When Renewable Energy Meets Power Grid Operations

[essenmein]

Haven't we rejected "greenness is the goal" several times already in this thread?

It was rejected by some people, a rejection I don't agree with, mostly because it does not reflect discussions and motivations behind renewable push in the pubic sphere, this is almost entirely centered around climate change, at least from what I've seen/heard.

 

[anorlunda]

It was rejected by some people, a rejection I don't agree with, mostly because it does not reflect discussions and motivations behind renewable push in the pubic sphere, this is almost entirely centered around climate change, at least from what I've seen/heard.

You're entitled to your opinion. In #33 I said:

Solar PV and Wind power are wonderfully attractive technology. Not since Niagara Falls (hydro power) have we found something so close to free and unlimited sources. Carbon concerns aside, it would be foolish to not exploit those technologies as much as we can. So it is unnecessary to push carbon as a priority higher than keeping the lights on.

Solar and wind will be expanded and utilized ASAP with or without climate concerns. They continue to have competitive cost advantages that assure that they generate as much as practical without giving them any unfair advantages. With less confidence, I also believe that withdrawal of all subsidies, priorities, and preferences would not slow down the growth of renewables significantly.

So my opinion is that solar/wind have gotten a tremendous boost in attention because they are green, but now they are just attractive power generation technologies independent of their green qualities.

Also IMO, the goal is reliable and affordable power is the goal, green or brown. Without power, we loose the ability to move anything forward or make anything greener. We have forgotten how to run civilization without electric power.

 

[PeterDonis]

We have forgotten how to run civilization without electric power

I don't think it's just a matter of forgetting. Civilization as we have it now has added a lot of features that are only enabled by having ubiquitous electric power. (The medium by which we are having this conversation is one of those features.) Those features would have to be given up if we somehow lost all electric power, which doesn't seem like a very attractive option. But there is certainly much to be gained from figuring out how to still provide those same features but with less electric power, or at least less electric power that requires costly infrastructure to generate and distribute.

For example, even if solar panels on my roof can't always provide enough power by themselves to run my refrigerator and air conditioner, they probably can provide enough power to keep the batteries on every digital device in my house charged; and with not that much battery backup they can probably keep all of the LED light bulbs in my house (which is now every light bulb in my house) on for the times that we have them on. They might even be able, with not too much battery backup, be able to keep the LED TV on for the times that we have it on. Up to now we have just powered all that stuff using 120V AC outlets, with a lot of AC/DC converters attached to individual devices, because that was easy and cheap. But there might come a point where on net it is actually more cost effective to uncouple low power devices from that 120VAC grid.

 

[essenmein]

So my opinion is that solar/wind have gotten a tremendous boost in attention because they are green, but now they are just attractive power generation technologies independent of their green qualities.

Also IMO, the goal is reliable and affordable power is the goal, green or brown. Without power, we loose the ability to move anything forward or make anything greener. We have forgotten how to run civilization without electric power.

This seems contradictory to me, especially when viewed with the context of the article.

Your opening paragraph and the first sentence of the next:
"The electric power industry faces much turmoil in the coming decades. The business model of of the electric utility company (public or private) may not survive. In addition, the power needs of high density cities may diverge significantly from non-urban areas causing political turmoil and technical hurdles.

The increasing share of renewable energy will be a major factor in the turmoil."

Then you say:
"So my opinion is that solar/wind have gotten a tremendous boost in attention because they are green, but now they are just attractive power generation technologies independent of their green qualities. "

How can a power generation technology be so attractive when they are, as you yourself identified, a large threat to:
"Also IMO, the goal is reliable and affordable power, green or brown." (note removed duplication)

Your opening paragraph is basically saying in a nice way, that reliable, and therefore affordable power is being directly threatened by a select few "attractive generating technologies".

Which to me doesn't actually make them that attractive.

Consider this scenario:
You've changed your generation method to be purely hydro and nuclear, no wind, no solar (ie meeting the climate change requirements of zero carbon).

Does the problem outlined in your article exist?

 

[anorlunda]

This seems contradictory to me, especially when viewed with the context of the article.

Fair point. The thread is caused by the rate of change of new technology, and by the property of these two new sources that their marginal costs for the next MW are nearly zero.

I am neutral regarding all technologies that can service the grid. I do not advocate for or against any such technology. What I fear is chaos, or disruptive changes that threaten reliable affordable supply.

So I guess it does sound like a paradox. The attractiveness and low prices of solar/wind threaten to bring change so fast that chaos could result. I think I made the analogy of reupholstering the seats in your car while you drive down the highway. That does not mean new upholstery is bad.

 

[essenmein]

I think I made the analogy of reupholstering the seats in your car while you drive down the highway. That does not mean new upholstery is bad.

You did, the problem as I see it though is that society has convinced itself that the only way to reupholster a car is to do it while driving on a highway (intermittent renewable), when in reality the smart way is to pull into a workshop and get it done right, because let's face it, if done at highway speeds the workmanship, ie quality, will suffer.

We can solve this without causing chaos, so why pursue the chaotic route?

 

[CWatters]

Renewables continue to grow in the UK. Recent news is that the Britain has managed to go a week without burning coal for power generation, a first time this has happened for over 130 years...

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/09/health/uk-coal-electricity-renewables-health-scli-intl/index.html

 

[mfb]

The UK basically replaced coal by gas and a bit of renewables in the last 30 years. 40% of the electricity is produced from gas now. 20% nuclear power, 10% wind, 9% coal, 8% biomass, 3% solar, 1.5% hydro, 8% oil and other (data from 2016).

Only 13% renewables that depend on the weather.

I don't think this qualifies as a valid source. I don't see a reference to an actual peer-reviewed paper.

Check the right edge.
I agree that more discussion of that would be off-topic.

 

[PeterDonis]

Check the right edge.

Ah, got it. My sideways reading skills are a little rusty...

 

[anorlunda]

when in reality the smart way is to pull into a workshop and get it done right

What are you saying? It sounds like you want to have society sit in the dark during renovations.

 

[essenmein]

What are you saying? It sounds like you want to have society sit in the dark during renovations.

lol like all analogies, they fall apart if you ask to much of them!

There is no reason we can't change to clean reliable power without disruption.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks so, and things are moving in this direction, just a little more out of the media spot light:

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/na...ctors-can-solve-canadas-climate-change-crises

 

[mfb]

The one big downside of nuclear power is the poor acceptance in the population - mainly coming from people who have no idea about the topic.

 

[CWatters]

The UK basically replaced coal by gas and a bit of renewables in the last 30 years. 40% of the electricity is produced from gas now. 20% nuclear power, 10% wind, 9% coal, 8% biomass, 3% solar, 1.5% hydro, 8% oil and other (data from 2016).

Only 13% renewables that depend on the weather.Check the right edge.

Things are changing very rapidly in the UK. One sources says that in 2018 around 33% of the UKs electricity generation came from renewable sources and in Q2 wind alone produced 37%.

Government data says renewable generating capacity increased 10% in 2018 alone. Think mostly offshore wind

 

[merriam]

To some degree, transmission lines can replace

Sorry to be slow to respond. I was very busy yesterday.Talk about risks. My article was so wordy that I'm afraid that not everyone read it to the end. Sure there are captital costs, fuel costs, maintenance, operating, marginal, average and more. But there are also multiple sources of revenues to the owners, not just kWh energy.

The energy market described in the article uses primarily marginal costs to determine the optimum, and it compensates the owners for their marginal operating costs.

The ICAP payments, directly compensate owners for their capital costs. To a lesser extent, so do payments for providers of reserves, frequency control, and voltage support. All of those payments are for capabilities, not for generating energy.

I think the debate in this thread about marginal costs was caused by an attempt to assign all types of costs on to one measure, one kWh of energy. That oversimplification ignores those other forms of revenue streams.

Those markets I described were designed by the actual participants. That means the people who buy and sell wholesale power. The designs are constantly tweaked. All those people, each looking out for their self interest assures that no source of value, goes unrewarded. But again, let me stress I speak of wholesale markets, not retail. They are transparent and open for scrutiny, but they seldom attract press attention because it is so difficult to relate what happens there to a consumer's monthly bill. Remember, I mention in the article wholesale prices change every 15 minutes, but rates charged to retail customers are set by law and typically stay constant for a year or more.You're correct, in southern California home rooftop solar has already grown to a very significant portion.

• Net metering, which is wildly popular among homeowners, is not sustainable if the portion of solar gets too large. With net metering, the PV owner is using the grid to provide the functionality of a Tesla Powerwall, but with someone else paying the costs. That's not sustainable at a large scale.
• Retail rate structures can be modified. Imagine a limiting case where every homeowner is self-sufficient for energy production, but they still want a grid connection for backup. There would be zero revenue to the utility for kWh charges. In that case, the obvious solution is to switch to a backup service monthly fee, and forget about kWh charges
• As you point out, there can be contradictions between the grids needs and various government mandates. That is what I mean by destabilizing factors. We can ignore them if the fraction is small, but as it gets larger we get forced to restructure, both technically and economically.
• There is one such restructuring movement underway in several states. That is to create a third layer. So called-agreggators form a buffer between retail consumers and the wholesale markets. The aggregator might offer "a deal" to say 1 million PV home owners, and represent the aggregate resource as a single wealthy and knoledgeable participant in the wholesale markets. I remain skeptical of this idea, but it is an attempt to bridge the transition between central power plant domination, to distributed consumer generation domination. (In the meantime, distribution engineers pull out their hair over protection against faults and short circuits, made complicated by distributed generation. That's a different domain than bulk power engineering.)
• If we take Russ' concerns to the extreme, then we need to revise the wholesale level to use something other than money to determine optimum. I mentioned that in the article, and I also mentioned my fears about such changes because of the risk of creating loopholes that allow cheating and stealing on a huge scale.

When tinkering with such critical things as the electric infrastructure, and hundreds of billions of dollars, the word prudence ranks extremely high in the minds of designers. But the prudence of central planning is hard to apply to a wild-west environment where every homeowner makes his independent decisions and who also lobbies his congressman.

I should also mention a huge factor the article doesn't address. How specifically are owners of power transmission lines compensated for their investments and services? That is even more abstract and difficult to understand than energy generators/consumers. It can also be big bucks, with up to $3 billion for each major new line. And with renewable advocates calling for 250K new miles of HVDC lines in America, and 500K new km in Europe, the magnitude of the transmission problem could itself become dominant.

In the article, I allude to political problems if the needs of high density cities diverge from everyone else. Distributed generation and high rise apartment buildings don't dance well with each other. In the USA, it is roughly a 50-50 split between people in single-family multi-family dwellings. That same split has a high correlation to red/blue political views which makes it even more volatile.

I love this topic precisely because it requires so many disciplines. Energy conservation, Ohms Law, economics, politics, cybersecurity. To me, it will never be boring.

To some degree, transmission lines can replace generating capacity or energy storage. The sun is always shining somewhere and transmission of power can overcome the dark. But transmission lines cost money and will usually charge for their use. Say something about other ways that utilities handle this - capacity charges, time of use charges, and special charges for anticipated high demand periods.

 

[Astronuc]

A relevant article from the UK with a perspective of off-shore wind and reduced grid inertia, which makes frequency control more difficult.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/britain-green-energy-disaster-awful-050000590.html

 

[russ_watters]

I was also thinking about this insight, as there has been a lot of reporting this spring about negative electricity prices in Europe due to oversupply:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/this-is...es-go-negative-as-springtime-renewables-soar/

Thoughts, @anorlunda ...?

 

[Fisherman199]

A relevant article from the UK with a perspective of off-shore wind and reduced grid inertia, which makes frequency control more difficult.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/britain-green-energy-disaster-awful-050000590.html

On a related note, many PPAs are in dispute for off-shore wind in NY area. procurements are state-sanctioned but build-outs just aren't economical. Firms are trying to renegotiate left and right.

 

[Fisherman199]

A relevant article from the UK with a perspective of off-shore wind and reduced grid inertia, which makes frequency control more difficult.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/britain-green-energy-disaster-awful-050000590.html

I'm not @anorlunda but I remember reading some moons ago that there were inversion technologies which solved the inertia question. Inertial signal can be essentially replicated on the grid level. That said, to my memory, I have not read in any interconnection study where this sort of technology has been requested or implemented.