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Solar PV News
- Thread starter mspohr
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As an aside, over the past couple weeks here in CA grid scale batteries are now regularly feeding over 1 GW into the grid during evening peak times. On Aug 10th, it peaked at 1,257 MW at 7:35 PM. That is a HUGE change from even just a few months ago. The battery charging seems to happen both in the early hours of the morning, and after the sun comes out - when solar kicks in.
California ISO - Supply, Today's Outlook
View real-time and historical data on generation resources, including renewables, currently on the system.
www.caiso.com
Not yet. Grown very fast, but just over 1GW now as noted. Probably will need to be at least 5x that (and no peaker plants retired in the interim).
The Tesla Powerwalls will cover your AC and take a load off the grid
Report shows strong solar+storage market growth… and plenty of room for improvement
A report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory looks at residential and non-residential distributed solar+storage markets and finds big growth with a huge future potential.
pv-magazine-usa.com
Tesla recently announced that there may be more than 50,000 Powerwall battery systems installed at homes and business in California alone.
They found that, overall, about 17% of all installed U.S. battery storage capacity is paired with solar behind a customer’s utility meter. Surprisingly, all those customer-sited systems add up to more than the entire solar+storage capacity installed directly on the grid: roughly 550 MW of customer-sited solar+storage versus 420 MW of grid-sited systems. Two-thirds of the customer capacity comes from small residential systems, which tend to be sized around 5 kW.
New Study: Renewables Much Cheaper Than Fossils — Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) Study
Another study came out recently showing that solar and wind power are the cheapest options in town for new electricity supply. This has been the case for at least a few years, as study after
cleantechnica.com
Another study came out recently showing that solar and wind power are the cheapest options in town for new electricity supply. This has been the case for at least a few years, as study after study after study has shown, and as indicated by the majority of new power capacity coming from solar and wind. (It’s less clear why anyone is installing any fossil fuel power plants at this point in time.)
$68 Billion in Stranded assets due to renewable energy, the popular press is finally noticing
www.utilitydive.com
Push for green energy could strand more than $68B in coal and gas assets, S&P says
New natural gas plants could lose as much value as recent investments in coal due to accelerating renewable energy deployments, an S&P report finds — but not for the same reasons.
Solar deployment will need to accelerate 3-4x to reach decarbonization goals, DOE says
Large-scale decarbonization of the electricity sector could move solar from 3% of generation today to over 40% by 2035.
pv-magazine-usa.com
An upcoming analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is expected to say that for the U.S. to reach a largely decarbonized electricity sector by 2035, solar deployment will need to accelerate to three to four times faster than its current rate by 2030. Large-scale decarbonization of the electricity sector could move solar from 3% of generation today to over 40% by 2035. An issue brief released by the Department of Energy (DOE) said that billions of dollars in investment will need to be made through 2050 across clean energy generation, energy storage, electricity delivery, and operations and maintenance. Such investment could result in anywhere from 500,000–1,500,000 people working in solar by 2035.
Who is working against distributed solar: Strategies for defense
A new report explores who is behind efforts to curb distributed energy and solar deployment. In this part, we look at policy and regulatory recommendations highlighted by the authors as a playbook to fight against anti-solar efforts, and how parties can curb campaigns before they begin.
pv-magazine-usa.com
Across the country, on a national, state, and even local level, utilities and corporations have used their political power, deep pockets and other avenues of influence to support legislation and institute policies intended on striking down the efficacy of distributed generation, according to a report released by Environment America, the Frontier Group, and the United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.
The report calls on decision makers to reject caps, restrictions on or elimination of net metering; rollbacks or elimination of state renewable energy standards; unfair or discriminatory charges or tariffs on solar power system owners; utility rate structures that penalize or discourage solar installation; and broader, unneeded regulatory burdens on solar energy.
Lawmakers must consider the full set of benefits distributed solar energy brings to the grid, ratepayers, and to society when making policy decisions. Additional policy recommendations include but aren’t limited to:
Implementing strong net metering and interconnection standards, which enable many customers to meet their own electricity needs with solar power
Supporting community solar projects and virtual net metering, which can expand public access to solar power
Enacting or expanding solar carve-outs and renewable electricity standards
Enabling financing mechanisms to allow for greater solar access for businesses and residents
Allowing companies that are not utilities to sell or lease solar to residents and businesses
Investing wisely in making the electric grid more intelligent, which will facilitate a greater role for distributed sources of energy such as solar power
jimm01
Member
Demand-side energy management is effective at leveling out peak demand, many natural gas distributors have been doing this for decades. Demand-side energy management is widely used by many large businesses and retailers, (I have my thermostats programed to reduce demand at schedule intervals). However, this is not energy storage. It’s more like the perspective of back feeding the grid being akin to charging a giant battery. In terms of outages, not all electrical outages are caused by extreme weather and even those that are demand-side energy management will do little or nothing to prevent them (especially given human nature, more on this later). In most cases demand increase because it’s predicated on the environment, which is changing at the extremes.
As the earth warms demand for A/C will increase. Extreme heat, as well as cold, has adverse health effects. Aside from the fact peoples comfort levels vary it will be difficult to mandate demand-side control unless the temperature and humidity levels are monitored and controlled by some central authority, (good luck with that). Humidity is a particular problem in that in some areas 80% of the work being done by an A/C unit is to remove humidity. Dialing down ones air conditioner can result in increased inside humidity levels, so depending on the outside environment this can be zero-sum or possibly result in a net increase in energy use as users tend to lower their thermostats, (the A/C also has to be sized correctly otherwise homeowners tend to lower their thermostats due to short cycling). Also, high humidity levels can result in mold issues. A few decades ago many school districts in the summer shut off their A/C to save money. Only to have mold issues that required closing the school to perform costly mold remediation and having to install new air handling systems. Aside from mold similar scenarios can be made for extreme cold, blankets will only go so far, have you ever bivouacked? Human nature seems to always trump logic.
In any case, the point of the article was not efficiency, but the increased use renewables may result in a significant decrease in the cost of electricity, which would correspond to a decreased ROI for renewable projects. So much so more incentives may be necessary for renewable projects not less. However, the goal is not just efficiency, for which there are alternatives, but climate neutral energy systems. There is a difference between carbon neutral and climate neutral. Carbon neutral is the net-zero production/consumption of carbon; climate neutral is the reduction of carbon and other greenhouse gases necessary to not just stop but reverse the adverse effects of greenhouse gasses on the environment.
I’m all for leveling peak demand if it can be done equitably, (if not there are other ethical and moral issues here). Nevertheless, in the long-term other large scale changes in energy generation, distribution, and storage will be necessary. The top down approach is faltering, bottom up solutions need to be integrated into the model.
As a final note, hydrogen may be part of our future but not without a lot of cheap electric. Today that would require the use of nuclear fission (or at least until economically produce large-scale fusion energy is available). The idea of spaced-based systems is a costly diversion.
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MontyFloyd
Member
Agree, however a major challenge to making renewables attractive is dealing with cyclical nature of renewable power generation.
Batteries are far from the ideal solution (IMHO the worst solution on utility level scale ).
The need to expand on storage systems goes hand in hand with renewable power generation.
jimm01
Member
That's why in the near-term local storage is key. The problem is of the grid storage technologies available today batteries are generally the most accessible locally, (small or moderate scale). Batteries can be cost-effectively deployed locally and a regional smart grid is not an initial requirement. At the level of scale necessary pumped-storage hydropower can be cheaper depending on geography, the same can be said of compressed air. However, at scale these would also require a smart grid to respond quickly to changing demand, which in any case is also a requirement for effective demand-side energy management. Thermal technologies are being utilized but there are cost thresholds to overcome. However, like solar battery storage thermal technologies can be effectively deployed locally. As a thermal storage technology molten salt is very effect when used in conjunction with large scale renewable energy generation systems. But like other such storage systems requires a smart grid for effective demand-side energy management.
Batteries aren't the worst solution at all. Batteries are relatively efficient electricity storage devices, have very rapid response time, and provide precise output.
The only reason they've not be used more in the past is cost.
MontyFloyd
Member
Sorry for not being more verbose in what I mean:
Transportation is the biggest emitter of Co2, both from use and inefficiencies of small ICE vs massive fixed powerplants
Rapidly changing ICE to BEV will be the fastest reduction to CO2 release.
The limiting factor is battery production, and challenges in mining sufficient material (and likely CO2 release in process).
I consider making BEV the priority use of limited battery production, and other myriads of storage systems for fixed installations.
One can also consider the BEV itself be part of grid system. Long haul trucks can be plugged in during peak solar times, and drive during night time (which will benefit from low traffic too).
To reiterate:
Using limited battery supplies for large scale energy storage is the worst of possible energy storage and management systems (I do understand that short term, instant power supply needs must be part of equation)
Watch: Gravity-based renewable energy storage tower for grid-scale operations
Energy Vault secured $100 million in Series C funding for its EVx tower, which stores gravitational potential energy for grid dispatch.
pv-magazine-usa.com
The company said the EVx tower features 80-85% round-trip efficiency and over 35 years of technical life. It has a scalable modular design up to multiple gigawatt-hours in storage capacity.
The company said its technology can economically serve both higher power/shorter duration applications with ancillary services from 2 to 4 hours and can also scale to serve longer-duration requirements from 5 to 24 hours or more.
Sunverge, Simply Energy, Nissan and Wallbox partner on vehicle-to-home and EV-to-grid services
By combining Sunverge’s advanced intelligent energy management platform, Wallbox’s bi-directional EV charging stations, and Nissan’s compact EV, the companies plan to enhance distributed energy resource control and load management.
pv-magazine-usa.com
Under the partnership, the Sunverge real-time Distributed Energy Resource (DER) platform will be expanded to control both EV charging and the EV batteries as energy assets, allowing utilities to harness fleet Vehicle-to-Home to enhance distributed energy resource control and real-time dynamic, flexible load management.
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