW on 3.8kW inverter

Expanded system: Added 1.2kW for 5.67kW on 3.8kW inverter

 

[Ampster]

That is almost the same DC to AC ratio as my system. It is interesting to see the difference. The one with more solar panels got to 3kW output by 10:30 versus the smaller system that took until Noon to get there. I would guess the daily output is greater.

 

[Ampster]

Yep; I was referencing a MN study which showed that as solar costs decline faster than storage it makes more sense to over build and curtail solar than to add storage.... to a point.

However from an investor's standpoint in California, it may be worth including some storage internally to charge batteries and sell to the grid during the neck of the duck curve.

 

[nwdiver]

That is almost the same DC to AC ratio as my system. It is interesting to see the difference. The one with more solar panels got to 3kW output by 10:30 versus the smaller system that took until Noon to get there. I would guess the daily output is greater.

Yeah; I'm really looking forward to watching this system. The other interesting feature is there are two independent MPPTs and the way SMA inverters clip they only clip 1 MPPT so I'll be able to get a really accurate assessment for how much energy was lost by comparing the energy produced by each string.

This is peak saturation. ~420w is being clipped. Tigo only tallies production once a month and doesn't report daily panel output so I'll have to wait until I have a full month of production with the larger system to get a better assessment of monthly 'losses'.

However from an investor's standpoint in California, it may be worth including some storage internally to charge batteries and sell to the grid during the neck of the duck curve.

Eventually... but in the near term I think west facing solar and demand response provide way more bang for the buck.

 

[Ampster]

Eventually... but in the near term I think west facing solar and demand response provide way more bang for the buck.

I think demand response from a solar farm investor perspective is what I was referring to. I agree from the perspective of a rooftop person like myself, over paneling is the best. I am still waiting for demand response programs to roll out for me other than the $5 a month I get for allowing them to turn off my EV charger whenever they want. So far they have never done that but that may be because I never charge until 11PM when my Super Off Peak rate starts.