Guest ROTFLMAO! by David Middleton
Vox’s David Roberts has a green epiphany…
Batteries have a dirty secret
Energy storage is considered a green technology. But it actually increases carbon emissions.
By David Roberts Jul 21, 2018
Energy storage (batteries and other ways of storing electricity, like pumped water, compressed air, or molten salt) has generally been hailed as a “green” technology, key to enabling more renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But energy storage has a dirty secret. The way it’s typically used in the US today, it enables more fossil-fueled energy and higher carbon emissions. Emissions are higher today than they would have been if no storage had ever been deployed in the US.
[…]
In and of itself, energy storage is neither clean nor dirty — it is neutral, as likely to boost the revenue of fossil fuel plants as it is to help clean energy.
[…]
It all boils down to “arbitrage.” Buy electricity when it’s cheap, store it and sell it when it’s more expensive. Since utility companies are “businesses,” they buy and sell electricity with “dollars,” as opposed to Btu or carbon credits. If the old coal-fired plant is selling cheap electricity at night and the new solar PV plant is only selling electricity during the day, when it’s expensive… Guess which source will be the preferred purchase for battery storage? (Hint: Not solar).
Irony can be so ironic!
What the heck are they burning in Kansas?
| kg CO2/MWh | |
| Coal (anthracite) | 353.8 |
| Coal (bituminous) | 318.4 |
| Coal (lignite) | 333.4 |
| Coal (subbituminous) | 331.7 |
| Propane | 215.1 |
| Natural gas | 181.1 |
450 kg CO2/MWh… They must be injecting extra CO2 into the flue gas of their coal-fired power plants! (/Sarc)
The promoters of Australia’s planned Snowy 2 pumped hydro scheme show that instead of lowering electricity prices, it will instead contribute to a price increase.
It is only commonsense, they need to be a viable business and intend to do that by buying cheap electricity thus creating a floor that otherwise would have seen even cheaper electricity being delivered to the grid, and then selling at a time of higher prices.
Everytime a business can enter into the energy market and make a profit without actually lowering prices, that profit can only come out of the pockets of the consumers by one way or another.
Yup. Told you so, 16 years ago. We published in 2002:
“THE ULTIMATE AGENDA OF PRO-KYOTO ADVOCATES IS TO ELIMINATE FOSSIL FUELS, BUT THIS WOULD RESULT IN A CATASTROPHIC SHORTFALL IN GLOBAL ENERGY SUPPLY – THE WASTEFUL, INEFFICIENT ENERGY SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY KYOTO ADVOCATES SIMPLY CANNOT REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS.”
Source:
DEBATE ON THE KYOTO ACCORD
PEGG, reprinted in edited form at their request by several other professional journals, the Globe and Mail and La Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
Wind and solar power do NOT contribute significant economic (dispatchable) electric power to the grid.
This is a simple, proved hypothesis, yet tens of trillions of dollars have been wasted globally on this green energy nonsense.
So next time, good people, please listen to your Uncle Allan, who cares for your well-being, and does not want you to waste trillions on foolish green energy schemes/scams – just to drive up energy costs, reduce grid reliability, and needlessly increase Winter Deaths – that is the job of our idiot leftist politicians – if you ever voted for any of these leftist idiots, please just do not vote anymore because you are ‘way too stupid to vote – thank you for your kind consideration!
To try to get this message across to the lower-end of the intellectual spectrum, especially our politicians, I rephrased the message about a decade ago:
“WIND POWER – IT DOESN’T JUST BLOW – IT SUCKS!”
“SOLAR POWER – STICK IT WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE!”
It seems to s-l-o-w-l-y be working! 🙂
EV’s with 30% efficiency: first produce electricity, then store it in the battery, then stream it to the electromotor for drive.
EVs are about 47% thermally efficient at the current U.S. generation mix. Gas cars range from about 22% to 27%, but Mazda and Toyota are on the brink of raising that to 40% to 44%. Mazda has said they plan to further raise it to 56%, but haven’t issued a timetable.
I should add that the introduction of these engines, which will soon be replicated by the other car companies, has materially changed my previous view that electric motive power in personal transport should be subsidized. If there’s to be little or no thermal efficiency gain from electric power, I’m seeing little reason to subsidize EVs.
“450 kg CO2/MWh… They must be injecting extra CO2 into the flue gas of their coal-fired power plants!”
That is probably the emissions divided by the system efficiency.
Probably true… just not as humorous.
It’s nice to see CO2 emissions honour borders…it’s remarkable.
“What the heck are they burning in Kansas?”
Does it show in the surface CO2 levels? Well kind of…
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=co2sc/orthographic=-93.96,45.32,781
And all to reduce the production of plant food.