Ed Hoskins
A few graphs say it all for Wind and Solar power
This is the 10-year productivity record for European Weather-Dependent “Renewables”: that is the annual power output divided by the nominal installation rating of the Weather-Dependent “Renewables” installations over the last decade. The data is provided by EurObservER a “Weather-Dependent “Renewables” promoting organisation supported by the EU.
The productivity of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” is limited as they only gather intermittent and dilute sources of energy, Wind and Solar. As they are not capable of producing the major excess power needed by civilisation they are parasitic on all other power generation technologies.
Conventional power generation, Gas-firing, Coal or Nuclear technologies:
- produce much more energy for use by civilisation than the energy they require to build and run. They have a high Energy Return on Energy Invested.<
- run 24/7
- can be turned on when needed to match demand
- use small land areas
- can be located close to centres of demand
- their installations use limited materials
- they can have substantial energy storage on site at low cost
- are shown to be substantially cheaper for the power they produce, even at current elevated European Gas prices.
The US EIA, Energy Information Administration, produces comparative capital and long-term costs for power generation technologies. When their Weather-Dependent “Renewables” costs are merged with the recorded European productivity for generating the same unit of power over the year and compared to the cheapest power generation technology Gas-firing at USA prices the comparative value for money is stark.
This comparison anticipates that the current European price for Natural gas fuel is some 3 times the standard USA price for fracked Gas production.
Would anyone sane buy a car costing 5 – 10 times the normal price that only works one day in five, when you never know which day that might be ? And then insist that its technology is used to power the whole economy.
Even at the current increased European Gas prices, the estimated excess expenditures on Weather-Dependent “Renewables” in Europe is still very large: $~0.5 trillion in capital expenditures and $~1.2 trillion excess expenditures in the long-term.
These simple calculations show that any claim that Wind and Solar power are now cost competitive with conventional fossil fuel (Gas-fired) generation are patently false. The figures give an outline of the financial achievements of Green activists in stopping fracking for gas in Europe, close on to $1.2 trillion of excess costs.
The scale of the wasted expenditure for the current UK “Renewables” fleet is about £60 billion in capital costs and ~£0.22 Trillion in the long-term.
The UK performance picture is slightly improved by greater installation of Offshore Wind power.
These very basic calculations just comparing the raw costs of supplying a unit of energy to the Grid are the tip of the cost iceberg, Weather-Dependent “Renewables” incur all manner of other costs and downsides not shown here.
Appreciating that future “Climate Change” from Man-kind burning fossil fuels is a non-problem and not reacting to that non-problem in an economically destructive manner would be the very best news for the Western world, for the Biosphere and for Man-kind.
So Wind and solar turned out to be exactly what physics and economics said they would be, All the promises and lies about the magical, virtuous, perpetual motion machines of green energy appear to be exactly what you might expect from snake oil salesmen or any other immoral grifters.
It’s not a surprise. I have 30kw of solar (yes it was subsidy mining). Yesterday I generated 22kw on a cloudy wet day, the day before it was sunny it generated 150kw. How anybody thinks they are going to run there ev, charge their battery and power their house off solar is beyond me. You can have 80%+ drop in output instantly when a storm comes over. Unreliable as a term really doesn’t explain it well enough. Maybe flaky people would understand better.
Yeah, its like relying on a teenager to do what he is told.
“These very basic calculations just comparing the raw costs of supplying a unit of energy to the Grid are the tip of the cost iceberg, Weather-Dependent “Renewables” incur all manner of other costs and downsides not shown here.”
Indeed, especially when compared to traditional energy generation. Those conventional sources have a significant cost increase FROM the use of and laws surrounding the “renewables”. Also their percentage of use to capacity is negatively affected by the renewables.
The phrase, “Its worse than we thought” actually applies. And the finale overwhelming negative insane energy costs, lead directly to wars. (Witness the world today)
It is far far FAR worse than we thought.
…and the benefit of these “renewables”, did they save the world?
No?
Did they change the GAT over a century by one degree from the projected catastrophic warming?
Treadmills for convicts would be more valuable than Solar Power in the UK.
Nice report, short, plain language, easy to understand in other words exactly what we need.
There’s a decent chance that we’ll find out, real soon, how robust all the unreliables are when we get hit by a Carrinton Event scale solar storm. Right now old Sol is looking cranky and about to throw a hissy fit…..
It is not at all clear whether the comparative cost of “conventional” and “renewable” power generation take into account the full life cycle costs of each technology over the full 60 or more years a conventional plant can be expected to last with good maintenance and refurbishment at relatively moderate cost.
In this 60 year timeframe, wind turbines with an expected service life of 20 years will need to be fully replaced (“repowered” by replacing with higher capacity units) at least three times, representing a multiplication of the initial capital investment, plus the costs of decommissioning, demolition and disposal. Thus, renewables require a never-ending rolling major capital investment programme just to keep standing still.
The more expensive offshore wind turines will likely require replacement up to four times in the same timeframe.
I do not believe the costs of shorter service life of the renewable technologies is considered in the comparative cost calculations.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Excellent visuals and summary.
The sad thing is that we’re in the 3rd decade of the 21st century, and we’re having to fight the forces of literal and political darkness over things that were well understood a century ago.
There’s something wrong with the chart showing conventional generation. 90% would be in the range of baseload generation, but mid merit and peakers would be substantially less. If their conventional generation (including mid merit and peak) is really running at 90%, they’ve let their grid get completely screwed up. Alternatively it reflects only base load generation, but that should be reflected.
The engines on a 787 can and ate used for land based power generation, each at 100MW. Iagine straping 50 windmills to a 787, and the pilot can’t control the output.
The only reason your conventional genetation shows 90% is that they have to be run at suboptimal levels while filling in the troughs of wind. They are normally in the 95% and up even factoring in periodic maintenance.
This is a misleading graph as far as system design and practicality. Renewables need to be compared economically on the absolute minimum power they generate at any point in time, not their average generated energy production. As an example, if wind has a name plate production of 1000 mw and a generated average production of 100 mw; so what. These figures cannot be used for designing a system. What counts is the minimum generated production at any point in time. If on a windless day the turbines put out 1 mw; then that is what you have to design your system around. Some form of power generation has to be able to fill in the gap. If not, the system goes down and everything goes black.
People have to get off the generated average and start making arguments on the minimum generated power. This is probably zero; making the argument for solar and wind baseless.
Just found this. It is better at explaining what I’m trying to get at.
https://youtu.be/m7PHUMd7PYA
Do the wind and solar costs shown, include the costs of batteries?
Would anyone sane buy a car costing 5 – 10 times the normal price that only works one day in five, when you never know which day that might be ? And then insist that its technology is used to power the whole economy.
Yep although the sane p[art might be a problem. Chris Bowen, Australia’s energy minister is one such fool and he has support from other impractical and ignorant politicians plus the brainwashed public service. We are led by fools advised by idiots.
But they’ll keep on muddling on, because that’s what brits do best.
Eventually they may see the ‘communal light’. I don’t know for sure but maybe . .