California apparently has too much solar power. Can someone explain

>>133021467
It isn't a bad thing, especially when it gets more and more affordable and at the same time efficient.

California produced so much that it paid Arizona to take the excess power. I get solar only works in sunny places but I'm entering college as a petro engineering major and this gives me some doubt as to my major. I'm really interested in my major and don't want to change it.

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In Washington State, where much of the power is Hydro, we were pushed to conserve energy, which we did. Now because there is less demand, the power company says it needs to raise its rates to cover a budget shortfall because people aren't buying enough power.

True story.

>>133021467
Never heard of the law of supply and demand, eh?

>>133022248
Oil extraction rates are only about 25% on the high end. Once it gets to that point it's currently more economical to move on. So for every barrel of oil we've pulled out of the ground, there is still 3 more down there and we keep getting better at finding new reservoirs. I doubt oil or coal goes anywhere for a long time.

>>133021467
>Muh cost
Solar energy recently passed all fossil fuels for the lowest cost energy source, overall including production of the panels, which people love to complain about.

Solar energy is the most redpilled concept in business right now. Energy use is skyrocketing, while finite resources are dwindling.

I'm working on an energy company and am going to be extremely rich in the near future. Just working on getting some nice government contracts, business deals, etc so I can sell by the millions instead of one at a time. Screencap this post.

>>133022248
Even though gas, diesel and kero will be around for a long time, there will always be need for petrochemicals as well. It's as safe as field as any to enter as a young xir

>>133022248
>>133025354
The rising importance of enhanced recovery will only make petroleum engineering more technically challenging and intellectually satisfying as a STEM career.

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>>133021467
Coal is much better for the environment, also
people working in mines are usually much healthier and better off. MAGA

The U.S' oil production rate has significantly increased over the past years

Also the US dollar is backed by oil and depends on the world trading oil for USD. If that falls through than the US economy will crash and enter a period of hyperinflation

>>133025614
Are you saying it's cheaper then fossil fuels, or is the cheapest energy source total.
Because you're wrong on both parts.
It's the most expensive non-fossil fuel out there. And it's more expensive then Natural Gas, and only on par with Coal.

>>133021467

I didn't know solar power was going to shoot spaceships into orbit so we can mine the materials on other planets needed to build massive solar super structures to harness the power of the sun.
Melting planet sized ore into even larger formed or forged building materials with solar power sounds amazing.
I can't wait until we use solar power to forge a continuous beam from NY to LA and fly it up into place around the sun.
I can't believe that's the path we are taking, its so inspiring.

>>133026758
Solar isn't even an alternative energy source to coal/NG, since solar isn't dispatchable.

>>133021467
Are you serious? If you manufacture so much of something, that you have to pay someone to take the surplus, it's a net negative. California manufactured so much electricity, it's paying Arizona to take it.

It's not a difficult thought. Why are you asking to have it explained?

>>133025614
do the actual math dummy, you are using current market price
photovoltaic cells need an absolute amount of silver. name a pv cell without silver, you cant
the amount of available silver will not make enough solar panels. we're all just fooling ourselves

Because the energy supply of solar power is unstable and a first world country needs a stable power supply, for obvious reasons.
So you need conventional power plants with enough capacity to make up for the solar power.

>>133027015
Niggers will destroy everything

>>133021467
Solarfags are idiots, also Trump is wrong on that one :(

>>133027358

>>133027015
Niggers will destroy everything

The crux of the problem is that solar power is not dispatchable; i.e. it cannot be produced on demand.

Since electricity needs to be consumed exactly when it is produced supply and demand need to have pretty close alignment (within a band of what the electricity grid can hold). For this reason it is highly desirable produce electricity from dispatchable sources, and you plan your load balancing looking ahead to the next ~15 minutes or so.

The problem that occurs when you get too much solar on a grid is that when it's working at 100% (like noon on a sunny day) you get all of it's rated output, but at 8pm that same day you'll get nothing. The rest of the producer on the grid may have to accommodate this variable production (turning off at noon, ramping back up at night) but it makes those plants less efficient (think stop/start driving fuel consumption, vs highway fuel consumption). Moreover, to protect the grid from this "duck curve" effect (see article on wikipedia) you often need to build "peaker" facilities that are capable of ramping up power on demand in a very short period of time (these tend to be natural gas-fired). But to get peakers bilt you need to pay them even when they are not operating (capacity payments).

The long and the short of it is that too much solar causes grid instability, inefficiencies in other sources of power, forced spending on redundant back-ups, and drives up the cost of electricity overall.

Now if only batteries keep getting much, much cheaper; then we may get somewhere...

>>133027155
You forgot about the part where California also pays to take the power back.

Basically the state put up massive amounts of tax dollars to help people build solar plants, so everyone and their mother built solar plants to such a degree that they over produce power, and then the state pays someone to take that power, and then pays to take the power back when the solar plants aren't producing.

>>133021467
Oil and gas are reliable. Solar and wind energy are not.

If you take too much energy from the sun it will shrink and eventually get so small that it falls in to the pacific ocean, creating global warming

>>133021467
>>133022248

Solar produces too much power from mid day to early afternoon and not enough from evening until mid morning. When power generation exceeds demand, power must be dumped off the grid to avoid damage. Like Germany, California accomplishes this by dumping excess power onto neighboring grids, and then having to use fossil fuels when the sun goes down.

As long as night exists, solar can never be the backbone of a grid

>>133027828
What? That's not how it works at all. We can't possibly take that much energy from it even if we covered the surface of earth in panels. It's like 100 billion times the current annual energy use of the world. We would have to coat every planet in the solar system, and much of the space between them with solar panels to take enough energy from the sun for it's orbit to destabilize.

>>133021467
Nuclear > Solar & Wind > Natural Gas > Oil > Coal

>>133027828
Will the pacific be warm enough to swim in?

>>133027015
Niggers will destroy everything

>>133028593

Solar and wind are by far the worst because they produce power at arbitrary times, utterly divorced from demand.

>>133028106
As long as solar is intermittent it's not grid supply of any sort. Solar (like wind) is simply a negative load.

>>133028757

They're trying to make it grid supply, and suffering the consequences

>>133028593
Where does Geothermal, Biomass, Bio-fuel, Hydro, Tidal, and all the other energy sources fit in your little chart?

If you generate too much power you can do serious damage to all sorts of equipment, particularly industrial equipment. Power companies try to stay within .1% of the right voltage, and solar can throw that off.

Solar and wind power have the worst efficiency/cost ratio, by far. Litterally a meme technology that needs to be dropped once and for all.

>>133028869
Hydro should be #1. It's the best in every category and can even store energy from the grid.

>>133029144
Energy loss on upstream reservoir storage for hydro is far greater than that of batteries. Obviously neither compare to gas storage.

>>133028106
Until we build really big rechargable batteries.

>>133029144
Ever check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station

Pretty neat idea, although it's tough to imagine the tremendous amount of water storage you'd need at scale and what the efficiency loss would be.

>>133029534

The loss is greater, but the infrestructure is much less damaging to construct and maintain

>>133029624

Battery tech is infinitely scalable, we just haven't found anything cheaper per unit power than fucking lead acid batteries

>>133023911
Why? If they reduced demand than operating costs should have lowered as well.

>>133021467

>Can someone explain why this is a bad thing?

I'll explain why, you fucking cupcake

Every drop of sunlight we steal with our big fancy BLACKED discs takes energy away from the earth and environment, the earth needs this sunlight and the loss of energy could result in an ice age or worse.

climate freaks

>>133021467
Too much solar power? Then sell it to people who need it. Lower costs. Do something!!! Damn, you people aren't even thinking straight!

>>133026038
This. Oil is used for a hell of a lot more than fuel. Won't be going anywhere soon.

>>133030009
Because they have this giant debt from buying all the stuff tp produce power

>>133027579
But Trump wants to save Mexicans money.

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>>133030047

>>133026208
Physical activity is the keystone of good health. Also new research has proven that coming into contact with bacteria in dirt and rocks boosts the immune system and other body systems.

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>>133021559

>>133027015
Niggers will destroy everything

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>>133021467
They are not cost effective. The amount of kilowatt hours produced is not worth the cost to produce or maintain them. Relying on this type of energy source for too long will result in a net loss and a much higher probability of an energy shortage.
>Fucking clouds

>>133021467
solar is good but gather the rare earths from somewhere other than china

>>133027697
How the fuck do you overproduce power?

>>133031620
Energy has to go somewhere

>>133031871
In this case, heat.

>>133031620
You can damage the power lines and the gird equipment. I don't know why they can't shunt the excess into ground, but that's the main reason you don't want to over produce. If you can't store extra energy then you really need to match production with demand.

>>133032287
Extra power is typically shunted with large braking resistors (think MW scale).

>>133031871
Energy has to go somewhere
>>133032093
In this case, heat.

>>133033196
Is there a reason they wouldn't just have disconnectors like you would find at most any substation etc. they could use to disconnect banks of them when they're overproducing significantly?

>>133029746
>In a common scenario (known as TV pickup), the end of a popular national television programme or advertising breaks in commercial television programmes send millions of consumers to switch on electric kettles in the space of a few minutes, leading to overall demand increases of up to 2,800 megawatts (3,800,000 hp).

Always hilarious England. Even their power plants have Tea Time.

>>133033777
It's quite the clever solution, though, you know?

>>133033479
Disconnect solar panels? They should do it, they just don't have the capability probably. If utility companies charged consumers for producing power at negative rates, they should be charged for it. That would solve it quickly.

>>133027015
I got just the theme for you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YE_8TGjC5g&ab_channel=UbisoftMusicUBILOUD

>>133034319
I meant internally bank by bank of solar cells so at least there's less excess (or even sub-excess). I'm aware that it can be complicated and difficult to reconnect an entire plant to the grid once it disconnects entirely.

But I guess there's something about the design of it that would make internal disconnections difficult, not worth the cost, or whatever compared to just paying for excess or bleeding it off with resistor banks or what have you.

>>133021467
If Solar power was so efficient and cheap, 3rd world countries would have use it.
Solar power is not efficient enough yet

>>133034058
Yeah pumped storage is awesome, only BIG battery actually used besides compressed gas (for which there are very few usable locations). I bet there are some awesome pumped storage locations in the mountains that will become accessible with HVDC, sometime in the near future.

>>133021467
maybe they could use the spare energy to power some fucking desalination plants so they could have water

>>133035270
I understand smaller household-level systems are popular among off the grid type people. Even if you don't need the electricity potential from having water stored up high, it's still useful for having water pressure to run your plumbing, you can have solar-based warm water, etc.

I'm a big fan of if we can economically decentralize the grid a bit considering what unholy hell would be unleashed if it went down for long enough.

>>133021467
>California apparently has too much solar power. Can someone explain why this is a bad thing?
because it takes money away from petrol companies who are just as jewish as the jews

>>133034812
Disconnecting should actually be quite simple, since they already have inverters. I believe newer plants use many small inverters, so they could be shut on and off in small increments. It may actually be fast enough for frequency regulation.

>>133021467
They are not its just the oil and gas industries cant make money of them.

>>133035369
MAYBE THEY SHOULD USE THE ENERGY TO POWER A SET OF AUTOMATED CANALS TO PROTECT THE BASED DELTA SMELT

>>133021467
Because it's basically concentrated cancer. Solar cells are an economical abomination. Thin film cells might fix that but those are 5 years out.

>read thread
>an intelligent, informed and mostly civil discussion
>check address bar
>mfw I'm on /pol/ and not e.g. /sci/
Weird

>>133035545
>implying petroleum products aren't required to make solar panels

Oil companies don't care. Only dumb people like you who think oil only has one or two uses.

>>133021467
There's no money to be made with solar energy long term.

>>133035539
Pumped storage is terrible if you don't build it at a huge scale. If you just want hot water you can practically build it yourself in a few days.

They could use the excess to execute white people.

Because they're cheaper than solar at the moment. If they have a lot of solar it means their electricity is fairly expensive.

>>133035746
Funny thing is California was dumping crazy amounts of mercury into the ocean during the gold rush. But now we gotta save some dumb fish to feel better.

>>133025614
Retard.

The low cost of solar is destroying the market, whose price is decided by marginal production cost ($0 for solar and wind). The more solar you've got, the worse the investment becomes. Also it can't be stored so it's extremely inflexible. Hope you're not honestly in the energy business.. that'd be embarrassing.

>>133038829
Why can't it be stored?

>>133021467
I'll take what are rolling brown outs for $500

>>133021559

overinvestment = malinvestment

sth sth Austrian economics

>>133036514
The electrical generation aspect as I understand is what makes it part of the endless debate. So you'd couple it with solar and/or wind, and then you basically have at least a minor house battery regardless of the weather.

I've only heard it discussed for like if you're thinking of living innawoods, not like you'd run a modern house off and the utilities all go down.

>>133030047
spotted the liberal hippy.

>>133039154
No power can be stored, we know based on historical data when people will need power and burn the appropriate fuel just before spikes in demand to cover it. Solar generates power passively all day and it has to be used. You can cut down on solid fuel burning to offset the power generated by solar on a large scale, but we can't get rid of solid fuel power generation until we work out whole-country's-power tier batteries, and private or state-owned solar plants suffer from this problem even more.