Will Fisher

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Will Fisher

Will Fisher

@Will_Powerman

The LeBron James of Power Gen. Cofounder @StrobePower - Running America's Modern Power Plant. Ex-Power Developer. Oxford Energy Systems. Posting about Power.

New York City เข้าร่วม Şubat 2022
271 กำลังติดตาม318 ผู้ติดตาม
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
"We have an old grid — it could never handle the kind of numbers, the amount of electricity that’s needed. So I’m telling them they can build their own plant, they’ve got to produce their own electricity." @realDonaldTrump is right about the problem, and @JigarShahDC is right to point out the cost increase fear driving the initiative. But "Bring Your Own Generation" is only half the answer. In isolation, it ring fences large loads from ratepayers. But we shouldn’t limit our ambitions to risk-adversion, we should seize the opportunity and make that private capacity work for the grid, not against it. Here’s why — and how ↓
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Xiao Wang
Xiao Wang@xiaowang1984·
@clawrence @SnazzyLabs Man is electricity going up 25% really that bad in the scheme of things. People probably just will blow that money on door dash and draftkings anyways!
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Quinn Nelson
Quinn Nelson@SnazzyLabs·
would you like to add protein to your $21 salad for just $9 more
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@PoW_Blockspace @PronouncedHare Plus the demand curve looks way more inelastic than that. This is so true that the market is structured such that demand reduction is represented on the supply curve.
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Lusty
Lusty@PoW_Blockspace·
@PronouncedHare So if you put Solar & Batteries behind the meter, and less electricity is delivered via grid, what happens to price?
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Liam Hehir
Liam Hehir@PronouncedHare·
Good grief it cannot be this hard to understand. This is a simplified supply and demand graph. See what happens to the quantity of demand when the price goes up? Furthermore, unless everyone who is not spending more on fuel is exclusively reducing savings, the rent they pay or cutting back on financial products, the additional GST of fuel they pay is offset by reduced spending on other goods and services.
Liam Hehir tweet media
Big Hairy Network@bighairynetwork

#BHN Nicola Willis said "the government is not getting any extra tax revenue because of this [fuel] crisis" But we pay GST on fuel, so if the price per litre goes up, then the GST take will go up won't it? What am I missing? #nzpol #nzpolitics

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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@ThomasHochman @saeverley What’s wrong with jet engines and diesels? Some combination of batteries, gas and diesel engines is typically a pretty strong solution for peak management.
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Thomas Hochman
Thomas Hochman@ThomasHochman·
finally, as a general rule, if someone says “just add more batteries” they are bullshitting you
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Thomas Hochman
Thomas Hochman@ThomasHochman·
I have enormous respect for Semianalysis, but people in this ecosystem consistently fail to appreciate that the energy bottleneck isn’t physics per se but 1. policy and 2. social license to operate
Dwarkesh Patel@dwarkesh_sp

Every year someone names a new bottleneck for AI compute scaling. @dylan522p on why power isn't gonna be the big one over the next few years: fundamentally there's many different ways to generate power (rather than just one company that can produce the EUV tools needed for the chips themselves) and the supply chains are simpler and easier to ramp. You can do jet engines bolted to the ground. Ship engines. Diesel recips from auto manufacturers with declining volumes. Fuel cells. Each category alone delivers tens of gigawatts by end of decade. Combined, hundreds. Even if energy costs double, a GPU goes from $1.40/hr to $1.50/hr. Nobody notices a dime when the models are improving so fast the value dwarfs the cost. Even if you don't add more power, but simply add more batteries, you can unlock 20% more of the US's terawatt scale power grid. This is because grid utilities want to make sure they're sized for peak summer load that hits a few hours a year. With enough batteries, you can make this guarantee, even without turning on more power plants! Fundamentally, there's a lot of different ways to bring power online over the next few years. Building more logic and memory is far more difficult and centralized, so that's where Dylan thinks the bottleneck will be.

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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@JaySawant0204 @xiaowang1984 Why wouldn’t they. They’ll all have like 3 layers of extra capacity - gas engines, + emergency diesels, UPS and/or batteries and probably harmonic filters as well.
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Jay Sawant
Jay Sawant@JaySawant0204·
@Will_Powerman @xiaowang1984 Agreed, also trying to think if they should just be grid-friendly assets (not disconnect) or grid-supportive assets (provide voltage and frequency services)?
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Jay Sawant
Jay Sawant@JaySawant0204·
BYOC and flexible interconnections have pushed large load developers to find sources of power to collocate with large loads for speed to power. If we put more capacity BTM and operate systems islanded mode for some hours/days of the year, are we building Tx connected microgrids?
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@xiaowang1984 @JaySawant0204 They’d still need to pay for ancillaries bundled into their purchased energy rate, no? They may be able to offset this a bit with OR - but in general I’d expect they dispatch like ~30%.
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@xiaowang1984 @JaySawant0204 They will probably have islanding capabilities, but generally operate in parallel - letting the grid get benefit most of the time, while ensuring their own resilience in an outage
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Xiao Wang
Xiao Wang@xiaowang1984·
@JaySawant0204 Are they truly islanded or do they inject power in a grid parallel way that reduces consumption at the bus?
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@xiaowang1984 This also generally means that producers at scale have received so much from the largesse of government that they’re willing to discount those fees based on an external price signals. You’d very rarely see negative prices without CfDs or FITs.
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Xiao Wang
Xiao Wang@xiaowang1984·
Negative prices essentially is a signal that says the market at this time is irrelevant because generation that has contracts is such a massive amount in the system. It says nothing about who the holder of those contracts are and if they are actually saving money on average. They could be the public agreeing to pay a wind farm £150 a MWh for example on a legacy FiT.
Craig David@windymillerhi

Don’t see these prices when running on fossil fuel! Role on net zero!

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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@retailLNG Sure - and to be clear I’m not making a remark on the system or its efficacy (though I would). It’s been an amazing engine to bring millions out of poverty. I’m simply making a critique of the metrics used. Enjoy the day in Singapore.
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Wingchunlion
Wingchunlion@retailLNG·
two levels here. (1) China is a collective society, the SOEs are built to serve the people (or the state as some claim). Their capitalism works way better (compared to the 1% super rich, 40% serving the 1% and 60% can't read and write (Ray Dalio said that, not me); (2) there are always people who want to steal, that is what Mr.Xi is trying to prevent but China does punish them. Nothing is done in the systemic and legalised corruption in the West. China will make decision based on its lowest common denominator - its masses. You don't need to accept that, but you should also compare apples to apples when you make claims. Anyway, let us shake hand and disengage.
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
I also regularly dealt with Harbin, and went through Belt and Road diligence with Sinosure. I competed against Chinese companies constantly. These are very effective companies, and our complaints against quality are largely horseshit. But NEVER would you say that these guys are economic actors. That doesn’t mean they don’t know how to build or win contracts, it just means the corporate financial incentive isn’t there like any traditional business. If there is an economic incentive it’s about how much money can they steal personally from a kg of cement so they can buy a house in Australia or Canada and get out of China.
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Wingchunlion
Wingchunlion@retailLNG·
@Will_Powerman your analysis is meaningless. I said / I see it is working well, you said yes and but. It is not your country, whether you can apply your framework or not, does not matter to them. China will beat US in AI and many other sectors, that is what matters.
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
Sure - I’m probably one of the only Westerners that has done diligence on a Chinese solar farm - but that’s fine. Ignore me and surface your true ideological leanings. You can tell me the system is working. Just don’t tell me it’s the pinnacle of economic efficiency. We compare apples with apples.
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Xiao Wang
Xiao Wang@xiaowang1984·
@MichaelEWebber Is $80 a MWh levelized even that expensive anymore for 2026
Xiao Wang tweet media
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
You think that’s true? Strip out the massively below market debt issuances saving it billions, the direct subsidy injections, free land and 0 challenges to construction? How about now? State grid doesn’t have “profit” in any meaningful way, as both its revenues and costs are artificial. Profit is a policy choice (both to the negative and positive) and its current 1-3% profit margins would never be viable in a real market based system. I don’t even care if you think it’s a well run institution and that it creates benefits for the Chinese economy- it’s just crazy to apply market based metrics to a fundementally non-market actor.
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Wingchunlion
Wingchunlion@retailLNG·
@Will_Powerman you can say this and that, similar to other countries. The fact of the matter is that state grid in China does not lose money. End of story.
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@xiaowang1984 @duncancampbell I mean - for sure it’s mostly energy, but that’s mainly because you can’t reliably reduce your demand level over a month given the intermittency.
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Xiao Wang
Xiao Wang@xiaowang1984·
Easy to get mad about customers who want solar because when consumers demand it and they get ROI that makes their investment work it's almost certainly a cost shift
Robin Hawkes@robhawkes

It's easy to argue, it's much harder to be productive and actually do something. Showing people how something will work is infinitely more powerful than spending forever arguing with them about it. And how could you possibly be upset about consumers demanding more solar panels?

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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@xiaowang1984 @duncancampbell Yes, you would - there are plenty of C&I customers who buy solar for self-consumption alone. The tax credit complicates it a bit, but the cost avoidance can at least service debt.
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Xiao Wang
Xiao Wang@xiaowang1984·
@duncancampbell With how much solar panels cost to install if you actually put in a good rate design, with buy all sell all would anyone ever buy solar panels
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@xiaowang1984 For sure, VPPs means all locally sited assets - not just those preferred by one political ideology. CHP remains one of the most efficient assets classes in the market, and gas engines is among the cheapest mid-merit capacity to add to the system.
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Xiao Wang
Xiao Wang@xiaowang1984·
@Will_Powerman Definitely has value on the distribution side. On the transmission side tho, i think it remains to be studied even if the dispatch questions are solved. Plus there is always on site gas and batteries right for the big stuff
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@xiaowang1984 That’s why “making VPPs less fake” is essential. They’re the hardest to slow down through those tactics.
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Xiao Wang
Xiao Wang@xiaowang1984·
@fbeirao Because the coal plants were already there and the solar is new, so if you want to turn down the coal then the complete solution is the capital cost of both the solar and whatever batteries you need to manage the ramps
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Will Fisher
Will Fisher@Will_Powerman·
@JigarShahDC To be fair, it’s not really hydro that’s be the major source of decline (though it has), it’s nuclear. So low carbon source has been replacing low carbon source.
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