Hurricane Sandy seems to have brought out the latent stupidity in just about everyone in their zeal to get in on the climate alarm resurgence. I laughed out loud when I read this op-ed in the NYT by DAVID CRANE and ROBERT F. KENNEDY Jr. published, December 12, 2012, because it becomes immediately obvious that these two “experts” don’t have a clue about how grid-tied solar actually works, and their ideas actually can cause deaths, injury, and additional property destruction if people try to follow their lead and then try to circumvent safety features when they find out their solar system won’t do what they claim. How embarrassing for them.
Excerpts:
[…]
Residents of New Jersey and New York have lived through three major storms in the past 16 months, suffering through sustained blackouts, closed roads and schools, long gas lines and disrupted lives, all caused by the destruction of our electric system. When our power industry is unable to perform its most basic mission of supplying safe, affordable and reliable power, we need to ask whether it is really sensible to run the 21st century by using an antiquated and vulnerable system of copper wires and wooden poles.
Some of our neighbors have taken matters into their own hands, purchasing portable gas-powered generators in order to give themselves varying degrees of “grid independence.” But these dirty, noisy and expensive devices have no value outside of a power failure. And they’re not much help during a failure if gasoline is impossible to procure.
Having spent our careers in and around the power industry, we believe there is a better way to secure grid independence for our homes and businesses. (Disclosure: Mr. Crane’s company, based in Princeton, N.J., generates power from coal, natural gas, and nuclear, wind and solar energy.) Solar photovoltaic technology can significantly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and our dependence on the grid. Electricity-producing photovoltaic panels installed on houses, on the roofs of warehouses and big box stores and over parking lots can be wired so that they deliver power when the grid fails.
That last sentence in bold is my emphasis, because it shows just how clueless these people are when it comes to real world solutions. They want to give readers the impression that they can use their grid-tied solar power system after a storm to get electricity, I’m here to tell you that claim is absolute bunk.
Full disclosure. I have a grid tied solar power system on my home. I had one on my previous home, and I orchestrated the first ever solar power system for our local school district. I know a thing or two first hand from an engineering and use standpoint. Here’s my current home installation:
Top: the solar panels. Bottom: the DC to AC inverters and the grid tie and SmartMeter.
Note the red labels, particularly under the SmartMeter. They are required by law. The red one under the meter (along with the new yellow one added by the utility company after inspection for the grid tie certification) reads:
“Possible danger of electrical back feed” is the key phrase, one completely lost on the NYT, Kennedy, and Crane.
The issue is this, if you have grid tied power sources running in your neighborhood, and they are producing power, anyone who isn’t careful doing electrical work could get electrocuted thinking that after they pulled the main breaker, there is no power in the wires. Imagine if you have a bunch of these pumping power into power poles laying on the street after a storm; it becomes an instant fire starter.
But that’s been taken care of too, because the DC to AC inverters won’t function due to this (also required by law and code) safety feature built in. Here’s the relevant code from the inverter installation manual:
Electrical conformity according to U.S., Canadian and
international safety operating standards and code
requirements:
– UL 1741 – Standard for Inverters, Converters, and
Controllers for Use in Independent Power Systems
And this:
4.2 Protective concepts
The following monitoring and protective functions are
integrated in blue planet inverters:
– BiSI grid monitoring to protect against personal
injuries and avoid islanding effects according to UL 1741
What is “BiSI grid monitoring”? According to E DIN VDE 0126, which is a year 1999 standard developed in Europe specifically to address the problem:
The automatic disconnection device is used as a safety interface between the generator and the public low-voltage distribution net and serves as a substitute for a disconnecting switch accessible at all times by the distributing network operator. It prevents the unintentional supply of electrical energy from the generator into a subnetwork disconnected from the rest of the distribution grid (islanding), thereby offering additional protection to the measures specified in DIN VDE 0105-100 (VDE 0105-100), 6.2 to
– operating staff, against voltage in the disconnected subnetwork
– equipment, against inadmissible voltages and frequencies
– consumers, against inadmissible voltages and frequencies
– equipment, against the feed of faults by the generator.
In a nutshell, when the power poles go down, the inverters lose connectivity to the grid, sense this automatically, and shut themselves off.
Never mind the fact that grid-tied solar power doesn’t work at night when you need it most, never mind the fact that during and after the storm, solar insolation is drastically reduced due to rain and cloudiness, and never mind the fact that all electrical systems, solar or otherwise, are just as susceptible to storm damage as conventional power infrastructure, there is one important point that kills the entire idea.
Assuming the solar panels aren’t ripped off the roof by the hurricane/storm, they are of absolutely no use because the grid-tie is broken, and the mandated grid-tie safety features prevent the homeowner from using the inverters to get power locally.
You’d think “experts” like Kennedy and Crane would understand this basic concept…but they probably never got any closer to a solar power system than a photo op.
Some might claim that a battery backup with an automatic transfer switch might solve the issue. But, battery systems double to cost of most solar installations, and need to be replaced about every four years on average (for lead acid batteries, the most common solution), and they need to be maintained, checked, etc, plus require significant space. Compare all that to a $699 generator available from a local hardware outlet that has none of these problems and you’d understand why that is currently the solution of choice for most homeowners that want backup power after a storm.
Hopefully people following their lead for solar systems won’t try to hack their solar power system inverter safety features in time of crisis. The first person to try defeating this safety feature after a storm may get themselves or others killed or injured, either by electrocution or fire. Hopefully the solar power industry will join me in condemning this foolishness propagated by Kennedy and Crane.
h/t to WUWT reader Charles Carmichael for the NYT story link.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, you’re welcome to your opinion about 19th century values, but if you’d welcome 19th century pay rates and 19th century death rates-per-km-of-buried-power-lines, and 19th century level of quality for electric power, and 19th century level of expenses ….. I’d be glad to provide 19th century buried lines.
If YOU were the one paying.
But 28% of US customers are served by (rural) electric membership cooperatives. They have 50 MILLION miles of wires and cables that need to be thrown away and replaced (for no gain) with buried cables. You going to pay for that?
Roughly 15% of US customers live in highly urban downtowns where buried cables already exist. These highly restricted downtown areas correspond to the “Europe” you live in.
So, 28% are served by rural lines already existing.
15% are served by urban lines not needing replacement, but very, very vulnerable to flooding,earthquakes, fires, access, etc.
What are you going to do to pay for the other 60% where buried lines cost too much and there is STILL no benefit to throwing away pole-and-insulator systems? That still work.
RockyRoad says:
December 13, 2012 at 11:23 am
They could always bury the copper …
——————————————————–
It boils down to cost. One one side is the $30-$50 billion clean-up bill that happens every 25-50 years. On the other hand is the billions of dollars required to bury the copper. Where I used to live the locals insisted that every new subdivision have buried hyrdo lines. So going forward there would be less and less infrastructure affected. Of course the transmission lines (above ground) would go down so the underground delivery lines wouldn’t help. But we were never without power for more than a full day.
Have you ever considered the cost of fixing something that is not broken, like burying a few million miles of power lines that get the job done just fine?
We do have underground utilities in some locations, New York started putting some lines under ground following a major blizzard over 100 years ago, and many newer subdivisions are going to under ground utilities but lines on poles are still far cheaper than burying the power lines.
When you factor in that we have states several times larger than European countries, and you understand the scale of the suggestion you are making it would be a ridiculous waste of money to retro fit existing power to underground lines especially in built up areas where they would have to work their way around 100+ years of underground construction like water sewer and natural gas lines. In many areas of the country like the Mountain states it is not a trivial task to dig in utilities due to shallow soils over rock. It is far faster to string lines by drilling holes and dropping poles. They can extend lines at a rate unapproachable for buried lines.
The Denver metro complex covers thousands of square miles and has a population of only 2,599,504 as of 2011. The urban corridor along the front range extends over 100 miles in length to near Cheyenne Wyoming and another 80+ miles south to Colorado springs and has a total population of about 4.6 million people. The corridor is 30-40 miles wide near Denver, narrowing to around 20 miles wide in most other locations. The average population density is around 1700/sq mile over most of that corridor, with a few areas getting up to 3700 – 8400 / sq mile in the core city areas. London for example has approximately 2x the population density and it has an area of just over 600 square miles compared the Denver metro area of near 8,400 square miles.
Europe had the “advantage” of being bombed to rubble in many areas nearly 70 years ago, so they could start from scratch on the rebuild and bury power lines during the reconstruction and subsequent growth that followed the war.
Larry
“vulnerable system of copper wires and wooden poles.”
Well I suppose we could use super high strength steel for the wires. That way when the wire is stressed it won’t break right away, it will take a while before it lets loose and takes a few arms or heads with it. Oh and those awful wooden poles, must replace all of those right away with fiberglass, that way when you need a new pole you can just order one from the factory and wait 6 weeks.
“Electricity-producing photovoltaic panels installed on houses, on the roofs of warehouses and big box stores and over parking lots can be wired so that they deliver power when the grid fails.”
Sure, it will be much easier to fix a whole grid of wires from hundreds of sources out to hundreds of destinations. Rather that fixing a grid from few sources to hundreds of destinations. Ought to be back up and running in 30 days rather than 10. And transfer switches all over the place along with fusing to protect everything. Should be fun when all of the out of spec inverters try to feed the grid with 58 Hertz instead of 60. Then you get to fix half of it twice……. Boy I should go into electrical power engineering, looks like about two centuries of steady work at least.
Do you get the feeling that these dupes don’t even plug the cords from their appliances into the wall outlet themselves ?
Cheers, Kevin.
Real median household income in the United States in 2011 was $50,054. When you figure in taxes the take home is ~ $3,600. Subtract about ~ $350/mo for a car loan, average student loan ~ $870 a month, the average credit card debt of $16,000 translates to at least another $400 and if you are talking the average mortgage (Northeast) of $225,000.00 with payments of $1780.00 that is $3400 a month in fixed payments. (Housing costs various all over the place from $163,600 in the south, to $250,000 in the Northeast where Sandy hit. )
Or you can look at it another way
Any way you slice it the average person does not have the $$$$ to spend on solar or wind. Otherwise we would not be up to our ears in credit card debt. U.S. banks charged off a record $83.3 billion in credit-card losses last year.
According to Sun Run Depending on the location and design of your system, the typical home installation ranges from 3 to 7 kilowatts and costs between $18,000 to $40,000 to purchase. That is a major purchase equivalent to buying a car which for most of us is a necessity. Solar or wind is nice to dream about but most homeowners are just trying to make sure they can hang onto the house. Also with the drop in housing values who is going to dump another $20,000 – $40,000 into a property with a mortgage that is already higher than the value of the home?
I think what you are going to see is a decline in the market as those interested and able to buy have already invested while there were subsidies. Given the U.S., subsidies are disappearing I think the market is maturing and the demand will continue to drop off unless it is artificially propped up by the US government.
With the Fiscal Cliff looming, and US solar manufactures unable to compete with China and going bankrupt, Obama & Co. are going to have to do some fast talking.
The real problem of the solar panels attached to the power grid is their stochastic behavior. The biggest issue of the power grid is to keep the voltage constant independently by the loads/sources changes. Solar panels are tolerated until they produce so little energy that the gird is unaffected by their production. When the solar panels will be able to change the grid power significantly, the grid owner should be able to quickly reduce or increase the conventional power generation to counteract the changes induced by the possible sudden (and localized) solar flux changes induced by eventual atmospheric changes (read changes in clouds patterns).
Here in Italy, the grid owner Terna asked and obtained from the government a new law in July, The new law imposes to the solar panels owner with a production potential power greater than 6kW to install automatic circuit breakers which shut down in less than 500ms the solar panels in case that the power production exceeds the +/- 15% voltage margin (note the plus sign too). That law exposes the truth about the solar panel energy production: no power is really shared to the grid, it’s just tolerated.
The owner of the solar panels reduce his/her energy bill of course, no doubt about that, but the community is paying for his/her energy (the one “sold” to the grid, but the one self used too). That’s because the grid must be supplied to warrant the continuity in case of sudden changes in solar irradiation, which is unpredictable. This means that no CO2 is reduced by that “green energy” because the power stations never reduced their production till today, and since it’s close the day when they have to deal with the problem of the quick power modulation, they asked to automatically switch off the stochastic producers themselves. They don’t want the solar energy on their grid because they can’t do nothing with it, they currently just dissipate the shared “green energy” heating the lines.
From the stochastic perspective, the wind farms energy is just a little better than the solar, but not so much.
Obviously an attempt to gain attention. It is PR move and given the way that people, including the MSM treat press releases as somehow Gospel who knows the result.
“RockyRoad says:
December 13, 2012 at 11:23 am
They could always bury the copper and use steel poles instead of wood where necessary, but that would drive electricity rates up and beyond acceptable levels.”
And taxpayer subsidised PV/wind doesn’t?? Suggest you ask any honest EU power payee how that’s working for them.
ferocious20022002 (December 13, 2012 at 11:32 am) said: “On the minus side, I have to thank you all for helping to pay for it. Various tax credits, federal, state, and from the power company paid for $13000 of the cost. Along with Solar Renewable Energy Credits, mandated in PA for generation companies, which bring in around $1000 a year our return on investment has been about 6%. One of those uneconomic fovernment mandates that have raised the cost of electricty. Even without the subsidies I would have gone ahead with it anyway. The ROI would have been about 2%, but at the time, and for the forseeable future that looks pretty good.”
Thanks for mentioning the credits ferocious. But there’s huge subsidy you didn’t mention. You get full retail price for the power you generate (i.e. it slow the meter at the retail price). Yet your power is off-peak and unreliable. Wholesale power is about 4 cents and is reliable and delivered at all times. Your power is costing all of us 13 cents or more.
It is amazing what government involvement will create. As Alan Greenspan said in a moment of clarity.. ” government is inflation”.
We chose to live in the country and when I built our current house, I purchased a full house generator, for temporary construction power and as standby emergency unit. The generator is a used industrial ONAN, propane fueled, 30 KW, 208/120/3/60, 100A.
At the time, I998, I spent $ 4500 for this 6 cylinder,1953 flat-head Ford beast with less than 3000 hrs.
It now sits in a remote, dedicated, heated, insulated shed 75 feet from the house along side the buried 1000 gallon propane tank. It has been a workhorse. The last time it provided Sandy power for 48 hours and you had to really concentrate to hear it running. It is isolated from the utility with a Manual Transfer Switch connected to the main panel that feeds two auxiliary panels.
As a retired Professional Engineer I looked into Wind and Solar and then looked away. Having worked in the battery business in another lifetime, I knew the back-up technology was a decade away and in my opinion, it is still a decade or more away.
In my research I believe the solution is miniature nuclear generators, as manufacturered by Mitsubishi, NuScale and others. These self-contained Thorium fueled units can be isolated from the Grid and can power small communities, neighborhoods and ultimately 4 acre properties like ours. They are safe, hermetically sealed and virtually maintenance free. Read the literature. I hope I’m alive to see it implemented.
PS – I have three phase power to my pole barn wood shop. If I can figure out how I can buy and then hide a new 5HP table saw purchase from my wife, I’ll be able to use the generator.
Silver Ralph says:
December 13, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Anthony: OK let’s assume the local big box store/warehouse has live solar power, with the power pole infrastructure wrecked, how do you propose to get that power out to the neighborhood? – Anthony
____________________________________
In Europe, we have not had wires on poles for more than 80 years, except in some really rural locations. I still cannot understand why ‘rich’ America, which suffers from many hurricane/tornado events, still insists on putting electrical wires on poles. Its so, well, 19th century.
—————————————————————
This is where I like to tell the story of my Dutch friends who flew to Canada and decided to drive from Toronto to Vancouver, then up to Alaska and possibly finish their vacation in Seattle before driving back to Toronto for a return trip home to Holland. Of course it would be no problem because they had booked 2 weeks off.
Ralph, Ralph, Ralph, I’M WILLING TO BET *I* (or even we collectively in the USA) have more nines (“9s”) in my (our) electric service ‘up-time’ than you do (referring to 99.99% ‘availability’ or up-time vs 99.999%) in your ‘European’ system …
We also live in cities where the distance across any given town is measured in double-digit miles versus single-digit kilometers too.
.
sur-PRISE!
I don’t know anywhere where distribution system lines are going as COPPER wire when Aluminum has COST and WEIGHT benefits when properly engineered …
I reckon not very many ppl here have considered all this from a materials and suitability perspective yet. Kinda falls right in with Kennedy and Crane practicing electrical engineering without knowing the FIRST thing about the field either …
.
should be no news to anybody we all know that most of them are brain dead
@Steve from Rockwood
Great analogy! I’ve driven across the USA several times, when I was a young man. Damn! That’s one looooong frackin’ drive! No way I’d do it again, unless I had an RV, unlimited funds, and no deadline whatsoever.
I would not trust a word out of David Cranes mouth.
It might come as a shock to some, but the average Corporate Exec. and Board member is a lefty. The trend started in the mid 80’s.
As a general rule:
Wealth manipulator (Real estate, Banking, Insurance, etc) -> Lefty Socialist
Wealth creation ( mining, farming, manufacturing, construction, etc) -> Conservative
Corporations are controlled by their boards. Their Board Members are selected from the investment community. The investment community is made up of wealth manipulators.
Nota Bene, I did not write right-wing conservative because Right wing is not the antithesis of Left wing. Both are just versions of socialism that topological are barley distinguishable.
John M. Chenosky, PE says:
Right on. I started out in the engineering trade 30 years ago and for the most part of 15 years worked in the wind, solar and hydro sector. I have built quite a few remote (off-grid) systems and done quite a few utility inter-tied ones as well prior to 2000, as well as large scale wind. After my stint there, I worked a a power lineman and was Fire Chief for a volunteer fire department. I know transmission and distribution quite well and cannot in good conscience support the wind or solar industry.
I am very aware of why wind and solar have failed in too many instances and will continue doing so. High cost and poor siting/system design has haunted the industry and it will continue to fail. I laugh at the lack of intelligence of Mr. Kennedy et.al. as they know nothing, literally of what they say. Safety is a rather big concern especially with battery based systems. Another concern besides accidentally back feeding the grid during outages are solar panel covered roofs. It’s a hazard to fire fighters and makes venting a structure fire even more difficult. I could go on and I will as my current efforts are exposing the frauds and waste associated with the industry.
john from the Daily Bail
A thorium reactor in every neighbourhood seems like a better idea than the grid thing…
If I may ask, DesertYote, what publications/websites do you read?
Does the list include PowerLineblog.com, Instapundait.com or Althouse by any chance? Would you consider those RW Conservative sites or simply ‘conservative’ sites in your estimation?
I’m just trying to figure this out, i need a little ‘vectoring thrust’ as guidance to understand your perspective.
.
Hmmm, gee, wound’t that work to be a …. –wait for it– … a ‘grid’ thing too?
I think WAY TOO MANY people lack the understanding/don’t posses the technical education to recognize the “spoke and wheel topology” of the local distribution network versus the “X-Y interlaced grid architecture” of the transmission (and generation!) side of the system.
See, on the one side we have generating plants and these are connected to substations via ‘transmission lines’. The substations in turn are interconnected via more transmission lines and also interconnected to general ‘switching yards’ … this all has the effect of creating “multiple paths” nowadays commonly referred to as a ‘grid’ (patterned after the idea of a 2-dimensional X-Y grid don’t ya know!) These multiple paths allow a degree of ‘failures’ (or out of service for repair, etc) to occur AND not completely disrupt service to customers, the multiple connections to/and from substations also allow various generating stations to be out-of-service (OOS’d) without disrupting service .. were ‘gridding’ not practiced at the generation-transmission level each city, each arbitrary load ‘district’ would see MANY, MANY more ‘outages’ since there would be no immediate redundancy in generation or transmission.
So, let me ask a couple of questions:
(1) Do you have two or more fuses for each circuit in your home (this how the transmission and generation side in the actual ‘grid’ work) with various circuits cross-connected at various miscellaneous and flexible (as need arises) points?
(2) Or do you have exactly ONE fuse in line to each circuit (excluding the main fuse of course) as the spokes in a wheel extend out from the (a) inner hub to the (b) outer edge of the wheel?
.
Electricity-producing photovoltaic panels installed on houses, on the roofs of warehouses and big box stores and over parking lots can be wired so that they deliver power when the grid fails.
… at night?
The cheaper units handle it quite crudely; think mechanical relay (one can literally hear the relay click!)
Higher priced units perform switch-over with solid-state device with time frames measured down to a cycle while, the high-end units do AC-DC-AC conversion and nary a cycle is missed …
I had complications with a low-end APC (relay switchover) just months back; the rendered freq was measuring in the 47 Hz range and the attached PC would see the power ‘glitch’ just after the APC was switched on (this series of APC UPSs does a brief power-from-battery test every time its powered up, and at this time in its life this time there was an issue even with a fresh battery …)
.
What happens when you connect your 1500 watt solar panel to the 15 megawatt load of the dead grid?
Not much…
It would almost be like a dead short!
Or wait a minute!
Maybe we can power a huge power grid with a couple of little solar panels!
…In liberal lala land….
I think this is sorta-kinda relevant—I used to manage a fairly large computer center (back when a computer occupied most of two floors).
We had a 250 KVA UPS and one night (for reasons that it turns out did not make sense at the time and that I have forgotten) I over-rode the system logic (it knew better) and tried to power all of down-town San Jose with our batteries.
I still have nightmares about the possibility that I might have killed or injured somebody.
Many houses here in the North East of England have solar panels on their roofs. The logic of them here escapes me, at this time of the year the sun rises at about 08:30 and sets at 15:35 and at noon is only 12 degrees above the horizon. The current outdoor temperature is -3 Celsius, so the current demand for power is at its highest. In summer when we don’t need the power (very few buildings are air-conditioned) the things are kicking out loads of power. There have been enormous government subsidies for these things, paid for by higher electricity bills for he rest of us. No mention though of : “It’s worse than we thought”.