Guest “too fracking funny” by David Middleton
CLIMATE CHANGE
Renewable Energy Isn’t to Blame for California’s BlackoutsDharna Noor
WednesdayOn Friday and Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Californians had their power cut for a spurt in the evening. And more of this could be in store in the coming days as record breaking heat beats down on the state and wildfires burn out of control.
State officials have said the need for the shutoffs shows the inadequacies of renewable power. On Monday, Stephen Berberich, president of California’s Independent System Operator (CAISO), the agency which made the call to enact the rolling shutoffs, blamed the California Public Utilities Commission for failing to ensure adequate power capacity on hot nights after the sun sets. That’s when electricity generated by the state’s solar panels drops to zero but demand for air conditioning remains high. The implication, that transitioning away from fossil fuels has made California’s energy less reliable, could work in the gas industry’s favor, since the state is reviewing proposals to keep several natural gas plants in Southern California online.
[…]
But despite Berberich’s and other’s assertions, there is no evidence that solar actually failed at all. In fact, energy experts have noted that based on the energy reserves that are available, the state should be able to handle the peak electricity demand that increased air conditioning use amid the heat wave is causing.
[…]
The heat wave is causing a spike in energy demand, and the state did lose some sources of power at the same time, causing what CAISO called a “perfect storm” of events. But the biggest power sources that went offline this past weekend weren’t solar power plants. CAISO’s own data shows that on Friday when the blackouts were announced, the solar supply remained pretty consistent, but the state’s natural gas supply underperformed by 400 megawatts.
“It was actually gas that failed,” said Shana Lazerow, a staff attorney at environmental justice nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.”
Wind energy also underperformed over the weekend, producing about 1,000 megawatts below state analysts’ expectations.
[…]
Even if the heat waves had caused an insurmountable spike in energy demand, Stokes said moving away from renewables would be exactly the wrong response.
“Let’s be real, why do we have heat waves right now, across the western U.S.? It’s because of climate change,” she said. “Parts of California … have warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 degrees Fahrenheit]. These are places that historically didn’t need air conditioning, and now they do because they’re seeing record high temperatures for days in a row, so people are going to need more electricity. And that is because we have burned fossil fuels for over 100 years.”
Gizmodo
Before I move on to the natural gas nonsense, this bit is irresistible:
Even if the heat waves had caused an insurmountable spike in energy demand, Stokes said moving away from renewables would be exactly the wrong response.
“Let’s be real, why do we have heat waves right now, across the western U.S.? It’s because of climate change,” she said.
“Even if the heat waves had caused an insurmountable spike in energy demand…moving away from” unreliable energy sources “would be exactly the wrong response” because… Drum roll, please… climate change”. I really couldn’t make this sort of schist up, if I tried.
On to the natural gas nonsense
The heat wave is causing a spike in energy demand, and the state did lose some sources of power at the same time, causing what CAISO called a “perfect storm” of events. But the biggest power sources that went offline this past weekend weren’t solar power plants. CAISO’s own data shows that on Friday when the blackouts were announced, the solar supply remained pretty consistent, but the state’s natural gas supply underperformed by 400 megawatts.
Both the “solar supply” and natural gas supply” links go to this document:
CAISO Briefing on system operations, August 17, 2020
Neither “natural gas” nor “gas” appear anywhere in the document. There is an entry about losing 475 MW of generating capacity at 2:56 PM on Friday August 14, but it doesn’t specify what that capacity was. Here’s the timeline:
The lack of resources was identified on August 12 and power plant operators were notified to restrict maintenance operations,
Here are Friday’s details:
At noon, they realized they would not be able to obtain additional resources, lost 475 MW of generation capacity, dispatched “contingency reserves” and began rolling blackouts until about 8 PM, when demand decreased. Then on Saturday, the wind acted up:
So the wind kicked up and reliable generation (natural gas) had to rapidly ramp down… Then the wind died and reliable generation (natural gas) had to rapidly ramp up. Mind boggling.
At this point, they were looking at a resource deficiency of up to 4,400 MW on Monday, as demand ramped up and solar ramped down:
Somehow, natural gas is to blame for this:
According to CAISO, the factors that could affect their maximum generating capacity from 5 to 8 PM were:
Capacity to meet peak hour load approximately 46,000 MW but can
be ultimately be affected by:
• Resource and transmission outages
• Fires affecting transmission availability
• Availability of imports based on west wide load and supply conditions
• Cloud cover affecting solar production
• Weather conditions affecting wind production
• Hydro conditions
• Ambient derates to conventional generators due to heatCapacity to meet 8 pm (net load peak) demand approximately
43,000 MW
• Lower due to no solar production after sunset
Can anyone see anything in this document that supports this claim?
“It was actually gas that failed,” said Shana Lazerow, a staff attorney at environmental justice nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.”
I can’t even find the quote anywhere else, except in an article quoting the Gizmodo nonsense.
“It was actually gas that failed,” while solar performed as designed
The closest support I can find for this claim, is from this Mercury News article:
California grid operator warned of power shortages as state transitioned to clean energy
Growing shortfall as solar power goes offline in early eveningsBy PAUL ROGERS | progers@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: August 17, 2020[…]
[L]ast fall, top officials at California’s power grid operator ominously warned that electricity shortages were likely as soon as 2020 during a big Western heat wave. The reason: The state’s historic shift away from fossil fuels such as natural gas, which provide consistent power, toward cleaner sources such as solar and wind energy, which rise and fall with the weather and the sun.
With less reliable energy supplies, they say the power grid has become more difficult to operate and more at risk of blackouts, calling it a “most urgent issue” that “really needs timely attention.”
[…]
“We have a much more risky supply of energy now because the sun doesn’t always shine when we want and the wind doesn’t always blow when we want,” said Frank Wolak, a Stanford University economics professor who specializes in energy markets. “We need more tools to manage that risk. We need more insurance against the supply shortfalls.”
The blackouts are not a surprise.
[…]
Starting Friday as temperatures soared above 100 degrees and hit 110 in some parts of the state, the warnings came true. The ISO ordered utilities such as PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric to impose rolling blackouts over the next two days and warned millions could lose power this week. ISO officials said two natural gas power plants in California had gone offline, demand for electricity was higher than they expected, and not enough power was available from other states to close the gap.
Wolak, of Stanford, said the state should make efforts to keep gas-power plants around until battery storage technology for solar plants can be ramped up.
One long-time industry official agreed.
“Some folks in the environmental community want to shut down all the gas plants. That would be a disaster,” said Jan Smutny Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association, a trade association representing solar, wind, geothemal and gas power plants. “Last night 60% of the power in the ISO was being produced by those gas plants. They are your insurance policy to get through heat waves.”
Many of the state’s gas plants have become less competitive because they are more expensive to run than solar, he said. In fact, some have been shutting down on their own because utilities are buying more power from solar and wind.
Jones also said utilities should be required to sign more contracts with generating companies to lock up power to provide a better cushion during heat waves and other events, even if they never use that power. Some utilities have resisted because of the cost.
“Nobody likes to pay for insurance,” he said. “But if you need a heart transplant, or your house burns down, you’re glad you had it.”
[…]
Mercury News
Natural gas is supposed to work 24/7. Solar is supposed to stop working as the Sun goes down… Therefore, when two natural gas-fired power plants went offline… “It was actually gas that failed,” while solar performed as designed. The problem with this line of thinking (or lack thereof), is that all power plants are subject to going offline for mechanical reasons, often related to weather.
When you are relying on natural gas as your “insurance” policy and you keep dialing back your coverage as your potential need for that insurance is growing, you’re literally playing with fire.
From the Soviet Union of Concerned Scientists:
Natural Gas Power Plant Retirements in California
MARK SPECHT, ENERGY ANALYST | FEBRUARY 25, 2019As the rest of the country rushes to build natural gas power plants, California continues to downsize its fleet. While the official numbers are not yet in, 2018 appears to have been a big year for natural gas power plant retirements in California.
California saw three big plant retirements last year: Encina (854 MW), Mandalay (560 MW), and Etiwanda (640 MW). The retirement of Encina and Mandalay was no surprise – those two plants used ocean water for cooling, and California has been phasing out plants that use that cooling technology because of its harmful effects on marine life. On the other hand, Etiwanda shut down simply because it was not making enough money. While California has figured out solutions to keep the electric grid operating reliably without the Mandalay and Etiwanda power plants, Encina is being replaced by the Carlsbad Energy Center, a new 500 MW natural gas power plant.
A dwindling fleet
These retirements in 2018 continue California’s downward trend in natural gas power plant capacity. California’s gas fleet peaked in 2013 with just over 47,000 MW of gas capacity, but California has shed roughly 5,000 MW of gas capacity since then.
[…]
Soviet Union of Concerned Scientists
Since 2013, California has shut down 5,000 MW of natural gas-fired generating capacity and on August 17, 2020, they were looking at a 4,400 MW shortfall as the Sun was going down.
Too fracking funny!
How do people get to be this stupid?
According to LinkedIn Dharna Noor, author of the Gizmodo article, has a 2014 BA in political philosophy, social science and vocal music. Shana Lazerow is an environmental attorney (’nuff said). The energy analyst for the Soviet Union of Concerned Scientists has even more humorous qualifications:
Mr. Specht earned a BA in integrated science and science in human culture from Northwestern University, and an MA in philosophy from the University of Otago in New Zealand.
SUoCS
We get this in Australia , they start talking about “unreliable coal” Yeah sure unreliable coal that powered the country almost flawlessly for 70 and is the basis for everything you take for granted you idiots.
“Unreliable coal” because now you really really depend on it because wind and solar doesnt work, so its getting worked harder and harder. You close down coal fired plants because coal bad, so remaining units get run so much it gets harder to do regular maintenance, and if any go offline for maintenance or heaven forefend a failure then its headlines of “unreliable coal”
Meanwhile solar dissapears every night and wind may just decide to stop for a few days because , well, wind. Yet they are reliable in some people tortured mental cinemas. Coal=Gas for California , but the stupid remains the same.
And just remember that when the amount of asynchronous renewable power in a network exceeds the amount of coal and gas synchronous power, it may be impossible to recover from a blackout. Then its ‘goodnight Irene’. Who do you blame then?
Just get a battery to last the three hours after the sun goes does 🙂
Easy you may only need a hundred of the Tesla plants they have in South Australia.
Even if the battery does manage to last 3 hours, where are you going to find enough power to charge it up so it can last 3 hours tomorrow?
“Let’s be real, why do we have heat waves right now, across the western U.S.? It’s because of climate change”
Attribution of localized weather events to AGW climate change is not possible because of the time and geographical constraints. Under these conditions the internal climate variability of nature dominates and AGW signals are impossible to find. Pls see …
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/16/the-internal-variability-issue/
As for the claim about the robustness of renewables, climate science acknowledges the intermittency and unreliability of wind and solar and offers hope for the future of renewables in terms of energy storage technologies that ate currently in the R&D process
Pls see
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/08/18/energy-storage/
Chaamjamal, the link you provide includes:
liquid-metal pumping has been limited by the corrosion of metal infrastructures. Here we demonstrate a ceramic, mechanical pump that can be used to continuously circulate liquid tin at temperatures of around 1,473–1,673 kelvin. Our approach to liquid-metal pumping is enabled by the use of ceramics for the mechanical and sealing components, but owing to the brittle nature of ceramics their use requires careful engineering.
High temperature liquid metal pumping is a yet to be perfected technology. Molten salt nuclear reactors will not be licensed until this high temperature issue has been proven safe at operating temperature for at least 20 years. Therefore the effort to perfect high-temp. ceramics has merit, but putting this silver saddle on a mule (worth less than nothing wind and solar) is as miss guided as using hopelessly expensive lithium batteries for storage (IMHO).
Another consideration: when an “expert” starts a sentence off with the non-phrase phrase: “Let’s be real…” they are not being real at all.
I am commenting about your article regarding battery storage for California — I did not see a way to comment on it directly. In your article you make the all to common mistake of confusing power and energy. Power is given in watts — megawatts or gigawatts, for example. Energy is is given in watt-hours. Energy is what we pay for on our monthly bill, not power. Batteries are a form of energy storage and are best defined by watt-hours. A battery that can generate a gigawatt of power for one second is not of much use. The peak power output of the batteries is also of interest since it doesn’t do much good to have a megawatt-hour of energy stored and a peak output power of 10 watts. You constantly switched back and forth between energy and power in your article and never used the correct unit of energy — watt-hours. I appreciate your interest in this area, but please learn the correct terminology.
Do you have a link to this “article”? I have no idea what you are referring to.
Ok bill and David,
Yes please can someone put a ballpark battery estimate on this.
From my visual California is down approximately 3000mw for three hours.
The Tesla battery plant in South Australia is rated at 150MW/200MW/hr
But it’s aim is either to provide 70mw for 10 min or 30MW for three hours.
So I guess you need 100 of theses battery storage plants.
I’m interested is proper estimate based on this actual event.
How much $ on batteries to stop blackouts in California.
My additional thoughts are the battery needed for hot places is way smaller than for cold places
Thanks in advance
There are more qualified people frequently posting on WUWT to answer your question about the cost of storage, but few comment. Probably because the idea of using lithium batteries for storage is so expensive it’s not worthy of consideration. The recent statement by Governor Newsom admitting to a 4000 Mw gap got me curious of costs. Here’s what I came up with. It’s ballpark, but conservative (IMHO).
Even the most optimistic (lying through their green teeth) battery storage promoters shouldn’t be taken seriously when projecting utility scale Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) at less than $200/ kw.hr. ($200,000/mw.hr, $200 Million/1000 mw.hr. Getting through the 3 PM – 9 PM peak requires $200mm X 6 hrs for every 1,000 mw of demand = $1.2 billion. California’s Governor Newsom admitted to a 4000 mW renewable “gap”. 4000 mW: 4 x $1.2B=$4.8B for 6 hours of peak storage.
Thanks Dennis
I was thinking about $6b just for three hours.
Waza, agree with you. My estimate is wildly conservative.
A utility scale peaking lithium battery storage system requires four essentials:
Willfully uninformed voters, crooked politicians, talented snakeoil salespersons and tons of green cash. A toxic blend if there ever was one.
Don’t forget the cost to recharge it for the next days necessity.
A minor point: Yes, I do pay for energy, but what I expect is power, enough power to keep my refrigerator A/C. lights etc running.
“How do people get to be this stupid?” We let them; we are far too gentle on them. And the MSM let them and we are far too gentle on them.
4 eyes, you say we are too gentle on stupid people. So, in my posting above, instead of mentioning willfully uninformed voters, I should more correctly refer to them as irresponsible stupid idiots, which is really what they are. hmmm, I need to think about that. Probably wouldn’t meet WUWT standards for polite discourse so I better not use that frame of reference. I retract.
> “Soviet Union of Concerned Scientists”
I see what you did there and wholeheartedly approve.
My goodness, let’s get California’s head screwed on right!
Californians should be grateful for their good fortune. It’s so much worse in Venezuela.
“It was actually gas that failed,” said Shana Lazerow, a staff attorney at environmental justice nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.”
.”Let’s be real, why do we have heat waves right now, across the western U.S.? It’s because of climate change,” she said….. And that is because we have burned fossil fuels for over 100 years.”
Lazaro doesn’t appear to be too interested in climate cycles, and instead clings to her CO2 climate control knob. I find interesting news reports that Death Valley recently saw it’s highest temperature since 1931, 89 years ago, Hmmm , what was that again? …”a strong and stable line at 88.4 ± 0.7 years for the time span of the last ∼11 Gleissberg cycles ” …ya, ya, not causation.
Source:
The most decisive evidence for the Gleissberg periodicity in solar–terrestrial phenomena was brought by a maximum entropy spectral analysis of the number of aurora reported per decade in Europe and the Orient from 450 A.D. to 1450 A.D. [Feynman and Fougere, 1984]. It revealed a strong and stable line at 88.4 ± 0.7 years for the time span of the last ∼11 Gleissberg cycles which cover an interval of almost 1000 years.
The Left lives in a bizarre fantasy world populated with “peaceful protesters”, where Trump is Hitler, wind and solar are viable replacements for fossil fuel generation, and where the President wants to be re-elected by stopping everyone from voting.
If Californians believe this, lets give it a real test. Turn off all non-renewables for a week and see what happens.
“Let’s be real, why do we have heat waves right now, across the western U.S.? It’s because of climate change,” she said.
No concept of history at all. As if we never had heat waves in the past.
“perfect storm” of stupidity. But everyone gets a participation trophy and we will continue to gas-light the public and subsidize the unreliable at the expense of the reliable. Because………climate change.
An inverted meritocracy is no way to run a state, but does provide a strong incentive to run from a state.
Do you doubt the generator that ramped down quickly from 400MW was a gas generator, David?
This is why having a large capacity of battery storage on the grid helps its stability enormously. It only needs to supplement the supply while the gas generation is ramped up and it can do that with zero lag. And as gas generation is ramped down, the batteries can soak up any excess supply.
Most people see the batteries totally wrongly, thinking they need to supply the grid overnight or something, but that’s not what they’re for at all.
Tim,
Please help me understand this a little better.
You are saying a battery back up is only there to accommodate the time it takes to ramp up replacement generation, from perhaps another gas fired plant. Is that what you are suggesting?
If that is the case, then tell me why is there any need for the battery involvement at all? Why not simply have spare gas fired plants on hot stand by?
Where is the need for batteries if you accept that gas or any fossil fuel generation is essential?
Just make sure you have enough of what you know works, ready for when they are needed.
Rod asks “Why not simply have spare gas fired plants on hot stand by?”
That’s what they do have but they still take time to ramp up. Hot standby doesn’t mean instantaneously able to deliver hundreds of MW into the grid. Batteries on the other hand vary instantaneously with the load. We dont know why the gas generator failed but ramping up and down by hundreds of MW in short time is no trivial thing and must stress the generator. Something happened. It broke.
At the end of the day, California is skating much too close to the edge with its dispatchable supply capacity and it needs something to smooth out the load at the very least, and probably more dispatchable capacity to cater for peak demand.
The way the instantaneous thing works is you have 10 power stations able to supply 40MW each via inertia (which kicks in automatically) and governor control. You accept a small lowering of frequency until extra plant is up to speed. You restore the inertia and headroom reserve.
Batteries can cope with some wind flicker, but it was highly revealing that when the Loy Yang plant tripped out (550MW of generation at the time) the Musk battery in South Australia responded promptly with a peak of 7MW of output – deemed a great triumph by greenies. Not much use against losing 550MW, which was in reality covered by spinning reserve and inertia elsewhere in the system.
It doesn’t add up say “The way the instantaneous thing works is […]”
But the way the “instantaneous” thing works is that the gas fired generator can increase its output as the gas is turned up and it can do it at a rate that’s measured in MW increase per minute called the ramp rate.
Its a defined property of the generator and is known in the market
eg for Australia the rules are
https://aemc.gov.au/news-centre/media-releases/final-rule-made-to-refine-generator-ramp-rate-requ
To increase say 400MW takes an appreciable amount of time to reach. Inertia helps smooth out moment to moment fluctuations.
Tim,
I think you are missing the point. Batteries may be able to provide short term backup while other capacity is brought on line. But the period the backup was needed in CA to prevent the black/brown-outs was *not* short term. You would need much more battery supply to handle the situation CA saw.
It’s the same issue telephone companies have had to fight for decades. When the power goes out how long do you design the batteries to last? You *could* design the battery capacity to last for 24 hour while a diesel generator is brought in but the cost would be so huge it isn’t feasible. So you design the batteries to last for three hours and put a backup generator on-site. The batteries only need to last long enough to bring the generator up to operating temperature.
The problem in CA is that they didn’t have enough battery supply to last over the period needed to bring alternative generating capacity on line. In fact, they didn’t have enough alternative generating capacity to bring on line!
short term battery capacity is not equal to long term battery capacity.
Tim writes “But the period the backup was needed in CA to prevent the black/brown-outs was *not* short term. You would need much more battery supply to handle the situation CA saw.”
Actually you missed MY point. We dont know why the gas generator dropped out while it was ramping up its supply but I’m speculating that it *could* have been due to issues associated with ramping up and down which, when you’re dealing with hundreds of MW, is non trivial.
If your comment is correct, then they must have been using these massive batteries to stabilize the grid for the last 100 years or so.
Maybe now would be a good time for you to investigate how dispatch in the market works 😛
I think the 475 MW that went offline earlier in the day were the two natural gas fired power plants that failed. This was at the beginning of a series of events that led to CAISO scrambling to find some combination of 4,400 MW of additional capacity and/or load reduction.
If California was looking for the most expensive, least efficient solution, more solar plus batteries would be the answer. Since they do seem to be looking for the most expensive, least efficient solution, it’s unclear why they didn’t have adequate battery storage capacity.
The answer is likely that California doesn’t have a infinite supply of other people’s money.
$Solar + $battery storage ~ 2 * $Solar
Consider the utopian grid where everyone has battery storage in their homes and businesses capable of holding the entire grid for a few hours or more. Now peak demand is a non-issue and instead the generators can run to optimal efficiencies, supplying the day’s energy with excess being used the charge the batteries and when demand exceeds generation, the batteries discharge.
How much do you think it would be worth to to have that level of grid stability, that level of generation efficiency, FCAS taken care of and remove the need for generators being on standby to cater for peak demands?
We have grid stability in Texas without any of that, with much lower electricity rates in Texas, without any of that, because we rely on very little solar power. On rare occasions, when it’s extremely hot or cold, we manage to avoid rolling blackouts.
In the nearly 40 years I’ve lived in Dallas County, the only rolling blackouts I can recall were Super Bowl week 2011. A few coal-fired plants went offline due to freezing pipes. Since they didn’t want to disrupt the Super Bowl activities, they imitated rolling blackouts everywhere else in North Texas.
It would be worth $0 to me to fund a “utopia” just in case that happened again.
Last summer, we were without power for 5 days due to a Derecho-type storm. Battery backup would have pretty well been worthless. A diesel or gas powered generator would have been useful.
“It would be worth $0 to me to fund a “utopia” just in case that happened again.”
That’s the beauty of having individuals fund the batteries rather than a centralized corporate owned battery farm. You get to make that choice.
“Last summer, we were without power for 5 days due to a Derecho-type storm. Battery backup would have pretty well been worthless.”
Not if the energy supplying the grid is decentralised. Currently a few feeders being taken out will take out entire sections of the grid. Not so if every home is its own generator. Sure, if the batteries dont have sufficient capacity, then they may not hold it for long overnight for example, but with solar charging that might still be way better than nothing and a utopian grid would hold it overnight 😉
Once we get cheap solid state batteries that last for many, many recharge cycles, perhaps you’ll change your mind.
Might as well have said, “Once we get cheap”… Unicorn dust, amoeba farts or Mr. Fusion Machines with flux capacitors
Good post, TTTM. Cal blackouts, whether they are on the increase or not, are still rare. In fact, Californians have accepted the choice off between interruptible power at lower cost, and not, for at least 25 years that I know of. Even the (now mostly shut in uneconomic) offshore platforms – which in Cal used shore power – did the arithmetic and found that the savings were worth the occasional extra 6 figure downhole pump change (from the increased starts).
My son and his family in the bay area will be installing the battery/solar combo soon. No AC, so no problem. Their annual challenge is the trek to visit DIL’s parents in Torrance,to get the youngsters away from of the wildfire air. Thankfully, since they already pre-podded with the alt.g’parents, CV won’t be a problem..
Oooh… More anecdotal information… 🙄
Although, when you’re paying nearly $0.20/kWh for unreliable electricity, rooftop solar and batteries probably feels like an “investment.”
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
“Although, when you’re paying nearly $0.20/kWh for unreliable electricity, rooftop solar and batteries probably feels like an “investment.””
He knows better. I know better. It’s an indulgence. Son/DIL – scientists who are now working from home -can afford it. And it would save them a trip to the dump in the unlikely event of having to dump a minivan full of spoiled freezer food.
He grew up in oilfield towns on the Central coast with about the same frequency of blackouts/voluntary interruptions. We hardly even noticed them…..
Tim,
Your use of the word “utopian” is a dead giveaway that the proposal is not realistic. So is the term “a few hours or more”.
Your plan is so expensive that it is impossible to implement. Assuming $10K per household for installation and 16M households in the US you would be talking around $160 Trillion to implement the plan. Just not feasible.
I believe you meant $160B which seems pretty feasible to me. But even if you mean 160M “homes” then its only $1.6T which is also feasible given your government gave about that much away recently.
Its not completely a pipe dream either. How many homes already have the solar component? There is considerable demand for “green energy” in society right now. Whether you like it or not, its got momentum.
I know quite a few people who put in solar systems and now they are replacing most of the panels, at a much higher price, and will have to replace them again, and again, etc etc. Gas is THE fuel of the future, any who refuse to acceptthis fact should be forcibly from every level of American government and academia. Solar and wind are niche toys, at best, totally unreliable and dangerous in any regard.
How many homes have the solar component. Not many, and now that the subsidies are being removed, so are a lot of the solar components.
Adding batteries to solar just takes an already uneconomic scheme, and makes it more so.
Where is even $160B going to come from?
Do *you* have a money tree? I don’t. You said individuals would fund this, not government. You keep moving the goalposts. Who’s going to pay when a large hailstorm happens?? Homeowner insurance? Up goes your rate – just like an unintended tax increase.
I’ve looked at this for my home. A $10 K investment will give 12 hours of backup. The problem is that we regularly have 3-4 days of overcasts meaning I would still need a backup generator. If I need a backup generator then why would i want to spend another $10K which really offers me nothing?
On top of that, you are accelerating an expense by purchasing electricity in advance.
a full functioning individual electric system for each household and for each building in each rental complex, etc for $10K each? Good luck. Unicorn farts are a far better alternative. What about the 16 million plus new exhaust pipes on these newly installed “systems”, see any issues there? Please people, just give it up. wind and solar is worth less than nothing junk, take off the blinders, your shaming yourselves.
MarkW writes “How many homes have the solar component.”
And in California its apparently 230,000 homes. I dont think that counts as “not many”. Our host has them. Where I live in Australia, I look out my window and can count more than a dozen homes with them in close proximity.
Just how many trillions of other people’s money were you planning on spending to reach this utopian grid?
MarkW wites “Just how many trillions of other people’s money were you planning on spending to reach this utopian grid?”
None. People can buy it for themselves. I guess you’ll opt not to. And so will many in this thread but that’s your choice.
Most people are smart enough to not accelerate expenses, like paying for electricity in advance.
Accelerating expenses only makes sense in the case of effective hedging strategies. Southwest Airlines hedges jet fuel purchases when oil prices are rising. This enabled SWA to remain profitable during periods when high jet fuel prices were killing other airlines. Of course, SWA took a beating when oil prices collapsed in 2008 and 2015.
If you believe the claim that solar costs will continue to fall in a Moore’s Law fashion, it makes little sense to invest now. If you think government malfeasance will cause electricity prices to continue to rise, solar might be a good investment.
David writes “Most people are smart enough to not accelerate expenses, like paying for electricity in advance.”
Most people? That’s one strategy but its not the only one. Another strategy is to buy up front to save money over the longer term. The cost of a typical solar installation is paid off before its useful lifespan but you do need to pay up front so its only viable if you can afford it.
You’re hedging against energy costs increasing and that’s a pretty fair bet. Its very unlikely energy costs will decrease over time.
Anthony chose to do it and I’d say he is a pretty smart guy.
Quote me in context, rather than lying about what I posted.
David writes “Quote me in context, rather than lying about what I posted.”
Your post is directly above mine. If you think I’ve misrepresented you with my quote, then I suggest you explain what you meant rather than suggesting I’ve somehow “lied” by quoting you.
Out of context quote:
Out of context lie:
“David writes “Most people are smart enough to not accelerate expenses, like paying for electricity in advance.”
Most people? That’s one strategy but its not the only one. Another strategy is to buy up front to save money over the longer term.”
In context quote:
David writes
Hedging against oil price fluctuations isn’t relevant to the long term price increases over time. What are you trying to say?
Google hedging, moron.
I Googled it for you…
https://www.investopedia.com/trading/hedging-beginners-guide/
From the comment you quoted out of context:
Rooftop solar is a hedge against government malfeasance, if solar works as advertised.
Yes but “The best way to understand hedging is to think of it as a form of insurance.”
Is not the same as buying an expensive item up front to save money over the longer term. That’s more like an investment. Solar panels eventually pay for themselves and then start saving you money. Another example would be a heat pump. Higher cost up front but lower cost over time.
They’re not examples of hedging except in the very broadest sense and certainly nothing like your example. Energy costs will go up over the long term. That’s a given.
Considering that we now have the lowest oil and natural gas prices that I’ve seen in my adult lifetime and I’m over a half century old, I guess you’re wrong about energy prices, and doubly wrong when considering what share energy costs will have in our budgets in the future as we will get more efficient cars, HVAC and lighting, and consumer electronics as well.
Similarly, one would have to be a fool to invest in solar and batteries at this time knowing that both are improving, with the latter expected to dramatically improve in the coming years. You would be buying a risky, fragile, obsolete system that won’t last long enough for the expected payback period.
“Rooftop solar is a hedge against government malfeasance, if solar works as advertised.”
Rooftop solar is an investment into energy that offsets against your ongoing energy costs over the life of the panels. Eventually they pay for themselves and thereafter save you money.
It doesn’t matter what the Government does but it hedges against them causing energy costs to increase beyond their natural market price. Energy costs will increase over the longer term regardless.
It’s only an investment, if it adds value over time.
If the LCOE of installing rooftop solar works out to $0.15/kWh over the 20-yr lifetime of the system, and I can buy electricity from the grid for $0.15/kWh, it’s not an investment. The LCOE of the rooftop solar would have to be substantially less than the current grid price to account for the time-value of money (discount rate).
If I think the cost of rooftop solar will go down in the future, buying it now is an extreme non-investment.
If I think government malfeasance will make my electricity more expensive every year, and I don’t think rooftop solar will get much less expensive, the discounted net present value of the solar panels might be positive and it would be a viable investment.
In places like California and Hawaii, rooftop solar is probably an actual investment.
All very well but PV solar does pay for itself. Typically well before their end of life.
David says “[…]and I can buy electricity from the grid for $0.15/kWh[…]”
Today. But not in 20 years time when it will be more expensive so you need to take that into account.
David says “If I think government malfeasance will make my electricity more expensive every year”
You’ve mentioned this multiple times now. Do you really believe that energy costs only increase because of “government malfeasance” ??
The fact that solar panels may recover the initial cost doesn’t make it an investment.
The only cost that matters when buying electricity from the grid, is the cost over the length of the contract, usually 1 year. Solar panels are a >20-yr commitment.
In places where government malfeasance is driving up electricity rates and/or degrading the reliability, rooftop solar might be a good investment.
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/2/12/electricity-prices-rose-three-times-more-in-california-than-in-rest-of-us-in-2017
In the sane world, there is no reason to expect electricity rates to rise. Coal and nuclear power can only get more expensive if government forced them to be. Absent government malfeasance, natural gas will only slowly become more expensive, as demand raises gas prices, while technology lowers generation costs. Wind and solar costs will supposedly continue to fall.
The only way electricity will become less reliable, is if government forces more wind and solar into the grid and/or impedes the operation of gas, coal and nuclear power plants.
The average cost of a 10 kW solar system is currently $29,600 (exclusive of tax credit).
http://news.energysage.com/how-much-does-the-average-solar-panel-installation-cost-in-the-u-s/
Assuming a 25% capacity factor, it will generate:
0.25 x 10 kW x 24 hr/d x 365 d/yr = 21,900 kWh/yr
At $0.12/kWh, that’s $2,628/yr… Just over 11 years just to break even. If you earned 1% interest on the $29,600 for 11 years, you’d be $7,000 ahead of breaking even on the solar panels.
PCMan writes “Considering that we now have the lowest oil and natural gas prices that I’ve seen in my adult lifetime and I’m over a half century old, I guess you’re wrong about energy prices”
Well I’m the same age and I assure you the prices were considerably lower when I was a young adult. If you’re American they you have a skewed view of oil prices. The rest of the world pays much higher prices than you do.
Tim says: ….Well I’m the same age and I assure you the prices were considerably lower when I was a young adult. If you’re American they you have a skewed view of oil prices. The rest of the world pays much higher prices than you do.
Wrong, I’m Canadian, and like the rest of the Western world dominated by closet communists our energy costs are higher than they should be – eg. At the pumps the price is mostly taxes. Nothing to due with actual energy prices. Instead of worrying about keeping costs and prices low and the grid reliable, government owned utilities waste money on trying to be “sustainable” and handing coupons for mercury-laden light bulbs, etc – not focusing on serving the customer but on being a propaganda organ and a cash cow for socialist vote buying. Again, nothing to do with energy prices. Even a clear headed environmentalist, unspoiled by politics, wouldn’t be forcing solar a wind on the grid now which would give those sources a bad rep – they would probably push for conversion to gas or clean coal, and when h2 production from electrolysis and wind and solar matures, then and only then add in unreliables. But then a clear headed environmentalist wouldn’t be fooled by the propaganda around co2, which is plant food anyway, and would strive to focus on real pollution.
Since 1946, the average inflation-adjusted price of oil is just under $47/bbl. I’ve been a petroleum geologist/geophysicist since 1981. Oil is currently less than $47/bbl and has been over most of my career.
https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices/historical-oil-prices-chart/
At a little over $2/mcf, the inflation-adjusted price of natural gas is much lower than it has been over most of the past 40 years.
https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices/inflation-adjusted-natural-gas-prices/
Thanks David, I always appreciate your wealth of knowledge and experience and how you can put together and explain things to non-experts like me who are more comfortable with megabytes and megatons than million-barrels-oil-equivalent. Would that be a mega-boe?
MBOE or mBOE = 1,000 barrels oil equivalent
MMBOE or mmBOE = 1,000,000 barrels oil equivalent
6 billion cubic feet (Bcf) natural gas ~ 1 mmBOE
🍻
The analysis here misses a larger economic point. The only reason to buy rooftop solar and battery backup is because we are moving towards a third world future where power outages become a normal part of life as a result of dependence on unreliable wind and solar. Rooftop solar gives some protection from power outages.
Assuming you have $30,000 to invest, the rate of return on rooftop solar is low compared to buying an S&P index fund with the same 20 year time horizon.
Government policy is siphoning off higher rate of return investment opportunities for capital in order to avoid having to sit in the dark while your S&P investment provides a higher rate of return. Wealth is created and living standards improved when scarce capital is deployed at its highest rate of return.
Solar and Wind power has a negative rate of return because solar and wind power is more expensive and is a lower quality product. The capital spent on solar and wind, whether by individuals, businesses, utilities, or governments is misdirected and ensures that we will all be poorer in the future.
The loss of the 475MW created no problems. Such drop outs have been happening since they first set up an electric grid.
There is no need to spend billions of dollars on batteries to solve a problem that never existed before politicians started to demand that wind and solar make up a major portion of the grid.
The loss of the 475MW created no problems. Such drop outs have been happening since they first set up an electric grid.
And yet the loss of 400MW later in the day caused problems. Our entire State went blackout a few decades ago when a single failure cascaded to all the generators. That’s protected against now. I dont think you realise just how complicated and costly it is to manage demand and especially peak demand on a grid.
Tim, maybe somewhere your scenario is valid that battery storage is only required for minutes, not hours. But your scenario requires a large redundant spinning reserve of gas generation. That is cheaper than hours-long battery storage. But keep in mind that Germany has demonstrated that at about 50% wind and solar penetration the “spinning reserve” needs to be huge. Any additional solar and wind only enables a 5% fuel savings. The only workable solution for intermittent unreliable electricity is an end to worth less than nothing wind and solar. An excellent worldwide covid-19 stimulus package would be funding a massive dismantling and landfilling of the junk power (IMHO).
Dennis writes “Tim, maybe somewhere your scenario is valid that battery storage is only required for minutes, not hours. But your scenario requires a large redundant spinning reserve of gas generation. ”
But we already have our grids backed by “large redundant spinning reserve of gas generation” or similar. What I’m suggesting is that the more battery we add to the grid, the more stable it becomes. And at some point those batteries can stand in for “large redundant spinning reserve of gas generation” and the baseload generation needs only cater for the day’s energy, not the next five minute requirement.
In that scenario, unreliable renewable sources like solar and wind become properly viable.
Tim,
“But we already have our grids backed by “large redundant spinning reserve of gas generation” or similar.”
That “large redundant spinning reserve of gas generation” gets less and less every year – see CA as an example.
Thus it doesn’t become an issue of “stability” over the short term which can be handled by more batteries. It becomes and issue of “stability” over the long term. Batteries, at least at the development level of today simply can’t provide long term staability.
That means that decommissioning any kind of fossil fuel generator is only driving long term stability *down*. And that is CA just saw.
“That means that decommissioning any kind of fossil fuel generator is only driving long term stability *down*. And that is CA just saw.”
Agree. But bigger pic, it appears that the main miscalc was counting on extra energy from out of state. The heat wave was unusually regional, so it wasn’t available. As AGW continues, Cal will need more energy for temp extremes, period. Since they have finally wised up to the lack of long term storage for spent nuc fuel, and to their seismic shape, they won’t be going down that road any more. And since they don’t have either enough wet or dry gas productivity left (you can’t economically frac in the Sac Valley)- and never will – they must rely on – what? All I can see is more renewables, supplemented with out of state electrons, and imported gas, stored in storage fields that are now antique time bombs (but that Gavin has started to improve), distributed in a generations old pipeline/compressor infrastructure, and burned in new/recommissioned peaker plants. Cubic $ worth of investment required, which will bring home the point that Cal is simply a great, expensive, place to live. Even before paying the folks who do the work enough to slowly get ahead, which they don’t do now.
Gavin needs to complete and publish his “investigation”, pronto….
You missed one option. A nat gas pipeline to where the nat gas is located.
Tim,battery storage is hopelessly expensive. See my postings elsewhere at least 3 times more than solar gen erated electricity. $0.03/kw.hr solar plus $ 0.09/kw.hr for the 4pm to 8 pm peak load costs $0.36/kw for those 4 hours. If the peak demand happens again a second day the battery may not be recharged. Utility scale solar is worth less than nothing junk.
Tim, don’t add more batteries, stop adding solar. Keep in mind that battery storage is 3X the cost of solar generation.
You say, we already have our grids backed by “large redundant spinning reserve of gas generation” or similar.
So why are you wanting to spend $billions on batteries? I’ve read your postings. What am I missing?
Exactly. Basic astronomy. The sun shines all the time. Even after dark. On the other side of the globe. Why wasn’t California’s grid tied into Iran’s solar power plants, 12 time zones away, to keep the electricity flowing?
Why not build a satellite system that reflects sunlight
from the other side of the globe to your preferred solar panel farm.
As I understand it the previous 2006 power demand record was beaten by about 300 MW and a 400 MW plant was offline… also power supplies from out of state weren’t available due to the regional nature of the heatwave and hydro plant water levels were low.
so what you are saying is that the grid can’t cope with a new record high with a general shortage of power resource… that it can’t cope with new record heat levels… renewables aren’t the main cause of this issue.
should California have prepared for a new record level of heat and power demand? Perhaps – because climate change clearly signalled it was coming. and will be back again.
Griff says “should California have prepared for a new record level of heat and power demand? Perhaps – because climate change clearly signalled it was coming. and will be back again.”
This is unfortunately a common view held by alarmists that every hot day is as hot as it is because climate change. Bollocks. Climate is an average of weather over timescales humans cant even grasp in terms of experience. Saying a particular hot day was because climate change is as crazy as people claiming they can “feel the climate change”
At least the first part of the statement makes sense. Every region plans for its peak demand based on history and when the previous maximum demand is beaten, then there’s always a chance of outages. But I’m going to suggest that’s more to do with increasing standard of living and increased populations than “climate change”.
And increased urban heat island! Where do you think all that “power usage” ends up? It all is converted to heat and expelled into the air. So the more you need electricity to provide AC, the more you are “turning up the heat” in your own community. The generation, transportation, and usage of electricity are all heat producing actions, that are minimal on a per capita basis. But it is not trivial for millions of customers, using round the clock AC. You are turning up the heat on yourselves and saying it is “climate change”.
And southern CA was marginally “uninhabitable” before AC. People that could leave would go up into the mountains, or spend their days alternating between the ocean and the shade, to escape the oppressive heat. Same with Phoenix, Palm Springs, and most of the SW desert areas.
This is not a modern problem. It is a problem that is manageable with AC. So treat like it is a necessity for living in the area. Because it is.
It is equivalent to heat in the winter for most of the northern half of the US. It will get below 0*F at some point and you better be prepared for life-threatening conditions. And if any politician is making stupid decisions about that, they have to go. SC seems incapable of coming to terms with the reality of where they live. Get a clue – IT IS A DESERT!!!
What you should note is that the green theory that there would always be spare power via an intertie was wrong. Bad modelling of weather systems.
It doesn’t matter how many greenie points you have. If theory doesn’t match experiment it’s wrong.
Griffter,
RE: “As I understand it….”
Your subsequent deceits and strawman arguments all fail because you don’t understand it. GIGO! Like an ensemble of uncalibrated and uncertifiable climate models, your ‘outputs’ are all over the fictional map and nowhere near reality. Your comments are analogous to solar and wind energy output: Intermittent and Unreliable.
Had the state not been shutting down gas and nuclear power plants in the 14 years since 2006, the heat wave and the drop out of 400MW would nave been nothing.
Griff, The immediate and imminent need for reliable baseload capacity in California is right now, it has nothing to do with climate change. The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is scheduled to shut down in 2025. Last weeks power failures demonstrate that decision can not stand! I live here, it matters to me, this isn’t a hypothetical.
Yes, climate change has always happened and always will and as you say,”will be back again”. Nothing in the climate has changed enough in the past 100 years to fundamentally change temperatures in California. Maybe one (1) deg. centigrade from a combination of natural variability and anthropogenic warming. Likewise, it appears that warming will continue at the same or a slightly greater rate for the next 100 years. Surely, well before then we will have perfected, and globally deployed massive nuclear power systems and essentially eliminated the “fossil fuel” component of warming. A doubling of CO2 in that time-frame and under that scenario should be acceptable to the majority of voters.
Just looked at Wikipedia on CaliforniA’s. 2000 electricity crisis and blackouts caused by price manipulation and incompetent government control.
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. ”
R. Feynman
You are talking bollocks griff .
You say you understand ,that is an overstatement .I dont think you really comprehend very much.
California is a state with a large population close to 40 million and it should not rely on electricity from out of state because they have gone down the renewable path and this power outage proves that this is unsustainable.
They have been warned that this would happen but they ignored this advice .
You reap what you sow and if your forward planning and your back up power generators are well below par this is the result.
A major stuff up and it wont be the last .
You griff and the politicians in California can blame heat waves and global warming but what about the increase in the population of close to 6 million people since the year 2000.
The thinking and language of that Gizmodo article can only be describes as Orwellian.
This is your electric grid on coal, gas, and nuclear: 0101010101010101…
This is your electric grid on unaffordable unreliables: 0101010-`^$#@ur momisugly#@ur momisugly$^)__(*)(*&%$#!!
Any questions?
Just say no to unaffordable unreliables.
I guess that’s an accurate statement. Solar electricity is reliably off every night when the sun doesn’t shine (including, of course, when it is undergoing maintenance, too, but I digress). Somehow, this reliability doesn’t comfort those with no electricity.
A point that dropped off the radar in this discussion of “natural” gas plants is what kind of plants are they? Are they gas fired steam plants or gas fired gas turbine plants. The ramp up time for those type of plant is very different, steam plants can take hours to ramp up but turbine plants can get up to load very quickly. So, what does the mix look like?
Why would anyone listen to a children’s show character? Might as well take your climate advice from Sponge Bob, at least that show creator likes people.
Personally I am grateful that California is paving the way for renewables. They will either work it out, or not. As long as they don’t come back to me and expect me to pick up the tab for their failures I am good with it. Who knows, perhaps there is a path to reliable use of renewables. I am dubious and don’t want to participate in an experiment where you get 3rd world quality power reliability at a grossly excessive cost. But go ahead, knock yourselves out.
On the other hand they are so deep in denial on causes that they seem to find a way to blame every one of their self inflicted failures on someone else’s bad decision. It’s sure to be a slow and painful learning process to watch.