Evidence points to the need for a broader range of clean power beyond just wind and solar.
by James Temple
A growing number of US cities and states have proposed or even passed legislation that would require producing all electricity from renewable energy sources like solar and wind within a few decades.
That might sound like a great idea. But a growing body of evidence shows it’s not.
It increasingly appears that insisting on 100 percent renewable sources—and disdaining others that don’t produce greenhouse gases, such as nuclear power and fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture technology—is wastefully expensive and needlessly difficult.
In the latest piece of evidence, a study published in Energy & Environmental Science determined that solar and wind energy alone could reliably meet about 80 percent of recent US annual electricity demand, but massive investments in energy storage and transmission would be needed to avoid major blackouts. Pushing to meet 100 percent of demand with these resources would require building a huge number of additional wind and solar farms—or expanding electricity storage to an extent that would be prohibitively expensive at current prices. Or some of both.
The basic problem is that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. The study analyzed 36 years’ worth of hourly weather data and found there are gaps in renewable-energy production even on a continental scale.Relying on these intermittent sources alone would requiring building many more solar and wind farms to produce excess energy during particularly sunny and windy periods, plus huge storage systems that can bank hours’ or even weeks’ worth of power (see “Serial Battery Entrepreneur’s New Venture Tackles Clean Energy’s Biggest Problem”). Another possibility is to build long-distance transmission routes that could ship the electricity around the country at just the moment it’s needed.
Storage systems are incredibly expensive in the case of batteries—and geographically limited in the case of pumped hydroelectric, which requires a set of water reservoirs at varying heights (see “Why Bad Things Happen to Clean-Energy Startups”). Long-distance transmission lines are also pricey and can take decades to get approved and built (see “How to Get Wyoming Wind to California, and Cut 80% of US Carbon Emissions”).
Just getting to 80 percent of demand reliably with only wind and solar would require either a US-wide high-speed transmission system or 12 hours of electricity storage. A storage system of that size across the US would cost more than $2.5 trillion for a battery system.
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“In the latest piece of evidence, a study published in Energy & Environmental Science determined that solar and wind energy alone could reliably meet about 80 percent of recent US annual electricity demand…”
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I GUARANTEE that the “study” in question is pure garbage. “Renewables” couldn’t satisfy 8% of US annual electricity demand, much less 80%.
“but massive investments in energy storage and transmission would be needed to avoid major blackouts”
All the investments in the world wouldn’t save us from the major, and repeated, and extended, blackouts. “Renewables” are intermittent and unreliable by nature (no pun intended), and tend to drop out of sight production-wise at exactly the times when demand is at its highest. And the stupifying destruction of landscapes necessary to pursue this folly to its self-destructive end CANNOT have been considered. And this also says nothing about the fact that in storm-prone areas, not only are both traditional AND the ADDED “massive” ADDITIONAL “transmission and distribution” lines threatened with damage and destruction, but the GENERATION equipment ITSELF would ALSO be subject; just ask Puerto Rico how that worked out when their windmills and solar panels were introduced to “Maria.”
You’ll never see a coal, or gas, or nuclear power plant blown apart by a storm, but you WILL see “renewables” destroyed by storms with utter regularity, whenever their locations and a storm’s path cross. It’s one thing to have scores of people without power because there are lots of lines and poles damaged; it’s quite another when you don’t have anything left to connect them TO upon repair.
Furthermore, you don’t even have to “destroy” “renewables” to render them useless; iced up windmill blades and turbine motors, and snow and ice covered solar panels, will be “producing” NOTHING, even if otherwise intact – so you can kiss your wintertime electricity goodbye with great frequency anywhere that you get snow.
The price that will be paid in lost productivity and ultimately in LIVES of instituting this sort of colossally STUPID energy “plan” is STAGGERING.
I’m guessing that to replace fossil/nuclear electric generation with renewables you would need name plate capacity at least 10 times and probably closer to 20 times the total energy needs.
That’s to cover both the generation of power needed right now, plus having enough left over to quickly recharge the batteries quickly enough.
That of course doesn’t cover the fact that charging and recharging batteries is not 100% efficient, and that power being transmitted from where it is being generated to where ever it is needed or the batteries are is well shy of 100% efficient as well.
Because of that you are going to have to increase that factor of 10 to 20 by at least 10 to 20% more.
Finally, they talk about wanting to make all cars electric as well. That means you are going to have to increase name plate power by another 5 to 10 times.
Just from these rough figures, you are going to need name plate power that is some 55 to 240 times greater than current generation capacity.
Good luck building solar panels and wind mills fast enough to even replace the ones wearing out, not to mention actually increasing capacity.
Fundamentally solar offers no benefit of scale and wind minor benefit of scale. They only make economic sense for low energy intensive use in locations remote from an existing grid when coupled with storage. Economics can improve a little if the system includes some gas or diesel generation.
As improvements are made they could make economic sense on the fringes of existing grids if installed with storage. That can work out as a lower cost option to upgrading the network for increased demand in a particular location.
There is no sense in having a grid designed for centralised generation being used for distributed generation. More economic to decentralise the power supply and place at the load.
Where have the professional engineers and project managers been all these years when they should have been kicking in the doors of the political establishment and our parliaments and halting these ridiculous, obscenely wrong, and unnecessary over-expensive power generation policies.
This Article simply states what has been blatantly obvious ever since this debate started: namely that all current forms of so-called renewable power generation require extensive and very expensive additional facilities and works to provide the continuous, reliable and adequate overall power generation system as needed and not when available. When such renewables are used, then necessary standby plants, providing massive over-capacity, and massive extended and enhanced transmission works are required to provide the base load systems that are needed.
The renewable energy industry and their supporters conveniently and fraudulently never mention or allow for these massive “hidden” costs when they compare their unit power prices with fossil fuel fuelled systems and neither do they mention the subsidies they demand or the costs of the subsidies needed for the inefficiently operated standby plants. All these additional costs are not paid for by them but by others, including taxpayers.
Even the claimed CO2 savings provided by such renewables are equally fraudulent as they ignore the CO2 emissions of the base load fossil fuel standby plants which are needed to maintain power during no/low wind or sun conditions and which generate the vast majority of the total power in any year. Unsubstantiated claims of future CO2 induced “damage” remedial/replacement works cost savings are similarly wrong, even if CO2 did provide such future “damage”, as they ignore the already substantiated benefits increased CO2 provides: such as increased crop yields and overall greening, as well as lower crop water demands during drought conditions.
Added to this, nuclear plants have the massive “hidden” long term costs of toxic waste management and disposal as well as similarly excessive costs for de-commissioning works contaminated by the same toxic materials.
Battery storage as a necessary standby plant also has many such additional costs including costs for massive land usage, additional capital works and power losses in the generated power to battery to power supply system. Dams, reservoirs and pumping and hydro turbine systems’ massive costs also need adding to the overall costs to consumers where such systems are used as “battery” storage.
macawber,
In general I agree with you wholeheartedly regarding renewables, and the fact that this has all been known from the start (excessive costs). I’d quibble with you regarding nuclear power, or at least the “hidden” costs part. Not sure how it is your neck of the woods, but decommissioning costs are collected from ratepayers (so the people using the power pay for the eventual costs of decommissioning). Nuclear waste has been discussed ad nauseum, and regardless of one’s opinions, there does exist a path for reprocessing and/or storage of these radioactive (note, radioactive is different than toxic) byproducts. This is easily priced into the nuclear cycle costs, and probably doesn’t change the economics significantly away from their current status. Finally, this is not a defense of current light water reactor technology, which is clearly not the optimal approach for fission power in the future.
rip
I forgot to add the UK’s Hinkley Point Nuclear Plant experience. Its costs, guaranteed minimum prices, together with recent continental Europe design and safety scares on similar works and the nuclear industry’s current appalling record of ever escalating delays and costs once a project is sanctioned, tells me that uranium fission nuclear reactor plants should not now even be considered.
The only hope for the UK in filling its Energy Gap in time is a significant programme of Gas Turbine Plants with the eventual benefits of UK fracked gas. This will at least give us the time for the desperately needed independent R&D work needed to develop the next generation of base load power generation, including such possibilities as renewable Thorium Reactors or similar, which are much simpler, hopefully much cheaper, and much safer than present and currently planned reactors.
Here in the UK I have been writing to my MP, to government ministers and responding to consultations for many years. As professional engineers in the UK know, it is a waste of time trying to kick down the doors, as the establishment refuses to listen to the professional engineers – they prefer to listen to the Greenblob.
For the most part professional engineers and project managers views have been limited by the “external affairs” people in their companies. A quote from a blog I wrote a few years back provided some of the rationale: “Speaking honestly and truthfully to regulators and other stakeholders can easily be re-interpreted by them as the utility being anti-renewables, inflexible and protectionist. Worst case as noted they can find some of your decisions imprudent and not allow cost recovery. ”
https://judithcurry.com/2014/10/22/myths-and-realities-of-renewable-energy/
The obvious solution, in the short term, is to get some Professional Engineers into the House of Commons and onto the HOC Department of Energy and Climate Change Committee. I suggested this more than 15 years ago at one of my professional Institution’s seminars and discussion on UK Infrastructure Works led by a visiting and supposedly eminent, leading member of the Institution. I explained that that was the only way the UK could get some sense and direction into its infrastructure works’ policies and achieve far less expensive but more effective solutions. The look on the man’s face, in response, was of absolute fear tinged with anger; as if he and his colleagues should have to accept such an accountable responsibility. Is it know wonder the UK’s infrastructure works are far too often under-performing and even more often costing massively more than necessary. Such an attitude at the top explains why the engineering professions have continually lost more prestige and influence during my lifetime. These leaders, for far too long, lack courage; something far from missing in their Victorian and even early to mid 2oth Century predecessors who generated the UK’s past technological and engineering dominance!
Nonsense like this leads me to believe that MIT now stands for Morons In Training.
… and PhD stands for permanent head damage!
And they needed an MIT study to state the blindingly obvious?
Much of the planet can make use of fairly simple solar hot water collectors. Hot water for domestic uses, including space heating in mid climes, makes far more sense than taking high grade electricity, especially if created by renewables, and turn those electrons into thermal heat or hot water. The Third World, most of which is in the mid or tropical/equatorial latitudes already does a lot of passive solar water heating, albeit usually a small tower or water barrel etc, on a platform or roof.
Given that the majority of the people on the planet live in these regions, including some of the First world to 45 – 50 degrees latitude makes solar hot water low hanging fruit to pick to reduce electrical demand. Solar hot water is even a good source seasonally in higher latitudes, due to higher spring/summer insolation. Either hemisphere. Anyone who has traveled to tropical or sub tropical regions all over the planet would know what I am talking about. Most of that is still fairly inefficient passive solar hot water, but hey, it is mostly free save for pumping the water to the tank where it flows via gravity even if the power is off. No subsidies required, and lasts a lot longer than PV or a windmill.
Heating hot water is currently the second highest energy demand domestically, behind either home heating or A/C. It is absurd to heat water electrically with solar PV or wind, and then use those electrons to heat water. You can fairly easily make the water hot or warm directly from solar sunlight and/or ambient outdoor temperatures in warmer climes. High efficiency solar collectors even work good in northern cooler climes, albeit less solar insolation in fall/winter. But still excellent for 2/3 of the year even in a cooler northern climate.
If I was younger and wanting to get into the renewable energy business, it wouldn’t be large scale solar PV or wind, it would be the newer high efficiency solar hot water collectors. This has the capacity to create the same BTU equivalent of energy for hot water usage, for a fraction of the cost that it would be to install the same wind or solar PV actual production of electrons to create the same hot water. Implementing more solar high efficiency hot water systems would do a lot more to reduce electrical or gas demands to heat the same water volume. Nobody is talking much about this, but is abundantly clear that it works fairly cost effective to save high quality electrons for lower grade thermal hot water.
I though that M.I.T. was the worlds premier technology university. Seems that I was very wrong.
Meanwhile in Canada…
http://amp.dailycaller.com/2018/04/02/catherine-mckenna-no-time-climate-change-disagreement/
There’s driving that wussy PC electric vehicle and then there’s drivin’ like you meant it.
We already have a mass energy storage battery. It is called coal.
I think that people who call her Climate Barbie are being terribly unfair to the real Barbie.
I ain’t eatin’ bugs and I ain’t giving up my electricity. If these kooks ever really get serious about enforcing their craziness, they better learn how to shoot straight.
The thing is, Peter, they won’t be coming to take your electricity away (or guns or most other things for that matter). They just aim to just make it progressively more expensive so that people are forever using less of everything, and yet not really knowing who to blame when they end up poorer than their parents generation.
This is the ratchet of environmentalism: Industrial capitalism has slowly and incrementally afforded us a better life-style than even the King of England had 300 years ago. Most people never noticed it happening. Greens want to reverse that. Many of them don’t even understand how it works, but support policies in that direction.
You’d be amazed how many of them actually believe it was government that made all the things we enjoy possible.
Because of that they believe that more government will increase wealth even faster.
The standard developed world lifestyle is better today for the masses than was that of King George III just 200 years ago, let alone than his ancestor George I 300 years ago.
Even George V 100 years ago would have benefited from modern medicine. The COPD and pleurisy which killed him could be treated today.
Of course mad King George III’s porphyria is also treatable now.
Edward VII, his son George V and his sons Edward VIII (abdicated) and Geroge VI all died from Pocahontas’ Revenge. Edward VII habitually smoked twenty cigarettes and twelve cigars a day. His great-granddaughter Margaret’s sad life was also cut short by smoking. Her big sister Elizabeth II was wise enough in her youth to break the chain afflicting her German dynasty, the Saxe Goburg Gothas, so-called “Windsors”.
They all should have heeded the advice of their homosexual, witch-hunting ancestor James VI and I, who blasted the foul habit of tobacco smoking, spreading during his reign thanks to Matoaka “Pocahontas” Powhatan and her English husband John Rolfe of the eponymous Jamestown, Virginia colony.
But, but, but we were told that intermittent “renewables” were cheaper – after all, the sun and wind are free!
Meanwhile, in the real world, Australia has a requirement to achieve 23.5% of power from “renewables” by 2020, currently at about 15%. Wholesale prices ex generators have increased from AUD$ 46/MWhr just two years ago to over AUD$90/KWhr as coal fired stations have been shutdown. In addition, “renewable” generators also get issued with certificates that retailers are obliged to buy at a price around AUD$80/MWhr – a subsidy paid for by consumers. We are suffering because of the fatuity of our politicians and their “scientific” advisers.
A policy that demands the most expensive and unreliable energy sources while exempting the world’s largest polluters and producers of carbon dioxide and rejecting clean reliable and affordable natural gas and nuclear energy is absolute insanity.
Obama said in 2008 that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his energy plan…which he claimed would include all sources of energy and not just be limited to expensive renewables.
MIT is just now getting the message?
All this talk about ‘renewable’ energy, giant expensive storage batteries and a Pakistani future would only make sense if there was any evidence that the climate was or had ever been unchanging in the past. The climate is always changing. Changes like those of the past century are common in the geological record, and are known to have bene driven by powerful natural phenomena. The Human influences, now, on the climate from all sources, are about 1% of natural energy flows.
It is not possible to tell how much of the recent warming can be ascribed to human influences or natural causes. There have been, in fact, no detrimental changes observed in the climate variables. On the contrary, extra CO2 is greening the whole world and plants are loving it.
I personally don’t think 80% wind/solar is feasible in the next 20 years for a grid as large as North America East. It is clearly possible for cities of 100k within a large grid. Alternatively if you are Norway with large hydro resources and a small population you can get 100% hydro. Beyond 20 years though? I don’t know and neither does anyone else. The US grid was largely built in 20 years. Yes, it grew after that, but the first half or so only took 1920-1940 to build. The US also moved from primarily horse to cars in the same timeframe. We went from maybe a home computer to near universal internet access in the same time frame.
Also, ERCOT is probably headed to at least 30% wind and solar in the next 5 years (going to hit 20% wind this year, while wind and solar are being built out rapidly), without hydro to balance. If you were on the North-America West and used the Grand Coulee simply to balance wind from Wyoming and Solar from Nevada you start having a grid that can manage with an enormous fraction of wind and solar. In fact, if you assume that you will run the Coulee at 40% capacity and use that to back wind/solar at a 5:1 you get a full 20% of generation on the western grid using only a single hydro facility (granted, the largest one in the US). The reality is that if we in the US were to use hydro as a battery, and upgraded our transmission lines on the three main grids (East, West, ERCOT) it is feasible to achieve at least 50% of our electricity from wind, solar, and hydro.