By David Wojick
New York City will soon be home to the world’s biggest utility-scale battery system, designed to back up its growing reliance on intermittent renewables. At 400 MWh this batch of batteries will be more than triple the 129 MWh world leader in Australia.
The City of New York’s director of sustainability (I am not making this title up), Mark Chambers, is ecstatic, bragging: “Expanding battery storage is a critical part of how we advance momentum to confront the climate emergency while meeting the energy needs of all New Yorkers. Today’s announcement demonstrates how we can deliver this need at significant scale.” (Emphasis added)
In reality the scale here is incredibly insignificant.
In the same nonsensical way, Tim Cawley, the president of Con Edison, New York’s power utility, gushes thus: “Utility scale battery storage will play a vital role in New York’s clean energy future, especially in New York City where it will help to maximize the benefit of the wind power being developed offshore.”
This puts the Con in Con Edison.
Here is the reality when it comes to the scale needed to reliably back up intermittent renewables. For simplicity let us suppose New York City is 100% wind powered. Including solar in the generating mix makes it more complicated but does not change the unhappy outcome very much.
NYC presently peaks at around 32,000 MW needed to keep the lights on. If Mr. Biden makes all the cars and trucks electric it might be closer to 50,000 MW but let’s stick to reality.
This peak occurs during summer heat waves which are caused by stagnant high pressure systems called Bermuda highs. These highs often last for a week and because they are stagnant there is no wind power generation. Wind turbines require something like sustained winds of 10 mph to move the blades and more like a whistling 30 mph to generate full power. During a Bermuda high folks are happy to get the occasional 5 mph breeze. These huge highs cover many states so it is not like we can get the juice from next door.
So for reliability we need, say, seven days of backup, which is 168 hours. Here’s the math:
32,000 MW x 168 hours = 5,376,000 MWh of stored juice needed to just make it. Mind you for normal reliability we usually add 20% or so. Did I mention electric cars?
It is easy to see that a trivial 400 MWh is not “significant scale.” It is infinitesimal scale. Nothing. Nada. Might as well not exist.
[I estimate 45 seconds of backup power from the facility. Someone correct me if I’m wrong~CR]
More specifically, 5,376,000 divided by 400 = 13,440 so only 13,439 more to go.
On the other hand, this measly 400 MWh battery array may well cost half a billion dollars, which is significant, especially to the New Yorkers who will pay for it. No cost figures are given because the system is privately owned, but EIA reports that the average utility scale battery system runs around $1.5 million a MWh of storage capacity. That works out to $600 million for this insignificant toy.
So what would it cost to reliably back up wind power, at this MWh cost and NYC’s scale? Just over $8,000,000,000,000 or EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS. I have not seen this stupendous sum mentioned in the media. Perhaps Con Ed has not mentioned it.
Then too, New York State has the same problem. Only much bigger if New York City is included, which it often is.
But hey, maybe the cost will come down a few trillion. Not if we create a seller’s market by rushing into intermittent renewables, which is certainly where we are headed. After all, this is just New York City. Imagine what backing up America with batteries might cost. Don’t bother because it is impossible.
I should also add that we have no idea how to make 5 million MWh of batteries work together. The tiny 400 will be a challenge. It may not be possible.
Maybe fracked geothermal, the reliable renewable, is the answer. Or how about coal, oil, gas and nuclear power? Too bad they are all out of fashion.
All of this battery backup hype is a scam, and not just in New York either. The papers are full of this con, from coast to coast. The utilities know perfectly well that these loudly touted battery buys are a hoax, but they are getting rich building the wind and solar systems the politicians are calling for.
The voters are oblivious to these impossible numbers, since they are told that intermittent wind and solar are cheaper than reliable coal, gas and nuclear. Only when the sun shines bright and the wind blows hard, which is not all that often.
Reality is just sitting there, waiting. It can’t work so it won’t work. At this point it is just a question of how and when we find out the hard way
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I have the data and a model of what is required for energy storage. In Australia on the eastern coast there was a significant drop in the amount of electricity dispatched from wind starting on 5 June it lasted for 33 hours. If you model this it means to maintain average output over those 33 hours you need 770 megawatt hours to support just one 100 MW wind power station. In Australian dollars that is about $850 million for one 100 MW power station which will deliver a constant 29 MW. The figures are so impossible it is beyond belief but I can prove it and show it in detail. I thought it was a folly but how extreme a folly even I was surprised. Prediction energy storage is never going to stabilise renewables and consequently nothing will be built on the scale required. We need storage that is the in the terawatt hour range.
Yes the figures are incredible. So we never see them, even though the power industry knows them well. The deception is systemic.
Facts are racist.
You all forgot one little thing: the entire UN complex is located in New Yawk Citee.
The lights go out, then their elevators and offices and stuff like that go dark, along with all the rest of it.
If that isn’t a giggle snort over this brilliant idea, what is it?
Merry Christmas to everyone, especially the people who put this site together.
A few hours stuck between floors in a dark lift should be enough to convert even a hard-core Warmunist to fossil fuels.
I wouldn’t put it past the UN to hoard tens of thousands of gallons of diesel in their basement and have reliable generator back-up for their elevator power
Batteries can only STORE power, they cannot generate power. So when and how are the batteries going to be recharges after they have been used and discharged? If you say fossil fueled power, then the whole system grows far more expensive, since backup generation capacity is not much cheaper to maintain than online generation. If the batteries are to be recharged by renewables, there is no way it can be certain power will not be there and renewable capacity needs to be expanded. An intelligent solution would be to ditch the renewable junk and build molten salt small modular reactors. only 64 or so reactors would be required to supply all of the needs of NYC. These reactors have a small footprint and would cost about $125 billion, a small fraction of the cost of mostly useless batteries. The ignorance of the renewable crowd is stupendous.
It’s the biggest “fake” in the entire thing. Any unreliable power system (like wind or solar) that relies upon a reliable power system (gas, nuclear, coal) MUST include the cost of the reliable power system in any calculation. For it is not a usable system at all without that backup.
Yet they never include the cost of the backup solution.
Why? Because it proves that unreliable power is always IN ADDITION TO the reliable power costs. It never is lower cost, it always starts at the existing cost and adds to it. And thus is always guaranteed to be more expensive.
Unreliable power generation will never be cheaper than reliable power generation, because it forces you to have two systems, rather than just one.
Right, but everywhere we look it says that renewables are cheaper, because they just look at the cost of generation, not the backup system cost. This is the great green lie.
BINGO! They may be cheaper when they run – but when is that? And does it scale on demand?
As we’ve found here in California – nope.
These batteries are of course useless for when the wind doesn’t blow. Then NY will depend on interties and such other power as it has,and the adequacy of these may become an interesting question. In South Australia they found out the hard way (a state wide blackout) that they needed proper dispatchable generation when they lost the Heywood interconnector to storm damage, and the government was forced to buy a load of diesel and gas fired generation to back up the wind and solar.
The batteries are instead mainly for helping to stabilise the grid when the wind does blow, compensating for gustiness that would otherwise see power surges and deficits every few seconds. Perhaps the real question is whether they will prove adequate for the task. When South Australia once again lost the Heywood interconnector in January and became an islanded grid, the Musk battery was not up to stabilising the grid when supply became dominated by wind and solar (in fact, there was surplus power they could no longer export). The tie to Victoria had been providing stabilisation via the inertia of their coal fired stations. The surplus generation meant prices went negative. But it was necessary to fire up conventional gas generation to provide stabilisation, and it had to be compensated for the negative prices. The cost of stabilisation became astronomic. The battery made a fortune – but it was not up to the task of stabilising the grid, and it failed to keep down the cost of stabilisation which reached record levels: cutting the cost of stabilisation had been a claimed big benefit of the battery, by reducing the need for conventional inertia. You can see the consequences of that here
http://nemlog.com.au/nlog/weekly-energy-and-fcas-revenues-for-participant/
The South Australia grid us about a tenth of NY, with peak demand on the hottest days of a little over 3GW. This battery looks to be too small for the job in NY.
I can be instructive to look at the performance of the system on King Island in the Bass Strait to the North of Tasmania. The system there has added to the original diesel generators some 2.45MW of wind in a three turbine farm, a 1.5MWh/3MW battery, 470kw of solar, a 1.5MW variable resistor (used for dumping surplus wind power), and 2MVA flywheels used to enhance stability. The system configuration and outputs are updated every few seconds here:
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
The operation largely depends on how strong the wind is blowing. At times when it is slight and wind output dies altogether, the small variations in demand as appliances are switched on and off are easily accommodated by the diesel generators, which may be supplemented by some solar. When the wind is strong, then often a lot of the stress of the changes in output is thrown on the diesel system and flywheels, with help from the resistor only in more extreme circumstances: the swings can be a large share of demand in just a few seconds. You need to bookmark it and check it out at different times of day and in different weathers to see the range of behaviours. The battery system seems to be a more modest contributor. The original battery was a flow vanadium type, and it soon failed. Roger Andrews took a look at the system here:
http://euanmearns.com/a-first-look-at-the-king-island-tasmania-renewable-energy-integration-project/
You are all assuming the population of NYC will be at least the same as it is now. I project due to all kinds of issues (including blackouts and tremendously expensive electricity), the population may be but half in 20 years. And most of these people will be pretty poor anyway, so demand will drop even more.
There’s that word “emergency” again. Like “racism” and a lot of other words, it’s a bit diluted and deluded.
We had the electricity go out for 2 weeks following a snow storm about 25 years ago that took out the local substation. We were plenty glad to have gas fireplaces, cooking and hot water.
Many of our neighbors were forced to move into hotels for the 2 weeks because they relied solely on electricity. Luckily it was only a small area, and otherwise there would have been no hotel spaces available in the surrounding city.
Now imagine this happening in a major city without heat, light or cooking for a couple of weeks in winter. Eventually people start burning the furniture, even when there is no fireplace.
Johannesburg’s City Power has up to 20 faults a day, many caused by the theft of electric cables, or by the explosion of transformers overloaded by illegal connections. The worst fault we had on the outskirts of JHB put us without power for 4 days – not as bad as another town where a whole distribution substation caught fire, depriving the whole town of electricity for 10 days! Speaking to a technician repairing stolen cable, I was told that the “Load shedding” (switching an area’s power off for hours) was causing the oil in the poorly maintained substations to overheat and sometimes catch fire!
Putting politicians in charge of essential utilities can be a death-warrant (for the utilities, but not, unfortunately, for the politicians).
400 MWh, sounds big, huh ? Equivalent to 30t, about half a fueler truckload of kerosene.
Roughly enough to feed a B747-8 (flying your X-mas presents and other shiny smartphones from China) in optimal cruise conditions for about 3 hours.
Indeed, it is as nothing but will be the world’s largest. Says it all.
And in terms of dollars, a full charge of 400MWh is worth only about $16,000 at, say, $40 per MWh wholesale on the grid. It gets ridiculous when you think about it – such a paltry amount of energy stored in a system costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Maybe this battery will provide enough electricity because almost all New Yorkers will have moved out because of high crime and bad governance.
for many years I was responsible for designing and implementing the power plant for a large insurance company. for battery backup we used PbA batts, which were never, ever, ever designed to provide power for more than about 2 minutes, until the generators kicked in. those batts also had to be completely changed out on a rotating four year basis (a large expense). for the gennies, we used both diesel and natural gas, on different generators so that we had coverage in case of failure of one supply. Our Canadian counterparts, on the other hand, went strictly diesel, and bragged about their guaranteed supply chain. When the big blackout occurred about twenty years ago, the Canadian government seized all diesel supply, so our pals went dark for a few days. final note, batteries are very expensive, need to be refreshed on a planned basis, and the governments can always grab your supplies, no matter how much you plan.
Some NGOs in Colorado have managed to get state regulators excited about the possibility of replacing natural gas fired engines on the pump jacks and other oil field equipment with electrical motors. You see, this will help the state meet its CO2 reduction targets. Mind you, this is natural gas that would otherwise have to be flared and is being put to a productive use. Xcel, a company I worry about because it is prone to manipulation by social justice and environmentalist noise (SJEN) figured they would have to build a couple of new power plants fired with natural gas in order to meet the new electrical demand.
Well see what transpires, but the scary part in the short term is the number of people and organizations who were oblivious to the consequences of their brainchild.
Long ago some people were concerned about the long term consequences of turning the educational system over to the lowest one-third of academic performers — the problem has only grown since then.
XCEL’s Colorado Energy Plan calls for spending something like $2.3 billion for wind and solar, plus shutting down a reliable coal burner. XCEL is making a fortune rebuilding its asset base with wind. The more it spends the more it makes.
https://www.cfact.org/2018/12/28/green-wave-staggers-u-s-power-utilities/
https://www.cfact.org/2018/12/09/giant-colorado-energy-company-xcel-goes-crazy-green/
https://www.cfact.org/2019/02/16/colorados-xcel-energy-is-misleading-the-public-with-false-promises/
Correction! My article numbers are for New York State, not City.
Here are the New York City numbers:
Peak power = 13,000 MW
13,000 MW x 168 hours = 2,184,000 MWh of battery backup capacity
@ur momisugly $1,500,000 per MWh of capacity = $3,276,000,000,000
or roughly THREE TRILLION DOLLARS. Still impossible.
They are building 400 MWh of capacity
2,184,000 MWh divided by 400 = 5,460 so 5,459 to go
or 400 divided by 2,184,000 = 0.00018 = 0.018%
Sorry for the confusion.
So rounded to a tenth of a percent, 400 MWh of capacity would meet 0.0% of NYC’s needs. Amazing.
Being New York, one would guess they’ll figure out a way to launder the money from US taxpayers.
David – thanks.
The Climate Cult folks don’t do numbers well.
_ _ _ _ _
You wrote: <em> Wind turbines require something like sustained winds of 10 mph to move the blades and more like a whistling 30 mph to generate full power. </em>
A local facility near us – on-line in 2006 and on a 3,500 ft. ridge, here:
47.01197, -120.20045
https://www.pse.com/pages/facilities/wild-horse
“Its turbines can produce electricity at wind speeds as low as 9 mph. They reach their peak of production at 31 mph and shut down at constant wind speeds above 56 mph.”
I have read elsewhere that turbines become parasitic when wind drops below that threshold. Apparently, they continue to use grid power to turn and seek a stronger wind.
If anyone is interested, there is a link to the manufacturer’s page for the initial turbines used at Wild Horse; link is on the page above under Fast Facts.
To recharge 1 million EVs (Electric Vehicles) overnight will take about 5 1000-MW power plants. There are 5+ million cars in NYC. This won’t end well.
RE: “New York can’t buy its way out of blackouts”
Please note #2 below:
In 2002 Dr Sallie Baliunas, Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian, Dr Tim Patterson, Paleoclimatologist, Carleton U and Allan MacRae TOLD YOU SO 18 YEARS AGO. We published in 2002:
1. “CLIMATE SCIENCE DOES NOT SUPPORT THE THEORY OF CATASTROPHIC HUMAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING – THE ALLEGED WARMING CRISIS DOES NOT EXIST.”
See Michael Shellenberger’s 2020 confession “On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare”.
2. “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.”
See Michael Moore’s 2020 film “Planet of the Humans”.
Our above 2002 major conclusions that contradict the global warming and green-energy frauds were made in 2002, based on fundamental laws of physics, which do not change in 18 years – or 18,000 years.
There is no real global warming crisis – it has always been a false and fraudulent crisis, promoted by scoundrels and believed in by imbeciles – wolves stampeding the sheep.
The Big Picture:
The global warming / climate change scam, the Covid-19 full-Gulag lockdown scam, the specious linkage of these two huge frauds, and the leftists’ “Final Solution”, the Marxist “Great Reset” – aka “Live like a Chinese peasant”.
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM PRESENTS: THE GREAT RESET— “YOU’LL OWN NOTHING, AND YOU’LL BE HAPPY.”
The World Economic Forum’s twitter account deleted the tweet in which this video was originally embedded in 2016.
All over the world, governments have been duped and have adopted a failed strategy of trying to appease leftist fraudsters who are intent on destroying our free society.
What to me may be the most frightening thing about all this is that it is highly likely that both China and Russia are stoking this nonsense recognizing that if they can get the west (US, Canada, UK, EU) to fully embrace the “green revolution”, they will have successfully gotten us to weaken if not destroy our economies, thus achieving their goal of dominating the west without firing a shot.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/12/25/china-recolonizes-africa/
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2020/12/21/chinas_green_ngo_climate_propaganda_enablers_654042.html
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/12/Green-reds.pdf
https://economics21.org/inconvenient-realities-new-energy-economy#.Xun54QaxDvk.email
If implemented NYC will wind-up being powered by nothing but stationary gas generators dotted all over the city.
Yep – but will there be any gas for the generators? As far as I’ve read, NY State is denying access across the state to any new gas pipelines.
The black market is the only kind of economy people will be able to have so it’ll be black market gas and black market generators.
Thanks for mentioning the Mws of the electric cars. That juice ain’t free, but no one mentions it. Adding 20% or 40% to our grid needs.
If, and it is a big IF, one can make very large scale energy storage economic enough then it may well be how we manage to make use of some small fraction of the tremendous energy the local fusion source (Sun) pours upon the earth. So it is a reasonable thing to explore. And for small things like having ample energy backup in your home it is quite useful and practical now.
That said I very much agree that media and players involved grossly overhype what has been achieved and what is near term available or at all likely.
Want to have zero carbon ample cheap energy? Fine. End the anti-nuclear hysteria and license and build modern failsafe nuclear plants as quickly as possible. In 10-15 years you could reach that goal without bullshit or literally leaving people in the dark.
Nu-Clear energy is the way to go. But EVs and their associated battery tech requirements will necessitate greater than 10 times and likely more in the neighborhood of 50 times the current copper mining output
Really, nothing has changed since dear old Ben Franklin said: “experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that.”
The point not discussed at all is the danger of having all this power in a small area. Say a battery catches fire (far from unknown) and the battery decides to self destruct. This will give a nuclear sized explosion if much of the stored energy is released. Now that is worse than the nuclear power plant explosion scenario. New York would probably cease to exist, you think the WTC collapse was bad?
Why don’t they store hydrogen, which can be produced with electricity, and then use it in appropriate power plants?
Dear Mr. Stone,
How much would the electricity produced on this way cost compared to the cost of electricity produced by the existing fossile fuel power plants in a real market economy (“real market economy”: No any distortion of the market for example by politically motivated sanctions (carbon tax and so on)).
Sorry, Dear Mr. marty instead of Dear. Mr. Stone.
Numbers and facts mean nothing to the Left. Only emotions, and they’re scared of climate change. They will vote for and push this sort of thing until the sheer weight of ignorance brings it all crashing down.
As long as it is NY paying for this foolishness, fine. Just don’t let them get subsidized by the feds. The sooner CA or NY – or any other state shutting down fossil fuel and nuclear power plants in favor of unreliables – fails, the better for the rest of us. The reality needs to hit hard in such a way that it is clear that the failure is the result of reliance on unreliables.