Re: (ReacTor) Five SFF Books Featuring Frigid, Icy Worlds

On Mon, 22 Jul 2024 16:59:31 -0500, Lynn McGuire
<lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

On 7/19/2024 11:38 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:

On 7/18/2024 7:49 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

 

>
We (ERCOT) were pulling 600 MW off the eastern grid today after the
solar power plants stopped making power between 6pm and 8pm.

 
In california, we export (and store in batteries) energy during the
day, then draw down the batteries (and import a bit) during the evening
hours.  During the day, about half of our electricity comes from solar.
 
It's been great - during the 9 day heat wave (100teens every day
in much of the state) last week, we still had
a surplus generation capacity of about 11Gw every day.  Much
of what we import at night comes from northwest hydro.
 
As I type this, the state demand is 32,007 mw, solar provides
18,309 mw, CH4 provides 8,024mw, and 4,851 mw is being used to
charge batteries for this evening and we're importing 2028 mw.
 
Current capacity is 55,514mw and today's forecast peak is 41,467mw.
 
Valley temperatures will be in the 100's today from the grapevine
to Mt. Shasta.

>
Texas is about 3X all of that.  Peak load is over 100,000 MW when you
count the refineries and chemical plants who make their own power and
sell the excess to the grid (ERCOT).  ERCOT current capacity is over
150,000 MW and will be over 160,000 MW by the end of this year.
>
And Texas has 7,849 MW of batteries and will be 10,000 MW by the end of
the year.  People are buying cheap wind turbine power from midnight to 6
am and reselling it to the grid at 6pm when the solar fails and people
are getting home from work.

My last Homeowner's bill came with an interesting Amendment:

Home power generation systems are /not/ [1] business activities even
if some of the power is sold to a power distributor [2], whether for
cash or for credits.

Apparently, this is indeed becoming common enough to affect something
as old and (for most people) boring as Homeowner's Insurance.

There was also something about the sales being "incidental" or the
purpose of the home power generation system being to power the house,
not sell the electricity, but this should work for most people.

Which is good; I have seen at least one article suggesting that houses
with solar panels /could/ be hooked up to the distribution network in
such a way that they could actually create the network and keep it
stable. As if each house were, indeed, a power generator. This, IIRC,
had to do with the difference in which commercial solar panels/wind
farms are connected and the way home systems are.

[1] My guess is that there was some ambiguity on this point.
[2] I forget the language, but it was pretty clear that whatever your
home was hooked up to to draw power from would do.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"