Wow, this EPA guy (Joseph Goffman, EPA Associate Assistant Administrator & Senior Counsel) thinks that renewables are going to make up 30% of the power grid by 2030. That may be, but the big hidden gotcha in that is that 30% is not power on demand. It is at the whims of wind and clouds. By replacing that much of the power grid with transient energy, look for brown-outs and black-outs in our future. What happens in a major heat wave (which they predict will be more frequent) and the wind does not blow? Watch the video:
youtube=http://www.youtube.com/embed/AcNTGX_d8mY
See also this report: Renewable Energy Poses Security Risk, New Paper Warns
The reality today:
![fig_if7-1[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/fig_if7-11.png?quality=75)
Source: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/elec_proj.cfm
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Remember with election due soon , if the republicans get in its likely one thing getting warm will be the feet of EPA who they have no love for at all.
In all it’s a ‘grand statesmen like gesture ‘ which translates into ?
First rule of politics , get elected , second rule of politics stay elected , if these ideas are seen to break those rules they will never come to pass.
Last winter, many Canadian provinces were living through power outages and rotating power outages. On Prince Edward Island, the fluid in the windmills froze so people had to live with rotating black outs in -30 C temperatures. The only thing the people can do is leave for a warmer climate.
There are not enough savings at present in the U.S. itself to move 30% of consumed power to renewables in 16 years. I once figured that getting to 20% in a 12 year span would take all of U.S. savings, leaving not a dime for infrastructure of other sorts. There may be enough savings in Asia to do so if we sell them assets in return. Once they see what we are doing with the money they may balk at buying our assets. I know I would.
Don’t see the link
So much anger over energy storage offshore!
If you are too stupid to understand the MIT spheres, as it appears you are, then I cannot help you naysayers.
It is a well-known and simple solution to grid-scale storage, as much as one wants. Simply using larger spheres, or more spheres, provides any duration one requires.
It uses abundant materials, concrete and steel. It hides out of sight so the dumbasses who bitch about scenery spoilage can shut the heck up. It can use offshore wind, but need not. It can also store energy from fossil fuel plants onshore, so they do not require throttling back at night. The spheres can be located in various water depths, with power production rated accordingly. There is no pollution. The end result is lower electricity prices.
All of this is painfully obvious, unless one is terminally stuck on stupid.
I can advise you to Hide and Watch. Let the engineers save the day, as always.
@roger Sowell,
Renewables are no longer unreliable.
Roger, I loose all respect for you when you write such uselessness.
You can have reliable renewables.
You can have affordable renewables.
You cannot have both!
Furthermore, I challenge you to show we can have reliable renewables at the quantity our society demands regardless of price in the span of a generation.
This is akin to the old saw,
You can have it a) cheap, b) fast, c)good — Pick any two.
When it comes to government mandates, you are lucky if you get one out of three.
In the case at hand, what we seek is
a) Cheep, b) Fast, c) Good, d) Plentiful.
That is a tall order. Except we already have it — coal fired electricity.
To replace what we have with a pipe dream is a trillion dollar folly.
Roger Sowell says:
June 2, 2014 at 9:59 am
I would recommend you peruse this table
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1
Pay particular attention to the column for Hydroelectric Pumped Storage. You will perhaps notice that for every year for the last decade its contribution been a negative number. I haven’t looked it up but I doubt that, at the time those systems were being proposed to be built, the engineers promoting them were projecting that that would be the case.
Roger,
Exactly how long do you think it will be before the enviro-weenies object to littering the continental shelf with these spheres?
If it takes about 1000 (per the article) capitol dome sized spheres coupled to about 1000 windmills above the surface to equal a single nuke plant, exactly why is that anywhere near a good trade off in either cost, or in utilization of surface area?
If the estimated cost per sphere is $12 Million (again, per the article), then the array of 1000 is $12 Billion – almost double the cost of the compared-to nuke plant, and not counting the costs of the windmill farm to source power to it.
I can see several other weaknesses to the idea from the get-go, so other than it being a novel approach I don’t think this is anything other than some grad student’s thesis without a full cost-benefit analysis attached.
Stephen Rasey,
You can also Hide and Watch.
I have nothing but pity for those too stupid to understand the MIT spheres.
Hoover Dam was too expensive in its day. Long transmission lines across a fierce desert were required. Today people are happy to enjoy the low-cost power from it.
Hoover Dam suffers from periods of drought. MIT spheres are immune to drought.
Hide and Watch.
I doubt that there are enough suitable locations for wind generation that, even at 100% density and 100% capacity, would provide 30% of our energy needs.
Suitable building sites would be a limiting constraint. Has anyone considered this?
Roger Sowell;
I have nothing but pity for those too stupid to understand the MIT spheres.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sir,
Put your damn money where your damn mouth is or STFU.
Dave Wendt,
I am thoroughly familiar with pumped storage hydro; are you?
PSH loses, on average, 20 percent of the energy input. It returns 80 percent when and as needed. Some PSH systems do a bit better, some do worse.
Davidmhoffer,
As always, you have my endless pity.
Perhaps you were born stupid? If so, my deepest pity for you.
For Mark Wagner,
The US NREL states that onshore wind has 12,000 GW at 100 meters. Offshore within 50 miles of shore has another 4,150 GW.
See Wind Resource Assessment and Characterization. at energy.gov
Total installed US electrical generation of all forms is roughly 1,000 GW.
Plenty of wind, forever, with storage to make it reliable.
They do not care about reality; it’s all about the cause…
My goodness! Such acrimony! I was rather intrigued by the MIT press release that Roger Sowell linked to. Using large undersea spheres with pumps and turbines to store electrical energy is a neat idea: pump water out, then let the water flow in to drive turbines. But the proof, as with everything, will be in the pudding. What are the net energy benefits after the costs of running and maintaining the pumps and turbines (not counting capital expenses)? How easy will it be to maintain this equipment in a deep salt-water environment? By all means, let the MIT project leader experiment with them, build a prototype, and then see how it works.
But before pairing it with wind and solar facilities, let’s get rid of the federal government subsidies for those. Then let private industry have a go at whatever makes the most sense. My guess is that good old coal will win out.
/Mr Lynn
Error, I think: the Renewables are going to increase from 12% to 16% by 2040, not 30% of the total but a 30% increase (see original text). But is this field capacity or market sales?
If renewables are about 22% effectiveness, by European experience, then 16% of market SALES means 73% of market face-place, i.e. actual demand.
Doesn’t seem reasonable. So perhaps 16% is face-plate, which means that only 22% of this, 3.5% will actually be SALES or use.
Idiots!
In addition to the table I linked above this one is also quite enlightening in regard to the prospect of expanding renewables to 30% of total generation
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1_a
Table 1.1.A. Net Generation from Renewable Sources: Total (All Sectors), 2004-March 2014
You might note that solar PV has grown nearly 1400fold over the decade, which seems impressive except all that growth has brought it too 0.2% of the total supply. That’s right 0.002! We will have to do 500 times what has been done in the last decade to get to 1 percent by 2030.
For the rest, except for wind, not much is happening. Hydro seems to be struggling to maintain its contribution and in all likelihood will decline in the next decade and a half. The rest also appear to be a wash. So that leaves it down to wind, but if you think those bird choppers have become a ubiquitous blight on the landscape now, imagine what that landscape will look like with 8-10 times as many of them. Of course those multiples neglect the fact that most of the most productive wind sites have already been raped and pillaged for these boondoggles and each additional increment will feature even lamer performance.
And of course because our wonderfully competent government will shepherding and financing, and therefore picking all the winners in this crony lovefest, you can imagine how compellingly efficient the whole process will be. As the captain of the airliner says at times like these “Fasten your seatbelts, Put your head firmly between your knees. And kiss your A** GOODBYE!”
Roger Sowell,
If you believe $12 billion for seven hours of electricity is a sum worth spending, when the same sum would purchase two nuclear power stations that would run 24/7 for 30 years, I’ve got a bridge in Old London Town I’d like you to buy from me. BTW, do you like sex and travel?
I work in the energy sector. If anyone here even thinks gas usage will increase, and it will with the Obama regulations. Now, as folks know natural gas would need massive pipeline infrastructure to meet the additional burdens on the system with these regulations. So, in essence greens have basically mandated massive pipeline expansions driving up prices even more. Then the natural gas prices themselves, as any product on the stock exchange does, rise with needs and supply. Power companies will have no choice but pass along the increase costs to consumers and business. Provinces like Alberta, Canada will make a killing, as will other gas and pipelines companies. These are hard, cold facts, period.
Roger Sowell just does not understand basic physics—if he did, he would understand the power density problem with renewables versus coal, gas, atomic, etc. Also, I don’t think he understands concrete construction very well either. He is a good dreamer, like many university profs from MIT and Stanford.
Roger Sowell says:
June 2, 2014 at 10:34 am
Davidmhoffer,
As always, you have my endless pity.
Perhaps you were born stupid? If so, my deepest pity for you.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Unfortunately I cannot find the thread in which you first hyped the MIT concrete spheres. Perhaps someone else can find it, I’m off to a series of meetings. Bottom line is that you were thrashed, and embarrassingly so. Every time the facts were pointed out to you, you just came back for more. If there was ever an indictment of someone’s intelligence, it was that thread. The solution is simply not cost effective, and that was demonstrated to you repeatedly using information that came directly from the MIT paper itself. Yet you persisted in your claims despite massive evidence to the contrary.
So, I don’t think the problem is that I am stupid. The problem is that you think all you need do is call anyone who disagrees with you too stupid to understand your opinion. That ranks with Michael Mann’s claim that his emails should not be made public because he is the only person smart enough to understand them.
So having learned from experience that debating the facts with you is pointless, I once again suggest that we simply reduce this argument to a matter of money. If this approach is economical, it will be worth trillions. By all means invest your money in the scheme. Just don’t ask for tax payer help to make it work. If it is economical without tax money, you’ll have proven how smart you are, how stupid I am, and made yourself unimaginably wealthy to boot.
But you won’t do it because deep down inside you know that you are just a lobbyist for the anti-nuclear industry and will hype any and all alternatives to nuclear no matter how irrational they are.
The best you can do is call me stupid for not buying into your drivel while keeping your hand firmly planted on your wallet?
Unfortunately, even if the Republicans take over the Senate and keep the House, they will not have veto-proof majorities. So a bill dismantling the EPA (or at least getting it out of the ‘climate’ regulation business), will not get signed by The Puppet President. I’m afraid we have to wait until 2017, and hope we can get a conservative in the White House.
/Mr Lynn
@Mr.. Lynn – true, they will not have a veto proof majority. But they control spending. No money, no EPA.
For Roger Sowell
Neat idea those spheres – Roger, I can’t quite follow how you are going to pump the water out of the spheres. Please could you expand a little on that aspect. Exactly what is left behind in the spheres after you have emptied them?
cheers edi