Southern California Power Disruption

[walterbays]

More local generation should mean more large electric generation near San Diego by SDGE instead of the importing of power from out side of state boundaries.

I agree. I noted that when they restarted the grid in San Diego they did it by firing up the Escondido and Chula Vista plants. And local generation should not be only large scale, but also small.

As I understand it, utilities are forced by the state to meet renewable energy targets but they get no credit for small scale installations, only utility scale. E.g., PG&E will get full credit for the 800 MW produced by the new San Luis Obispo solar plant, but would get no credit if they instead incentivized 160,000 homeowners and businesses to install solar panels and small wind turbines averaging 5KW each. Which ought they do? Both. And they should get full credit for both. Bookkeeping for home installations would be a bit troublesome since they're typically installed on the other side of the meter. But a reasonably accurate measurement or even an estimate would do for purposes of tracking aggregate renewable energy production. I wouldn't have a problem with a requirement that I read my own PV meter once a year and send the number to the utility.

Similarly the best locations for wind turbines are in the foothills and mountains connected to transmission lines (through the fire prone back country). But there's an SDG&E owned hill near me that looks like a fine place for a few turbines which might make enough power to be worthwhile and whose power would be produced right where it was used. IMBY: In My BackYard, I say.

 

[DaveEV]

is that even possible in California?.. I can imagine the paperwork to build a new plant has to be extensive.. much easier to just build the plant over the border in Mexico or Arizona.

Yes, new plants are frequently built in CA. Natural gas, wind and solar these days make up the bulk of generation.

As I understand it, utilities are forced by the state to meet renewable energy targets but they get no credit for small scale installations, only utility scale.

I do believe that it depends on who owns the installation.

If SDG&E pays to install a PV system on their roof and buy the power from it to sell on the grid, they will get credit for it. SCE is doing with with a couple hundred kW of PV on warehouse rooftops. I think SDG&E is doing something on a smaller scale as well.

If SDG&E wants credit for small scale PV, they won't pay anywhere near retail rates for it, but as a net-metered customer, that is what you are compensated as long as you aren't a net generator in which case you are paid something like $0.05 / kWh.

And frankly - I don't have any issue with the utility not getting credit for small local generation - that just means that more generation will be renewable.

Currently there is about 70 MW of PV installed in the SDG&E region with about 30 MW pending [1]. PV is still a drop in the bucket when looking at the big picture. I still wonder why more residences don't install PV when it has a break-even point in 5-10 years after rebates/credits for most people. It's simply a no-brainer. Should PV keep on dropping in price, this will rapidly change - I give it another 2-3 years before PV reaches a price point where you'd have to be dumb NOT to install PV in sunny areas if you have a half-way decent roof - with or without rebates/credits.

 

[Nekota]

Some new information in IEEE about the transmission line that was part of the power outage.

What is clear, however, is that the substation where trouble began last night lies at the center of last night’s disruption is located in a sensitive spot. The North Gila Substation operated by Phoenix-based utility Arizona Public Service (APS) is on the eastern edge of a zone extending to the Pacific Coast that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) judges to be the second-most congested transmission flow path west of the Rockies. The corridor runs from south-central Arizona to San Diego, and at its heart is a single-circuit 500-kilovolt high voltage transmission line that brings coal-fired power from southeastern Arizona to San Diego.

In addition the 'Local Power Generation' discussion earlier in this thread is mentioned in this article as well.

That single line to San Diego leaves the city highly vulnerable, since California’s environmental policies have shuttered many of southern California’s baseload generating plants. “They rely on imports, and if those imports go offline they have nothing to rely on,” says John Kyei, a former APS transmission planning engineer who is now director of Transmission for Houston-based renewable power developer BP Wind Energy

I recommend a quick read of the entire article at :

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/west-coast-blackout-emanates-from-notorious-grid-bottleneck" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[EricH]

As I understand it, utilities are forced by the state to meet renewable energy targets but they get no credit for small scale installations, only utility scale.

I do believe that it depends on who owns the installation.

If SDG&E pays to install a PV system on their roof and buy the power from it to sell on the grid, they will get credit for it. SCE is doing with with a couple hundred kW of PV on warehouse rooftops. I think SDG&E is doing something on a smaller scale as well.

If SDG&E wants credit for small scale PV, they won't pay anywhere near retail rates for it, but as a net-metered customer, that is what you are compensated as long as you aren't a net generator in which case you are paid something like $0.05 / kWh.

And frankly - I don't have any issue with the utility not getting credit for small local generation - that just means that more generation will be renewable.

Currently there is about 70 MW of PV installed in the SDG&E region with about 30 MW pending [1]. PV is still a drop in the bucket when looking at the big picture. I still wonder why more residences don't install PV when it has a break-even point in 5-10 years after rebates/credits for most people. It's simply a no-brainer. Should PV keep on dropping in price, this will rapidly change - I give it another 2-3 years before PV reaches a price point where you'd have to be dumb NOT to install PV in sunny areas if you have a half-way decent roof - with or without rebates/credits.

One problem with "small-scale" installations is that virtually no home-scale solar PV installations have revenue-grade metering on the solar panels... just the utility meter on the house (which runs "backwards" when solar PV generation exceeds the home's electric load). So there's no way to precisely measure the solar PV output on most homes, and that precise measurement is one requirement to claim Renewable Energy Credits for purposes of meeting the California state mandate. Larger-scale systems tend to have solar metering that allows for REC measurement and documentation.

 

[walterbays]

Thanks for the information drees! That explains a lot.

And frankly - I don't have any issue with the utility not getting credit for small local generation - that just means that more generation will be renewable.

I do. I think it means that more of the renewable generation will be out of the San Diego area than in it. Now (risking a flame war on the level of the recurring liberal/conservative shouting matches) I wouldn't mind Sunrise Powerlink transmission lines being built in "my backyard." And the sun shines brighter in the desert and the wind blows harder on the mountain top. So maybe it makes economic sense to generate the electricity there and build transmission lines. But maybe the millions spent on those transmission lines would be better spent on local generation capacity that would also be more resilient to remote blackout events and back country wild fires. I don't know the answer. But I know that the calculations are distorted if one option, local generation, is taken off the table by quirks of the regulations.