Grid greening

[stoveliker]

An interesting analysis.

The Math Does Not Support New York’s Climate Plan - Empire Center for Public Policy

I am not anti-renewable and I am not a climate denier. What I am is an engineer that lives by numbers. The numbers underpinning the CLCPA—namely the belief that New York can replace most of its natural gas-fired electricity generation with renewables in the next six or even nine years—are a fantasy.

www.empirecenter.org

 

[EbS-P]

Good article…. Two thoughts

Is 100% up time realistic? Can forecasted demand and active load management reduce peak demand by enough to achieve goals?

I think businesses need separate considerations vs residential and even then there are probably different tiers of businesses. A short outage at a semiconductor facility will scrap weeks of productions. But a large retail even with refrigerated storage an outage would be disruptive but not cost weeks of productivity.

Building code should keep up with the new realities. My battery can power my house with AC running for a few hours. Yes it’s expensive but it’s also convenient. Maybe 3-4% of the total building cost. Or less than the listing fee of a Realtor.

Second thought…. Is the green energy revolution being limited by generation or transmission. My somewhat informed opinion is that today we have a transmission capacity issue.

 

[stoveliker]

He touches on both. In population dense centers, generation would have to be outsourced to other areas ("upstate"). But the numbers he quotes are for generation power replacement - and I believe his point is that total power transmission will go up with renewables because of space and generation (where's wind) issues. And thus *more* renewable power generation needs to be installed than fossil generation that is taken offline.

(And to your personal situation; if you put it in that way [ 3-4% of building cost for a few hours of AC convenience], I'd think that investment would be hard to justify for me. Instead building code maybe should be updated not with "site convenience" in mind, but with grid stability in mind... as a lot of such "few hour" battery systems could quite help keep things stable if they are actively managed from the grid.)

 

[woodgeek]

Ugh. A rambling post by a guy in the energy industry (for decades) who loves gas fired CHP. He seems to take as a given the lithium-ion batteries have many deficiencies and so cannot be part of a solution. Even saying that supercapacitors are a better solution (contrary to what the market and investors are saying).

So yeah, when you try to imagine a future all renewable grid __without batteries__ you come to the conclusion that it can't be done, or can't be done at reasonable cost. QED. LOL. Sound the alarm!!

Any future all renewable power system will require stupid cheap intermittent inputs (solar and wind and TBD) combined with reasonably cheap batteries. The optimization then becomes one of overproducing renewable energy (to reduce battery need) or building more batteries. The overproduced energy will be 'given away' to low cost consumer like crypto miners and datacenters and desalination plants, depending on the location.

Of course, if the 'optimum' you reach that way trying to get to 100% is above the cost of natural gas energy, guess what... you will build an 80 or 90% renewable system with 10 or 20% gas. That is the current 'plan' such as one exists.

Can batteries really scale? Yes... there are enough minerals out there already discovered. And their projected footprint is quite manageable. Other storage modalities like compressed air and pumped hydro are not scalable... many of the best sites are already taken.

We CAN debate how cheap batteries can get, and how long it will take to scale them. Whether that is possible on NYS timeline is unknown. But to start the debate by saying that batteries are not a thing? Pfft. Good luck with that.

 

[EbS-P]

He touches on both. In population dense centers, generation would have to be outsourced to other areas ("upstate"). But the numbers he quotes are for generation power replacement - and I believe his point is that total power transmission will go up with renewables because of space and generation (where's wind) issues. And thus *more* renewable power generation needs to be installed than fossil generation that is taken offline.

(And to your personal situation; if you put it in that way [ 3-4% of building cost for a few hours of AC convenience], I'd think that investment would be hard to justify for me. Instead building code maybe should be updated not with "site convenience" in mind, but with grid stability in mind... as a lot of such "few hour" battery systems could quite help keep things stable if they are actively managed from the grid.)

The extra cost is marketed as convenience. And the utility is paying me half the cost of the unit over 10 years for my elective participation.

 

[EbS-P]

I did find the authors point of view not very forward looking but more bottom line for his short term business. Sounds like he was “cutting edge “15 or more years ago. And now is really trying to manage day to day operations and cash flow. Boring…… but I bet his net worth has gone up way more than the cost of energy in that time frame.

 

[stoveliker]

Ugh. A rambling post by a guy in the energy industry (for decades) who loves gas fired CHP. He seems to take as a given the lithium-ion batteries have many deficiencies and so cannot be part of a solution. Even saying that supercapacitors are a better solution (contrary to what the market and investors are saying).

So yeah, when you try to imagine a future all renewable grid __without batteries__ you come to the conclusion that it can't be done, or can't be done at reasonable cost. QED. LOL. Sound the alarm!!

Any future all renewable power system will require stupid cheap intermittent inputs (solar and wind and TBD) combined with reasonably cheap batteries. The optimization then becomes one of overproducing renewable energy (to reduce battery need) or building more batteries. The overproduced energy will be 'given away' to low cost consumer like crypto miners and datacenters and desalination plants, depending on the location.

Of course, if the 'optimum' you reach that way trying to get to 100% is above the cost of natural gas energy, guess what... you will build an 80 or 90% renewable system with 10 or 20% gas. That is the current 'plan' such as one exists.

Can batteries really scale? Yes... there are enough minerals out there already discovered. And their projected footprint is quite manageable. Other storage modalities like compressed air and pumped hydro are not scalable... many of the best sites are already taken.

We CAN debate how cheap batteries can get, and how long it will take to scale them. Whether that is possible on NYS timeline is unknown. But to start the debate by saying that batteries are not a thing? Pfft. Good luck with that.

This is a response that reads like being driven by confirmation bias.

You read this piece far to general. His point is the requirement by NYS and the timeline for that.
"stupid cheap" doesn't exist yet, and indeed batteries are still very expensive.
Hence the conclusion "cost prohibitive" *within the requirements and timeline* of NYS seems valid to me.

I also think his "transmission losses will go up" argument holds water for dense population centers. (renewable generation in NYC won't ever cover the usage in NYC, and fossil powerplants have a smaller footprint so can be closer)

 

[DBoon]

"Upstate" NY (I will define that as north of Orange and Westchester counties, and that basically conforms to where the Con Ed service area ends and other utilities provide electricity) is already 85% renewable or carbon free (hydro, solar, nuclear) and there is A LOT of community solar going into upstate NY (NY installed solar PV has gone from 2 GW of capacity about 3 or 4 years ago to 6 GW of capacity, the vast majority of that is community solar and the vast majority of that is in upstate NY). Upstate NY has basically already met the plan, but there are transmission line constraints on getting excess/infinite electricity to downstate. We can see this in regional electricity bid prices (posted by NYISO) in the spring and fall collapsing or going negative (a sign that there is excess renewable generation) in upstate NY when it is both a sunny and windy day. In two or three more years, I could imagine consistently low wholesale electricity bids from 9 am to 4 pm in the spring and fall. The problem is that there doesn't appear to (yet) be enough battery storage so wholesale rates peak a lot in the evenings (when fossil-fueled and peaker plants are running). In summer and winter, prices are stable during the day, so there is still more renewable capacity needed for those times of the year. But if upstate NY installed modest amounts of storage they could be 100% renewable (I would think) in the very near future.

The problem is downstate NY (as the author describes). When Cuomo closed the 2 GW Indian Point nuclear reactor in Buchanan, NY (Westchester County, or downstate) and replaced it with a (nearly equally sized) gas generation plant in Dover, NY (Dutchess County, about 40 miles north) and a gas plant in Orange County, the downstate percentage of renewables or carbon free electricity collapsed from about 30% (working from memory) to about 15% - they've gone backwards. They are banking on offshore wind to provide nearly 10 GW of capacity to Long Island and NY City, and those projects are way behind schedule and/or have to be rebid because the early bid winners backed out of the projects when their costs escalated after the pandemic. That is the big problem for downstate.

In response, NY is building a 1200 MW HVDC line from Quebec to downstate NY (operational in 2026, per the plan) which would at least make up partially for the Indian Point fiasco. The cost is $6 billion (wow!) up front and (amortized over 20 years with zero interest (because it is morning and I am not going to do the interest calculations) is 3 cents/kWh just to move the cheap hydro from Quebec to 300 miles south. That is a lot (and is really more with interest costs). But they need the offshore wind projects and they need them fast to really up the renewables percentage downstate. There are other small research projects or improvements planned for the NY state transmission grid, but nothing that moves the needle in any major way.

Complicating things is as of 20 years ago (I doubt it has changed), NY City was required to get 80% of its electricity from generation within NY City and Long Island had to get 98% of its electricity from generation within Long Island. This was done to ensure that overall reliability in these reasonably transmission isolated/constrained regions would not be compromised. So unless you put renewable energy projects in those regions (i.e., offshore wind, massive solar with battery storage) you are not going to get NY state to 80% (or more) renewables. The author does have a point that the goals will probably not be met, but he gets the real reasons wrong - its not that we won't build the transmission lines because they will be too costly (and they would be and are too costly) but it is because those regions are mandated to regionally develop renewable generation at huge scale, and there seems to be an all-in bet on offshore wind that is likely to be wrong (at the minimum, delayed by many years).

The author does seem stuck in the past and seems very narrow-minded on the future. Supercapacitors as an alternative to lithium ion batteries? OK....why not consider lithium ferro phosphate batteries? $140k is too much to expand a gas line to power a generator? Jeez, he spent probably a lot more than that on everything else. Kudos to him for making some smart, forward-looking investments back 15-20 years ago (rooftop solar, CHP system), but his current assessments of solutions and costs seem pretty weird nowadays, and I personally (as a degreed electrical engineer) am always suspicious of people who say "I should know because I have a (insert name) degree from blah blah blah", so my red flags were already waving.

He is also in the very small minority of business owners who would make those kinds of investments. Most business owners just want to buy power from utilities, as do most residences. It would be smart for NY state to direct more of their solar PV incentives to downstate to encourage more residential solar PV in that region and less in the upstate region (where there is plenty of installed solar PV planned) but that is probably politically unfeasible. Still, in a region that pays (by now) probably (on average) 30 cents/kWh for electricity, you would think more residences would have solar PV installed by now - the payback period would be very short at those rates, I am guessing a 3-5 year payback.

 

[EbS-P]

What I want to see is a cost breakdown at the customer level of grid scale green generation and storage versus private. There must be a reason my utility is paying me nearly 10k back on my solar plus battery system.

All the antidotal data I’ve seen is that for regions with high electric costs it’s now cheaper to install large scale lithium batteries than use existing combine cycle natural gas. (This was in California). And I just think we will be seeing the first IRA dollars spent in the coming year.

And this transmission issues it’s just an urban thing. We’ve been farming around power poles for many years. And the leases they pay generally decent.

Lawmakers press for restrictions on transmission lines - High Plains Journal

Sens. Moran, Marshall, Rep. Mann introduce legislation to protect Kansans’ private property rights in regard to transmission lines.

hpj.com

 

[woodgeek]

This is a response that reads like being driven by confirmation bias.

You read this piece far to general. His point is the requirement by NYS and the timeline for that.
"stupid cheap" doesn't exist yet, and indeed batteries are still very expensive.
Hence the conclusion "cost prohibitive" *within the requirements and timeline* of NYS seems valid to me.

I also think his "transmission losses will go up" argument holds water for dense population centers. (renewable generation in NYC won't ever cover the usage in NYC, and fossil powerplants have a smaller footprint so can be closer)

I read the essay again, and liked it less the second time. I learned that lithium batteries burn at 2600°F, and he didn't tell me at what temperature natural gas burns. LOL.

If he was saying that NYS was going to come into his factory in the next few years and shut it down unless he switches to an all electrical process... I would feel for him getting out the pitchforks. But NYS is not doing that. They are trying to green and expand their grid on an aggressive schedule, and I didn't see any note about how they were going to ban the use of gas to existing industrial customers.

How do they plan to green their grid? A lot of utility solar, wind and batteries. All he has to say is that solar and wind are intermittent (and he can't fit enough on his factory roof to run his factory), and that batteries are not an option. His experience as an older electrical engineer means we should just believe him when he says that.

But apparently policy makers in many states and the Fed govt, along with private investors, think that utility solar and grid batteries are pretty peachy.

According to EIA, the US will install 37 GW capacity solar in 2024. If you assume a 0.2 CF for that solar, you get the same production as 7 GW plants with 100% uptime, or maybe the same as 9 large (1 GW) nuke plants. In one year, still growing.

U.S. power grid added 20.2 GW of generating capacity in the first half of 2024 - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

The US also installed 7 GW of grid batteries (I assume with a 4h capacity). That is some pretty good scale.

I guess all those policy makers and investors are confused about what a bad plan this is. Investors in California AND Texas.

A little googling suggests that utility solar runs about $1W installed, all in. With a 20+ year lifespan, a brownfield site should be able to make solar for <$0.05/kWh (assuming a 0.2 CF). I'd call that 'stupid cheap'. And expect install rates to climb as interest rate fall.

EV batteries are <$100/kWh now (cell price). At thousands of cycles, that is also down around $0.10/kWh and below.

There ARE real limits regarding getting to 100% RE in many regions, esp the Northeast, which needs a lot of energy in the winter when the sun is hidden. But there is little difficulty getting to >50% Solar + Wind + Battery (SWB) in any state in the lower 48, and doing so affordably, with current prices and tech. As prices fall, that 50% number will rise.

grid losses? I thought those were <8% total.

 

[stoveliker]

Fair enough

 

[woodgeek]

Came across this today, re the rise of solar...

Solar power continues to surge in 2024

Analysis of national monthly data for solar capacity additions shows that the world will once again beat forecasts.

ember-climate.org

Headline number of global capacity additions for solar is 593 GW in 2024, with 334 GW of that being in China (!) alone, and compared to the 37 GW for the US I quoted above. (this source thinks the US figure will be closer to 50 GW in 2024).

You might almost conclude that the US (awash in cheap fossil fuels) is simply bringing up the rear on solar.

Assuming a 0.20 CF, the 2024 global additions figure corresponds to a production equivalent to 118 plants each cranking out 1 GW continuously, or the same as 140 large (1 GW class) nuke plants. Google says that the existing global nuke fleet has a capacity of 390 GW, so with a 0.9 CF that is about 350 GW of continuous power.

So 2024 solar additions produce about 40% as much energy as the entire global legacy nuke fleet.

How much solar is installed at end of 2024? The BNEF prediction in the same link says 2200 GW capacity, which according to the math above is about 1.25X the existing global nuke fleet. Solar passed nuclear this year on a global basis. Who's gonna tell Bill Gates?

Projections for 2030 (only 6 years from now) are for that global capacity figure to triple to ~6600 GW. About a 18% CAGR.

Should we invest in supercapacitors and burn those useless lithium batteries for heat in the winter?

 

[stoveliker]

Yes, nice.
The point is that large scale storage (GWh) is not feasible yet while GWs generation are being switched on during the day and off during the night.

It's not ideal if 70 Nukes (half the 140 for half the world in daylight) get switched on each day and off each night.

Generation is great but it's outpacing storage.

Distributed semi-large storage seems like a high need.

Also to your love affair with lithium batteries, why would it be, you think, that there are billions of dollars being spent (by the "market and a investors") on battery research, if the lithium batteries we have are already the holy Grail you seem to make them to be?

 

[begreen]

There are other technologies being used for grid-scale storage.

Grid-scale batteries: They’re not just lithium

When size and weight don't matter, lots of other battery chemistries can work.

arstechnica.com

 

[stoveliker]

Sure. I quote "we have a lot of rapid scale up..." Etc.

The point is that generation has been scaled up but storage lags behind. And that's the issue the original article focused on as a main problem. (Regardless of what type of storage as I agree the fire issue is not born out by statistics.)

 

[EbS-P]

Large grid storage will be coming on line “soon”.

85MW for 100 hours.

Form Energy set to build world’s biggest battery in Maine

The long-duration storage pioneer won DOE grant money to construct a massive iron-air battery intended to help a strained pocket of the New England grid.

www.canarymedia.com

 

[begreen]

Large grid storage will be coming on line “soon”.

85MW for 100 hours.

Form Energy set to build world’s biggest battery in Maine

The long-duration storage pioneer won DOE grant money to construct a massive iron-air battery intended to help a strained pocket of the New England grid.

www.canarymedia.com

Yes, this type of flow battery is what I was mentioning as the alternative to lithium based tech.

 

[woodgeek]

Yes, nice.
The point is that large scale storage (GWh) is not feasible yet while GWs generation are being switched on during the day and off during the night.

It's not ideal if 70 Nukes (half the 140 for half the world in daylight) get switched on each day and off each night.

Generation is great but it's outpacing storage.

Distributed semi-large storage seems like a high need.

Also to your love affair with lithium batteries, why would it be, you think, that there are billions of dollars being spent (by the "market and a investors") on battery research, if the lithium batteries we have are already the holy Grail you seem to make them to be?

Yes. Storage is definitely lagging generation. The main factor there I think is that at low solar and wind penetration you don't need storage. And as big as those global generation numbers are, its still probably about 7% of global electric generation. If it were spread out, we wouldn't need any storage yet. Since most grids can handle 15-20% intermittent generation without any batteries.

So we are seeing storage being installed in markets with high solar penetration. California, Hawaii, Australia, and more recently parts of China. The batteries in Texas are mostly being used to replace gas peakers (and steal their profits). In fact, analysis has shown that Texas batteries actually increase fossil equipment utilization!

Billions are being spent on battery research bc the technology is still improving and coming down in price. A lot of that research is in mass production, cost reduction, and includes removal of things like cobalt. If you're not doing research (or contracting with someone who is) your products will be not cost competitive in a few years and you will be out of business.

Also, I think most nukes are unhappy cycling daily. So natural gas is best suited to backing up solar and wind. Fortunately we have plenty of that. ETA: Sorry... I misunderstood... you weren't suggesting cycling nukes.

If the article had gone into some cost or technical or material limitation of batteries, that would've been fine. but he skipped it.

 

[EbS-P]

In fact, analysis has shown that Texas batteries actually increase fossil equipment utilization!

Got a link?

I think most nukes are unhappy cycling daily.

Really?? Three mile island is bringing a reactor back online for a MS data center.

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-microsoft-ai

 

[woodgeek]

Got a link?

Really?? Three mile island is bringing a reactor back online for a MS data center.

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-microsoft-ai

Batteries: https://www.volts.wtf/p/grid-scale-batteries-do-not-currently

Didn't see anything about the 'New TMI' cycling daily...

 

[EbS-P]

Batteries: https://www.volts.wtf/p/grid-scale-batteries-do-not-currently

Didn't see anything about the 'New TMI' cycling daily...

Didn’t mean to say TMI is cycling just that more mics are come back online presumably because their uptake and carbon foot print.

I didn’t realize they were cycling nukes.

Here is the most recent version of the white paper by Tera climate. Didn’t read it off to do more yard work.

 

[stoveliker]

If it were spread out, we wouldn't need any storage yet. Since most grids can handle 15-20% intermittent generation without any batteries.

Spread out generation doesn't take the issue of night power usage out of the picture

 

[woodgeek]

Spread out generation doesn't take the issue of night power usage out of the picture

Sure. But greening the grid has stages...

In Stage 1, intermittent renewables displace fossil fuels, up to about 20% of energy produced, and do that without major changes to the grid, mostly by throttling gas generation (which has excess capacity in much of the US). Batteries are not required in this stage, and if you do build them they act like peakers and have minimal climate impact bc they actually store fossil generation for use later.

Fossils back up RE in this stage during nighttime and cloudy days. Also lots of things like coal get retired and replaced by gas here, so long as gas prices stay low (aided by demand reduction from solar).

In Stage 2, RE exceeds 20% of energy produced on the grid, and this means that RE generation exceeds demand during some days (like sunny weekends). This production must either be curtailed (which is low cost, but dents profits) or stored in a battery (ignoring things like pumped storage). Which of these two things you choose depends on the cost of power you are getting and the cost of batteries. Given the cosine curve of conventional solar, you can also install your solar east/west to flatten the production curve, but again at lower over production per installed Watt (as you know). Batteries that you DO install to overcome curtailment only need to store a fraction of the produced energy and sell it back during early evening high demand period (say 4 hours).

Ultimately, maxing out batteries in this scheme would allow production following demand from midmorning to early evening on sunny days, which would typically be more than 50% of total daily demand.

Fossils (mostly gas) still back up RE in this stage on cloudy days and during nightime after the 4 hour batteries are spent. Maybe 30%-50% of total demand depending on local solar resource. So RE covers 50-70% of energy.

In Stage 3, you need to build build BIGGER batteries and arrays to cover evening demand, and also partly cloudy days. Now you can get to 75-90% of energy depending on local solar resource and wind mix.

Chasing that last 10-25% of fossils off the grid (Stage 4) is hard. It will likely not happen in some regions for some time. Regions with hydro and legacy nukes can get to 100% carbon free electricity in Stage 2 or 3.

So, most places in the US are still in Stage 1. California and Hawaii and arguably Texas are in Stage 2. So that is where the batteries are at.

For decades, people argued that solar could never get over 1% of energy, too expensive. Then they argued that the grid would collapse if RE went over 5-10% of energy, too intermittent. Then they argued that over 10-15% curtailment would be necessary and further expansion would be impossible economically. Those arguments were based on the ideas that grid batteries would never work.

And yet here we are, in a world with grid batteries being deployed, but only where they make sense and then seemingly rather small (bc Stage 2). And that is what it looks like when RE energy production is >20% and <50%. And ofc those grid batteries have a learning curve, so they will get better and cheaper as more are built. So the fact that they are being fielded (rather than sitting on a bench in a lab) is really important. Watch this space.

Regarding the original post column, the author is arguing that the NYS goals (to reach into Stage 2 by 2030) are impossible, but assumes that grid batteries don't exist. This seems to me to be common thinking from about a decade ago, that Solar was nice and all, but would never exceed 20% of energy. Since the NYS goal is to exceed that, of course he thinks it impossible.

 

[stoveliker]

I think he simply recognizes that storage is far behind and that therefore the stages (that form the basis of his piece, so I'm not sure why you emphasize that here as if that wasn't clear...) as you describe them won't allow the timeline posited by NYS to be achieved.

 

[woodgeek]

I think he simply recognizes that storage is far behind and that therefore the stages (that form the basis of his piece, so I'm not sure why you emphasize that here as if that wasn't clear...) as you describe them won't allow the timeline posited by NYS to be achieved.

Sure. But he's not saying that batteries are too expensive, or unlikely to come down in price, or can't be built at scale. He is just putting them aside and talking about supercapacitors.

Its a form (in my opinion) of negative argumentation with a long history in the renewable energy area. If there is a solution that exists, but is not at scale or at the desired price point YET, then just say its not a solution, put it aside, and say that we need to do more research on other options (e.g. supercapacitors).

I see it as a form of concern trolling (by the columnist, not by you). "I am a huge fan of solar energy, and have panels on my roof myself, BUT, blah blah blah" ignoring the well known solutions to blah blah blah.

To be more specific, there were a lot of renewable energy fans in the 2010s who were very worried that we could never get to a 100% carbon free grid with just solar and wind and batteries. They were usually trying to sell new nukes. For example, Bill Gates.

To be fair they DO have a point. There are regions, including the Northeast and Northern Europe where getting to 100% electricity without a good amount of nukes and hydro is hard. Especially is you want to electrify all industrial production. These areas are already building (or planning to build) offshore wind, or transmission to hydro, bc of this known (projected) problem.

But I don't think NYS is trying to get to zero carbon by 2030 (correct me if I'm wrong), just to some lower carbon target (like 70% of renewables, S+W+H). So I don't see the problem for the 2030 plan... which is likely achievable (or nearly so) with a buildout of SWB, and some new transmission to hydro.