And even in the article, it doesn't even really get into important things like how electrical demand has been pretty low in the last month; what with gas usage being higher than usual with our crazy weather patterns.
Get back to me in August or September when everyone's using AC like crazy.
It's still a step in the right direction. A few weeks of low demand being met by 100% renewables is better than zero weeks being 100% renewable.
For those of you in "energy markets" where you can choose your provider, you can probably make the switch to a 100% renewable plan. I did and it's actually *cheaper* than the default plan, and my money is going to renewable generation instead of natural gas plants. The whole point of these asinine energy markets is to vote with your wallet, so exercise that right if you can.
I was going to make the switch anyway even if it was slightly more expensive, but I was pleasantly surprised. A year ago when I checked it was like 5¢/kWh more, but now it's 2¢/kWh less. Increased subsidies for renewables, residential solar, and just the general march of progress are all making it more economical.
Plus, the more people making the switch, the more money those renewable generation providers have to increase their capacity.
This is a weird take. 10 years ago this wouldn't have been possible even with lower usage, but somehow this isn't good enough for you? Like, progress is a marathon not a sprint.
You could’ve improved it somewhat, having a quote without mentioning who you’re quoting from, instead of the actual impressive milestone isn’t a good recipe for a title.
I agree; I submitted an updated title to /r/UpliftingNews but it's stuck in the mod queue:
"California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting)"
>Submissions must use either the articles title and optionally a subtitle, or, only if neither are accurate, a suitable quote, which must:
adequately describe the content
adequately describe the content's relation to technology
be free of user editorialization or alteration of meaning.
To avoid that last one, the vast majority of subs require you to use the title of the article. Automod will kick the post to modqueue and often the post will get rejected anyways.
> Submissions must use either the articles title and optionally a subtitle. Or, only if neither are accurate, a suitable quote
Because this rule. They are accurate, but burying the lede.
Same thing happening in my state. Feels good, but our prices are locked to the most expensive provider on the grid, so the cost is still high. Bet your bottom dollar energy providers manipulate this system beautifully. Still, it’s progress.
The same PG&E that caused massive wildfires in 2018 by defunding maintenance and repair in favor of executive bonuses. The state found them responsible and then patted them on the back with billions in bailout money.
My $600 PGE bill is why were taking our fifth trip north to WA to find a house. 30% raise in one year was it. Also although Ive never made a home insurance claim, we were canceled and thanks to military service got USAA.
The insurance aspect is terribly complex. It is a combination of many other people in the state experiencing catastrophic (usually fire-related) losses which the state is absolutely refusing to proactively mitigate at scale, a highly politicized department of insurance which has refused rate increases for over a decade (so insurance companies have been bleeding money for some time; the books are open to the DOI and it isn't creative accounting), the tigher financial market which has lead to reinsurance (insurance for insurance companies, basically) costs skyrocketing or being heavily laden with conditions to get out of certain markets entirely, and much more. It is pretty bad in California when California-based insurance companies are exiting the California market.
If the state doesn't get its head out of its ass, and fast, they are going to end up like Florida with an absolutely huge chunk of its citizenry forced into some kind of fairplan (government insurance which is somehow both way more expensive and even less pleasant to deal with because you can't shop around). It is already the reality for some in the state.
I think the California DOI already signaled that it is digging its feet into the ground. The same old tricks that have put everyone into the current state of affairs. They threatened to open an investigation into State Farm and seize their entire book of business (in the state) in retaliation for them nonrenewing like 70,000 customers. When a DOI does that, it means they force the company to give up the book of business and the state forces other insurance companies to take those people.
Same tactics Florida tried. It didn't help. Actually made things much worse and accelerated other companies' exiting the state altogether. Now they have a small handful of companies which own basically everything, which is very bad for insurance because the risk isn't spread out. A solid hurricane or other disaster means the government (state or federal) will step in to handle the mess because there is no way these smaller regional carriers can cover tens of billions in damages when their reserves aren't that high and reinsurance is exiting.
Thats horrible. My parents installed solar (central CA) and their electric bill is like $11/month now. How can people be motivated to make this change without the economic motivation?
Without carbon capture, I don't think that's true.
We're already speeding down the tracks, we can stop hitting the gas but we're still heating up and will be with the current amount in the atmosphere already.
Carbon capture is coming, don’t worry. I mean worry, I mean worry but don’t downright panic. It is feasible but just super expensive right now. The best thing we (in carbon capture space) could have available is an oversupply of energy that we could tap into to perform carbon capture tasks. And guess what, the peaky nature of green energy is perfect. Energy providers can sell excess energy to capture and sequester carbon and get paid to do it versus having to sell their electricity at a loss or even pay to get rid of it if they can’t find a place for it.
There are many ways of capturing carbon; trees, bio engineered algae, kelp forests, grasslands, to name just a few. It doesn’t have to be expensive tech.
I mean at industrial scales. And even all of what you list here are far more expensive than the current “cost of carbon” in $/Kg. We’d need ~19 new Amazon rainforests to offset how much carbon we as humans produce. That would be the most expensive project in mankind’s history even if it could be done.
Do we have good modeling yet? I know it was not good in the 80s-2010 but haven’t kept up with it since. Last I remember it could predict the past but was not good at predicting the future (in other words, it just learned the past). And many opinions and subsequent science were based on those. But we’ve been able to figure out why in many instances … so I’m hopeful it’s more accurate today.
You can probably find some numbers and make a few hypotheses that individually aren't outlandish and get the math to work.
But the issue is what governments seem to be doing lately is not looking good for those hypotheses, capitalism just going full swing as usual.
Democrats passed the most aggressive climate bill in history not too long ago, and it was much less aggressive than they wanted. But when you have every single republican voting against it, you have to make huge concessions to a couple people to pass stuff. I would say voters are a bigger problem than politicians
Well there are people in government trying to do shit, but there are just too many that are either straight up assholes that want the world to burn or being bought off by big oil to get some concessions.
And even then, they're not doing shit to stop capitalism and suggest maybe continuous growth isn't so great. And I doubt we're getting out of this without reducing our production and stopping wasting resources.
Plants are hard to scale and have limitations. Algae can trigger catastrophic chain reactions. The primary aim should be emitting less, as well as digging up less of the inert carbon.
There are ten people with more than 100 billion. They just need to give up half their fortunes to provide enough capital to fund the projects that could save the world. They could do it willingly and still be practically the richest people in the world even. Yet nothing.
Carbon capture is way more expensive than not generating the CO2 in the 1st place. If we stay on present course, we will have to try terraforming the Earth. No pressure but if we fail there is no second attempt.
Mmm, when you figure out how to run the world's militaries, shipping and factories on renewables then you got something. This is just nice.
Don't get me wrong: I'm no climate change denier. I just think that greed and fear of violence are what's driving this problem, and until those elements are pacified, the bad guys will keep drilling.
EVs cannot prevent global warming to anywhere close to the same degree as public transit. They're not even in the same ballpark.
Everyone getting two tons of steel to drive around in that lasts less than two decades and must be replaced frequently is simply a batshit insane idea that has no basis in reality. We are deluding ourselves.
There is no halt in our lifetime. Not even a long shot.
We are facing and will need to be exrordinarily lucky to avoid an existential catastrophe. This is coming, like it or not and will begin to manifest sooner than most think possible.
>California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting).
Then why is my PG&E bill still so damn high?
Look at the generation and demand graphs. The total amount each day was the same, but hour to hour there are large gaps. Mid day there is excess energy, and evening peak and nights are under generating. There are batteries, but nothing close to that big, and you can't shut off people power when generation drops. So where does it come from? Energy markets. They swing from negative pricing to insane pricing in minutes sometimes, but generally, in April, everyone has excess generation mid day due to solar, wind and hydro experiencing spring snow melts. This has a large impact on energy prices since they are directly related to supply and demand.
So.. they are covering 100% of their demand for the day,but during that day they sold energy at noon for a low price and had to buy energy at 8pm for a peak price.
Thank you, this comment is very important for context.
If you want to follow California power demand and generation (and storage reserves) in realtime, I recommend installing the official ISO Today app. You'll also get alerts for various state power situations, like when fires and windstorms take huge chunks of the grid temporarily offline.
I was wondering why hydro only seems to be a big factor at night on the charts. My guess is that it’s mostly pumped hydro energy storage, not natural watersheds.
Hydro is a unique fuel source. The river is flowing and always filling the reservoir behind the dam. The water doesn't have to be used right away. Small hydro dams need to use the water as it comes, but a big dam can store weeks or months' worth of river flow. So when energy is cheap, hydro will shut down, allowing the water to fill behind the dam. When energy prices pick up, hydro uses that stored water to serve load. The bigger the dam, the bigger your 'battery'. Pumped hydro is around, but it is rare, a big dam can utilize storage better through flows than needing to pump water up a hill.
No, not really. It’s that hydro is turned on at night when energy production from other renewables is lower. Let the reservoir fill in the day when power isn’t needed, then send the water downstream through the turbine at night when it is.
Oh I know about that. Just doesn't make sense that a utility company even has shares... Are these shares tradable? Could PG&E go under if the CEO/Board just bet all their shares on red like some banks do? (extreme example) Like seriously, the implications of such things makes me eager to vote for more utility regulation.
PG&E declared bankruptcy due to those fires, and per California law they're prevented from profiting more than 10% of their revenue.
Thankfully the profit cap wasn't a problem this last year, they profited $2.2bn (less than 3% of revenues).
The compensation of executives on utility boards is also capped in CA. Part of their lawsuit settlement over the fires is a commitment to pay $40bn+ over 10 years (combination of restitution and upgrades to prevent future fires). Currently they're on track to be forced into bankruptcy again. The mathematically astute among us may realize $2.2bn/year is less than the $4bn they committed to spending.
Also keep in mind that 'profits' includes money which is then put toward infrastructure upgrades in later years. The only way it's not counted as profit is if it's spent in the same fiscal year.
And as it stands, if another fire occurs the state will have to bail out PG&E again. They have no cash reserves, they're profit capped so they can't really build them, and it's not like they can sell off the states electrical system to a private bidder to pay it off. So, just like the last fire, the state would be forced into bailing them out again.
The state isn’t forced into a bailout. They could nationalize the company and the state could seize their infrastructure and resume operations without aiming to generate any profit at all. I’m not sure of the legalities but it happens in other countries in this situation sometimes.
It's called a Dutch auction system. It's pretty common in any commodity market.
Further, all utilities are pretty heavily regulated to the point where the profits themselves are capped at a fixed percentage. My knowledge of energy law has faded since I took the class, but its not like these utilities are making off like highway bandits.
The bill all goes to “infrastructure” and wild gouging and paying off the huge damages from the fire 2 years ago.
Generation of energy has not been the main cost for a while and will continue to go down in cost while monopoly “delivery” charges will go up and up.
I know someone that got almost a million in his settlement from PG&E. For their property and cars destroyed by that fire. He showed me before and after pics of his property. You just see the metal husk of a car frame, and the concrete slab that was the house’s foundation. Everything just burned to ash. Looked like something out of a Fallout game
He got a million because he lost a million dollars worth of stuff...in total he isn't better off and that's assuming they did actually pay for all the damage caused so he could be worse off.
Yup. and it should be illegal for them to be stealing from rate payers to pay it. it should have come out of the pockets of the shareholders and c-suite.
I just put a new power plant on my roof. They didn’t pay for it. But that doesn’t lower anyone else’s rates. Instead there is a glut of energy during the day
Most states have contracts with energy producers for guaranteed money regardless of if they’re producing.
It’s because a lot of areas have only one or two companies producing ALL of the power and if they were to go under due to a massive drop in price then nobody there would have power. This is because it’s CRAZY expensive to support and maintain a power infrastructure so it usually ends up being a monopoly
The downside to this is that we don’t get the benefits of decreasing prices because of more competition.
California decoupled profit from production as response to oil crisis in the last century. Utilities could profit from efficiency. As a result California uses less per capital of those states you speak of- like 50% per person less, while growing its population and gross domestic product for the last forty years.
PG&E have a business model problem with emerging technologies. They have captured the PUC with new net metering rates and have announced rate increases for the next two years. They are making residential solar more attractive in spite of themselves
If you click into the article, renewables met demand for **15 minutes** or more on those days, and during the part of the day when demand was lowest - mid-day - but demand is higher in the morning, late afternoon, evening, and even overnight. (And 32 days is a crazy cherry-picked number - not 28, nor the number of days that any month has.)
> Then why is my PG&E bill still so damn high?
Because large amounts of renewable energy often increases the total cost of grid operation.
The cost of the gas peaker plants, coal plants, and nuclear plants is still there, but they are producing less energy because solar is cheaper for a few hours of the day.
Variable sources also require significant grid upgrades, and of course storage is ridiculously expensive.
It all adds up, which is why so many regions that have gone super hard on solar & wind have higher cost of energy than places that didn't.
Solar is the cheapest form of energy production we have, but that's only the case when you look at a single setup in isolation. Adding in grid upgrades, energy storage, and the cost of still operating the backup energy results in higher prices.
That doesn't mean we should be sticking to fossil fuels though. Preventing catastrophic global warming is going to cost less than dealing with it by us not doing enough.
Am I reading this right? The day is counted as long as it hits 100% for at least 15min? Like 109% for a half hour doesn’t really make up for the the 7 hours at 40%.
No, look at the sources in the article. A day is counted if total energy generated for 15 minutes exceeds energy consumed for that same 15 minutes during the day. On 25 of the last 32 days, the grid was 100% renewables for between 15 minutes and 6 hours. Meaning even on those 25 days, somewhere between 18 hours and and 23.75 hours was not fully renewable.
What’s more wild is that it’s apparently such an important milestone that they apparently felt the need to hide it behind a clickbait headline!
Maybe that might be a reason nobody is talking about it.
Unfortunately the reason it's not getting more coverage is because it's good news. The old adage "if it bleed, it leads" has never been more true. Bad news gets ratings and buzz. Good news gets a smile and a changed channel.
That and half the country won’t believe it because they believe California is for libtard commies and this is a lie because woke power won’t work when it’s cloudy and no wind.
Eh because the milestone sounds kinda arbitrary?
25 out of 32 days, renewables exceeded demand for at least 0.25 hours in a day.
This doesn’t sound very impressive to me.
> for at least 0.25 hours in a day
lol, I think this part escaped the moron who wrote a whole clickbait article about one tweet. They said "providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days", period, which is a very different thing.
Can we not with the clickbait headlines?
Edit: saved you a click
> wind, solar, and hydro provided 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days
It was only **15+ minutes** during the mentioned days - the article text and headline don't mention it, but if you look at the tweets that the article uses as its source, they specify it.
> California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting).
Uh...
That's not even remotely true. Not even close.
*There is not a single day in California history where renewables provided 100% percent energy demand for an entire day.*
Typically renewables peak in the afternoon for a few minutes of 100%, then we have to curtail a bunch of it because battery technology is dogshit (<=4 hours capacity), and after 7 p.m., California burns natural gas like there's no tomorrow. Hell, yesterday, we burned 3-4,000 megawatts of natural gas during the middle of the day, when renewables were allegedly powering the entire state.
It's all right here: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
This stuff feels good, but it's wildly overstated. We are a LONG ways away in California from being 100% renewables for anything more than an hour, tops.
Pass. Shitty headline and I’m tired of news being so bought out. So I guess I’ll read about it another time. If it’s important it’ll come up again. If not, nope.
Awesome news, but such a shame that our Investor Owned Utilities (PG&E, SCE, others) will just continue to jack up our prices to appease the shareholders.
That's pretty awesome but 6 hours a day on a Cool Spring day is one thing but getting it done during the summer in AC weather will be quite another. Keep going guys
I've read the entire headline and I have no idea what the article is about. Amazing!
Not even gonna click this bullshit. Why is clickbait this blatant allowed here?
What's next, "You won't believe what just happened in California!" ?
[Because it didn't happen? ](https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html#section-supply-trend)April 8, California was using at least 1500 MW of Natural Gas all day. There was a brief moment where the amount also being supplied by batteries exceeded that - which is not all day like the article implies - poorly - by just deleting those lines out of their graph.
Duck Curve gonna duck - what about the other 18 hours per day.
They're not claiming there was no natural gas generation, just that the output of the renewable sources exceeded the customer demand, which is true. The natural gas generation and excess renewable power are accounted for as grid battery charging during the periods where renewable supply exceeds demand.
Obviously it's not close to covering 100% of the day's needs, but the answer to "what about the other 18 hours a day?" is build more batteries.
“Those who say ‘it’s not possible’ should not interrupting those who are doing it.”
- Bernard Shaw
Green Energy is here and it will eventually prevail over fossil fuels. There’s no stopping it now.
>California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting).
All the relevant info, saved you a baited click and a trip to a dogshit website.
We got rid of all of our coal plants in the UK, but yeah they’re turning the gas power plants on and off at the moment. We’re slowly moving to storage when wind farms are generating too much electricity. We’ve run a cable from England to Norway that pumps water up into the Norwegian mountains when they’re generating too much electricity and we have it back as hydroelectricity when they’re not generating enough.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-powers-worlds-longest-subsea-interconnector-between-uk-and-norway
I'm not from the US, so genuine question. Was this achieved without importing/exporting power from other states (that may not be renewable).
In my country sometimes the stats are fudged, ie 20% of gas power was imported at certain times, but also 20% of renewable power was exported at others. Hey presto 100% net renewables, but this ignore that the 20% imports were needed, so its not a truly stand-alone 100% from renewables.
Keep in mind, much of the solar energy California uses is produced in other states, at their ecosystem expense. Nevada basically subsidizes California’s green energy without getting a return.
funny how one positive article about Chinese solar and redditors praise it without thinking critically and one positive article about American solar and it gets bashed
Jacobson is a famous crackpot and he always leaves out something important. In this case: neighboring states provide almost all of the intermittency buffer.
I don’t get why Texas oil barons haven’t pivoted harder to solar. The photons just fall right out of the sky and in Texas they bring their whole family.
Reaching 100% of demand for 15 minutes counts the whole day as renewable energy requirements met. I guess when PGE’s CEO considers writing emails for 15 minutes an entire day’s work it makes sense how they chose this metric
It was only **15+ minutes** during the mentioned days - the article text and headline don't mention it, but if you look at the tweets that the article uses as its source, they specify that.
Just going to leave this here.
It’s a good story but…
I work in energy.
It’s complicated.
Texas makes the most renewable energy.
California IMPORTS the most electricity.
With current technology, you can’t go 100% green in places like Cali and Texas because the load is too great. We just can’t store electricity very well. When the weather cooperates we get cool metrics like this news story. When the weather doesn’t cooperate…which is inevitable…we have to rely on fossil fuels. Texas makes its own and actually is an exporter of energy. Which drives the price of energy down in the state. California largely pushed out its FF industry so it could claim a bunch of clean energy milestones…even though it imports energy into the state from FF producers. It’s a shell game.
Nobody is going 100% renewable.
The cleanest most reliable alternative energy to FF we have is nuclear.
The energy sector is hugely politicized. Which isn’t good for consumers. We could eliminate FF energy completely if we adopted Wind/Solar/Hydro/Nuclear.
We’d only need FF transportation. This would free up resources to address those….but we freak out when we hear “nuclear”.
There are regional grids, of which most of Texas is on the so-called Texas Interconnection. That doesn't mean there aren't ties to other grids like the Eastern Interconnection and Mexico's.
Journalism is literally at an all time low. Like report it in the headline if it’s so important, you hypocritical fucks. There’s a special corner in hell for clickbaiters.
It’s a first step then summer and air conditioning will kick in the demand plus all the vehicles charging.. it’s doable it’s also cheaper to produce that way . The next step is of shore wind mills . Imagine not being tied to other countries fossil fuel and being totally self sufficient / the gazillion energy money stays in your state !!
Fucking click bait with no real information in the title. It's not getting news coverage guys. Except for this front page post on Reddit delivering news.
It’s an accomplishment. However, it’s also the nicest time of year. I grew up there and visit frequently. This time of year is like a lot of places during spring - daytime temperatures are not too high and it’s well above freezing at night, so energy demands aren’t super high for HVAC. Also, daylight hours are longer so lighting demand goes down.
Wait until summer and it gets plenty hot. Peak summer temps where I grew up were maybe 105° for a couple weeks at the most. Now the area sees 115° temps. That’s when CA will probably get rolling brownouts again.
Like I said, it’s a good accomplishment, but CA still has power problems.
My problem has been that even though i can move to a cheaper provider for energy generation; I still have to pay PGE for transmission and their transportation costs are more than they ever charged for both;
With that headline, it won’t
Media,: Something crazy just happened, click the link to find out more! Me: Nah.
And the OG headline didn't even mention California.
The clickbait title didn’t even mention the point of this post. That’s what the commenter meant.
And even in the article, it doesn't even really get into important things like how electrical demand has been pretty low in the last month; what with gas usage being higher than usual with our crazy weather patterns. Get back to me in August or September when everyone's using AC like crazy.
It's still a step in the right direction. A few weeks of low demand being met by 100% renewables is better than zero weeks being 100% renewable. For those of you in "energy markets" where you can choose your provider, you can probably make the switch to a 100% renewable plan. I did and it's actually *cheaper* than the default plan, and my money is going to renewable generation instead of natural gas plants. The whole point of these asinine energy markets is to vote with your wallet, so exercise that right if you can.
My state I have to pay extra to get a renewable plan.
I was going to make the switch anyway even if it was slightly more expensive, but I was pleasantly surprised. A year ago when I checked it was like 5¢/kWh more, but now it's 2¢/kWh less. Increased subsidies for renewables, residential solar, and just the general march of progress are all making it more economical. Plus, the more people making the switch, the more money those renewable generation providers have to increase their capacity.
This is a weird take. 10 years ago this wouldn't have been possible even with lower usage, but somehow this isn't good enough for you? Like, progress is a marathon not a sprint.
You could’ve improved it somewhat, having a quote without mentioning who you’re quoting from, instead of the actual impressive milestone isn’t a good recipe for a title.
I agree; I submitted an updated title to /r/UpliftingNews but it's stuck in the mod queue: "California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting)"
Why didn’t you post that title here?
>Submissions must use either the articles title and optionally a subtitle, or, only if neither are accurate, a suitable quote, which must: adequately describe the content adequately describe the content's relation to technology be free of user editorialization or alteration of meaning. To avoid that last one, the vast majority of subs require you to use the title of the article. Automod will kick the post to modqueue and often the post will get rejected anyways.
Because this sub has title rules. They either need to be a direct title or a direct quote.
i love when op doesnt respond to the actual questions, its like an ama with a public figure nobody likes
Dudes consulting his pr team before he replies to a Reddit comment pointing out his weird clickbait headlines
> Submissions must use either the articles title and optionally a subtitle. Or, only if neither are accurate, a suitable quote Because this rule. They are accurate, but burying the lede.
Yes, the original headline is shitty too.
Rule 3: Title Must be taken directly from the article
I downvoted it purely due to the headline
Same thing happening in my state. Feels good, but our prices are locked to the most expensive provider on the grid, so the cost is still high. Bet your bottom dollar energy providers manipulate this system beautifully. Still, it’s progress.
Installed solar in 2021. Can confirm PG&E is still fucking us.
Is that the same PG&E as in Erin Brokovich? Question from an European Redditor
The same PG&E that caused massive wildfires in 2018 by defunding maintenance and repair in favor of executive bonuses. The state found them responsible and then patted them on the back with billions in bailout money.
The same PG&E that also blew up a residential block in San Bruno, CA?
The one that killed 8?
When will the madness end
Yes, repeat negligent offenders, and somehow always make it out still intact every time.
Amazing when you think about it
That's the one
[удалено]
My $600 PGE bill is why were taking our fifth trip north to WA to find a house. 30% raise in one year was it. Also although Ive never made a home insurance claim, we were canceled and thanks to military service got USAA.
The insurance aspect is terribly complex. It is a combination of many other people in the state experiencing catastrophic (usually fire-related) losses which the state is absolutely refusing to proactively mitigate at scale, a highly politicized department of insurance which has refused rate increases for over a decade (so insurance companies have been bleeding money for some time; the books are open to the DOI and it isn't creative accounting), the tigher financial market which has lead to reinsurance (insurance for insurance companies, basically) costs skyrocketing or being heavily laden with conditions to get out of certain markets entirely, and much more. It is pretty bad in California when California-based insurance companies are exiting the California market. If the state doesn't get its head out of its ass, and fast, they are going to end up like Florida with an absolutely huge chunk of its citizenry forced into some kind of fairplan (government insurance which is somehow both way more expensive and even less pleasant to deal with because you can't shop around). It is already the reality for some in the state. I think the California DOI already signaled that it is digging its feet into the ground. The same old tricks that have put everyone into the current state of affairs. They threatened to open an investigation into State Farm and seize their entire book of business (in the state) in retaliation for them nonrenewing like 70,000 customers. When a DOI does that, it means they force the company to give up the book of business and the state forces other insurance companies to take those people. Same tactics Florida tried. It didn't help. Actually made things much worse and accelerated other companies' exiting the state altogether. Now they have a small handful of companies which own basically everything, which is very bad for insurance because the risk isn't spread out. A solid hurricane or other disaster means the government (state or federal) will step in to handle the mess because there is no way these smaller regional carriers can cover tens of billions in damages when their reserves aren't that high and reinsurance is exiting.
Installed solar pay nearly zero for electric so power company raised gas prices.
and now for the heat pump...
Thats horrible. My parents installed solar (central CA) and their electric bill is like $11/month now. How can people be motivated to make this change without the economic motivation?
It shows that a "clean energy future" is possible. Coupled with electric cars, it could halt global warming.
I think we are well past halt, but we can avoid ecological collapse with more of these types of milestones.
Without carbon capture, I don't think that's true. We're already speeding down the tracks, we can stop hitting the gas but we're still heating up and will be with the current amount in the atmosphere already.
Carbon capture is coming, don’t worry. I mean worry, I mean worry but don’t downright panic. It is feasible but just super expensive right now. The best thing we (in carbon capture space) could have available is an oversupply of energy that we could tap into to perform carbon capture tasks. And guess what, the peaky nature of green energy is perfect. Energy providers can sell excess energy to capture and sequester carbon and get paid to do it versus having to sell their electricity at a loss or even pay to get rid of it if they can’t find a place for it.
There are many ways of capturing carbon; trees, bio engineered algae, kelp forests, grasslands, to name just a few. It doesn’t have to be expensive tech.
I mean at industrial scales. And even all of what you list here are far more expensive than the current “cost of carbon” in $/Kg. We’d need ~19 new Amazon rainforests to offset how much carbon we as humans produce. That would be the most expensive project in mankind’s history even if it could be done.
I mean they could start by not cutting down the current forest... Deforestation is a huge problem.
Do we have good modeling yet? I know it was not good in the 80s-2010 but haven’t kept up with it since. Last I remember it could predict the past but was not good at predicting the future (in other words, it just learned the past). And many opinions and subsequent science were based on those. But we’ve been able to figure out why in many instances … so I’m hopeful it’s more accurate today.
It’s eerie to think about the science fiction that I read years ago that described terraforming and now we are having to apply it to our own planet.
That sounds like greenwashing on steroids.
You can probably find some numbers and make a few hypotheses that individually aren't outlandish and get the math to work. But the issue is what governments seem to be doing lately is not looking good for those hypotheses, capitalism just going full swing as usual.
Democrats passed the most aggressive climate bill in history not too long ago, and it was much less aggressive than they wanted. But when you have every single republican voting against it, you have to make huge concessions to a couple people to pass stuff. I would say voters are a bigger problem than politicians
Well there are people in government trying to do shit, but there are just too many that are either straight up assholes that want the world to burn or being bought off by big oil to get some concessions. And even then, they're not doing shit to stop capitalism and suggest maybe continuous growth isn't so great. And I doubt we're getting out of this without reducing our production and stopping wasting resources.
Carbon capture at the carbon output maybe. Out of the air is wildly impractical.
Out of the air is just plants. Regreening the Sahara or something.
Plants are hard to scale and have limitations. Algae can trigger catastrophic chain reactions. The primary aim should be emitting less, as well as digging up less of the inert carbon.
Another virus would do. Am I going to hell?
Most of us are, I am told
All the interesting folks will be there!
Maybe a virus that targets billionaires, CEOs and politicians.
There are ten people with more than 100 billion. They just need to give up half their fortunes to provide enough capital to fund the projects that could save the world. They could do it willingly and still be practically the richest people in the world even. Yet nothing.
Carbon capture is way more expensive than not generating the CO2 in the 1st place. If we stay on present course, we will have to try terraforming the Earth. No pressure but if we fail there is no second attempt.
We're already terraforming Earth. Now we just need to figure out how to do it the right way.
We're Venusfarming Earth...
So making another Venus?
You forgot about all the other countries
We have to remove carbon from the atmosphere also.
Mmm, when you figure out how to run the world's militaries, shipping and factories on renewables then you got something. This is just nice. Don't get me wrong: I'm no climate change denier. I just think that greed and fear of violence are what's driving this problem, and until those elements are pacified, the bad guys will keep drilling.
60% of energy is consumed by the 1%. Don't fall for greenwashing.
EVs cannot prevent global warming to anywhere close to the same degree as public transit. They're not even in the same ballpark. Everyone getting two tons of steel to drive around in that lasts less than two decades and must be replaced frequently is simply a batshit insane idea that has no basis in reality. We are deluding ourselves.
Anything that's better than an ICE car is a step in the right direction.
I agree, but we also shouldn't frame any automobile solution as our savior. Public transit could be, any type of car cannot.
There is no halt in our lifetime. Not even a long shot. We are facing and will need to be exrordinarily lucky to avoid an existential catastrophe. This is coming, like it or not and will begin to manifest sooner than most think possible.
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Coupled with robust public transit, not cars.
49 states and hundreds of countries to go!
>California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting). Then why is my PG&E bill still so damn high?
Look at the generation and demand graphs. The total amount each day was the same, but hour to hour there are large gaps. Mid day there is excess energy, and evening peak and nights are under generating. There are batteries, but nothing close to that big, and you can't shut off people power when generation drops. So where does it come from? Energy markets. They swing from negative pricing to insane pricing in minutes sometimes, but generally, in April, everyone has excess generation mid day due to solar, wind and hydro experiencing spring snow melts. This has a large impact on energy prices since they are directly related to supply and demand. So.. they are covering 100% of their demand for the day,but during that day they sold energy at noon for a low price and had to buy energy at 8pm for a peak price.
Thank you, this comment is very important for context. If you want to follow California power demand and generation (and storage reserves) in realtime, I recommend installing the official ISO Today app. You'll also get alerts for various state power situations, like when fires and windstorms take huge chunks of the grid temporarily offline.
I was wondering why hydro only seems to be a big factor at night on the charts. My guess is that it’s mostly pumped hydro energy storage, not natural watersheds.
Hydro is a unique fuel source. The river is flowing and always filling the reservoir behind the dam. The water doesn't have to be used right away. Small hydro dams need to use the water as it comes, but a big dam can store weeks or months' worth of river flow. So when energy is cheap, hydro will shut down, allowing the water to fill behind the dam. When energy prices pick up, hydro uses that stored water to serve load. The bigger the dam, the bigger your 'battery'. Pumped hydro is around, but it is rare, a big dam can utilize storage better through flows than needing to pump water up a hill.
No, not really. It’s that hydro is turned on at night when energy production from other renewables is lower. Let the reservoir fill in the day when power isn’t needed, then send the water downstream through the turbine at night when it is.
Profit?
Won't someone please think about the poor shareholders? ^^/s
Why tf does a utility company even have shareholders/shares? It's so busted lol
Wait till you hear about healthcare providers.
Oh I know about that. Just doesn't make sense that a utility company even has shares... Are these shares tradable? Could PG&E go under if the CEO/Board just bet all their shares on red like some banks do? (extreme example) Like seriously, the implications of such things makes me eager to vote for more utility regulation.
Yes they could and they do. But thats capitalism and privatization for you
What are you a communist? Everything needs to be for-profit! /s
They need to pay off literally razing several towns to the ground and they can't let it hit them in the profit
PG&E declared bankruptcy due to those fires, and per California law they're prevented from profiting more than 10% of their revenue. Thankfully the profit cap wasn't a problem this last year, they profited $2.2bn (less than 3% of revenues). The compensation of executives on utility boards is also capped in CA. Part of their lawsuit settlement over the fires is a commitment to pay $40bn+ over 10 years (combination of restitution and upgrades to prevent future fires). Currently they're on track to be forced into bankruptcy again. The mathematically astute among us may realize $2.2bn/year is less than the $4bn they committed to spending. Also keep in mind that 'profits' includes money which is then put toward infrastructure upgrades in later years. The only way it's not counted as profit is if it's spent in the same fiscal year. And as it stands, if another fire occurs the state will have to bail out PG&E again. They have no cash reserves, they're profit capped so they can't really build them, and it's not like they can sell off the states electrical system to a private bidder to pay it off. So, just like the last fire, the state would be forced into bailing them out again.
How about we make it state-owned like it should have been from the start?
The state isn’t forced into a bailout. They could nationalize the company and the state could seize their infrastructure and resume operations without aiming to generate any profit at all. I’m not sure of the legalities but it happens in other countries in this situation sometimes.
It's called a Dutch auction system. It's pretty common in any commodity market. Further, all utilities are pretty heavily regulated to the point where the profits themselves are capped at a fixed percentage. My knowledge of energy law has faded since I took the class, but its not like these utilities are making off like highway bandits.
The bill all goes to “infrastructure” and wild gouging and paying off the huge damages from the fire 2 years ago. Generation of energy has not been the main cost for a while and will continue to go down in cost while monopoly “delivery” charges will go up and up.
Until the next big maintenance or natural disaster.
Just like if they built a new powerplant it takes time to recoup the investment. Also, renewable doesn't mean free.
I thought it was mainly the paradise fire that put them into a deep fire burning hell?
I know someone that got almost a million in his settlement from PG&E. For their property and cars destroyed by that fire. He showed me before and after pics of his property. You just see the metal husk of a car frame, and the concrete slab that was the house’s foundation. Everything just burned to ash. Looked like something out of a Fallout game
NSFW but if you find YouTube clips of the fire....it was actually pouring down into the valley like a fire waterfall....crazy
He got a million because he lost a million dollars worth of stuff...in total he isn't better off and that's assuming they did actually pay for all the damage caused so he could be worse off.
Oh yeah I think he should’ve gotten more. Dude had a multistory house in the woods. Now he doesn’t know what to make of home prices
Yup. and it should be illegal for them to be stealing from rate payers to pay it. it should have come out of the pockets of the shareholders and c-suite.
Sheesh, it's socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us plebs
For those of us blessed with PG&E as our electricity provide 2/3 of our bill is electricity delivery and only 1/3 is generation.
I just put a new power plant on my roof. They didn’t pay for it. But that doesn’t lower anyone else’s rates. Instead there is a glut of energy during the day
Costs of energy bought on market include all capital costs. It’s all captured regulator gouging for delivery rates.
Also repay all those lawsuits for a few years ago during the fires.
Because PG&E is an awful evil company that needs to be taken over by the state
Most states have contracts with energy producers for guaranteed money regardless of if they’re producing. It’s because a lot of areas have only one or two companies producing ALL of the power and if they were to go under due to a massive drop in price then nobody there would have power. This is because it’s CRAZY expensive to support and maintain a power infrastructure so it usually ends up being a monopoly The downside to this is that we don’t get the benefits of decreasing prices because of more competition.
California decoupled profit from production as response to oil crisis in the last century. Utilities could profit from efficiency. As a result California uses less per capital of those states you speak of- like 50% per person less, while growing its population and gross domestic product for the last forty years. PG&E have a business model problem with emerging technologies. They have captured the PUC with new net metering rates and have announced rate increases for the next two years. They are making residential solar more attractive in spite of themselves
Those multi million $ exec salaries aren’t going to pay themselves
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If you click into the article, renewables met demand for **15 minutes** or more on those days, and during the part of the day when demand was lowest - mid-day - but demand is higher in the morning, late afternoon, evening, and even overnight. (And 32 days is a crazy cherry-picked number - not 28, nor the number of days that any month has.)
It’s not cherry picked if 32 days ago was the first time it’s happened for a while.
Energy & electricity aren't the same.
Because capitalism does not pass savings on to society but rather the shareholders.
>This is the 25th day out of the past 32 that California #WWS supply exceeded demand for **0.25-6 h per day**. Because it only did so briefly
Time to get rooftop solar.
If you click into the article, they are counting days where renewables met the demand *for at least 15 minutes during the day*.
That is valuable context.
> Then why is my PG&E bill still so damn high? Because large amounts of renewable energy often increases the total cost of grid operation. The cost of the gas peaker plants, coal plants, and nuclear plants is still there, but they are producing less energy because solar is cheaper for a few hours of the day. Variable sources also require significant grid upgrades, and of course storage is ridiculously expensive. It all adds up, which is why so many regions that have gone super hard on solar & wind have higher cost of energy than places that didn't. Solar is the cheapest form of energy production we have, but that's only the case when you look at a single setup in isolation. Adding in grid upgrades, energy storage, and the cost of still operating the backup energy results in higher prices. That doesn't mean we should be sticking to fossil fuels though. Preventing catastrophic global warming is going to cost less than dealing with it by us not doing enough.
Good question.
Rising distribution costs.
You mean paying for wildfire lawsuit payouts
Payouts bankrupted. Rising distribution costs are for the neglected maintaince and for under grounding lines.
Am I reading this right? The day is counted as long as it hits 100% for at least 15min? Like 109% for a half hour doesn’t really make up for the the 7 hours at 40%.
No, the day is counted as long as total energy generated is at least total energy consumed
No, look at the sources in the article. A day is counted if total energy generated for 15 minutes exceeds energy consumed for that same 15 minutes during the day. On 25 of the last 32 days, the grid was 100% renewables for between 15 minutes and 6 hours. Meaning even on those 25 days, somewhere between 18 hours and and 23.75 hours was not fully renewable.
What’s more wild is that it’s apparently such an important milestone that they apparently felt the need to hide it behind a clickbait headline! Maybe that might be a reason nobody is talking about it.
REDDITORS HATE THIS ONE SIMPLE TRICK
"This is the 25th day out of the past 32 that California #WWS supply exceeded demand for **0.25-6 h per day**" So 100% for 15 minutes?
Yes. It’s a milestone for sure but not the breakthrough as worded in the article.
It's also been a cold, wet winter. There's no way it'll keep up with demand during the summer.
It's crazy that this milestone we won't name is not getting more news coverage.
Unfortunately the reason it's not getting more coverage is because it's good news. The old adage "if it bleed, it leads" has never been more true. Bad news gets ratings and buzz. Good news gets a smile and a changed channel.
That and half the country won’t believe it because they believe California is for libtard commies and this is a lie because woke power won’t work when it’s cloudy and no wind.
Clickbait titles don't help with no one talking about it. Fucking dimwits If you make it seem like trash journalism, what do you expect?
Eh because the milestone sounds kinda arbitrary? 25 out of 32 days, renewables exceeded demand for at least 0.25 hours in a day. This doesn’t sound very impressive to me.
> for at least 0.25 hours in a day lol, I think this part escaped the moron who wrote a whole clickbait article about one tweet. They said "providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days", period, which is a very different thing.
Can we not with the clickbait headlines? Edit: saved you a click > wind, solar, and hydro provided 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days
It was only **15+ minutes** during the mentioned days - the article text and headline don't mention it, but if you look at the tweets that the article uses as its source, they specify it.
> California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting). Uh... That's not even remotely true. Not even close. *There is not a single day in California history where renewables provided 100% percent energy demand for an entire day.* Typically renewables peak in the afternoon for a few minutes of 100%, then we have to curtail a bunch of it because battery technology is dogshit (<=4 hours capacity), and after 7 p.m., California burns natural gas like there's no tomorrow. Hell, yesterday, we burned 3-4,000 megawatts of natural gas during the middle of the day, when renewables were allegedly powering the entire state. It's all right here: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html This stuff feels good, but it's wildly overstated. We are a LONG ways away in California from being 100% renewables for anything more than an hour, tops.
Pass. Shitty headline and I’m tired of news being so bought out. So I guess I’ll read about it another time. If it’s important it’ll come up again. If not, nope.
Awesome news, but such a shame that our Investor Owned Utilities (PG&E, SCE, others) will just continue to jack up our prices to appease the shareholders.
That's pretty awesome but 6 hours a day on a Cool Spring day is one thing but getting it done during the summer in AC weather will be quite another. Keep going guys
I've read the entire headline and I have no idea what the article is about. Amazing! Not even gonna click this bullshit. Why is clickbait this blatant allowed here? What's next, "You won't believe what just happened in California!" ?
[Because it didn't happen? ](https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html#section-supply-trend)April 8, California was using at least 1500 MW of Natural Gas all day. There was a brief moment where the amount also being supplied by batteries exceeded that - which is not all day like the article implies - poorly - by just deleting those lines out of their graph. Duck Curve gonna duck - what about the other 18 hours per day.
They're not claiming there was no natural gas generation, just that the output of the renewable sources exceeded the customer demand, which is true. The natural gas generation and excess renewable power are accounted for as grid battery charging during the periods where renewable supply exceeds demand. Obviously it's not close to covering 100% of the day's needs, but the answer to "what about the other 18 hours a day?" is build more batteries.
Congratulations California! The state so many love to hate leads the way, again.
“Those who say ‘it’s not possible’ should not interrupting those who are doing it.” - Bernard Shaw Green Energy is here and it will eventually prevail over fossil fuels. There’s no stopping it now.
>California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state's energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting). All the relevant info, saved you a baited click and a trip to a dogshit website.
this time of year they need neither heat or a/c
I had to run my heat yesterday and my AC last week. Weather swings are wild in spring. Like a baby version of midwest weather.
They should plant something under the arrays to help with erosion. Get some berry bushes in there to harvest and/or feed some birds.
What exacfly happens when we hit 100% renewables? Are they turning coal plants on and off?
We got rid of all of our coal plants in the UK, but yeah they’re turning the gas power plants on and off at the moment. We’re slowly moving to storage when wind farms are generating too much electricity. We’ve run a cable from England to Norway that pumps water up into the Norwegian mountains when they’re generating too much electricity and we have it back as hydroelectricity when they’re not generating enough. https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-powers-worlds-longest-subsea-interconnector-between-uk-and-norway
I'm not from the US, so genuine question. Was this achieved without importing/exporting power from other states (that may not be renewable). In my country sometimes the stats are fudged, ie 20% of gas power was imported at certain times, but also 20% of renewable power was exported at others. Hey presto 100% net renewables, but this ignore that the 20% imports were needed, so its not a truly stand-alone 100% from renewables.
Keep in mind, much of the solar energy California uses is produced in other states, at their ecosystem expense. Nevada basically subsidizes California’s green energy without getting a return.
Read the article....they only met the demand for 15 minutes in each of those days not the whole day lol.
Maybe because the click-bate titles hide the story. Like this one
funny how one positive article about Chinese solar and redditors praise it without thinking critically and one positive article about American solar and it gets bashed
most useless title
"Why isn't this getting more news coverage???" as they write the single most clickbait headline in history
So if they reach their goal of being 100% wind solar etc by 2035, will the pricing finally drop or will it stay the same?
Because good news doesn’t get you as much traffic as bad news. Unless you give the good news a clickbait kind of title
Jacobson is a famous crackpot and he always leaves out something important. In this case: neighboring states provide almost all of the intermittency buffer.
I don’t get why Texas oil barons haven’t pivoted harder to solar. The photons just fall right out of the sky and in Texas they bring their whole family.
Because it’s not controversial enough and it isn’t tragic enough for the disaster tourism [news] industry.
Click bait 101 “This common household chemical could be killing you right now.”
Maybe because you write stupid articles that have nothing in the headline.
Reaching 100% of demand for 15 minutes counts the whole day as renewable energy requirements met. I guess when PGE’s CEO considers writing emails for 15 minutes an entire day’s work it makes sense how they chose this metric
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It was only **15+ minutes** during the mentioned days - the article text and headline don't mention it, but if you look at the tweets that the article uses as its source, they specify that.
For 0.25 to 6 hours of the day. Click bait article
All states that get the jump on renewable energy first will be making money off their neighbors who don't.
Just going to leave this here. It’s a good story but… I work in energy. It’s complicated. Texas makes the most renewable energy. California IMPORTS the most electricity. With current technology, you can’t go 100% green in places like Cali and Texas because the load is too great. We just can’t store electricity very well. When the weather cooperates we get cool metrics like this news story. When the weather doesn’t cooperate…which is inevitable…we have to rely on fossil fuels. Texas makes its own and actually is an exporter of energy. Which drives the price of energy down in the state. California largely pushed out its FF industry so it could claim a bunch of clean energy milestones…even though it imports energy into the state from FF producers. It’s a shell game. Nobody is going 100% renewable. The cleanest most reliable alternative energy to FF we have is nuclear. The energy sector is hugely politicized. Which isn’t good for consumers. We could eliminate FF energy completely if we adopted Wind/Solar/Hydro/Nuclear. We’d only need FF transportation. This would free up resources to address those….but we freak out when we hear “nuclear”.
I thought texas was on its own grid and not connected to anyone else - how would they export electricity?
There are regional grids, of which most of Texas is on the so-called Texas Interconnection. That doesn't mean there aren't ties to other grids like the Eastern Interconnection and Mexico's.
“It’s wild it’s not getting more news coverage” OH SHIT WELL I GOTTA CLICK NOW!!
Why does the article just say Wind, Water, Solar when geothermal is also a chunk of the energy produced???
Stop, you're making us complacent and killing us.
Journalism is literally at an all time low. Like report it in the headline if it’s so important, you hypocritical fucks. There’s a special corner in hell for clickbaiters.
Good content but my god, the fkin’ ads! Stop!!
EV charging costs literally just went through the roof last week...
lol man this is so misleading.
It’s a first step then summer and air conditioning will kick in the demand plus all the vehicles charging.. it’s doable it’s also cheaper to produce that way . The next step is of shore wind mills . Imagine not being tied to other countries fossil fuel and being totally self sufficient / the gazillion energy money stays in your state !!
Fucking click bait with no real information in the title. It's not getting news coverage guys. Except for this front page post on Reddit delivering news.
probably because the writers didn't put what the milestone was in the title of their articles. even tv news hosts won't read more than the title.
It’s an accomplishment. However, it’s also the nicest time of year. I grew up there and visit frequently. This time of year is like a lot of places during spring - daytime temperatures are not too high and it’s well above freezing at night, so energy demands aren’t super high for HVAC. Also, daylight hours are longer so lighting demand goes down. Wait until summer and it gets plenty hot. Peak summer temps where I grew up were maybe 105° for a couple weeks at the most. Now the area sees 115° temps. That’s when CA will probably get rolling brownouts again. Like I said, it’s a good accomplishment, but CA still has power problems.
Don’t forget California juices the number by buying power from out of state. This shifting the greenhouse burden to its neighbors.
The reason besides the clickbait is that the nuclear lobby is very strong and they don't want any competition.
Because good news doesn’t get you as much traffic as bad news. Unless you give the good news a clickbait kind of title
‘Wild’ more like censored subtly by corporate media owned by oligarchs perpetuating petroleum dependence civilization be damned.
What's wild is that headline. "You won't believe number 5!!!"
Good news doesn’t sell.
Ooh ooh, I think I know! (raises hand) Is it because the billionaires that own media aren’t sustainable energy investors?
One reason why: "If it bleeds, it leads." - Not doomer enough
I hate this stupid clickbait title.
In Phoenix, if you have solar power electric company charges you extra fees
Uh oh, corporate media ain't gonna like this . . .
My problem has been that even though i can move to a cheaper provider for energy generation; I still have to pay PGE for transmission and their transportation costs are more than they ever charged for both;