oxothuk said:
danrjones said:
And since that fee doesn't actually deal with the problem of too much solar, the real answer is that its punishment from the power companies because they don't like solar, rather than dealing with the realities of the issue
I don't blame PG&E for not wanting to tackle the storage problem. Why should they? The problem was created and dumped in their lap by politicians with no understanding of engineering realities.
None of the storage technologies which goldbrick mentioned are currently capable of operating at the required scale. Power-to-gas would enable grid-scale storage, but with tremendous round-trip losses - which would also highlight the fact that intermittent energy sources really aren't worth much.
Sorry but I'm going to disagree. All to often in my life I've seen that companies won't change unless they are forced to. Sure, they will innovate when they see $$$ on the low hanging fruit, but when they have a system they already like (aka $$$), they will not change. Being forced to change by regulation is often the only way to get anywhere on large issues, especially environmental issues. Plus as Sage posted, and anyone can look, we are no where close to have "too much solar". Solar and other renewables only covered about half CA power needs yesterday at peak, plus they can still reduce imports and reduce peaker plants such as NG further if needed during the daytime. There is still a lot of time and room for energy storage to come online.
Part of the problem with capitalism isn't that it doesn't work, it is that we don't properly force companies to deal (price in) with the full scope of their product. The extremities or externalities, so to speak. This is forcing the power industry to do just that. The real problem is not forcing all other companies to also do this, aka, forcing plastic bottle companies to be responsible for the end location and disposal / recycling of their bottles, etc etc etc