California Solar Generation Record!

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DaveEV

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I usually check the California ISO Today's Outlook page to see how we are progressing on our way to getting to 33% renewables by 2020.

Happily surprised today to see that we've hit 3.8 GW today in combined solar PV and solar thermal production - about 15% of demand.

Something else interesting - yesterday's net load (total demand - renewables) was lower between 10am-3pm than during the early morning minimum thanks to solar production around 4-5am. Check the 2nd page of this PDF: http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20140223_DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The current renewables generation plot is below:

ems_renewables.gif
 
Interesting! Thanks!

It looks like Ivanpah 1 and 3 may be producing close to their maximums (while Ivanpah 2 remains curtailed). I guess those two plants contributed about 260MW yesterday. Is that correct?

Do you have any links which provide the growth rates of solar PV and solar thermal electricity production? Also, do they collect private PV production information in real time?
 
RegGuheert said:
It looks like Ivanpah 1 and 3 may be producing close to their maximums (while Ivanpah 2 remains curtailed). I guess those two plants contributed about 260MW yesterday. Is that correct?
Really hard to say, I haven't found any good sources of individual power plant production and the curtailed/non-operational generator page isn't necessarily accurate, either.

RegGuheert said:
Do you have any links which provide the growth rates of solar PV and solar thermal electricity production? Also, do they collect private PV production information in real time?
The CAISO page only shows utility scale plants. All net-metered PV generation only shows up as a reduction in demand.

The California Solar Statistics page has a lot of data, but I don't know how accurate is now given that CSI rebates have just about run out and aren't available in many areas.
 
drees said:
RegGuheert said:
Do you have any links which provide the growth rates of solar PV and solar thermal electricity production? Also, do they collect private PV production information in real time?
The CAISO page only shows utility scale plants. All net-metered PV generation only shows up as a reduction in demand.

The California Solar Statistics page has a lot of data, but I don't know how accurate is now given that CSI rebates have just about run out and aren't available in many areas.
Cool! Thanks!

So it appears that net-metered PV installations may contribute about an additional 50% to the 3.8 GW listed in the title (assuming most are well-sited and still operational).
 
RegGuheert said:
So it appears that net-metered PV installations may contribute about an additional 50% to the 3.8 GW listed in the title (assuming most are well-sited and still operational).
Yes. Part of the requirement to qualify for the CSI rebate is that a 10-year warranty must be provided on the system as a whole, so unless the company went out of business and then the system broke down, the majority should still be functional.
 
Can you say 4.1GW?

Look at the graph in the first post!

http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
Almost got to 4.8 GW today, so in 3 months California has brought online 1 GW of solar.

Not bad!

Of course, it's getting close to summer now, so 4.8 GW is still about 15% of total demand at the time (31 GW).
 
So I noticed that yesterday the 21st had Thermal (non-imported anyway) production drop to only 1.3 GW at 12PM out of a total demand of 16.8 GW. If San Onofre were still running with 2 GW of production, California could have shut down all local thermal generation for a couple hours.

http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20141021_DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20141021_DailyRenewablesWatch.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Does that mean that it could actually be cleanest to charge your car during the day now with all the solar that's on the grid? I am very curious as to what the generation makeup of imports is at this point - is it gas? Coal? Hydro?
 
drees said:
So I noticed that yesterday the 21st had Thermal (non-imported anyway) production drop to only 1.3 GW at 12PM out of a total demand of 16.8 GW. If San Onofre were still running with 2 GW of production, California could have shut down all local thermal generation for a couple hours.

http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20141021_DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20141021_DailyRenewablesWatch.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Does that mean that it could actually be cleanest to charge your car during the day now with all the solar that's on the grid? I am very curious as to what the generation makeup of imports is at this point - is it gas? Coal? Hydro?
as a whole? or individual communities. Makes a difference. We charge during day time - and still produce enough PV during daytime to run the meter backwards while charging.
.
 
That graph on the first page of the daily renewables watch is wrong. Look at the second page. Load isn't that low on a Tuesday! Check back in spring on a Sunday though, you'll get something close.
 
Darn, looks like the charts have been wrong since the 14th at least. Thermal appears to be missing quite a bit of generation.

Jeremy, you don't know who can fix them, do you?
 
Heh, look at the charts/data for yesterday - thermal plants were sucking in 2 GW!

http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20141026_DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20141026_DailyRenewablesWatch.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
Solar's been peaking around 5 GW lately, so over 1.2 GW more solar PV on the CA grid than last year.

But today, I noticed some strange jumps in demand which normally only show up during early morning hours, but today occurred during peak solar hours.

Looks like there's an extra GW of demand popping up - I wonder where it's going?

(Screengrab below taken from http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; on Feb 15 2015 11:00PM)
G7aMbNz.png
 
Seems unlikely, otherwise we'd see a corresponding dip somewhere else. If I had to guess I'd guess it's grid exports.
 
Any sudden dips or spikes on that page should mostly be ignored.

Page says: These displays are provided for information only and do not represent real-time system operating conditions.
 
smkettner said:
Any sudden dips or spikes on that page should mostly be ignored.
Yes. Load is calculated as the sum of generation output and imports on tie lines from neighboring utilities. A spike up in load is usually caused by the momentary loss of communication with a generator.

I can't give specifics on why you are seeing other load plautus, but Lopton is correct.

drees said:
If I had to guess I'd guess it's grid exports.
California is a large importer of power. Further, exports would not show up as load as stated above.
 
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