
US Electricity Markets Aren't Designed to Handle 100% Clean Energy - howard941
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2019/07/01/u-s-electricity-markets-arent-designed-to-handle-100-clean-energy-heres-two-ways-to-fix-that/#355c855a6e4b
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Dumblydorr
100% clean energy is decades away, I'm not such a pessimist to presume we will
have no grid improvements by then. Marketplaces themselves are already
straining due to the cheapness of renewables at certain times. Batteries plus
renewables will avoid some of this, but overbuilding capacity and demand
response with EVs and industry should be another component. I also expect
utilities to buy access to appliances and heating and cooling and dynamically
control their customers' use.

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whatshisface
I really, really don't want the power company to control my thermostat. Big
companies are invading my home and violating my agency enough as it is. If
past behavior is any indication of future behavior, smart appliances are more
likely to be snuck in like the phone-home misfeatures on smart TVs than they
are to be a willing contract between the home owner and the power company.

~~~
brandmeyer
There is another approach that could also alleviate some of the pressure.
Instead of keeping the consumer price fixed and allowing the utility to
control your load, you can allow the consumer price to float.

Most of these markets have a 24hr-ahead clearing price for energy. I think you
aught to be able to expose retail consumers to fluctuations based on the day-
ahead market to let people make their own choices for energy usage. Given that
exposure, enough consumers will change their behavior to soften the
variability in price. It might also make distributed energy storage Just Work
(TM) if individual battery owners have a vector to profit from supporting the
grid.

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minikites
>I think you aught to be able to expose retail consumers to fluctuations based
on the day-ahead market to let people make their own choices for energy usage.

What prevents an electric company from significantly raising prices for a day
to catch people off guard? I can't exactly switch electric companies to punish
them.

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Hello71
what prevents them from significantly raising rates permanently?

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brandmeyer
There are other futures markets that are bootstrapped off of the day-ahead
market. Weeks/months out are used to schedule maintenance operations. Years
out are used to schedule construction/decommissioning.

So if the extended market prices are high enough, then this acts as a signal
to add generation and/or distribution capacity. Likewise, if the extended
market prices are low enough, this acts as a signal to retire capacity that
has a higher operating cost/lower profit margins.

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exabrial
I watched an interesting "Interesting Engineering" video on why utility scale
batteries are a game changer.

Right now, in my area, we have a Nuclear plant that handles the base load, but
we tend to keep it at "not full capacity" most of the time, because nuclear is
harder to ramp up/down in response to load.

In the video, he shows how renewables can pick up the slack in many ways...
but I was thinking, why not run our nuclear plants at something like 90%
capacity _all the time_ and store the excess energy in utility scale
batteries?

It seems like these devices could have a far greater impact than renewables
could, and they can harness existing investments in nuclear. It's too bad we
can't just pump water uphill into reservoirs from nuclear plants and dump that
through turbines when needed. Such a setup is obviously a huge investment and
you can't really build a reservoir next to every nuclear facility.

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notpeter
We have one in Western Massachusetts (Northfield Mountain) built nearly 50
years ago to pair with the Yankee nuclear power plant in Vermont. Peak run-
rate is 1140 megawatts and the hilltop reservoir is ~12k acre feet. Peak spin
up takes ~10mins and can run for ~8hrs if the upper lake is full. So capacity
is just short of 10 gigawatt hours.

My high school electronics class took a field trip there and I found the scale
and design simplicity truly awe inspiring.

[https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2016/12/02/northfield-
mounta...](https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2016/12/02/northfield-mountain-
hydroelectric-station)

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awad
Can someone much smarter than me opine on why nuclear is not lumped into the
100% clean energy category?

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whatshisface
Nuclear waste and parts from decommissioned reactors are not that big of a
deal, but they are also not 100% clean.

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dasd99
>not that big of a deal

also known as 'who cares, we won't be here'

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WorldMaker
Maybe more the opposite: in the long enough term radioactive materials are
just ugly rocks. It's more the short term storage in the here and now that is
the concern for most people, because they are understandably afraid of DNA
damage and cancer.

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Nasrudith
The mention of demand side IoT power load as a service has me wondering about
the theoretical abuse potential for insider trading or Enron style
shenanigans. Ideally such attempts would result in losing money.

It does bring to mind an oddly positive twist on the "you don't own it" of
IoT. By signing up as part of a service cooperative of some sort getting a
share of the generated income as compensation.

Probably not a winning move and if done by could rightfully get FTC involved
by mixing in investing - especially if it id being run by the manufacturer who
has potentially clashing incentives.

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fallingfrog
Wait, the _markets_? Don’t you mean the _infrastructure_? The financialized
language in the article is very jarring. It’s like their readers can’t relate
to base reality anymore and the only way to connect with them is these
financial terms, the “demand side and supply side”, “smart energy resources”,
“multi period optimization”, and so on. Almost like you’re trying to describe
a Ford Focus to them and you have to describe it as a “on demand relocation
capital unit as a service” or something.

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woodandsteel
People say that nuclear is superior to wind and solar, and the main reason it
isn't booming in the US is governmental regulations. But since 2016 we have
had a federal government that is anti-renewable and pro-nuclear, and still
nuclear plants are being closed, not built.

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theshadowknows
I’m not sure why we pay for electricity in the first place. Reliable
electricity, clean water. These things are fundamental to modern human
existence. Why do we have to pay for them at all other than greed?

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logfromblammo
Things that have no price cannot be fairly allocated by a market system, and
production cannot be reliably planned.

Also, paying $0.10 per kWh makes us choose between using an air conditioner to
cool the interior of an occupied building to 20 degC, or wasting power on
mining proof-of-work cryptocoins.

There may be a case for having the first N kWh of residential household use in
a month be free, and metering the excess at a higher rate. If I got unlimited
electricity at no cost, I, for one, would have an aluminum smelter in my back
yard--right next to the Moon-etching laser, programmed to write "CHAIRFACE".

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anoncake
The market system does not even try to fairly allocate anything. It allocates
to those who can pay.

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logfromblammo
Let's forget about "fair" then, and focus on the allocation. Whether fair or
not by someone's definition of "fair", the market system can allocate
resources among uncountable federated actors, without spending a significant
fraction of those resources on centralized calculations. A zero-price system
cannot do that.

There may exist theoretical alternate systems that can allocate more fairly
than a market system. If one can do that with unmetered, no-additional-cost-
to-the-consumer electricity, I'd be happy to hear about it, as I am not
currently aware of any.

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anoncake
Sure, right now unmetered electricity would be a bad idea.

