<story><title>Duck Curve</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>OliverJones</author><text>Once smart-grid tech starts to emerge, many possibilities to muffle the quacking of the duck curve present themselves.&lt;p&gt;The most obvious, and applicable in any climate and weather, is domestic hot water heating. Temporarily suspending power to electric hot water heaters at times of high demand can save tons of short-term load. And, it&amp;#x27;s potentially responsive enough to support frequency control ancillary services (the very expensive task of keeping the power grid running at exactly 60Hz or 50Hz when power demand is changing fast).&lt;p&gt;Another is electric vehicle charging time-shifting, either mandatory or voluntary.&lt;p&gt;A third, more complex, opportunity is HVAC. If heating &amp;#x2F; airconditioning systems can get ahead of their needs during late afternoons, then temporary power suspension in early evenings is feasible. This kind of application may be easiest to deploy in commercial locations like big-box stores, office buildings, and data centers.&lt;p&gt;A mindset change required is this: demand time-shifting IS energy storage.&lt;p&gt;A bigger mindset change: grid operators are in the information business, whether they know it or not. All this proposed timeshifting is based on information.</text></comment>
<story><title>Duck Curve</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>boulos</author><text>I’m surprised the mitigation discussion didn’t include “more wind generation”. Especially at the coast [1], you have plenty of wind at and around sunset from the large temperature differential. The chart is load minus solar&amp;#x2F;wind, but the example graph was a low wind day apparently (and IIRC, we are predominantly solar in California).&lt;p&gt;But even then, this curve doesn’t seem to apply in California in the summer when load demand is highest (look at CAISO demand for say July 24). The amount of built up generation should be looked at in terms of annual peaks and overall efficiency. July has demand up to 45GW range where renewables are only currently able to shave off 10 GW of that (but basically all day long). The forecasted demand for today has a peak of 25 GW.&lt;p&gt;Is it “just” about how quickly net demand spikes? The grid seems to handle 10+ MW or scheduled maintenance (look at October 1).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.windfinder.com&amp;#x2F;forecast&amp;#x2F;pacifica_dumps_san_francisco&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.windfinder.com&amp;#x2F;forecast&amp;#x2F;pacifica_dumps_san_franc...&lt;/a&gt; (ignore the current high winds, go a few days forward).</text></comment>