California Renewable Energy Legislation / Progress

[iPlug]

Well, it didn't take too long for another new NG floor low record. California busted below 2,000 MW NG generation.

Gonna stick with the theory that this is due to rising NG prices leading generators to forgo their NG minimum generation guarantee for the savings of cold hard cash for not burning the stuff. All this despite likely limits of generation/demand islanding preventing more curtailment of renewables. Grid continues to get cleaner...

 

[miimura]

That same day there was also a surge up to 1,425MW of battery discharge later in the evening after your snapshot was taken.

 

[iPlug]

Yeah, weird, I just noticed the date on that screenshot as “04/30/2022”. Actually that was from today (05/01/2022) - looks like the tracings were refreshing near instantaneously but the date didn’t flip over from yesterday without a browser tab refresh.

 

[RubberToe]

In May California hit 4TWh of solar generation for the first time. June is typically the biggest producing month, though May 2021 at 3.7MWh held the previous record. It takes 1,100 pounds of coal to produce 1MWh of electricity. So the 4,076,064 MWh of electricity, if produced by burning nothing but coal, would have required 4,483,670,400 pounds of coal.

 

[SageBrush]

It takes 1,100 pounds of coal to produce 1MWh of electricity

This varies by coal type but I think one *Kg* per kWh is ballpark

 

[Dave EV]

In May California hit 4TWh of solar generation for the first time. June is typically the biggest producing month, though May 2021 at 3.7MWh held the previous record. It takes 1,100 pounds of coal to produce 1MWh of electricity. So the 4,076,064 MWh of electricity, if produced by burning nothing but coal, would have required 4,483,670,400 pounds of coal.

View attachment 812939

This is awesome, and glad to see that it's climbing at a decent rate.

Squinting at the chart, it appears that summer generation is growing faster than winter generation - I wonder why?

Are utility solar installs just optimizing for summer peak rates?

It's also pretty clear that pretty soon we will have to start optimizing solar installs for winter generation than total annual generation. Higher pitch angles for fixed size installs, though this limits how close together you can place the rows of panels. I wonder if lower pitch, but keeping rows closer together allows for the same winter generation, but with more summer generation. Have to run some calcs...

 

[Dave EV]

In May California hit 4TWh of solar generation for the first time. June is typically the biggest producing month, though May 2021 at 3.7MWh held the previous record. It takes 1,100 pounds of coal to produce 1MWh of electricity. So the 4,076,064 MWh of electricity, if produced by burning nothing but coal, would have required 4,483,670,400 pounds of coal.

View attachment 812939

BTW, here's another cool milestone - CAISO started exceeding 2 GW of batteries during evening peaks recently - Sunday it hit 2.3 GW:

Large hydro generation is peaking a bit over 4 GW these days - another year or two and we should see batteries handling as much peak load as them.

Still have quite a ways to go to start making a significant dent into gas or imports, though - around 22 GW combined at this moment. Still - assuming that batteries are offsetting fossil fuel generation, depending on the day of week it's already approaching 10-15% reduction in peak emissions on a daily basis.

 

[cpa]

Large hydro generation is peaking a bit over 4 GW these days - another year or two and we should see batteries handling as much peak load as them.

I am by no means up to date on this subject.

We had another crap winter the past six months. Predictions are that large hydro will suffer by August. I am starting to be of the mindset that if our sketchy winters continue more years than not, then we will have to make up this deficiency elsewhere. The levels of the various impoundments are way, way down for this time of year.

 

[voyager]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1538309927898230784

 

[mspohr]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1538309927898230784

If you don't count the most productive auto factory in the US or the most valuable auto company or the most valuable Space transport company, among other things.
It's useful to exploit Texas for cheap labor and lax regulation if you can deal with dodgy power and environmental fallout.

 

[bkp_duke]

If you don't count the most productive auto factory in the US or the most valuable auto company or the most valuable Space transport company, among other things.
It's useful to exploit Texas for cheap labor and lax regulation if you can deal with dodgy power and environmental fallout.

1) Tesla didn't build the Fremont factory. It was previously a joint venture between GM and Toyota. It's FAR easier to get permits to upgrade equipment in a factory than to build a new one in Cali. At least 100X easier.
2) Have you lived in TX? I have, and run a company in the state with employees there (and still have some there). The labor costs is more appropriately called "average" in price for a company. It's not like foreign labor cheap, nor like some worse-off parts of the USA, which would be much much cheaper for labor. Additionally, the EPA governs in the USA pretty much anything important related to "environmental fallout". It's not like Tesla has been "destroying the environment" to build Gigafactory Austin. Quite the contrary, they have in their plans setup ecological zones, etc. to try to minimize any environmental impact.

Additionally, Austin is an EXTREMELY blue area of the state (as blue as just about any part of Cali), and the city laws (permitting processes, etc.) there are not nearly as "friendly" than if Tesla had gone to basically anywhere else in the state. The City of Austin didn't let Tesla "get away" with anything on permitting, environmental assessments, etc. for Gigafactory Austin. It was all done by the book (and "the book" is a fair by any assessment).

Did you actually do any "research" before you posted this, or was this just a veiled political opinion that you felt like you needed to get off your chest because you have some bias towards California or against Texas because how the populations vote?

 

[RubberToe]

New website: California Climate Dashboard:

Climate Dashboard | CalEPA

calepa.ca.gov

 

[RubberToe]

The 2020 34.5% renewables doesn't correlate with what I see on the CAISO website. Maybe they are also counting renewable imports:

My 2020 tally for renewables using the CAISO data ended up at 27.46%:

My 27.46 is just the cumulative of the two shown below:

 

[iPlug]

Here was 2020 for California, a lot closer to numbers reported above:

2020 Total Electricity System Power

 

[iPlug]

Must be a new record for grid batteries today, rescuing us as we set dozens of record high temps today in CA (both for Sept. 5th and the entire month). 3.359 GW deployed at peak power demand this evening (18:30).

 

[SageBrush]

Well, it didn't take too long

The RE peak in the daytime is lasting 12 hours this time year. That is really impressive.
I think that when CA gets its off-shore wind up and running it will be upwards of a 90% renewable energy economy

 

[RubberToe]

Must be a new record for grid batteries today, rescuing us as we set dozens of record high temps today in CA (both for Sept. 5th and the entire month). 3.359 GW deployed at peak power demand this evening (18:30).

View attachment 849343

And the Tesla VPP Powerwall collection has been participating in all of these for the last week or so. Note that the combined VPP output of 70MW is a drop in the bucket compared to the 3,359 commercial battery supply, but every bit helps. I think that Healdsburg may be the only city affected by the rolling blackouts, though I haven't checked the news this morning.

FWIW, I got a phone alert notification last night at around 6pm about the power emergency. Immediately changed the thermostat from 78 to 84, hit the pool, and sat outside in the shade reading after a dip for 90 minutes or so. Great way to beat the heat if you have a pool at your disposal.

RT

 

[RubberToe]

The RE peak in the daytime is lasting 12 hours this time year. That is really impressive.
I think that when CA gets its off-shore wind up and running it will be upwards of a 90% renewable energy economy

Yes, they can't get those offshore wind turbines up fast enough. Perhaps the entire process can be streamlined in some manner. The goal obviously is to get at least enough online to replace Diablo Canyon by 2029/30 when those reactors shut down. And given the recent heat waves we are seeing, they also need to speed up the deployment of battery storage to soak up that otherwise curtailed solar surplus.

I read an interesting article recently, maybe it was in the NY Times, about a nickel mine proposed for Northern Minnesota. I have family who lives up there so follow the news feed from Google. One of the interesting points they made was that some environmentalists have a "zero threshold" policy toward mining/development. WRT mining of any kind, obviously any kind of "extraction" of anything from the Earth isn't sustainable over the really (1,000+ years) long term. But in looking at the overall impact on the environment, you also should be considering what happens if your don't extract those elements and end up burning fossil fuels instead. A good example of perfect being the enemy of "lets get on a better track".

This is the mining story about Nickel. Doesn't look like this was the one about sustainability I was thinking of, but an interesting read:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/business/economy/electric-cars-us-nickel-mine.html?searchResultPosition=1

RT

 

[SageBrush]

One of the interesting points they made was that some environmentalists have a "zero threshold" policy toward mining/development. WRT mining of any kind, obviously any kind of "extraction" of anything from the Earth isn't sustainable over the really (1,000+ years) long term.

There is a fundamental difference between extraction industries that are recyclable and those that are not. As for NIMBY'ism -- whatever.

 

[RubberToe]

There is a fundamental difference between extraction industries that are recyclable and those that are not. As for NIMBY'ism -- whatever.

Absolutely, which is where Redwood Materials come into the picture. All the used up batteries are going to have to find their way into new batteries in teh most efficient manner possible. And yeah, more YIMBYs and less NIMBYs.

RT