550 megawatt solar farm "Topaz" in California
California invested heavily in solar power. Now there's so much that other states are sometimes paid to take it
LA TIMES June 22, 2017
On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power.
Well, actually better than free. California produced so much solar power on those days that it paid Arizona to take excess electricity its residents weren’t using to avoid overloading its own power lines.
It happened on eight days in January and nine in February as well. All told, those transactions helped save Arizona electricity customers millions of dollars this year, though grid operators declined to say exactly how much. And California also has paid other states to take power.
The number of days that California dumped its unused solar electricity would have been even higher if the state hadn’t ordered some solar plants to reduce production — even as natural gas power plants, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, continued generating electricity.
Solar and wind power production was curtailed a relatively small amount — about 3% in the first quarter of 2017 — but that’s more than double the same period last year. And the surge in solar power could push the number even higher in the future.
Why doesn’t California, a champion of renewable energy, use all the solar power it can generate?
In Western Kern County, solar panels on almost two square miles of land form the Beacon Solar Project, owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. (Mel Melcon/Los Angels Times)
The answer, in part, is that the state has achieved dramatic success in increasing renewable energy production in recent years. But it also reflects sharp conflicts among major energy players in the state over the best way to weave these new electricity sources into a system still dominated by fossil-fuel-generated power.
No single entity is in charge of energy policy in California. This has led to a two-track approach that has created an ever-increasing glut of power and is proving costly for electricity users. Rates have risen faster here than in the rest of the U.S., and Californians now pay about 50% more than the national average.
Perhaps the most glaring example: The California Legislature has mandated that one-half of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030; today it’s about one-fourth. That goal once was considered wildly optimistic. But solar panels have become much more efficient and less expensive. So solar power is now often the same price or cheaper than most other types of electricity, and production has soared so much that the target now looks laughably easy to achieve...snip more http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-f...tricity-solar/
So instead of paying others to take it, crank up electrolyzers, make hydrogen and store it. Fuel cars, trucks, trains, home heating and cooking - even weed whackers.
Power to gas (also power-to-gas) (often abbreviated P2G) is a technology that converts electrical power to a gas fuel.[1] When using surplus power from wind generation, the concept is sometimes called windgas. There are currently three methods in use; all use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen by means of electrolysis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas
Most gasoline engines can be modified to burn hydrogen
We’re Hydra Energy, a Vancouver-based venture that’s powering a cleaner future by helping commercial fleet operators upgrade their vehicles to run dual fuel with hydrogen – at zero upfront cost. http://hydra-energy.ca/main-page-2/
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Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty
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