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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@roger Sowell at 10:27 am
I have nothing but pity for those too stupid to understand the MIT spheres.
Then you pity yourself.
You obviously understand nothing of such a project that is
physically possible,
but environmentally questionable,
challenging engineering,
gargantuan manufacturing,
enormously demanding of materials,
and near impossibility of maintenance,
and lunacy in economics.
May you spend eternity in pro-bono legal Purgatory defending the EIS applications of these domes.
David Ball says:
June 2, 2014 at 7:14 am
I laughed at the end of Cosmos, they showed an idyllic city with plants on every level and green spaces everywhere. Looked beautiful, but I thought; “shouldn’t they be showing Detroit?”
David,
I had a similar reaction to that final segue. Cosmos is propaganda wrapped in apocalyptic science fiction.
Mac
looks like a cloud blocked the video
[Added. thank you .mod]
Friends:
Analysis I conducted for the UK some years ago is not dated and is pertinent to the US situation being discussed in this thread. Of especial importance are its assessments of why wind and other intermittent power sources cannot provide electricity of use to a grid supply, and its assessment of alternative ‘renewables’ to wind power.
If any are interested and have not read it then they can read it here
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
Richard
From Roger Sowell on June 2, 2014 at 9:59 am:
Oh I can understand it well enough, to see it’s completely bass ackwards.
As practically an aside, it speaks of farms of floating wind turbines. With towers going to “hub heights” of 70 and 80 meters and more, that’d be a dang big floating base to keep them from teetering over in the ordinary winds, let alone storms. And unlike a tall masted ship, the blades cannot be furled and stowed very well. That’s indicative of the sheer lack of practicality of the proposal.
The plan wants giant concrete spheres dropped onto the ocean floor. They say energy storage is from pumping out the water, but reality says they’d be better off pumping in air to displace water. Sucking water from an unventilated vessel is very difficult, you build a strong vacuum up until you get low temperature boiling and vaporization so the void is filled, which I presume would happen practically explosively and make for a hell of a pressure shock. Pump air and let the weight of the water provide pneumatic energy storage.
So there would be high air pressures involved. They’re talking 400 meters deep. At 1 atmosphere (14.7 psi, 100kPA) per 10 meters, that’s about 590 psi, 4000 kPa, to displace sea water. Manageable, but it better be some real special concrete to avoid turning into a giant aquarium air stone. Especially with ocean acidification eating away the cement binder, or so I’ve heard.
Oh wait, in the abstract of the paywalled paper they’re mentioning depths of 1500 meters, 2200 psi, 15000 kPa. Yep, very good concrete.
Of course that’s assuming, despite what the release says, they’ll sensibly keep the inner and outer pressures balanced. If they really are intent on pumping out water, and building a vacuum charge at those depths…
And when a concrete sphere goes bad, do they creatively haul up the water-filled mass in an operation akin to raising the Titanic? Or blow it up with high explosives and call the remains an artificial reef? GreenWar and WWTF will be quite conflicted once all those dolphin and shark carcasses start floating.
The practical solution is as obvious and ancient as an anchor and has been around since mechanical clocks. Use a weight. Use a saltwater resistant cable, attach reel to dual-purpose brushless generator-motor.
To generate power, let the weight sink down. To store power, raise the weight. If you’re worried about it drifting around, use another cable moored on the bottom as a guide.
You can even get fancy, give the weights “wings” that are hinged near the top, around the lifting eye. Seemingly mimicking the limbs of many sea creatures, when lifting they will naturally fall along the body for a sleek profile. When falling they will fly outward and provide drag, thus controlling descent speed and avoiding overloading the generator-motor.
Floating wind turbine farms soaring into the skies, and concrete spheres in the crushing depths for storing transient energy. I could only get paid for writing such dreck if I was selling science fiction, perhaps steampunk.
@L. E. Joiner at 11:33 am
even if the Republicans take over the Senate and keep the House, they will not have veto-proof majorities. …. I’m afraid we have to wait until 2017, and hope we can get a conservative in the White House
…. and KEEP a Republican Senate.
That last caveat is a problem few are considering, least of all the Republican National Committee in public.
All the talk today in the 2014 election is the probability of a Republican gain of 6 seats to take majority control of the Senate. Republicans need to think, talk, and act BIG. They’ll need to take 11 seats in 2014 to have any margin of safety to hold onto a majority after the 2016 election.
Pat Kelly says:
June 2, 2014 at 7:50 am
I guess this means we’ll solve the storage problem for wind & solar…
Pat,
Sure. Just like we ‘solved the problem’ of using heavy, expensive chemical fuel rockets for the last 50 years to get things and people into outer space….. Right? Your comment is analogous to halting all chemical rocket launches from Earth to ‘solve the rocket problem’ by stimulating the invention of ‘anti-gravity’. “Suddenly, a miracle occurs…..” or not, eh? Fifty years later and we are still working on a viable alternative to chemical fuel rockets. Some times the miracle doesn’t show up on time and, when it comes to not freezing to death on a dead calm -30F winter night in Rhinelander WI, wind and solar ‘energy’ are not viable, reliable options.
Your ‘guess’ overlooks the fact we already have 3 storage systems for solar energy here on Earth: Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas. They represent the lowest cost forms of readily useable stored solar energy on the planet, bar none! They are available 24 hours a day and in great abundance sufficient to fuel our economies. They use proven technologies to provide clean and highly reliable energy to the entire nation, at costs that make perfect economic sense. Of these 3, coal is the least expensive and US proven reserves are sufficient to meet our national energy needs for more than 100 years.
Why would anyone want to destroy a system like that?
Mac
Mac the Knife says:
June 2, 2014 at 11:55 am
Scary stuff, if one understands the holes in the science presented. Wtf are they doing? What are they up to? ( I have my suspicions, but would enjoy other viewpoints ).
I have some questions about the MIT spheres. From an engineering perspective, you could simply use a large void at the bottom of a well, or use a deep lake, to try this out. You don’t really need to be out in the ocean to do that, as the sphere, air, and turbine just need the “head” of water pressure to work. So, since it would be fairly simple to set this up for “proof of concept” without even being near the ocean, my question is: Where has this been set up, scaled down? All you would need is a reasonably deep lake, and enough wind to turn the windmill for a few hours at a time. Where is this trial? What were the results? What size of sphere was used, and what depth of water was it in? What size of air pump was used to displace the water? I only ask because I have been unable to find any of this information doing a search.
Have a look at pumped storage:
Google Earth coordinates: 41.8338, -79.0101
The reservoir extends northward into NY State. Zoom out until you can see it all and note how small the pumped storage appears by comparison. Co-located with the Kinzua (kin-zoo) Dam, this is called the Seneca Pumped Storage Generating Station. The Senecas are the Natives displaced by the projects.
–—
Have a look at green energy:
. . . find the little green line in this active chart, updated every 5 minutes.
http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
High pressure has settled over the USA’s pacific northwest region – for the next several days – and the wind has stopped. The little green line just fell to zero! Oops.
{ I just posted this last on NoTrickZone, also, as Pierre’s current post is about the Obama-EPA announcement – the latest one!}
One of the issues with energy storage is that the wind farms must generate surplus power. So, they must be sized far larger than the need to supply power at a convenient time when the wind is blowing at sweet spot velocities. That is, you need to build 3X or more the immediate demand capacity or you won’t have any surplus power to use to store for off-peak. The other capital costs and engineering issues are far larger yet, as noted by others above.
Another major issue for wind is the lifetime of components, meaning that the initial investment must be replicated every 10-20 years. So, the capital costs will be much larger than for nuclear, not even counting energy storage.
Another factor will be increasing resistance to those who worry about birds. We are losing eagles and other species with 0.2% of energy from renewables. If we get to 10%, the toll on wildlife will be enormous.
====================================================================
Anger? No. Just don’t use taxpayer money.
If it’s such a sure fire solution I’m sure Al Gore or Soros would invest in it.
Rodger I understand the concept easily enough, but I’m sceptical that the water can be pumped out of a 25m concrete sphere 400m below sea-level efficiently enough to make it worth doing. Seems like a Rube Goldberg way to wind a CooCoo Clock, but I await the engineering proof-of-concept prototypes with baited breath. Besides isn’t steel and concrete both materials with significant CO2 foot-prints?
Reblogged this on wwlee4411 and commented:
Don’t forget. You have to allow for continued growth and demands on the system as well, and right now they don’t make up 10%!
hunter says:
June 2, 2014 at 7:06 am
The only way that renewables could make up 30% of the power grid by 2030 is if Mr. Obama’s incresingly terrible policies are not severely reformed or tossed falt out and the American economy is shrunk to a small fraction of it present size.
###
That is the goal.
Jeff L says:
June 2, 2014 at 7:54 am
The problem last winter in the northeast was not production, but pipeline capacity. ISO-NE is concerned because we’re so dependent on natural gas now. Last week the Salem MA coal powerplant was shutdown, possibly to be replaced with a NG plant. Pipelines don’t show up with the stroke of a pen…. What were the peak NG costs in New York City? I think 5-10X normal prices.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=14671#tabs_SpotPriceSlider-3
Roger Sowell says:
June 2, 2014 at 8:10 am
> Renewables are no longer unreliable. Offshore pumped storage hydro provides unlimited energy storage to be released on demand. From MIT.
MIT is on the coast, they may have neglected to compute the coast to land ratio. I grew up in northeast Ohio. While we had Lake Erie, it’s the shallowest of the great lakes.
igsy says:
June 2, 2014 at 8:37 am
> So, from Roger Sewell’s link, it claims “.. 1,000 such spheres could supply as much power as a nuclear plant for several hours…”
Cleveland, we have a problem. And Chicago, and St. Louis, and ….
Just wait until they outlaw fracking!
If you will grant me an hour or so to commute home, I will try to answer the serious inquiries on MIT’s storage system.
For the terminally stupid, like davidmhoffer, there is truly no hope. He clearly thinks he “thrashed” me, whatever that means in his feeble mind.
wws says:
June 2, 2014 at 7:35 am
Since Nat Gas is the cheapest type of peak producing plant, those are the backup generators that will be built.
And when they kick in, spot nat gas prices will SKYROCKET!
=====================
They won’t be built. You can’t make any money building a power plant that you only run occasionally. And the more reliable wind generation gets, the worse the finance case gets, because you would need the plant even less.
Wind generation will be supplemental for the foreseeable future. Making it outrageously expensive.
David Ball says:
June 2, 2014 at 12:46 pm
Scary stuff, if one understands the holes in the science presented. Wtf are they doing?
David,
To my eye, it looks like the Cosmos series was created and presented to ‘make the non-science case’ for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. It is presented to appeal to about the 8th grade level of comprehension, with extensive embedded pseudo-historical cartoons and flights of CGI science fiction to ‘possible’ worlds and/or ‘future’ states of earthly existence.
The timing of the series appears to have been directly coordinated with the White House.
I do not think it coincidental that Our Dear Ruler was scheduled to introduce Neil ‘StayoffdeGrasse’ Tyson and the ‘new ‘ Cosmos series back on Fox March 8th.
http://time.com/17052/president-obama-to-introduce-reboot-of-cosmos/
I do not think it coincidental that Our Dear Ruler has just announced his new Rules to ‘limit green house gases’, one night after Neil Tyson made his non-science case for man made global warming on the Cosmos series June 1.
I do not think it coincidental at all that Cosmos was/is the advance propaganda series needed to bolster the Obama administrations new EPA ‘rules’. This was well crafted political propaganda, dressed up as pseudo-science, coordinated to provide mass audience advance marketing of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, and timed to justify Obama’s new economy crippling EPA rules now.
Mac
PS: I particularly liked the “Halls Of Extinction”, and the repeated implications that CO2 emissions are taking us ‘there’. Now THAT’S science!
Take a week.
Mods: Delete my 3:58 post; got there too late to be effective. And this one also.
Roger Sowell says:
June 2, 2014 at 8:10 am
No mention of costs or how soon this magical storage will be mass deployed. So far the largest implementation is a sphere about 3 ft (1m) in diameter.
Roger Sowell says:
June 2, 2014 at 8:10 am
And Roger. How much will storage cost to deliver power in those cases where there is insufficient wind for a few days? How much more does off shore wind cost than onshore?