Reposted from the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN/ Francis Menton
It should be glaringly obvious that, if we are shortly going to try to convert to a “net zero” carbon emissions energy system based entirely on wind, sun and batteries, then there needs to be serious focus on the feasibility and costs of such a system. The particular part of such a prospective system that needs the most focus is the method of energy storage, its cost and, indeed, feasibility. That part needs focus because, as wind and solar increase their share of generation over 50% of the total, storage becomes far and away the dominant driver of the total costs. Moreover, there is no clear way to identify some fixed amount of storage that will be sufficient to make such a system reliable enough to power a modern economy without full backup from dispatchable sources. This also should be glaringly obvious to anyone who thinks about the problem for any amount of time.
And yet, as recently as a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like the entire Western world was racing forward to “net zero” based on wind and sun without anyone anywhere giving real thought to the problem of the amount of storage needed, let alone its cost, and let alone whether any fixed amount of storage could ever fully assure complete reliability. A retired, independent guy named Roger Andrews had done some calculations back in 2018 for test cases of California and Germany, which had showed that at least 30 days’ of storage would be needed to back up a fully wind/solar system. Andrews’s work showed that storage costs just to be sufficient to match actual wind/solar intermittency patterns for 2017 would likely cause a multiplication of the cost of electricity by something in the range of a factor of 14 to 22. But Andrews did not even get to the point of considering how much storage might be needed in worst case scenarios of lengthy winter wind or sun droughts.
And then Andrews died suddenly in early 2019, and nobody immediately took up where he left off.
But then a few weeks ago I discovered at Watts Up With That some new work from someone named Ken Gregory (again, a retired, independent guy — funny, isn’t it?), who produced a spreadsheet for the entire United States again showing that about 30 days’ storage would be needed to back up a fully wind/solar system. (Cost for the storage, assuming all energy use gets electrified: about $400 trillion.)
And now, some others are getting into the act. And none too soon. A guy named Roger Caiazza has a blog called Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. Caiazza, as you might by now have guessed, is another independent retired guy. In the past few months, he has turned his attention principally to the energy transition supposedly getting underway here in New York State, as a result of something called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (the Climate Act). The Climate Act created a gaggle of bureaucracies, and the end of 2021 saw those bureaucracies utter something they call the “Scoping Plan,” laying out how New York is going to go from its current energy system to the nirvana of electrification of everything together with “net zero” emissions by no later than 2050.
The Scoping Plan is a massive document (some 330 pages plus another 500+ pages of appendices) of breathtaking incompetence. The basic approach, summarized by me in this post of December 29, 2021, is that designated “expert” bureaucrats working for the State, themselves having no actual idea how to achieve “net zero” from an engineering perspective, will get around that problem by simply ordering the people to achieve the “net zero” goal by a date certain. Then, presumably some engineers will magically emerge to work out the details. The thousands of people who put this thing together apparently do not regard proof of cost or feasibility as any part of their job. As to the key problem of energy storage to achieve “net zero” goals, the Scoping Plan, in nearly 1000 pages of heft, never even gets to the point of recognizing that the MWH (as opposed to MW) is the key unit that must be considered to assess issues of cost and feasibility.
For the past many weeks, Caiazza has been putting out one post after another ripping the Climate Act and the “Scoping Plan” apart, piece by piece. But for today, I want to focus on one post from January 24 titled “Scoping Plan Reliability Feasibility – Renewable Variability.” This post considers the implications of dependence only on wind and solar power, particularly as to how much storage would be needed with such a system, and without remaining fossil fuel backup, to achieve necessary system reliability.
Rather than creating a spreadsheet for annual wind and solar generation, in the manner of Andrews or Gregory, Caiazza takes a different approach, which is simply to consider a worst-case scenario. (For this purpose Caiazza draws on a January 20 piece from a guy named David Wojick at PA Pundits International.). The beauty of considering the worst-case scenario is that the math becomes so simple you can do it in your head.
So here is the scenario considered by Caiazza. Your mission as the State is to deliver 1000 MW of power continuously with complete reliability, but with only the wind and sun to provide the generation. How much generation capacity do you need, and how much storage do you need? And how much will it cost? (New York’s average current usage is about 18,000 MW, and by the time everything is electrified that will be at least 60,000 MW, so we can multiply everything by 60 at the end to see what the cost implications are for the State of New York.)
First what is the hypothesized worst case? To make the math simple, Caiazza hypothesizes a solar/storage only system, and a five day winter period of overcast, followed by two sunny days to recharge before the next such worst-case 5-day sun drought.
The required battery capacity is simple. Five days at 24 hours a day is 120 hours. To supply a steady 1,000 MW that is a whopping 120,000 MWh of storage. We already have the overnight storage capacity for 16 hours so we now need an additional 104 hours, which means 104,000 MWh of additional storage.
But the 120,000 MWH of storage assumes that you charge the batteries up to 100% and discharge them down to 0%. Real world batteries are supposed to only range between about 20% and 80% charge for best performance.
The standard practice is to operate between 80% and 20%. In that case the available storage is just 60% of the nameplate capacity. This turns the dark days 120,000 MWh into a requirement for 200,000 MWh.
I might throw in that solar panels don’t produce at full capacity for anything close to 8 hours on even the sunniest winter day, but who’s quibbling?
Now suppose that in this worst-case scenario we only had two days to charge up since the last 5 day drought:
Two days gives us 16 hours of charging time for the needed 120,000 MWh, which requires a large 7,500 MW of generating capacity. We already have 3,000 MW of generating capacity but that is in use providing round the clock sunny day power. It is not available to help recharge the dark days batteries. Turns out we need a whopping 10,500 MW of solar generating capacity.
That’s right, it’s not just that you need 200,000 MWH of storage, but you also need more than ten times the “capacity” of solar panels as the mere 1000 MW that you are trying to deliver on a firm basis, just to deal with this worst case scenario to deliver 1000 MW firm through one bad month in the winter.
For cost of storage, Caiazza takes what he calls a standard EIA figure of $250/MWH for the batteries. At this price, 200,000 MWH would cost $50 billion. Then there is the cost of the solar panels. Here, Caiazza has a standard EIA figure of $1.3 million per MW. For the 10,500 MW capacity case, that would mean $13.7 billion. Add the $50 billion plus the $13.7 billion and you get $63.7 billion.
And that’s for the 1000 MW firm power case. Remember, fully-electrified New York State is going to need 60,000 MW firm. So multiply the $63.7 billion by 60, and you get $3.822 trillion. For comparison, the annual GDP of New York State is approximately $1.75 trillion.
Caiazza points out that the state’s Scoping Plan gives necessary storage costs for the new wind/solar/battery system in the range of $288.6 to $310.5 billion. These figures are about 10 times lower than we just calculated. But Caiazza attempts to find in the Scoping Plan the assumptions on which these numbers were calculated, and he can’t find it. Neither can I. Maybe some reader can take a crack.
The reader may find that Caiazza’s $3.8 trillion figure for New York State seems remarkably small relative to the number calculated by Gregory. Gregory got about $400 trillion for the U.S. as a whole. New York representing about 7% of the U.S. economy, that would mean that the cost of the storage piece for New York would be closer to $30 trillion than $4 trillion. The difference is that Caiazza is calculating the cost of just getting through one “worst case” week in the winter, while Gregory considers the cost of trying to get through a whole year where energy needs to be stored up from the summer to get through the whole winter.
One final point. Suppose that, based on even a few decades of meteorological data, you determine that this five day winter sun drought is the true worst case scenario, and you put together a system on that basis. OK, what now happens when one year you get a six day drought? By hypothesis your fossil fuel backup has been dismantled and is no longer available. Does all power then just go out on that sixth day? Remember, this is the dead of winter. People are going to freeze to death. So are you going to keep the fossil fuel backup around just for this one day that might occur only once every few decades? If so, how much of the fossil fuel backup capacity do you need to keep? Think about that for a second. The answer is, all of it. In the 60,000 MW firm power requirement scenario for New York State, you will need 60,000 MW of available fossil fuel capacity to cover that one day when the batteries run out. Dozens of major power plants, fully maintained, and with fuel at the ready, capable of being turned on for this one emergency day perhaps once every twenty years.
Or you can try to avoid that by building yet more solar panels and more batteries so that you can get through a six day sun drought. But what happens when you get a drought of seven days?
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EXCERPT from:
HIGH COSTS OF WIND, SOLAR, AND BATTERY SYSTEMS IN US NORTHEAST
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-costs-of-wind-solar-and-battery-systems
Any transition from fossil fuels to low-CO2 sources, such as wind, solar, nuclear, hydro and biomass, could occur only when the low-CO2 sources are: 1) abundantly available everywhere, and 2) at low-cost, say 5 to 6 c/kWh, wholesale, and 3) as reliable as fossil fuels, 24/7/365, year after year.
This article presents the all-in cost of wind, solar and battery systems in the US Northeast.
Table 1 shows the all-in cost of wind and solar are much greater than reported by the Media, etc.
Much of the cost is shifted from Owners of these systems to taxpayers and ratepayers, and added to government debts
PART 1
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) 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
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 could counteract those output variations.
Wind and solar systems could not be connected to any grid without the peaking, filling-in and counteracting services of the CCGT plants, i.e., shutting down CCGT plants, and artificially diminishing/obstructing their gas supply, advocated by pro RE folks, would not be an option for decades, if ever, because of the high costs of site-specific, custom-designed, utility-grade, grid-scale battery systems.
Costs not paid by wind/solar Owners:
– The cost of extension/augmentation of electric grids to connect widely distributed wind and solar systems
– The cost of services rendered by other generators, mostly CCGT plants, which counteract the variable, intermittent outputs of wind and solar, 24/7/365
– The cost of battery systems to stabilize distribution grids, due to variations of the solar and wind system outputs
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 often 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 rates
EXORBITANT “ALL-IN” ELECTRICITY COST OF WIND AND SOLAR IN NEW ENGLAND
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 at about 9%/y
4) Grid extension/augmentation
5) Grid support services, including fees for:
– Capacity availability (i.e., plants are fueled, staffed, kept in good working order, ready to produce on short notice)
– More frequent plant start-up/shut-down
6) Future battery systems
Comments on table 1
– Vermont legacy SO solar systems had greater subsidies, up to 30 c/kWh paid to owner, than newer systems, about 11 c/kWh
– Wind prices paid to owner did not have the drastic reductions as solar prices.
– Vermont utilities are paid about 3.5 c/kWh for various costs they incur regarding net-metered solar systems
– “Added to the rate base” is the cost wind and solar are added to the utility rate base, used to set electric rates.
– “Total cost”, including subsidies to owner and grid support, is the cost at which wind/solar are added to the utility rate base
– “NE utility cost” is the annual average cost of purchased electricity, about 6 c/kWh, plus NE grid operator charges, about 1.6 c/kWh
for a total of 7.6 c/kWh.
– “Grid support costs” would increase with increased use of battery systems to counteract the variability and intermittency of increased build-outs of wind and solar systems.
NOTES:
1) NE wholesale grid price averaged about 5 c/kWh or less, starting in 2009, due to low-cost CCGT and nuclear plants providing at least 65% of all electricity loaded onto the NE grid, in 2019.
– Wind, solar, landfill gas, and methane power plants provided about 4.8%
– Pre-existing refuse and wood power plants provided about 4.6%
– Pre-existing hydro power plants provided about 7.4%
– The rest was mostly hydro imports from the very-low-CO2 Canada grid, and from the much-higher-CO2 New York State grid
2) There are Owning and Operating costs of the NE grid, in addition to utility wholesale prices.
ISO-NE pro-rates these O&O costs to utilities, at about 1.6 c/kWh.
3) NE charges are for:
Regional network services, RNS, based on the utility peak demand occurring during a month
Forward capacity market, FCM, based on the utility peak demand occurring during a year.
EXCERPT from:
BIDEN 30,000 MW OFFSHORE WIND SYSTEMS BY 2030; AN EXPENSIVE FANTASY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/biden-30-000-mw-of-offshore-wind-systems-by-2030-a-total-fantasy
The Biden administration announced on October 13, 2021, it will subsidize the development of up to seven offshore wind systems (never call them farms) on the US East and West coasts, and in the Gulf of Mexico; a total of about 30,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
Biden’s offshore wind systems would have an adverse, long-term impact on US electricity wholesale prices, and the prices of all other goods and services, because their expensive electricity would permeate into all economic activities.
The wind turbines would be at least 800-ft-tall, which would need to be located at least 30 miles from shores, to ensure minimal disturbance from night-time strobe lights.
Any commercial fishing areas would be significantly impacted by below-water infrastructures and cables. The low-frequency noise (less than 20 cycles per second, aka infrasound) of the wind turbines would adversely affect marine life, and productivity of fishing areas.
Production: Annual production would be about 30,000 x 8766 h/y x 0.45, capacity factor = 118,341,000 MWh, or 118.3 TWh of variable, intermittent, wind/weather/season-dependent electricity.
The additional wind production would be about 100 x 118.3/4000 = 2.96% of the annual electricity loaded onto US grids.
That US load would increase, due to tens of millions of future electric vehicles and heat pumps.
This would require a large capacity of combined-cycle, gas-turbine plants, CCGTs, to cost-effectively:
1) Counteract the wind output variations, MW, aka grid balancing
2) Fill-in wind production shortfalls, MWh, during any wind lulls
Such lulls occur at random throughout the year, and may last 5 to 7 days in the New England area.
These URLs provide examples of similar wind/solar lull conditions in Germany and New England
High Costs of Balancing the Grid with Increased Wind and Solar
The ANNUAL grid balancing costs are entirely due to the variations and intermittencies of wind and solar, because the OTHER power plants have to operate far from their efficient modes of operation, 24/7/365. They experience:
1) More up/down production at lower efficiencies, which have more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh
2) More equipment wear-and-tear cost/kWh, due to up/down production
3) More-frequent plant starts/stops, which have high Btu/kWh, high CO2/kWh
Increased wind and solar also requires:
– Increased hot, synchronous (3,600 rpm), standby plant capacity, MW, to immediately provide power, if wind/solar generation suddenly decreases, or any other power system outage occurs.
– Increased cold, standby plant capacity, MW, to provide power after a plant’s start-up period.
When wind and solar were only a very small percent of the electricity loaded onto the NE grid, those balancing costs were minimal, sort of “lost in the data fog”
When wind and solar became a large percent, those balancing costs in the UK became 1.3 BILLION U.K. pounds in 2020, likely even more in 2021, 2022, etc.
Those balancing costs should have been charged to the Owners of wind and solar systems, but, in reality, they were politically shifted to taxpayers, ratepayers, and government debts.
Those balancing costs are in addition to the various government subsidies, which are also politically shifted to taxpayers, ratepayers, and government debts.
Now you all are finally beginning to see just how wonderful wind and solar have been, and will be, for your pocketbook.
Energy systems analysts, with decades of experience, saw this mess coming about 20 years ago, but all-knowing legislators and bureaucrats ignored them, because they were pressured into aiding and abetting the harvesting of federal and state subsidies for RE businesses.
Turnkey Capital Cost: The turnkey capital cost for wind systems, plus offshore/onshore grid extension/augmentation would be about 30,000 MW x $5,000,000/MW = $150 BILLION, excluding financing costs. Biden’s excessive inflation rates, about 7% at present, surely would increase that cost.
Area Requirements: The 8-MW wind turbines would be arranged on a grid, spaced at least one mile apart (8 rotor diameters), about 1 sq mile per wind turbine. The minimum sea area requirement for 30,000/8 = 3,750 wind turbines would be 3,750 sq miles, or 2,400,000 acres
Electricity Cost/kWh: Based on the real-world European, mostly UK and German, operating experience in the North Sea and Baltic, such highly subsidized wind turbine systems:
1) Last about 20 years
2) Have high maintenance and operating costs, due to the adverse marine environment
3) Produce electricity at an “al-in” cost of about 2.25 times NE wholesale prices. See Appendix
The “all-in” wholesale prices of the offshore electricity of new systems are calculated at about 17 c/kWh, without cost shifting and subsidies, and about 9 c/kWh, with cost shifting and subsidies. The shifted costs and subsidies would result in:
1) Increased tax burdens on taxpayers
2) Increased household electric rates on ratepayers
3) Additions to federal and state government debts.
4) Additional burdens on the owners of traditional generators, because their power plants have to counteract the wind output variations, 24/7/365; the more wind (and solar), the greater the electricity quantities involved in the counteracting, plus their plants have to spend more time on standby, and are required to have more-frequent start/stops. See URLs and Appendix
NOTE: These rates compare with the average New England wholesale price of 5 c/kWh, during the 2009 – 2022 period, 13 years, courtesy of:
1) Abundant, domestic, natural gas-fueled CCGT plants, that have: 1) low-cost/kWh, low-CO2/kWh, extremely-low particulate/kWh
2) Domestic, uranium-fueled nuclear plants, that have low-cost/kWh, near-zero CO2/kWh, zero particulate/kWh
3) Long-lasting hydro plants, that have low-cost/kWh, near-zero-CO2/kWh, zero particulate/kWh
NOTE: Cost shifting and subsidies have not yet affected NE wholesale prices, because the percent of new RE (mostly wind and solar) on the NE grid is very small, after 20 years of subsidies.
The image shows the negligeable “contribution” of wind + solar to the NE grid load, during 2021, after 20 years of subsidies!!
Wind and solar became significant in Germany and Denmark after more than 20 years of subsidies, resulting in:
– Politicians excessively allocating RE costs to households, thereby greatly increasing household electric rates.
– Politicians keeping industrial rates artificially low for international competitiveness reasons (a hidden trade subsidy). See URL
EXCERPT from:
COST SHIFTING IS THE NAME OF THE GAME REGARDING WIND AND SOLAR
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-name-of-the-game-regarding-wind-and-solar
Regarding wind and solar, cost shifting is rarely mentioned, identified or quantified. Those costs, as c/kWh, could be quantified, but it is politically expedient, using various, often far-fetched reasons, to charge them to:
– Directly to ratepayers, via electric rate schedules, and/or added taxes, fees and surcharges on electric bills
– Directly to taxpayers, such as carbon taxes, user fees and surcharges.
– Directly to federal and state budgets and debts
Per Economics 101, no cost ever disappears.
Eventually, the various shifted wind and solar costs, plus direct and indirect wind and solar subsidies, would increase the prices of energy and of other goods and services.
Efficiency and productivity improvements elsewhere in the energy sector, and other sectors of the economy, may partially, or completely, offset such increases.
However, wind and solar subsidies would divert capital from other sectors of the economy, which likely would result in fewer improvements in efficiency and productivity in these sectors.
LIFECYCLE COST ANALYSIS OF EXISTING AND NE ELECTRICITY SOURCES
This report uses publicly available data to estimate the average levelized cost of electricity from existing generation resources (LCOE-Existing), as compared to the levelized cost of electricity from new generation resources (LCOE-New) that might replace them.
The additional information provided by LCOE-Existing presents a more complete picture of the generation choices available to the electric utility industry, policymakers, regulators and consumers.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/IER_LCOE2019Final-.pdf
Existing coal-fired power plants can generate electricity at an average LCOE of $41 per megawatt-hour, whereas the LCOE of a new coal plant, operating at a similar duty cycle, would be $71 per MWh.
Similarly, existing combined-cycle gas power plants (CCGTs) can generate electricity at an average LCOE of $36 per MWh, whereas the LCOE of a new CCGT gas plant would be $50 per MWh.
Non-dispatchable wind and solar impose a cost on the dispatchable generators which are required to remain in service for peaking, filling in and balancing, 24/7/365, to ensure reliable electricity service.
Non-dispatchable means the output of wind and solar depends on factors beyond our control (the wind blowing and the sun shining) and cannot be relied upon for peaking, filling in and balancing.
Wind and solar increase the LCOE of dispatchable resources by reducing their utilization rates without reducing their fixed costs, resulting in a levelized fixed cost increase, i.e., higher c/kWh.
This report estimates the “imposed cost” of wind generation at about $24 per MWh, or 2.4 c/kWh, if CCGT gas generation performs the peaking, filling in and balancing.
The CCGT plants compensate for the erratic outputs of wind and solar by inefficiently ramping up and down their outputs at part load, and inefficiently making more frequent starts and stops.
All that decreases annual production of CCGT plants, adversely affects their economic viability, increases Btu/kWh and CO2/kWh, and increases wear and tear, all at no cost to the wind and solar multi-millionaires.
This report estimates the “imposed cost” of wind generation at about $24 per MWh, or 2.4 c/kWh, if CCGT gas generation performs the peaking, filling in and balancing.
This report estimates the “imposed cost” of solar generation at about $21 per MWh, or 2.1 c/kWh, if CCGT gas generation performs the peaking, filling in and balancing.
As a result, existing coal ($41), CCGT gas ($36), nuclear ($33) and hydro ($38) are less than half the cost of new wind ($90) or new PV solar ($88.7), if imposed costs were included.
NOTE: The imposed cost on ratepayers and taxpayers of various direct and indirect wind and solar subsidies are an entirely separate issue.
E
These citizen-scientists are to be commended for considering and then actually analyzing the issue of storage of renewable energy during the ‘good’ days, to use during the ‘bad’. It’s a subject pretty much ignored by the renewable advocates, and certainly by their lap-dog press. Bravo!
The required length of storage is a complex issue. Over-night storage is but a weak start on the journey. It seems logical to use batteries for this, but even the best of them lose charge over time. The referenced five-day storage requirement discussed seems practical, but what about seasonal variations, or even the biblical storage requirement for the ‘seven lean years’ of storage by building up resources during the ‘seven years of plenty’. That was a known problem several millennia ago. It can’t be ignored now.
This brings up an item that adds considerably more complexity to the analysis: energy distribution. It’s clearly not feasible to send electricity from Australian summers to Greenland winters using today’s technology. It is, at least theoretically possible to send it from Mexico’s deserts to Canada’s snowy midlands. It’s even more feasible to send it from Texas’ wind turbines to California’s nuclear energy deprived masses. I don’t even want to think about the political complexities of this!
Without the politics, though, moving energy around can reduce some of the storage requirements by generating it where it’s most practical. There was another discussion here about how much of sunny Spain’s surface would be required to provide power to Germany’s cloudy winters, especially now that Germany is shutting off its nuclear power plants. I’m quite sure many Spaniards might object to this.
How can distribution and politics be added to the already complex spreadsheets? Distribution, maybe. Politics???
There are a lot of things in this piece that are likely untrue.
Read all the comments. There are a lot of good points made in response to the posts of Peter Farley.
1 and 2 – Old planning engineer:
The issue is the variability of the resource over time frames of a day or so. Short term variations can be addressed quite neatly (and relatively economically) through the use of batteries, it’s the longer term droughts caused by continental blocking highs that cause the need for massive over investment in wind / solar generation. In South Australia a capacity factor of between 7% and 9% is applied to the installed name plate generation to estimate the contribution of diversified wind under those conditions. How much over capacity you actually need is an extremely complex calculation as it depends on both the location of the resource, the short term availability of the resource at that location, transmission capacity linking the resource to the load and the temperature dependency of the load. Averages wont do. Note that the first two elements are basically unknowns. Note that engineers have struggled with just the last two elements, both relatively straight forward, as witnessed by the number of back/ brown outs such as New York of a few years ago, South Australia in 2017 and Texas last year.
3 Both pumped bydro and compressed air storage need specific site characteristics. There aren’t that many locations where pumped hydro that we know works can be installed. Compressed air might work but again you need underground caverns.
4 It is not just the generation that is supposed to change. New York’s net zero target requires electrification of home heating and transportation. That increase in load is not going to be turned down much by efficiency or demand management because of the variability of resource demand over worst case periods. For example, the NY plan is to convert to heat pumps. Many are targeted to be air source heat pumps. The plan recognizes that you need backup heat because air source heat pumps don’t work when the temperatures are really cold. The electric alternative is resistance heat which is very inefficient. As a result for the worst case when people need heat the most the electric load is going to spike. I predict bad things will happen.
You may think it unlikely, but it happens that we get global stilling. Like this, just recently. Nowhere on land was wind strong enough for more than about 10% of capacity, except in Siberia.
Author is right, but this simplified analysis will always be incomplete and low. Even with accounting for massive new mining and manufacturing.
Missing are the other requirements of electric service:
Generation to grid: massive land areas, infrastructure, maintenance, replacement of short-lived wind/solar/batteries.
Transmission lines, in electrically right places, with all the land and right-of-ways.
Substation siting and land acquisition at optimal grid interconnections, generation and distribution ends with transformers, capacitors, communications, switching, fault clearing, etc.
Distribution modifications, likely much more expensive than other components per kWh.
Plus the full amount of existing fossil fuel/nuclear/hydro generation for worse case ever.
Plus a large multiple of existing facilities if further electrification, with certainly much more distribution modification and additions.
Plus, to do all of above ( that took more than 100 years to build, modify, optimize, refine, and provide 24/7/365 reliable, available, on-demand electric service) include the time and costs of all the additional legal, contract, legislative, regulation changes, and hearings.
Whole concept is magical, imaginary, naive, fraudulent.
Just one item above “…is enough to prove me wrong.” Einstein
Author is right, but this simplified analysis will always be incomplete and low.
Well I don’t see any mention of the extra power required at night to charge all the EVs that will supposedly be replacing all the ICE cars in New York at present. You don’t get much mileage out of moonlight and the mind boggles at the level of infantilism.
It gets worse for them as the wind turbine manufacturers struggle to stay afloat-
WindAction | ‘Squashed in the middle’ | Ousted Siemens Gamesa boss says loss-making turbine OEMs paying price of cheap wind
Watch out for taxpayer bailouts coming in the event they’re going under as they’re rattling the milk bucket now.
No mention is made of the impacts of taking $400 trillion out of the economy. Wait! There is no way we can squeeze $400 trillion out of the economy. Impossible to do. And if one state like New York were to attempt to tax its citizens and industries at a rate sufficient to cover the cost of renewable storage, then everyone would leave; making the problem even worse. New York is on a fools’ errand.
Nice video to illustrate 100% ‘green’ energy is impossible:
.
Peter Farley has been on here peddling his windy wet dreams, but the bottom line is that the countries with the greatest percentage of their power generated from wind and sun have the most expensive energy in the world.
Peter doesn’t care if people are pushed into poverty, just as long as he can feel smug and carbon-free.
<sarc>
But…but…but…. It’s going to be too cheap to meter!
</sarc>
ROFLMAO
I’d forgotten about that little nugget of “wisdom” from the windmill wallies. Thanks for the reminder!
Seems like there’s a mad scramble for wannabe Peter Isherwell’s – the creepy ceo of BASH corporation in “Don’t Look Up” (played by Mark Rylance).
So energy policy is now to be decided by Garden Shed Guy come good – the mythical American hero-titan, or Russia’s Akaky Akakievich?
Well good luck with that fellow batt’lers.
I’m reminded of Napolean Boneparte’s advice: “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”. Off to get some popcorn before the shops close
Or you could just build nuclear
https://youtu.be/raqxQr6pq2Q
The needed megawatts don’t take into account the electrical usage of all the buildings that will be forced to retrofit from gas heat and gas stove to electric, and all new construction will be electric only. But all that pales in comparison to replacing fossil fuel to power cars. I did these calculations only nationally, not for one state because I used the presidential claims as the basis. HIs claims to have only non fossil fueled vehicles on the road by 2035, are like, so many of his other claims, nothing but blatant lies. Americans use 400 MILLION gallons of gasoline per day and 131 MILLION gallons of diesel fuel per day. Gasoline produces approximately 16.6 kwh per gallon. 400 million gallons of gas is the electrical equivalent of 6 billion, 640million kilowatts of electricity, or 6 million, six hundred forty thousand megawatts, or 6,640 gigawatts. The largest power producer is a nuclear power plant which can produce up to 1 gigawatt of power. a gas turbine plant can produce up to 700 megawatts. Then we get to renewables which are woefully lacking in any kind of 24/7 reliability. For comparison, we will grant wind turbines that they will constantly produce 75% of max output 24 hrs per day, and the fact that each wind turbine will produce an average of 2.6 megawatts 24/7. To produce enough electricity to replace gasoline power with electric power to replace that 400 million gallons per day with wind energy will take 2,553,846 wind turbines. Let it be known there are 12,000 wind turbines in the world today. Solar gets even more impossible. At maximum power, which is about 4 hours per day, it will take 54,000 square miles of solar collectors to put electricity into all those cars. after that, solar power is done. I totally agree with all the storage calculations ,but we do not have now, nor do we foresee the inventing of any battery systems to just power cars at night, much less any kind of backup power in the near futures.
Most of my career has been in designing, building, and programming automation in anything from small to medium commercial projects to extremely high end residential systems, and megaychts. To my customers the motto has always been “the impossible just costs more”, but that motto doesn’t work here, because the technology simply does not exist
to make it work, yet. I did not put diesel into the equation because there is no existing storage technology that will practically replace the large diesel engines needed for large trucks, and other large machinery
The good thing is that CO2 has been proven, in new peer reviewed studies, to have no effect on temperature levels at all. The scam has been exposed, so we can get to work making machinery more fuel efficient of the sake of lowering costs without the added cost of pointless electrical storage and spending money to fight nonexistent “climate change”.
Essential reading for the EV promoters. Excellent post.
Recently I was paddling around Newcastle harbour marvelling that the claim to fame was it was going 100% renewables power from 2022 onwards. The port operates 24/7 and as I got a windbreak from following an outgoing Capesize attended by 4 tugs, I wondered at the navigation hazards associated with 4 tug boat electricity cables capable of going from the Inner Harbour to 2km outside the harbour entrance.
Apparently this feat is to be achieved by using some of the 60% of the output of the Bodangora Wind Farm in central NSW allocated to such big industry contracts.
Going into the Bodangora website, and doing some calcs from the statements revealed an interesting implied capacity factor. 113.2MW nameplate capacity was capable of powering 49,000 homes. I used 2020 NSW figures (amongst the most electricity hungry homes in Aust from the Australian Energy Regulator and got a capacity factor for wind of 28%.
Most of the studies I have seen use capacity factors for wind of at least 33%. The assumptions are based on best case sites. The capital cost required to do away with fossil fuels is massively underestimated just on the assumed capacity factors alone.
Has any qualified electrical engineer put his name on this New York plan?
Wouldn’t it ultimately be cheaper to spend the money to solve the fusion problem and not have to mess with wind and solar at all?
If you’re thinking of going for fusion, you might as well just go with nuclear because:
1. Fusion emits neutrons, which will make the system radioactive.
2. Nuclear already works, so why wait for fusion, which is perpetually 20 year away.
Five day reserve? Five months would not be enough. Solar generation in the winter is insignifigant. Batteries cannot store if they are already full or supply when they are dead. To allow for the likely circumstance that they will not be in the needed state at the right times, another 100% redundancy would be necessary.
It is nonsense to assume that they will be empty when you need to store or full when you need to discharge. Weather just doesn’t work that way.
When the grid failed in Australia, New York and Texas, a major problem was having a rock solid powerful generating source that could restart the grid.
None of the renewables have that capability.
I have my doubts that a battery or even a series of batteries have that capability.
The Australian east coast grid is faced with the same issue – except that it is the annual wind-droughts experienced every winter. The costs are laid bare in this report:
Decarbonised_Electricity.pdf (modelling.energy)
Ahh! but it does not suit the narrative so it is just ignored – and we will end up paying way more for energy than we ever should.
Not a real calculation of the costs, but a visual explanation as to why it will be impossible to base our western economies on windmills: