Doomberg has said "in the battle of platitudes vs. physics, physics is undefeated." California's plight is the poster child for this axiom. Your conclusion asks, "How high will it have to go before Minnesota’s [or any state, for that matter] policymakers get serious about avoiding California’s fate and prioritizing grid reliability and affordability?"
So long as we allow energy policy to be subjected to the four-year political cycle, there is indeed no limit to high for lawmakers whose sights are set on virtue signaling and not grid reliability or affordability.
California is the Ghost of Christmas Future for states that continue to follow the virtue-signaling environmental left. Substitute most states in Minnesota's place and it is the same story of passing responsibility for grid reliability to the amorphous "someone else."
A rigorous planning process would have identified these issues and scheduled construction activities to minimize them. However, planning was bypassed in favor of aggressive goal setting driven by politics rather than moderated by physics.
"A failure to plan is a plan to fail.", Benjamin Franklin
The argument here makes enough sense (don't burn money in the sake of "progress") but the data shown on those last two slides graphs doesn't seem to support the argument.
Am I reading it right? All months saw <some> level of curtailment but only March, April, and May saw significant levels of curtailment? And even then the "significant" levels there reach what? 80% usage & 20% curtailment? So the argument then is that needing to curtail ~5% of yearly power generation means solar panels are a bust of an idea? What of the other ~95% of the time?
Good question! These graphs are from EIA, and what I'm seeing here is that there's a more significant mismatch in the spring when solar is generating too much and demand isn't high enough to consume it. In summer months there is less curtailment because demand is higher. I think what's more concerning is the uptick in curtailments from year to year. Growing solar is likely also to drive reliable sources off the grid with solar reaching low and negative prices, making natural gas uneconomical, and curtailment costs consumers because the grid operator still has to pay for the generation being wasted (I think this is true in CAISO).
Wouldn't we expect the curtailments to rise as more solar is brought onboard? If they're always wasting 5% of the power they generate but they're now generating 3-4 times as much power then wouldn't it stand to reason that the raw number for curtailment values would also increase? The graph you included seems to show a step increase around 2019 and then another one around 2022, were those the times when large solar banks first went online? And then additional increases a result of those large banks expanding slightly over the years?
Also, I'm pretty sure the way energy markets work is that the power is "bid" from the generation companies (wind, solar, coal, etc...) and then based on forecasted system load the markets (CAISO in your example) inform the generating units which ones have been selected vs declined. They typically just start at the lowest bid cost and go up from there until their expected demand is met. Once the generation allocation is selected I thought all power producers were paid the same amount per MWh. I don't think CAISO would actually pay WPP to use their excess solar, they would just bid it as $0 or negative in order to make sure the extra 10MW (or whatever they are trying to curtail) was selected.
I could be wrong though and would welcome a correction on how that part of it works.
A very nice summary, ma'am. Thank you.
Doomberg has said "in the battle of platitudes vs. physics, physics is undefeated." California's plight is the poster child for this axiom. Your conclusion asks, "How high will it have to go before Minnesota’s [or any state, for that matter] policymakers get serious about avoiding California’s fate and prioritizing grid reliability and affordability?"
So long as we allow energy policy to be subjected to the four-year political cycle, there is indeed no limit to high for lawmakers whose sights are set on virtue signaling and not grid reliability or affordability.
California is the Ghost of Christmas Future for states that continue to follow the virtue-signaling environmental left. Substitute most states in Minnesota's place and it is the same story of passing responsibility for grid reliability to the amorphous "someone else."
"ghost of Christmas future" LOL
A rigorous planning process would have identified these issues and scheduled construction activities to minimize them. However, planning was bypassed in favor of aggressive goal setting driven by politics rather than moderated by physics.
"A failure to plan is a plan to fail.", Benjamin Franklin
That is the truth, Ed!
The argument here makes enough sense (don't burn money in the sake of "progress") but the data shown on those last two slides graphs doesn't seem to support the argument.
Am I reading it right? All months saw <some> level of curtailment but only March, April, and May saw significant levels of curtailment? And even then the "significant" levels there reach what? 80% usage & 20% curtailment? So the argument then is that needing to curtail ~5% of yearly power generation means solar panels are a bust of an idea? What of the other ~95% of the time?
Good question! These graphs are from EIA, and what I'm seeing here is that there's a more significant mismatch in the spring when solar is generating too much and demand isn't high enough to consume it. In summer months there is less curtailment because demand is higher. I think what's more concerning is the uptick in curtailments from year to year. Growing solar is likely also to drive reliable sources off the grid with solar reaching low and negative prices, making natural gas uneconomical, and curtailment costs consumers because the grid operator still has to pay for the generation being wasted (I think this is true in CAISO).
Wouldn't we expect the curtailments to rise as more solar is brought onboard? If they're always wasting 5% of the power they generate but they're now generating 3-4 times as much power then wouldn't it stand to reason that the raw number for curtailment values would also increase? The graph you included seems to show a step increase around 2019 and then another one around 2022, were those the times when large solar banks first went online? And then additional increases a result of those large banks expanding slightly over the years?
Also, I'm pretty sure the way energy markets work is that the power is "bid" from the generation companies (wind, solar, coal, etc...) and then based on forecasted system load the markets (CAISO in your example) inform the generating units which ones have been selected vs declined. They typically just start at the lowest bid cost and go up from there until their expected demand is met. Once the generation allocation is selected I thought all power producers were paid the same amount per MWh. I don't think CAISO would actually pay WPP to use their excess solar, they would just bid it as $0 or negative in order to make sure the extra 10MW (or whatever they are trying to curtail) was selected.
I could be wrong though and would welcome a correction on how that part of it works.