Posted on 04/20/2016 1:36:16 PM PDT by Lorianne
Solar energy records are falling left and right in California these days, as the state steams ahead toward its ambitious renewable energy goals.
But the success of solar has brought about a hidden downside: on some perfectly sunny days, solar farms are being told to turn off.
That’s because in the spring and fall, when Californians aren’t using much air conditioning and demand for electricity is low, the surge of midday solar power is more than the state can use.
It’s becoming a growing concern for those running the grid at the California Independent System Operator. At their Folsom headquarters, a team continually manages the power supply for most of the state, keeping the lights on for some 30 million people.
“It’s constantly solving a constant problem, meaning you’re always trying to balance,” says Nancy Traweek, who directs system operations for the grid.
TOO MUCH RENEWABLE POWER
On March 27, a sunny day, some solar farms had to shut down because there was more power on the grid than Californians were using.
(Excerpt) Read more at ww2.kqed.org ...
Turn them into tanning lamps?
Tax it, that’s what they do
If it moves, tax it, when it can no longer move, subsidize it!
Buy a bunch of Musk batteries.. Millions of them and build power reserve facilities to house arrays of them. Damn the smelt and tortoises.. And birds.
I’m sure some is being sold on the grid here in Nevada. Prices are actually dropping (some of that is due, I’m sure, to reduced economic activity).
Other than that, they can certainly put together some large-scale bird frying exhibits.
Why wouldn’t they have the gas-powered generators turned off instead? Oh yeah, that would affect PG&E’s profits...
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
—RR
Other forms of electrical generation power down during periods of low demand. Why is this an issue?
Summer will solve that.
Instead of shutting down the solar plants they could run giant arc welders that incinerate the mutilated carcasses of birds killed by windmills as a green energy performance art piece.
It would be so educational.
Sunny Day Tax is a solution.
remove the solar farm operating subsidies, tax credits and accelerated depreciation allowances - they will be inop within hours.
SoCal Edison has that covered. Three tier, time-of-day, pricing structure.
Seconded.
That problem was solved almost 50 years ago.
California's San Luis dam.
The secret: Pump water to a storage lake higher than the solar generating site, and as close to it as possible to minimize transmission losses.
Reverse the flow of water at night through hydro-generators to provide most of the power back into the power grid. The nighttime demand is never zero...
The only requirement is finding a nearby site for the dam/lake.
Smarter specialists than me can figure that one out...
Grand Coulee Dam in Washington utilizes this design.
Those gas generators are maintaining frequency stability of the generating system, inversely compensating for variance of solar and wind production, and preventing a blackout. They are the hot spinning reserve which can ramp up from stand-by to full output in minutes. Suggest Californians actually own the talk and shut them down for a trial run. The nuclear complement will go into emergency stand-by, leaving the turbines’ limited capacity available for reboot of the grid. When the system comes back up three days later, tell us how it all went.
The article doesn’t go much into the California utilities divestment of ownership in coal fired plants over the eastern border, feeding power to the coastal cities. A kind of hypocrisy similar to electric car owners bragging of zero emissions-—emissions displaced to the source of generation.
California was long claiming only 1% coal based generation-—the plants in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah kept the emissions in other states-—and of course no coal burning was visible to the PGE customer whom believes it all comes from solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear in that order.
And there you have it...
Government morons decide “you have to produce solar” with no clue as to variable market and weather conditions, and you ed up with this. Generating too much electricity????? a private company would never get into this position.
Why not sell it? (or would that be capitalism and so evil)
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