Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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Tuesday, September 4, 2018, 6:59 - California is closer than ever towards setting a statewide goal of moving to 100 percent clean renewable energy. Recently, the California Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee approved Senate Bill 100, which establishes a new target for California's energy future. It ensures that 60 percent of California's electricity will come from clean sources by 2030 and 100 percent by 2045.
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/us/ne ... 45/111617/

Do or not do. There is no "try" in this instance.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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I'll toss this in 'cause California.

https://climatecrocks.com/2018/09/09/te ... ales-soar/
Media: Elon Musk smokes Joint.

I’ll have what he’s having.
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In August, sales of EVs (electric vehicles) and PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) rose 120% over sales in August 2017. Most of the jump is due to the Model 3. Without Model 3 sales, total EV/PHEV sales would be up just 12.5% on last year. In fact, 63% of August EV sales were from the three Tesla models. In August, the Tesla Model 3 was the 5th biggest seller of ALL US cars, behind only the Toyota Camry, the Honda Civic, the Honda Accord and the Toyota Corolla Family. Let that penetrate for a minute. An electric car, from an upstart manufacturer, is the 5th bestselling car in the US. And it doesn’t even advertise. And you have to wait months for it to be delivered. And the MSM has been spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about whether Tesla will survive, whether it’s profitable, oh, and why doesn’t Musk just give up?

I repeat: a car from a supposedly bankrupt company, with a months-long waiting list, with a new technology, and not cheap, is the 5th best selling car in America. This must be giving legacy car manufacturers the heeby-jeebies.

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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It turns out that renewables make economic sense. Who knew? Well, many of us know. Who doesn't know are the ones who pursue carbon based energy generation.
California reached its 2020 goal four years early, in 2016, while building one of the world’s strongest economies, proving that climate action and vibrant economic development can coexist - Yet this remarkable achievement created barely a media ripple.

Any statistician will warn that correlation is not causation, and further econometric work is needed to identify the cause-effect relationship between the implementation of AB 32 and California’s economic performance. But while further research on this topic is called for, the evidence suggests California’s implementation of AB 32 has not impaired economic growth. The first phase of decarbonization has proven remarkably doable, thanks to entrepreneurship and innovation.

It is quite obvious that California’s climate action has not crippled its economy, that climate action can spur economic development, and that predictions of economic catastrophe from the early days of AB 32 implementation proved inaccurate.

Though California is known for innovation, these policy implications apply broadly to other governments. Wind and solar have become the lowest-cost electricity generation option in many places, spreading clean energy to previously underserved communities, and other clean technologies are following the same pattern. If fully embraced, low carbon investments present an opportunity to boost global growth by $26 trillion through 2030.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinno ... 72a76821cf

The article is not to bash Texas, but CA and TX frequently are compared, as TX depends more on oil than we do on the Left Coast.

And, as Andy posted, electric cars are big--going global they are.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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Yeah, a goodly chunk of those renewables is hydropower taken from dams up here in the Pacific Northwest.
Before technology came along allowing for long distance transmission of electricity we had it all for ourselves and it was dirt cheap. Rates were so low that most residences got a bill every *other* month because it wasn’t worth it to Seattle City Light to mail a bill. Then California sued to get “its” share of the dam power and our rates skyrocketed. Still cheaper than CA, but...
We built wind turbines, but now CA takes 30-40% of that too.

CA is a vampire. It will suck “renewable” power from surrounding states so it can feel good about itself.
We were near 100% renewable long before you until you forced us to look for alternatives.
There is a reason you are so unloved.
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Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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There are 1/3 the people (4+m) in Oregon as there are in southern California alone (12+m). California could buy Oregon and lease it to Arizona for a summer camp. Please. We have the bucks and the people so we buy. GDP: OR $160 B; CA $2.4 T.

But interestingly enough, we're buying solar instead of hydro. Check it out

https://screenshots.firefox.com/IMYz2GG ... rgy.ca.gov

it's a .pdf there. Here is the master link:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/tra ... ewable.pdf

Hydro exists and is non optimal with respect to fish and habitat. But the new money goes into solar.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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You might want to buy some wind from Texas. It appears that if one combines the wind generation capability in California and Iowa, then multiply it by three, you'll get Texas' capability. 'Course, we use all we make and then some, so it'll likely be a while before we have extra. ;)

Seriously, though - California's power situation (and frankly that of both coasts and even Texas) shows just how unsustainable cities and our overly-developed coasts are. One of the problems the West has had for a long time is colonialism. California drawing food, water, and energy from the 'cheap seats' isn't changing the old ways. There's almost an honesty in Texas. They know they're energy hogs.

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featureless wrote: Wed Sep 12, 2018 6:02 pm I don't classify anything that obliterates rivers and fish habitat as "renewable." :)

I like the wind turbines, though!
True dat. That’s why we are doing dam removal. The White Salmon Dam and others are gone and the salmon are already coming back. White water rafters too.

CDFingers wrote: Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:34 pm There are 1/3 the people (4+m) in Oregon as there are in southern California alone (12+m). California could buy Oregon and lease it to Arizona for a summer camp. Please. We have the bucks and the people so we buy. GDP: OR $160 B; CA $2.4 T.

But interestingly enough, we're buying solar instead of hydro. Check it out

https://screenshots.firefox.com/IMYz2GG ... rgy.ca.gov

it's a .pdf there. Here is the master link:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/tra ... ewable.pdf

Hydro exists and is non optimal with respect to fish and habitat. But the new money goes into solar.

CDFingers
You got the bodies and the money so you can buy us out on a whim? A cheap date are we?
Oh CDFingers, you silver tongued sweet talking California lounge lizard he-devil you. :love:
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Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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https://youtu.be/lvGPsPQoJTs

California invested heavily in solar power. Now there's so much that other states are sometimes paid to take it
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-e ... ity-solar/
On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power.

Well, actually better than free. California produced so much solar power on those days that it paid Arizona to take excess electricity its residents weren’t using to avoid overloading its own power lines...

The number of days that California dumped its unused solar electricity would have been even higher if the state hadn’t ordered some solar plants to reduce production — even as natural gas power plants, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, continued generating electricity...

Why doesn’t California, a champion of renewable energy, use all the solar power it can generate?

The answer, in part, is that the state has achieved dramatic success in increasing renewable energy production in recent years. But it also reflects sharp conflicts among major energy players in the state over the best way to weave these new electricity sources into a system still dominated by fossil-fuel-generated power...
CA finally reached the tipping point of a technological revolution. All states and countries will have to deal with the growing pains of transition to renewable energy. The challenge has long passed being one of technological possibility and into one of political/financial will.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

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AndyH wrote: Thu Sep 27, 2018 1:15 am
CDFingers wrote: Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:45 pm I think we have to get creative and find a way to monetize that surplus. More breweries, that's the ticket.

CDFingers
There you go! :beer2:

I'm looking forward to the day that coal, gas, and nukes are curtailed before wind and solar are. Right now when there's a surplus on our grid the wind turbines are turned off. Gotta flip that pair a dimes.
"But the birds! What about the birds?"--Mario's Mushroom.

Biggest killer of birds? Fluffy, Whiskers and Tigger--house cats. Second? Cars. Wind generators come in something like a distant 4th. Our cats are indoor cats, and our dogs aren't bred to hunt...but one almost got a tom turkey about 25 years ago. She went after him roosting in our yard, he went flapping wildly to get off the ground and made it up to a tree branch and safety.

Then the branch started to bend under his weight and she was waiting for him, getting up on her hind legs....You could SEE the tom thinking "Oh, SHIT! I'm gonna be lunch!" and he started flapping wildly again and escaped. Poor tom, but it WAS funny! For a Belgian Tervuren, she had strong hunting instincts. Lost her 20 years ago in December at nearly 14.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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Recurrent Energy, based in San Francisco, wants to build a 350-megawatt desert solar farm with up to 350 megawatts of energy storage. The Arizona-based developer First Solar is planning a 450-megawatt solar farm, with a still-undetermined amount of storage. And San Diego-based EDF Renewable Energy recently announced a contract that involves 70 megawatts of solar power and 35 megawatts of storage.

None of the projects is expected to come online for at least two years. But they send a clear message about where the energy market is headed. California got 32 percent of its electricity from renewable resources including solar and wind last year, not counting energy generated by rooftop solar panels. Batteries could help address the challenge of solar and wind farms not always being able to generate electricity when it's needed.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/tech/sc ... 511143002/

They would not do it if they could not make money from having done so.

FDT

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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Bardo wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 10:08 am Again, gravity is a battery. Sea water pumped to 10,000 ft in the day and let down to a turbine at night. There couldnt be a better place for it than CA.
There aren't enough high areas to store enough energy. That's the problem with pumped hydro anywhere in the world. That's exactly why Germany's energy transition is using excess renewable energy (that would otherwise be curtailed and unused) to generate hydrogen and methane for storage in the country's natural gas grid. They have enough storage already in place to run the country - from apartments to manufacturing Mercedes trucks - for six months with no additional energy inputs. We can do the same.

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
While we’re having “fun,” let’s see what we could get out of the Great Lakes. The upper four lakes are all at essentially the same elevation (6 meter drop from Superior to Erie), while there is a 99 m drop between Erie and Ontario. We call this Niagra Falls, although only half the drop is developed across the falls proper.

If we drained one meter from every upper lake, we would get 54 billion kWh of energy: about a sixth of the target capacity. If performed over seven days, the flow would be 375,000 cubic meters per second, or 125 times the normal flow over the falls. Now I’d pay to see that! But I would first want to visit every town along the St. Lawrence River one last time.

If we tried to trap the water in Lake Ontario so-as to spare those downstream of the wrath, its level would rise 12 meters (39 feet). Watch out Toronto & Rochester!

The pipe delivering this water to the turbines would have to be over 125 meters in diameter (or 160 tubes each 10 m in diameter) to limit the velocity of the water through the pipes/turbines to below freeway speeds! What fun.

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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CDFingers wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 9:15 am
Recurrent Energy, based in San Francisco, wants to build a 350-megawatt desert solar farm with up to 350 megawatts of energy storage. The Arizona-based developer First Solar is planning a 450-megawatt solar farm, with a still-undetermined amount of storage. And San Diego-based EDF Renewable Energy recently announced a contract that involves 70 megawatts of solar power and 35 megawatts of storage.

None of the projects is expected to come online for at least two years. But they send a clear message about where the energy market is headed. California got 32 percent of its electricity from renewable resources including solar and wind last year, not counting energy generated by rooftop solar panels. Batteries could help address the challenge of solar and wind farms not always being able to generate electricity when it's needed.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/tech/sc ... 511143002/

They would not do it if they could not make money from having done so.

FDT

CDFingers
Watch this get derailed by the Sierra Club during the environmental and permitting stage. While I absolutely understand the concerns over tortoise and bird kills associated with these, I guarantee that unmitigated CO2 emissions will kill far more tortoises and birds than the solar farm might.

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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AndyH wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 10:28 am
Bardo wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 10:08 am Again, gravity is a battery. Sea water pumped to 10,000 ft in the day and let down to a turbine at night. There couldnt be a better place for it than CA.
There aren't enough high areas to store enough energy. That's the problem with pumped hydro anywhere in the world. That's exactly why Germany's energy transition is using excess renewable energy (that would otherwise be curtailed and unused) to generate hydrogen and methane for storage in the country's natural gas grid. They have enough storage already in place to run the country - from apartments to manufacturing Mercedes trucks - for six months with no additional energy inputs. We can do the same.

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
While we’re having “fun,” let’s see what we could get out of the Great Lakes. The upper four lakes are all at essentially the same elevation (6 meter drop from Superior to Erie), while there is a 99 m drop between Erie and Ontario. We call this Niagra Falls, although only half the drop is developed across the falls proper.

If we drained one meter from every upper lake, we would get 54 billion kWh of energy: about a sixth of the target capacity. If performed over seven days, the flow would be 375,000 cubic meters per second, or 125 times the normal flow over the falls. Now I’d pay to see that! But I would first want to visit every town along the St. Lawrence River one last time.

If we tried to trap the water in Lake Ontario so-as to spare those downstream of the wrath, its level would rise 12 meters (39 feet). Watch out Toronto & Rochester!

The pipe delivering this water to the turbines would have to be over 125 meters in diameter (or 160 tubes each 10 m in diameter) to limit the velocity of the water through the pipes/turbines to below freeway speeds! What fun.
Im in no way an engineer or have done any kind of numbers...but if anywhere seemed perfect for gravity battery it would be the peaks of the sierras and the valleys of central california. Controlling flow is pretty easy with valves.

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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Bardo wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 2:46 pm
AndyH wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 10:28 am
Bardo wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 10:08 am Again, gravity is a battery. Sea water pumped to 10,000 ft in the day and let down to a turbine at night. There couldnt be a better place for it than CA.
There aren't enough high areas to store enough energy. That's the problem with pumped hydro anywhere in the world. That's exactly why Germany's energy transition is using excess renewable energy (that would otherwise be curtailed and unused) to generate hydrogen and methane for storage in the country's natural gas grid. They have enough storage already in place to run the country - from apartments to manufacturing Mercedes trucks - for six months with no additional energy inputs. We can do the same.

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
While we’re having “fun,” let’s see what we could get out of the Great Lakes. The upper four lakes are all at essentially the same elevation (6 meter drop from Superior to Erie), while there is a 99 m drop between Erie and Ontario. We call this Niagra Falls, although only half the drop is developed across the falls proper.

If we drained one meter from every upper lake, we would get 54 billion kWh of energy: about a sixth of the target capacity. If performed over seven days, the flow would be 375,000 cubic meters per second, or 125 times the normal flow over the falls. Now I’d pay to see that! But I would first want to visit every town along the St. Lawrence River one last time.

If we tried to trap the water in Lake Ontario so-as to spare those downstream of the wrath, its level would rise 12 meters (39 feet). Watch out Toronto & Rochester!

The pipe delivering this water to the turbines would have to be over 125 meters in diameter (or 160 tubes each 10 m in diameter) to limit the velocity of the water through the pipes/turbines to below freeway speeds! What fun.
Im in no way an engineer or have done any kind of numbers...but if anywhere seemed perfect for gravity battery it would be the peaks of the sierras and the valleys of central california. Controlling flow is pretty easy with valves.
It's not about how easy it would be to use valves. The problem is that we need really huge amounts of storage and the cost to carve CA's mountains into lakes (in money, the environment, and maintenance) is even larger - and even then it's nowhere near enough. The post above - the piece about using the Great Lakes - is important. Start with the area of the lakes he's using:
Superior: 31,700 square miles
Michigan: 22,300 square miles
Huron: 23,000 square miles
Erie: 9,910 square miles
Total: 86,910 square miles

Put a map of the 'upper' Great Lakes over the Sierras. Install all the pipes. Then realize that it would only provide 1/6 of the storage we need while also reducing the snow and ice storage CA uses for some of their summer water supply. That's why pumped storage is a non-starter.

ETA. Here's a real-world example. Here's an island trying to get 100% renewable. Engineers designed the pumped storage system to do the job. The problem is, even though they have more generation than they need, the pumped storage system isn't working well enough and they still have to burn diesel to fill in the gaps.
https://www.hydropower.org/blog/case-st ... nd-systems

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... rro_Island

(The good news? If we implement either the Third Industrial Revolution plan, or RMI's Reinventing Fire plan, we won't need a ton of storage. That's useful because once sea level rises, California's gonna need their mountains. 8-) )

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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I think the best approach to renewables is a multi pronged one. Moving water up and letting it flow down in order to generate power is convenient only in a few places. If it's good, do it. Some places don't have lots of wind, but they might have sun. Some places will use tidal flow. And so on. The main point is to move off of fossil fuels, and eventually off carbon--we know that making solar cells and cement for dams and many other things put carbon into the air.

On a tangential note, here is an article about direct carbon capture from the air at between $100 to $300 a ton.

The company’s proprietary process creates a closed loop in which the only major inputs are water and energy. The output is a stream of pure, compressed CO₂. “Our DAC technology has been proven and is now being scaled up into commercial markets. Individual DAC facilities can be built to capture one million tons of CO₂ per year each, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of 250,000 average cars,” the company says. The Carbon Engineering process utilizes an aqueous solution of potassium and oxy hydroxide coupled with a calcium caustic recovery loop.

Carbon capture has been the subject of much debate but the discussion has lacked specifics. Working with an independent consulting firm, Carbon Engineering now has actual data about what its carbon capture process will cost.

“When carbon dioxide is delivered at 15 MPa, the design requires either 8.81 GJ of natural gas, or 5.25 GJ of gas and 366 kWh of electricity per ton of CO2 captured. Depending on financial assumptions, energy costs, and the specific choice of inputs and outputs, the levelized cost per ton CO2 captured from the atmosphere ranges from $94 to $232 per ton of carbon dioxide.”

Let’s not get carried away here. Even at $94 a ton, the cost of carbon capture will be staggeringly high. Of course, some of the cost could be offset by selling fuels made from the captured carbon, but there’s no getting around the fact that cooling the planet is going to be expensive. The only consolation is that the cost of doing nothing will be much, much higher.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/05/ca ... 0-per-ton/

We loves us some magic, eh.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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CDFingers wrote: Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:56 am I think the best approach to renewables is a multi pronged one. Moving water up and letting it flow down in order to generate power is convenient only in a few places. If it's good, do it. Some places don't have lots of wind, but they might have sun. Some places will use tidal flow. And so on. The main point is to move off of fossil fuels, and eventually off carbon--we know that making solar cells and cement for dams and many other things put carbon into the air.
We loves us some magic, eh.

CDFingers
For a while there was some exploration into building solar cells into highways because they get so much sun. I still remember driving and across the Cornell Dam (also called the Croton Dam) many, many times prior to the roadway on top getting closed off after 9/11. Parking areas had thick, round glass in them, about 1.5 to 2" across you could drive on. They were a late 19th/early 20th century solution to lighting the mechanical chambers below the roadway. The dam is SO big it has about 1/4th the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza!
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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I have an idea similar to the highway idea. We have huge parking lots around buildings and most of the year in Texas they are hot and sunny. We hop in our cars that are 120+ degrees and turn on the AC and drive off. We need to provide electricity and shade to keep the cars cooler making them more efficient by not running the AC full blast. We could put up solar cells over the parking areas and use the electricity to power the buildings around the parking lots and also provide power plugs for the plugin EVs.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: CA made 67% of our power from renewables

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Most interesting.
PG&E Corp. plans to replace three natural gas-fired power plants in California with battery-storage systems as the state continues its push to squeeze fossil fuels out of the electricity mix.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved Thursday four PG&E energy-storage contracts to support Northern California’s electric grid, including a project by Tesla Inc. The commission in January ordered the state’s biggest utility to find a way to replace the power it gets from three Calpine Corp. gas plants that are at risk of retirement, and to consider battery systems.

California has mandated that utilities add about 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage to the grid by 2020 to help integrate the increasing amount of intermittent wind and solar power. Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation in September requiring the state to get all of its power from carbon-free sources by 2045.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... from-tesla

We can do it. There's money to be made, kids, so tease hapless repubs mercilessly. Why they not want to make money? Because orange.

There's a reason nothing rhymes with orange.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

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