Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem. As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power
Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem. As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power
I'll note that right now, this is a seasonal issue, associated with moderate springtime temperatures when there is a lot of sunshine available.
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This is only a problem because of money. Maybe California should install some power storage centers in order to hold the excess for later.
Way ahead of you. This article is like propaganda against solar panels.
There's already some storage: its the #1 source of electricity during the evening peak, but realistically, we're going to want enough renewables that we sometimes see curtailment
I'm hoping to one day install some solar, and looking forward to setting up non-battery "storage" --- e.g., electric water heater that turns on when there's an excess of power, deep freezer that gets as cold as possible when there's excess power, that sort of thing. It seems thermodynamics is the relevant discipline for these sorts of "storage" methods :)
As an aside --- while smart devices are much maligned, some rudimentary smart features for matching consumption seems like a pretty good idea. (If I ever get around to this stuff it'll be local control via HomeAssistant.)
Im a fan of gravity based energy storage. Excess energy is used to raise a weight up a slope and it can be reclaimed when the weight is released.
There is a reason why energy based energy storage is not more developed right now (with the exception of Pumped-storage hydroelectricity). It's not very dense at all.
A 15 tons block of concrete that goes up 100m can only store 4kwh of energy. A 4.5kwh battery cost around 1600€.
Gravity based energy storage seem simple and elegant at first but you go into the details you realized that is far far les efficient than regular chemical battery. Unfortunately.
Absolutely! Living in a city, this gets a bit tricky though. But if I had a giant reservoir on a hill...and another one below it...
Why would you convert electricity into thermal work then back again? Why not consider old school batteries? You're already taking up space and infrastructure
Oh, I have no intention of converting that back to electricity. The goal would essentially be to maximize usage during times of cheap/marginally free energy.
Ah, that makes sense.
The only problem is they need more of it. Some cost needs to be put onto solar to fix the grid. It needs upgrading because solar is making more work for the grid.
Solar is absoultely good, but it doesn't come without costs to the grid and that money needs to be raised to upgrade it.
if you had read the article, you’d know that they are.
To cope, CAISO is selling some excess power to nearby states; California is also planning to install additional storage and batteries to hold solar power until later in the afternoon.
don’t just read the headlines y’all. not a good look.
Yeah, sorry I missed that single sentence in the article that is so plastered with ads that my phone has trouble displaying the page. I’ll be sure to do better next time.
lmao “too much work to read”
upvotedThe site is serious crap on mobile. Between all the poppins and the ads reloading to make it jump around as you read. It’s damn hard to read a full article on a lot of these news sites.
cool. still not really an excuse to make an uninformed comment. get an ad blocker or a browser with a reader mode before spreading misinformation like that lol.
I mean, it’s a pretty good excuse. The sites job is to inform people and they do a shit job of it. I’m literally checking lemmy on my phone while taking a break so when some link leads to a site that’s damn near unreadable I’m not spending my entire break futzing with settings to make it readable. Like I said, I’ll do better next time.
oops sorry i read “i’ll do better next time” as sarcasm at first. that’s on me, totally my fault.
idk what app you use but Voyager has a setting that lets me open all links in reader mode. i believe other apps i have tried also have this option. and adblock plus works great 👍