CAISO: Expect 14 days of outage this summer in SoCal

It seems the natural gas leak in Aliso Canyon may result in severe issues providing electricity in southern CA this summer:

Energy Matters said:

The California Independent Service Operator (CAISO), which manages the California grid, estimates that as a result all customers should expect to be without power for a total of 14 days this summer. Some 21 million Southern Californians stand to be directly affected.

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One concern discussed in this blog post is that the natural gas generators are critical for providing power during the steep ramp-up portion of the solar-induced duck curve:



Reading that post does not make it at all clear to me why residents should expect to go without electricity for a total of fourteen days this summer. I would expect that conservation measures could reduce or eliminate the need for outages. I guess we'll know soon enough.

ETA: I guess CAISO does have a plan which they think will work. According to the Business Insider article linked from the blog post:

Business Insider said:

"We are confident we have a strong plan in place to meet the operational challenges posed by the upcoming hot temperatures," ISO CEO Steve Berberich said, adding that consumer conservation efforts would be key.

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That 3 year old graph was trying to predict a doomsday that will never come.
ridiculous argument to posture for fighting net metering.

Hello, start installing some battery to put the duck belly to the head :roll:

I don't believe we will see one day of stage 3 rotating outages.

JMHO

smkettner said:

That 3 year old graph was trying to predict a doomsday that will never come.
ridiculous argument to posture for fighting net metering.

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Perhaps, but when I look at CAISO's current (dated 2016) communication on the topic which contains these old graphs, I see no mention of net metering or the desire to eliminate it.

smkettner said:

Hello, start installing some battery to put the duck belly to the head :roll:

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In fact, that is one of the recommended recommendations made by CAISO:

CAISO said:

The following mechanisms can help mitigate oversupply conditions: 1) increasing demand by expanding the ISO control area beyond California to other states so that low cost surplus energy can serve consumers over a large geographical area; 2) increase participation in the western Energy Imbalance Market in which real-time energy is made available in western states; 3) transition our cars and trucks to electricity; 4) offer consumers time-of-use rates that promote using electricity during the day when there is plentiful solar energy and the potential for oversupply is higher; 5) increase energy storage; and 6) increase the flexibility of power plants to more quickly follow ISO instructions to change its generation output levels.

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But the question then becomes "Who installs the batteries?" It seems that recommendation 4) is intended to change TOU pricing to encourage consumers to reduce consumption at 9:00PM and instead consume more during the day. If the pricing differential is significant enough, that would encourage individuals to install batteries.

I find recommendation 3) to be somewhat interesting, if not incomplete. I'm all for moving to more BEVs, but that, in itself, will not solve grid storage issues unless and until those vehicles have SOME knowledge of the grid. As it stands today, the only mechanism to control the charging of BEVs is TOU metering and that requires action by the vehicle owner and only really applies at home. "Free" resources such as Tesla's Superchargers provide no market signals to help guide when vehicle charging occurs, and it seems Elon Musk is fighting against using BEVs to balance the electricity grid. I personally think it is a marriage made in heaven if done well, but I don't see much in the way of using BEVs in a way that will actually help the situation. Instead, it seems we are dumping a new, large load onto the system in a rather haphazard fashion. Shipment of Gen 2 BEVs will certainly quicken the pace of BEVs loading the electricity grid. Perhaps there are efforts afoot of which I am unaware?

smkettner said:

I don't believe we will see one day of stage 3 rotating outages.

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Let's hope not.

Can you say scare tactics...

I encourage anyone interested in the topic to please read the Aliso Canyon Risk Assessment Technical Report.

The report goes into great detail to outline the challenges, and ways to overcome them. There's a very real impact to losing Aliso Canyon and the storage that it offered to the southern California natural gas system. The problems faced are real, and not a scare tactic.

That is all I can say publicly on the matter.

Doesn't seem to be solar-induced problem, but a gas storage problem. If anything, the increasing belly of the curve represents less natural gas demand per 24-hour period and a better opportunity to accumulate storage. Relying on a single storage mechanism for 21 million people, seems unwise in hindsight.

Nubo said:

Doesn't seem to be solar-induced problem, but a gas storage problem.

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No one indicated that it was solar-induced. The issue is that the ramp-up coming into the evening is (nearly?) all natural gas. The ability to provide the volume of gas to meet that ramp is the issue here.

Nubo said:

If anything, the increasing belly of the curve represents less natural gas demand per 24-hour period and a better opportunity to accumulate storage.

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True. But they are not allowed to store any gas in Aliso Canyon right now.

Nubo said:

Relying on a single storage mechanism for 21 million people, seems unwise in hindsight.

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According to the excellent report linked by JeremyW, SoCalGas has four storage facilities. Unfortunately Aliso Canyon accounts for more than half of the total available storage. One of the four facilities is too small to be helpful in the Los Angeles basin and another is too far away.

One thing that I found interesting in the report is that other gas carriers choose to provide storage by pressurizing the gas in their pipelines, but SoCalGas does not use that approach, I'm wondering if that decision might be revisited in the wake of the Aliso Canyon disaster.

Who installs batteries? The utility of course. Utility gets a fixed guaranteed return on all assets in place.

Or charge rates accordingly and let the consumer arbitrage the rate with a battery. I understand current regulations prohibit customers to sell back energy stored in a battery. It would be net metering on steroids. Utility would cry foul for a customer making a profit on the TOU spread because the non-battery rate payers would have to absorb the cost to the utility. So unfair like they talk about net metering hurting the non-solar customers.

That is all fine..... so install your own batteries if it is so lucrative. They are constructing a disaster by doing nothing and preventing expansion of customer investment.

This post on Roger Sowell's blog makes a good case that the strong growth in solar and wind production in the last few years is what will keep the lights on in CA during the hottest days this summer. This is something that was completely ignored by the analyses by both by CAISO and Roger Andrews.

Sowell argues that the amount of production by solar and wind on recent hot days is almost equivalent to the amount of natural gas previously drawn from Aliso Canyon on similarly-hot days:

Roger Sowell said:

However, an estimate of the natural gas not burned can be made by taking the total renewable output from wind and solar, 167,950 MWh on June 14 (per the table at the top of the article), and using an average of 45 percent thermal efficiency for the power plants not being run. On that basis, approximately 1.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas was not burned on that day. Per California Energy Commission documents, that is nearly the same gas withdrawal rate at Aliso Canyon when it is at full operation (1.9 billion cubic feet maximum withdrawal). See Table 1 in "Aliso Canyon Action Plan to Preserve Gas and Electric Reliability for the Los Angeles Basin,"

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Makes sense except the CAISO analysis used the years 2013 through 2015 as a basis for its analysis, so some of that production was included in the analysis. Still, installed renewable capacity in CA is now about twice what it was in 2013, meaning there certainly is some additional help coming from renewables this year. Solar, in particular, is certainly with high air conditioning solar load, so more solar certainly helps during the daylight hours. While solar will stop helping as it gets dark, wind may continue to help after dark, depending on the conditions. In both cases, the amount of natural gas used throughout the day is reduced, which certainly reduces the loss of linepack in the pipelines which means pressures should be higher going into the evening hours.

Sowell closes with these salient words:

Roger Sowell said:

It is especially ironic that renewables, once derided as destabilizing a grid, are now riding to the rescue and helping to prevent blackouts on the California electric grid during summer heat waves. One can only imagine the rolling blackouts and uproar with Aliso Canyon gas storage effectively out of commission, SONGS nuclear generating shut down, and if no renewable power plants had been installed over the past 5 years.

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Of course renewable generators CAN destabilize a grid, but I fully agree with the rest of the statements he made. Hopefully we will be able to keep the systems stable as we add more and more renewables. I think BEVs can play a significant role in making that happen.

Still, the analysis by CAISO seems clear, the situation looks much more dire for wintertime. They need to ensure Aliso Canyon is back online before any cold, dark, still nights occur this winter.