California wants 100% renewable power. It just hit that milestone — briefly

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GRA

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East side of San Francisco Bay
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/California-hits-major-energy-milestone-as-17143036.php


California hit a major clean energy milestone over the weekend when the state’s renewable power sources like solar and wind generated essentially as much electricity as the state needed.

The record occurred shortly before 3 p.m. on Saturday, as solar power production soared before late-afternoon power demand kicked in. . . .

The California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s grid, said that the share of renewable energy peaked at 99.87% — marking a record for the state, albeit a fleeting one.

A brief time period does not reflect the overall electricity picture in California. Spring is a time of relatively low power demand, because moderate temperatures outside mean less need for heating or cooling, and longer days bring high solar power production.

Californians still rely heavily on natural gas throughout the year. Natural gas provided 37% of energy in the state in 2020 — more than the 33% of all renewable energy sources combined, the latest data from the California Energy Commission. Solar power provided 13% and wind 11% of the state’s electricity.

Still, clean power advocates viewed Saturday’s marker as brief but stunning proof of the energy shift made over the past several decades. California must get 100% of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045 if it is to meet a goal signed into law nearly four years ago by then-Gov. Jerry Brown.

“It wasn’t all day, it wasn’t all weekend and we have a long way to go before we’re not burning fossil fuels — but we definitely can get there,” said Laura Deehan, state director with Environment California, a nonprofit renewable energy advocacy group.

The state has tripled its use of renewable power sources over the past ten years, mostly with new wind and solar projects. Other renewable energy sources include geothermal, biomass from wood products and biogas from food scraps and animal waste. Although nuclear is a carbon-free energy source, it is not included in the electric grid operator’s renewable energy calculator. Large hydroelectric dams are also not included as renewable energy sources because, although they do not generate greenhouse gases, they can cause other environmental problems like habitat destruction.

Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, noted that wind, hydropower and solar together met 80% of the state’s electricity demand for eight hours straight on Saturday. . . .

On Saturday, California reported its renewable energy sources rising above demand for the first time at 2:05 p.m., producing 17,636 megawatts compared to electricity demand, which was listed at 17,548 megawatts, according to operator data. That continued for about an hour until demand slipped above production at 5:05 p.m. At its peak, production exceeded demand by 623 megawatts at 2:40 p.m.
 
That's good. I know I'm doing my part, putting in far more solar than I've been using.

The next big step is finding a way to store all our renewable power. Massive grid scale storage, or tons of smaller micro grid storage.
Lots and lots of it. And it doesn't have to all be battery storage - there are lots of ways to store power.

I've wondered why we don't see more "hot" storage, converting the power in the day to heat and then extracting the heat at night.
 
Marktm said:
danrjones said:
I've wondered why we don't see more "hot" storage, converting the power in the day to heat and then extracting the heat at night.

Using "attic" heat and/or solar roof heating to afford desiccant regeneration might actually be a practical method to condition homes. https://siamagazin.com/revolutionary-air-conditioner-home-made-desiccant-based-air-conditioning/

Others have DIY ideas - or actual installs?

I was thinking industrial scale, such a a large in ground pit where you heat up salt (or whatever) and then take that heat and convert back to power as needed. It would be interesting napkin math to calculate how much heat energy a certain size pit could actually store.

As far as my house, it sure does heat up in the summer, but I fight hard to keep it cool. My swamp cooler runs non stop June through early September. Last year we hit 119 in July. It would be interesting if someone found a way to take all the waste heat from ACs and convert to energy. Heat is molecular energy but I believe using heat to do WORK requires a thermal difference... so I'm not sure what you could do with all that waste heat?
 
I was thinking about this wondering why we still have to use propane to heat water for shower and washer or use electricity to dry the clothes even on the hottest of summer days. We need better integration across our appliances and energy sources. Heat pumps have come a long way but IMHO integration and symbiotic relationships across devices is still lacking.
 
danrjones said:
That's good. I know I'm doing my part, putting in far more solar than I've been using.

The next big step is finding a way to store all our renewable power.

EVs
Hot Water
Time shifted electricity work

If you have decent home insulation and envelope, then cool (or heat, as the season demands) more than "needed" when your generation is abundant, and then let your home coast into the off-generation hours.
 
With a swamp cooler you don't want to ever really "coast", nor can you control the actual temperature it puts out. So you can't over-cool your house during the day using solar to "coast" later. You get what you get, and you need the air flow as part of the equation to keep you cool.

But since it uses a fraction of the energy of a AC, leaving it running nonstop isn't a huge deal.

Insulation in my house is OK, not great but not bad. The south west in general has lower R value homes. With a swamp cooler, R value isn't that important, since you are constantly exchanging all the air in the house anyway. But for our winter it matters a bit more, and I've been slowly changing out the old windows.
 
SageBrush said:
If you have decent home insulation and envelope, then cool (or heat, as the season demands) more than "needed" when your generation is abundant, and then let your home coast into the off-generation hours.

I was quite successful at this with conventional freon based A/C and buying energy at ERCOTS pricing for a monthly subscription during summer months - UNTIL the big freeze hit in Texas and "energy" cost $9/kWh. Lost 2 years of savings in a few days. Having a reliable solar/EV battery storage system would have made me money instead of losing.

Having your own micro/nano grid will allow "thumb your nose" at the power companies.
 
danrjones said:
With a swamp cooler you don't want to ever really "coast", nor can you control the actual temperature it puts out. So you can't over-cool your house during the day using solar to "coast" later. You get what you get, and you need the air flow as part of the equation to keep you cool.

But since it uses a fraction of the energy of a AC, leaving it running nonstop isn't a huge deal.

Insulation in my house is OK, not great but not bad. The south west in general has lower R value homes. With a swamp cooler, R value isn't that important, since you are constantly exchanging all the air in the house anyway. But for our winter it matters a bit more, and I've been slowly changing out the old windows.

You mentioned swamp cooler, and then I forgot ... sorry about that.
Definitely a different beast.

Swamp coolers used to be very common in my locale, in fact they are pretty much perfect for our low humidity summers and temps of 90 - 100F. I was all set to have one installed in my whole home ducting but I was turned off by the $10k installation estimate, and overall my house actually has a fair bit more heating than cooling days each year so I still had to deal with winter.

I'm waiting for low GWP refrigerant to go whole hog with mini splits I self install and run off PV in a fashion I mentioned to you earlier. If the performance is poor I'll invest heavily in an energy retro-fit for much better insulation, envelope, and energy conserving ventilation.

Your situation is obviously quite a bit different since you have a lot more summer to deal with, and you have already bought your main appliances that are summer weighted and not synergistic with a better envelope. In your shoes I think my first question would be whether the swamp cooling is adequate.
 
SageBrush said:
You mentioned swamp cooler, and then I forgot ... sorry about that.
Definitely a different beast.

Swamp coolers used to be very common in my locale, in fact they are pretty much perfect for our low humidity summers and temps of 90 - 100F. I was all set to have one installed in my whole home ducting but I was turned off by the $10k installation estimate, and overall my house actually has a fair bit more heating than cooling days each year so I still had to deal with winter.

I'm waiting for low GWP refrigerant to go whole hog with mini splits I self install and run off PV in a fashion I mentioned to you earlier. If the performance is poor I'll invest heavily in an energy retro-fit for much better insulation, envelope, and energy conserving ventilation.

Your situation is obviously quite a bit different since you have a lot more summer to deal with, and you have already bought your main appliances that are summer weighted and not synergistic with a better envelope. In your shoes I think my first question would be whether the swamp cooling is adequate.

TEN Thousand?? YIKES!

So evaporative cooler prices have gone up quite a bit the last few years, even before our inflation surge. A few years ago a 6500 cfm was about 500-600 for the unit. Now they are around $900.

But installation is cheap. Or it CAN be cheap. It can be as cheap as cutting a hole in your wall somewhere and adding a few up-ducts, or just opening your windows. There are even 5900 cfm units you mount in your window. For those installations its less than $100 in parts. but you can go fancy as well, having a ground mounted cooler, a chase up into the attic, and then real ducting for the evaporative cooler. Now you are talking 5 to 6k for all that work. Maybe more?

Luckily my house was already ducted with a swamp cooler, ground mounted, with a chase. So when I changed out my cooler a few years ago, the "install" cost was zero. Well, maybe $20.

More recently I also got rid of my gas furnace and installed a DIY heat pump. Mostly for the heat, but it does now give me the ability to switch over to real AC on the few days a year I need it. Right now our swampy is great, keeps the house cool and moist. A few days in July and Aug though I'll switch over.

But yes, here almost everything is about summer. I installed a 10 kW heat strip with the heat pump, and our winter was so warm, it never even turned on. (10 kW was half the recommended size for a 5 ton heat pump, but 20 kW strip was just so overkill for my area... and the wiring would have been a pain)
 
Yes, TEN thousand. You can imagine my reaction since the ducting was already in place.

HVAC installers are pretty happy, and the prices they charge show it. I get the impression that they have their choice of jobs so everything costs $10k.

No matter. I'll take my $10k and apply it to retro-fitting the envelope. My house is a lot bigger than need be or we even want, so I've been mulling over a polyurethane layer on the outside followed by re-stucco, Vs doubling the thickness of every exterior wall by building a double frame on the inside with new windows and a doubling of insulation.

Anybody know if that is actually a thing that is done ?
 
danrjones said:
With a swamp cooler you don't want to ever really "coast", nor can you control the actual temperature it puts out. So you can't over-cool your house during the day using solar to "coast" later. You get what you get, and you need the air flow as part of the equation to keep you cool.

But since it uses a fraction of the energy of a AC, leaving it running nonstop isn't a huge deal.

Insulation in my house is OK, not great but not bad. The south west in general has lower R value homes. With a swamp cooler, R value isn't that important, since you are constantly exchanging all the air in the house anyway. But for our winter it matters a bit more, and I've been slowly changing out the old windows.


Dan, have you looked into very high reflectivity white paint, something like this, for your roof and maybe walls: https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=611545#p611545


Relatively low cost, passive methods such this are going to be critical in low-income countries like India, currently dealing with their annual (and continually growing longer and hotter) heat wave, with a grid that's not very reliable under typical conditions and very likely to fail under extreme ones.

The world is on average 1.1-1.3°C warmer than in pre-industrial times, and the number of heatwave days India experiences (when the maximum temperature is 5°C or more above average) has also increased—from 413 in the decade to 1990 to 600 in the decade to 2020.

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/05/03/how-can-india-cope-with-heatwaves
 
Interesting idea.

The thing is, I think white paint would quickly get really, really dirty with all the blowing sand and dust we get. The other issue is most houses are stucco, and I don't know how reflective paint would look on stucco? But the real issue is that most of my heat load isn't coming through my walls, its the roof and attic, and since I'm on a evaporative cooler, I don't think heat load even matters that much.

My roof is flat concrete tiles, plus a bunch of solar. Maybe a lighter, more reflective tile would have been a good idea?

The heat load matters as far as how long your cooler can shut down, or before you turn it on, but once you turn on an evaporative cooler, your temp isn't really determined by heat load at that point, but rather that dry bulb and wet bulb temps. Once my cooler is running its pushing through a constant of about 6500 cfm through the house, and your house takes on the temp of whatever the cooler is producing (plus maybe a degree or two depending on air flow and internal loading - ovens, computers, whatever) ... but the traditional btu calculations go out the window, literally. It isn't recirculated air. So any heat load is pushed out of your house.

The real issue is the max cooling based on the aforementioned dry and wet bulb. As an example, on a typical summer day, say 105f with 10% RH my cooler should produce around 77f degree air - I actually have 12" pads on my cooler, and so they actually do a bit better than most of the charts you see on the internet. So maybe 75-76f. But if we get any humidity, or if we hit into the 115 range, it does start to get warm and sticky. I'll have a few days each summer where my house is 80f and 55% rh. Those are they days I'll switch over to AC.



As far as CA, we hit (tied) our all time record last summer at 119f here. But an individual record isn't climate. What worries me more is our droughts. Water across the whole west is an issue, and as absurd as it sounds, I think we need a Federal "new deal" sized program to build aqueduct's and transport water from the Mississippi and Missouri all the way to the west. The eastern half of the country will gripe about paying for it, but they enjoy eating. A huge chunk of your edible food comes from CA. CA has all the water we ever need, even in drought -> as long as you get rid of farming. 80% of CA's water goes to AG. AG the whole country enjoys consuming, so I think bringing water westward is something that must be done, paid for by all, at a FED level. It obviously would be a huge project. Just my 2 cents.
 
danrjones said:
The real issue is the max cooling based on the aforementioned dry and wet bulb. As an example, on a typical summer day, say 105f with 10% RH my cooler should produce around 77f degree air - I actually have 12" pads on my cooler, and so they actually do a bit better than most of the charts you see on the internet. So maybe 75-76f. But if we get any humidity, or if we hit into the 115 range, it does start to get warm and sticky. I'll have a few days each summer where my house is 80f and 55% rh. Those are they days I'll switch over to AC.

Curious about your utility bills. With evaporative cooling mainly, backup (conventional?) A/C, heat pump heating, and solar I'd guess they are quite low. We depend on nat gas for heating, conventional A/C for cooling and no solar (yet). We conserve energy as best we can, but still average over a couple of hundred $$'s per month totals. Water has become the more expensive utility recently (last few years) that adds over a hundred $/month.
 
Marktm said:
danrjones said:
The real issue is the max cooling based on the aforementioned dry and wet bulb. As an example, on a typical summer day, say 105f with 10% RH my cooler should produce around 77f degree air - I actually have 12" pads on my cooler, and so they actually do a bit better than most of the charts you see on the internet. So maybe 75-76f. But if we get any humidity, or if we hit into the 115 range, it does start to get warm and sticky. I'll have a few days each summer where my house is 80f and 55% rh. Those are they days I'll switch over to AC.

Curious about your utility bills. With evaporative cooling mainly, backup (conventional?) A/C, heat pump heating, and solar I'd guess they are quite low. We depend on nat gas for heating, conventional A/C for cooling and no solar (yet). We conserve energy as best we can, but still average over a couple of hundred $$'s per month totals. Water has become the more expensive utility recently (last few years) that adds over a hundred $/month.

My electric bill last year was something like -$2000; however, they only "pay" you out a fraction of that, so I ended up with a credit rolling forward to this 12 month period of around $200. This year I still expect to be negative, but not nearly as much. I used to be under a TOU plan that had the most expensive power 2pm to 8pm, so mostly when I was putting IN. However they changed the plans and now the cheapest power is mostly during the day, most expensive is from 4pm to 9pm, and at night is middle priced.

Gas is still used for dryer and stove and hot water, and has been running around $20 / month. Phone is whatever ATT charges, we don't have a landline anymore. Water has been going up - winter bills are about $60 but summer can easily hit $200. Internet is around $100 for 200 mbs. Though Fiber is currently being installed, and that company promises 1 gbs for $60. Gas this AM was $5.59/gal here, though my Leaf uses none, of course.
 
danrjones said:
My electric bill last year was something like -$2000; however, they only "pay" you out a fraction of that, so I ended up with a credit rolling forward to this 12 month period of around $200. This year I still expect to be negative, but not nearly as much. I used to be under a TOU plan that had the most expensive power 2pm to 8pm, so mostly when I was putting IN. However they changed the plans and now the cheapest power is mostly during the day, most expensive is from 4pm to 9pm, and at night is middle priced.

Appears your solar system helps your electricity provider more than you? I have some rural property that has solar and the cooperative pays back the entire "energy" part, but not the transmission part, so it's quite good (about 70% of the total cost/kWh).
I don't yet have solar at my permanent residence, but it seems there are no solar buy-pack type contracts, basically a "free nights", "free weekends" that are all so high cost on the majority use times, it does not pay off for me.
 
Someone else here can probably explain the details of NEM 1 and NEM 2 better than I; however, I think it was always intended to let you put in and take out, but not for residential customers to make money. I get to put in and take out at the rate for that time period, clearly, my old TOU was far better for me as I got to put in at a higher rate. The new TOU rates are not nearly as favorable for me, but I still get to put in and take out at the full rate for that time period. You do this for a full year, and then they balance everything out. If you have leftovers, like I did, then you only get a pittance. But as I said, NEM was never intended to make me money. The idea was always to offset your usage more than to be a power plant. The reason I had so much extra is because I over sized when I put in my second solar system - I knew I would have more EV usage in the future. I plan to use the power.
 
Net metering via PNM in New Mexico is a kWh in = a kWh out but there is a gotcha: they 'true up' every month.
Still, a great deal
 
Make low cost reflective concrete and asphalt and you would eliminate most of the heat island and asphalt roofs would also be cooler
 
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