Guest essay by Wayne Delbeke
From the 180 on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Monday, March 21, 2016.
The maximum California can realistically achieve from renewables is 18% of their total energy supply.
The comment was made by a former member of the California Energy Commission during a CBC review of Alberta’s goal of “UP TO 30%” of it’s power supply from wind and solar. The key word from a political standpoint is “UP TO” since 1% actually achieves the goal POLITICALLY.
The new Alberta government plans to use a carbon tax to fund subsidies for “renewable” energy projects – whatever that means. People think “solar and wind” but that is not necessarily the case.
Still an interesting listen.
Summary below:
“In California where I used to be a regulator, we went out and did a complete estimate looking at all the land we could get access to and be able to use for renewables and find out what’s the best you could do… and the best we could ever imagine, if you fully committed to renewables was thirty percent. Then we backed off and said what’s it realistically going to be, and the best we could come up with was eighteen percent. – Michal Moore, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary “
“Last week, The 180 visited the town of Hanna, Alberta, where residents worry they’re living in a town without a future.
Hanna’s coal-fired power plant has had an uncertain future since the release of the NDP’s climate plan in November. Dean Girodat works at the mine that feeds the plant, and is worried about life after it closes — both in terms of his own ability to make a living, and the province’s ability to power itself without coal.
But while coal power is on the way out in Alberta, wind is picking up. The Alberta government’s plan sees renewable energy, like wind and solar, to provide up to 30 per cent of Alberta’s electricity once coal is gone. The 180 visited a turbine farm near Pincher Creek, Alberta, where wind from the Rocky Mountains whips across the rolling foothills and ranch-land.
Wayne Oliver supervises TransAlta’s wind operations in Pincher Creek, Alberta. (Kathryn Marlow/CBC)
Wayne Oliver is the Operations Supervisor for the company TransAlta’s wind operations in Pincher Creek and Fort Macleod. The company operates 412 turbines around around Pincher Creek.
If you consider that your fuel source is free, once you put up your tower, all you have to do is maintain it. Then, it’s a great supplemental source of energy for the grid… of course, sometimes it’s not windy. I don’t know if wind will replace everything we have, but it’s a great supplemental source of energy. -Wayne Oliver
So there’s one of the challenges in bringing renewable energy up to 30% of Alberta’s energy grid. Right now, wind turbines provide 4% of Alberta’s electricity. Solar power, another renewable energy source, has challenges of its own, such as efficiency in a province where for much of the year, the sun is at a low angle.
Michal Moore is a Professor of Energy Economics at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. He was also a commissioner of the California Energy Commission. He says getting renewable sources to power 30% of Alberta’s grid is a good, but difficult, goal.”
Note: in the last full year of reporting (2014), Coal-fired plants provided 55% of Alberta’s power. There is more Natural Gas generation (44%) than Coal-fired on line but coal-fired (38%) was still providing the majority of electricity in the province. That may change as there are a number of new NG plants. Wind and solar – not so much. It’s snowing as I write this, my solar panels are covered with white stuff and the wind is calm. But I have grid power and a Propane fired 12 kW generator for when the wind and/or snow knock the power out – which happens regularly in my remote neck of woods in the Alberta boreal forest.
The NDP goal of 30% of electricity from Wind and Solar in Alberta is likely nothing more than “California Dreamin’ ” If sunny California can’t achieve 30%, then it is highly unlikely that Alberta will – in terms of ACTUAL production as opposed to “installed capacity”.
http://www.energy.alberta.ca/Electricity/682.asp
http://www.energy.alberta.ca/Electricity/681.asp
It might help if people could grasp that big hydro is a “renewable” source of power AND also potentially storage for other intermittent renewable sources. Its also the cheapest source in terms of typical LCOE.
Obviously expanding big hydro could have a significant role to play.
But, part of the alarmist agenda appears to be to resist any realistic affordable practical solutions to the problems that they themselves intend to expensively not solve.
So apparently we all must pretend as though big hydro does not exist.
As if Tasmania and that island in the Canaries so not exist as bad examples of “renewable energy”. The green blob will try to keep warm with handwaving.
Renewable drivers, not technology. Green drivers, not technology. Environmentally friendly… sort of. kind of. maybe.
The marketing, educational, lobbying, and political schemes have created a false impression of their quality and potential. They should be exploited circumstantially as suited to purpose.
Great, it’s snowing again in Ontario, Canada….at the end of March !!!
Few would dare accuse Canada’s NDP of economic competence, this is just another instance.
Ecoloon theory with these people always trumps common sense.
Michal Moore is a Professor of Energy Economics at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. He was also a commissioner of the California Energy Commission.
So is this the guy California can thank for their high energy costs.
30% is easily achievable.
Get rid of 60% of the people.
While it should be clear that even people that support the “eco loon” solution don’t expect renewables to replace capacity of Coal fired much less expand supply where is it that a growing, more energy intense, economy is supposed to get the necessary supply? It should be obvious these guys are organizing an economic collapse
California got 20% of its electricity from renewables in 2014, so I guess 18% wasn’t that hard after all.
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html
Alberta already has what is likely the most reliable cheapest power in the world. Gas prices are at unsustainable low prices for now, which is the only reason they’re able to use it now. The oil and gas companies that produce oil and gas have been laying off thousands and because every direct jobs in the industry creates four other jobs, thousands more jobs are gone as well. Wells are being shut in small cap companies have gone broke, mid= are either going out of business or selling to whoever will buy them, and the large-caps are loosing billions. The gas plants that were suppose to replace the coal plants are being cancelled because they see what’s coming. The province is slowly depopulating because everyone sees what’s coming, except the government.
According to Alberta Energy, electrical generation by fuel source in 2014 was: coal – 55%; natural gas – 35%; hydro – 2%; biomass – 3%; wind – 4%. The NDP wants to prematurely shutter 6 coal-fired plants by 2030, so there will be no coal plants. Since NG emits half the CO2 that coal does it would be the obvious replacement for coal. The NDP want to replace it with expensive, intermittent and unreliable wind power instead. Albertans can expect higher electricity rates, “energy poverty”, less competitive industries, destabilized power grid and higher provincial debt.
These people are chasing rainbows. Most of the rest of the world is chasing new nuclear power
technologies that make wind and solar look highly dangerous, expensive, unreliable, and environmentally obscene. California’s stupid, ill-informed anti-nuclear bigotry is costing them heavilly. Couldn’t
happene to a more deserving group of buffoons.
California got 20% of its electricity from renewables in 2014….
Twenty percent of its electricity is nowhere near 18% of their total energy supply.
It is REALLY EASY to get 30% of the electric energy actually used from renewables – simply turn off the power to everyone when the limit is reached and the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. After sundown in Alberta on a cold, clear winter night is a B**ch though!
How many tons of birds and bats to remain a free power source?
As a power station operator for 35 yrs, 30% from solar or wind, would mean an uncontrollable grid, we have to control voltage, frequency and power factor within narrow margins and this is not possible with solar and wind,
Hydro is a totally different matter, having commissioned a Hydro station in Malaysia, I know they can start up from standstill to full load in minutes, their governor response to load requirements can be adjusted to whatever you require.
There’s a fine American colloquialism for this kind of project. Boondoggle.
Alberta and its eastern neighbor Saskatchewan passed up the opportunity at least two decades ago for an east-west power grid supplied mainly by Manitoba Hydro in a province that generates 98% of its electricity from hydro dams. Instead, Manitoba exports 88% of that energy to states like Minnesota and Wisconsin. So if Alberta were realistic about clean energy, it would try to renew the offer rather than gamble that wind and solar will make up the shortfall left by abandoning fossil fuels.
People here, I think, miss a key point.
Here is a person, presumably professionally educated in energy economics, who does not care in the least how much things actually cost.
Bingo!
Correction:
“From the 180 on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Monday, March 21, 2016.”
Should read: … CBC (State -Owned Liberal Government Propaganda Office) Monday, March 21, 2016
I hope I live to see it completely shut down, with all the senior executives in tattered urine-stained clothes begging for spare change. Corrupt scum, through and through.
You can go as high a proportion as you like with renewables if you solve intermittency.
The most cost effective solution to that to date, where the renewables aren’t primarily hyrdo power backed by a large reservoir, is molten salt thermal storage. Not free, but the economics will eventually be favourable, I think.
The cost of wind power is dropping as improving technology, and economies of scale kick in:
With the cost of wind power already below market rate for power in some areas:
http://bv.com/images/thought-leadership/renewablenetcost-condensed_maps_r2.png
There will increasingly be more financial capacity to build supporting infrastructure, such as storage solutions.
Deaths from coal plants are unsubstantiated. These numbers thrown around are just guesses by people who have a vested interest in making the number high.
Alberta has been one of the few jurisdictions that made power generation in real time from every source public. As I type this wind produces 84 from 1445 installed capacity and a total demand of 9587 with 283 dispatched. Why look at published results from groups that have a vested interest in a particular outcomes if you can check for yourself?
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
Love Seths next biased piece of junk from a dubious source that 13,000 people per year in the US might just might die from coal industry. Seth google “Preventable causes of death in USA” and you aren’t even in the ball park of the top 10.
The top one is usually botched medical procedures, then the usual suspects of tobacoo, gun and car deaths. Throw in sexual diseases and death by household chemicals and the stupid article and idea gets to be about where it belongs a distant memory.
WHO lists worldwide 170,000 people drown each year just think how many people we could save if we banned water.
Solve this problem, please:
Drug-Induced Deaths 46,471 in 2013 {“Drug” includes both legal and illegal drugs.}
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.XWr1TIfF.dpbs