California has so much solar power it's throwing it away

[sl8]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/22/california-solar-duck-curve-rooftop/

California has so much solar power it’s throwing it away

As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power.

by Shannon Osaka / April 22, 2024 at 06:38AM

[...]

But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” — essentially, thrown away.

[...]

Over 15 years ago, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory were in the midst of modeling a future with widespread solar power when they noticed something strange. With lots of solar power on a given electricity grid, the net load — or the demand for electricity minus the renewable energy — would take on a “U” shape. Sky-high demand in the morning would be replaced by almost zero demand in the middle of the day, when solar power could generate virtually all electricity people needed. Then as the sun set, demand surged up again.

California’s grid operator, known as CAISO, later dubbed this effect the “duck curve.” (If you squint, you can imagine the curve as the belly of a duck.) It’s most prominent in the spring months, when solar panels get plenty of sunshine but there is less demand for heating and cooling.

In recent years in California, the duck curve has become a massive, deep canyon — and solar power is going unused. In 2022, the state wasted 2.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity, 95 percent of which was solar. (That’s roughly 1 percent of the state’s overall power generation in a year, or 5 percent of its solar generation.) Last year, the state did that in just the first eight months.

[...]

[NNadir]

1. The effect of making electricity worthess is destructive...

...if, as is the case with so called "renewable energy," the power is unreliable and unpredictable.

This is because the O&M on the dangerous natural gas plants on which California is wholly dependent - five such plants are now under construction there - are not covered when the plants are briefly unable to operate, thus raising the costs when they're operable as they must be without the lights going out.

Egged on by dumb journalists promoting selective attention, the failure of so called "renewable energy" to do anything at all about climate change other than to accelerate it, has resulted in extreme and often deadly temperatures in California and around the world. If one follows CAISO as I do, one can see that peak demand in California is often, almost always in the late afternoon and early evening, at which time temperature can remain extreme.

At these times, California's policy is to run gas plants and dump the waste directly into the planetary atmosphere, where it drives climate change.

I often offer my opinion that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science degree with a grade of C or better. This would also apply to courses in Engineering.

[hunter]

2. The economic viability of our wind and solar follies are entirely dependent on fossil fuels...

... especially natural gas.

Link to CAISO data here:

https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html

At the moment 80% of my electricity is coming from renewable sources, 86% of that solar.

I can hear the solar enthusiasts cheering...

Unfortunately, if you try to model some kind of non-nuclear renewable energy utopia using real world data from gigawatt scale energy and energy storage systems in California you'll discover it can't be done, the prognostications of feckless gas shills like Stanford University's Mark Z. Jacobson notwithstanding. ( I mention him only because I recently heard him on BBC radio, where he was being promoted as some kind of expert. "Feckless" is me being nice. For all I know he could simply be duplicitous.)

Unfortunately hybrid gas / solar / wind electric power systems won't save the world and any "transition" to "100% renewable energy" based on natural gas is a lie.

[NNadir]

3. Watch it. Mark Z. Jacobson, asshole, sues people who criticize him.

His behavior when authors in PNAS criticized his silly "100% renewable" paper, filing a 20 million dollar suit, is one of the worst stories in science, for which he has yet to apologize.

He's a fool with a very thin skin.

Stanford prof who sued critics loses appeal against $500,000 in legal fees

[LiberaBlueDem]

4. Nuclear power plants are to blame

Nuclear must run 24/7 .... there is no turning nukes off or limiting output. Once they are burning they keep burning no matter how much the sun shines. Gasplants, OTOH, can be turned on and off with ease.

The solution is batteries which nuclear can keep full and which can store solar power when not used. Too many people make a fuss over solar when what needs to happen is storage for excess nuclear and solar.

[LiberaBlueDem]

5. Car batteries will fill with solar

Batteries are 12v and can be charged directly via solar power with little loss

As more and more EVs are on the road the capacity for storing solar will grow

Eventually all nukes will be out of business. But until then we must keep nukes running so that the reactors do not melt down and blowup.

[NNadir]

6. Anyone talking about batteries on a gas dependent grid is embracing a very, very, very, very bad idea.

There are batteries on the California grid which are charged by gas, not nuclear, thus driving climate change by virtue of the laws of thermodynamics.

Batteries, like solar and wind, are mass intensive and unsustainable. They are subject to the laws of thermodynamics which require that whenever they are used they waste energy. It would be cleaner to just shut access to the grid.

A reliable system is not a problematic system by the way. It is unreliable systems, in particular those that produce electricity when it isn't needed and fails to produce energy when it is needed that are the problem.

Diablo Canyon in California, on a 12 acre footprint, produced more energy than all the wind turbines in the state, and did so without the destruction by industrialization of over 1500 square miles of former wilderness.

California Energy Commission 2022 Total System Electric Generation.

This nonsense of building infrastructure because there are short periods where solar energy produces too much energy, as opposed to the vastly larger periods of time where California is burning natural gas and dumping waste into the planetary atmosphere is obscene and dirty.

California, like any region that gives a rat's ass about climate change - which California clearly doesn't - should just go nuclear against climate change. They are in the happy position to have plenty of used nuclear fuel in the State, which if reprocessed, could provide all of the State's energy needs for decades to come, no gas, no solar, no wind. With the right kind of nuclear power they could also eliminate the need for problematic things like gasoline and diesel fuel by engaging in process intensification.

I wrote a kind of "feasibility" analysis, certainly ad hoc but I think conceivable for California, its water supply and its industrial energy needs here: The Energy Required to Supply California's Water with Zero Discharge Supercritical Desalination.

[LiberaBlueDem]

7. Nukes are 35% efficient

So there is 65% waste, and like you say "in particular those that produce electricity when it isn't needed.... are the problem."

Since nukes run 24/7 that means a lot of the time nukes produce electricity when it isn't needed. That's where batteries come in to play, maybe even saving nukes.

Then there is all that waste heat sent into the air. Nukes burn as high as 5,000 degrees. Plus it takes tons of water to keep nukes from melting. Whereas solar takes heat out of the air, makes electricity, and only releases that energy when the electricity is used. That is zero-sum power.

[NNadir]

8. I will try to respond to this misinformation as gently as is possible.

Last edited Tue Apr 23, 2024, 05:37 PM - Edit history (1)

Let's start here: Almost all current US nuclear reactors, built over a 25 year period in the 20th century, are Rankine cycle (steam) devices of one of two types, a boiling water reactor (BWR) where the steam that turns the turbine is in direct contact with the reactor core, or pressurized water reactors, (PWR) where high pressure liquid water in contact with the core is used to boil lower pressure water not in contact with the core to generate steam to turn the turbine. Basically the plants operate on exactly the same principles as the coal plants they displaced. All thermal reactors including those using gas heat to boil water (as in "flex fuel" power plants that can burn either coal or gas) that rely on steam to turn a turbine are Rankine devices. The thermodynamic efficiency of all such power plants, nuclear, coal, or gas (with the exception I'll describe below) operate at, as a general rule of thumb, at around 33% thermal efficiency. This actual number varies slightly with the weather. If one studies engineering data describing power plants, one will often see discussions of "winter capacity" and "summer capacity," the former being higher because, in a simplified sense, they display Carnot efficiency described by the following formula:





If the temperature of the sink (the ambient weather generally) is low, and the temperature of the device is high, the ratio will be smaller and the efficiency higher.

Because nuclear reactors were built long before antinuke fear and ignorance triumphed, with the result that the planet is now in flames, most power engineers relied, in particular because of the limits of materials science of the time, on Rankine engines, with nuclear power plants being no different.

I don't know where this "5000 degrees" figure comes from, or whether it is in centigrade, kelvin or Fahrenheit, but the melting point of uranium dioxide can be found at the Wikipedia page for the compound for all three temperature scales: 2,865 °C (5,189 °F; 3,138 K)

There is no evidence that under normal conditions nuclear fuel is liquid in a reactor. One can pull pellets out of used nuclear fuel and see that they are swelled (from fission gases) but intact. There are no puddles at the base.

The temperature you gave would suggest that uranium oxide is subject to liquefaction. In general, fuel rods contain uranium or MOX pellets separated from the zircalloy cladding by space. Zircalloy-4 is very common in nuclear reactors. It has a melting point of around 1850°C. There is no evidence that under normal conditions nuclear fuel is liquid in a reactor.

As for the nonsense statement that they must run all the time, they obviously can be shut or run at lower power using control rods. It makes sense to run them at full power however since this provides the cleanest baseload power possible. If they shut them fully restart can take up to 8 hours because of an effect called xenon poisoning.

Any system exposed to a continuous energy flux without removal of heat will melt, but nuclear reactors do have continuously recycling water and the temperature in the fuel is well below the number stated in the post to which I'm responding. To raise thermodynamic efficiency, as in any Rankine plant, be it gas, coal, or nuclear, cooling water is used to lower the temperature of the recycling water.

It is possible to build nuclear reactors that can be air cooled; but only a few reactors of this type, mostly in Great Britain, the AGCR (Advanced gas cooled reactor), which do not use water as a working fluid but rather use carbon dioxide as the working fluid. These devices operate on the Brayton cycle.

Late in the 20th century and early in the 21st, an advance in materials science took place allowing for the use of thermal barrier coatings, using a ceramic layer generally known as YSZ, Yttrium Stabilized Zirconia. This ceramic can be bonded with alumina to a superalloy turbine to allow the turbine to turn from hot gas, including gas flames, creating the opportunity for a Brayton cycle. The exhaust gases can be and often are hot enough to boil water to run a Rankine cycle, which have a thermal efficiency that can exceed 50% slightly.

My son, who is a Ph.D student in nuclear engineering, focusing on nuclear materials is aware of all of the above and more; it should be possible, under the case where antinuke stupidity and ignorance is shown for what it is, stupidity and ignorance, to build combined cycle nuclear plants, and indeed plants can be used to drive chemical reactions, a general term called "process intensification" about which I write frequently in this space. I believe that it should be possible to obtain thermal efficiency for nuclear systems approaching 80%, if one considers the work done in making synthetic fuels, desalinating water, and carrying out material processes. The term for this approach is "exergy recovery."

Now let's turn to the nonsense about batteries. From the above it should be immediately clear that electricity, by its very nature is thermodynamically degraded in all of the systems discussed above. It doesn't matter where it comes from. Most large power plants (except combined cycle plants which can approach and even exceed 50% thermal efficiency) operate at or around the Rankine figure, 33%. This means that 67% of the energy is waste heat. If the heat can be recovered for use, that's wonderful, but current industrial practice is to waste it, something of a shame in my view.

So busbar electricity - electricity at its source - represents only 33% of the original energy used to produce it. Transmission losses are generally 1 to 3%. Modern Lithium batteries charging and discharging operate at between 70% and 80% efficiency. One can feel this losses by noticing that batteries often get hot in use. Some are known to burst into flame. Let's use the figure of 73% overall for transmission, charge and discharge. Thus the efficiency of the systems is now .33 * .73 is now around .24, or 24%. Huge amounts of energy have been wasted in this electrical system.

I don't want to be mean - I'm really trying to be nice - but it is not true that "solar takes heat out of the air, makes electricity." That statement that it does so is absurd. One can easily see this by sticking a solar cell in a dark oven, turning the oven on and seeing if the cell generates electricity. Solar cells absorb light energy - radiation - and convert that light into electricity by exploiting electrons jumping energy levels according to the rules of quantum mechanics. They only capture some of the energy - there's a big hoopla going on when they reach 25% thermodyanmic efficiency in exotic systems like lead based perovskites, but generally the thermodynamic efficiency is lower - the rest of the converted light energy is rejected to the atmosphere as heat. This is why solar cells are black by the way, generally; they absorb light, not heat. They radiate heat as black body radiation, a common term discussed in preliminary college physics courses.

I marvel at how readily critics of nuclear energy are ready to display, often proudly, that they next to nothing about it. This ignorance and mysticism with respect to nuclear energy is part of the reason that the planet is bursting into flames as a consequence of the unrestricted release of dangerous fossil fuel waste, chiefly carbon dioxide, but also including many other noxious materials.

If one is interested in energy production and wishes to understand it, I recommend college level physics and engineering courses, particularly those where thermodynamics are discussed..

Have a wonderful evening.

[LiberaBlueDem]

9. Yes, well

The Fukushima reactors are estimated to have hit 5,000 degrees. That is why they melted.

All that wasted energy! And more waste every day.

The reason death is so limited is because the people were evacuated. Had they stayed most would be dead by now. Fukushima meltdowns, because there was no cooling water, is why nukes are hated and such a bad business decision that no one will finance them except for big government. Bankers have killed nukes.

As for solar, the energy comes from the sun, which is captured by solar panels and removed from heating the air until the electricity is generated. The energy is neither created or destroyed, which is not true for nukes.

[NNadir]

11. Really 5000 "degrees," higher than the boiling point of zirconium metal?

Last edited Fri Apr 26, 2024, 08:28 AM - Edit history (1)

The core at Fukushima vaporized? Who knew?

I note the switch from every nuclear reactor for this made up figure (with no units) of 5000 "degrees" to the big, big, big, big Bogeyman at Fukushima.

It would be interesting to learn of something called a reference from a reputable source for this extraordinary claim of 5000 "degrees" but I'm familiar, certainly, over all the years of antinukes cheering for the destruction of the planet by the application of fear and ignorance, with which only antivaxxers can compare in terms of death tolls, although Covid never killed roughly 19,000 people day like air pollution - not even counting climate change - does. In most cases antinukes don't have references. It's easier to make stuff up. However, if one relies on "making stuff up" one risks confronting people with legitimate real knowledge of the case.

Here is something called a reference, with textual commentary from a reputable source (the premier medical journal Lancet) for the number of people killed by air pollution egged on by antinukism:

: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

I keep this handy to point out how little antinukes care for stuff that matters, be it climate change, or the other effects of fossil fuel use, about which antinukes couldn't care less.

Here also, is something called a reference to the number of deaths caused by radiation at Fukushima, as opposed to the number of people killed by fear of radiation at the same event:

Comparison of mortality patterns after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant radiation disaster and during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Motohiro Tsuboi et al 2022 J. Radiol. Prot. 42 031502)

It's open sourced, but an excerpt is relevant:

However, in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant(FDNPP) accident, no direct health hazards due to radiation, such as acute radiation injury, were observed, while various indirect health effects were reported even in the acute phase [2, 3]. Major health effects are attributed to the initial emergency evacuation and displacement, deterioration of the shelter environment, evacuation from nursing homes, and psychological and social health effects. In addition, there were also the effects of medical collapse, where lives that could normally be saved by medical care could not be saved due to a lack of medical resources [4, 5]. It is known that these effects are particularly susceptible to the socially vulnerable [6].

.

I added the bold.

I also keep this text handy as well whenever people are carrying on insipidly about the big, big, big, big, big Bogeyman at Fukushima on their computers, powered by electricity that overwhelming comes from fossil fuels, with fossil fuel waste killing millions of people per year, roughly 80 to 90 million people since people began whining about Fukushima 13 years ago.

As for the commentary on how solar cells work, let me say this: I am used to contempt for science, in particular the laws of thermodynamics, among the "renewable energy will save us" crowd, although it's very clear after 50 years of such chanting, the world is not saved. Climate change is getting worse faster, and one reason is the trillions of dollars spent uselessly on solar and wind energy with the effect of entrenching the use of fossil fuels. It is antinuke fear and ignorance that has left the planet in flames. The evocation of wishful thinking about magical batteries is, as I often point out, an expression of contempt for the second law of thermodynamics, which is slightly arcane, but accessible to anyone of reasonable intelligence now that rational explanations exist, developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is unusual however, for antinukes, as badly educated as they generally are, to hold the first law of thermodynamics in contempt, as is happening in this exchange. It's a much simpler law.

As for nuclear energy:

Nuclear energy saves lives.

Here is something called a reference, coauthored by one of the world's leading (and famous) climate scientists, making the point, which I also keep handy:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

The problem, as I see it, is a persistent refusal to have a simple sense of decency, for the elevation of dogma entrenching ignorance. I have seen here, among the antinukes, people citing the toxic idiot Helen Caldicott's unreferenced writings rather like right wing Christian Fundamentalists quoting the Book of Genesis in the Bible to explain the existence of the universe. One really doesn't want to believe that this sort of thing goes on, but it does.

No amount of information can change the rhetoric of a cult, not religious cults, not antinuke cults, not political cults like Trumpism, Nazism or the like. Cult thinking kills people, every time, all the time. The current case is no different.

Have a very pleasant Friday.

[LiberaBlueDem]

12. I understand your frustration and angst

To be such a proponent of a failed idea is hard to take. I mean, solar power is far cheaper than nuclear and that solar is almost too cheap too meter.

But, look, your son will have a job for life trying to figure out what can be done with the tons and tons of nukes waste piling up and that will remain waste until some one very wise and very careful comes with a very good idea of what to do with the waste that is deadly for decades and decades. So, there is that.

In the meantime, solar grows and grows and will, one day, supply almost all the electrical power we need. And yes, the batteries will play a huge part in that.

It's what is called progress.

So, don't worry, be happy!

[NNadir]

13. The antinuke cults, like all cults, are immune from correction by information.

Last edited Sun Apr 28, 2024, 08:22 AM - Edit history (1)

If you ask a member of this cult to show that what they ignorantly call "nuclear waste," about which they know zero, being as the are, unacquainted with the contents of scientific literature, to show that in the seventy year history of its storage, used nuclear fuel it has killed as many people as fossil fuel waste, aka air pollution, will kill in the next ten hours - only literature from the primary scientific literature can be accepted as proof - they'll either slither away, change the subject, or chant insipidly.

I have never seen any other response from any of these generic moral and intellectual lightweights.

The death toll from air pollution egged on by the antinuke cults not giving a fuck about climate change in the next ten hours will be between 7,000 and 8,000 people.

Again, not that antinukes can read: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249).

They lack the moral depth to give a shit about climate change or the death toll associated with fossil fuel waste, lack the intellectual depth to understand even low level science, or even to compare numbers like the numbers in this appalling document:

2023 World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), Table A.1a on Page 264.



They are, in general, unable to understand basic facts, like whether 7 is bigger than 29 or if 7 + 8 is greater than 29.

Note that the number 29 would be much greater if stupidity and ignorance had not prevailed.

My son, by the way, doesn't give a shit about immoral people who attempt to shit on his important work to come to the aid of humanity. I'm proud to have raised him right.

As a scientist, I am wasting as much time addressing cult thinking as a molecular biologist might waste talking to an antivaxxer, although antivaxxers have killed far fewer people than antinukes kill every damned day, as antinukes are responsible for between 17,000 and 19,000 deaths each day, every day. Covid never killed 19,000 people in a day, not on its worst day.

Contempt for science is not hard to recognize.

Antinukes chant away endlessly, but there is not one among them who can demonstrate a shred of human decency.

They are very toxic fools, responsible for killing the planet in my view.

[Ontheboundry]

14. A little light

In the darkness of the green energy cult. Nice.

Ftr, my home is all solar because I can't access the grid. Sad, since we have three nuke plants within an hour of me