California Hits New Solar Power Record

[jpak]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/california-hits-new-solar-power-record

California set a new record for solar power generation earlier this month and nearly doubled its solar production in less than a year.

The California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) announced that the state hit a record of 3,926 megawatts on March 7. The next day, it broke that record and surpassed 4 gigawatts with 4,093 MW of solar power generation. The current record is nearly double the peak production of June 2013.

“This shows that California is making remarkable progress in not only getting new resources approved and connected to the grid, but making meaningful contributions in keeping the lights on as well,” Steve Berberich, president and CEO of Cal ISO, said in a statement [PDF].

California’s total installed solar capacity is just over 5.2 GW. The state also has nearly 5.9 GW of wind resources. All renewable power, including geothermal, make up about 15 GW of Cal ISO’s generation mix. The state’s demand in early March was around 28 GW. The state has a goal of 33 percent renewable energy by 2020.

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[quakerboy]

1. Crazy Idea I had

California, especially southern California, has a ton of solar power available during the day. Even with the constant haze, its still bright enough to generate a ton of power.

At night, not as much.

Why not put water to work to mediate. Put a tank at the bottom of each water tower. At night or during the rare stormy weather, water is pumped up top by the extra solar power. At night, it drops down to the lower tank, powering a microhydro generator to put power back into the grid.

[FBaggins]

2. There isn't much need

The advantage here is that some of the peak demand times in SoCal line up very well with the peak production times for solar... so there isn't as much of an advantage to shifting some production to dark hours.

[quakerboy]

5. Energy storage would seem to be a big growth industry

from what I read. See the second response to my post, or go read the recent front page article on the battery factory that Tesla is planning. And, apparently, pumped water is actually a pretty good way of doing it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage#Pumped_water. Im just thinking that it might be useful to apply it to the many thousands of water towers around the nation, instead of needing to build a huge reservoir anywhere. By some quick math based on numbers I found online, it seems like a normal city water tower could hold enough potential energy to power several thousand homes overnight, if need be.

I would guess that a bunch of water tanks and pumps would probably be more environmentally friendly, and probably safer, than adding a bunch of batteries or retaining the current oil burning power plants to cover times where renewable production drops. In addition, it would seem to decentralize that storage, which would also be a benefit, in my mind

[FBaggins]

6. Two different categories of storage

Longer-term storage like you mentioned provides power at night and on cloudy days. Pumped storage, molten salts, etc.

The need in this case is instead the shorter-term smoothing to pick up the hours adjacent to normal solar production when (for example) the sun is setting, but it's still hot enough to need extra air conditioning.

[quakerboy]

9. And what makes pumped storage

any less useful for this than a lithium ion battery?

[madokie]

10. For pumped hydro you need a pretty good sized lake

We have a 750 acre pumped lake that GRDA owns that they use for peaking, mostly summer months and they'll draw the lake down 12 to 15 feet from mid morning to late afternoon. It's 200 feet above the lake it uses for storage.
GRDA claims it doesn't make them any money but saves them/us rate payers a ton of cash though

[kristopher]

7. From bankrupt EV maker to building-scale energy storage contender - 100 Ca systems contracted

After Failing in EVs, Coda Energy Pursues No-Money-Down Building Storage
From bankrupt EV maker to building-scale energy storage contender, backed by a deep-pocketed parent


Jeff St. John
March 11, 2014

Last year we covered the bankruptcy of venture-capital-backed EV maker Coda, and the plans of its new owner to resurrect it as a grid battery systems provider. Now we’re seeing the fruits of that plan emerge, in the form of yet another no-money-down energy storage play -- this one financed internally by Fortress Investment Group (FIG), the multi-billion-dollar investment firm that picked up Coda’s assets for $25 million in June.

Over the past month, Coda Energy has quietly installed about twenty of its “CODA Core” Tower systems at commercial and industrial sites across California, and it has also secured financial backing from its parent company for a total of 100 systems over the next few months, John Bryan, vice president of product and marketing, said in a Monday interview.

At $64,000 for each 30-kilowatt, 40-kilowatt-hour, lithium-ion-battery-based, inverter-integrated unit, that adds up to a $6.4 million commitment from Fortress -- and under the terms of its financing model, the customers pay nothing, he said.

Instead, “we’ll pay for it, no payments at all for the first year, and the nine following years, we’ll split the difference in savings with the end user,” he said. In other words, Coda's customers will pay only 50 percent of whatever savings the systems provide to annual utility bills, rather than a set payment -- an offer that puts the onus on Coda to achieve high enough savings to pay back its system installation and maintenance costs over the term of its ten-year-warrantied lifespan and beyond.

If the first 100 projects appear on their way to proving that this revenue stream represents a workable model...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/coda-energy-joins-the-no-money-down-building-energy-storage-fray?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Headline&utm_campaign=GTMDaily

[kristopher]

3. That isn't crazy at all - in fact it is a top energy priority in Ca right now.

I pulled this at random from a Gooscan.

United States: California's New Energy Storage Mandate
Last Updated: February 19 2014
Article by Omar Samji and Daniel Lynch
Jones Day

On October 17, 2013, the California Public Utilities Commission ("Commission&quot issued its final rule promulgating energy storage requirements intended to encourage emerging storage technologies and progress toward market transformation in a technologically neutral fashion. The storage requirements apply to California's numerous community choice aggregators ("CCAs&quot , electric service providers ("ESPs&quot , and three investor-owned utilities ("IOUs&quot . The Commission issued these rules pursuant to Assembly Bill 2514 (AB 2514), passed by the California legislature in 2010. These rules also serve to forward California's objective of procuring one third of its total procurement from renewable sources by 2020.

Energy storage is seen by policymakers as a means to avoid or defer new fossil power plants, better integrate intermittent renewable power, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. AB 2514 mandated the Commission with evaluating whether to establish a new energy procurement program, which these rules are a part of.

The Commission established a target for the procurement of 1,325 megawatts of energy storage for the three IOUs—Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison Company, and San Diego Gas & Electric Company—by 2020. Installation of such energy storage must be achieved by the end of 2024. The IOUs may not own more than 50 percent of the storage projects, with the majority of the storage projects needing to be owned by third-party providers. CCAs and ESPs must procure energy storage equal to one percent of their annual 2020 peak load by 2020, and installation must also be completed by the end of 2024.

What Counts as "Energy Storage." Section 2835(a)(1) of the California Public Utilities Code defines an "energy storage system" as a "commercially available technology that is capable of absorbing energy, storing it for a period of time, and thereafter dispatching the energy." An energy storage system must "be cost effective" and accomplish one of the following: reduce emissions of greenhouse gases; reduce demand for peak electrical generation; defer or substitute for an investment in generation, transmission, or distribution assets; or improve the reliable operation of the electrical transmission or distribution grid. Additionally, an energy storage system must (i) "use mechanical, chemical, or thermal processes to store energy that was generated at one time for use at a later time"; (ii) "store thermal energy for direct use for heating or cooling at a later time in a manner that avoids the need to use electricity at that later time"; (iii) "use mechanical, chemical, or thermal processes to store energy generated from renewable resources for use at a later time"; or (iv) "use mechanical, chemical, or thermal processes to store energy generated from mechanical processes that would otherwise be wasted for delivery at a later time."

The Commission noted that system...

http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/294286/Utilities/Californias+New+Energy+Storage+Mandate



This is also helpful.

Solar Power Reshapes the California Grid
The growth in solar power will make sunset a challenge for the power grid, as solar generation drops off just as demand rises, grid officials say. The nonsolar part of the system will have to increase generation rapidly. Energy storage would allow some generators to keep running at peak solar hours, so the curve is not so steep...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/24/business/solar-power-reshapes-the-california-grid.html?ref=energy-environment

[lonestarnot]

4. Fanfuckingtastic!

[CRH]

8. If the battery technology continues to increase density, ...

and as several articles have been suggesting 3x-4x density is just a few years away, then V2G could smooth over many demand problems in non peak solar hours. A large EV fleet could be a very large collective battery, if politics and utilities will allow.

Also probably a need for somebody or something, to put a muzzle on ALEC after a needed defanging.