Technology

What's also interesting to me is that we here in Utah used to (and maybe still do?) sell dirty electricity to CA (we produce a lot from coal and gas), because they didn't have sufficient base supply.

CA really needs effective base power supply, whether that's batteries or some other clean-ish energy source/storage solution. Meanwhile, electricity here in Utah is quite cheap at $0.12/kWh-ish, which is nice, and something like 1/3 of what CA charges.

CA has a for-profit energy sector so that's not surprising. They aren't lowering bills there for anything short of the apocalypse.

Obama tried to push grid upgrades for years, kept getting shot down. His plans would all be done by now. Throw in the fuel economy requirements of 54.5 mpg requirements for cars and light trucks and we would have seen billions of barrels of oil not being needed. (Lower gas prices as well). Granted it wasn't everything, but it was what we needed to start doing. Now 13, 14 years later after Trump rolled back those fuel efficiency policies as much as he could because it cost manufacturers more money in research, we are much closer to a rock we can't live on and haven't advanced nearly enough. So we voted in Drill Baby Drill to finish off the rock.

Sometimes the best way to get things done is to wedge your way in and cause a problem. It sucks, but humans be humaning

Which is so odd to me, because electricity just a couple states over is about 1/3 the cost vs CA. I pay $0.12/kWh in UT, whereas CA pays more like $0.32/kWh.

If we look at solar generation, we're doing pretty well here in Utah vs other states in the US (source). Taking a rough average of that data, here's what the numbers look like:

• California - 8500 MWh, or ~217 MWh per million people
• Utah - 650 MWh, or ~203 MWh per million people
• Texas - 4800 MWh, or about 160 MWh per million people
• Arizona - 1700 MWh, or about 242 MWh per million people

I just don't understand why California electricity prices are so high. It's not like they're generating a ton more than other states in the area or anything.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the figures, but the source I quoted didn't say anything about per-capita production, so I think it's total for the state.

And this involves only driving in summer when there is excess energy? Or getting through winter by storing enough hydrogen to make the Beirut explosion look like a firecracker in comparison?

So, take the excess solar energy, produce hydrogen and store for off-peak times or to distribute.

Storing hydrogen is difficult and expensive. Not even to say it can't be done, but it would require the energy companies to invest money in capital, and they hate doing that.

They are. Modeling has shown that getting Australia to 98.8% renewable is highly achievable.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/energy/grid-renewable-electricity-simulation/

Figuring out grid scale storage isn't easy, but the good thing about it is that you can figure out storage at slightly smaller scales to alleviate the problem somewhat, and build on that success to try to get to daily storage to meet nighttime demand, then up to weekly storage to handle fluctuations in weather, and maybe even seasonal storage to deal with seasonal variation in both supply and demand.

But storage doesn't have to just be chemical batteries, either. Some can be demand shifting, like desalination or water pumping based on excess power supply. Maybe even intermittently powering direct air capture of CO2 if there's so much excess energy they don't know what to do with it. Some can be storage of heat, whether really hot like molten salt that can run turbines for dispatchable electricity, or just at the residential scale with a bunch of distributed hot water tanks, or everything in between. There are also some storage technologies relying on gravity (pumped hydro if the geography supports it), compressed air, flywheels (could be important for maintaining grid inertia for stability).

And there's always curtailment, where you just don't generate the power, and turn off some the panels in the middle of the day.

Ohh, you gave me an idea! Given that it also happens in CA, maybe we should use the excess for freshwater production from seawater.

Which also has the additional benefit for homeowners of local backup power in the case of a blackout :)

We have so much solar power that we can no longer efficiently profit off of it. We would either need to reduce the margins we make on electricity or destroy our stock of solar capital to reinflate the price of energy.

What to do... what to do...