[HN Gopher] Which power plant does my electricity come from?
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Which power plant does my electricity come from?
Author : impish9208
Score : 168 points
Date : 2024-11-19 14:24 UTC (5 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (practical.engineering)
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It could be partially your neighbor's solar panels or batteries.
| A lot of domestic power that gets contributed to the grid never
| leaves the neighborhood. These things aren't always as clear cut.
|
| The key to lower prices on the grid is more flexible and
| localized pricing. Power suppliers don't like this because it
| favors cheaper sources of power that push their more expensive
| legacy generation out of the market. But it would create price
| incentives for demand and supply to align better.
|
| A good example is the UK, which has national energy pricing and a
| lot of excess wind power in Scottland that is often being
| curtailed at the same time gas plants further south need to power
| up to power local demand there. End result: the Scottish pay the
| same high rate even though they are literally discarding energy
| they don't know what to do with. If they had local energy
| pricing, their rates would go down a lot because they have a lot
| of wind power most of the time.
|
| And further south, people would either invest in local power
| generation (instead of far away in Scottland) or actually
| relocate data centers and other energy intensive businesses to
| where the power is cheap. As opposed to e.g. Slough.
| Skeime wrote:
| Yeah, it's the same in Germany. (And to add insult to injury,
| people in places with renewable generation often pay higher
| grid fees due to the investments necessary to connect all the
| new plants.)
| baridbelmedar wrote:
| Yes, but that's partly a consequence of how the German
| electricity market operates and the neglected state of its
| infrastructure, isn't it?
|
| Wind power and other intermittent sources create grid
| instability, which drives up costs.
|
| And to my knowledge, Germany has chosen not to have different
| bidding markets within the country (or has at least kept
| prices consistent across its four markets) to protect vital
| industries in the west?
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| This is how the energy grid operates everywhere, it's not
| some uniquely German mistake. Renewables require an
| incredibly huge grid investment - it's the same story they
| keep telling about external costs, only this time they
| don't want to hear it. I don't want to subsidize others'
| cheaper energy, I don't have any place to put my panels and
| batteries, I was happy with how it was before. But they
| would do anything to avoid the fees when they can.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Would you buy wind power if somebody provided that close
| to where you live? The way the system currently works is
| that you see no benefit at all if wind towers are close
| to where you live. Because somebody on the complete
| opposite side of the country only has access to gas power
| and the national prices are set for the highest price
| needed anywhere in the country. You are effectively
| subsidizing those people. Not the other way around. Your
| rates are high because gas is expensive and has to be
| shipped in in LNG form these days. No matter where you
| live in the country.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Gas is expensive because stable demand has been replaced
| by spikes based on renewable availability. I don't have
| any opportunity to get any renewable power - it's cold
| and there's no space for grid scale wind or solar.
| fsh wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense. Germany has storage for more
| than a season's worth of natural gas. The price went up
| because Russia stopped selling cheap gas to western
| Europe after its attack on Ukraine.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Myself I'm not affected by this. It's used too much as a
| counter argument, it's not universally applicable - even
| in Germany. The price spikes were happening before the
| war too.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > This is how the energy grid operates everywhere, it's
| not some uniquely German mistake.
|
| The fact that Bavaria keeps sabotaging north-south
| transmission capacity _is_ a uniquely German mistake, as
| is the insistence of Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg to
| keep the single pricing zone.
| brylkarim wrote:
| I don't think it's as simple as that. Expensive legacy gas and
| nuclear plants provide base load power at scale. Something
| renewables don't really do. These have to be built and the cost
| distributed across everyone who takes power from the grid. The
| shared model is what makes it more resilient and reliable.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It is actually that simple. The current pricing system was
| created for a grid that no longer exists. There is now lots
| of wind generation, solar, battery power, etc. And growing
| rapidly. Both on the grid and domestic. And soon large
| amounts of batteries with wheels capable of powering houses
| and delivering power to the grid.
|
| All this means lots of fluctuations in power availability and
| cost. Pretending that it costs the same all the time
| everywhere is irrational. If you give people incentives to
| adapt to these fluctuations, they will. Energy providers like
| Octopus prove that at scale. They by the way are a big
| proponent of more localized power. Because it's just more
| optimal.
|
| Price incentives cause people and companies to adapt their
| behavior. Including when to to use power and where to use
| power. Likewise, it incentivizes power companies to invest in
| power generation where the demand is instead of where the
| NIMBY's are not (like Scottland). Speaking of NIMBY's, if
| they could benefit from lower pricing, they'd probably love
| wind power a lot more. Buy more electric cars, do the laundry
| when it's windy, etc.
|
| As for base load. Nobody ever specifies a number in GW or
| GWH. It's a very fuzzy notion that people just assert is
| needed in huge (unspecified) amounts. If you put actual
| numbers on it, you would be able to have a sane discussion on
| (much) cheaper alternatives. But that never happens. Most
| discussions around base load center on the notion that we
| allegedly need a lot of it. What's the budget we need to
| reserve for that? How much? When? Where? Why? Are there any
| alternatives? The debate is mostly completely irrational and
| hand wavy on this.
|
| There is a basic notion that power companies don't mind
| charging the same rate nationally because that means they
| make lots of money charging for mostly cheap power available
| everywhere except in a handful of places. The way the system
| works is that everybody pays the highest price on the system.
| Localized prices would introduce lots of variation and cause
| lots of reasons for power companies to optimize their power
| delivery and pricing. High prices mean unhappy customers
| voting with their feet. They are being shielded from that
| currently.
|
| It's a big reason they are resisting changes on this front.
| In some cases they actually get paid to not generate power or
| discard it. That's wasteful. Scottland has plenty of base
| load. They are exporting their power surplus most of the
| time.
| tialaramex wrote:
| For base load one obvious reason to be sceptical is that in
| country A you may find that a generation technology is
| "base load" and so we can't possibly throttle it up or
| down, that's just how it works, and then in country B the
| very same technology is indeed throttled up and down as
| needed.
|
| The UK has a lot of combined cycle gas burners. You will
| sometimes see US claims that these generators are only
| baseload and it wouldn't make sense to throttle them up and
| down. Over the course of an ordinary day in Britain you
| might see power output from these "baseload" generators
| vary between 2GW and 20GW and it's no big deal.
| UltraSane wrote:
| gas turbines last much longer when run at constant
| optimal RPM than when constantly varying.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| My naive presumption is that the gas turbines do run at
| constant RPM, but vary the fuel use to deliver more
| torque and hence energy?
|
| Maybe just wrong though :P
| UltraSane wrote:
| I'm not sure. I do not that gas peaker plants that have
| to be started and stopped a lot wear out very fast.
| switch007 wrote:
| What PS/kWh rate could we achieve at 2am, if we had the
| perfect localised modern pricing model?
| adrianN wrote:
| Depends on the weather.
| switch007 wrote:
| What's the range?
|
| And to quote the person to whom I replied: "If you put
| actual numbers on it, you would be able to have a sane
| discussion "
|
| There is often an implication or assertion that the tech
| to enable surge pricing will actually enable way cheaper
| energy. So I want to know the estimated unit prices.
| movpasd wrote:
| It really isn't that simple.
|
| Every decision is a trade-off. The trade-off here is
| between on the one hand the savings from additional network
| reinforcement, the savings from reduction in aggregate
| Dx/Tx costs, and increasing the optimality of placement of
| generation wrt load; on the other hand, the cost of
| renewables generation being placed in areas with lower
| potential, the cost of increased price instability due to
| smaller markets, and of course, the switching costs. There
| is also the question of what incentives a zonal electricity
| market would actually provide to renewables developers.
|
| With regards to the network reinforcement savings, it is
| worth noting a few things. A major obstacle to increasing
| network reinforcement is not the intrinsic investment cost,
| but inadequate and restrictive planning, which, the grid
| being a natural monopoly, results in artificially
| constrained connection supply (not out of malice but policy
| failure). Just as an illustration, the way DNOs currently
| determine whether to pay for flexibility services or
| upgrade the network is done on the basis of a _5 year_
| calculation (ludicrously short!). The current waiting lists
| for new grid connections are on the order of a decade.
| Fundamentally, there is a short-sightedness in the planning
| system, and the long term is catching up.
|
| As for the optimality of placement of assets, price signals
| already exist to reflect local needs -- there isn't exactly
| one single price for electricity for the whole of the UK
| (though it's a decent approximation). Transmission and
| distribution costs are baked into the settlement system.
| For grid constraints, both distribution and transmission
| use of system charges vary in space and time to reflect
| constraints (and flexibility services also introduce a
| local price signal, although I have earlier expressed
| skepticism of the procurement process).
|
| If these price signals exist, why don't they cause
| renewables generation to become more distributed across the
| UK? The answer is that they probably do, but that grid
| losses are just smaller than the increased capacity factor
| of building in Scotland. Grid losses (both Dx and Tx) is on
| the order of 10%, and wind farms in Scotland will have a
| capacity factor about 30-40% greater.
|
| Finally, to touch on the incentives question. The
| justification for pay-as-clear pricing (which is what you
| refer to as paying the highest price on the system) is
| actually to _incentivize_ the construction of cheaper,
| _renewable_ and nuclear energy. Sure, it doesn't especially
| disincentivize the construction of marginally-priced gas
| plants, but it doesn't incentivize it either. You could
| argue that maybe power companies are keeping this market
| structure to profit from their renewable assets instead of
| moving the whole grid to renewable, except for a simple
| fact: there is no monopoly on power generation in the UK.
|
| Let me be clear: I am not actually arguing against zonal
| pricing. There are plenty of good arguments being made by
| people who have studied this more closely than me. What I'm
| fundamentally trying to do is provide a different
| perspective: that there is a lower-hanging fruit in the
| form of improving grid planning, a point which may be
| argued. But it is _not_ a simple problem with an obvious
| solution that's only being held back due to a conspiracy of
| energy suppliers.
| scrlk wrote:
| > The current waiting lists for new grid connections are
| on the order of a decade.
|
| There's a number of projects in the connection queue that
| are speculative - in many cases, people applying for a
| connection, then sitting on it to resell. Thankfully, a
| lot of these "zombie" projects are getting ejected from
| the queue due to some recent reforms, so we might see
| those 10+ year connection dates move down.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Expensive legacy gas and nuclear plants provide base load
| power at scale. Something renewables don't really do.
|
| Running hydro, biogas (e.g. in Denmark) and offshore wind
| (UK, Spain, France, Italy) can definitely fulfill base load
| demand on the basis of renewable energy generation. With
| solar, enough overcapacity can guarantee base load during the
| day even when it's cloudy, and in the summer the solar
| overcapacity can be used to run synth-fuel plants for those
| things that we absolutely cannot run with electricity (ships
| and large airplanes).
|
| Additionally, we can reduce base load demand during night
| time... a lot of places are still running incandescent
| lighting, for example. Replace that with LEDs, better
| reflectors (for less waste) and movement detectors, and you
| tackle light pollution at night at the same time. Or heat,
| add storage to a heat pump system to avoid having to run the
| heat pump at night. And for fucks sake France please get rid
| of resistive heating.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Running hydro, biogas (e.g. in Denmark) and offshore wind
| (UK, Spain, France, Italy) can definitely fulfill renewable
| base load demand.
|
| What is renewable base load demand?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Sorry, brain fart, shifted the words around and didn't
| fix the sentence up. Corrected, thanks.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| No worries! However I don't understand it :) Base load is
| the load that can't vary based on weather conditions;
| i.e. it needs to be supplyable from
| coal/diesel/gas/nuclear-type generation, or from
| batteries that have a certain number of hours or days of
| supply in them at all times. I don't think we have that,
| although I'm happy to be corrected.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The best way to supply "synthetic baseload" with
| renewables is typically not to use just batteries for
| storage, but rather a combination of batteries and
| another storage mode more suited for longer term storage.
| The latter is optimized to have lower cost per unit of
| energy storage capacity than batteries, at the expense of
| lower (perhaps much lower) round trip efficiency.
|
| This latter storage mode isn't needed until fossil fuels
| are almost entirely eliminated from the grid, since
| otherwise just use those instead for that long term
| firming.
|
| The idea that the electricity supply system has to itself
| shoulder the burden of dealing with intermittency is also
| mistaken. If it's worthwhile users will be willing to
| dispatch at least some of their demand. I'm reminded of
| the argument against deregulation of telecom or airlines:
| that the new system wouldn't be as reliable or nice. But
| users were willing to make the tradeoff if the services
| were cheaper.
| hidroto wrote:
| geothermal power would make good base load.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Yeah but geothermal isn't without its own risks. For one
| it's not available everywhere, for it to be viable at
| scale you need some serious hot rock formation and a way
| to drill through to it, and finally geothermal energy has
| been linked with an increased risk of earthquakes.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > Running hydro, biogas (e.g. in Denmark) and offshore wind
| (UK, Spain, France, Italy) can definitely fulfill base load
| demand on the basis of renewable energy generation.
|
| This seems entirely region dependant, but even so, I think
| a citation is needed here.
|
| I know there are poster children for renewables, like
| Iceland which struck the energy lottery. But I don't know
| of many places other than that which can satisfy base load
| today with renewables unless you're going hyper-local.
|
| Or was your point that we _could_ do it if we threw
| billions at the problem?
|
| Your entire second paragraph is basically "throw money at
| it" when, sadly, the politics (which are reflective of the
| will of the majority) of the world seem to be instead
| moving in the opposite direction.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think it is obvious which is the "throw money at
| it" solution. Energy utilities are already heavily
| regulated. Users aren't really exposed to a market with
| transparent pricing to enable supply and demand. The
| folks who want smart grid stuff are the ones trying to
| let the free market actually work on the energy problem.
|
| Currently, petrochemicals might be:
|
| -Benefiting from consumer-focused subsidies, like heating
| or energy assistance.
|
| -Subsidized by, like, actual intentional industrial
| subsidies
|
| -Subsidized by infrastructure investments, like a road
| out to some hinterlands that is only needed to get to
| some mine, pipeline, or whatever
|
| -Subsidized by allowing these companies to externalize
| their costs onto society by dumping them on the
| environment. All those greenhouse gasses, cleaning them
| up isn't going to be free, and we're going to pay for it.
|
| -Subsidized by international relations. This isn't a
| political site, so let's not dig into the details there.
| But the long dependency chains for petrochemicals have
| made some odd international relations bedfellows. These
| constraints on our diplomatic options have a cost that is
| hard to capture.
|
| We could start by making sure to price all that in to
| petrochemicals if we wanted to give ourselves a ton of
| extra homework (actually we shouldn't try to run the
| numbers because it is big country-dependent mess, but we
| should at least have the size of the picture in our
| heads).
|
| Renewables have fewer built-in, structural, or snuck-in
| by negligence subsidies like that. They don't produce as
| many toxic byproducts to dump on the planet (though,
| semiconductors aren't byproduct-free for sure), and
| energy falling from the sky is easier to just grab
| without any drama. So, I think if it were possible to
| actually run those numbers, renewables would look pretty
| good.
|
| Then we add in the fact that renewables probably are the
| future (eventually we will run out of oil). So, subsidies
| for renewable R&D are an investment that should pay off
| with future manufacturing jobs.
|
| Overall, sticking with petrochemicals seems very
| expensive to me.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| You're not wrong, but all this amounts to wishing. At the
| end of the day, the majority only care about their
| utility bill. Telling them that X will cost more today
| but lower the bill for the next generation isn't
| enticing.
|
| For that, you need forward-thinking politicians who can
| dance the subtle dance of planning for the future without
| making the current situation too onerous for the people.
| The recent election results in the USA is an example of
| getting that dance wrong.
| wbl wrote:
| France has 80% zero carbon all the time. Why not resistive
| heating?
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's expensive compared to heat pumps, especially if you
| also want air conditioning.
| fsh wrote:
| According to the IEA [1], 43% of the energy consumption
| is oil (transportation, heating), 18% is natural gas
| (mostly heating), and 25% is electricity. Switching to
| resistive heating would require doubling the electricity
| production. Using heat pumps is much more efficient.
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/countries/france/energy-mix
| Scoundreller wrote:
| They lose out on export revenue
| UltraSane wrote:
| Heat pumps reduce electricity usage by at least 3x and
| also provide cooling.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Why not resistive heating?
|
| Because France has a massive dependency on nuclear
| power... of course resistive heaters are cheaper than
| anything else when you got a ton of NPPs around. But
| their plants are all aging and are a nightmare to keep
| operational, so if they'd switch over to heat pumps their
| total energy demand would go down drastically.
| jonatron wrote:
| To reduce curtailment, more transmission is required. However,
| the planning process is absolutely ridiculous, so multiple
| years of consultations are required before there's a chance
| anything might actually get built.
| barbegal wrote:
| Which is why the UK is putting in subsea cables between
| Scotland and England despite the added cost.
| samwillis wrote:
| Yep, there are on-shore plans, but there is a lot of
| NIMBYism that results a resistance to these necessary
| projects.
| seszett wrote:
| Well I find it understandable. I was recently looking for
| a terrain to build a house and I didn't choose the one
| that was within the area for the new high voltage power
| line that they're planning.
|
| I bought another terrain in a slightly less interesting
| place nearby, but that is definitely not on the path of
| the power line. I think it's a normal reaction.
| yodelshady wrote:
| Those transmission components are expected to cost the
| taxpayer at least PS54 bn
| (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62085297). Transmission,
| of course, doesn't solve storage, which, to quote the
| article, "can't really be stored or stockpiled on an
| industrial scale". Because it _can 't_. Batteries are _orders
| of magnitude_ less than what is needed, as is hydro.
|
| Do you think anyone would be building mammoth turbines in the
| North of Scotland _without_ access to the Southern markets?
| Oh yes please, I really want to invest several billion pounds
| in order to serve Ullapool and Wick, that makes my capitalist
| bones tingle.
|
| But "nuclear expensive", and of cause _that_ isn 't to do
| with the planning process at all. Not if you have a competing
| product to sell.
|
| The UK has the most expensive electricity in the developed
| world, and approximately 10 times the CO2 footprint per kWh
| of France, or of France since _the 1980s_. If the goal of the
| renewable energy policy was to be a world leader, it has
| _dramatically_ failed.
| fsh wrote:
| PS54 bn over eight years is around 0.2% of the UK's GDP. A
| lot of money, but doesn't sound unreasonable for a major
| overhaul of a central price of infrastructure.
|
| Ruling out the possibility of storing energy at industrial
| scale might also not age terribly well.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Especially if the energy being stored is heat. Heat is
| embarrassingly storable, much more cheaply per unit
| energy than electrical energy. Any industry that uses
| heat can be a target for thermal storage of renewable
| energy.
| UltraSane wrote:
| I wonder if you could use tunnel boring machines to dig
| tunnels to run power cables to avoid some of the NIMBY
| objections. Expensive sure but the tunnels will be there
| basically forever.
| paulhart wrote:
| You make an excellent point - so much so that it already exists
| today at the wholesale level in many markets. What you're
| describing is Locational Marginal Pricing (LMP) - a reasonable
| introduction is here: https://www.enverus.com/blog/an-intro-to-
| locational-marginal...
|
| In the wholesale market the biggest consideration is
| transmission capacity - if I can generate 100MW of electricity
| at $15/MW but the transmission line between me and the demand
| can only carry 20MW, and another generator can generate 100MW
| for $30/MW with excess transmission capacity to the demand, the
| price at the demand will lean heavily towards the $30/MW price.
|
| The same model could be applied to local grids as a way to
| "manage" residential solar installations for example;
| overcapacity is penalized through pricing signals (but if you
| throw in batteries so you can shift the release of
| electricity...).
| xattt wrote:
| How is this partitioning implemented?
|
| Local "production-generation" can make sense at some level, but
| the mental model breaks down when you go back to the "water-in-
| a-lake" way of considering the grid.
|
| I assume that there is less electricity being moved on one end
| of a winding of some downstream transformer, but it could also
| be that we really don't know.
| Retric wrote:
| The grid can't move infinite power through any one point.
|
| Substations and long distance transmission lines make local
| production a meaningful thing with real upsides. The overall
| grid avoids losses when power isn't going through long
| distance transmission lines. Further as heat increases
| transmission losses and transmission losses produce heat,
| lowering the power sent through a long distance transmission
| line makes it more efficient.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Power suppliers don't like this because it favors cheaper
| sources of power that push their more expensive legacy
| generation out of the market.
|
| Meanwhile a common scam in several EU countries consists in
| having the power supplier that is either fully state-owned or
| officially a private company but actually state-ran behind the
| scenes and... They force you to give back any excess power for
| free to the grid.
|
| At the same time ofc they pass crazy laws mandating most of the
| energy generated to be sold for pennies on the dollar to other
| state ran companies, while then reselling it based on the price
| of... natural gas. It's quite the wonderful state-ran scam.
| _Some_ politicians denounced that scam when electricity prices
| skyrocketted in France etc. a few years ago.
|
| So not only do they steal people's produced energy but they
| also make sure to resell it at an inflated price, while their
| little friends in fake privately owned companies are lining up
| their pockets (the scheme is very probably complete with
| illegal kickbacks to the politicians).
|
| I know not one but two person who have powering on on-demand...
| Cryptocurrency mining equipment (for some GPU based ones)! This
| way they make sure to not give back for free electricity to the
| state. Sucks but it's what it is. Wouldn't be that way if these
| people were paid for that excess energy.
|
| They simply don't want to encourage this government ran
| electricity scam.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yes, one of the problems of renewables is that they are
| highly correlated as to when they generate power, so the
| value of the power they produce (per kWh) is much lower than
| it would be if they were uncorrelated with each other. Since
| we have all invested so heavily in renewables, there is
| generally a huge amount of excess power generated at these
| peak times that has to be burned. The correct marginal price
| of those joules that have to be burned is $0.
|
| Providing that power back to the grid for free is about the
| right price for the power, and if you would like to be the
| one to burn it instead (because that is what the grid is
| doing with a lot of that power), I assume you are free to do
| so.
| UltraSane wrote:
| "They force you to give back any excess power for free to the
| grid."
|
| If the power being generated is in excess of what the grid is
| consuming then it is worthless. I've seen people suggest
| installing bitcoin mining hardware directly inside wind
| turbines so they can consume excess electricity and make a
| profit.
| belorn wrote:
| Two major problems that need to be considered with using
| localized pricing are sudden bidding wars and partitioning.
|
| Let's say locally you have a few factories when a sudden drop
| in supply occurs in the energy market. The biggest costs of
| those factories are personnel, equipment and building, so
| rather than shutting down they will be willing to pay much more
| for energy than what is rational in the market in order to
| continue producing and maintain contracts in the short term.
| Long term they may move away to a more energy stable and
| cheaper location, but for the next 10-20 years they will eat
| the occasional spike in price. Everyone else who locally live
| there can't eat a sudden 100x in energy costs, with the result
| that they will vote into office politicians that protect
| against such situations, and those politicians will in turn
| spread out the problem over a wider area where areas with
| stable supply of energy can help through funding (higher energy
| price) and transmit energy to areas with less stable energy.
| Alternatively they can pay their citizens' bills directly, as
| happened during the energy crisis a couple years ago, money
| that then get taken from the general budget (paid through
| taxes).
|
| The other issue is partitioning. The more local zones you get,
| the more borders you get between those zones. People living on
| the border will see a unreasonable price difference depending
| if their house/town/city happened to land on one side or the
| other. This feels unfair, which results in upset citizens,
| resulting in people voting in politicians that can fix the
| situation. Politicians then feel a pressure to even out the
| prices among the zones, using things like adjusting local
| taxes.
|
| As a general rule, the voting population want stable energy
| availability, stable prices and fair prices that are similar to
| everyone else.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Power demand is often inelastic. There are many places in
| summer where people would pay $200/kWh to run a small air
| conditioning unit, for example, when their normal price of
| power is $0.10/kWh. There is no reason to shift toward
| generation sources that have price uncertainty when demand is
| inelastic like this. See the exact same thing in healthcare.
| The proper solution to this economic problem at a societal
| level is to have a predictable low price of available power.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| There are "many" places where people would pay US$200 to
| run an air conditioner for one hour?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Hospitals, specialty warehouses, datacenters, the list
| goes on. Some private citizens in Arizona or Texas, too.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > There are many places in summer where people would pay
| $200/kWh to run a small air conditioning unit, for example,
| when their normal price of power is $0.10/kWh.
|
| I don't know _anyone_ that would pay $200 /hr to run a 1kW
| air conditioner. I'd just go in my air conditioned car and
| pay for gasoline..
| crmd wrote:
| Parent may be referring to specialty units that for
| example chill expensive perishable medication.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I once had to pay about $1500 USD per kWh. That's $90 USD
| to boil 1 litre of water.
|
| Consequently I chose to freeze rather than turn on any
| heating. At that price even LED lighting is too
| expensive. I probably should have unplugged my fridge
| too.
|
| But many people chose to keep themselves (and families)
| warm.
|
| Lesson learnt: never pay the spot price for power. In
| minutes I probably lost all the saving I had accumulated
| by micro managing power until that point.
| rescbr wrote:
| I have seen my fair share of data centers and office
| complexes switching to their diesel generators due to
| very high energy spot prices.
|
| If you have an alternative source of power (even if it is
| a gas generator) I think a spot price contract is fine.
| Otherwise it is too risky for residential consumers.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Good point. If there is an alternate power source, it
| makes perfect sense to go to spot pricing. If you don't
| and you have room mates who may not like freezing in the
| middle of winter, don't.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| If you can't handle volatile prices and know your demand in
| advance then simply by PPAs or energy futures?
|
| You know, the standard method all markets use to handle
| volatility. But apparently electricity is different and we
| need enormous subsidies instead.
| nradov wrote:
| It's simply not realistic to expect consumers or most small
| businesses to participate in futures markets. And futures
| markets sometimes break down with the counterparty failing
| to deliver. That's not a problem with most commodities but
| electricity shortages cause real problems.
| schiffern wrote:
| I expect the only viable solution left is to go _around_
| the meter using an aggregator like Tesla Autobidder. A
| large entity consolidates many home batteries as one
| "virtual" battery, handles the grid futures prediction
| and dispatching for a cut, and re-distributes a majority
| of revenue back to the battery owners.
|
| This effectively uses the existing behind-the-meter grid
| market to make an end-run around current perverse (non-
| local, non-instantaneous) end-customer pricing schemes.
| belorn wrote:
| Electricity is a bit of different in that it is an general
| utility, closely attached to government for delivery and
| production, and historically dependency on natural
| resources or caused pollution (social impact). Electricity
| is also essential in many places for human survival, and is
| critical for economical growth and social stability. During
| war, electricity is treated different from other
| commodities in a very clear way.
|
| But my point is that all that isn't necessary the important
| part. The voting population are not always rational
| participants in the market, nor are companies. There are
| Nash equilibriums and strategies with local maximums that
| results in irrational consumer behavior. When there are
| major social consequences from irrational behavior then
| people will look towards social, ie political solutions.
| That generally means regulation, subsidies and if all else
| fails, government control. The only way to avoid that is to
| either eliminate the social consequences, or eliminate
| irrational behavior.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| This was an interesting read. I still don't quite understand the
| pricing during emergencies or shortages, though.
|
| There is no tolerable scenario where providers could choose not
| to generate electricity for a grid if it were necessary and they
| were the only provider available.
|
| I want to assume that in the freest of markets the state could
| still compel electrical generators to operate in the events of an
| emergency.
|
| I really need to read up on what happened in Texas in 2021.
| sesuximo wrote:
| > providers could choose not to generate electricity for a grid
| if it were necessary
|
| Enron basically forced this exact situation in order to charge
| inflated prices.
|
| Maybe worse is that this isn't even the reason they ended up in
| court.
| Epa095 wrote:
| IDK how it is in the jurisdiction of the author, but I know a
| bit about how it is in the small European country I reside in
| (and which has a market almost identical to how it's described
| in the post).
|
| There is a "System operator" which has the final responsibility
| for the stability of the grid. The _TLDR_ is that they really
| really really want to use the market to solve it, but in a
| crisis they have supreme powers over all production and all
| consumption.
|
| There are multiple short-term intra-day markets for extra
| capacity, and both producers and consumers can participate
| (consumers can reduce their capacity temporarily). It is
| extremely rare that these markets are not enough. Any "weird"
| bidding (e.g possible attempts at market manipulation) is
| audited, and market manipulation is of course illegal. You can
| only provide bids based on your estimation on the value of the
| power, and you need (if audited) to be able to show how this is
| calculated in a consistent (over time) way.
|
| In the case of a system instability from either market failure
| or some extreme unexpected event (e.g. multiple production
| facilities going offline) there are a hierarchy of actions:
|
| - Many/most large industrial consumers have deals where they
| pay less in grid fees, but they can be disconnected with little
| warning and no compensation. In the old days the system
| operator would call them, but these days more and more of this
| is digitalized. (There are prototypes of markets where these
| kind of load-shedd services can sold on a per-kW-per-hour
| basis)
|
| - Any producer can be forced to produce at any time. They will
| be compensated according to normal spot-price for that hour.
|
| - Any consumer can be cut at any time. Every substation is
| prioritized according to their criticality (suburbia is less
| important than hospitals). If nothing else works then
| substations will be disconnected in accordance with this list.
| (Also btw, there is always 2 network-paths to every substation
| over a certain size)
| bob1029 wrote:
| "Our generators & compressors froze over" was PR bullshit. The
| spot price of natural gas went through the roof at the time.
| gruez wrote:
| From wikipedia:
|
| >Data showed that failure to winterize power sources,
| principally natural gas infrastructure but also to a lesser
| extent wind turbines, had caused the grid failure,[15][16]
| with a drop in power production from natural gas more than
| five times greater than that from wind turbines.
|
| What's the difference between "Our generators & compressors
| froze over" and "natural gas infrastructure froze over"?
| What's the PR gain from blaming yourself?
| danans wrote:
| > I still don't quite understand the pricing during emergencies
| or shortages, though.
|
| Unpredictable supply shortages (almost always from emergency
| shutoffs at fossil plants) happen on the grid all the time. To
| deal with this, grid operators contract with "operating
| reserves", which are sources of supply that stay ready to make
| up for a supply shortfall. Often this takes the form of running
| natural gas turbines (hence the subcategory called "spinning"
| reserves).
|
| This is very expensive electricity because usually you must pay
| for the fuel spent while the reserve isn't being used also.
|
| As more battery storage is added to the grid, this service will
| be increasingly provided by batteries instead of natural gas
| turbines.
|
| It can also be provided by voluntary (and compensated) demand
| curtailment programs.
|
| None of this can make up for a grid that is under-invested in
| resilience (in exchange in the short term for extremely low
| electricity prices), which is basically what happened in Texas.
| Lerc wrote:
| What mechanism exists in the initial bid phase to deter lower
| cost producers from offering less power than they will actually
| supply? This would push the price per unit up. Supplying more
| than they offered would get them a larger chunk of it.
|
| I'm not sure how the market works in my country, but I understand
| there are bitcoin miners that work directly with suppliers to buy
| power that can be cut off at a moments notice so extra supply can
| be generated and sold cheaply if not needed, eliminating spin up
| time.
|
| I think it might be at the pilot program stage, but it does seem
| like a reasonable option to provide resiliency in an economical
| fashion.
| dleink wrote:
| They also have a marvelous youtube channel.
| kergonath wrote:
| Or Nebula :)
| howenterprisey wrote:
| I would like to use Nebula - I even bought a subscription
| once - but will not until they add comments.
| kzrdude wrote:
| That sounds similar to what I think about Nebula. They need
| to try to make that place feel alive.
| maronato wrote:
| One thing that bothers me about Nebula lately is their
| apparent shift toward quantity over quality.
|
| They started as a handpicked group of creators who
| consistently produced excellent content, but it seems they've
| fallen into that classic 'eternal growth' trap, lowering
| their standards and accepting creators who, IMO, put out
| mediocre or lazy stuff.
|
| The platform's now flooded with so many creators that finding
| good content has become a real challenge. The irony is that I
| remember Nebula founders advertising the lack of YouTube's
| recommendation system and ratings as a feature. While that
| made perfect sense in a carefully curated environment, these
| tools have become necessary now that, like on YouTube, it's
| hard to separate signal from noise.
| mikeweiss wrote:
| I was hoping for some website where I could plug in my address
| and find out.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| Clickbait headlines like this should be flagged
| pyth0 wrote:
| Just because you misunderstood what the article was about
| does not make it clickbait. The article answers the question
| in the title in a generalized way and I did not interpret it
| the way you did on first read.
| standardUser wrote:
| > Just because you misunderstood what the article was
| about...
|
| The headline is supposed to tell us what the article is
| about. If we only understand _after_ reading the article,
| the headline has failed.
| pyth0 wrote:
| > The headline is supposed to tell us what the article is
| about.
|
| In what way does the current title not do that? The post
| explains how the energy market works and answers the
| question somewhat literally:
|
| > Confusingly, the flow of power isn't really controlled
| on a line-by-line basis or sometimes even on a system-by-
| system basis. Power flows where it flows once it's
| released on the grid, and there's no simple way to keep
| track of who made it or who bought it at individual
| points on the network.
|
| The answer being "you can't really know" which isn't
| always true but in general is correct.
| jweir wrote:
| > There's pretty much no way for them[renewables] to lose money
| if they're connected to the grid, especially because many get
| outside incentives for every megawatt-hour they generate. They
| even submit negative bids in some cases, meaning they're willing
| to pay money to stay connected to the grid.
|
| The negative price reflects their incentive, not their
| willingness to pay.
|
| If I am guaranteed $18 a MW/h for my solar farm, then I will bid
| -$18 (or maybe slightly less to account for costs). The state, or
| federal government will ensure I am paid at least $18.
|
| Without these incentives we would not see negative prices, zero
| perhaps, but not negative.
|
| For instance the IRA offers upto $33.00/MWh incentives.[1]
|
| This is a problem if you have a power plant that must run - such
| as a nuke. You may end up paying that negative price, unless the
| market offers you some sort of make whole payment. But where does
| that come from?
|
| [1]https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/inflation-reduction-act-
| ta...
| kmax12 wrote:
| This article discusses the "deregulated" energy markets that
| allow many different participants to be involved in the
| generation of electricity.
|
| One consequence of having many market participants is the
| availability of data that is published to make the markets
| function.
|
| If you're interested in seeing more about the real-time
| operations, I built a site that tracks all this data:
| https://www.gridstatus.io/live
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(page generated 2024-11-24 23:01 UTC)