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Comment Good deal for the grid operators (Score 5, Interesting) 95

The way this works is that Google buys 120% of the power it needs from these renewable producers. It pays the grid operator to deliver 120% of its power requirement to its various data centers. It pays the grid to deliver the whole 120%. If Google only uses 100% of the power it is paying to have delivered, there is an additional 20% of power being fed into the grid. More likely, the renewable plants are delivering 200% or more of Google's instantaneous usage during the sunlight hours and that excess power get delivered to other consumers.

The grid doesn't care where power comes from after it is on the grid. It only knows how much power that is being put on the grid cost. If it gets a free 20% of Googles' power plus the transport fee from Google for that extra 20%,that is pure profit. At any given instance the grid looks at all power sources to determine where it can get the cheapest power to meet its anticipated demand. During the time the renewable plants are producing, the grid uses that power and tell the other sources to pound sand. The grid doesn't care if power is renewable or not. It only cares how much money it can make at any given instance. If it has more power sources than it needs, it can refuse power from peaker plants and they will reduce the amount of power that they produce. These plants are usually gas fired steam plants that can easily be dialed back, These peaker plants will probably become battery storage plants in the future when there are more renewable sources available than the total required peak load. In the end, the total amount of renewable energy gets consumed by somebody.

The grid operator loves it since they are essentially "buying" electricity for a negative price. When the sun goes down or the wind stops, the renewable plant stops putting energy on the grid and the grid has to start paying the carbon based peaker plants to make energy again. Maybe, at some point in the future, it will be able to draw down the battery storage before using the peaker plants. This works out great for the grid operators since their is much higher demand during the day than at night. The two big losers here are the non-renewable fuel suppliers since they aren't running the peaker plants as much and Google since they are overpaying for a specific amount of renewable power source to be generated and transported. The renewable producers are not likely to have many companies like Google to buy their power at a premium. Most companies will buy what is cheapest so the renewable operators will have to compete on price with the fossil producers.

Sci-Fi

Submission + - Joss Whedon back on TV

tokenhillbilly writes: I can't believe that it was announced three days ago, and it hasn't shown up on /. yet. Joss Whedon of Buffy and Firefly fame has signed on to do another TV series on Fox starring Eliza Dushku (Faith/Tru). The series is going to be called Dollhouse and the storyline is a lab (the "Dollhouse") that programs the minds of unsuspecting subjects and sends them out to do "missions". When they have completed the mission, they go back and get erased and re-programmed to do other "missions". I can't wait to see it. The story is on Varity at: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117975136.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

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