Mark Z Jacobson PhD on Linked In:
Solar crushes gas.
Fossil gas use declined on the California ISO grid by 29% March 7-September 4, 2024 vs 2023 due to a 103% growth in battery output and 11% growth in Wind-Water-Solar output (led by 29% more solar & 6% more wind, but lower geothermal and hydro) DESPITE a 3 F hotter period in 2024.
Solar alone provided 9% more electricity than fossil gas in 2024 (30,915 GWh v 28,370 GWh).
In 2023 during the same period, fossil gas provided 24% more electricity than did solar (39,865 GWh v 24,033 GWh).
And no blackouts in either year.
Although California has high electricity prices, data indicate that, on average, higher renewable penetrations today reduce electricity costs and prices.
Of the 12 U.S. states with the highest WWS supply as a percent of demand from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024, six were among the 10 states with the lowest residential electricity prices in March, 2024; 10 were among the 20 states with the lowest electricity prices; and only two (California and Maine) had high electricity prices . As such WWS is correlated more with lower, rather than higher, electricity prices. For example, South Dakota, Montana, and Iowa provided 100.6, 79.9, and 78.6 percent, respectively, of the electricity they consumed from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 with WWS. Yet, those three states had the 9th-, 8th-, and 12th-lowest March 2024 residential electricity prices among all U.S. states, respectively.
So why were California’s overall electricity prices high in 2024?
Aside from the high cost of fossil gas in California (3rd-highest in the U.S.), a big factor was wildfires. Utilities had passed on to customers, for several years, the cost of wildfires caused by transmission-line sparks, the cost of undergrounding transmission lines to reduce such fires, and other wildfire-related mitigation costs. Utilities had also passed on to customers the costs of the San Bruno and Aliso Canyon gas disasters, the cost of retrofitting other gas pipes following San Bruno, and the cost of keeping an aging nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, open.
In sum, available data on price and cost indicate that increasing the share of WWS tends to reduce electricity price.
So CAISO shows 2023/2024 (Mar-Sep) ~28% year on year drop in summertime gas consumption.
I can live with that.
‘Crushing’ gas is a bit hyperbolic. Over the last week, solar was making 10-15% of ERCOT’s daily power, gas about 45-50%.
‘Utilities had also passed on to customers… the cost of keeping an aging nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, open.’ Diablo Canyon is not ‘ageing’ – it’s younger than Governor Gavin Newsom (who would be gutted to be labelled thus), and arguably much less prone to the ills that flesh is heir to.
It’s also saving the power users there money. ‘There are significant financial benefits for customers that come from extended operations of the plant, and when you add everything up, Diablo Canyon’s revenues and reliability value will be more than $8.2 billion — more than $1.1 billion higher than the operating costs to be paid by customers.’ https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article291055345.html
There are a myriad of ways to to tabulate costs, percentages, prices and such of electricity consumption, demand, production and such. If there’s a way to cherry pick a way to make wind and solar look good, MZ Jacobson will find it. The Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton, takes a look at MZJ’s recent letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal about states with high renewables having lower electricity rates:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-8-31-renewables-are-they-really-cheaper
He concentrates mostly on South Dakota. He compares MZJ’s claim of SD getting 77% of it’s generation in 2023 from renewables with South Dakota Public Utilities Commission data that shows SD getting 36% of electricity consumption from coal in 2023, more than from wind, water and solar combined. Here’s a quote from Menton about 2024:
SOUTH DAKOTA pop. .9m (47th) .3% 12 people/m2
76k m2 16th in area 2nd in grid reliability
“Renewable resources generated 77% of South Dakota’s total in-state electricity in 2023, almost all of it from wind and hydroelectric power. After surpassing hydroelectric power’s contribution to in-state electricity generation in 2021, wind provided nearly three times as much electricity as hydropower in 2023.” (EIA)
2022 https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=SD
I note this bullet point from the blue “quick facts” box in your link:
Is that a caveat or double-speak?
Drove across Dakota not too long ago: lot of windmills, solar farms
Meanwhile:
https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/pipeline-fire-spencer-highway-la-porte-texas/285-0a30fb6b-bfa7-40a6-995f-00a463372487