Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to climate scientists Ethan Coffel and Justin Mankin, we need to replace coal, gas and nuclear plants with solar and wind, because they are less affected by the heat of global warming.
Guest post: How global warming is making power plants produce less electricity
15 February 2021 8:00
Dr Ethan Coffel, assistant professor and climate scientist at Syracuse University
Dr Justin Mankin, assistant professor and climate scientist at Dartmouth College
The coal, gas and nuclear power plants that generate mostof the world’s electricity have to be kept cool in order to function properly. However, this will be increasingly challenging as the world gets warmer.
Waste heat from these facilities is typically released into the atmosphere or nearby water sources. During heatwaves or droughts, excessive heat or a lack of water makes it much harder for plants to be kept cool.
When this happens, the plants must be curbed, meaning electricity output is cut. This often comes just as electricity demand peaks due to people’s increasing reliance on air conditioning to keep cool.
In a new paper, published in Environmental Research Letters, we find that in a warming world, hundreds of additional power plants would need to be constructed in the coming decades simply to make up for this lost power.
However, this is not the only option. If nations instead focus on technologies such as solar and wind, which produce fewer emissions and are less impacted by hot weather, the electricity sector will be both less of a contributor to – and victim of – climate change.
…
Read more: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-global-warming-is-making-power-plants-produce-less-electricity
The study predicts an 0.8-1.2% falloff per degree of global warming, so not exactly a pressing emergency.
What about global warming induced severe winter weather? Climate scientists have rushed to assure us the Northern Hemisphere’s deep freeze is not incompatible with global warming. But as Texas recently noticed, solar panels and wind turbines don’t work that well when they are covered with ice.
Perhaps in the warmer future climate scientists expect, when snowfalls and freezing rain are a thing of the past, it might be worth considering solar and wind. But so long as severe winter weather is a possibility, surely it makes more sense to hang on to reliable power generation systems, maybe beef up the cooling systems a little so they can handle more heat in Summer.
Codswallop!
Hmmm
Texas
Wind and Solar Generating Facilities are Struggling with the Cold of Global Warming
Gas and Nuclear might have a few percent efficiency drop off with an additional degree of warming but Wind and Solar have a 50 – 100% drop off of production with snowfall and extended cold periods … Like WINTER
Gas turbines are cooled with air that has been heated to over 800 degrees. A one degree C rise over the past 50 years the extent of our global warming is inconsequential. Same with nuclear. Just more BS.
Yeah – a one-degree rise outside the core of a nuclear reactor might make it go kaboom! Oh, the humanity.
Are these guys really aware of how stupid they are making themselves appear, or really that desperate?
I want a grant to warn Corvette owners their cars’ bodies will melt. Probably.
No, they are not, and neither are all the people who listen to them.
Join the discussion
The first reply by Eric said it all. CODSWALLOP!. No need for the flood of further codswallop in most cases.
And, do wind and solar run better when it’s cold and snowy or wind is missing?
Like all other semiconductor devices, solar cells are sensitive to temperature. Increases in temperature reduce the bandgap of a semiconductor, thereby effecting most of the semiconductor material parameters. The decrease in the band gap of a semiconductor with increasing temperature can be viewed as increasing the energy of the electrons in the material. Lower energy is therefore needed to break the bond. In the bond model of a semiconductor bandgap, a reduction in the bond energy also reduces the bandgap. Therefore increasing the temperature reduces the bandgap.
In a solar cell, the parameter most affected by an increase in temperature is the open-circuit voltage. The impact of increasing temperature is shown in the figure below.
The open-circuit voltage decreases with temperature reducing panel output. Also inverteres used in wind and PV begin losing efficency at aroud 130 degrees F.
These authors have OBVIOUSLY never been to Texas. The timing of this article with the iced-over windmills in West Texas and elsewhere in Texas makes these guys look like complete idiots.
Look like – you say?
Given their employment they are likely infecting young minds with the stupid virus.
Training another crop of shallow fruit loop attributionists every year…..
https://youtu.be/5-bNZdAHK-A
The warming we have seen has not come from fossil fuels. As this paper from Norway demonstrates, the warming from CO2 is minuscule.
The Influence of IR Absorption and Backscatter Radiation from CO2 on Air Temperature during Heating in a Simulated Earth/Atmosphere Experiment
So, what is causing the warming over the past few centuries if not humans? The answer to that question may very well be …. humans. It’s just the mechanism that is wrong. A new paper, Cheng et al 2021, shows the changes in ocean salinity over the past few decades correlates very well with warming. The paper tries to blame the salinity change on AGW but their argument is so bad it would qualify as “not even wrong”.
The real cause is likely a combination of natural cycles with human use of salt in farming, water treatment, road deicing, etc.
I have been around farming all 67 years and the only salt used has been in the house.
Hi Richard M, – “Salinity” is a term referring to soluble minerals, of which there are quite a few. NaCl (sodium chloride) is popularly referred to as “salt”; although Na & Cl ions are certainly involved in salinity they are so as a part of total salinity.
In farming fertilizer formulas commonly include “mineral salts” which are water soluble, although agronomy does not refer to these as salt since mineral salts are more than just NaCl. I think that when reading about “soil salinity” many reflect on the word root “saline” & then mentally associate what read with our everyday salt NaCl.
They didn’t check the EPA heat wave index …..
😉
Typical bunch of head-in-the-sand garbage by fools who have not actually studied the science and history of climate change, and have no idea what it is all about.
Correct the normal temp in a power house is around 50 degrees, only kept to that level for the humans. You know you are dealing with dropkicks who don’t have a clue from that statement on.
Wow – somebody better remind these turkeys that solar is way less efficient when it gets hot!
Absolutely, Solar needs to be cooled as well or you wind up with Wal-Mart rooftop fires
Doesn’t air get less dense as it heats up?
Yep.
But the msm just keeps on getting denser.
(maybe that’s because it could actually be getting cooler?)
Unfortunately Michael Mann gets More Dense as his education level rises
Yes, and a big heatwave consists of a big high-pressure system sitting over the affected area, and when that happens, the winds sometimes go away and the windmills don’t turn.
But these turkeys area scientists, assistant professors, etc
I just love articles from “scientists” that have no clue about their subject matter.
I would be very interested in listening to these two yahoos explain how a natural gas co-generation power plant works.
And if you clean the bugs off your windshield, air resistance will be less, and you’ll get better mileage.
These jokers are idiots that have bought into the false claim that max temps are going up. They aren’t! Minimum temps are going up. That is what is increasing the mid-range values being propagated by the AGW crowd. If a plant will work during daytime temps then it will certainly work during nighttime temps under any foreseeable increase in min temps!
The last European near blackout in January is said to happen because of downgoing temperatures affecting French nuclear power plants.
The near blackout I thought was caused by an overloaded grid transporting the power and a big unit’s trip in Bularia.
That what I had was one of the first colported reasons, now I read, they had a lot of shutdowns of big customers in France, the split was caused in Rumania.
“Minimum temps are going up” Exactly! At least, in the U.S., the data is readily available @NIST.gov. Don’t have the link handy but look for NCEI pages.
You have to wonder how supposedly intelligent people can come up with such statements, or are they just blinkered by the University narrative
We need to define a new category to study: Climate change psychology/delusion.
We need some climate change psychologists to descibe for us the reasons why someone would assume the Earth is getting hotter and hotter, when the actual temperatures tell a different story.
I’ll take a shot at it: One reason someone would make such an unwarranted assumption is because they have been lied to by NASA Climate and NOAA.
I note the article is written by academics with no real world experience. They aren’t even engineers.
In Australia, a lot of the output of windfarms is reduced when the air temperature goes over 40degC. This is because they overheat.
Which was that ‘mystery DUID’ that apparently ‘can’t stand the heat’*? – WattClarity
And their operation is also suspect in conditions below 2degC because of icing on blades and oil viscosity.
Presumably this twoddle was peer reviewed which speaks volumes about the qualifications of teh reviewers
Peer review is little more than spell checking.
“Peer review” is, was and always will be no more than a beneficial protocol to maintain quality control of the publisher’s product. It reduces the need for published errata. One thing it does not do is validate the theses of their articles … the thing warmists invariable attribute to this practice.
Real “peer review” is accomplished in the real world like what’s happening daily on these pages, or when other scientists attempt to reproduce the findings
Not even that they got right in their study 😀
Solar panels are also impacted by high temperatures, and in Australia most if not all remote area fuel and accommodation stopping places rely on diesel fuelled generators for electricity supply.
Often sighted on the few major roads are “road trains” consisting of a prime mover or tractor pulling up to four trailers of fuel, or other goods.
Tejas is a test, it has provided results,,, how now can we proceed having facts and results,,, the greens can try ,but this weather will occur again and the population needs to save lives not shine BS . Stay with fossil tried and true and acquire more reliable back up .. as in small nuke reactors.. cold now, maybe could get much colder
These geniuses failed to take into account that utility-scale power plants (at least here in the US) use cooling towers for heat rejection to the atmosphere.
Cooling towers reject heat by evaporation, and the capacity is dependent almost entirely upon the moisture content of the ambient air, not the temperature.
I find it awfully hard to believe that a degree or two increase in the design dry-bulb temperature, if it even ever happens, will have any impact on the ability of cooling towers to reject heat.
In fact as the dry-bulb temperature of the ambient air increases (all other things equal) the ability of the ambient air to absorb moisture will increase.
Well you know these things are designed to only ever run in ideal conditions. Engineers never ever use things like Factors of Safety in designs, or design for out of normal conditions.
Duh
Hence Associate Professors!
How are the wond Turbines in Texas today? Frozen solid. What happens when it gets cold?
Build nuclear plants and drill oil and gas and put these Green Loonies in a rubber room in a quiet little village in El Salvador.
Uh, No..
Wind is affected by weather. The recent cold snap has paralyzed Texas. But what about warmer temps you ask?
In August 2019, Texas spot power prices hit the same 9000$/ MW-Hr when winds were weak and a coal plant was retired.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-15/scorching-texas-declares-second-power-emergency-in-three-days
https://www.americanexperiment.org/2019/08/bloomberg-lack-wind-causes-texas-electricity-prices-skyrocket-40000/
Hotter weather can kill your wind power as well as cold. The darn stuff is just INTERMITTENT !
Ethan and Justin could power their homes now with their own windmill and solar panels….I bet they have not done so.
Didn’t any of these climate scientists study thermodynamics!? Power plants are cooled with water not air. Air has a puny heat content and can’t possibly effect the temperature of water, What jerks
But in a warmer world, when cooling with water there are 2 dangers, high water temperatures, and low water level, both may cause a shut down of a water cooled plant.
At room temperature water has 3200 times the heat content as air. Water temperature therefore will not be
increased by air. That’s the laws of thermodynamics Why would water levels be low.?
After reactor 2 at the Swedish Ringhals nuclear power plant had been running at reduced capacity since Monday 30 July, it was closed down completely Tuesday afternoon.
The continued warm weather in Sweden has brought the sea water close to 25 degrees during recent days. To maintain cooling capacity at Ringhals’ production facilities, sea water is used for cooling of various systems and components in the process. The sea water used for cooling Ringhals 2 has now reached a temperature that makes it necessary to take the reactor out of operation.
– When the water becomes warmer, its cooling capacity is reduced and in order for us to keep the necessary cooling capacity for the various systems with a good safety margin, we now have to take Ringhals 2 out of operation, says Sven-Anders Andersson, Head of production at Ringhals.
Ringhals 3 and 4 are still producing normally, and Ringhals 1 is presently closed down for scheduled maintenance. Each reactor has a maximum permissible value for the sea water temperature. For Ringhals 2 it is 25 degrees.
Nuclear reactors in the tropics can cope because they have better cooling systems. If the world continues to warm, plants will slowly be fitted with better cooling systems as they are refurbished or replaced.
No problems with adapting to changed circumstances, but what I said was about the status quo.
I know that in the 90th, they had to exchange the condensers for cooling plants and systems for better working.
Until than, there where days, they had to cool down the roof condensers with water.
Changes nothing I said. Even if air temperatures were 10 degrees above normal this would only cause a small rise in water temperature, Sea water principally rises in temperature through the direct absorption of sunlight. I see this was 2018 perhaps there was unusual clear weather then.
What you said is correct, nevertheless watertemperatures in rivers are able to rise with sunshine duration, just when the levels are decreasing and waterflow is slower.
That’s what I’m able to observe living some meters away from Rhine border, swinging in sommer is possible, the other seasons not.
Warmer world is wetter.
No getting around it.
It has always been true, and always will be true.
Warm sea water in Finland reduces power from Loviisa nuclear plant
Finland’s Loviisa power plant, consisting of two reactors with a combined capacity of 1 gigawatt, had to reduce power by 170 megawatts on Wednesday as the sea water that is used to cool the reactors had become too warm, operator Fortum said.
Because of the very warm temperatures the Nordic region is currently experiencing, the sea water that is collected to cool the Loviisa reactors is warmer and the water released is also warmer, at 32 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.
Releasing hot water back to the sea after cooling the reactors could be a hazard and if it exceeds 34 degrees Fortum said the reactors must be shut down due to regulations.
So name any power plant which runs without a stable supply of water … just one???
The comment gets idiot of the week award.
The quality of your answer is at least at the level of griff or Loydo.
What warms water ? Maybe the sun, maybe warmed water from industrial cooling reflow from industries along a river ?
You know, in summer you can swim in river Rhine, not in spring, fall or winter.
Low River Water Could Cause Problems for German Coal Power Plants
German utility RWE warned energy markets this week that low water levels on the Rhine River may affect the delivery of hard coal to some of its plants, although no power production has yet been affected.
An October 17 Platts report quotes an RWE spokeswoman as saying on Monday, “Continued low river levels are increasingly a challenge for transporting the coal [by river barge from the ARA region].”
Plants that could be affected include Bergkamen, Gersteinwerk, and Westfalen.
One problem for plants caused by low water.
An other:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxLd3z2PhSo
Further:
Nuclear power plant in Germany on verge of getting switched off due to heat wave
A nuclear power plant in northern Germany has come to the verge of being taken off the grid on Friday, a Lower Saxony state environment ministry spokesperson told Clean Energy Wire. The ministry on Thursday had said the Grohnde nuclear plant near Hannover would likely be taken offline, as high temperatures were excessively warming a river used for the plant’s cooling system, and should be started up again once the heat wave that has hit Germany and other European countries with unprecedented temperatures has abated. On Friday, the plant’s operator, Preussen Elektra had informed the ministry that water temperatures were not rising as quickly as expected. However, precautions for a possible shutdown were taken nonetheless, the operator said. The river Weser, into which the plant’s cooling water is discharged, is suffering low water levels and has warmed to above 26 degrees Celsius. Additional heat from the nuclear reactor could damage the river’s ecosystem, the ministry said.
Influence of cooling water temperature on the efficiency of a pressurized‐water reactor nuclear‐power plant
The main findings of the paper is that the impact of 1°C increase in temperature of the coolant extracted from environment is predicted to yield a decrease of ∼0.45 and ∼0.12% in the power output and the thermal efficiency of the pressurized-water reactor nuclear-power plant considered, respectively.
The next time, you and the others answering my comment reflect a bit about what happens in the world surrounding you.
Salute!
Texas needs to be the poster boy for the renewable reliability, and Texas also has many coal plants still operating. I see them every summer driving to Colorado on 287 and hundreds of windmills each side of the highway. Granted, on the hot days of summer that wind is blowing and helping with all the folks’ airconditioners that they didn’t use 50 or 60 years ago. Ditto for the hot sun panels.
But then comes winter! This storm is the best example so far for too much relaiance on the renewables that cannot store excess energy by some means or another.
If I controlled the grant money, I would require the clueless academicians to live using their idea of how cheap and effective and reliable the windmills and solar panels work. And also require them to drive pure electric vehicles, no hybrids. After a few weeks in the winter they would likely die, not just suffer and learn to build a fire.
Oh well, I can dream, huh?
Gums sends…
“Texas needs to be the poster boy for the renewable reliability”
I think they just became the poster boy for unreliable electrical power in the form of windmills and solar.
Any sensible person can now see that windmills and industrial solar are not suited to providing baseline electrical power for the nation.
If the alarmists insist on trying to reduce CO2 output then nuclear power generation is the only viable option for them, and for the rest of us.
Windmills and industrial solar are deadends. They are niche power generation options The pubic should not have to subsidized these industries, they should succeed or fail on their own.
Texas had windmills producing 23 percent of their electrical power, and we see what happens when most of that becomes inoperable. A disaster ensues.
And we all thought Germany and California would be providing us this lesson about unreliable electricity generation. As they say, “Everything is Bigger in Texas!”
We’re now being told that the “Green New Deal” would have prevented this.
These guys are spot on.
On those hot dry summer days when the citrus leaves were curled even in the mornings, I’d call FPL and demand they shut down St. Lucie 1&2. I don’t think they paid me any attention. If only they(Coffel & Mankin) had been around to explain things.
A PhD in claptrap. Obviously not an engineer. What a load of codswallop
Well, at least they made sure to include plenty of hogwash, poppycock, and some good old-fashioned horseshit with the flapdoodle.
I mean codswallop.
Neither has the slightest bit of real engineering in their background.
They are basically CLUELESS about the topic they are talking about.
The fact they got away with this suppository BS and got it through peer-review really reflect badly on all involved.
This is some nuclear grade ignorance.
Q = U*A*(Th – Tc)
If the cold side temperature goes up (Tc), just make the area bigger (A)
All refineries have more or less the same processes that run at the same temperatures. Northern refineries have small cooling towers, southern refineries have big cooling towers. I’ve worked in Texas and up north – no issues with temperatures in either place.
So (cough cough), if temperatures just happen to go up, make the cooling towers bigger. Crisis averted. Where is my honorarium for solving this world-shaking problem?
“Northern refineries have small cooling towers, southern refineries have big cooling towers. ”
A little bit of bit of a simplification but pretty much true.
Hundreds of power plant will have to be built because the get old.
I was a power plant engineer. All power plants struggle to keep on line in extreme weather. I can think of no exceptions.
One of the reasons nuke plants in the US produce more power is power uprates. Basically cooling system design margins are used. So on some days, the plant can only produce the original rated power.
Another misconception about steam plants is that they are massive. Only the output is massive.
Wind and solar require large footprints. Life cycle emissions are not lower. They may appear to be lower when college professors do they calculations based on ‘expected’ output. However, wind and solar never produce expected power. I expect zero to be produced.
So during the hypothetical period for temperature to increase, hundreds of steam plants will get built. Not a big problem.
Millions of wind and solar projects will need to be built. Not possible.
At some point the fall apart rate will exceed the build rate.
The insanity has gone too far
The level of stupid from Dr Ethan Coffel and Dr Justin Mankin is off-the-charts. Is that what they call critical thinking at Syracuse U and Dartmouth? Pathetic. Clearly these two are merely in search of rent, i.e. grants and tenure by adhering to the climate dogma to make up that shit.
I mean really, no one with a PhD at an Ivy League school could really consider 1 to 2 degrees of global warming as having any real effect on modern power generation stations that have design and professional engineering staffs that are certainly more competent and intelligent that those to IYI’s. Those likely two took up a climate science career because they couldn’t hack it in a real engineering track.
Also, the 1 to 2 degree increase is driven by higher low temperatures.