Don Bogard, © 2015 (published here with permission)
The tale below is fictional, but every one of its elements and issues has been or will be experienced somewhere in the process of switching electrical power production from fossil fuels to renewable wind and solar. Hopefully this tale will illustrate in a non-technical way some of these complications and potential issues that can and often will arise. My reference to “city” and “government” and “city fathers” are generic and could apply to different entities and scales.
Visualize a medium-size city with two very functional electrical power plants, each producing 500 Mega-watts of electricity, with one fueled by coal and one by natural gas. (About 2/3 of U.S. power is produced from these two sources.) The government decrees that this city must reduce its CO2 emissions. The city fathers decide to retire their coal-fired plant because it generates more CO2 and replace it with 350, General Electric (G.E.) 1.5 Mega-watt wind towers (total rated capacity 525 M-watt). The entire city celebrates over their good fortune in moving into a modern era of green energy. The mood is jovial.
The city planning begins. Each of these G.E. wind towers consists of 116-ft blades atop a 212-ft tower for a total height of 328 feet, and the blades sweep an area just under an acre. Each tower weighs 164 tons and is mounted on 1,000 tons of concrete and steel rebar and must be outfitted with flashing red lights.
City Problem #1. These 350 wind towers are expensive, about $2 million each. Luckily the government will subsidize most of the cost (paid by taxpayers elsewhere).
City Problem #2. Whereas the coal plant occupies fewer than 20 acres, each GE 1.5-megawatt turbine requires a minimum of 32 acres and needs 82 unobstructed acres in order to optimally utilize wind from any direction. This is a total of 28,700 acres, or about 45 square miles of land. That much space is way too expensive to purchase, so the city fathers convince the county and state to fund subsidizes to surrounding farms to host such towers, or decree eminent domain to force their location on unwilling farmers.
City problem #3. The coal plant was located close to town. To service these new wind towers new expensive access roads and power transmission lines must be funded and constructed.
Some grumbling begins, mainly among those whose farms were forced to accept the towers, among coal plant workers who are soon to be fired, and among those long range planners of future city budgets.
The wind towers are finally constructed and tied into the city power grid.
City Problem #4. Before the coal plant is retired, which operated 24/7/365, the city planners realize that the wind does not always blow. Further, even when it does blow, it often does not blow enough, and at these times the wind towers generate less than their rated electrical output. Often some towers will be out for maintenance.
The city fathers decide to keep the coal power plant in operation (after all, it was paid for) and only use it as back-up power for when the wind does not blow.
City Problem #5. It is discovered that when the coal plant must be fired up to replace wind power that has suddenly diminished, it cannot come to power quickly enough to prevent brown-outs (voltage drops), even an occasional black-out (no power). Further, these times of rapid cooling and heating of the boilers are degrading them much faster than when they operated continuously.
Citizen grumbling increases over the power issues they individually are experiencing.
The city fathers decide to build another gas-fired plant to replace the coal plant.
Grumbling increases among city dwellers over the increased taxes and electricity costs required to pay for the second gas plant. For the first time in many years, serious challengers arise in the upcoming city council election.
The second gas plant is constructed. One gas plant operates continuously, and the second plant operates in a near idle mode (but still burning some gas and producing CO2) so that it can be rapidly fired up when the wind dies. Keeping both gas plants operating, even at lower level for one, is more expensive than expected, but now they offer adequate back-up for when the wind-towers generate too little power.
Some city citizens forget that they are now paying sizably higher electricity bills and are happy that their CO2 production is now somewhat lower than originally. But many other citizens grumble and discuss recall elections.
Time passes. The city grows and needs more power. Further, the government gives a new decree to lower CO2 emissions even more. The city fathers decide to construct more wind towers. The reasoning is threefold: a) adequate power would still be available when the wind blew only lightly; b) extra power generated by wind could be sold to the surrounding cities; and c) the city’s gas plants would not have to operate as often, thus lowering CO2 generation. The plan sounded reasonable to city council.
City Problem #6. Large citizen protests erupt. The city mayor and two city council members are recalled. Yet under demands from the government, the new city government barely convinces the annoyed citizens to proceed. Active animosity develops between those who support this rapid move to renewable energy and those who do not.
City Problem #7. With the prospect of large flows of energy among various cities, extra and expensive long-distance transmission lines must be constructed.
The city goes even much more heavily into debt and several hundred extra wind towers are constructed. Counting total power capability from two gas plants and many hundreds of wind towers, the total potential power production is much more than twice what the original power capability was, although the city has only grown by 20%.
City Problem #8. The city is now sharply divided over this issue. The “green” citizens emphasize the good that wind power is doing in reducing CO2 emission and think that good justifies the many extra costs. Financially practical citizens complain that city electricity costs are now much higher than before, that much more open land is being compromised, and that the wind towers are noisy and unsightly, whereas CO2 emissions have only modestly been reduced.
The city fathers argue than the extra wind power produced by the new turbines can be sold to ally some of their costs.
City Problem #9. However, when the wind blows hard and extra wind power is produced, the city fathers discover that surrounding cities, which by now also have converted heavily to wind power, often also have too much wind power and are not in the market for any more. The city cannot sell its unused power, and having no way to store the extra power, must simply “dump” it unused. City fathers also realize that sometimes the wind quits blowing not just over a local region, but over a very widespread one. In these cases most or all of the local cities produce too little total power, and regional brown-outs develop.
The city fathers have a new idea — develop solar energy. Often the Sun shines when the wind does not blow and the wind often blows at night. But the city citizens would never permit a huge central solar power facility, and there is no suitable place to locate such a facility. But, the city fathers learn that the government heavily subsidizes PV-solar equipment for individual homes and businesses. The city fathers again decide to utilize government subsidizes paid for by others elsewhere. The city fathers appeal to the “green” citizens to use some of their funds along with the government subsidies to install PV-solar systems on their roofs. To give further enticements, the city fathers decree that the city electrical power company must purchase at full retail prices all excess solar power than these “green” citizens may produce. Many “green” citizens comply and a few hundred extra M-watts of solar power becomes available.
City Problem #10. However, the city fathers soon discover that when the Sun is brightly shinning, these PV-solar panels feed so much solar power into the grid that sometimes either the gas-fired plants or some wind towers must be curtailed in their power production. This produces further complications in keeping power fed into the local grid precisely in balance with the local and total power demand, as it must be if equipment damages are to be avoided. The city power company strongly complains about the new problems it has been handed.
City Problem #11. Further, the city power company discovers that on sunny days, it is buying so much solar power at retail prices, that it must raise power rates to those customers who do not have PV-solar grids.
Citizen complaints about power costs increase. Some prospective new industries with sizeable power demands decide to locate elsewhere.
Surrounding cities, which have also encouraged rooftop PV systems, find themselves with similar problems.
The city finds itself in a catch-22 situation. Both producing too much power and too little power, both at significantly increased prices, have negative and unintended consequences.
MORAL OF THE TALE. Conversion of electrical power generation from fossil fuels to renewable wind and solar is a process that can readily be both quite expensive and filled with unexpected negative consequences. For governments to rush into such a transfer too quickly or without a fully thought out a plan may be a recipe for higher electricity costs, customer dissatisfaction, social disruption, and ultimate political consequences.
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This sounds suspiciously like Canberra. The Labor party needs the Greens votes so much that they will do anything, no matter how stupid, to keep them on side. A solar power farm in the middle of the suburbs? Yes, master. Another wind farm (in the middle of NSW, talk about long-distance power), yes master. And yet it is still impossible to vote the stooges out.
Augh, forgot to mention the stupid tram that isn’t a tram. A tram shares the road with cars, so you get double the benefit from a single infrastructure cost. But our government can’t do that, because it inconveniences the bicyclists. So, it is building the tram lines on dedicated land. Like a railway. All the combined disadvantages of a tram and a railway, with none of the benefits.
Some more interesting new facts about renewables in Germany . Wind and solar electrical capacity now account in 2015 for about 78,000 MW or 40% of their total electrical capacity of 180,730 MW . However in 2014 they generated only 16 % of their electricity . Most of the load was still carried by coal , gas and nuclear . In 2015 the conventional generators of coal , natural gas and nuclear are still generating 25 to 33 TWh per month while wind is mostly around 5 with occasional 5-10 TWh per month and solar is less than 5 TWh per rmonth. So wind and solar combined despite being 40 % of the capacity are only generating about 20-25 % of the power. All that wasted renewable’s capacity doing nothing but draining money and driving up costs. Where Germany is smart is that they are not shutting down their coal or gas plants as US is doing but converting from nuclear to coal even more.
The problems with so-called “renewables” or “green” energy are numerous indeed. The idiocy of shutting down perfectly good plants producing (relatively) cheap, reliable power in favor of the opposite is mind-boggling. Indeed, one has to wonder, “is mankind getting dumber”?
One other problem of many, which I don’t believe was mentioned, is that people, and those businesses remaining (who may be unable to move elsewhere) are forced to purchase and use generators for times of blackouts or brownouts. And generators, as we all know, are far less efficient, far more expensive, and far more polluting (both the real and faux pollution, CO2). They can also be quite noisy. So, you can add the prospect of increased levels of smog to the woes of the city.
When the wind blows too hard, you don’t always get surplus energy which has to be dumped. The reality is, of the wind blows to hard or is too gusty (rapidly changing direction) the windmills will shut down to protect themselves from being damaged. Times of high wind are often times of low solar as well – leaving entire states out in the cold during a severe winter storm.
I believe we will continue with this idiocy for some time yet. Ultimately, there should be a major commission of inquiry into engineering of these systems. An inquiry into the collapse of the Quebec Bridge over the St. Lawrence River in 1907 while under construction formed a foundation of such inquiries worldwide. Canadian engineers wear a steel ring made from the collapsed bridge that killed 30 workers as a reminder to exercise diligence, experience and skill, and not to proceed with a project lacking these. I’m a mining and mineral processing engineer (and geologist) and even I could see immediately the obvious problems of going ahead with such major, renewable systems.
A Canadian engineer has his first allegiance to his craft, the safety of the public and industry workers and fit-for-purpose design and construction. He is obliged by law (the Engineering Acts of the Provinces) to refuse to accept direction from his client or his boss that he believes is a negative compromise in a project that violates proper engineering practice. He is also obliged to report inadequate design, skill and experience and unacceptable engineering practices by other engineers that come to his notice. This may start with a word to the engineer in question and, if necessary, reporting the individual and company to the association of engineers. Surely engineers should not involve themselves in the types projects that have the outcomes of this article.
“…each GE 1.5-megawatt turbine requires a minimum of 32 acres and needs 82 unobstructed acres in order to optimally utilize wind from any direction.”
Source, please? The 32 acres spacing between turbines sounds right, but the 82 “unobstructed” acres sounds excessive or possibly redundant.
You forgot one thing – committed capital.
No coal plant in the United States is ever fully “paid for”. No utility has the $500 million laying around to build the plant. They borrow the money at low interest, then pay it back slowly over the expected lifetime of the plant (30 years) by adding a little bit to everyone’s rates. This is very fair, because everyone uses the plant, therefore everyone pays a little bit of the capitol costs and interest for the plant. Usually by the time the loan is paid off, the plant is worn out, and the next generation of rate payers pay for a new plant.
If you decide to prematurely retire the pant, you still must pay back all the capitol and interest. Ergo, the minute you close a plant before it is thoroughly worn out (and paid for), you have lost a substantial chunk of money that must be recovered via rate increases. Also, anytime anyone leaves the grid, all the remaining payers must be charged a little more to cover the cost of the committed capital for the plant. Each rooftop solar installation, even if they NEVER contributes to the grid, increases the costs for everyone without a rooftop solar installation.
Really, renewable power is the most selfish thing imaginable – it favors those with lots of land, their own homes, and excess capital. It punishes those who live in apartments, don’t own land, and otherwise are capital poor.
I’m always struck by how little our power cost at the socket is actually “fuel” costs such as coal, natural gas and uranium, versus capital costs, O&M, and construction costs. Maybe 20 to 30% is the maximum savings even if fuel was completely free.
The Australian Government has just put out a statement to reduce CO2 emissions by 26% by 2030.
My question to the politicians is, if we decide to go down the path of spending several billion dollars of tax money on reducing CO2 emissions is that we must have a unit of measure to show the results of that expenditure. We cannot spend that sort of money just to feel warm and fuzzy. That unit of measure could be for example be a reduction in global CO2, (that currently stands at around 400ppm) and a corresponding reduction in global temperature.
Don’t forget that Australia is a strong carbon sink. It is not a net polluter, and should be entitled to recompense for being a net sink.
It’s enough to want to make you cry!
I suppose if foreigners burn our exported coal it won’t produce CO2
Sounds like a typical story of failure in the Obama administration.
Then there are the power companies….
Mid American Energy is seeking approval for 2 more wind farms (they won’t tell us where they’re going to put them) and they’re wondering whether they should share the savings with their customers – the taxpayers who paid for the subsidies.
“At issue is whether the company should keep savings from the wind farms for future use or directly pass them on to consumers.”
http://www.kcci.com/news/900m-iowa-wind-energy-project-awaits-final-approval/34670680