by Roger Caiazza
According to their website, the “Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) is the leading US coalition of state energy organizations working together to advance the rapid expansion of clean energy technologies and bring the benefits of clean energy to all”. On August 5, 2021, they released “Energy Storage Policy Best Practices from New England: Ten Lessons from Six States” that “explores energy storage policy best practices and lessons learned from the New England states.” This post gives an overview of the report.
The report “aims to inform state policymakers and regulators seeking to expand energy storage markets”. I will address the following ten recommendations that “each state should consider as it charts its own course”:
- Identify benefits of energy storage that are not priced or monetizable in existing markets; recognize and accommodate the multi-use nature of energy storage resources.
- Establish a monetary value for each storage benefit and use those values when calculating cost effectiveness and setting incentive rates. Estimated value is better than no value at all.
- Create incentives to support storage operations that further state policy goals. Incentivize storage use, not just storage deployment.
- Set ambitious clean energy and/or emissions reduction goals and explicitly include energy storage as an eligible technology. Define how storage is expected to be deployed and operated to help meet the goals.
- Incorporate energy storage into existing clean energy and efficiency programs.
- Incorporate equity considerations into energy storage program design from the start, not as an afterthought. This should include significant incentive adders for qualifying participants.
- Support a wide variety of storage ownership, application, and business models.
- Anticipate and proactively address needed regulatory changes.
- Replicate and improve on successful programs implemented in other states.
- Fund demonstration projects when needed, but do not rely on grants alone to build a market.
After Superstorm Sandy struck New York City the importance of resilient power became evident to the green energy policy makers and the idea that battery storage could help was broached. The report states that their efforts began “with the idea that advanced battery storage—especially when combined with rooftop solar and other energy resources—could provide clean, resilient backup power, allowing critical facilities such as emergency shelters and health clinics to ride through future grid outages.” A frequently used example of the viability of distributed systems is a hospital in Princeton, NJ that remained on-line despite widespread grid outages due to Sandy. Unfortunately, proponents of these distributed energy approach who cite this as proof of the viability of the concept don’t mention that the hospital had a natural gas fired backup system. The presumption that coupling battery storage with renewable resources will work as well is untested in practice.
The report goes on to note that energy storage can be used to provide other energy services: “demand management, frequency regulation, grid infrastructure investment deferral, renewables integration, and load shifting.” The report claims that: “As the list of possible storage applications expanded, state storage policy would need to become more sophisticated, and state utility commissions would need to review many regulations that had been written prior to the widespread availability of advanced battery storage, which now needed to be revised to accommodate this new technology”. The ten recommendations address these points.
The first recommendation is to “Identify benefits of energy storage that are not priced or monetizable in existing markets and recognize and accommodate the multi-use nature of energy storage resources”. The example benefit given is behind-the-meter (BTM) resilient power that is the ability to support critical facilities and infrastructure during an electric grid outage. As proof they note that that is “widely recognized as having value—otherwise, there would not be a thriving market for backup generators.” The claim is that “Battery storage, when properly configured, can provide resilient power, and this is one of the storage applications that customers value most highly.” Therefore, they recommend that the states figure out some way to monetize this benefit. However, in my case while I chose to install a generator because resilient power is important to me, I wanted the system to be able to handle the multi-day outages I have experienced due to a wind storm and an ice storm. In both cases there is no way I could have installed enough rooftop solar and storage to provide power throughout those days-long outages. Resilient power needs are for the worst case, not just most of the times the power goes out. The worst case is a long duration extreme hot or cold weather situation and energy storage is a poor choice for those scenarios.
In this recommendation, the report states that “Advanced energy storage can provide a wide variety of energy services, and storage owners frequently need to “stack” multiple services (each representing a revenue stream or cost savings opportunity) in order to make storage investments economic.” It includes a highlighted section that discusses a “multi-use” resource. While it recognizes that the different services are “not necessarily” available at the same time, it goes on in Table 1 to list the ratepayer individual savings for six beneficial services then sums for the total. Clearly, this is not appropriate.
The second recommendation is to “Establish a monetary value for each storage benefit and use those values when calculating cost effectiveness and setting incentive rates. Estimated value is better than no value at all”. The paper lists values for seven non-energy benefits of distributed storage in Massachusetts.
The first claimed benefit is Avoided Power Outages – “Battery storage helps avoid outages, and all of the costs that come with outages for families, businesses, generation and distribution companies”. I agree that outages have costs for families and businesses and battery storage that can reduce or eliminate them clearly has value. However, the only way I can think that outages would affect generation companies is if there is a power plant outage and energy storage is used during the outage but the existing system has enough spare capacity to handle that concern. I cannot think how energy storage would reduce costs for a distribution company.
The second value is Higher Property Values – “Installing battery storage in buildings increases property values for storage measure participants by: 1. Increasing leasable space; 2. Increasing thermal comfort; 3. increasing marketability of leasable space, and 4. reducing energy costs”. My understanding is that energy storage systems need space so it is unclear how they would increase leasable space. The other three benefits also seem to be stretch the concept of “value”.
Next is Avoided Fines – “Increasing battery storage will result in fewer power outages and fewer
potential fines for utilities”. I have no clue how energy storage can provide this benefit. Utilities get fined when they don’t plan for enough resiliency in their system to prevent extreme weather impacts on their transmission and distribution systems. Energy storage cannot prevent power outages caused by damages to the wires.
The fourth value is Avoided Collections and Terminations – “More battery storage reduces the need for costly new power plants, thereby lowering ratepayer bills, and making it easier for ratepayers to consistently pay their bills on time. This reduces the need for utilities to initiate collections and terminations.” The ability of battery storage to reduce the need for new power plants is an article of faith amongst the advocates of this technology. However, the claims are long on rhetoric and short on quantitative analysis. If an old power plant has to be replaced it would take one heck of a lot of energy storage to provide the output of any natural gas fired turbine. Until I see their numbers then I will continue to believe that the costs of sufficient energy storage coupled with renewable resources would be far more than the costs of a new turbine.
The fifth value is Avoided Safety-Related Emergency Calls – “Increasing battery storage results in fewer power outages, which reduces the risk of emergencies and the need for utilities to make safety-related emergency calls”. In theory if a customer has a need for uninterrupted power a personal battery storage system could reduce emergency calls. However, you are back to the issue of energy storage capacity versus outage time. If I have the need for uninterrupted power, I want it available for long durations. In order to provide that with energy storage I have to purchase so much capacity for such a rare event that it cannot be cost effective relative to a generator.
The sixth value in the document is Job Creation – “More battery storage benefits society at large by creating jobs in manufacturing, research and development, engineering, and installation”. I have my doubts about this claim but don’t want to do the research necessary to refute this.
The last value in this recommendation is Less Land Used for Power Plants – “More battery storage reduces the need for peaker plants, which are more land-intensive than storage installations—benefiting society by allowing more land to be used for other purposes.” This is only true at the facility itself. However, the grand plan is to combine energy storage with power generated from wind and solar power. Ignoring the vast land use requirements for enough coupled energy storage and diffuse renewable generation is an egregious oversight as shown in the following picture from the report.

The third recommendation is to “Create incentives to support storage operations that further state policy goals. Incentivize storage use, not just storage deployment.” The report states that because
“clean energy incentives generally support broader policy goals such as energy sector decarbonization, electrification, sustainability, modernization, efficiency, resilience, and reliability” that the “energy storage incentive program should not be about ‘storage for storage’s sake,’ but should be designed to support specific policy goals”. The report notes that battery storage can “provide several different services depending on how it is used” so it suggests that “a state energy storage program must actively link the use of battery systems to applications that support specific policy objectives. However, it does not recognize that battery systems that support one policy objective cannot necessarily support all other policy objectives. For example, batteries used for energy storage when intermittent renewables are not available need to be kept charged at their maximum capacity but batteries for frequency regulation and to smooth intermittent fluctuations in supply are kept at an intermediate capacity so that they supply power and draw power as needed. Consequently, I believe the report underestimates the amount of energy storage needed.
Furthermore, there is another example of the disconnect between energy storage by itself and energy storage coupled with renewable energy to solve intermittency. Figure 4A, Misaligned Financial Signals claims that a California energy storage program to reduce emissions was set up incorrectly because “battery owners frequently discharged their batteries during low emissions periods, rather than charging when emissions were low and discharging when they were high”. Honestly, I don’t think the author understands emissions control programs or diurnal peak loads. Time of day emissions matters for conventional air pollution but does not matter for GHG emissions because GHG contribute only to a global long-term alleged problem. Diurnally, California renewable energy primarily comes from solar which peaks during the middle of the day. Figure 4A shows the batteries being charged during the day and then discharging later in the day causing the emissions to go to zero. Diurnal peak loads are usually in the late afternoon so even though there are emissions in the middle of the day the program eliminated emissions during the peak period – it worked precisely as it was supposed to if the goal of the program is to reduce nitrogen oxides for ozone attainment. The “solution” shown in Figure 4B is simply switching the charging source to wind because if it is charging in the night, it certainly is not coming from solar.






The fourth recommendation is “Set ambitious clean energy and/or emissions reduction goals and explicitly include energy storage as an eligible technology. Define how storage is expected to be deployed and operated to help meet the goals.” Regulators take ambitious goals as an article of faith believing that somehow the goals can be met because previous air pollution control programs have always met their goals. The concept that feasibility should be considered is not an element of many regulators and no politician’s thought process.
The next recommendation is “Incorporate energy storage into existing clean energy and efficiency programs.” I think this is pretty obvious so no comment.
The sixth recommendation is “Incorporate equity considerations into energy storage program design from the start, not as an afterthought. This should include significant incentive adders for qualifying participants.” The rationale for this is:
“Low-income and underserved communities spend proportionally more of their income on energy costs than other segments of the population. They are also more likely to suffer from energy related environmental and health burdens; and they are hit hardest by natural disasters and the accompanying grid outages and have fewer resources with which to recover. In short, they are most in need of the cost savings, resilience, and health benefits energy storage can offer.”
This another example of limited thinking. While I do not dispute the underserved communities are disproportionally impacted by environmental impacts and extreme weather events the presumption that cost savings will accrue from clean energy are not supported by the experience of any jurisdiction that has tried it. Furthermore, if society not only subsidizes clean energy but also attempts to provide it to those who cannot afford existing energy then it only increases the costs to everyone else. Most importantly, those who may be just able to afford energy bills now but will not be able to afford them in future net-zero energy systems will be impacted by this recommendation.
The recommendation listed in the introduction as “Anticipate and proactively address needed regulatory changes” apparently morphed into the seventh recommendation in the report “Pay attention to regulatory friction points” during the documentation preparation process. The point of the recommendation is that there may be unintended consequences when new energy storage policies are adopted. The analogy used is regulatory whack-a-mole where the states will have to “spend several years fixing problems one at a time as they pop up” after they implement a new rule. In my opinion this should be addressed as part of the feasibility study that most advocates don’t think is necessary. However, the presumption that all the problems associated with converting an energy system using dispatchable energy sources that has taken decades to evolve to one utterly dependent upon intermittent energy sources in a decade or two can be anticipated is wishful thinking. Anyone in a net-zero jurisdiction will be a guinea pig for this experiment.
The eighth recommendation is “Support a wide variety of storage ownership, application, and business models”. The rationale is that energy storage can “integrate renewables and make regional grids more efficient, reduce transmission congestion, defer distribution grid investments, make variable generators dispatchable”. It is also claimed that it can “flatten demand peaks, balance microgrids, make critical infrastructure resilient, and provide ancillary services”. Not noted is that these applications are mostly theory and, especially in a de-regulated market, developing business models that work for both society and the grifters selling energy storage as the solution to anything and everything will be a challenge.
The ninth recommendation is “Replicate and improve on successful programs implemented in other states”. Obviously, there is no sense reinventing the wheel so this makes sense. However, “success” has to be defined well because it can be in the eye of the beholder.
The last recommendation is to “Fund demonstration projects when needed, but do not rely on grants alone to build a market”. As I read this document, I became more and more convinced that the author had limited electric energy system experience. He claims that “there is little need to demonstrate another utility-scale lithium-ion battery providing peak demand reduction and frequency regulation services when numerous such projects already exist in the region”. The report is illustrated with pictures and descriptions of five energy storage facilities with the largest having an 8 MWh duration and totaling 22.4 MWh. The average daily load in New England is 260,120 MWh so those facilities are inconsequential. I don’t think there is any question that in these micro grid applications that batteries can provide peak demand reduction and frequency regulation services. I question whether the author understands that the issue is a matter of scale and it is not at all clear that peak demand reduction and frequency regulation is feasible when non-dispatchable resource penetration is significant. Ultimately it is obvious that ratepayers cannot provide grants for all the energy storage projects needed to try to support the utility grid.
Conclusion
The report concludes that “With falling battery prices, increasing adoption of state clean energy and decarbonization goals, and forward-looking utilities (and ratepayers), many states have a strong foundation for success”. The report is supposed to offer “some suggestions to policymakers for building on that foundation”.
I am unconvinced that this report provides any value. The report was not proofed well because wording of the ten recommendations in each chapter do not match the description of the ten recommendations in the introductory text. I was prompted to write this article by the following quote from the introduction: “In Vermont, for example, Green Mountain Power’s residential battery program has placed battery systems in more than 3,000 homes; the utility dispatches this aggregated, distributed energy storage resource to reduce peak demand, saving ratepayers millions of dollars.” The report notes that the “Stafford Hill solar farm includes 7,700 solar panels capable of producing 2.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power 2,000 homes. Therefore 3,000 homes are powered by 3.75 MW. I would love to see the math that produces millions of dollars of savings from shaving peaks by 3.75 MW. I just don’t think this is credible and indicates a lack of knowledge about electric systems by the author.
I believe there is a fundamental oversight not mentioning that stacking energy storage applications is problematic. A single energy storage system cannot supply all the different resources suggested (e.g., by summing the benefits of each resource in Table 1) in this report. There is another fundamental issue with the report because it considers energy storage by itself. Batteries are supposed to solve non-dispatchable renewable energy issues. Claiming that energy storage improves resilience when the coupled energy input is fragile and intermittent is at best a stretch. Finally note that there was very little in the way of caveats and cautions with respect to this unproven, at utility scale and using renewables, technology. As a result, policy makers will not get a full appreciation of the challenge of this transition.
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Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
“The last value in this recommendation is Less Land Used for Power Plants…” Those fossil fueled power plants are such land hogs compared to say, a wind or solar farm…LOL.
Not really, but don’t let reality get in the way of a good story.
Word salad alert.
You really are slow today. That wasn’t an argument, just a comment on the quality of your post.
Oil and natural gas are not fossil fuels. They derive from the breakdown of neutron-rich elements that heat Earth’s core. The elements produced are mostly C and H, and as the methane, CH4, percolates upward, some hydrogen is lost to the molten magma and methane becomes longer hydrocarbons. This is why you might find natural gas without oil, but you never find oil without natural gas. THIS IS A RENEWABLE RESOURCE, a biotic gas and oil. Coal may very well be the result of these materials percolating through fossilized plant matter beds. Again, there is a lot of natural gas in coal mines.
Hydrocarbons, certainly, petroleum and coal correlated with organic matter. Perhaps in the future, we will be able to narrow the field, and discern their origin and [contaminated] expression in human accessible frames of reference. In the meantime, an excellent source of energy and other products, and nutritious matter in some environments, for some organisms. Then, of course, organic CO2, anthropogenic CO2 a minority’s minority, and a green and greening Earth. Emit responsibly.
Petroleum companies already are able to source the origins of petroleum from core samples and chemical analysis.
Non-associated natural gas can be formed from thermogenesis of kerogen and is also sourced from coal beds. It also usually contains some condensate.
In any case, how does your theory account for the presence of biomarkers, like steranes, pristane, phytane and saturated isoprenoids in petroleum?
Chemically, there is no way in which coal could be formed from hydrocarbons percolating though fossilized plant matter.
Oil isn’t on the surface.
Surface area of the earth: 510,000,000 km2
2% of that: 10,200,000 km2
Area of Australia: 7,692,024 km2
So an part of the surface of the Earth larger than Australia is Oil?
Mark, are you ABSOLUTELY sure you are wording your argument correctly?
Seems to me that Natural Evolution has already worked out the kinks of the Energy Storage Problem. The best storage device for high density energy supply to power a modern society IS Carbon Based Energy…Designed by Nature, Provided by Nature and ALL NATURAL
Conclusion…Eliminate Liberal Democrats and the world runs smoothly
The main electricity in a producing oil field is to run the pumps and transport the oil, first can be operated nearly independent, especially in the middle of nowhere; second close. Are there any wind turbine fields independent of a separate distant energy source? Drive through oil and turbine fields and get back to us with the ratio of energy unit production per unit time per square foot. Pipelines are usually buried, electric transmission lines not so much.
One’s intestines are 25′ or so in length, but amazingly everything that passes through them exits via an orifice that can close to zero area.
You could have them be independent of external energy sources to operate provided you had 2 Wind Turbines to provide energy assistance to every 1 providing Grid Energy
A juxtaposition of clean, green, nutritious high density energy petroleum products and a laundered, gray, low density Green blight spread over land and water. To be fair, both are solutions in large and niche markets, respectively. If not for the prophetic consensus of a catastrophic climate, and urbane proclivities, the latter would have limited viability, indeed.
Would you care to define your understanding of an “Oil Field” and what consists of the land it occupies?
I think the blabbering nonsense of the post above makes it pretty clear that M.I. really IS just a troll, and almost certainly the most successful one we’ve seen.
Or a cleverly programmed chat bot.
Tom,
but also, large capacity batteries require more generation capacity to keep them charged, i.e. extra power plants so the point is not really valid.
Let’s hope for peak troll. Starve the troll, please.
Badly I only can upvote once 😀



I would say we hope for peak troll(s)
In all this verbal diarrhea not a single word about efficiency of the storage options. Truly the lunatics rule the asylum and the grownups are removed from policy making. Truly we will pay a heavy price when the eh butcher’s bill is presented for this nonsense.
I don”t believe the 4 MWh battery is visible in the photo, the small white shed likely contains the inverter.
I doubt that 3 minutes or 3 hours of stored energy can help for anything but a local transformer failure. These batteries are simply not fit for purpose, super-expensive, and have a short lifetime, which means more super expense.
And are excellent sources of Thermal Energy creating potential Fire Sources in every building
Though I fear that it took more energy to make the batteries then you will be able to get out of them as they burn down.
Just use them as a fuel source in a furnace to generate electricity, eliminate 2 birds with one stone
Assume a 100 MWHr battery bank and a nearby 500 MW wind farm. If the wind dies suddenly, that battery bank can supply the customers for 1/5 hour, or 12 minutes. That’s long enough to get the spinning reserve on line, if the battery is capable of discharging that fast. Or supply your own assumptions, e.g. a 100 MW solar plant that doesn’t provide any power at night. Battery farms don’t make technical or financial sense.
“Clean” and “Renewable” energy. Sounds great. PV Solar, Wind, and Lithium Batteries are dirty and non-renewable.
Other than that, carry on…
Don’t be surprised when a one trick pony keeps returning to it’s own vomit.
When cattle get into the shape that Mark Ingraham is in, they’re knocked between the eyes with a 20lb sledgehammer
He claimed the ability to “buy” WUWT earlier today.
Soylent Green
Great, Green, Hopeful, and forward-looking transmarket rackets are invariably accompanied by a Planned Population scheme: older, younger, and the youngest “burdens”, in a wicked solution, a transglobal conflict to reset accounts
You can.lead a horse to water, but it takes lead for every pencil.
But you were the first one to mention them.
Why do people keep responding to this psychotic knothead?
Find a new hobby.
His logic is great … No one mentioned oil reserves yet there is his comment.
.
We are also eagerly awaiting his offer to buy WUWT.
He claims to already have a blog.
Maybe that is one of the blogs he was banned from?
So he banned himself, makes sense.
This “study” seems to be playing green buzzword bingo, where assembling the most green sounding proposal is the goal. Never mind that the quantitative analysis is so casual as to be purely for show.
But if you google Gina McCarthy’s education ,from her degrees, she could very well have never taken one “hard course” in her entire education. And I believe she is normal for environmental regulators. This “study” might well meet with her approval.
Anyone advocating any version of the GND (renewables plus) is by definition innumerate.
And also lacking any basic physical science. Even very simple stuff like renewable intermittency backup is necessary because the sun does not alway shine and the wind does not always blow.
AOC illustrates both points nicely. She is a good example of George Carlin’s non- joke:
Remember how dumb the average 100 IQ person is, then realize that half are dumber than that.
Peak Green is reached with short-term, recurring irregularity on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. The Green deal is a solution for niche markets where high availability and reliability does not matter.
And if ‘ifs and buts were candy and nuts’ we’d have a fine Christmas. This entire report is without substance. It’s a wish list and nothing more.
Can’t wait for one of these big battery facilities to fail during a crisis or weather event or god forbid leak it’s contents into the water table. We already know that fires happen and they basically do a major toxic meltdown and burn for days. Can’t wait to watch the horror that erupts when a major weather event causes all their exposed solar and wind systems to be destroyed and there is no backup because it was “bad”. Might actually be good since a week or 2 going hungry might wake up people to the folly of these vulnerable systems.
I want those “big batteries” to be required by law to be built right next to the places where the politicians that support the lunacy live and work, so they can be the ones running from the inextinguishable fires that are inevitable. Oh, and those same politicians should also be required to get 100% of their electricity and transport, whether at home or at work, from wind, solar, and “batteries.” Not working? Tough shit, live with the stupidity of your own “platform.”
The report is trying to pretend that fossil fuel needs battery backup aa a means of having costs fall on everyone, not just the intermittent power sources.
If batteries were cheaper than peaking plants, power companies would already be using batteries.
See below. You can get a motorhome and 8 years of fuel for the cost of 8 days of equivalent battery storage.
A Green privilege enjoyed through shared responsibility, and a prophetic change that is not forthcoming.
Exactly. There has always been a place for grid level storage – even if only to smooth the highs and lows each day. The fact that it never happened is a fair indication that it has never been cost effective.
Appreciate the effort you put into this CESA dissection.
There is a simpler CESA rebuttal once one realizes they meant battery storage.
If the thing does not exist, all 10 CESA superficially ‘reasonable’ thing points make no sense. Just like large scale renewables themselves.
Rud,
We Aussies have never been offered or allowed a say about our future electricity structures. Example, many people did not know we were getting a big battery at Geelong until it caught fire a few days ago. Nobody had a vote on this outlandish expenditure.
The official acronyms like AEMO (Aust Energy Market Operator) are staffed by converts who write deliberately misleading reports, like how 75% or 90% renewables penetration is not just possible, but essential. They do this by assuming that fossil fuel cannot be considered or compared because Aust signed Paris agreement.
It is sick, sick, sick. Time some devious people were offered jail time. Geoff S
If the liberals are successful in forcing EVs down our throats, I wonder what will happen to insurance rates for homes that have a garage with an EV parked inside — charging!
In other words, even more subsidies.
Since according to this battery storage reduces ratepayer costs the solution is obvious. Reduce rates now to incentivize the market response to install batteries and save money.
The most cost effective battery is a generator with a big fuel tank.
A typical class A gas motorhome has a 5.5 kva generator, 80 gallon fuel tank and sells for $100k.
80 gallon of gas is 2600 kwh of power. At 40% efficiency that is 1000 kwh of power. At 5 kw that is 200 hours full out. About 8 to 9 days running 2 aircons, fridge and hw.
Now a powerwall is about 10kwh for $10k. So you need about 100 powerwalls to equal 1 class A mh generator with fuel. That is $1 million in batteries vs $100k for the motorhome.
You could take the $900k difference and buy 300k gallons of gasoline. About 4000 fill up time 8 days running time per. Almost 9 years of power vs 8 to 9 days for rhe powerwall.
And as a bonus the MH is mobile and you can live in it if the power goes out
Fortunately, you wouldn’t have to buy 300k gallons of fuel all at once.
That’s kind of the problem with batteries in that you’re stuck with the full mass of electrodes, electrolytes, etc. from the beginning.
Quote:”Installing battery storage in buildings increases property values for storage measure participants”
Somebody is out of their tiny little mind. Those things are incendiary bombs.
After just a couple of those take fire, NOBODY is gonna want them installed anywhere near their houses, let alone inside.
Quote:” Increasing thermal comfort; 3. increasing marketability of leasable space, and 4. reducing energy costs””
Headline:”Cladding crisis”
‘Cladding’ was installed under Government mandate/diktat by Government Cronies milking the system for all it was worth
It has gone on to destroy people’s savings, mortgages & pretty well everything.
Yet ‘cladding’ was supposed to do all the things mentioned in the quote.
At last count, cladding has trashed the value of nearly 4 million homes.
4 million UK houses are now worthless because of those sort of promises.
And The UK Government has simply walked away
I’ll let the peeps in this BBC video explain a bit more
Especially your insurance company!
How does one go about advising best practices without any knowledge of such or examples? The best cases of stored energy in New England have been on-site storage of fossil fuels either at backup generating plants or even at utility generation. They have saved the day upon occasion. Best practice.
“How does one go about advising best practices without any knowledge of such or examples?”
Obviously one can’t. In a more enlightened time, assuming the existence of non-existent storage systems as a premise for the immediate and widespread adoption of unreliable and uneconomic power sources would have been considered a logical fallacy. If I recall correctly, it’s called “begging the question”.
You can untie your shoes, unlock your doors, unscrew a light bulb and undermine good ideas. How do you undo green energy when all of conventional energy is gone. And the climate has not cooperated by changing in a drastic way.
Using farm land for food good! Using farmland for gasoline, wind and solar farms not good. And wind and solar kills birds that eat insects that eat crops.
In New England, a government-funded propaganda organization had found that increasing government funding, regulation and interference in energy markets is a “Best Practice”. Surprise!
This article is peppered with ads for this company (for me, at least.. your ad content may be different) I hadn’t heard of them until now, nor have I searched for anything remotely related to their products…
https://nomoreblackout.com/en/consumer-landing/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Sempre-Energia-Consumer-Display-prodotto&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvtOV_IGl8gIV6oJ3Ch0LMgbfEAEYASAAEgLj1_D_BwE
I think they’re trying to tell me something…
Probably Google and Cookies and going to the site triggering the ads
Right! Installing more stupid power sources and dumb batteries opens up the market for fossil fuel powered backup generators.
Backup batteries cannot make wind and/or solar reliable. The Hornsdale power reserve in Australia was the world’s biggest back-up battery when it was built in 2017. Hornsdale can provide a total of 70 MW for just 10 minutes or 30 MW for 3 hours. That’s TINY. What it does is buffer a wind farm so that when the wind dies off it gives the utility just enough time to bring a Natural Gas fired turbine on line. To store enough energy to prop up a wind or solar farm the size of one nuclear power plant (1000 MWe) for one single night would require a battery about 90 times bigger than Hornsdale but Hornsdale cost over $70 million US dollars. Even a battery 90 times larger than Hornsdale costing $6.0 billion wouldn’t be big enough to buffer the wind or solar farm through a single day of calm or cloudy weather, let alone a week.
Australia is now building a bigger battery near Geelong. One of the modules, a Tesla Megapack, caught fire during testing, burned for 3 days, and was totally destroyed.
Energy (and economic) smoothing functions in the short-term, with catastrophic resets in the long-term.
Like all such documents is was written by someone without any power generation experience.
It really is simple; if you understand anything about power generation you know you can’t do without fossil fuel generation, if you are ignorant you believe in “renewable” power & battery backup.
From the second recommendations “The second value is Higher Property Values.” Then you can invest in trailer parks…. “Estimated value is better than no value at all.” You don’t have to know the difference between a cathode and anode to know the problem with that.
A solar PV ‘farm’ in Vermont?
Vermont already has some of the most expensive electricity in the US.
Solar PV + storage is the most inefficient form of electricity generation in locations like Vermont.
Solar PV + storage in locations of moderate insolation are energy sinks or close to it.
Over time, theoretically, if Vermont depended on solar PV as the main energy source and all the materials and labor required for the manufacture construction maintenance and disposal of solar PV + storage were confined to Vermont the economy would eventually collapse.
The only reason that is not obvious is most of the mining and manufacturing takes place in China or Third World countries.
Having ridden out a few hurricanes over my years, there is often three to four days of quiet, clouded weather, as the energy has been drained for the system. Where are these reliant systems going to be when they cannot recharge in good time. It’s just a nonstarter, really, period.
Nonsense Charles, it’s magic 😉
Not to mention if “wind and solar” provided your power before the hurricane, there’d be nothing left to provide the power after the hurricane, even when they got the “transmission and distribution” lines back together.
Details details. It’s still a good warm snugly story and I feel good about it. That’s what matters. I feel good about it.
So there.
tl:dr
From the third item of the above article’s list:
“3. Create incentives to support storage operations that further state policy goals.”
WTF does that mean in plain English? If the “storage operations” were net beneficial, they would stand on their own merits, and therefore not need any form of
“incentivies”governmental handouts.And it is to be the “incentives” or the “storage operations” that “further state policy goals”.
And what, oh what, is one to do if the state policy goals are contrary to the best interests of the governed citizens . . . like, that could never happen, right?
If no value exists or the value is negative, an erroneous or intentionally biased or simply foolish estimate is a great deal worse than no value at all.
1000 watts of solar power might produce 100 watts of electricity for a few hours around mid day in Vt in the wintertime . maybe about three times that for six hours in the summertime .
AFTER the snow is blown off!
When I lived in Vermont, the last snow of the season was on May 1st, and the first snow in the Fall was mid-October. Although, one year we didn’t get any snow until Christmas Eve — then we got 18″ overnight.
Vermont has 10 months of Winter and 2 months of bad sledding.
You forgot 2 months of mud between “winter” and “bad sledding.”
Green Mountain Power: What a terrible waste of relatively scarce flat agricultural land in Vermont.
Just drive up I-91 and see what was once acres of productive farmland now covered in soon to be toxic waste. Some very wealthy individuals made a lot of money on this scam…
“Energy Storage Best Practices from New England” Stop the nonsense and just burn coal, gas and oil, or build more nuclear power. STOP trying to justify unreliable power generation when RELIABLE power generation is required. All unreliable power generation leads to de-industrialization, unemployment, and declining living standards for the majority.
Human emissions of CO2 are negligible compared to nature and ALL atmospheric CO2 so called ‘warming’ effect is lost in the natural noise and chaos of thermal changes inherant in natural climate change.
All else is just BS!
Too many cooks spoil the broth .
Different ‘ experts ‘ in their own field whether it be solar or wind energy production , others for energy distribution , some for storage , economists and then environmentalists .
Put them all in a barrel mixed with politicians is sure to provide a foul taste .
How much electricity will those Vermont solar PV panels produce when they are covered with snow for 3 months?
They could get out the propane powered heater sn clear off the snow and ice I suppose. But short winter days they still would produce only a few hours of electricity. I guess Vermonters are supposed to freeze to death. Maybe they take Bernie and the Ben and Jerry idjits with them.
Who reads this kind of rubbish ?
More to the point who writes it ?
Must be a Philadelphia Lawyer !!
That is a whole lot of PVC panels. Who is responsible for cleaning them and keeping them snow-free during the long, cold, Vermont winter? I know from experience with all the tiny solar-powered lights and pumps in my garden that if they are not kept clean the efficiency of the items drops quickly. Just sayin….
In Vermont, they hire people from Jamaica to pick the apple crop in the fall.
During the winter they hire squeegee guys from NYC to clear off the solar panels.
Coal piles, fuel oil and LPG tanks, pumped hydro. Proven safe means of (backup fuel) energy storage.
Industrial scale batteries? Not so much.
What a vast waste of fertile farmland that will be polluted forever due to heavy metals and toxins leaching from the solar panels, during about 25 to 30 years
New England has the worst solar conditions in the US, except for rainy, foggy Washington
state.
No PV solar and battery storage would exist, without the outrageously high federal and state subsidies, and the extensive cost shifting from owners to rate payers and taxpayers, and to government debts.
Here are some numbers that detail the scam of wind, solar and batteries in New England.
EXCERPT FROM:
HIGH COSTS OF WIND, SOLAR, AND BATTERY SYSTEMS IN NEW ENGLAND
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-costs-of-wind-solar-and-battery-systems
Green Mountain Power, GMP, Riding the Subsidy Gravy Train
Vermont utilities buy about 1.4 million MWh/y of hydro power, at 5.7 c/kWh, under a 20-y contract, from Hydro Quebec. The HQ electricity is not variable, not intermittent and does not cause midday solar bulges
GMP, a Canadian company, refuses to buy more hydro electricity from HQ, because that electricity would just be a “pass-through”, on which GMP would make minimal profit. HQ has plenty of electricity and is eager to sell it. This approach requires no subsidies!!
GMP rakes in millions of our hard-earned money, by investing in: 1) utility-scale solar/battery combos, 2) leasing heat pumps and 3) wall-hung Tesla batteries for playing “catch the peak games”.
GMP rides the subsidy gravy train, a la Warren Buffett, and plays the “green, forward-looking utility” role.
Per standard Wall Street practice for tax-shelters, the cash value of the subsidies is about 45% of the project turnkey cost, which includes the costs of: 1) financing, 2) subsidies, 3) owner’s return on investment.
The subsidies are “front-loaded”, i.e., about 40% is recovered by GMP in the first 5 years, the other 5% in the remaining years, i.e., skimming the fat off the milk for GMP in the early years, and long-term increased costs for ratepayers and taxpayers.
https://solarplusllc.com/macrs-and-bonus-depreciation/
https://norwichsolar.com/vermont-commercial-and-industrial-solar-incentives/
https://vermontbiz.com/news/2019/october/22/owner-gmp-and-vermont-gas-will-get-new-ceo
Cost Shifting from Owners to Ratepayers and Taxpayers
The owning and operating cost of wind, solar and battery systems, c/kWh, is reduced by about 45%, due to subsidies. However, because no cost ever disappears, per Economics 101, the subsidy costs are “socialized”, i.e., added, in one way or another, onto:
1) The rate bases of utilities, i.e., paid by ratepayers
2) Taxpayers, by means of extra taxes, fees and surcharges on electric bills and fuel bills
3) Government budgets
4) Government debt
5) Prices of goods and services other than electricity
If the subsidies had to be paid by owners of wind and solar systems, the contract prices paid to owners would need to be:
– At least 19.3 c/kWh, instead of 11 c/kWh, for large-scale solar
– At least 15.5 c/kWh, instead of 9 c/kWh, for ridge line wind. See table 1 and URL
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-name-of-the-game-regarding-wind-and-solar
Shifting Grid Costs
Many small-scale solar systems and/or a few large-scale solar systems on a distribution grid would excessively disturb the grid, especially at midday. Battery systems, with sufficient capacity could counteract the output variations of those solar systems.
Wind and solar systems could not be connected to the grid without the services of the CCGT plants, i.e., shutting down CCGT plants, and artificially diminishing/obstructing their domestically produced gas supply, advocated by pro RE folks, would not be an economic option for decades, if ever, because of the high costs of battery systems.
1) The cost of extension/augmentation of electric grids to connect widely distributed wind and solar systems (not paid by wind and solar system owners)
2) The cost of services rendered by other generators, mostly CCGT plants, which counteract the ups and downs of weather/season-dependent, variable, intermittent wind and solar outputs, 24/7/365 (not paid by wind and solar system owners).
3) The cost of battery systems to stabilize distribution grids, due to variations of the solar and wind system outputs (not paid by wind and solar system owners).
Shifting Owning and Operating Costs
The combined effect of cost shifting, determined behind closed doors, increases a project’s annual cash flow, i.e., “left-over-money”, to provide an ample profit for the RE system owner.
RE system owners are happy, having the “ears” of friendly politicians, saving the world from climate change, and claiming: “See, my project is profitable and competitive”, while everyone else gets hosed.
1) Grants from various sources, such as the VT Clean Energy Development Fund
2) 26% federal investment tax credits, plus state FITs. Tax credits reduce, dollar-for-dollar, the taxes GMP pays on profits
3) 100% depreciation over 5 years; the normal for utilities is 20 to 25 years. Write-offs reduce GMP taxable income
4) Deductions of interest on borrowed money. Interest deductions reduce GMP taxable income.
5) Various O&M payments are waved, such as sales tax, fees, property tax, school tax, municipal tax, etc.
6) RE system owners sell their output at two to four times NE wholesale market rates, which have averaged about 5 c/kWh starting in 2009, courtesy of:
– Low-cost, low-CO2, very-low-particulate, gas-fired CCGT plants
– Highly reliable, very-low-CO2, zero-particulate, nuclear plants
– Low-cost, very-low-CO2, zero-particulate, hydro plants Canada.
All-in Cost of Wind and Solar
Pro RE folks always point to the “price paid to owner” as the cost of wind and solar, purposely ignoring the other cost categories. The all-in cost of wind and solar, c/kWh, includes:
1) Above-market-price paid to owners
2) Subsidies paid to owners
3) Owner return on invested capital
4) Grid extension/augmentation (not paid by owners)
5) Grid support services (not paid by owners)
6) Future battery systems (not paid by owners)
Yeah, why not put those solar panels on crappy (cheap land) hill sides that will only grow grass where cattle, sheep, goats and pigs once to roamed in self sustaining cycles. Now those edible critters live in solar powered (using crappy batteries and playing the tax boondoggle games) autobot feeder houses on what was once fertile farm land. Then the operator (one person) pumps out the slurry from the autonbot feeder house into giant diesel trucks to farms so that use giant diesel machines can to spill the slurry all over their farm land as bio-inoculant/fertilizer along with petroleum based fertilizer so that grain could be grown to put on a giant train and then giant ship to China. It’s like we have all gone mad. It’s like legs nor brains matter anymore. Put the edible creatures back on the hills, hire people to care for them, find someone with the will and the brains to make a good battery, invest like hell and then eventually you are free to make, store and distribute electricity anyway you damn well please, ( you might have to fight the colluded and monopolized Utility/Energy companies and their politicians for the right to be off grid…which would be simple if we had a dang battery…cause a dang battery means a ‘new order’, kind of money/capital that will not be suppressed). Leaving the critters on the hills with your hired people , you are free and capital-empowered to build a manufacturing plant on some crappy land down the road using your own dang cheap tax free electricity. Then if viable, dig your own dang gas or oil well to take even more of the colluded monopolized utility energy middle-persons and politicians out of your life. Local economies take legs and brains…. which are in short supply in America. LOL So would some one please remind me, which of the big oil companies and utilities that are lobbying for carbon taxes and state laws that prohibit going off grid? The battery as it stands now is still crap. Neither crappy batteries nor the PERFECT battery are our enemy. We are not luddites…. the coming high tech battery ain’t here yet but it will come and it won’t be our enemy. Stupidity and laziness and those who would leverage our hearts and minds for financial, political or existential gain are our enemy. The enemy is the totally wrapped up utility/energy market, which survives by playing global the political/propaganda insider games. Some spout peak oil demand or supply… or hydrocarbon glut-now….yada, yada. All I care about is flourishing local economies all the rest of BS. Where are the dang tasty cheap pork chops of the pre-corn take over (HFCS 1985) you crappy farmers out there. LOL
The “Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) is the leading US coalition of state energy organizations
workingplotting together toadvanceforce-feed the rapid expansion ofcleanworse-than-useless energy technologies andbring the benefitsshove the stupidity ofcleanwind and solar energytodown the throats of all”.There – now it’s more honest.
And since wind and solar power are 100% dependent on fossil fuels for their very existence, you “solution” would presumably be to waste the supposedly “scarce” fossil fuels producing worse-than-useless wind farms and solar farms that still require the fossil fuel plants be kept in place so there’s power available when the weather doesn’t cooperate?
I note the USAF has adopted these resiliency practices on airbases now substantially renewably (solar) powered…