[HN Gopher] California's giant new batteries kept the lights on ...
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California's giant new batteries kept the lights on during the heat
wave
Author : gamblor956
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-09-13 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| somat wrote:
| I think California tends to be consciousness of supplying enough
| electricity to it's population because electrical outages were
| probably the deciding factor in sending governor Gray Davis home
| early. This sent a very clear message to the government as to
| what the population actually wants. Keep the lights on. (as
| opposed to what they think they want, leading to the buffoonery
| found in most California bills)
|
| There were news stories a few years ago critical of how
| California had way too much generating capacity. My thoughts at
| the time were similar, the people had spoken very emphatically 15
| years earlier that they want the power to be kept on, the
| excessive generating capacity was the government doing that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Davis
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Related article that provides more detail about the grid storage
| buildout: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-grid-
| operator-en...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Tangentially... Most California solar farms under construction
| today are sited, rather stupidly, in deserts. Why stupidly?
| Because deserts are hot and dusty, conditions that curtail output
| and shorten panel life. Why build there anyway? Ignorant
| investors still think it's a great idea.
|
| Siting over water, though, really is a great idea. Healdsburg,
| near Santa Rosa, floated a big array very successfully.
| Construction on a canal near Modesto has begun; official estimate
| is that solar built out on California canals would yield 12 GW,
| save millions of gallons lost to evaporation, cut biofouling, and
| provide protected habitat for wildlife underneath.
|
| Singapore is well ahead on this.
|
| Sacramento delta "islands" could be easily converted to floating
| solar farms, eliminating the major ecological threat of failing
| dikes, and resuming sequestration of carbon in peat bogs
| underneath.
|
| Storage, the actual topic, seems to generate confusion on the
| level of the investors favoring desert solar farms. Most of
| California's "batteries" are not batteries, but reservoirs high
| up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, built starting in the 1920s,
| connected to water wheels at the bottom of penstocks thousands of
| feet below. They are turned into storage simply by attaching an
| electric pump to the penstock. Of course you can float solar on
| those reservoirs, too.
|
| Chemical batteries are the expensive storage alternative. There
| won't be very much of that, except in cars, because they are
| expensive; or anyway will be until new and much cheaper chemistry
| matures. Promising chemistries include zinc/bromine,
| antimony/calcium, and iron/air, all of which are at the stage
| where manufacturing capacity is being built out.
|
| There are plenty of other storage alternatives, of varying
| maturity. Compressed air storage is deployed at industrial scale
| successfully, and is extremely mature technology. Liquified air
| is similar; efficient air liquidation had a long industrial
| pedigree before its adoption for storage. Synthesizing hydrogen
| to keep underground is somewhat less mature, but that mainly
| means conversion efficiency (E => H2) is soaring, and lately
| exceeded 90%. Ammonia synthesis is attractive because tankage is
| cheap and _very_ transportable, and it may be burned in already
| paid-for combined-cycle turbines. Expect solar and wind farms in
| favorable spots to produce industrially huge stocks of ammonia
| for export, eliminating need for any seasonal storage.
|
| Underground and underwater gravitic storage is still in
| prototyping phase, but the tech involved is centuries old,
| involving winches and water pumps. One especially promising
| relies on buoyancy, winching floats down to seabed-mounted
| pulleys.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > None of this happened by accident. California began investing
| in solar power more than 20 years ago and passed Assembly Bill
| 2514, the nation's first legislative grid energy storage mandate,
| in 2010. Gov. Gavin Newsom has also pushed to get more clean
| energy assets on the state's grid. These long-term efforts are
| paying off for California -- and have shown the world what's
| possible.
|
| This puts the "California banned non-EVs and their grid
| collapsed" takes into perspective. 12 years ago grid energy
| storage was seen as a bit odd, 12 years later (i.e. today) it's
| kind of obvious, what will we think in 2035 when we can no longer
| buy new ICE Vehicles?
| MandieD wrote:
| Another way to think about it: by 2035, any new vehicle sold in
| California must also double as electricity storage.
|
| There were some Texans who rather appreciated having an EV
| during the February 2021 deep freeze driven blackout. Not great
| for long distance driving, amazing for keeping warm and
| charging phones: https://electrek.co/2021/03/05/electric-cars-
| texas-blackout/
| bequanna wrote:
| I agree with the benefits you cite, but isn't the problem
| that EVs are still too expensive for most people?
|
| Additionally, what is the plan to build a grid that can
| actually support mass EV adoption? There seems to be very
| little talk about this.
| abawany wrote:
| There are plenty of EVs that are pretty comparable to their
| atmospheric-combustion equivalents: the Bolt EV and the
| Nissan Leaf are fairly comparable in price to their gasser
| counterparts. If the F150 Lightning weren't unobtanium, its
| pricing isn't that far off its gasser equivalent. IMO, the
| main problem is availability.
| MandieD wrote:
| The people for whom they're too expensive will do what
| people who can't afford/stomach the price of buying new
| already do: buy used. Those are allowed to be ICEs even
| after 2035. They might drive used car demand from
| neighboring states or other parts of the country for a few
| years. The old saying "it loses 20% of its value when you
| drive it off the lot" may be over longer than just the
| current supply chain crunch.
|
| I've never bought a new car, and I'm a well-paid software
| engineer (by German standards) married to an engineering
| manager, who has also never bought a new car, or any car
| that cost more than 17k EUR (post-baby, lightly-used
| station wagon, August 2021).
|
| EVs have come down in price and grown in variety over the
| past decade; I expect that our next vehicle will be a used
| EV, or at least a plug-in hybrid.
|
| Many EU countries have set similar deadlines for new ICE
| sales. I imagine that countries with 2035 deadlines will
| still have some public gas pumps around throughout the
| 2040's - pumps providing the 50:2 mix Trabants need are
| still around at some filling stations in the former East
| Germany, and those haven't been made since the early 90s.
| ncmncm wrote:
| A very great deal of solar and wind generating capacity
| will need to be built out in any case.
|
| EVs get cheaper all the time.
| more_corn wrote:
| You know what I love? When I'm reading an article and the site
| throws a pop up in my face. No wait I hate that.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Lately, I have only read about how the system was about to
| collapse and we should be ready for rolling blackouts. I'm happy
| to read this article since it's some of the best news I've read
| for a while. It gives me an understanding that there's a way to
| move forward. I'm glad to know that there are people that are
| managing the grid and are looking forward to see what might come.
| They aren't just waiting until the system falls a part. Thanks
| for posting.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-09-13 23:02 UTC)