Critics agree that some excess capacity is needed. And, in fact, state regulations require a 15% cushion. California surpasses that mark and is on pace to exceed it by 6 percentage points in the next three years
Hmmm... as soon as I hit this point in the article I really lost a lot of enthusiasm to keep reading.
The article throws out all these shocking stats about too many power plants, show a scary graph where the supply keeps going up even though demand if flat. Frightening!!
The they readily admit that a 15% surplus in generation capability is a good thing! In fact it's a requirement by law. Suddenly a 21% excess doesn't seem all that scary.
I think you are missing the point of the article. It lays out a case that this excess power generation is done for the profit of some regulated utilities, such as PG&E.
For example, it mentions a power plant that was shut down because of it's excess capacity while another plant, which benefited PG&E, was allowed to come online. Secondly you mention 15% as a good thing, ignoring the article's mention that 15% itself was controversial, as higher then normal.
You mock "show a scary graph where the supply keeps going up even though demand if flat. Frightening!!", but I don't understand why. This is a fact that demand is going down, so why should power plants keep getting added, to the point we are shutting DOWN power plants for excess capacity.
The article cites multiple experts who argue that this is an excess of power generation, including multiple people on the PUC board. These people surely have some conception of future anticipated growth. And also we pay 50% more per kwh then is the average, which is money going into pockets of regulated utilities.
And yet despite this, somehow you have decided the bigger number is better, no matter the actual cost. I honestly cannot understand how you read the article and come up with your conclusion, based off no cited expertise yourself.
The fact that your comment is on the top baffles me even more, as if everyone here has decided for the day they are suddenly experts in utility planning. It is possible of course you have some more knowledge about WHY this is needed e.g. some demand spike you anticipate. Yet to dismiss it all in bad faith, with no real argument other then 21 > 15, is just ridiculous to me.
Quite a lot of modern politics seems to be making sensible but mildly complex solutions seems stupid, wasteful or malicious. Once you recognize the pattern you see it everywhere.
Another big chunk is taking a number that applies at a national scale and referring to it out of context so that it seems unfeasibly large.
Quite a lot of modern politics seems to be making sensible but mildly complex solutions seems stupid, wasteful or malicious. Once you recognize the pattern you see it everywhere.
That's a great and very important point, I think. Oversimplification goes hand-in-hand with populism – essentially the promise of simple, elegant (and ultimately unrealistic) solutions to complex problems.
It was particularly evident in the UK during the recent EU referendum.
I've described Brexit as "anti-globalisation riots for the over-50s" before. "Smash the system" is a very tempting slogan, but then you realise that the "system" is also a life-support system.
Or compare it to the temptation to want to re-write a complex software system. It's very hard for the rewrite to retain all the features and it's nearly always very expensive.
The national average for renewable energy use is 13% but in California it's 30%. Renewables are awesome but subject to clouds or lulls in the the wind so you need to run a renewable heavy grid with more excess capacity compared to one where only the demand side fluctuates unexpectedly.
In the future we can hope to add more short term storage and long range transmission lines to smooth this out.
I think the real question (not addressed by the article) is how much projected surplus there is as older plants reach their scheduled closure dates. Especially given the experience at San Onofre where the plant was closed early due to unexpected problems, it's reasonable to consider capacity if the 2.2 GW at Diablo Canyon goes offline before the current schedule of 2025.
Unlikely, 2.2MW is pretty much nothing, it's the nameplate capacity of a single relatively large wind turbine (but not a huge one, the current record-setter is the 8MW Vestas V164). Even in SMR few commercial design go that low, there's only ABV (3~10MWe) and the quite odd ELENA effort (68kWe), but most designs are 2~3 digits electrical.
Diablo Canyon has a nameplate capacity of 2240MWe over two reactors, which is about 2.2GW.
A 50% buffer on top of the buffer that was already increased by 50% above what was already considered a safe buffer, against the advice of experts? But are you sure 21% excess capacity will be enough? It's barely over twice what people consider a sane margin of error; maybe it should be 40%. Or 80%! Safety first, right?
Or maybe it should just be 10% like a normal state would have?
If there's a legal requirement, I would be uncomfortable being right on the edge of it.
In any case, the problem here seems to be that regulatory approval for additional plants is supporting Public utilities like PG&E who have guaranteed returns over independent companies who don't have guaranteed returns. It looks like we need the ability to exempt proposed projects from the guaranteed returns in order to fix the misaligned incentives here.
It's not like an independent set of experts in charge made it.
California made it, and in fact, most experts (in the very same article) seem to think it's "pretty rich".
The regulators made the legal requirement, so saying "it's good the regulators are doing this because it's a legal requirement" is super-circular logic when the very same regulators made the legal requirement.
The scary graph talks about aggregated demand, not peak.
Things go to shit if you approach 1:1 supply:demand ratio on a single day in a single region. Idle gas plants in particular are expected -- that's your cushion.
I'm sure there is excess given the knee-jerk to the brownouts a few years ago. But I'd like to see a response written by an engineer who understands electricity in CA.
It's extraordinarily difficult and expensive to bring on new generation in California (and most of the US in fact). California's total population has increased by 50% in 30 years. They're adding half a million people per year net. They're going to need all the power they can get over the next ~20 years, as California rapidly shifts to electric vehicles and their population continues to expand.
We already have a 15% cushion as the article and the parent comments state. That is plenty for any conceivable jump in demand. A large state like california does not change that fast. And all the present technological trends are for lower demand, not higher.
If you look at CED high demand, CA today already has almost 10% excess of the projected 2026 peak demand (projected is between 65-70, lets say 69MW, per the LA times capacity is 75MW). High demand makes it's own set of assumptions about the efficacy of self generation and economic growth, and I'd be interested to see if they redid this in 2016 (based off how much they overestimated in 2014 and lowered their expectations in 2015).
I did not fully digest this document but based off a brief skim I don't think this document disagrees strongly with the LA times article. Clearly there are more plants coming online, but that today we have 10% excess of the high end of a 10yr projected forecast, I think is part of the articles point (although I think the main point of the article is about how regulated utilities are benefiting from this, at the cost of consumers and non-regulated utilities).
Less than 60% of California households have AC compared to 80% across the US. The excess capacity necessary would seem to be smaller if this were a large contributing factor.
It's all a matter of perspective and how you interpret numbers. I can also say: "15% is standard surplus according to regulation, but California is generating 40% (6/15) more than the standard surplus". Now that seems like a bigger number.
This cali, land of air conditioners. That it keeps a greater cushion to cover heatwaves is to be expected. Washington or oregon wouldnt need such a cusion as thier hot seasons are more mild. Direct comparison of state laws ignores the physical realities for which those laws are written.
Less than 60% of Californians have air conditioners at home, as opposed to 80% of Americans. So, you seem to be missing a comparison to the 47 other states whose AC ownership percentage is strikingly higher.
Yes, but look to the use of them. California is hotter than other states. It is also subject to heatwaves in the south, short periods of intense heat which are uncommon elsewhere. People in LA basically live in AC during such times. Washington state may have more machines but doesn't get the heatwaves and so doesn't need the same reserves.
I was surprised how low AC usage in residential homes is in LA compared to many cities on the East Coast. I guess that a city which is rather hot year-round has less need for AC compared to cities that are very hot for only a few months per year. It allows building differently.
At least for the first one, this definitely plays into it. Average winters in NYC top out at 38-42 degrees, compared to LA bottoming out at 48-49. LA can get away with less insulation, so they don't need to worry about buildings trapping as much heat during the summer.
Hmmm... as soon as I hit this point in the article I really lost a lot of enthusiasm to keep reading.
The article throws out all these shocking stats about too many power plants, show a scary graph where the supply keeps going up even though demand if flat. Frightening!!
The they readily admit that a 15% surplus in generation capability is a good thing! In fact it's a requirement by law. Suddenly a 21% excess doesn't seem all that scary.