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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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Is there a state with excess energy that can't be sold or used in a better way?
Locally, yes. Solar (and wind) energy isn't uniform in timing or location, so when there's too much of it relative to consumption, there needs to be a profitable way to use it rather than just dumping it into resistive heating or letting the panels wear out faster at open circuit. Desalination is a pretty good idea since places with high solar resources also tend to be poorer in water resources. The challenge is the capital costs of desalination plants and competition with existing water sources - water rights are a giant ratfuck by themselves. I think it'll make sense to build desalination plants that can absorb excess energy generation, but if there's even political will for it, they'll take a lot of time to build up
You could also have a power grid and distribute the excess electricity to the next state where it's cloudy. Or do other things with it. Or build the AI datacenters there, that Google etc are currently planning to power with small nuclear reactors... I believe desalination is a very wasteful option compared to other things.
Transporting large quantities of electricity isn't easy, you have to have large enough interconnects to handle the energy you're moving around.
Entire Europe is connected. Sure we're still missing quite some cables to get the regeneratives to where they're needed. And I suppose this doesn't cover the UK. But it's no problem to move around quite some energy across parts of a continent.
IIRC, California overproduces electricity during sunny summer days due to solar, but solar production drops in the evenings right when demand is peaking due to people getting home from work and cooking dinner and whatnot. There are better applications for that energy than desalination though - battery storage right now, and maybe running electrolyzers for green hydrogen production someday in the future.
Do we have numbers on how much electricity actually gets discarded (in a year)? Sure, we don't use that much during the day. But I bet companies are happy electricity is cheaper during daytime when we work. And we can cut down on natural gas during the day. And use it for air condidioning specifically when it's warm anyways. I wonder how much excess is actually left after all of that.