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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ryanaka who wrote (1108915)	1/8/2019 10:41:25 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580681

Another small step in the right direction.... El Paso Electric Taps 100MW of Storage to Supply West Texas Summer Peaks The integrated utility offers a new opening for the storage industry, which has struggled elsewhere in Texas. Julian Spector January 07, 2019 El Paso Electric Taps 100MW of Storage to Supply West Texas Summer Peaks El Paso Electric wants to build new natural-gas generation to meet its summer peaks, but it also selected solar and, unusually for Texas, energy storage resources. After evaluating its 2017 all-source request for proposals, the company decided to expand its Newman Power Station with a 226-megawatt natural-gas combustion turbine, but additionally picked 200 megawatts of utility-scale solar and 100 megawatts of battery storage. The company could also contract for up to 150 megawatts of additional wind and solar power. The portfolio's heavy battery component breaks new ground for Texas, a massive energy market where energy storage has had an exceedingly difficult time breaking in, as previously reported by GTM. A few battery projects have moved forward as research efforts, and some have succeeded with creative business models, but never before on the scale of 100 megawatts. On its face, the development sounds like a major victory for the storage industry in a lucrative and largely untapped market. However, there are a few important caveats to note. Here’s what the development portends for the Texas cleantech industry. Unique case El Paso Electric is an outlier among Texas utilities, because it’s vertically integrated and lies outside of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid. ERCOT features a highly competitive generation marketplace, with energy transported and delivered by separate, regulated wires companies. The fierceness of the competition, plus the ban on wires companies owning assets considered to be generation, have made it hard for storage technology to find a role in that region. Not so in El Paso. The investor-owned utility serves electric generation, transmission and distribution to 424,000 customers in the western tip of Texas and part of southern New Mexico. This structure allows for more holistic planning, which works well for storage, a tool that defies the simple wires/generation dichotomy that worked for the industry until recently. The winning projects still require regulatory approval, contract finalization and permits. Assuming those all check out, El Paso’s experience developing energy storage won’t translate directly to the bulk of Texas, which plays by different rules. “While there is relatively limited opportunity for utility-owned energy storage in broadly deregulated Texas, this could serve as a sign that renewables and storage are increasingly competitive in the state, which could have significant ripples through ERCOT's markets in the next three to five years,” said Daniel Finn-Foley, a storage analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. That said, there are a few other investor-owned utilities outside of ERCOT, and Texas has several notable municipal utilities, like Austin Energy and CPS Energy in San Antonio. The case study of using storage and solar to deliver peak capacity could inform their planning more directly. The resource mix is changing El Paso doesn’t reflect the broader Texas energy world. But it’s still a utility in a state with minimal policy support for energy storage that adopted the technology based on its performance in a competitive solicitation. “The resource mix for new generation is a pure sign of the times, and it reflects growing investment in more diverse resources in utility integrated resource planning processes,” Finn-Foley said. “It's particularly notable that the only natural gas included is a new turbine at an existing facility, while the rest is solar, wind and energy storage.” Count El Paso with the likes of Arizona Public Service, Xcel Energy and NV Energy, which all selected battery projects in the past year, not because regulators or legislators told them to, but because of the competitive economics for storing cheap solar power for more crucial times of the day. Learning by doing Regulators have had years to get familiar with gas generators, but batteries are a relative newcomer to the grid. There’s a learning curve to master in going from small R&D pilots to regularly considering battery plants as a core part of grid infrastructure. California couldn’t have responded as swiftly in the Aliso Canyon battery procurements if regulators hadn’t gotten comfortable with analyzing the technology over the previous years. Every regulatory body is different, but it stands to reason that as the Public Utility Commission of Texas analyzes storage projects in the few vertically integrated utilities it oversees, any insights it gains will inform its outlook on future projects. That could prove valuable as Texas electricity stakeholders continue to debate the proper role for storage technology in a grid where low-cost intermittent renewables are already changing the competitive landscape for all the other dispatchable generators. greentechmedia.com

To: ryanaka who wrote (1108915)	1/8/2019 12:36:53 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1580681

Interesting. So you would argue that Ivar Griever is not qualified to talk about temperature ? nobelprize.org or that John Coleman does not qualify to talk about global temperature and weather (largely self taught in Science but was accepted into Meteorological Society) ? Here is one of the stills Look at the plot of all the models and look at the plot of the actual temperatures. Notice anything ? Sorry, I don't go with the "Emperor has new clothes" fairly tale about scientists. That only special gifted people can see the wonderous science and us plebs have to listen to the words of wisdom they offer. John Coleman recounts the history of what happened with global warming from the skeptics viewpoint. If you have nothing to say (i.e didn't watch it) your view wont be changing my POV much at all. If scientists have a job, get paid to do a certain function, that job will get done. At the moment criminal organisations like Deutsche Bank want to see some impressive Global Warming Science, and have coughed up the dough to get it. See your Reference to "Pseudoscience". That is exactly what Ivor Griever and John Coleman called the recent Climate Science, and that was a compliment. It's really a new religion. No dissenters allowed. Shrinking strawberries and all. I didn't come here with just one view on this matter. In previous years I would argue with Thomas Watson on the possibility of a Global Warming Trend and the reports in the press. I do science though, and I would be rather be mistaken and corrected then belong to a new Religion that is also called "Science". When I hear some twat on TV or in the Press start using the "consensus" words, or the "97% of scientists say" it makes me want to puke. The 97% is misused term usually as well. It's exactly like the picture of the doctor smoking a cigarette in my previous post. Einstein didn't discover Relativity because he had a consensus view. It isn't just him if you check the history on science. It wasnt just JFK who said it.