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Renewable Energy Saving Texas' Ass Right Now

Horn Under a Bad Sign

By Horn Under a Bad Sign
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troph

troph 24500

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Outstanding news. We are too late but we still may figure this out.  Now finish developing the atmospheric shop vacs and get them out there to suck CO2 out. 

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Captainant

Captainant 27251

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22 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

I hear from a lot of friends that they'd be more accepting of wind turbines but for the fact that "they kill so many birds."

It turns out that wind turbines kill far fewer birds than the fossil fuel power production that they replace:

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds

 

Lol that's the stupid trump line from like 2019 when he was saying windmills cause cancer. 

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elfenix

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i missed this last month

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Pioneering developers started inaugurating battery plants in 2021, making use of the state’s cheap and abundant land and rapid permitting, and the power market’s low barriers to entry. The first cohort of batteries made a lot of money for their owners, companies like Broad Reach Power, Eolian, Jupiter Power, and Plus Power. These original venturers doubled down with bigger, longer-lasting storage projects, and a wave of followers charged in close behind.

That brings us to today. Texas rolled into 2024 with some 5.1 gigawatts of energy storage online, second only to mighty California. But the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts Texas will complete another 6.4 gigawatts this year, outstripping California’s 5.2 gigawatts of new construction. ERCOT expects to end the year with approximately 11 gigawatts online. Analyst firm BloombergNEF, by contrast, predicts Texas will build a more modest 4.3 gigawatts, somewhat less than the company’s expectation for California’s new battery construction. But even that more modest forecast would nearly double Texas’ existing battery fleet.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/how-texas-became-the-hottest-battery-market-in-the-country-energy-storage

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bolverk

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16 minutes ago, elfenix said:

i missed this last month

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/how-texas-became-the-hottest-battery-market-in-the-country-energy-storage

About a week ago, Samsung announced it would build a battery storage facility outside my hometown, and a separate solar project is also coming online next year. This is in addition to the 4-5 wind farms already in the county.

Renewable energy is plentiful in Texas; it's only a matter of capturing, storing, and transmitting it. But we're getting there.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 104239

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9 minutes ago, bolverk said:

About a week ago, Samsung announced it would build a battery storage facility outside my hometown, and a separate solar project is also coming online next year. This is in addition to the 4-5 wind farms already in the county.

Renewable energy is plentiful in Texas; it's only a matter of capturing, storing, and transmitting it. But we're getting there.

Don't worry....the O&G industry is lobbying HARD at the lege, ERCOT, and the PUC to crush battery storage/make it nonviable economically.  NPRR 1186 (rule) is shit.  https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ercot-battery-capacity-rule-NPRR-1186-state-of-charge-SOC/697653/#:~:text=from your inbox.-,New ERCOT battery rule could limit energy storage use in,Eolian CEO Aaron Zubaty said.

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Horn Under a Bad Sign

Horn Under a Bad Sign 20338

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Texas set a new solar record yesterday. At 1:15 p.m., 20,800 megawatts were generated via solar. At that time, it was blazingly hot across Texas, but solar provided more than 25% of supply. Despite the high demand, wholesale power prices were below 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

TLDR:  No matter what O&G do, they're not going to be able to stop this transformation. It's just too good of an idea.  And prices continue to fall. 

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Captainant

Captainant 27251

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7 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Texas set a new solar record yesterday. At 1:15 p.m., 20,800 megawatts were generated via solar. At that time, it was blazingly hot across Texas, but solar provided more than 25% of supply. Despite the high demand, wholesale power prices were below 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

TLDR:  No matter what O&G do, they're not going to be able to stop this transformation. It's just too good of an idea.  And prices continue to fall. 

Well, they can continue to stymie efforts to build out more transmission capacity, effectively stranding that power. And they also changed the ERCOT rules to make it uneconomical to run battery storage (you're penalized for discharging, effectively), so it really amplifies one of the weaknesses of renewables.

They're not gonna go down without a fight, that's for damn sure.

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texasdago

texasdago 7544

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On 6/19/2024 at 9:59 AM, Brisketexan said:

Don't worry....the O&G industry is lobbying HARD at the lege, ERCOT, and the PUC to crush battery storage/make it nonviable economically.  NPRR 1186 (rule) is shit.  https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ercot-battery-capacity-rule-NPRR-1186-state-of-charge-SOC/697653/#:~:text=from your inbox.-,New ERCOT battery rule could limit energy storage use in,Eolian CEO Aaron Zubaty said.

To be fair, the companies that service the majors... companies like Schlumberger, Halliburton, NOV, Baker Hughes are all expanding their efforts on hydrogen and other renewables like wind, solar, etc.  Same goes for Saudi Arabian companies... https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/saudis-alfanar-build-35-bln-green-hydrogen-project-egypt-2022-08-29/ 

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swraith

swraith 335

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The growth of solar generation in ERCOT over the past couple of years has been truly astounding.  "Peak" load in the afternoon has already hit a point of less concern than in prior years.  This is ERCOT load curve for 8/18/2024.  (credit goes to www.gridstatus.io for graph)

Blue line is classic load shape.  That 4pm peak in the summer, was for decades, our concern for "running out" of generation during peak usage. 

Green line is net load, so load minus wind and solar generation.  4pm is no longer the concern in the summer.  We are approaching a point where we are not supply constrained for thermal generation at 4pm.  The concern is shifting to sunset (post 7pm in summer) when solar starts to fade off.  As batteries continue to fill in that evening peak, the grid is going to continue to evolve.  

image.png.b7b70f8d2f203978c447a0fbe45182cf.png

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troph

troph 24500

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4 hours ago, swraith said:

The growth of solar generation in ERCOT over the past couple of years has been truly astounding.  "Peak" load in the afternoon has already hit a point of less concern than in prior years.  This is ERCOT load curve for 8/18/2024.  (credit goes to www.gridstatus.io for graph)

Blue line is classic load shape.  That 4pm peak in the summer, was for decades, our concern for "running out" of generation during peak usage. 

Green line is net load, so load minus wind and solar generation.  4pm is no longer the concern in the summer.  We are approaching a point where we are not supply constrained for thermal generation at 4pm.  The concern is shifting to sunset (post 7pm in summer) when solar starts to fade off.  As batteries continue to fill in that evening peak, the grid is going to continue to evolve.  

image.png.b7b70f8d2f203978c447a0fbe45182cf.png

Using our solar / battery use as an example, we use solar to power the house during the day (yellow), excess stores in batteries and is used in the evening (green) then late at night we draw from the grid (gray) until the morning sun. In theory we could double our battery capacity and almost double our solar and go entirely off the grid but the point is if high capacity/industrial battery tech can take off this could become a tremendous boon for all of us. 
 

 

IMG_5277.jpeg

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Sawbonz

Sawbonz 27302

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13 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:


TLDR:  No matter what O&G do, they're not going to be able to stop this transformation. It's just too good of an idea.  And prices continue to fall. 


 

Amazon is purchasing renewables worldwide in the billions; Exxon and Shell are spending 10’s of billions in renewable generation research and infrastructure 
 

Onesy twosey O & G billionaires in West Texas are peanuts compared to what is coming with renewables. The corporate players are getting interested and once that happens there is no going back

 

 

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swraith

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21 minutes ago, troph said:

Using our solar / battery use as an example, we use solar to power the house during the day (yellow), excess stores in batteries and is used in the evening (green) then late at night we draw from the grid (gray) until the morning sun. In theory we could double our battery capacity and almost double our solar and go entirely off the grid but the point is if high capacity/industrial battery tech can take off this could become a tremendous boon for all of us. 
 

 

IMG_5277.jpeg

Yes, there are all kinds of interesting battery concepts on the horizon.  It will be interesting to see which ones make it to market and thrive.

Here are two podcasts doing deep dives on two different battery concepts.

A super-battery aimed at decarbonizing industry (volts.wtf)

Why electrifying industrial heat is such a big deal (volts.wtf)

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Updawg

Updawg 2254

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Amazon is purchasing renewables worldwide in the billions; Exxon and Shell are spending 10’s of billions in renewable generation research and infrastructure 
 
Onesy twosey O & G billionaires in West Texas are peanuts compared to what is coming with renewables. The corporate players are getting interested and once that happens there is no going back
 
 

Don’t tell Rex Kramer this
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Captainant

Captainant 27251

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5 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

The EROI on renewables is terrible.

[citation needed]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800919320543

Quote

Recent papers argue that the energy return on energy invested (EROI) for renewable electricity technologies and systems may be so low that the transition from fossil fuelled to renewable electricity may displace investment in other important economic sectors. For the case of large-scale electricity supply, we draw upon insights from Net Energy Analysis and renewable energy engineering to examine critically some assumptions, data and arguments in these papers, focussing on regions in which wind and solar can provide the majority of electricity. We show that the above claim is based on outdated data on EROIs, on failing to consider the energy efficiency advantages of transitioning away from fuel combustion and on overestimates of storage requirements. EROIs of wind and solar photovoltaics, which can provide the vast majority of electricity and indeed of all energy in the future, are generally high (≥ 10) and increasing. The impact of storage on EROI depends on the quantities and types of storage adopted and their operational strategies. In the regions considered in this paper, the quantity of storage required to maintain generation reliability is relatively small.

 

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Rex Kramer

Rex Kramer 1280

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2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

[citation needed]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800919320543

 

Not outdated. All analyses of ICE to EV totally ignores the energy required to mine lithium. The analyses are solely focused on cars after the manufacturing process. 

We need wind and solar for electricity generation. But let’s not pretend the EROI isn’t significantly worse than gas. It is very much so. 

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Schulz2.0

Schulz2.0 28710

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57 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Not outdated. All analyses of ICE to EV totally ignores the energy required to mine lithium. The analyses are solely focused on cars after the manufacturing process. 

We need wind and solar for electricity generation. But let’s not pretend the EROI isn’t significantly worse than gas. It is very much so. 

How much energy do you think a refinery uses?

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MissingInAction

MissingInAction 24748

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59 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Not outdated. All analyses of ICE to EV totally ignores the energy required to mine lithium. The analyses are solely focused on cars after the manufacturing process. 

We need wind and solar for electricity generation. But let’s not pretend the EROI isn’t significantly worse than gas. It is very much so. 

Do you even climate change, bro?

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Dahobbs

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As I've said many times before, renewable additions to the grid are absolutely crushing everything else. This trend is not changing anytime soon.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/08/us-grid-adds-batteries-at-10x-the-rate-of-natural-gas-in-first-half-of-2024/:

Wind, solar, and batteries are the key contributors to new capacity in 2024.

Quote

 

According to the EIA's numbers, about 20 GW of new capacity was added in the first half of this year, and solar accounts for 60 percent of it. Over a third of the solar additions occurred in just two states, Texas and Florida. There were two projects that went live that were rated at over 600 MW of capacity, one in Texas, the other in Nevada.

Next up is batteries: The US saw 4.2 additional gigawatts of battery capacity during this period, meaning over 20 percent of the total new capacity. (Batteries are treated as the equivalent of a generating source by the EIA since they can dispatch electricity to the grid on demand, even if they can't do so continuously.) Texas and California alone accounted for over 60 percent of these additions; throw in Arizona and Nevada, and you're at 93 percent of the installed capacity.

* * * 

Wind power, by contrast, is running at a more sedate pace, with only 2.5 GW of new capacity during the first six months of 2024. And for likely the last time this decade, additional nuclear power was placed on the grid, at the fourth 1.1 GW reactor (and second recent build) at the Vogtle site in Georgia. The only other additions came from natural gas-powered facilities, but these totaled just 400 MW, or just 2 percent of the total of new capacity.

The EIA has also projected capacity additions out to the end of 2024 based on what's in the works, and the overall shape of things doesn't change much. However, the pace of installation goes up as developers rush to get their project operational within the current tax year. The EIA expects a bit over 60 GW of new capacity to be installed by the end of the year, with 37 GW of that coming in the form of solar power. Battery growth continues at a torrid pace, with 15 GW expected, or roughly a quarter of the total capacity additions for the year.

Wind will account for 7.1 GW of new capacity, and natural gas 2.6 GW. Throw in the contribution from nuclear, and 96 percent of the capacity additions of 2024 are expected to operate without any carbon emissions. Even if you choose to ignore the battery additions, the fraction of carbon-emitting capacity added remains extremely small, at only 6 percent.

 

 

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Horn Under a Bad Sign

Horn Under a Bad Sign 20338

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32 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

As I've said many times before, renewable additions to the grid are absolutely crushing everything else. This trend is not changing anytime soon.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/08/us-grid-adds-batteries-at-10x-the-rate-of-natural-gas-in-first-half-of-2024/:

Wind, solar, and batteries are the key contributors to new capacity in 2024.

 


This is so beautiful it almost makes me cry.

 

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