Will Renewable Energy Crash the Grid?

First coal plants are not easier to maintain than wind. Wind is brutally easy to maintain, and has extremely low maintenace costs. Coal needs large staffs. Wind is more expensive to build than coal, and these costs include grid upgrades and having enough natural gas capacity ocgt or ccgt to fill in when the wind is not blowing, and this natural gasses ability to shut off.

SCE, remember they and PG&E helped create the deregulation scheme that led to black outs and their own bankrupcies. Now we have a situation in southern california, where natural gas should be built to replace the power from shut nuclear plant san onofre. This will in the short run raise rates. SCE wants to shift blame from their botched nuclear upgrade, which is the real reason the southern californian grid is at risk of black outs.

Bottom line is ercot has more variability with their renewables, and in fact a higher percentage of wind + solar than the california grid. California should be able to handle a much higher percentage of wind fairly easily. California though to do this should be building more ccgt to replace the shuntered nuclear plant, as well as doing grid upgrades to move in the new potential wind and solar. If enough renewables enter to need less natural gas capacity, they can then shut down less efficient and older natural gas steam plants (new fast cycling ccgt is about 50% more efficient with natural gas than these old plants, natural gas is so cheap there is incentive by the power producers to keep the less efficient plants running and regulators seem to be blocking new construction by ab32 which paradoxically is increasing ghg emissions versus building the new infrastructure. This keeps rates lower for say the next 5 years, but will likely make them higher in the future.

Bottom line is the california grid like ercot needs upgrades for renewables. Both also need more ccgt infrastructure, not batteries, for levels that are likely in the next decade. Nothing wrong with the battery research, but if you need heavily subsidized batteries, because you dont want to replace old natural gas steam power plants with fast cycling and 50% more efficient ccgt, then its going to cost rate payers much more in the future, will require more fuel, and is just a poor regulation. ERCOT is trying to address this, but its market based encouragement is somewhat hampered by current low prices for natural gas. It may take regulatory change such as more efficient plants get dispached before less efficient plants.

 

I wonder if the snippet above also refers to what happened in my state a few years ago, when burgeoning windpower capacity in the Columbia Basin collided with a surplus of hydroelectric from a high water year to exceed the outdated transmission capacity to the urban coastal area. The hydro (which doesn't legally count as 'renewable' in this state) was given priority over the wind.

Grid stability under continuously changing demand and supply conditions has always been an enormous computational problem. But the new 4kW of ever-varying solar PV on my roof shouldn't be any more difficult to manage than the 4kW of electric water heater, 4kW of electric dryer, 3x 4kW of electric space heater, and probably a similar amount of electric stove, that have already been serving me (and family, and parents) for well over a half century. All of these legacy heaters are controlled by rapidly cycling between full-on and full-off, except that the water heater cycles slower in longer batch runs.

In fact, the variability added by the new PV should more than be offset by my conversion of primary space and water heat to inverter-controlled heat pump units. Both of them not only take less energy, but they also spread the load out over a much longer period of steady low power, getting rid of that rapid full power On-Off cycling. And I'll do the same with the clothes dryer when that technology arrives here in North America.

The issues the above article mentions are very real, but not intractable.

 

Large hydro should not count toward building new renewable, since these are old projects that can not simply be built again. Definitely grid infrastructure is needed or some wind will be wasted, but this simply means that wind is economically more expense because of the lower utilization rate.

The relibility problems come if there isn't enough natural gas cycling power (ocgt or ccgt) to overcome the power loss when the wind doesn't blow. Washington doesn't have that problem. California though may in the future, and black outs happened when hydro power was low. If california doesn't have enough natural gas back up, then bad hydro, wind, or sun or combinations can cause black outs.

There aren't going to be problems with individual houses, but imagine a much higher percentage, without back up when the sun does not shine. At 1% of power solar (and the country is much less than this) there is not much of a problem. In Southern california though they are talking about building massive solar thermal plants in the desert, but don't have enough local power genrated. They need grid upgrades and new power plants to replace the shut down nuke.

Electric heat is not getting converted to heat pumps at any fast rate. One thing the inexpensive natural gas can bring though is more electric heat converted to natural gas heating. That definitely reduces load variability. New homes here are being built more and more with geotheral heat pumps and solar.

The problems at our levels have already been solved in germany, and mostly identified and being worked on in ERCOT. It appears that new england and ERCOT are building the infrastructure necessary, but california is still questionable, and most of the country doesn't even have a plan. The pacific northwest doesn't appear to have any problems at all though as natural gas and hydro can really be used quite well without building much wind or solar.

 

...suddenly dawned on me, building an H2 refill infrastructure for Toyota's FCV does not sound so bad.

 

you also need to build a few extra hospitals and extended obama care

 

Except it isn't a pure necessity. There are various options for powering transportation, all with their pros and cons.

Even if plug in numbers never increase beyond what they are at now, the electrical grid will need to be updated. Even if without renewables, it needs updating.

Upgrading the grid seems daunting, but it has to be done. Much of the heavy lifting is already done. An upgrade won't require the re-installation of the transmission grid. Wiring and components might need to be replaced with parts that can carry the load of increased demand. The majority of the transmission towers and other supporting infrastructure should serve on.

Outside of some short pipelines to serve industry, there is no infrastructure at all for refilling hydrogen cars.

 

Well you need to think of the costs. A new fast cycling 500 MW ccgt power plant @70% utilization might cost $500M, say plug-ins took about 40% of the investment ($200M) that is roughly the size of the $200M claimed for the 100 hydrogen stations in california for the "hydrogen highway".

Now say roughly 40% of plug-in drivers install solar or buy wind, and need 10 KW/night. That means 6kw drawn off that 55% efficient to the plug from the power plant (50% more efficient than natural gas thermal). If those 6 kw are drawn over 6 hours at night we use 1kw of power plant or .001MW. The power plant can handle the new renewables built for plug-ins. We get (500kw x 40%)/(0.001) = 200,000 plug-ins fueled. Now this new infrastructure is likely to last at least 40 years, and part of it can be used to retire less efficient gas or coal plants.

If you think the 100 hydrogen stations will supply around 200,000 fcv then it may not be a bad investment, but wait there is more. The plug-in drivers and rate payers of the electricity will pay for the new ccgt on their electric bills. The fuel cell infrastructure will be paid by people that own non-fuel cell cars according to california's new tax scheme. If the cars never come they will pay more to keep these empty stations running. If the plug-ins don't come the utilities in california will simply shut down less efficient plants and use less natural gas.

To me the pickens plan for lng for trucking, the open fuel standard for methanol blending into gasoline, are much less expensive ways to substitute natural gas for oil than building a hydrogen highway and hoping people will then buy imported fuel cell cars.