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Comment by logtempo | Hacker News Reader

and it's also just an excess during mid-day (excess during .25h up to 6h in the day if I understand correctly) which does not cover the reat of the day through batteries.

It also say "it's only the start, it's going to be more in the future" but tbh I expect hydroelectric power to go down in the future...which represent up to 20% of the demand, and is the most practical renewable source.

Also batteries system is "one of the largest in the world" and barely allow to delay +4h of power...that shows how big is the task.

Title is definitly missleading.

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https://www.pv-tech.org/caiso-approves-transmission-plan-to-...

https://www.energy.ca.gov/news/2023-10/california-sees-unpre...

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO

California is the fifth largest world economy. Currently, solar is pushing ~16-19GW sustained during solar hours. For comparison, Germany has 80GW+ of solar generation capacity. It is trivial for California to push the remainder of its fossil generation out of the mix. Based on current trajectories, I would be shocked if California doesn’t meet their mandate far sooner than expected.

(Earth receives enough solar energy in less than half an hour to power humanity for a year; scale collection and storage accordingly)

Are you comparing California power generated to German nameplate capacity? How do they compare apples to apples, or oranges to oranges?

Wikipedia says California has 46 GW nameplate capacity and Germany has 81 GW nameplate.

Germany produced 53 TWh of solar in 2023 (12% of electricity used)

Wikipedia data for California 2023 is incomplete, but it looked to be on track for ~39 TWh in 2023 (same as 2022), and 17% of electricity used.

I am lazily comparing total capacity and current daily generation mix trends from ElectricityMaps. The specifics are not so important, the trend and velocity of change is, and those are clear based on the data.

(ElectricityMaps is in the business of accurately tracking both generation capacity and generation mix for their carbon intensity data consumers)

in terms of trends, the number seem to indicate that California is far ahead of Germany in terms of solar as a % of generation, and saturating summer daytime production. This is where things get tricky, because you your cost for kwh increases radically for storage, or overbuild capacity that is only useful in the winter.

Accurate, the last part will be the hard part, but we must learn how to.

Following up, Germany has too much solar, and needs more transmission and storage it appears (or load shifting to daylight hours): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-22/solar-pan... | https://archive.today/6cDAY

https://research.sebgroup.com/macro-ficc/reports/49776

"German electricity prices are collapsing during the sunniest hours of the day as the country is flooded with solar power, potentially curbing profitability. The price of power during daylight hours over the past 10 days was €9.1 per megawatt-hour compared to €70.6 during the rest of the day as the number of solar installations continues to increase across the country, SEB AB wrote in a note. This means on sunny days, output can outstrip demand leading to negative prices in the market, with the grid unable to handle so much power and insufficient storage capacity. Although many producers are not directly exposed to the spot prices, these trends bring down revenues overall. Total installed solar capacity soared to more than 80 gigawatts at the end of 2023, according to the bank, 30 gigawatts higher than average demand."

Exactly.

> Total installed solar capacity soared to more than 80 gigawatts at the end of 2023, according to the bank, 30 gigawatts higher than average demand."

Solar only has about a 10% capacity factor in Germany so we can conclude that they don't have enough solar yet and this author has no idea what he is talking about.

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