Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from NOAA’s Earth System Laboratory, Boulder Colorado exposes and debunks the contrived claims of a recent renewable energy study which falsely alleged that low cost and reliable 100% renewable energy electric grids are possible.
The new paper concludes that the prior study is based upon significant modeling inadequacies, is “poorly executed” and contains “numerous shortcomings” and “errors” making it “unreliable as a guide about the likely cost, technical reliability, or feasibility of a 100% wind, solar and hydroelectric power system.”
Additionally the new paper harshly chastises the previous study by noting “It is one thing to explore the potential use of technologies in a clearly caveated hypothetical analysis; it is quite another to claim that a model using these technologies at an unprecedented scale conclusively shows the feasibility and reliability of the modeled energy system implemented by midcentury.”
The new paper describes in detail many flaws and failures of the prior study to address and appropriately deal with critical electric system reliability requirements as follows:
The government mandated requirement that renewable energy generation has priority “must take” status whenever offered to the electric grid thereby exempting it from free energy market competition has created extensive energy market price distortions which are unacknowledged and concealed from the public by renewable energy activists, owners and their biased mainstream media supporters.
These government driven energy market price distortions are directly related to the inability of non-dispatchable renewable energy to provide electric system reliability and stability capabilities.
Renewable energy resources cannot provide predictable load variation, spinning reserves required for system regulating margin and load changes nor do they have synchronous generators needed to stabilize electric grid system frequency.
Additionally renewable energy resources are unable to provide black start capabilities in the event of a system wide power black out.
All of these critical electric grid reliability and stability needs must instead be provided by dispatchable generation resources including fossil, nuclear and hydro power plants.
These dispatchable generation resources provide electric system regulating requirements that manage and control both load and frequency variations and planned and unplanned changes without which the electric system collapses and fails.
Because of the “must take” provisions of renewable energy the number of operating hours available for dispatchable power plants is significantly reduced which drives up the unit costs of production for these plants without which the electric system cannot be reliably operated.
The increased costs imposed on dispatchable power plants created by the politically driven “must take” provisions of renewables are not assigned as a responsibility of renewables but instead are assigned to the dispatchable generation resources.
This politically driven practice completely distorts free energy market pricing and acts as a government mandated subsidy which hides the true costs of non-dispatchable renewable energy.
The most recent PNAS study shows the prior renewable paper was an attempt by renewable energy activists to try and coverup the long standing and extensive price distortion of free energy markets created by the inability of renewable energy to provide electric system reliability and stability capabilities.
These energy market price distortions have been in existence for decades, were created by the governments politically driven mandate of “must take” energy from renewable energy resources, grossly undervalue electric system reliability and stability attributes provided by dispatchable resources and hide billions of dollars in increased costs that are created by the mandated use of non-dispatchable renewable energy.
The world of government driven renewable energy promotion is built upon a foundation characterized by two huge fundamental deceptions.
First and foremost is the deception that man made CO2 emissions are controlling global climate. This deception has been exposed as wrong as clearly demonstrated by flawed and failed climate models, failed projections of coastal sea level rise acceleration, failed projections of increased extreme weather and failed politically driven efforts to expunge the decades long global temperature hiatus.
Second is the deception that renewable energy is cost effective and reliable both of which have been exposed as wrong as demonstrated by the need for massive and decades long government “must take” mandates and huge cost subsidies.
Owners of dispatchable generation which provide all electrical system reliability and satiability provisions have been badly energy market disadvantaged and had the their generation resource assets significantly devalued based upon the flawed and absurd government driven politics of mandated and subsidized renewable energy use. It is time for this to stop.
Over at skeptical science – they are going hysterical over the quality and the feasability of converting to 100% renewables along with touting the much lower costs of renewables. This is from the premier AGW science website.
I am struck by those that lack the basic analytical skills in math and science yet somehow possess the superior intellectual capacity to ascertain the validity of climate science
https://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=73&&n=3774
Thanks Larry Hamlin for another superior post.
Indeed, another + 10 Larry
Call it free-riding or dumping but this is what they do and simply require thermal generators and grid operators to pick up the insurance tab without their just premiums-
http://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/lack-of-wind-a-big-blow-for-infigen-and-power-prices/ar-BBD5jgd
You can see the bleeding obvious that they’re all in denial over here in the first 3 weeks of June-
http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2017/june
While their combined annual average last year was 34% of installed capacity you can see there they’d be lucky to be averaging around 12.5% or one eighth of their capacity but when the wind blows stronger they get to dump on the grid and make up that longer term one third average-
http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2017/may
but look at the one whole week in May that mirrors the pathetic performance in June.
If car manufacturers sold cars with sort of performance these same spruikers of unreliables would be screaming for lemon laws to protect consumers.
Caltech’s Nate Lewis, Argyros Professor of Chemistry, whose work is at the leading edge of research on solar power, has said publicly that “I need to dissuade you up front from one important notion, that some low-cost process is magically going to take us away from fossil energy within the next 20 or 30 years. That’s simply false.” Lewis estimates that population and GDP growth could triple energy demand by 2050. He has concluded that “solar is … far and away the most expensive way we have of making electricity today, with costs ranging from 25 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour for photovoltaic systems, that is to say solar panels. Solar thermal systems, … run 10 to 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is still too expensive. Nobody is going to pay that much for a substitution product, when they can get the original one for four cents a kilowatt-hour.”