California’s Exploding Rooftop Solar Cost Shift

[Alan Ambrose]

Hmmmm, interesting:

 

... lots of solar capacity brings higher electricity prices:

 

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2024/04/22/californias-exploding-rooftop-solar-cost-shift/

 

[SteamyTea]

12 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

lots of solar capacity brings higher electricity prices

Seems to be higher import prices because of higher network charges.

It does not mean that the domestic consumer is paying more overall.

 

I am sure I could come up with a fixed domestic monthly fee that offers unlimited energy (up to the network power limit), would be in the region of £2,500/month.

Would not suit many people.

Edited April 23 by SteamyTea

[MikeSharp01]

Interesting - gives me another opportunity to trot out the 'everything is connected to everything else' bumper sticker. So essentially as more of us get PV the utilities costs go up because they pass less energy across their network on which to make a profit. So costs standing charge goes up for everybody and those left have to pay more for their electricity - even though some of it might be coming from just next door!  

[joe90]

However, it states several times that forest fires there have impacted on utility costs which is a factor in the price rises and if they are not delivering as much “lecky” they need to generate less surely which must reduce their cost somewhat?

[SteamyTea]

8 minutes ago, joe90 said:

nd if they are not delivering as much “lecky” they need to generate less surely which must reduce their cost somewhat

Only the marginal costs, the fixed costs will remain the same.

There is also quite a bit of interstate power trading in the US and that has very complicated rules and laws because of the different state tax rates.  And what ENRON got up to.

 

The USA market in power is not the same as the UK's energy market, and cannot easily be compared.

 

As an aside, I cam across this month old article.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/16/edf-hinkley-point-c-delays-cost-overruns

Another £11bn and not finished till 2031, instead of 2017.

 

 

Edited April 23 by SteamyTea

[joe90]

6 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Only the marginal costs,

So your saying the costs of generation are marginal compared to the network?

[SteamyTea]

Just now, joe90 said:

So your saying the costs of generation are marginal compared to the network?

No, there are lots of fixed costs i.e. network upgrade/repair, ongoing investments, wages, pensions, offices, vehicles etc.

[ToughButterCup]

I seem to recall that the same issue was reported in the Spanish press a couple of years ago. Exactly the same issue is occurring in Germany now.

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, ToughButterCup said:

Spanish press a couple of years ago

More like over a decade ago.

5 minutes ago, ToughButterCup said:

Exactly the same issue is occurring in Germany now

No idea what the structure of the energy market is in Germany, but if it is like ours, then it is being supported by central government (we have a price cap based on wholesale prices, and they are not in the customers favour but keep the energy companies viable for the time being).

So with a bit of PR, it is not hard to concoct a narrative that blames something, regardless of the truth.

[SteamyTea]

Just came across this.

Puts a different slant on the 'California Problem'.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91110863/california-renewable-energy-grid

 

California just went 9.25 hours using only renewable energy

Nearly every day for the last six weeks, California’s electric grid has run on solar, wind, and other clean energy sources for hours at a time.

Last Saturday, as 39 million Californians went about their daily lives—taking showers, doing laundry, or charging their electric cars—the whole state ran on 100% clean electricity for more than nine hours.

The same thing happened on Sunday, as the state was powered without fossil fuels for more than eight hours. It was the ninth straight day that solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and battery storage fully powered the electric grid for at least some portion of the time. Over the last six and a half weeks, that’s happened nearly every day. In some cases, it’s just for 15 minutes. But often it’s for hours at a time.

California first hit the milestone of running on 100% clean power in 2022, but it was only temporary. “In past years, it was only for one or two days, and not consecutively,” says Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor who has been posting updates about the state’s grid each day on X. “And all of a sudden we’re having now 37 of the last 45 days, and the last nine days straight.”

There’s a caveat: California also has natural gas plants that keep running at low levels in case backup power is needed. Even when the state is producing more than enough renewable energy to cover all of its needs, it’s still exporting some gas power to other states. But it also exports solar power, helping make other grids cleaner. And it keeps getting closer to its overall goals for renewable energy. By 2030, the state plans to run on 60% renewable energy. It’s likely to hit that goal early. By 2045, the state plans to run on 100% zero-carbon energy, and Jacobson argues it’s technically possible to also accomplish that goal faster.

The state now has nearly 47 gigawatts of solar installed, both on rooftops and in sprawling, utility-scale solar farms. Rooftop solar helps reduce demand from the grid, since homeowners can use that power directly. And on sunny April days, when it usually isn’t hot enough to need air conditioning, renewables on the grid can produce more electricity than Californians need.

Too much solar power can be a problem. California often produces so much during the middle of the day that it can’t be used, so producers lose money and some of the potential environmental benefit is lost. “Some of it is absolutely being wasted,” says Paul Denham, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. But some of it can be sent to other regions, he says, and some of it can also be stored.

The state has added a significant amount of battery storage in the last few years. California is now home to the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage system for the grid, with more storage projects opening soon. Last Sunday, the state stored a record amount of power.

 

Grid operators also want to add new transmission lines to make it easier to send more renewable energy to other states. Some companies are also beginning to use excess renewable energy for other purposes, like making green hydrogen or heating up giant bricks that can be used to power factories. Utilities can also help by incentivizing customers to use power at different times. Right now, Jacobson says, PG&E, one of the state’s large utilities, charges more for power in the late afternoon, which doesn’t make sense—electricity should be cheapest when there’s the most solar power available.

The state might continue having streaks of 100% clean energy throughout the spring. But as the weather heats up and air conditioning spikes, renewables won’t yet be able to keep up with demand. Shifting to all clean energy all the time is a challenge, says Denham. “It’s pretty easy to do 80% or so—we don’t know the exact number because we haven’t gotten there yet,” he says. “But it just gets a lot more difficult to get to truly 100% every hour of the year.”

California is planning to build offshore wind power, which Jacobson says can help cover nighttime power demand. He also says that even more solar power and battery storage are needed. While Denham argues that some natural gas might still be needed to make sure that affordable power is available all the time, geothermal energy may eventually be able to help fill that gap.

[Alan Ambrose]

I do buy the idea that the grid is a big fat fixed cost and it may well need enhancing to support peak usage. So, we'll end up paying for it regardless - whether that's in higher per kW prices or connection fees, even if we're individually using less grid energy.

 

We might end up with something like internet ISP charging where it's the size of the pipe that's the costly thing rather than the amount of data.

 

So, the idea that overall electricity supply costs are going to get cheaper is questionable even if the per kW cost becomes very cheap sometimes.

 

Anyone know how the full cost of home PV compares to the full cost of grid PV? That is, how much more efficient is it to do it in bulk?

[SteamyTea]

4 hours ago, Alan Ambrose said:

do buy the idea that the grid is a big fat fixed cost and it may well need enhancing to support peak usage. So, we'll end up paying for it regardless - whether that's in higher per kW prices or connection fees, even if we're individually using less grid energy.

The UK grid is very robust, but was set up for centralised generation.

The big costs are now at the local level to cope with decentralised and variable small scale generation.

The main argument is really how it is paid for, either through people's bills, central government or extra charges in micro generation (which I think is what Spain has done).

Personally I think that central government are going to have to step up and foot the majority of the bill as we all benefit from a reliable supply.

Trouble is, most likely of my life, the UK governments have been very poor at infrastructure projects.

[ProDave]

31 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

The UK grid is very robust, but was set up for centralised generation.

The big costs are now at the local level to cope with decentralised and variable small scale generation.

The original UK grid was indeed centralised generation.  But a major change now is very much more renewables, in particular wind, is being built in Scotland.  The original grid had little generation north of the Central belt.  Now there is more and more wind farms in the far north, meaning it is the high voltage gris that is struggling, not just local issues.

[FuerteStu]

36 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

The UK grid is very robust, but was set up for centralised generation.

The big costs are now at the local level to cope with decentralised and variable small scale generation.

 Rather than relatively expensive microgeneration, wouldn't decentralised storage be a better option? With cheaper alternatives to lithium? 

 

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/03/10/sand-batteries-could-be-key-breakthrough-in-storing-solar-and-wind-energy-year-round#:~:text=The hot air is then,container through a heat exchanger.&text=The sand can store heat,in the district heating network.

[SteamyTea]

8 minutes ago, FuerteStu said:

wouldn't decentralised storage be a better option

It maybe at the moment, and we have about 6 million homes already utilising it (E7). Many people with more modern houses fitted with heat pumps may also start to utilise it as well.

Lithium batteries have about the best volumetric storage capacity, so better suited to local storage. They are also almost silent in operation.

[Alan Ambrose]

Curiously, another article on California electricity suggesting that (a) there will need to be a big capital spend to support EV charging, and (b) the kW price will stay stable. BTW I think California is interesting for us - while 'special', it is an innovator, so the UK could follow suit, say, 10 years later.

 

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2317599121

 

BTW this isn't behind a paywall, just press the 'show more text' button.

 

Summary below:

 

Two researchers at the University of California, Davis -- Yanning Li and Alan Jenn -- have determined that nearly two-thirds of [California's] feeder lines don't have the capacity that will likely be needed for car charging. Updating to handle the rising demand might set its utilities back as much as 40 percent of the existing grid's capital cost. Li and Jenn aren't the first to look at how well existing grids can handle growing electric vehicle sales; other research has found various ways that different grids fall short. However, they have access to uniquely detailed data relevant to California's ability to distribute electricity (they do not concern themselves with generation). They have information on every substation, feeder line, and transformer that delivers electrons to customers of the state's three largest utilities, which collectively cover nearly 90 percent of the state's population. In total, they know the capacity that can be delivered through over 1,600 substations and 5,000 feeders.[...]

 

By 2025, only about 7 percent of the feeders will experience periods of overload. By 2030, that figure will grow to 27 percent, and by 2035 -- only about a decade away -- about half of the feeders will be overloaded. Problems grow a bit more slowly after that, with two-thirds of the feeders overloaded by 2045, a decade after all cars sold in California will be EVs. At that point, total electrical demand will be close to twice the existing capacity. The problems aren't evenly distributed, though. They appear first in high-population areas like the Bay Area. And throughout this period, most of the problems are in feeders that serve residential and mixed-use neighborhoods. The feeders that serve neighborhoods that are primarily business-focused don't see the same coordinated surge in demand that occurs as people get home from work and plug in; they're better able to serve the more erratic use of charging stations at office complexes and shopping centers. In terms of the grid, residential services will need to see their capacity expand by about 16 gigawatts by 2045. Public chargers will need nine gigawatts worth of added capacity by the same point. The one wild card is direct current fast charging. Eliminating fast chargers entirely would reduce the number of feeders that need upgrades by 12 percent. Converting all public stations to DC fast charging, in contrast, would boost that number by 15 percent. So the details of the upgrades that will be needed will be very sensitive to the impatience of EV drivers.

 

Paying for the necessary upgrades will be pricey, but there's a lot of uncertainty here. Li and Jenn came up with a range of anywhere between $6 billion and $20 billion. They put this in context in two ways. The total capital invested in the existing grid is estimated to be $51 billion, so the cost of updating it could be well over a third of its total value. At the same time, the costs will be spread out over decades and only total up to (at most) three times the grid's annual operation and maintenance costs. So in any one year, the costs shouldn't be crippling. All that might be expected to drive the cost of electricity up. But Li and Jenn suggest that the greater volume of electricity consumption will exert a downward pressure on prices (people will pay more overall but pay somewhat less per unit of electricity). Based on a few economic assumptions, the researchers conclude that this would roughly offset the costs of the necessary grid expansion, so the price per unit of electricity would be largely static.

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

BTW I think California is interesting for us

It is, they have a population of 40 million people but use a similar amount of electrical energy to us.  Being Western they also live similar lifestyles.

[saveasteading]

13 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

they also live similar lifestyles

Except they use lots of aircon cooling?

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Except they use lots of aircon cooling

Yes, but the overall usage patterns are probably very similar.  They tend to be in developed countries.

 

Not identical but a useful comparision.

 

https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx

 

https://gridwatch.co.uk/

 

 

[joe90]

1 hour ago, saveasteading said:

Except they use lots of aircon cooling?

At least you can use PV to power it when it’s required unlike our heating demand when not sunny 🤷‍♂️

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, joe90 said:

At least you can use PV to power it when it’s required unlike our heating demand when not sunny

Mainly because they are a lot further South than us.  Crescent City, about as far North as you can get is 8.5° further South than I am.

Most of populated Canada is South of the UK.

I think, because of our mild climate, we forget how far North we are and that reduces the solar intensity.

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> Most of populated Canada is South of the UK.

 

That's just spooky - they have snow and bears and everything...