
Wind, solar farms produce 10% of US power in the first four months of 2018 - toomuchtodo
https://renewablesnow.com/news/wind-solar-farms-produce-10-of-us-power-in-4-mo-617830/
======
philipkglass
There are big battery storage moves coming up too.

A 300 MW/1200 MWh project planned in California by Vistra Energy:

[https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vistra-energy-to-
de...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vistra-energy-to-
develop-300-megawatt-battery-storage-project-in-california-300674786.html)

Another California project, 182.5 MW/700 MWh from Tesla/PG&E:

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-Tesla-
team...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-Tesla-team-up-on-
big-batteries-13038571.php)

Have We Reached Peak Peaker? ‘I Can’t See Why We Should Build a Gas Peaker
After 2025’

[https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/battery-
storage...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/battery-storage-is-
threatening-natural-gas-peaker-plants)

A Reckoning for Power Giants: Siemens May Sell Its Gas Turbine Business

[https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/siemens-may-
sel...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/siemens-may-sell-gas-
turbine-business)

I remember when solar power was _ridiculously_ expensive. I'm amazed that in
sunny regions it is transitioning so quickly from "more expensive than the
most expensive fossils" to "cheaper than the cheapest fossils." Not long ago I
thought that natural gas was going to have significantly more time to savor
its victory over coal before being dethroned in turn.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The Tesla/PGE project is estimated to be up to 1GW of storage.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Do you mean 1 GW hour?

------
perilunar
The article says "A bit over 10% of all power produced in the US came from
solar..." but given the table doesn't include oil, they clearly mean only 10%
of all _electrical_ power. It's only 6-7% if you include oil.

(And don't get me started on the stupidity of measuring power as GWh per 4
months)

~~~
Retric
Technically, if you want total power defined by physics that equates to aka
power as defined by physics, then the US is 99% solar just like every other
country. Look at the solar numbers for all that farm land which is converted
to chemical enegery at low efficiency. Then add in passive solar heating etc.

Interestingly 80% of farmland is used to feed animals which give us 20% of our
calories. So the total solar energy required for the average diet ends is
significantly boosted. More so if you include fish that are high on the food
chain.

PS: Might seem pedantic, but it's more often relevant that you might think.

------
sintaxi
Take note: 10% PRODUCED, not 10% CONSUMED.

This is counting all output by wind and solar regardless if it is needed and
usable when the power is being produced. This is quite important because wind
and solar are not on-demand sources of power.

~~~
westurner
> _This is counting all output by wind and solar regardless if it is needed
> and usable when the power is being produced. This is quite important because
> wind and solar are not on-demand sources of power._

I think you have that backwards: in the US, we lack the ability to scale down
coal and nuclear plants. Solar and Wind are generally the first to get pulled
offline when generated capacity exceeds demand and storage.

TIL this is called "curtailment" and it's an argument that utilities have used
to justify not spending on renewables that are saving the environment from
global warming (which is going to require more electricity for air
conditioning).

Solar energy production peaks around noon. Demand for electricity peaks in the
evening. We need storage (batteries with supercapacitors out front) in order
to store the difference between peak generation and peak use. Because they're
unable to store this extra energy, they temporarily shut down solar and wind
and leave the polluting plants online.

Consumers aren't exposed to daily price fluctuations: they get a flat rate
that makes it easy to check their bill; so there's no price incentive to e.g.
charge an EV at midday when energy is cheapest.

The 'Duck curve' shows this relation between peak supply and demand in
electricity markets:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve)

Developing energy storage capabilities (through infrastructure and open access
basic research that can be capitalized by all) is likely the best solution.
According to a fairly recent report, we could go 100% renewable with the
energy storage tech that exists today.

But there's no money for it. There's money for subsidizing oil production
(regardless of harms (!)), but not so much for wind and solar. There's money
for responding to natural disasters caused by global warming, but not so much
for non-carbon-based energy sources that don't cause global warming. A film
called "The Burden: Fossil Fuel, the Military, and National Security" quotes
the actual unsubsidized price of a gallon of gasoline.

Wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of computer workload that could be
run whenever energy is cheapest ( ' _energy spot instances_ ') so that we can
accelerate our migration to renewable energy sources that are saving the
environment for future generations? If there were people who had strong
incentives to create demand for power-efficient chips and inexpensive clean
energy.

Where would be if we had continued with Jimmy Carter's solar panels on the
roof of the White House (instead of constant war and meddling with competing
oil production regions of the world)?

It's good to see wind and solar growing this fast this year. A chart with cost
per kWhr or MWhr would be enlightening.

------
onetimemanytime
See what we can do? In a relatively short amount of time, a revolution
happened. As prices get lower, unless the state taxes them to the wazoo, DIY-
ers can get close to free electricity as after a few years the panels will pay
for themselves.

~~~
agumonkey
Consider what happens when people are mostly energy independant, efficient,
and have open source software to turn this into quite a lot of different
things.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Everything, or virtually anything, is closely priced to energy cost. Virtually
everything we use, uses energy to be transformed and then transported to us.
If we take care of AC (correlates with hot and sunny days), cooking, charging
our cars (why nor charge them when the sun is out?) and other household stuff
(we can program to do the laundry at 1pm when the sun is at max) a lot of
energy is freed for other stuff. Price drops...

~~~
agumonkey
I'm jumping even further.. beside the price of renewable energy transformer
(solar, wind, hydro..), the tools (heating, cutting, radio, etc) and the
metatools (computer, network) what else is there to buy ?

How close to a closed loop synergy are we ?

------
pwagland
What is interesting is to look at the breakdown in increases of non-hydro
renewables:

Non-hydro renewables 149,652 +10.8%

\- of which wind 104,801 +10.5%

\- of which utility-scale solar 18,510 +33.6%

This equates to:

Type 2017 2018 difference

Non-hydro renewables 135,065 149,652 +14,587

\- of which wind 94,842 104,801 +9,958

\- of which utility-scale solar 13,854 18,510 +4,654

In other words, utility-scale solar is increasing faster, but it is still
falling behind. The increase in wind power is _almost_ the starting point of
utility scale solar.

I would love to know how the residential scale solar numbers fit into this,
but that isn't reported here.

~~~
specialist
Aside: Figuring out (roughly) when we can start decommissioning hydro is on my
todo list.

Motivation: Restore habitat. Try to save the pacific salmon, humpback chub,
others.

~~~
snowwindwaves
british Columbia has been building half a dozen new hydro electric power
plants per year for the last 20 years. It takes 3-6 years to do the
environmental studies. Goats, insects, tadpoles, bears, eagles, fish, plants,
you name it, everything is studied to see how it will be impacted. On a recent
project they discovered a frog that was on the endangered list actually wasn't
endangered at all as it was in every creek in the whole area.

Impacts can be mitigated by creating new habitat.

there are environmental monitors during all construction and weekly reporting
to the goverment ministries of fisheries and forests during operation.

The run of river plants only cause unnatural changes in river flows if human
life is at risk. Some owners would rather destroy a bearing than kill a fish.

My point is that hydro can operate without much impact on the environment.
Flow releases and fish ladders might decrease the absolute amount of energy
generated but that small decrease is in the big picture preferable to
switching to natural gas for the entirety of the hydro plant capacity.

I don't think any struggles of the pacific salmon or humpback chub can be
blamed solely on hydro.

Disclaimer: I program hydro plants for the last 15 years.

~~~
specialist
Solely? No. Significantly? Yes.

I'll google your new BC hydro, of which I know nothing. See what's what. But
that doesn't change the situation with USA's dams.

Further, any hope of restoring the pacific salmon runs requires removing
hydro. Among many other measures.

You didn't answer my question. So I'll try to restate it: At what point will
we have enough solar and wind capacity to moot hydro?

I can't speak to the chub situation.

~~~
snowwindwaves
I believe salmon runs that have been impacted can be helped without having to
remove dams entirely, but I'm an EE not a biologist.

I also don't defend all dams. Many dams have had terrible impacts on people
and the environment.

Hydro could be mooted when there is enough battery storage in MWH as there is
stored in the potential energy in the water in the reservoirs of the dams.

The economics on batteries aren't there yet. To be able to depend on having x
MWH of energy in the battery in 5 years you need a battery that is 10x, or you
buy a battery that is only 1.5x but then replace it every year. A project in
Hawaii just chose pumped hydro storage over batteries.

I'm more hopeful geothermal will become a strong resource but all of the
drilling equipment and expertise is chasing oil.

~~~
specialist
We cool.

After some quick googling, skim reading, it looks like your govt has tried
harder to preserve your salmon runs. Honestly, that's pretty encouraging. And
the restoration work on Vancouver Island is exciting.

Since the Columbia (Basin) is also used for irrigation, agriculture, it's been
hard, slow work balancing the needs of all the stakeholders. Just guessing:
Maybe that's less of a factor for your govt.

Aside: I do think we'll need to be build more reservoirs, cisterns. Higher up.
As you know, the snowpack, which used to hold the water, has all but
disappeared with climate change. We'll need something to replace that
functionality, capacity. So even as an EE, you'll still have a lot of work in
the future (assuming you stay with hydro).

Peace.

------
Animats
Nice. Wind has passed hydro.

There's a ceiling on wind, though. Without storage, you need some other
source. And no, averaging over a large area won't work. We have that now, and
there's still about 4:1 variance in a day over the CAISO or PJM control areas.

With solar, peak air conditioning load and peak solar output pretty much
coincide.

~~~
ant6n
> Without storage, you need some other source

You need storage

