Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
“Between wind and water: (Nautical) In that part of a ship’s side or bottom which is frequently brought above water by the rolling of the ship, or fluctuation of the water’s surface. Hence, colloquially, (as an injury to that part of a vessel, in an engagement, is particularly dangerous) the vulnerable part or point of anything.”
Forcing people to buy expensive renewable energy seems like a really bad plan to me. But that’s what California is doing. It used to be capped at 20%, but the new law is that we’ll have to get 33% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020. But that’s not bad enough. Here’s the goofy part, the part that makes it uniquely Californian, that marks it as being from the famous “Granola State”, home of nuts and flakes …
Because of the regulations requiring California to use renewable energy, it won’t be able to use all its renewable energy, and will have to throw part of the energy away.
I must confess to a great fondness for the law of unintended consequences. It involves us in situations of delicious irony all the time. You see, here in California, in order to be “renewable”, it’s not enough that power be hydroelectric. This is California, and we require better green credentials than the fact that hydroelectric is renewable to declare it “renewable”. You might think I’m kidding. Unfortunately, I’m not. Here is the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) report for the energy mix on Monday the 11th of April 2011:
Figure 1. Where California gets its electricity. Note that the top section, “Hydro[electric]”, is not counted with the “Renewables”.
Under the law requiring 33% renewables, any large-scale hydroelectric plant is not considered “renewable”. What the law calls “renewables” were about 15% of the total in 2009, and hydroelectricity was about 20%. So in fact, in California we are already getting 33% of our power from renewable sources … but that’s not good enough for the nuts and flakes, who could have guessed? Under the goofball definition in the law, most of our renewable energy doesn’t count as renewable energy. Figure 2 shows what’s included in the California so-called “Renewables” mix:
Figure 2. Renewable energy generation in California, 11 April 2011
So from the bottom up we have geothermal, biomass, biogas, small hydroelectric, wind, and solar … but no regular old, boring, and definitely renewable hydroelectric power.
Here’s one of the problems with this nonsense, from the Seattle Times :
Wind-power producers fight possible shutdown of turbines
PORTLAND — Pacific Northwest wind-power producers are battling a proposal that could force them to periodically shut down their plants in the months ahead, potentially costing them millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) officials say that limiting wind production could be required to free up space in the regional transmission system to handle hydropower generated from the melt-off of a huge mountain snowpack this year.
“We’re looking at doing everything we can to avoid the shutdowns but you have to be able to do something when your back is against the wall,” said Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman.
… The BPA manages the regional power-supply system by balancing, minute by minute, the flow of electricity surging through the system with demand.
As the wind industry expands, the BPA has found it more difficult to transmit all that power and still meet other responsibilities, which include selling hydro power outside the region and spilling water over dams to aid the passage of migrating salmon.
Last June, the BPA balancing effort turned into a high-wire act as a late snow melt unleashed a gusher of water down the Columbia River at the same time that winds whipped up the power turbines.
BPA officials said that they couldn’t divert all the water around the hydroelectric turbines without putting too much dissolved gas into the river and placing salmon at risk. So they ended up running more water through the dam turbines and giving away their surplus power to utilities all over the West.
That spurred the agency to develop a new proposal to periodically shut down wind-power farms to help balance loads. The plan was embraced by public utilities across the region.
Why does this matter to consumers in California like myself? Because like idiots, we’re contracted to use the windpower despite the high costs of both production and transmission (emphasis mine) …
The dispute reflects major strains on the regional power system, which has been reshaped by a dramatic expansion of wind power in Washington and Oregon. Most of that power is exported to California and other markets outside the Northwest.
Of course, since regional planners all bought into the “we’ll never ever see winter again” mantra sold by the AGW alarmists, nobody was planning for a winter like this one. There was 61 feet of snow at some points in the Sierras, the reservoirs are full and over, we’re going to have more than enough water to generate plenty of power.
But none of that waterpower, not a drop, counts towards the California 33% renewables quota. So despite having already reached the 2020 goal of 33% renewables, here we are “between wind and water”. The utilities will all have to buy expensive wind power in preference to cheap water power … and then we can’t just release the water because it’s low in oxygen and will harm the fish, so then we’ll have to generate the power anyway and give the power away … that’s hell of a resource-management and conservation plan there, guys. Gotta love California.
w.
References:
Anthony’s previous post on this subject
CAISO Historical Daily Data (1 year)
Latest California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Report
CA Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS)
Hydro is the key to balancing load when mixing inconsistent renewable wind and solar power with minimalised reliable nuclear and thermal baseload. Hydro can be instantaneously ramped up and down at will whereas wind/solar isn’t always there and thermal/nuclear cant easily be switched off.
However…”run of the river” hydro isn’t like that where there is abundant water involved. You cant easily turn it off for long since inevitably the dams are full and the water must flow down the river and if its spilled, then the oxygenated water kills the salmon. That effect has happened here in Tasmania too in the past.
Ideally you’d cut down on thermal but then you need to run the hydro harder and you lose whatever little flexibility you had to increase and decrease the hydro to even out the load.
Although this situation appears ludicrous, its not entirely unexpected. Exporting power becomes the answer (as stated in the article) and at some point people have to accept that if we’re going to have a higher proportion of unreliable renewables then we’re going to need much higher total generating capacity in order to account for the unreliability and consequently we’re inevitably going to have times where some of that generating capacity is wasted when all the generating ducks line up.
So there you have it . It’s all about the money It has nothing to do with the environment.
And Crude Oil is a renewable energy source. Why do you think BP was drilling so deep? Why Russia has so much Crude Oil and Natural gas?
Ushering in Solutions for the Gulf Coast
http://itsrainmakingtime.com/2010/chrislandau/
min 6.00
” Pacific Northwest wind-power producers are battling a proposal that could force them to periodically shut down their plants in the months ahead, potentially costing them millions of dollars in lost revenue.”
========
This should be interesting.
A full financial accounting of their wind-power assets.
I’m going to do my best NOT to type a bunch of foul words describing the mentally retarded Bozos we have in Sacramento running the state. The part the I find so frustrating is that people keep voting these #$%^#$%^ $%^$^& back into office!!!!
California is #3 when it comes to unemployment, 21%, roughly 1 in 5 small businesses are NOT going to be around in 3 years. Some will fail and many will leave this STUPID over-regulated state and go to a state where business does not cost as much.
http://jan.ocregister.com/2011/03/08/are-calif-businesses-closing-or-leaving/55995/
Here’s a clever idea, our energy is around 50% higher than average, let’s make it EVEN HIGHER!!! Who knows, maybe we can drive even more businesses out of state or out of business!
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_17829150?IADID=Search-www.dailybreeze.com-www.dailybreeze.com
Just when you think they can’t do anything more stupid, they do:
[snipped – apologies, Bob, but way off topic. – w.]
If you live in California, please stop voting for liberal Democrats!!!
suyts says:
April 14, 2011 at 3:52 pm (Edit)
James, my sincere apologies for my misunderstanding and my correspondingly inappropriate response.
w.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014756586_windpower13m.html>, begins with the following statements,
“Pacific Northwest wind-power producers are battling a proposal that could force them to periodically shut down their plants in the months ahead, potentially costing them millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) officials say that limiting wind production could be required to free up space in the regional transmission system to handle hydropower generated from the melt-off of a huge mountain snowpack this year.
“We’re looking at doing everything we can to avoid the shutdowns but you have to be able to do something when your back is against the wall,” said Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman.
But turbine owners bristle at the BPA proposal, which they say would result in a big financial hit during the blustery spring and early summer months, peak season for wind generation.
“There has been a strong united [wind industry] voice saying ‘this is not reasonable,’ ” says Roby Roberts, a vice president of Horizon Wind Energy, which has built wind farms in Oregon and the Kittitas Valley in Washington.
The dispute reflects major strains on the regional power system, which has been reshaped by a dramatic expansion of wind power in Washington and Oregon. Most of that power is exported to California and other markets outside the Northwest.”
Oh, Willis! You have only seen the tip of the politically correct ice burg. I spent 20 years developing various “renewable energy” power plants. At one time, I had 14 small hydro plants under development. Only 3 of them ever saw the light of day and I walked away from a couple $ million in sunk cost on the others. The “forces for environmental good” will fight any power plant that has any chance of an honest profit (without outrageous government subsidies), but they have long held “hydro” in particular disdain.
During all those years, I avoided wind and solar for the simple reason that the inherently limited energy density of those two technologies makes them, even theoretically, ruinously expensive and not candidates for “economy of scale”. Add to that the “randomness” of those technologies’ output and you have a utility nightmare.
Unfortunately for us rate payers, in the world of regulated electric utilities you and I must pay the freight for regulatory folly. Utilities are literally being thrown into “Bre’ Rabbits Brier Patch” when California tells them they must invest in the two most capital intensive technologies known to man. Regulated electric utilities do not make a profit on fuel or other operating costs. They make an “authorized return” on their capital investments, which means that they get to charge rate payers whatever it takes to cover those capital costs plus their authorized rate of return. When they buy that power from an independent developer, the cost is likewise passed through to the consumer. So, who is left in the game on the supply side to resist Moonbeam’s folly?
Look to Spain and Portugal (now bankrupt) for a primer on how all this political correctness turns out for both rate payers and the state.
I have often wondered how geothermal gets to be included as renewable. Can anyone explain it to me?
@Oldseadog: I keep hearing about all the “green jobs” that will be created with the carbon tax in Australia… no one has been able to explain them to me – you have answered the question – thanks :-).
A minor point, but most folks here are too young to remember that the primary reason that the Shasta and Oroville dams were built wasn’t to generate electricity. It was to moderate the floods and periodic droughts that affected the Sacramento River watershed prior to their construction. Since the water and hydro plants are there and there is zero chance that either dam is going to be removed, it’d be kind of dumb not to use the electricity.
TimTheToolMan says:
April 14, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Ideally you’d cut down on thermal but then you need to run the hydro harder and you lose whatever little flexibility you had to increase and decrease the hydro to even out the load
Washington State gets 85% of it’s electricity from nuclear or hydro.
British Columbia get 90% of it’s electricity from hydro.
Idaho gets 85% of it’s electricity from hydro.
Oregon gets 70% of it’s electricity from hydro.
There isn’t much thermal to ‘cut down on’ in the spring.
Who loses when the amount of hydro + renewable electricity being produced exceeds 100% of demand of every neighboring area?
The Pacific DC Intertie only has a 3 GW capacity.
We were already approaching minimum river run + nuclear + windmill > greater then off peak demand when we only had 2 GW of windmills. We have 4 GW of windmills in the Pacific Northwest now.
Just a note, Grand Coulee has a 125 sq mile reservoir.
CA, the state I love to hate.
Claude Harvey says:
April 14, 2011 at 5:20 pm (Edit)
Indeed. Me, I’m a fan of ethical dams. Kicking a whole bunch of people off their land for a lake? Sketchy. Power dams up in the hills? Sure.
What kind of “small hydro” were you doing? (I’ve seen various size estimates of “small-“, “micro-“, and “mini-” hydro? I grew up on a cattle ranch with our 10 kilowatt Pelton wheel hydroelectric plant. I’d call that “microhydro”.)
Both of those have their place, but it is only where they make economic sense. Subsidizing them is madness.
Sigh …
w.
From the story; “…BPA officials said that they couldn’t divert all the water around the hydroelectric turbines without putting too much dissolved gas into the river and placing salmon at risk. So they ended up running more water through the dam turbines and giving away their surplus power to utilities all over the West.”
Sorry, but you really have to be kidding me. Too much foam & bubbles in the water just down stream of the dam spillway will hurt fish?? How in the world do the salmon survive in the shallows going over rapids and waterfalls with all those bubbles & dissolved gases in the water? I don’t buy it & I think it is just another enviro-wacky regulation to handicap the dam operations…but that is just my humble opinion.
Jeff
This is crazy simple. Washington does not consider hydro to be renewable even though nobody can foresee any reason it would not always be available. We get a lot of rain. Period. But so does BC, Canada which is where the Columbia head waters are. It is more like the world’s longest lake than a river, in fact.
So if Cali keeps hydro on the plate as renewable, we can sell alla y’all hydro and in return we get nothing because none o’y’all has anything anymore. That makes our inner greenies happy and teary because we’re giving until our guilt is matched. Our power availability goes down, BO gets his brownouts not only in Cali but here in Washington, Oregon gets paid for hosting the Pacific Intertie from the feds who borrow it from the Chinese who sell the debt to the Venezuelans, and we don’t need more wind power here. Win, win, win.
It’s perfect! Gasoline is headed over $5.00/gal so fixed income types will have to stay home and freeze in the dark, power will not be used to heat the urbs, so UHI goes away, all industrial/manufacturing will get the hint and leave the country, and we’ll all become quaint little green hamlets communicating by placing notes on logs and sending them down river and lighting our homes with dung lamps. People will be colder all the time so will die younger, populations will fall, nobody can afford pets so PETA is happy, Gaia is going to be one happy camper because there’s not reason to drill drill drill. After a couple generations of living like Australopithecus people will forget and even reject going back to the bad old days. It worked in Russia.
Re salmon, the commercial says “It’s the fish John West rejects, that make John West the best.”
That’s BTW. I have a problem also with Fig 2. How come the hiatus between hour 24 and the next day’s hour 1? And where does the solar come from after the sun sets? What is the treatment of credits when fossil electricity is used to pump water uphill to hydro dams? Is this in the category of small hydro? What is the treatment of windmill power used to charge standby batteries at fossil plants or nuclear plants?
I’m confused, hence abundant question marks, but consoled by the bigger confusion in Californian logic.
Again BTW, it’s a pity that the abbreviation CA can be California or Climate Audit. Causes some double takes.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 14, 2011 at 6:37 pm
What kind of “small hydro” were you doing?
Of the three I eventually managed to build, none created a new impoundment. One was a rehab of an 80-year-old, crib-dam project in Maine (low-head, using variable pitch Kaplan turbines) and two were “run of river” projects in Washington State. One of the Washington projects was my favorite because it had such incredible energy density (high-head, using a two-nozzle, pelton wheel turbine). The plant was only about the size of a four-car garage and turned 14Mw (think hundreds of acres of solar cells). The dominant feature was over a mile of penstock (pipe) to divert a glacier fed stream well above the “fish line” down to that compact little plant at lower altitude where it discharged back into the original stream. We simply side-tracked a portion of the flow from a stream that supported no fish and then put the water back into that same stream at lower altitude. The thing was about as environmentally benign as one can get, but forget about obtaining permits to do that today. That one is where I fought an absurd battle over “endangered grass”.
Who loses when the amount of hydro + renewable electricity being produced exceeds 100% of demand of every neighboring area?
I can see an industry for Energy Storage emerging as a result of increasing our reliance on unreliable renewables. We do it already to some extent and Australia has the Snowy Mountains scheme for example but I predict it will be a growth industry.
If a rain event hits the Sierra snowpack, with the reservoirs now sporting very little flood capacity, they will have to release a lot of water. Not only that, they will have precious little time to release a lot of water.
They claim they cannot do this because of the fish?
Before they had the dams for flood control, a lot of water went down anyway, and the fish did just fine. The fish evovled to survive exactly what the greenies say they cannot tolerate. It’s the roads/bridges/towns/cities that got wiped out, not the fish.
So what is California really up to?
By the looks of it, a most dangerous game.
We in BC already pay $5 per gallon of reg gas and nobody complains at all.
Since the value of US $ is falling against the Can $, folks in the US are going to pay dearly for BC Hydro juice!
I don’t understand why everyone feels that this system is incorrect. The goal is not to reach the number 33%, the goal is to increase the states generation of electricity from renewable sources. Because large-scale hydro is more or less at maximum capacity (there aren’t many places to build large new dams to generate electricity) it makes sense to exclude large-scale hydro from the renewable generation targets. Where there is potential to increase hydro generation (small hydro) it is included.
As of 2008 wind power generaton was a total of 5385 KMW hours. Looking at the new RPS schedule just released to acheieve 33% by 2020 we see some interesting estimates.
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/62B4B596-1CE1-47C9-AB53-2DEF1BF52770/0/Q12011RPSReporttotheLegislatureFINAL.pdf
Six different ‘trajectories’ are charted based on different estimates of time contraints (ie economy transmission problems etc.). They estimate adding 18,000 to 35,000 KMW hours of wind generation. Solar thermal is at best 8000 KMW hours.
Then they hope to add 5000 to 8000 KMW hours of geothermal.
All the good bird killing locations are gone. Geothermal is declining and fears of causing earthquakes have curtailed new development.
Willis is right that they plan no new large hydro but they do include the existing big hydro in their calculation of the 33%. In 2008 it accounted for 11.2% of the renewable power generated but it fluculates greatly as result of the snow pack. They are having a couple of good big hydro years that make the RPS look better than in the drought years.
Here in NZ we haven’t quite reached this level of insanity yet.
However, based on this information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NZ_electricity_2011_provisional.png
The target is to achieve 90% renewable’s, with, wait for it: Wind – Go Figure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_New_Zealand
The liberal media in Oz are slowly beginning to wake up to all the Greens laws of intended consequences and their reshiftable energy pogroms-
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/error-of-putting-the-panel-before-the-purse-20110414-1dg33.html
Mike says:
April 14, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Since we already get a third of our energy from renewables, I don’t see why we should “increase the state’s generation of electricity from renewable sources”. And even if we should, why is the state in the business of mandating that? Particularly when such a high percentage already comes from renewables, who are you or the state to claim it should be even more yet?
w.
richcar that 1225 says:
April 14, 2011 at 9:29 pm
No, that’s the problem, Richard. They don’t include the existing big hydro in their calculation of the 33%. If they did we’d be there already.
w.