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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the power-to-the-people dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

California has a big — and growing — glut of power, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times has found. The state's power plants are on track to be able to produce at least 21% more electricity than it needs by 2020, based on official estimates. And that doesn't even count the soaring production of electricity by rooftop solar panels that has added to the surplus.

[...] This translates into a staggering bill. Although California uses 2.6% less electricity annually from the power grid now than in 2008, residential and business customers together pay $6.8 billion more for power than they did then. The added cost to customers will total many billions of dollars over the next two decades, because regulators have approved higher rates for years to come so utilities can recoup the expense of building and maintaining the new plants, transmission lines and related equipment, even if their power isn't needed.

How this came about is a tale of what critics call misguided and inept decision-making by state utility regulators, who have ignored repeated warnings going back a decade about a looming power glut.

[...] California utilities are "constantly crying wolf that we're always short of power and have all this need," said Bill Powers, a San Diego-based engineer and consumer advocate who has filed repeated objections with regulators to try to stop the approval of new plants. They are needlessly trying to attain a level of reliability that is a worst-case "act of God standard," he said.

Even with the growing glut of electricity, consumer critics have found that it is difficult to block the [Public Utilities Commission] (PUC) from approving new ones.

In 2010, regulators considered a request by [Pacific Gas and Electric Co.] (PG&E) to build a $1.15-billion power plant in Contra Costa County east of San Francisco, over objections that there wasn't sufficient demand for its power. One skeptic was PUC commissioner Dian Grueneich. She warned that the plant wasn't needed and its construction would lead to higher electricity rates for consumers — on top of the 28% increase the PUC had allowed for PG&E over the previous five years.

[...] Recent efforts to get courts to block several other PUC-approved plants have failed, however, so the projects are moving forward.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:04PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:04PM (#464764) Journal

    That sort of depends. If the over-capacity is in the form of redundancy, then it might be quite reasonable given that earthquakes can wipe out facilities, and they take awhile to rebuild. But if it is done correctly 20% margin should be ample. At that point, or even before, you need to start worrying a lot more about infrastructure and distribution. And being adapted to lots of small points of generation, like solar or wind farms.

    --
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday February 09 2017, @01:17AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 09 2017, @01:17AM (#464836) Journal

    But if it is done correctly 20% margin should be ample.At that point, or even before, you need to start worrying a lot more about infrastructure and distribution.

    Yes, you need to worry, but not for the reasons you think.

    A true story about power and grid (or was it greed?) set in Australia context

    2014 Power corrupts [themonthly.com.au]

    In the past few years, our electricity prices have doubled. While the media has feasted on the likes of pink batts, Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson, the astonishing story behind these price hikes has been all but ignored. And yet, it may be one of the greatest rorts in Australia’s history.

    Since 2009, the electricity networks that own and manage our “poles and wires” have quietly spent $45 billion on the most expensive project this country has ever seen. Allowed to run virtually unchecked, they’ve spent vast sums on infrastructure we don’t need, and have charged it all to us, with an additional fee attached. The spending was approved by a federal regulator, and yet the federal government didn’t even note it until it was well underway.

    2015 - The result [abc.net.au]

    Australia is on the cusp of an energy revolution. Investment bank Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2030, 2.4 million households will get much of their electricity, day and night, from rooftop solar panels and battery storage.

    Staggering predictions like this are wooing solar battery manufacturers from all over the world to Australia, many of whom are either launching their products here first, or getting here as quick as they can. The most hotly anticipated is Tesla's soon-to-be-released Powerwall, a lithium-ion battery system that's sleekly designed, and cheap.

    2016 - Hazelwood power station: Closure of plant to leave hundreds jobless [abc.net.au]

    early 2017 - Battery storage: Is Australia on track to be the world’s biggest market? [onestepoffthegrid.com.au]

    Australian homeowners are continuing to demonstrate that they are hungry innovators when it comes to adopting solar storage. Our solar owners aren’t waiting for some hypothetical, high level, unfunded innovation policy to kick in – they’re off and running.

    A new report [reneweconomy.com.au] released by industry analysts Sunwiz has recently updated the estimates of installed solar storage in Australia and the huge news is our market and installed capacity grew by more than 13 times in 2016 to 6,750 systems for the year.

    Just under seven thousand systems may not sound like a lot but when you consider there were less than 500 systems installed the previous year, you start to realise that the growth is astounding. More so, considering there were 250 working days in 2016, it means that collectively there were 27 storage systems per day being installed Australia wide.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by Alphatool on Thursday February 09 2017, @11:40AM

      by Alphatool (1145) on Thursday February 09 2017, @11:40AM (#464949)

      It's also worth mentioning the ongoing [wattclarity.com.au]lack of peak supply [wattclarity.com.au] that has arisen in Australia, even with the energy revolution you mention.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 09 2017, @12:42PM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 09 2017, @12:42PM (#464968) Journal

        It's also worth mentioning the ongoing lack of peak supply that has arisen in Australia, even with the energy revolution you mention.

        With 6000-7000 total battery installations, this is to be expected - it's the "early adopters" phase.
        And it will continue until the number of installations steps into the mid-high 100ks range - it will require the battery prices to go down significantly, though - i.e. get to the mainstream stage. The same happened with the PV panels - 10 years ago, the prices were over $10,000 for a decent sized installation. Now, one can get a 5kW worth of panels + inverter + installation on under $5,000.

        But... the straw that broke the camel's back (and convinced Aussies to really consider solar panels) was the hike in electricity prices for "grids to nowhere" the greedy distributors charged. It what started the death spiral - the less people buy power from you, the higher prices you need to stay viable. The higher prices, the more people will seriously consider going off-grid.
        What happened has less to do with the "green feeling" and more with enough technological progress to allow the consumer to say "F... you, I'll do it myself".

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford