Wind and solar power + soaring electricity prices = outsourced jobs + more coal burning
Meanwhile, eco activists demand “sustainable lifestyles” – for other people
Guest post by Kelvin Kemm
It is amazing how biased the international media is when it comes to reporting on energy generation, specifically electricity.
In mid-August, Germany opened a new 2200MW coal-fired power station near Cologne, and virtually not a word has been said about it. This dearth of reporting is even more surprising when one considers that Germany has said building new coal plants is necessary because electricity produced by wind and solar has turned out to be unaffordably expensive and unreliable.
In a deteriorating economic situation, Germany’s new environment minister, Peter Altmaier, who is as politically close to Chancellor Angela Merkel as it gets, has underlined time and again the importance of not further harming Europe’s – and Germany’s – economy by increasing the cost of electricity.
He is also worried that his country could become dependent on foreign imports of electricity, the mainstay of its industrial sector. To avoid that risk, Altmaier has given the green light to build twenty-three new coal-fired plants, which are currently under construction.
Yes, you read that correctly, twenty three-new coal-fired power plants are under construction in Germany, because Germany is worried about the increasing cost of electricity, and because they can’t afford to be in the strategic position of importing too much electricity.
Just recently, German figures were released on the actual productivity of the country’s wind power over the last ten years. The figure is 16.3 percent!
Due to the inherent intermittent nature of wind, their wind power system was designed for an assumed 30% load factor in the first place. That means that they hoped to get a mere 30% of the installed capacity – versus some 85-90% for coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric facilities. That means that, when they build 3,000MW of wind power, they expect to actually get merely 900MW, because the wind does not always blow at the required speeds. But in reality, after ten years, they have discovered that they are actually getting only half of what they had optimistically, and irrationally, hoped for: a measly 16.3 percent.
Even worse, after spending billions of Euros on subsidies, Germany’s total combined solar facilities have contributed a miserly, imperceptible 0.084% of Germany’s electricity over the last 22 years. That is not even one-tenth of one percent.
Moreover, the actual cost of Germany’s wind and solar electricity is far and away higher than its cost of coal and nuclear power. So much for “free” solar and wind. So much for all the German jobs that depend on reliable access to plentiful and affordable electricity.
As to natural gas produced via hydraulic fracturing, that too is prohibited, even if it is required to back up undependable wind and solar facilities. No wonder Germany’s natural gas and electricity prices are practically unaffordable.
Meantime the extreme greens continue to preach about the wonders of life based on solar and wind power. They also talk constantly about “sustainable living,” a “sustainable future,” and an otherwise hydrocarbon-free and “decarbonized” tomorrow. Be warned! What these vacuous exhortations mean is that people must not enjoy the lifestyles and living standards of a modern world.
They mean the First World must cut back significantly on its living standards, and the developing world must give up its aspirations for achieving the lifestyle of the First World.
Believe me, African small-scale farmers all dream of becoming like the large commercial-scale farmers they see next door. They do not wish to plough their fields with oxen, when their neighbours have tractors and automated grain handling machines. The same is true of small-scale commercial and industrial operations in which an affordable and reliable supply of electricity is essential. It is likewise true of virtually every office, shop, hospital, school and family on the entire African continent.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, an organisation calling itself “Green Truth” has distributed a notice about a newly released movie titled simply “Fuel.” Here is part of the promotional notice:
“FUEL is a comprehensive and entertaining look at energy: A history of where we have been, our present predicament, and a solution to our dependence on foreign oil. Rousing and reactionary, FUEL is an amazing, in-depth, personal journey by eco-evangelist Josh Tickell, of oil use and abuse, as it examines wide-ranging energy solutions other than oil; the faltering US auto and petroleum industries; and the latest stirrings toward alternative energy.
“The film includes interviews with a wide range of policy makers, educators and activists such as Woody Harrelson, Neil Young and Willie Nelson. Tickell knew he just couldn’t idly stand by any longer. He decided to make a film, focusing on the knowledge and insight he discovered, but also giving hope that solutions are at reach. A ‘regular guy’ who felt he could make a difference, he spent 11 years making this movie, showing himself – and others – that an individual can indeed make a difference. Stirring, radical and multi-award winning energy documentary! FUEL features experts and eco-celebrities such as: Sheryl Crow, Larry David, Richard Branson and Robert Kennedy, Jr.”
The notice frequently emphasizes “sustainable living” and “a hopeful future.” And the singers, actors, activists and other energy “experts” featured in the film are all extremely wealthy, and not at all likely to adopt the “sustainable” lifestyle that they and Tickell advocate so passionately.
Does this film have anything to do with “truth” about energy? Or is it simply a propaganda film for the producers’ and activists’ version of “sustainable lives,” for others, though not for themselves? It takes but a fleeting moment to realize that it is just like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” – leagues removed from truth, and laden with scientific errors, personal biases, and the hypocrisies of affluent partisans who own big houses and fly private jets to events where they tell other people how to live “more sustainably.”
I’m sure “eco-evangelist” Josh Tickell is just “a regular guy,” just as his movie promo says he is. But I would much rather have my country’s electricity future planned by electrical engineers and scientists, and by citizens and politicians who actually live here – rather than by a “regular guy” environmental activist and his self-proclaimed “experts” on energy and “sustainable” lifestyles.
As formerly eco-evangelist Germany has demonstrated, countries cannot afford to have national energy policy moulded by movies like “Fuel” and “An Inconvenient Truth.” Their policies – and their future – need to be based on genuine truth and honest reality.
____________
Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and business strategy consultant based in Pretoria, South Africa. A member of the International Board of Advisors of the Washington, DC-based Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), Dr Kemm has been awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievers Award of the National Science and Technology Forum of South Africa.
Matt Skaggs says:
August 28, 2012 at 10:49 am
This post is a highly skewed hit piece. For example:————————–
According to this:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUSBRE84P0FI20120526
Germany nearly reached 50% of its electrical needs with solar power on a recent sunny afternoon, and overall has achieved 4% from solar and around 20% from renewables. The fact is that Germany is planning for its future, things are going as planned, and they do not really care what you think.
=======================================================================
The linked article states;
(Reuters) – German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour.
===========================================================================
Apparently the jounalist has no understanding of power or energy. Gigawatts per hour is not an accepted unit of anything. 22GW per hour = 0.366666667 GW per minute or 0.0061 GW per second. Watts per hour is nonsense.
Energy is power X time. Daily solar energy intensity is defined by a bell curve. High instantaneous output is only possible for about four hours per day. A high peak of output may not provide much energy if it is for a short time but it causes major disruption for other generating assets.
BTW the 43% efficiency rating of the Cologne coal plant is a maximum value under ideal conditions and may never be achieved in normal operation. Windmills in the system will reduce the efficiency of most fuel burning plants. Just like your car in stop and go traffic.
Matt Skaggs and Paul: The reason that it is relevant to consider 22 years of solar is that Germany began in earnest to build and push solar 22 years ago. What they have accomplished since that push with unsustainable levels of subsidies and coersion? That is why the number is relevant. Yes, the number for 2011 or 2012 would also be relevant. But a honest look at those numbers only continue to embarass the solar drive.
Stephanie Clague says: August 28, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Good comments Stephanie – sad, but true.
In North America, we too have our share of CAGW scoundrels and imbeciles – an ignorant stew of Harpo and Groucho Marxists who are convinced that if all industry were shut down and everyone worked for the government, the economy would perk along just fine. These leftist ideologues appeal to that idiot 30% of humanity who are somehow convinced they are much more intelligent than the rest of us, despite their lack of any technical or economic competence.
From time to time, these ideologues gain power and proceed to wreak havoc upon their economies – witness the Canadian Liberals under Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien, or the Ontario Liberals under Doltan McGuinty. Out of neighbourly courtesy, I will not comment on USA politics.
Because of the boom in cheap natural gas from shale, and similar apparent success in shale oil, North America is again enjoying abundant cheap energy. The question is, will we use this incredible competitive advantage to rebuild our economies and our manufacturing sectors, now increasingly outsourced to China, or will be squander this opportunity in a quagmire of regulatory incompetence and pseudo-environmental obstructionism?
Stay tuned.
Reality check.
If the contribution of solar and wind to total power generation is so minuscule how can it possibly contribute to sky high electricity prices. After all the price should be just a weighted average of all contributions and that means that wind would have to be very expensive indeed to escalate prices significantly given it’s small percentage of the total.
I’m betting that German electricity prices would be nearly as expensive without wind energy as a contribution.
Quote from this article:
“Due to the inherent intermittent nature of wind, their wind power system was designed for an assumed 30% load factor in the first place. That means that they hoped to get a mere 30% of the installed capacity – versus some 85-90% for coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric facilities. That means that, when they build 3,000MW of wind power, they expect to actually get merely 900MW, because the wind does not always blow at the required speeds. But in reality, after ten years, they have discovered that they are actually getting only half of what they had optimistically, and irrationally, hoped for: a measly 16.3 percent.”
The above paragraph reflects a common misunderstanding – the misuse of a term often called the Capacity Factor, which makes wind power look much BETTER than it really is.
The following comments apply to GRID-CONNECTED power. Off-grid uses, often in remote locations, are different.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/18/mcintyres-talk-in-london-plus-the-uks-tilting-at-windmills-may-actually-increase-co2-emissions-over-natural-gas/#comment-1060656
Repeating: [excerpt]:
Wind power is not nearly that GOOD.
The actual required conventional generating backup for wind power is between 90% and 100%.
The Capacity Factor of wind power is typically about 15- 25% – close enough. However, much of the time the wind is blowing when this power is not needed, and other times when the power is needed, the wind is not blowing. Wind power typically cannot be stored and is worthless except when needed, usually at peak demand times.
The Substitution Factor (how much conventional generating capacity can be permanently retired due to addition of grid-connected wind power) recognizes this problem, and it is between 8% and 4% according E.On Netz for their large German network. Hence the need for 90-100% conventional backup.
For proof, see Fig. 7 at http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
Simplifying, for Matt:
“Wind Power – It doesn’t just blow; it sucks!”
Solar power is much more expensive than wind power. Without huge, wasteful, life-of-project subsidies, grid-connected wind and solar power are green-energy nonsense.
“Solar Power – Stick it where the Sun don’t shine!”
Excellent post Dr. Kemm but the problem is that no ”green” will read it let alone understand it.
Do you favour Liquid fluoride Thorium Reactors as a safe, fuel plentiful method of generating electricity?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/secret-history-climate-alarmism
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/43291
I am sure the Germans were not alone in conceiving this massive hoax, but they have defilnitely used it as a weapon to finance their reuinification. The madness within Germany comes with lush exports of trinkets to idiots in the rest of the Western world, Africa, and every fool who like “Green”.
Allan MacRae says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:25 pm
“What is German for “I told you so”?”
Hab ich doch gleich gesagt.
davidmhoffer says:
August 28, 2012 at 6:05 pm
“It strikes me the Merkel may be playing a rather clever long term gambit. The most sensible thing for Germany to do is nuclear, and option that the German public is just dead set against. When I heard the announcement that they would be shutting down the nukes, here’s what I predicted:
[…]
6. After much discussion, nukes come back on the table as the lesser of two evils. Greens must choose which of two evils to accept, and I predict they’ll choose nukes.”
David, you are disregarding the aspect that the Greens have been playing a gambit since about 1980 as well. You see, their leaders come from c0mmunist groups of the 70ies , the K-Gruppen, which had no beef with nuclear at all nor with the environment.
It happened that an apolitical anti nuke pro enviro movement developed, and only AFTER that movement gained traction, and the green party began to form, did the K-Gruppen members realize that this was THE vehicle for mass politization and mass mobilising. So they infiltrated the movement, kicked out competing leaders, purged the party and turned it into THEIR movement. (This is documented in the biographies of Trittin, Joschka Fischer and Kretschmann, for instance)
To this day this K-Gruppen elite rules the Greens, and they have hijacked the movement very efficiently. None of them has a personal reason to be against nukes but every one of them knows that being anti-nuke is what enables them to run the movement.
So, they will be pro-nuke the day hell has frozen over, not a second before.
Correction to above:
Grid-connected wind and solar power schemes require huge, wasteful, life-of-project subsidies and are green-energy nonsense.
henrythethird,
But read that again – on average, the plants to be shut down are 12% MORE efficient than those older plants they’ve retired. Seems efficiency wasn’t considered
The delivered price of steam coal in the US varies from about 75 cent/MMBtu to about $4/MMBtu with the US average being about 2.40/MMBtu. Natural gas prices are at about $2.60/MMBtu and CCGT plants run as baseload are about 50% more efficient then most coal plants.
Economic efficiency was considered when deciding which coal plants to close.
Merkel’s Other Crisis Spurs German Quest for Energy Holy Grail
Meanwhile, Brent crude oil increased 1200% from $10/bbl in 1999 to $120/bbl in 2012.
SasjaL says:
August 29, 2012 at 7:49 am
Thanks for the info, Sasja, I didn’t know that. Maybe the drastic fall of the Euro in May has helped to push you to pole position.
We’re doing our best to catch up!
David L. Hagen says:
August 29, 2012 at 8:39 am
“Meanwhile, Brent crude oil increased 1200% from $10/bbl in 1999 to $120/bbl in 2012.”
All nice and well, but coal didn’t, and wind turbines and PV don’t replace oil. BTW, if fossil fuels became very expensive, would we still need subsidies for PV and wind? No. Would we be able to ramp up PV and wind in such a scenario? Yes. Why are we doing it before it is making economic sense? The answer is the widespread fear of CO2 and nothing else. So in my opinion, we are solving a non problem with money we don’t have. The problem of exploding oil prices – IF it affected us – would make the switch to wind and solar economic and therefore meaningful and solve a real problem. That time is not now.
@sunshinehours1 — Thanks for your link. Unfortunately it just leads to dueling blogs and commenters… because, while, the Argonne National Labs report sounds very interesting, it’s paywalled at $35… All we get as a result is the “full analysis” by mouthpieces of Wind Energy or other groups, some of whom might actually be accurate in their reporting.
Of course, it also appears the Argonne study was computer simulations, and I’m never very keen on those unless it is a well-established model. But even then, computer model simulations are … computer model simulations, not observations.
Thank you Dirk for your interesting comments on German politics, regarding the (former?) communist K-Gruppen and its takeover of the Green Party.
A similar phenomenon has occurred throughout the Western world – the environmental movement is now the old Harpo and Groucho Marxists, covertly cloaked in green.
The destruction of Western civilization through “green” energy policies is the stated objective of many of these scoundrels and imbeciles. It is not a foolish accident – it is their stated objective.
In their own words:
* Source:
http://www.green-agenda.com
Excerpts:
“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on
human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to
discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy,
because of what we might do with it.”
– Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the
worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
– Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the
equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another
United States. We can’t let other countries have the same
number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US.
We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
-Michael Oppenheimer,
Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty,
reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
-Professor Maurice King
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
– Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.”
– Dr David Frame,
climate modeler, Oxford University
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
-Al Gore,
Climate Change activist
“It doesn’t matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson,
co-founder of Greenpeace
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to
frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and
spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest
opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.”
-Al Gore,
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
“We are on the verge of a global transformation.
All we need is the right major crisis…”
– David Rockefeller,
Club of Rome executive member
“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place
for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and
plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams,
free shackled rivers and return to wilderness
millions of acres of presently settled land.”
– David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
Dan in California says:
August 28, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Meanwhile, the Russians are selling oil and gas to Europe and receiving lots of hard cash. What are they doing for their own electricity? They currently have 10 nuclear power plants under construction with 14 more on order.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html
While Angela Merkel is afraid of a Tsunami.
According to this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/business/9370958/russia-uk-nuclear-plants.html
Russians might soon also be building nuclear plants in the UK (“soon” by nuclear planning and construction standards). Plus maybe the Chinese. This is partly due to Germany’s nuclear exit.
LazyTeenager says: “After all the price should be just a weighted average of all contributions and that means that wind would have to be very expensive indeed to escalate prices significantly given it’s small percentage of the total.”
There are different ways retail electricity costs are increased by wind generation.
Feed-in-tariffs costs about 200% of the wholesale generation price. But wind only displaces about 50% of the costs of fossil fuel power stations as there is a need to hold standing generating capacity in reserve for those times that the wind doesn’t blow.
There are other hidden costs.
The network operator needs to hold firm-flexible (fossil) fired generation in variable operation to handle the minute-by-minute variability of wind input. This “operating reserve” has reduced thermal efficiency in much the same way that urban driving has higher fuel consumption in your car. Running costs are high – not just the waste of precious fuel, but the costs of additional CO2 permits (thanks to your global warming scare story). These costs are paid by the consumer.
The network usually needs to be extended to connect additional wind generation as wind farms are not usually at the same location as existing fossil fired power stations. This is a significant additional cost to be paid by the consumer.
And the network is not an infinite conduit for power flows. Local constraints on power flow and voltage can result in constrained-off wind generation (which gets compensation for lost profit) and constrained-on fossil fired generation. This is more cost to .the consumer
It’s nothing like a weighted average of power inputs.
Reality check?
[LazyTeenager says:
August 29, 2012 at 1:25 am
Reality check…..I’m betting that German electricity prices would be nearly as expensive without wind energy as a contribution.]
You suffer from a Lazy thought process, probably wind powered.
What would be the price of electricity if the Germans had spent the billions of euros wasted on wind power on coal fired plants instead?
Detailed discussion in Der Spiegel
Germany Rethinks Path to Green Future
PS DirkH
Re: “problem of exploding oil prices – IF it affected us”
With transportation almost entirely dependent on oil, crude prices DO affect all of us. OPEC is raking in $1 trillion/year = $40 trillion over the next generation. That is equal to global market capitalization in Sept. 2008.
i.e., from a lack of fuel policy we are paying OPEC to buy all OECD companies.
“Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government decided last year to shut the 17 nuclear power stations in the country by 2022, which sent the country’s big utility companies slumping down.”
Well that was a little unilateral, don’t you think?
No, that’s not how it works. The electricity prices are high because of the intermittent nature of wind and solar. The same reason they are so high in Denmark.
During times of high wind production and low demand there may be more electricity produced than needed. This excess is exported at very low prices, sometimes 0 cent per kWh. Because, as is the case in Europe, some of the potential customer countries also experience low demand and it costs money to idle thermal power plants, whether they produce electricity or not.
But because of the feed-in tariffs, that electricity has to be paid for at high prices by the consumer regardless, because the producers of wind or solar electricity are paid for electricity produced, whether needed or not.
During times of high demand but low renewable production, electricity has to be imported at high prices (spot market), again driving the price paid by the consumer high.
A country with a high intermittant renewable portfolio and guaranteed prices for energy production from such renewables might be a net exporter of electricity, but its consumers need to pay higher electricity prices than the countries they export their excess to.
What is the three most important things to consider for producing power?
“The delivered price of ….”
Answer: location, location, location.
Power production is a local thing. I do not care what the average price of fossil fuels or how much wind there is in Germany or Iowa.
“In 2010 coal provides 43.5% of the country’s electricity, nuclear 22.5%, gas 13.5%, biofuels & waste 6.5%, wind 6%, hydro 4%, solar 2%. ”
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf43.html
Common sense dictates that reliable sources of power provide and adequate reserve margin so a small amount of renewable energy does not hurt anything. Most industrial countries have interconnected grids. Needless to say that the number of closures of power plants for economic or political reason is greater than the number reopened quietly when opps the power is needed.
Only one thing matters, having enough power.
David L. Hagen says:
August 29, 2012 at 2:38 pm
“Detailed discussion in Der Spiegel
Germany Rethinks Path to Green Future”
Yeah, unfortunately the article is written by a person who uses the terms energy and electrictiy as synonyms; hint, primary energy consumption for Germany is 7 times the electricity consumption. This is a frequent mistake by journalist school graduates; use different words with different meanings for the same thing – someone taught them to not repeat the same word too often; the result is useless garbage like this wonderful example.
“Indeed, the Federal Network Agency has calculated that the country’s biggest electricity guzzlers account for 18 percent of overall consumption, but bear only 0.3 percent of the costs associated with the EEG. ”
The “biggest energy guzzlers” are also known as steel mills, aluminum and copper smelters; also known as “employers”. The terms that the Spiegel uses tell us about its mission. Hint: It’s the german Grauniad.
“There’s only one problem with the EEG: It’s been too effective.”
Only a dyed in the wool pre-October revolution Leninist can call price-fixing measures like the EEG “effective” – the type of person Der Spiegel would hire. (Hint: Lenin himself had to re-introduce market prices for agricultural goods when the price-fixing lead to collapsing production).
The only “effectivity” of the EEG is the destruction of the free market. I hold that the contribution of wind and solar to German ENERGY usage (that’s a different thing than electricity, it’s seven times bigger, see above, I’m NOT using words like a journalist) is about 1%, maybe at 1.5 %.
To LazyTeenager, nomen est omen: This 1 to 1.5% percent of energy costs us 0.5 % of our GDP BECAUSE this energy is extremely highly subsidized. The reason, in other words, that is COSTS so much is that it is so EXPENSIVE. Hope that came through. I know it’s not an easy concept.