Heatwaves Are Stressing Out Power Grids All Over the World 111
Heatwaves are pushing power grids to their brink around the world -- a risk that can make an already dangerous situation deadly. From a report: When temperatures spike, people tend to need air conditioning the most. But that can put a lot of pressure on a power grid, potentially triggering a blackout if there isn't enough electricity on hand. That's the worst-case scenario grid operators across the world are scrambling to prevent. Close to 28.8 million people are under heat alerts today in the US. Texas grid operator ERCOT broke its June record for electricity demand on Monday after issuing a "weather watch" for June 15th through 21st and asking residents to voluntarily conserve energy. In Texas and across the border in Mexico, temperatures soared above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius). A state of emergency was briefly declared Tuesday by Mexico's National Center for Energy Control as electricity supplies dipped to their lowest levels since a 2021 cold snap.
India and China have been suffering through extreme heatwaves since April. Power outages in India this week have also robbed people of air conditioning and running water. Recently, the heat has killed scores of people in northern India, flooding hospitals and morgues. Beijing shattered a June temperature record today of around 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius). Cities that are industrial powerhouses in southern China urged residents and businesses to save energy, and the country's National Energy Administration staged an emergency drill last Thursday to prepare for possible outages this summer.
India and China have been suffering through extreme heatwaves since April. Power outages in India this week have also robbed people of air conditioning and running water. Recently, the heat has killed scores of people in northern India, flooding hospitals and morgues. Beijing shattered a June temperature record today of around 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius). Cities that are industrial powerhouses in southern China urged residents and businesses to save energy, and the country's National Energy Administration staged an emergency drill last Thursday to prepare for possible outages this summer.
Re: Too much stress (Score:2, Troll)
If you were trying to be funny bear in mind that an attempt was made to ban a school book recently because it mentioned male seahorses carrying eggs. You're gonna have to dig way deeper to reach satire.
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Hey, don't make fun of Texas like that!
It's not nice to pick on the intellectually disabled [govinfo.gov].
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Don't bother. Just another immature child in an adult body.
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Well, if the book was "banned" for that reason, that would seem reasonable if that fact about sea horses was used to support the assertion that male humans can get pregnant and give birth to children.
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Yet, there are cases of XY individuals with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , who have gestated and given birth to children, though it does take a donor egg and some hormone treatments so their uterus responds right to the introduced fertilized egg. They may look like a woman, but with XY genes, they are men even if they identify as women due to being born with a vagina.
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
Think of the implications (Score:3, Interesting)
This just screams implication that wind and solar will be regionally applicable in solving this problem. When weather is extreme, these fledgling technologies step in to save the day.
Re:Think of the implications (Score:4, Informative)
I was being fucking fascetious, ya'll. This is not "informative", and it's also the opposite of true: weather-induced power supply problems is almost always a distribution infrastructure problem, not a power generation bottleneck. If you've been paying attention, wind and solar severely exacerbate power distribution infrastructure problems.
The article, I might add, is complete hokum. It's a perfect example of lying with statistics. For instance:
"A study of more than 13,000 cities around the world found that the number of people exposed to extremely hot, humid days in a given year tripled between 1983 and 2016."
OK, great. But what does that mean, exactly? And why did they pick the curious dates of 1983 and 2016?
Urban areas are always hotter than their surrounding areas. 1983 just happens to be when China started to drastically increase its per-capita urban population. The Chinese urban population has gone from 220 million to 787 million in that timeframe. The US, similarly, went through a similar population growth (2x). India was178M to 455M.
Another way to state their broad assertion is that people have moved to cities over the past 40 years. There's no accounting for population increases or anything in the interning period, which would potentially invalidate the claims article.
Just spin.
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Nah..
Folks should see the 2021 article...
"The US is experiencing 'wet bulb' heat, which can be deadly even to healthy people"
It's getting too hot to *live* in areas including the united states. The reason those years are chosen is that real science takes time. You'll never find data for the current or prior year and usually not for the two prior years.
Yes, there is a heat island effect but pointing that out is misleading (I think... emotionally and intentionally).
What folks don't realize is just how bad
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I have learned a long time ago, Sarcasm doesn't work on the internet. I actually fear that I might have accidentally created the Flat Earth movement, because while I was younger and had time, in response to some anti-evolution post, I created some crazy explanation on why the earth was flat, figuring it was too stupid for anyone to take seriously. It did get moderated insightful or its equivalent for the sites, I thought it was because people got the sarcasm. However it just might had been a bunch of peop
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I pretty much doubt that. Flat Earthers have been around a LOT longer than computers.
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The issue is that it's too expensive for many of these areas. Annual income is $700 to $3,200.
I *just* bought a solar setup on a very good deal. It was $800 pre-tax. It is not enough for one day of coverage with air conditioning. It may keep the chest freezer, a couple led lights, a fan, a laptop, and the cable modem going.
I'm using window units instead of my central air conditioning and my year to year power usage is down 20% from last year which was down 9%. My annual electricity bill is *still* a l
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At about 0700 this morning, here in England, the UK energy dashboard showed that 4% or so of Britain's electricity was being generated from solar, and about the same from wind. The other 92%, approximately, came from nuclear, gas, a little coal, "biomass" (i.e. burning wood), and "imports" (i.e. electricity generated abroad, probably from burning gas and coal).
Right now, about 8.30 pm, solar and wind between them are contributing about 10% of the UK's electricity.
https://www.energydashboard.co... [energydashboard.co.uk]
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That's odd considering the World Economic Forum indicates a third of UK's annual power comes from wind and solar... back in 2020.
Ah-- I see, you need to look include the 10 hours per day that solar and wind make up a 13GW of power generation (while gas consistently delivers 12GW of power generation). Looks like Wind is 3 to 5 GW most of the day.
So add more solar and storage and you can reduce natural gas usage.
Add more wind and it reduces natural gas linearly.
Nuclear provides a constant 4 GW of power.
Howe
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However- in my experience, Nuclear is priced artificially low
Do you care to elaborate on that? Renewables in Europe have been benefitting from fixed-price to help their development. They have grid-priority over other forms of energy sources, which mean the other energy sources must be the ones artificially decreasing their capacity factor when there is too much of solar/wind energy (yes, it happens, which is why electricity costs can go below 0). And they have to be the ones spinning up again to cover the intermittency of those renewables, even though spinning down a
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Simply put, Nuclear always promises that decommissioning plants will cost "X" and it has been as much as "10X".
Private insurance companies *will not* reinsure decomissioning costs.
So the current generation gets artificially cheap nuclear power (which is still more expensive than renewables now) and the bill gets dumped on the grandkids.
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Simply put, Nuclear always promises that decommissioning plants will cost "X" and it has been as much as "10X".
Repeating the lies of anti-nuclear associations like greenpeace, without doing your research first, is just laziness.
As with every projects, some can be over budget, some can be under budget. The more projects of the same kind you do, the more precise you can be in your estimates. At this time, a little over 25 reactors have been fully dismantled in the world [world-nuclear.org].
The Trojan nuclear plant (funny name, hey) in Oregon was closed in 1993 and released for unrestricted use in 2005 for a relatively low-cost of $300 mi
Re: Think of the implications (Score:2)
7am and 8:30 PM is when my airco is running always, cos, you know, bloody hot times of the day.
Oh wait. Almost nobody has airco over here. Neither do I.
Also sun's barely up at those times. Nobody cares for the stats of power solar deliver at 7am or 8:30pm, especially when it comes to airco's. Also, we don't have airco's here. Try trees.
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Are any numbers available for about 2pm, too?
Re:Think of the implications (Score:5, Informative)
Check for yourself whenever you like - it's updated in real time (although you might want to tell your browser to do a reload). https://www.energydashboard.co... [energydashboard.co.uk]
Right now, 1207 pm UK time, total is 33.225 GW. Solar is providing 18.4%, and wind 19.9%, total 38.3%.
Gas 28.3%, nuclear 14%, imports 15.9%, biomass 3%, total 61.2%. Plus some rounding error.
Note that this is noon in early summer, with a fairly high temperature and not much cloud cover (which is fairly common in England all year round).
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It may be overlooked, and it's worth noting, that the UK energy dashboard Web site linked to in the parent gives figures for electricity only. However electricity makes up only a fraction of domestic (household) energy consumption.
"Ofgem (the official regulator) estimates the typical household in Britain uses 2,900 kWh of electricity and 12,000 kWh of gas in a year".
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/infor... [ofgem.gov.uk]
So electricity accounts for only about 20% of household energy consumption.
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That's odd considering the World Economic Forum indicates a third of UK's annual power comes from wind and solar... back in 2020.
Ah-- I see, you need to look include the 10 hours per day that solar and wind make up a 13GW of power generation (while gas consistently delivers 12GW of power generation). Looks like Wind is 3 to 5 GW most of the day.
So add more solar and storage and you can reduce natural gas usage.
Add more wind and it reduces natural gas linearly.
Nuclear provides a constant 4 GW of power.
Howe
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Sorry for the double post. No way to remove it apparently.
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This just screams implication that wind and solar will be regionally applicable in solving this problem. When weather is extreme, these fledgling technologies step in to save the day.
What if it is hot evening or night without wind?
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This just screams implication that wind and solar will be regionally applicable in solving this problem. When weather is extreme, these fledgling technologies step in to save the day.
Insightful.
Not wind, but solar: right. Solar puts out the most power on sunny days in the summer, exactly when the air conditioning peak draw is. Point them a bit to the west of due south, to put the power generation peak in the afternoon.
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You can orient the panels farther west to get solar production to continue until later in the day. I have both southeast and northwest panels, and my solar production stops around 8:30pm right now, on one of the longest days of the year, in CA.
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Did you have a scientific reason for the panel's angle or did you just guess? I have set aside funds to install my own system in northeast Florida. It is hottest during the afternoon and continues much later. With the humidity it really does not cool off much before sunup so my room AC cycles all night. I run it at 76F.
I am doing a ground mount and have tall trees to the east and west so now would be the perfect time to mark the best location.
Re: Think of the implications (Score:2)
No, I didn't have a scientific reason. I just have 2 northwest roofs and 2 southeast roofs. I filled one of the SE in 2010, another in 2013, and both NW recently.
Ground mounts cost more than rooftop unfortunately. Shade from the trees could kill your ROI. I don't have nearby tall trees, but do have 4 chimneys which shades dome panels. To prevent that causing the entire array to go dark, I use Enphase micro inverters for every panel - all 70 of them.
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This just screams implication that wind and solar will be regionally applicable in solving this problem. When weather is extreme, these fledgling technologies step in to save the day.
The windmills did not step up to save Texas when it froze, but many on /. could care less about freezing Texans.
Re:Think of the implications (Score:5, Informative)
According to wikipedia: Power equipment in Texas was not winterized, leaving it vulnerable to extended periods of cold weather, leading to widespread power outages.
So there you have it, no amount of anything was going to save the cold Texans due to the power companies didn't think winterizing mattered. Also, from recollection, the power authorities in Texas were too concerned with saving money to winterize. That included the windmill operators who set up shop there because of the warm climate and no state government regulations. So the Texans pretty much shot their foot off by taking careful aim so that Mother Nature could pull the trigger.
On another note, we'll start worrying about cold Texans when Texans start worrying about cold Texans. Currently, they are run by bunch of ignorant gits who think someone's penury is a fault of their own...disregarding medical debt, natural disasters, stupid government policies, etc.
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You can't really blame them. They made a choice that was legal and which maximized their profits. The problems those choices cause consumers are *literally* not *their* problems.
The Texas sytem is a radical social experiment. Literally nobody else in the world has ever tried doing electricity that way. I'd say a fair assesment of the results is that they're mixed.
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Who said anything about Texas? This is the norm with any sort of extreme weather, whether it's Texas or Minnesota.
If it isn't winterized concerns, it's grid capacity issues during summer due to the disproportionately expensive infrastructure needed for such a small amount of capacity which solar/wind require.
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Winterizing is expensive. The last time Texas had a freeze this bad was about 114 years ago. But we did have some bad freezes 30 years ago (which we got thru fine).
On average, you'll winterize two windmills and tear them down before you put up another wind that faces even the 30 year freeze. At a cost of $60,000 each.
And the natural gas tanks-- you would have to "winterize" every fall and "summerize" every spring.
And the coal would need to be covered so rain wouldn't fall into it and freeze.
This would
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God is a tranny. She provided means and opportunity for you to save yourself.
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When weather is extreme, these fledgling technologies [wind and solar power] step in to save the day.
Tony Seba and others have predicted that solar, wind, battery power systems (SWB power) are going to disrupt everything else, because they are the least-cost solution to the problem.
I believe this to be true. Solar and wind have issues, but adding grid-scale batteries fixes those issues. Grid-scale batteries are expensive and there aren't enough being built, but that's changing rapidly. It may seem slow n
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I'm not a skeptic of wind or solar, mind you - I'm a skeptic of them at scale, because they are largely weather intolerant. I'm a skeptic of the heavy-handed measures, which are fundamentally fairly classist. They will make life more difficult for the poor.
You've got to account for the cold as well as the heat. Yes, heat is largely a self-solving problem with solar, but not wind. Neither do well with the cold or inclement weather in general.
I agree completely about heat pumps and solar on new construction.
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This just screams implication that wind and solar will be regionally applicable in solving this problem. When weather is extreme, these fledgling technologies step in to save the day.
Resistance increases with increasing heat reducing effective capacity of transmission systems. There have been numerous large scale blackouts caused by transmission lines overheating having nothing to do with supply shortage.
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Understood. This is just one of the reasons why centralized wind/solar are not a very good stopgap measure for high temperatures.
Let's push EVs even harder!! (Score:3, Funny)
I mean, that extra load on the system surely won't cause any harm?
Hey, in addition to the AC going out, we can stop all commerce, shipping and travel and really enjoy our lives.
I mean, I'm all for alternative energies...and I think EVs in general are a good thing, but let's not put the cart before the horse...our grids are not ready for a electric vehicle ONLY society yet.
Re:Let's push EVs even harder!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it would be nice if somebody would think to put something like batteries in EVs.
That way, they could be charged during off-peak hours, and maybe even used to pitch in with AC during peak demand.
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I'm with you. What moronic society would invent energy storage in the form of batteries on wheels?
V2G. It's a thing.
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V2H (household) would be enough, mostly. V2G from every house apparently makes the electricians nervous. V2G from whole corporate and government parking lots full of road-repair vehicles, buses, corporate fleets, where you've got 100 vehicles and can kick out a megawatt for hours, now you're talking, it's worth the safety equipment to input to the grid.
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What doe V2H and V2G stand for?
I'm not familiar with those acronyms.
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Vehicle to Home and Vehicle to Grid respectively.
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Thank you!
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But our sponsored by Oil Companies, and primarily ICE Vehicle news sources, want to make EV the boogy man! And show scenarios of usage on par of the Infomercial model who is unable to do a simple task unless they get that new gadget specialized to do just that one thing!
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When you have overwhelming heat like this...and no, your AC needs don't just go away after 5pm....there is no true off peak hours.
And when everyone has an EV plugged in 24/7 somewhere...again, there is no "off peak" hours.
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It's going to be hotter during the day, no matter what.
If you barely have enough juice even to run AC at night, you're going to have blackouts during the day, and you've already failed even without EVs.
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Even if it's still hot, ACs may run intermittently after 5pm vs continuously, based on thermostat settings. 2-stage ACs can switch to the lower stage. etc.
And of course the big ones - most business shut down in the evening/nights, so a whole bunch of loads drop off.
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Actually at night I crank the AC up to really cool things down....so I can sleep comfortably.
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That way, they could be charged during off-peak hours, and maybe even used to pitch in with AC during peak demand.
I wish people would stop suggesting this. The best time to charge EV's is actually while you're at work, during peak solar panel output. This will also help us to see just how much solar we still need to build out. As a bonus, a number of business that need reliable electricity during work hours, might get it more reliably with all those plugged in EV's.
Re:Let's push EVs even harder!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is Air Conditioners, not EV.
Air Conditioners require constant High Power to keep your home cool. For most people they will charge their EV in the evening when it is Cooler and only for about an hour or so with a normal commute) Most EVs even have the option to only charge late at night to save on power bill, thus allowing slighly less difference between day usage and night usage, allowing for a more consistent power strategy.
Also to note a lot of home users who get EV also consider offsetting with Solar Panels which will also help balance the grid.
Home AC are the biggest problem, they are often running high during peak power usage times, because that is when it is the hottest, as well to make it worse, they are cooling homes where their may not be anyone in the home at the time. Electric Cars are not a problem at this point. As well who is pushing everyone to get an EV? I keep on hearing that people are getting pushed into getting one, however I never seen anyone doing this.
They are intensives to switch, but you can still get a gas guzzler. There may be a point in a decade where their may new Gas models of particular classes of cars, but I don't see any push to get rid of your older car. The transition to EV, is running rather gradual, definitely at a rate which our grid can manage it.
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It's worth reflecting that 100 years ago there were no air conditioners - or hardly any, even though the modern air conditioner was invented just after 1900.
Just think - for the first million or two years of our species' existence, we survived without air conditioning! Even when I was a kid, back in the 1950s, it was thought of as a rare and exotic luxury mostly confined to the richer areas of the USA.
Certainly in the hottest times some people have always died of heat. Not nearly as many as died of cold in
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Just think, for the last 50 years temperatures have been rising inexorably.
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Except they have not actually risen inexorably. According to this Nasa chart https://climate.nasa.gov/explo... [nasa.gov]
Global temps have gone up about 1 to 1.2 Degrees Celsius in the past 70 years. That's not enough to say you are dead without AC anymore then you were dead in the 1950s without AC.
I imagine before AC we had more heat related deaths in general but ultimately the number one problem we have is actually overpopulation. According to this https://www.macrotrends.net/co... [macrotrends.net] We have more then tripled global p
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You do realise that there is a huge difference between a global average and a local maximum?
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100 years ago almost no one who didn't have to lived in the South. There was a reason for that.
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Umm what? A major portion of the USA's population lived in the south. We fought his thing called the civil war. A nontrivial amount of people have lived in the South for well over 100 years.
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Yes, many people lived in the South. But a great many more have moved there since the availability of mechanical air conditioning.
Just as an example:
1940 population of Texas; 6.4 million. Population of USA 132 million.
2020 population of Texas; 30 million. Population of USA 332 million.
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People have grown weak. They need to have AC to survive nowadays, and they need to take their cars because it's too hard to walk 1 mile.
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Well, yes, but really hot places like Arizona or Florida were sparsely populated. 100 years ago Arizona had only about a third of a million inhabitants, now it's got 7.2 million. Florida had about 900,000 inhabitants, now it's got 22 million. Of course more moderate climate states have also grown, but nowhere near as much -- New York and Ohio for example have roughly doubled.
I think it's fair to say that population patterns in the US would be radically different today without air conditioning.
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I keep on hearing that people are getting pushed into getting one, however I never seen anyone doing this.
You're not watching the right Angry People on TV or the Internet.
It's one of their standard "Things To Be Angry About," along with "DEI," "CRT," and "Woke."
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The problem is Air Conditioners, not EV. Air Conditioners require constant High Power to keep your home cool.
The problem is air conditioning attached to an energy-inefficient dwelling.
When a dwelling is built in an energy-efficient manner, then heating and cooling efforts tend to be minimized as the energy-efficient nature of the dwelling construction maintains the "conditioned air" (cool air in hot weather, warm air in cold weather) within the dwelling. Some amount of that "conditioned air" is lost everytime the "barrier" between "conditioned air" and "unconditioned air" is broken, like a door opening & closi
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We have the perfect solution to this. Solar panels on the roof that work best when AC demand is highest, and insulation/shade to reduce the load.
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To be fair, high temperatures are not good for solar PV, and reduce the efficiency. Optimal conditions for solar are medium temperatures, with unobstructed skies, and long days. Kind of lack we are having in California. My 21kW PV arrays generated 140 kWh on tuesday, more than double what we actually used that day. Temperatures were mild for the season in CA.
Re: Let's push EVs even harder!! (Score:2)
GP is talking about the thermal load on the inefficient house. It's not just about panels converting some heat causing solar radiation to energy. They also reflect some of it back (at night too). They also absorb the heat and since they are raised off the roof, radiate it to the raising air (on slanted roofs) instead of into your roof and home. Google says they reduce the thermal load by 38%... even half that is pretty good!
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There are 2-stage, multi-zone air conditioners on the market for a very long time. I put in a 10 zone system in my home in 2010. It cost about $30k to replace the entire HVAC. That's with 2 central ACs units and 2 central gas furnaces, all 2 stages. The energy consumption from the AC is minimal, because we don't cool all 4600 sq ft 24/7. The winter natural gas bills are more consequential though - I find it harder to tolerate walking across cold rooms/hallways, so we do heat the whole house. We are a net ex
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Hey, but let's still push going to EVs only as soon as possible....I mean, that extra load on the system surely won't cause any harm?
Different load profiles.
Air conditioning loads peak during the day, while people typically plug their EVs in and charge them at night.
Since pretty much all electric vehicles have the capability to schedule charging, what utilities need is to implement time-dependent electric pricing, encouraging people to schedule their EVs to charge after midnight, when grid demand is low.
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In heat in the south, do you seriously think that the need for full blown AC drops at 5pm?
No, you pretty much need it ALL day.
And...when EVERYONE has an EV
Daytime peak [Re:Let's push EVs even harder!!] (Score:2)
In heat in the south, do you seriously think that the need for full blown AC drops at 5pm? No, you pretty much need it ALL day.
The key word is "peak." Air conditioning may be used all day and night, but the PEAK is in the day. Which is also when other electrical usage peaks (particularly if there is industry in the electric service area).
And...when EVERYONE has an EV...there is no such thing as off-peak...if everyone is charging them up after midnight.
Not at all clear. First, it will be a long time before there are enough electric vehicles to worry about this. You're postulating a problem that won't manifest for decades, if ever. And even if everybody in the US drives an electric car, the total energy required is still only a fraction of the el
Stop building in arid regions (Score:5, Insightful)
Texas has the highest rate of housing buildouts in the country. Many of these houses are in a lower latitude than Phoenix Arizona. I've always loved this quote from king of the hill on how building in these places is a monument to mans arrogance, [youtube.com] and I think it's right on the money.
I get why real estate developers love these regions. Land is CHEAP, often times there's minimal roadblocks in the way of local regulations, labor pool is cheap and all of this adds up to high profits. All you have to do is build what is essentially life support systems, and there is the problem. Life support systems in these regions are a finite resource. The arid regions around the world tell the same story, when these resources dry up, they become ghost towns. If it wasn't for Northern California shipping water down to LA via the Aqueduct, it would be a ghost town (or at least sparsely populated) Air conditioning is what's made them livable.
For our carbon offset, we REALLY need to knock this off. It's not just Phoenix that's a monument to mans arrogance. Dubai, Vegas, most of Texas, LA are all culprits.
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Go ahead and suggest that to the Texas legislature. They'll accuse you of being "woke" or something, and that building underground is against G-d's law, and you are planning to groom kids underground. They aren't the brightest bulbs on the tree.
Solar (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there will be some instances where solar is impractical, but building codes could require solar to be fitted on any building that has air conditioning installed unless there are practical reasons why it is not viable.
Governments just have no backbone.
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If you want to talk building codes, the way to partially alleviate this problem is to encourage white or light-colored roofs.
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A whole bunch of electrical loads go out around sunset (or earlier) as businesses close.
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Why would you do that?
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No shit, but on heat wave days , generally the sun shines, and there is solar generation, though it's not optimal generation at high temperatures.
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The California government mandated solar PV on new constructions in 2020.
A partial solution (Score:2)
If you're in a region with significant temperature swings and you've invested in good insulation... open your windows at night and chill the home as much as possible and close it up (including blinds / curtains to reflect light out again) during the heat of the day.
I convinced my wife to try that out a few years ago and our air conditioner has been idle since. Mind you, it's not like heat in Southern Ontario will kill you without AC. I suspect we'd be a little more interested in chilling the house if the
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If you're in a region with significant temperature swings and you've invested in good insulation... open your windows at night and chill the home as much as possible and close it up (including blinds / curtains to reflect light out again) during the heat of the day.
In Central Texas, I can do that maybe three nights a year. My cat loves it. It might work in west or south Texas, but the rest of Texas is too humid for big swings.
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Can customers review detailed information? (Score:2)
Can customers review detailed information? Or do they hide everything under the guise of "security" (by obscurity)?
Any public utility seems like it should be mostly public knowledge. Meaning how often do things fail, how long do people wait for repair, etc. I'm sure they track those for internal use, but how easy is it to find by random Joe public?
Similarly I saw a website to monitor the status of government bills for the federal government. It wasn't great, but it existed.
I've been less impressed by st
I have a solution! (Score:1)
4.4 Million EVs to take up the slack? (Score:2)
How about you pull those 5000-Watts at night when power demand is but 65% of peak demand?
https://www.ercot.com/gridmkti... [ercot.com]
Even last night that means you when Texas had, let's see.. about 22,000,000 kW of excess capacity @ 5kW/vehicle = 4,400,000 additional vehicles charging while making no impact to peak demand.
Also, those hydrocarbons when burned in your ICE have a full cycle efficiency of less than burning those in a power plant, transmitting them to a vehicle, and propelling the vehicle with electricity
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It's too bad it's impossible to change the grid to meet chaning use patterns.
Re: 4.4 Million EVs to take up the slack? (Score:2)
I schedule my EV every Friday around 1am-5am. It takes about 4hrs and gives me 200 miles. Occasionally, I will charge it on Wednesday due to high usage. Granted other EVs will have less range but that just means they spread this load over the week.
I think the grid load fear is overblown. The amount of electricity used to maintain and run the petrol supply chain isn't a small thing. If significant people switch to EVs, that's going to see a drop in usage. And we can also give charging control to the powe
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Evs (Score:2)
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AC loads are different from EV loads. Some understanding required.
"All over the world" (Score:1)