mook Wrote:
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> So in essence you're using the grid as a battery.
> Except that in most places there isn't enough
> on-grid storage to make that work - power plants
> shut down or go into inefficient low-output modes
> during the day, then have to quickly power up as
> the sun goes down, because there has to be a
> perfect match between production (a *little*
> overproduction is needed) and consumption or else
> the lights go out.
>
> As long as relatively few people have enough solar
> production to feed the grid (above their own
> usage), that doesn't require much change in how a
> system is run, but when rooftop solar becomes a
> significant portion of generation there can be
> issues. It's slightly less of an issue with
> utility-scale solar, because they're designed for
> remote control; rooftop solar isn't. It can be
> managed: California's learning how to do that, and
> it isn't either pretty (from a system control
> standpoint) or cheap. I have a UPS on my PC
> because of frequent transients, which occur most
> often in the mid-morning and late afternoon -
> times when many adjustments are going on in the
> power source mix with solar ramping up or dropping
> fast.
>
> Texas learned about it (for wind generation, not
> solar) the hard way one day when the wind suddenly
> stopped in West Texas but there weren't enough
> coal plants fired up to cover the slack.
> Widespread blackout was just barely avoided. Of
> course, that was some years ago; they now have
> even more wind power, but many of the coal plants
> have been replaced or have converted to gas, and
> can respond somewhat more quickly now.
>
> For those complaining about their privately-owned
> utilities (like PG&E) reducing the number of rate
> tiers and starting to charge connection fees as
> part of the rate, note that many publicly-owned
> utilities (like SMUD) have been doing that for a
> long time. They're not PUC-regulated, but are
> responsible to their ratepayers through direct
> elections or as a municipal utility. SMUD started
> doing it more than 15 years ago, when solar began
> to be a significant thing, for all of its
> customers on the theory (which is reasonable) that
> all connections have a cost regardless of how much
> energy is actually used. SMUD, of course, had and
> still has much lower rates overall than PG&E (and
> other privately-owned utilities), so it's not
> hugely burdensome. And they do support solar
> including rooftop; perhaps it's because they don't
> have big steam plants to pay off with their nuke
> long gone?
>
> One amusing thing about CA: there *is* power from
> coal here, and it's not all imported power from
> coal plants elsewhere. Haven't been able to track
> down the specific facility(ies); the amount is
> small (<1% of the state's power mix), so in-state
> it's probably from industrial co-generation. But
> coal use almost certainly implies railroad access
> - so where (other than to ports for export) do
> railroads haul coal in CA?

Mook is full of BULL$HIT!