Hail sucks, and Burnet and WillCo are about to get plastered with it, according to the NWS weather alert that just popped up on my phone
Ughhhhhhh so much hail in Austin. I always have my car garaged at home. But today as I was leaving work, my tire had a puncture and was flat so after changing it to the donut, I left it at Costco. My only hope is they were currently working on it when the hail came down.
Happy Friday, huh? Haven't been out to check my garden yet, if half of it is still viable I will be most thankful
So Costco called me about 10 minutes after it passed telling me my car was ready. They were working on it as the storm passed! Hurray. Plus, the guy said they only had about 5 seconds of pea sized hail hit their area whereas my area was hit for a solid 15 minutes. You guys out in the boonies tend to get it worse. I hope it wasn't bad for you. I haven't heard this storm cause too much damage in the Austin area.
I was bracing for the worst, but it looks like half of Dallas got dumped on in terms of rain (not sure about hail), but where I live, I'm not sure we even got a drop of rain - just a bunch of clouds and wind. I'd rather have the rain. Oh well.
Looked like it snowed there was so much hail. My garden is fuuuuuhhh**ed. Hope my roof is okay. Just had it replaced last year from the last big hail storm.
This thread might not be the best fit for this, but it should be good enough for now. https://abc13.com/ercot-texas-power-grid-summer-outages-public-utility-commission/13211903/ Public Utility Commission Chair Peter Lake on Wednesday warned that Texas' main power grid is at risk for outages this summer if wind turbines don't produce enough electricity when it's needed. He yet again made the case that more on-demand power sources, such as natural-gas-fueled power plants or batteries, need to be built to make the grid more reliable. Lake's statements, made in light of a new assessment of possible risks facing the grid this summer, echoed arguments he has made throughout the legislative session. Lawmakers are evaluating a new economic tool that Lake's agency approved, called performance credits. The credits would increase electricity customer bills an estimated 2% and direct the funds to companies that operate on-demand power sources, with a goal of incentivizing them to build more power plants or keep existing plants in service longer. "The Texas grid faces a new reality," Lake said Wednesday. "Data shows for the first time that the peak demand for electricity this summer will exceed the amount we can generate from on-demand, dispatchable power, so we will be relying on renewables to keep the lights on."
I'm all for battery storage, Mango. Here's an article about what Australia's doing, which I don't doubt you are already aware of. What they are doing is remarkable, and we should have followed their lead long ago, in my opinion. From Energy Storage News: Spoiler Australia had over 2GWh of large-scale battery storage under construction at end of 2022 By Andy Colthorpe April 18, 2023 Nearly double the megawatt-hours of large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) were under construction in Australia by the end of 2022 compared to the previous year. According to national trade association Clean Energy Council’s latest annual report into the country’s clean energy sector, the combined capacity of 19 BESS projects being built last year totalled 1380MW output and 2,004MWh energy capacity. At the end of 2021, the figures had been 921MW and 1,169MWh respectively. Meanwhile, investment in large-scale wind, solar and storage was at AU$6.2 billion (US$4.17 billion) for 2022, a 17% increase on 2021 figures. In a foreword to the Clean Energy Australia Report 2023, Clean Energy Council (CEC) chief executive Kane Thornton noted however that overall, clean energy development actually slowed down a little last year over a “stellar” 2021. That was in part due to supply chain and workforce constraints causing a slowdown in rooftop solar uptake, from 3.3GW added in 2021 to 2.7GW in 2022. The growth did mean however that for the first time ever, rooftop PV comprised more than a quarter of all renewable energy generation in Australia. The number of new wind projects was down too, from 1.7GW in 2021 to 1.4GW in 2022, but project sizes grew. The number of new megawatts of large-scale solar also decreased, by quite a significant amount, dropping from 1,683MW in 2021 to 860MW last year. That said, as of the end of last year, 48 large-scale PV projects were in construction across the country versus 42 at the end of 2021, and again, with average project sizes growing larger, CEC said it was confident total generation from utility-scale solar PV will rise in the coming years. It was a similar dynamic for utility-scale batteries: while at the end of 2021, 30 projects were under construction versus the 19 recorded at the end of last year, the more recently announced projects dwarf the scale of what has gone before. CEC’s report estimated that around 50,000 residential battery systems were installed during the year, again, a considerable increase on an estimated 34,731 installations in 2021 and broadly in line with a recent market size estimate of 47,100 new systems as reported by solar consultancy Sunwiz a few weeks ago. Good outlook, but pace of large-scale deployment needs to increase Thornton said that the figures showed that despite a slowdown in some areas, the energy transition economy in Australia remains strong, particularly as coal power plant retirements accelerate. Australia’s political direction gives good cause for optimism, the CEC executive said, with the Labor government voted in last year setting a 43% by 2030 emissions reduction target and announcing initiatives like the Rewiring the Nation AU$20 billion grid upgrade scheme and forthcoming tenders for large-scale BESS. Renewable energy in 2022 accounted for 35.9% of all generation, up from 32.5% in 2021, more than double the 16.9% share it had in 2017 when Australia’s clean energy “boom” began, CEC said. A total 2,257MW of new large-scale renewables were added to the grid last year, and 500MW of large-scale wind and solar was in construction as of the end of 2022, another record. Thornton said however that the sustained growth of renewable energy cannot be taken for granted. Even with the “greater policy clarity” the sector now enjoys, reaching the federal government’s targeted 82% renewables in the generation mix will require the pace of large-scale project deployment “to at least double”. Australia’s national science group, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), recently published a roadmap for renewable energy storage which found that a 10-14x increase in energy storage capacity will be needed in the National Electricity Market (NEM) between 2025 and 2030. View the full Clean Energy Council’s ‘Clean Energy Australia Report 2023’ PDF in full here. Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia, 11-12 July 2023 in Singapore. The event will help give clarity on this nascent, yet quickly growing market, bringing together a community of credible independent generators, policymakers, banks, funds, off-takers and technology providers. For more information, go to the website.
Tesla is doing this in Australia, too. They also have one in Angleton, Tx, or they said they were building a 100 megawatt battery park there a couple of years ago. I don't know what the status is on that.
Didn't Tesla start this in Australia? I think Musk made a bold bet that he could install what was a massive battery, massive at the time, storage thingy within several months, or it would be free. I dimly recall something like that (recalling "dimly" being about as good as I can manage these days).
I'm not sure, tbh. I just remember them building it there, then I heard about the one in Angleton. I just looked, and I guess they have one somewhere in Alaska, too. Not sure if they're installed or what the status of any of them are, though. Here's a short video from last year about the one in Angleton :
Good stuff, and we (USA) are lagging on this. It probably will take a while for us to pick up the pace on this because buyin on renewables is uneven. Far too much of that is how we have always done it in this country.
Alberta and BC have some big fires going and the pattern for the PNW US and Western Canada is for a lot of heat starting tomorrow and lasting for the rest of the month.
An old friend of mine has lived in BC since the early 1970's. He's in Kaslo, which is on the lake north of Nelson. I hope his area has been spared. It's incredibly beautiful.
No matter how many times they've done this, it's still pretty cool. This one seemed weak compared to some of the other videos in the past where they've taken direct hits by tornadoes, but still pretty nuts. One thing is always funny to me - they always have those wipers going. The other cool thing is how much Dominator has changed in its construction over the years. The thing looks space-age (as goofy as it still looks) now compared to the old Chevy Tahoe with plates tacked onto it looked. Of course now it's just a big Ford pickup with plates tacked on, I think, but it still looks better. lol. Crazy stuff these guys do.
