Serotonin said:
Quote:
Have you ever heard of the Duck Curve? Solar works best at times when it is needed less. The early evening is when power is needed, but solar generation has fallen off.
That is true in CAISO but not in ERCOT.
In California load drops in the afternoon hours when the weather is nice. In Texas the afternoon hours are where you see extremely high demand.
In ERCOT, solar works very well leading up to and during peak load (~5pm) but then it rapidly falls off when it is still needed in the evening hours.
of course, that is why wind typically picks up the load at that time, but not in Auggy or Sept as wind dies during that time period.
Obviously, Ercot never really thought it through when they built all those wind farms in W. TX, where wind only blows at night, and not much during 5-7PM period.
Blows more down the coast near Corpus with sea breeze.
Again, if they had a meteorologist, they could have figured that out, and concentrated all the wind gen down the coast, which they are now doing.