California growing solar (and wind) production thru proposed 2045

[LATTC Student]

This is probably more a Utility question rather than PV-specific but . . . .

As California moves toward a zero carbon 2045 with Diablo canyon going offline, how will CA maintain a stable grid with Solar, Wind, Thermal, and Hydro (and ESS)? Will we have any traditional generation plants left? I thought they provided the frequency and voltage WECC "grid" stability. I know there is way more to the future of the CA energy landscape that I am unaware of, it just seems like the common public perception is that large-scale Solar will save the day. Can we survive with the four renewables mentioned above along with the proposed huge ESS systems (i.e. Moss Landing, et al)?

 

[hbiss]

We don't discuss politics here which is what your questions are deeply rooted in.

-Hal

 

[don_resqcapt19]

I doubt that you could install enough ESS to make the system work in a reliable manner.
A study in Illinois showed that to go carbon free without nuclear, we would have to cover 7 to 10% of the farmland in the state with solar panels and install storage capacity that is greater then 40 times the total capacity currently exists in the US.

 

[jaggedben]

I doubt that you could install enough ESS to make the system work in a reliable manner.

For economic or political reasons, perhaps true, depending on your criteria for timescale.

But if those weren't obstacles, enough ESS would totally function to make a reliable grid.

 

[LATTC Student]

Thank you all for the responses!

Hal - yes I definitely don't want this post to be about political issues surrounding our energy future in CA. As a Trade student my lack of understanding was more at the core - about logistically what is feasible based on todays, or near future, technologies as they relate to large scale solar.

So Ben, it sounds like technically ESS would provide the grid stability, assuming we had the ESS footprint to scale, without the traditional fossil-based generation plants. Chances are (maybe) one day we will.

Are there any other sources? If we don't have large scale ESS by 2045 could/would we use costly neighboring out-of-state providers in the WECC to provide that stability to fill in the gaps as we relied heavily on PV generation . . . . and wind to a lesser degree?

If I am going down the wrong path for this forum then I can move it to another one. I returned here with my post because I have a lot of confidence in the Solar, Utility, electrical, et al. . . sages here who have helped me deploy my own PV and wiring at home, quite successfully. and it is "PV-related"

 

[wwhitney]

We don't discuss politics here which is what your questions are deeply rooted in.

I disagree. The question of whether or not to set "a zero carbon 2045 with Diablo canyon going offline" is political. But the OP's questions were technical: "how could we do this, what are the consequences of doing this?"

Cheers, Wayne

 

[petersonra]

The reality is there is no technical solution to the problem of taking baseline load out of the equation that is being done mostly for political reasons.

I don't think that anybody wants to understand how difficult it's going to be to do black starts of the grid every few months.

Unless there is some technology sitting out there that no one knows about yet chances are that no one is going to let California politics take down the grid for the rest of the country so the only practical solution to that is to cut them off from the grid and let them go their own way.

There's just plain no amount of money that can be spent to achieve a technical solution to what the politics is demanding.

 

[winnie]

There is another bit of politics in this discussion which I suggest should be permitted. Not the partisan politics or discussion of particular political figures, but the personal politics of 'how individuals might need to change their behaviors to achieve the technical goal'.

If everyone goes vegan, ditches their cars, and lives with electricity available 18 hours out of the day, then the other technical issues become trivial...but the politics of such a behavior change would be impossible.

If the goal is a rock solid electrical grid that behaves as though we have an excess of nuclear capacity (turn on any load you wish, whenever you wish, grid can support everyone having electric hummers which they charge whenever they wish) then the technical aspects of an all renewable grid become much much harder.

It is pretty clear to me that an all renewable grid will require behavior changes. The technical question becomes how to minimize the required behavior changes and how to make them politically palatable (in the personal sense).

I personally think we need to wean ourselves off the expectation of fixed electricity rates. In any reasonably priced grid the value of electricity will vary. (Though with nuclear one could imagine an all you can eat capacity based charging scheme, and at the other extreme of off grid solar you pay for your system and use electricity as it is available with some energy storage. ) I believe that having people pay more when supply is scarce will be necessary for a grid with more renewables.

Demand management is another technology which requires significant behavioral change. Making demand management acceptable to lots of people rather than shoveling it at people is a combination of a technical and political challenge.

If the utility manages air conditioning in ways that keep people comfortable then it will be more popular than if the utility makes people sweat. (Also part of the political/technical intersection: some people want their comfort, others want their puritan virtue and would delight in sweating to save the planet, and the technology needs to work for both populations. )

Jon

 

[petersonra]

I think the politics of getting millions of small power producers to voluntarily sell their surplus power to the grid when it is not in their best interest is going to be a tough sell.

 

[winnie]

I think the politics of getting millions of small power producers to voluntarily sell their surplus power to the grid when it is not in their best interest is going to be a tough sell.

I absolutely agree.

If it cannot be structured to serve the interests of both buyers and sellers it isn't going to go far

Jon

 

[petersonra]

I absolutely agree.

If it cannot be structured to serve the interests of both buyers and sellers it isn't going to go far

Jon

The state has a lot of say over the relative handful of power producers right now but as more of that production comes from people making less power than they use, they are going to want to keep it for themselves.

 

[winnie]

If lots of people have PV, and match their consumption to their production (or buy batteries) then they are a net win in terms of grid stability.

The problem is people producing power at noon and then wanting 'their's kWh at 5pm

Jon

 

[gadfly56]

This is probably more a Utility question rather than PV-specific but . . . .

As California moves toward a zero carbon 2045 with Diablo canyon going offline, how will CA maintain a stable grid with Solar, Wind, Thermal, and Hydro (and ESS)? Will we have any traditional generation plants left? I thought they provided the frequency and voltage WECC "grid" stability. I know there is way more to the future of the CA energy landscape that I am unaware of, it just seems like the common public perception is that large-scale Solar will save the day. Can we survive with the four renewables mentioned above along with the proposed huge ESS systems (i.e. Moss Landing, et al)?

As others have alluded to, from a technical aspect it may be possible to do this. However, the current grid has huge inertia provided by thousands of tons of spinning metal. I don't know if anyone has ever modeled a grid using only solar, wind, and hydro and batteries. Thermal is now, and will remain, an absolute bit player here. Sounds like you might have a nice senior project in front of you.

 

[LATTC Student]

The reality is there is no technical solution to the problem of taking baseline load out of the equation that is being done mostly for political reasons.

I don't think that anybody wants to understand how difficult it's going to be to do black starts of the grid every few months.

Unless there is some technology sitting out there that no one knows about yet chances are that no one is going to let California politics take down the grid for the rest of the country so the only practical solution to that is to cut them off from the grid and let them go their own way.

There's just plain no amount of money that can be spent to achieve a technical solution to what the politics is demanding.

Yes sir. The Texas event earlier this year is what triggered my curiosity to how viable our predicted reliance on renewables (i.e., Solar/wind) could be. I know Texas is mostly a Wind state but they were less than 2 minutes away from a black start due to the grid frequency drop to 59.4. (this was the first time I heard of this concept). Officials said it would take weeks to get the grid back online in TX if that had happened due to the time it would take to check and test everything out. Again I know very little technically but this is what started the wheels turning.

Thanks again for your posts, I am learning a ton!

 

[gadfly56]

Yes sir. The Texas event earlier this year is what triggered my curiosity to how viable our predicted reliance on renewables (i.e., Solar/wind) could be. I know Texas is mostly a Wind state but they were less than 2 minutes away from a black start due to the grid frequency drop to 59.4. (this was the first time I heard of this concept). Officials said it would take weeks to get the grid back online in TX if that had happened due to the time it would take to check and test everything out. Again I know very little technically but this is what started the wheels turning.

Thanks again for your posts, I am learning a ton!

You might do some research into the differences between "capacity markets" and "energy markets" with regard to electricity production, and how each affects the choices energy producers make. It should be an interesting exercise in tradeoffs; if you want more of "A", you get less of "B", or you pay a lot more for a hybrid solution.

 

[LATTC Student]

If lots of people have PV, and match their consumption to their production (or buy batteries) then they are a net win in terms of grid stability.

The problem is people producing power at noon and then wanting 'their's kWh at 5pm

Jon

This is my current use case here Jon. To be honest we rolled out solar for self-reliance as the priority, cost-benefit analysis wasn't at the top of the list like most others. The goal was to get my $450 SCE bill down to $0 and have a whole home backup . . . eventually (JaggedBen sold me on the idea to deploy the MPU/Smartswitch needed). We self-consume the storage nightly with little fed back to the grid - other than minimal excess production during the day. We sized the array to meet daily consumption plus 10Kwh ESS filler. Right now it seems that the residential/commercial sectors are going heavy into solar deployment here in SoCal due to historical lower equipment costs coupled with credits/incentives. It would be great to see that across the country (you probably know more detail) and to have developing communities of managed DER's working as an integral part of a "Smart-Grid"

 

[LATTC Student]

There is another bit of politics in this discussion which I suggest should be permitted. Not the partisan politics or discussion of particular political figures, but the personal politics of 'how individuals might need to change their behaviors to achieve the technical goal'.

If everyone goes vegan, ditches their cars, and lives with electricity available 18 hours out of the day, then the other technical issues become trivial...but the politics of such a behavior change would be impossible.

If the goal is a rock solid electrical grid that behaves as though we have an excess of nuclear capacity (turn on any load you wish, whenever you wish, grid can support everyone having electric hummers which they charge whenever they wish) then the technical aspects of an all renewable grid become much much harder.

It is pretty clear to me that an all renewable grid will require behavior changes. The technical question becomes how to minimize the required behavior changes and how to make them politically palatable (in the personal sense).

I personally think we need to wean ourselves off the expectation of fixed electricity rates. In any reasonably priced grid the value of electricity will vary. (Though with nuclear one could imagine an all you can eat capacity based charging scheme, and at the other extreme of off grid solar you pay for your system and use electricity as it is available with some energy storage. ) I believe that having people pay more when supply is scarce will be necessary for a grid with more renewables.

Demand management is another technology which requires significant behavioral change. Making demand management acceptable to lots of people rather than shoveling it at people is a combination of a technical and political challenge.

If the utility manages air conditioning in ways that keep people comfortable then it will be more popular than if the utility makes people sweat. (Also part of the political/technical intersection: some people want their comfort, others want their puritan virtue and would delight in sweating to save the planet, and the technology needs to work for both populations. )

Jon

Agreed 100%! Consumption behavioral changes. We were recommended to analyze our own consumption before deploying solar here at my place. We cut 1/3 of our monthly consumption before the actual solar deployment. That part was pretty easy. It was harder cutting off another 5-10% thru daily behavior changes and awareness to meet our goals of daily self-reliance on solar/storage but it's working so far. I expect us to be much leaner on consumption as we go into the winter months here in CA - called "Spring" everywhere else in US :O

There are still days with Utility reliance (overcast, Fire smoke coverage, maintenance, excess consumption, etc . . .) and will always be is my guess.

 

[wwhitney]

Leaving aside the political question of whether we "should" do this, what is the technical problem of a solar/wind/storage grid? Assume the queuing theory problem of ensuring the storage never runs empty has been properly handled.

Solar/wind/storage is viable for a single off grid dwelling unit, maybe its total annual electricity use is 8,000 kWh per year. Apparently US total annual electricity use is about 4 trillion kWh, or 500 million times greater. What are the technical issues of scaling up by a factor of 500 million?

Cheers, Wayne

 

[petersonra]

Leaving aside the political question of whether we "should" do this, what is the technical problem of a solar/wind/storage grid? Assume the queuing theory problem of ensuring the storage never runs empty has been properly handled.

Solar/wind/storage is viable for a single off grid dwelling unit, maybe its total annual electricity use is 8,000 kWh per year. Apparently US total annual electricity use is about 4 trillion kWh, or 500 million times greater. What are the technical issues of scaling up by a factor of 500 million?

Cheers, Wayne

Unfortunately, it is much harder for grid users in general to be able to accept loss of power for indefinite periods of time that it is an individual home owner. When you buy power from the grid you expect it to be there 100% of the time, as much as you need.

PV and wind cannot provide that guarantee. As a practical matter you basically have to have backup capacity for most or all of your PV and wind generated power. It does not have to be real cheap but it is just a matter of time before it is needed. Might only be a few hours every few years.

Incidentally, I am currently working on a test stand that has a diesel genset that can go from a dead stop to full load in a few seconds. It is not real hard to do so. But those kinds of gensets would need to be available in mass quantities for the few hours they would be needed, and no one is going to want to pay for them.

I did some water treatment projects on some peaker plants that used NG fired modified jet engines to make power years ago. They could be online in under ten minutes.

So it is not like the technology to bring on generation rapidly does not exist.

Fortunately for Texas, they have a problem that money can solve. California, OTOH, there is no amount of money can solve their energy problem, because it is at its core not a technical issue, but a political one.

 

[wwhitney]

PV and wind cannot provide that guarantee.

I think you missed the "storage" component. Obviously absolutely critical part for a grid powered only by intermittent sources. Sizing the various elements to ensure the storage never runs empty is a well studied problem (see queuing theory). Backup on demand generation may still be wise.

California, OTOH, there is no amount of money can solve their energy problem, because it is at its core not a technical issue, but a political one.

The whole point of the thread is whether California's goal for the grid is technically feasible. So far I've seen nothing here that says it isn't. People have said it's politically the wrong choice, or too expensive, but where's the technical roadblock?

Cheers, Wayne