Too much solar

Digging ditches to fill them back up

Publishing note: Random Walk is going to experiment with a different publishing cadence over the next few weeks (more details forthcoming). I will endeavor to trade some frequency for depth, at least some of the time.

• data centers (and everyone) still needs more power

• CA is wasting an increasing amount of solar energy. why?

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Another short post today, coming off the holiday. I do have some longer posts in queue, though, that I’m finishing this week.

Too much solar

In general, the Data Centers Need More Power trade is alive and well.

Data centers still need more power

It’s pretty straightforward: AI’s computational demands consume a lot of energy (and so does the ‘electrification of everything,’ more broadly). Electricity demand, however, has been flat for years, and the grid has (until recently) prepared accordingly (i.e. not very much).

Hardware has gotten more efficient, but power demands have still gone up, up, up:

Stanford AI Index Report

The hardware is getting ~40% more efficient, but energy consumption is doubling (and note that these are log scales).

Put it all together, and we need more power, or perhaps more transmission, but in all events, more-better electricity.

Solar curtailed

That there’s an energy-supply shortfall makes it all that much more striking to see California saying “we’ve got enough” with increasing frequency.

At least, with respect to solar:

EIA

Solar “curtailments” in the California are growing substantially every Spring.

A curtailment is basically when the grid operator says “no” to the energy—peak curtailments for solar have quadrupled since before the pandemic.

The reason that CA is curtailing so much solar is because (a) the state prioritized adding a lot a lot of solar to the grid; and (b) the intermittent nature of solar means there is often way more of it than anyone possibly needs during some parts of the day/year, and not nearly enough of it during other parts of the day/year.

Too much energy means the grid can fry. Too little energy (and too little storage) means other sources (i.e. nat gas) need to be a part of the mix.

So, in the spring, when there’s lots of sun, but not too much heat for A/C, CA has to dump solar-generated energy.

It’s almost like when the state (country?) decided to go whole-hog on solar power generation, storage and transmission appear to have been left by the wayside.

In the EIA’s (delicate) words:

CAISO is trying to reduce curtailments in several ways:

• Trading with neighboring balancing authorities to try to sell excess solar and wind power

• Incorporating battery storage into ancillary services, energy, and capacity markets

• Including curtailment reduction in transmission planning

In addition, starting this year, companies are planning to use excess renewable energy to make hydrogen, some of which will be stored and mixed with natural gas for summer generation at the Intermountain Power Project’s new facility scheduled to come online in July.

Flush with solar energy in a secularly short energy environment, CAISO is trying to dump it on other states, get some batteries online asap, and belatedly upgrade transmission. In the meantime, excess solar (which cost taxpayers billions to generate) gets pissed away.

Idk, but this seems like it was all pretty foreseeable.¹

On the plus side, CAISO is also trying to make some hydrogen, which sounds cool.

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Previously, on Random Walk

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1. Hayek, grumble, grumble . . .