[HN Gopher] The data behind New York's increasingly dirty electr...
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The data behind New York's increasingly dirty electricity peaks
Author : stevenleeg
Score : 57 points
Date : 2021-11-01 18:43 UTC (1 days ago)
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| jplr8922 wrote:
| Note : I am an ex quantitative and algorithmic power trader in
| the NYISO market
|
| I totally agree with the analysis and conclusion of this article.
| The power grid is is a complex legal, economic and engineering
| system where our usual political narratives cannot produce a
| valid analogy for our common understanding. Right now, most green
| power sources (except non run-of-the-mill hydro) have non-
| controlable and hardly predictable outputs. Wind is much harder
| to forecast than temperature, and not every market are equiped to
| deal with the new variability. This create price distortions and
| other unintended consequences. Pushing against nuclear when there
| are still coal power plants running is nonsense, and in my
| opinion proves that twitter beats sound policy in terms of
| political priorities.
|
| What I do not like in this article is the tendency to regroup all
| fuels type together and call them 'dirty'. Coal, natural gas and
| gasoline are not equals, and play different roles in electricity
| production...
| egberts1 wrote:
| that's why he focused on carbon outputs.
| Shalomboy wrote:
| I really don't get the whining about categorizing Natural Gas and
| Coal as dirty. Hydrocarbons make CO2 as a byproduct of each
| molecular reaction. That isn't debatable!
|
| The thing I do want to debate is the classification of Hydro as
| Clean Energy. The meager power generation that hydroelectric dams
| produce isn't nearly enough to offset the environmental damage
| necessary to produce a hydroelectric reservoir.
| q1w2 wrote:
| > With no more carbon-free energy coming from Indian Point
| [nuclear plant], we see that natural gas and dual-fuel generation
| has filled the void and caused our grid to become more reliant on
| fossil fuels than it was two years ago. For all of the tough talk
| from New York's politicians about tackling climate change, this
| is not the trajectory we should expect.
|
| This is the talking point that needs to make the rounds in the
| media. Shutting down nuclear plants is beyond idiotic.
| Environmental groups need to do a 180 on nuclear, and politicians
| supporting this need to lose all "green" support.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I appreciate the analysis, though I am not sure that any of the
| results should surprise anyone.
|
| - NY is moving away from nuclear (counted under "clean")
|
| - none of the "clean" sources can easily scale on demand. Sun,
| wind, hydro and nuclear have either fixed or random output
|
| - all peaker plants and less-desirable and so less-fully-
| maximized sources fall under the dirty category. Sun not
| providing enough juice? Ramp up nat gas peaker plants
|
| No surprises here. We need batteries, more reliable clean base
| generation if we want to use less dirty peak generation.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Why are they moving away from nuclear? They have a 100% carbon
| free target, which doesn't exclude nuclear and they intend to
| introduce a carbon price, which lets nuclear fight on an even
| ground with other carbon reduction moves. I guess it just
| didn't make sense financially?
| tristor wrote:
| > Why are they moving away from nuclear?
|
| Because in the US, Twitter determines policy priorities, not
| science or reason.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| I think it's more because, does it make sense to have a
| nuclear power plant so close to nyc. Even in a moderate
| fallout incident the city would have to be evacuated.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| The US has been nuclear hesitant since before Twitter was
| around. Perhaps it's gotten worse, although I think that
| would be difficult to prove causality.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| My knowledge with people in a midwestern 'urban' city tells
| me it's the NIMBYs who want the trend away from nuclear.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Surprisingly, a decent chunk of America's nuclear reactors
| are in the midwest. Illinois and Pennsylvania are by and
| away the largest producers of nuclear energy in the US,
| with 11 and 9 reactors respectively.
| selectodude wrote:
| Nuclear power was invented in Illinois. They got the jump
| on it and it's paid dividends for 60 years now.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Nuclear reactions were first mastered in Illinois, but
| arguably Idaho gets credit for the first generation of
| electricity via nuclear reactor with the 100kW EBR-1 in
| 1951. Credit for the first grid-tied nuclear power plant
| goes to the Soviets, with the commissioning of the the
| Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant in 1954. Curiously the latter
| produced a miniscule amount of power by modern standards,
| with a mere 5MW of nameplate capacity.
| selectodude wrote:
| The reactor out in Idaho was designed and built as
| Chicago Pile-4 and was only placed in Idaho because our
| there it couldn't blow up around anything that mattered.
|
| I'm not sure a reactor designed, built and operated by
| scientists at the university of Chicago has much to do
| with Idaho.
|
| Note: as a native Chicagoan and a lover of nuclear
| energy, I take this stuff overly seriously :)
| pjlegato wrote:
| Pennsylvania is not in the Midwest. According to most
| regionalization schemes, it's in either the Northeast or
| the Mid-Atlantic region.
|
| e.g.: https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-
| data/maps/reference/us...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Being from Southern Ohio, I've always considered
| Pennsylvania to be Midwest. Maybe it's because the
| cultural difference between Eastern Ohio and Pennsylvania
| is much less marked than the difference between Southern
| Ohio and Kentucky.
| xxpor wrote:
| Western PA is for all intents and purposes.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| If only my state would adopt cleaner electricity
| production more so than having predominant production
| from coal. There is 1 single small reactor supplying less
| than 10% of power.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's a mix of economics, technical issues, politcs, and
| safety concerns.
|
| The economics of building or even operating nuclear power
| plants continues to be unfavourable relative to either
| wind/solar, or natural gas (for peaking plants). Nuclear has,
| of course, a smaller carbon footprint than gas, but until
| that is built into economics (through emissions costs or
| higher costs for natural gas fuel), that doesn't translate
| into a financial benefit. Long-term costs of nuclear have
| been _rising_ whilst those of alternative renewable and low-
| carbon sources (notably solar and wind) have been falling
| _for well over half a century_. If you 're hiring^Wbuying
| based on slope rather than intercept, nuclear is not
| attractive.
|
| Technically, nuclear power is poorly suited to peak-power
| loads. It doesn't ramp easily or quickly, and performs most
| economically when operated at constant power outputs. Gas
| (and hydroelectric or pumped-hydro storage) by contrast can
| follow demand-side changes rapidly, in a matter of minutes.
| For pairing with a variable-input solar-and-wind capability,
| something other than nuclear would be a better supply-side
| match. Pumped hydro, compressed-air energy storage (CAES),
| thermal-electric storage (e.g., molton salt), electric
| battery, load-banking (e.g., as thermal energy) or demand-
| side shaping (adjusting heavy loads to maximum generation)
| would be better fits. For now, natural gas turbine peaking
| plants fit the bill, though those also need phasing out.
|
| Politically nuclear power is a challenge for numerous
| reasons, spanning those I'm raising and with others. The
| economics make for challenging financing and popularity, with
| very long lead and pay-off times. Cancellations of plants
| during construction or operation means that potentially-
| realised benefits are lost with major costs. In many ways,
| nuclear solves the wrong power problems (though it does solve
| the right emissions problem).
|
| Nuclear continues to carry risks, and very-long-tailed ones,
| despite the claims of supporters. Many of those are _not_
| technical in nature, but operational, organisational, or
| reflect global threats outside the purvue of a utility
| itself. Nuclear plants typically have a paramilitary security
| presence armed, trained, and authorised to use lethal force.
| Relative to coal and oil plants, the net safety record is
| better, but one of the characteristics of nuclear power is
| the capability for things to go from operating very well to
| behaving exceeding poorly in a matter of minutes. This has
| happened repeatedly, across a wide range of designs, despite
| assertions of safety. Once things go poorly, then tend to
| remain that way for centuries or millennia. Long-term
| environmental consequences of fossil fuels notwithstanding,
| other power options don 't have this specific handicap.
| cpwright wrote:
| Cuomo and Riverkeeper entered into a deal with Entergy to
| shut down Indian Point Energy Center.
|
| I am personally disappointed because it provided good jobs in
| my community and 1/3 of my school district's revenue.
| philipkglass wrote:
| New York introduced subsidies to keep nuclear plants
| operating just a few years ago:
|
| "Five states have implemented programs to assist nuclear
| power plants"
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41534
|
| It says that some nuclear plants in New York receive
| subsidies since 2017. I don't know what the New York
| selection criteria are. Maybe Indian Point just didn't
| qualify like other plants did, and (regrettably) shut down
| sooner as a consequence.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Indian Point has always been a political flashpoint because
| of how close it is to NYC, just 36 miles north and in the
| middle of the suburban bits of the metro area.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > Sun, wind [have] random output
|
| While true, they do correlate to demand. The sun is going to be
| the strongest when A/C demand is greatest, shaving peak demand.
|
| Same with wind: a hot wind in summer will drive A/C demand.
| Same in winter with winds driving resistive heating or the 1hp
| load from furnace circulating fans.
|
| This falls apart when your system becomes significantly double
| digit solar/wind, but smaller contributions should pair well
| with demand.
|
| Hydro can be the worst because you get the most supply at
| spring thaw, but this the 3rd or 4th lowest demand season.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| You also need power to heat, and there's usually very little
| sun then... sometimes even no wind.
|
| Nuclear and thermal are both slow to ramp up and ramp down,
| and unusable for short term peaks.
|
| Hydro is actually great for that, because you can regulate
| the power production relatively fast (as long as you have
| enough water).
| greenyoda wrote:
| > _The sun is going to be the strongest when A /C demand is
| greatest_
|
| Not necessarily. There are lots of hot summer days when the
| sky is cloudy.
|
| Also, there can be direct sunlight heating up NYC while there
| are clouds over the solar plant, which could be miles away.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > - none of the "clean" sources can easily scale on demand.
| Sun, wind, hydro and nuclear have either fixed or random output
|
| Hydro scales on demand actually, somewhat slowly, but it does.
| Pumped Hydro in fact turns hydro power into a battery for
| perfect response vs demand.
|
| Nuclear can scale in theory: but its too expensive to scale
| down. The fuel is _basically_ free, so there's no point ramping
| nuclear power plants down. You spend all the money on safety /
| construction, very little on the ongoing costs.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I think it's somewhat useful to actually list numbers in
| these discussions. Hydro is great, but it tends to produce
| quite a bit less power than most people imagine. A lot less
| once you consider the relative size of not just the dam, but
| the reservoir behind it as well[0].
|
| The biggest Hydro plant in the US is the Grand Coulee dam in
| Washington, with a nameplate capacity of 6,809MW. This is
| pretty impressive, but it's a heck of a lot more than most
| hydro plants could ever hope to produce. Only one other dam
| beats out 3,000MW, barely, and most are in the ~2,500 MW
| range. Overall America has 79GW[1] worth of hydro power
| capacity.
|
| Now ~2,500MW per dam is a lot, but it's actually kind of low
| compared to nuclear power. America's newest operating power
| plant, Watts Bar, has a nameplate capacity of 2332MW, which
| would put it at number 6 in the hydro plants list. And Watts
| Bar is fairly small compared to most other nuclear power
| stations around, since it only has two reactors. 6-7GW
| nuclear power plants are far from unheard of[2], and most of
| the older French reactors hang out in the 3GW range.
|
| In places where hydro fits the geography, it's a great
| choice. Not without its tradeoffs, but miles better than coal
| or natural gas. But overall nuclear is still going to beat
| the pants out of it for versatility, and total generation
| capacity.
|
| 0 - To be fair, this can be a benefit in cases where you need
| to both generate electricity and store water for later use.
|
| 1 - Peak production. Yearly energy measured will be higher,
| roughly 270TWh, because there are a lot of hours in the year.
| Still a heck of a lot less than the ~800TWh of nuclear power
| we were making per year last year.
|
| 2 - Japan, China, and South Korea run a total of 5 nuclear
| plants with >6GW capacity. Japan and South Korea each have a
| plant with >7GW capacity. South Korea, Ukraine, China, and
| France run a combined seven reactors with a capacity between
| 5 and 6GW. The French reactors are interesting because
| they're all pretty old, from the 1980s, and were built and
| commissioned on a tight schedule, with an average
| construction time of 7 years.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Is there a battery technology on the market that can be used at
| scale or do we need to wait for this to be invented?
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| The fella who invented lithium ion batteries invented:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_battery
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/john-goodenough-glass-battery-
| news...
|
| Quebec hydro is actually developing it to go to grid scale.
| They have much better performance and none of the problems.
| In fact the early evidence is that the batteries somehow get
| better over time.
| volkl48 wrote:
| ESS recently went public and has some good sized deals for
| their iron-flow batteries. If they're what's claimed, they
| ought to be a pretty scalable technology without too many
| materials bottlenecks.
|
| This is pretty much a press release, but a bit of a summary:
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ess-sb-energy-softbank-
| reac...
|
| That said, it's entirely out of my realm of expertise for
| vetting how good their tech or plans are.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Some mines use molten salt batteries. [0] I'm surprised
| they've never been recommended for power grids but I'm
| probably missing something.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery
| bin_bash wrote:
| it has been used
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-
| concentrating...
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Time to call Governor Hochul
| cbhl wrote:
| I believe "pumped water" is the currently available battery
| technology that has the capacities required, but I'm under
| the impression that it can't scale further (new dams / loss
| of green space)
| q1w2 wrote:
| Any form of storage will have poor efficiency compared to
| primary production, particularly pumped water. We're
| talking about under 50% efficiency.
|
| Moreover, you need an absolute MASSIVE amount of storage to
| make intermittent sources like solar and wind equivalent to
| baseload power.
|
| In winter months, solar in New York will produce less than
| 5% what the same facility will produce in the summer.
| Shorter days, lower sun, snow, leaves, clouds... all
| contribute to this.
|
| One cloudy winter and the entire state would be without
| power - for weeks. It would be catastrophic.
|
| The size of the water reservoir needed to replace plants
| like Indian Point plant don't exist on the East coast. You
| would need to flood absolutely massive areas of land.
|
| Nuclear isn't an _option_. It 's a necessity.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Any form of storage will have poor efficiency compared
| to primary production, particularly pumped water. We're
| talking about under 50% efficiency.
|
| I've generally seen pumped-hydro quoted as 80% efficient.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > In winter months, solar in New York will produce less
| than 5% what the same facility will produce in the
| summer.
|
| From the numbers I've seen, on rooftop systems, output is
| 2x in the 6 best months versus the 6 worst months:
|
| https://www.lighthousesolarny.com/blog/2017/february/the-
| sea...
|
| But some of this summer production increase is by design:
| summer power is worth more on the grid, so you over-
| design to capture more sun in summer (steeper angles,
| ignorance of winter shadowing, reduced focus on winter
| cleaning/maintenance) at the cost of winter production.
|
| If you were building an off-grid system, the
| summer/winter discrepancy would be smaller. You might
| even overbuild for winter production at the cost of
| summer production.
| mariebks wrote:
| Tesla Megapacks.
| willis936 wrote:
| What invention are you suggesting? Magic? Entropy reversal?
| Suggesting that climate policy should be influenced by
| fiction is dangerous.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Current battery technology is adequate for 4-hour peak
| shaving and it's being deployed. Here's a project approved
| this year:
|
| "Approval for 100MW / 400MWh battery storage project at site
| of New York fossil fuel plant"
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/approval-for-100mw-400mwh-
| ba...
|
| _The project is expected to reach commercial operation by
| the beginning of 2023. Enabling the storage of electricity to
| be used when it is most needed will help increase the amount
| of variable renewable energy that can be put onto New York's
| grid. It will also, as with some recent high profile projects
| in California, help reduce the state's reliance on peaker
| plants; which are only called into action several times a
| year when electricity demand is at its highest._
| C4K3 wrote:
| Lithium batteries are used on the grid, for example
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Energy_Storage
| 99_00 wrote:
| It's great that this is being experimented with, and this
| doesn't look like a solution that is ready to be deployed
| at scale.
|
| What is the carbon emissions per kwh, cost per kwh, etc.
| I'm not saying that the company building this needs to give
| those answers.
|
| But if this is part of the solution for climate change,
| those things will need to be known and reasonable.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > What is the carbon emissions per kwh
|
| The raw materials are lithium, potassium and iron. All
| are abundant but require significant energy to extract.
| So if we have a clean grid they can be produced with
| almost no carbon emissions. So if using "dirty" batteries
| is necessary to create the clean grid, it's still a
| massive win.
| pydry wrote:
| Hawaii recently canceled a grid interconnect between the
| islands and is building battery backed solar instead.
| olau wrote:
| Besides existing hydro, there's biomass (like coal plants,
| just without the coal), new pumped hydro, thermal electric
| (where you heat up rock and use the heat to drive a turbine,
| still no full-blown plant), and chemical batteries like
| lithium-ion or flow batteries. Chemical batteries are
| currently too expensive for longer term storage, but lithium-
| ion are already competitive for peak shaving.
|
| So no new invention is needed, but some of this tech needs
| maturing/getting cheaper.
|
| Extending the grid is also often helpful, albeit still
| somewhat expensive. I think we need someone to work on making
| that cheaper.
|
| If you just need energy for heating, you can store the heat
| in a big insulated pond with an insulated floating lid on.
| That's cheap, and good enough for seasonal storage. There are
| several of those ponds in production already, village-sized
| ones, but they're going to build a town-sized one not far
| from where I live.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > We need batteries, more reliable clean base generation if we
| want to use less dirty peak generation.
|
| Options that are often cheaper than massive batteries and "more
| reliable clean base generation" by which I assume you mean
| "build new nuclear".
|
| - don't shut down existing nuclear
|
| - hydro as implicit or explicit storage
|
| - interconnecting regions
|
| - better green energy mix
|
| - overbuilding green production
|
| - geothermal
|
| - demand management aka variable pricing
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The post is at least up front that it's got an agenda that it's
| setting out to prove.
|
| A more standard measure of progress would be carbon intensity
| (carbon emitted per kWh generated) I have a hunch that it doesn't
| support this argument as the decision to bucket everything into
| "clean" or "dirty" is otherwise bizarre.
|
| It's also misses things like greater electrification which might
| be graded poorly on this, e.g. every car running on gas powered
| electricity is an improvement but will show up here as a bad
| thing.
| 99_00 wrote:
| >carbon emitted per kWh generated
|
| Is it? If an energy source requires natural gas or coal to deal
| with peaks of increasingly hot days, this doesn't tell the
| whole story.
|
| If we increase solar or wind to be a primary source, then we
| need to take into account the carbon cost of storage. Since
| this doesn't exist, it is an unknown.
|
| Finally, the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't
| always blow. Carbon emitted per kWh generated assumes it will
| be operating at 100% over its lifetime. So we will need an over
| capacity of wind and solar generators. The actual carbon
| emitted per kWh will be much higher.
| pydry wrote:
| >we need to take into account the carbon cost of storage.
| Since this doesn't exist, it is an unknown.
|
| NY appears to have plenty of hydro from that graph. It's not
| all that hard to close the sluice gates and open them later.
|
| Grid scale batteries are also cost competitive (as of the
| last 12 months or so), though they wouldn't be as cheap as
| hydro for dispatchable energy.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Hydro has issues with reliability as well. You could have a
| long drought.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| We will eventually get to a state where solar and wind is all
| we have/need. The requirement will be gridscale energy
| storage that contains enough storage for days of operation.
| 99_00 wrote:
| The question is: should we be closing nuclear plants and
| filling the gap with natural gas and coal before we get
| there?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| New York phased out their last coal plant already, so
| they've moved onto the nuclear+renewables+gas stage and
| are only tweaking the mix on their way to 100 zero
| carbon.
|
| (Also "dual fuel" basically means gas, but with the
| ability to burn other stuff if they get into shortages,
| but its basically a last resort, its 99% gas)
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >The question is: should we be closing nuclear plants and
| filling the gap with natural gas and coal before we get
| there?
|
| We're there now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
| storage_hydroelectricit...
|
| Put solar panels on literally every building. Put wind
| mills where you will. We know we need to do this. No nat
| gas or coal, we do pump storage. When we can, we do the
| next gen batteries at massive grid scale.
|
| We dont need to shutdown anything early. Those are all
| amortized for their time. When we can, we eliminate those
| things as they come of age.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Is "days" actually enough? What happens if there is a
| drought, clouds and no wind for more than "days"?
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