By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Douglas Pollock will be known to many readers here as a regular and popular speaker at Heartland conferences. After several years researching the effect of unreliables on electricity grids the world over, Douglas has discovered a truly fascinating scientific result.
He had been looking at nations such as Britain, whose government has gone further towards reducing the economy to third-world status by its unhinged nut-zero policies than any other. As a direct result of this fatuity, Britain now suffers the costliest electricity prices in the world.
The manufacturing industries in which we once led the world have died or gone overseas to Communist-led China, India and Russia. Manufacturing now accounts for just 8% of Britain’s already-imploding GDP. The workshop of the world has become its workhouse.
Industries large and small are going to the wall at a record rate, wrecked by the endless hikes in electricity prices whose root cause is the enforced and pointless shuttering of long-amortized and perfectly viable coal-fired power stations that used to produce electricity at only $30 per MWh, and their replacement with wind and solar subsidy farms producing intermittent and unreliable electrical power at anything up to $11,500 per MWh.
What is more, this disastrous industrial and economic collapse has been deliberately precipitated by a once-Conservative “government” that has long abandoned the no-nonsense economic realism and free-market ideals of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Curiously, though, the crazed infliction of pig-ugly, wildlife-wrecking, landscape-lacerating windmills on the British people is not reducing our electricity-driven CO2 emissions.
More and more windmills and solar panels are industrializing and destroying our formerly green and pleasant land. Yet the fraction of the nation’s electrical power contributed by unreliables stubbornly remains at just below 25%. Douglas Pollock wondered why.
He consulted widely among the ranking experts on grid management, but no one had any idea why grids such as Germany and the UK, whose installed unreliables capacity is so much greater than 25% of total generation, are incapable of getting their mean annual contribution from wind power, in particular, above 25%. True, on some days wind can generate about two-thirds of Britain’s electricity. But on average – a la larga, as they say in the casinos of Puerto Rico – the contribution of wind and solar is stuck at 25% of total grid generation.
So Douglas scratched his head and thought about it. After a good deal of research and a lot more thinking, he discovered what was wrong. It was a subtle but devastating error that none of the whinnying enviro-zomb advocates of unreliables had noticed.
Douglas’ argument is a beautifully simple and simply beautiful instance of the logical application of mathematical principles to derive a crucially-important but unexpected and hitherto wholly overlooked result. Read it slowly and carefully. Admire its elegant and irrefutable simplicity.
Let H be the mean hourly demand met by a given electricity grid, in MWh/h. Let R be the average fraction of nameplate capacity actually generated by renewables – their mean capacity factor. Then the minimum installed nameplate capacity C of renewables that would be required to meet the hourly demand H is equal to H/ R.
It follows that the minimum installed nameplate capacity N < C of renewables required to generate the fraction f of total grid generation actually contributed by renewables – the renewables fraction – is equal to f C, which is also f H / R ex-ante.
Now here comes the magic. The renewables fraction f, of course, reaches its maximum fmax where hourly demand H is equal to N. In that event, N is equal to H ex hypothesi and also to fmax H/ R ex-ante, whereupon H is equal to fmax H/ R.
Since dividing both sides by H shows fmax / R is equal to 1, fmax is necessarily equal to R.
And that’s it. In plain English, the maximum possible fraction of total grid generation contributable by unreliables turns out to be equal to the average fraction of the nameplate capacity of those reliables that is realistically achievable under real-world conditions.
For onshore wind, that capacity factor R is a depressingly low 25%. For offshore wind, one might get 30%. The reason is that a lot of the time the wind is not blowing at all, and some of the time the wind is blowing too much to allow safe rotation of the turbines.
What Douglas Pollock’s brilliant and, at first blush, unexpected result means is that the miserably low capacity factor R is in fact also the fundamental limit fmax on the contribution that unreliable can make to the grid without prohibitively expensive and logistically unachievable large-scale static-battery backup.
That means that wind and solar power cannot contribute more than about a quarter of total electricity demand on the grid, unless there is battery backup. However, as Professor Michaux’ 1000-page paper of 2021 for the Finnish geological survey has established, there are nothing like enough techno-metals to provide battery backup of the entire grid worldwide.
Just for the first 15-year generation of static-battery backup for the global grid, the Professor calculates that one would need the equivalent of 67,000 years total current annual production of vanadium, to name but one of the scarce techno-metals that would be required in prodigious quantities. In another 15 years, another 67,000 years production will be needed, for batteries are short-lived, as anyone with a cell-phone knows to his cost. So battery backup is simply not an option on a global scale, even if it were affordable.
Now consider just how devastating is Douglas Pollock’s brilliant result for the climate-Communist narrative. First, it is simple. Even a zitty teenager in high school can understand it. Secondly, it shows that even if global warming were a problem rather than a net benefit there is absolutely nothing we can realistically do about it, except sit back and enjoy the sunshine. Thirdly, it shows that the climate Communists, in placing all their eggs in the electricity basket, have a basket-case on their hands.
For the imminent, enforced replacement of gasoline-powered autos by electric buggies will not only impose an enormous extra loading on the grid – for which most grids are wholly unprepared – but, since the batteries add 30% to the weight of the typical buggy compared with a real auto, the entire transport sector will be squandering 30% more energy than it does now. And that energy is supposed to come from the already overloaded grid, powered by unreliables that can only deliver a quarter of total grid capacity in any event.
It gets worse. In the UK, the “government”, in its final thrust to destroy the British economy, is ordering every household with a perfectly good oil-fired boiler to tear it out in two years’ time and replace it with a ground-source or air-source heat pump, which will deliver far less heat at far greater cost. And where is the electricity for the heat pumps going to come from? From the grid, that’s where.
The bottom line is that, because vastly more electricity than now would be needed to achieve nut zero, and because the Pollock limit means only about a quarter of grid electricity can be delivered by unreliables, the net effect of attempts at nut zero will be to increase global emissions significantly, because, as Douglas has decisively proven, nut zero – even if it were at all desirable, which it is not – is impossible.
Nut zero, then, is a striking instance of Monckton’s Law, which states that any attempt by governments to interfere in the free market in pursuit of some political objective or another will tend to bring about a result that is precisely the opposite of that which was – however piously – intended.
I hate to be the skunk at the picnic, but I believe the analysis, as I follow it, is incorrect. Various wind/solar proponents argue that we should overbuild wind and solar capacity, then use the “surplus” generation to produce “green” hydrogen. Ignoring the costs of doing so, if N > C, then Mr. Pollock’scalculation fails. Having said that, however, overbuilding does nothing for the periods during which there is no wind/sun. Hence, the battery capacity required to ensure reliability for such a period does not change. If I am missing something, perhaps Lord Monckton or one of the commenters can clarify.
The hydrogen still has to be transported and stored.
And not through pipelines designed for methane.
Hydrogen is a terrible solution. There are many times it flat doesn’t work, and it is explosive and corrosive. Just say no to hydrogen.
When I ran these calculations I found the lowest cost for a net-zero grid (about 30% higher than today’s cost, nowhere close to Germany’s nonsense) did the following:
Maintain all existing nuclear
Install wind & solar to 60-80% of generation (not capacity) depending on grid
Ran natural gas combined cycle for the rest
Install a very small amount of storage to manage largest summer peaks
Run direct air capture over the year to offset any CO2 released by NGCC
Alternative model (assuming next gen nuclear was low cost)
Exact same as above, but install nuclear to hit 60-80% of generation
For ERCOT you do everything except the direct air capture based on cost only. That is, at $3.50.mmBTU you install as much wind and solar as you can just to avoid fuel cost. However, you don’t waste money on direct air capture. That led to ~80% zero emissions in ERCOT driven entirely by cost considerations. Beyond that costs started rising again as you overbuild wind (much less overbuild of solar) and run direct air capture.
In no scenarios was hydrogen a cost effective option. The problem is if you want to generate hydrogen with “surplus” electricity you end up installing insanely expensive electrolysis equipment that is only used a few hundred hours a year at most. Complete waste of capital. You would be much better off spreading out direct air capture in order to run a peaker.
In response to Jonathan, the head posting (if only people would read them before rather than after commenting) makes it plain that in the absence of static-battery backup the capacity factor of an energy source is equal to the maximum fraction of total grid generation contributable by that source.
It is not difficult to work out, having read that in the head posting, that soi-disant “green” hydrogen would act in such a system in a fashion functionally similar to a static battery. The cost, like that of static battery backup, would be enormous; the risks, including risks to life, would be substantial, and, at present, the costly infrastructure that would be required does not exist.
In no way, then, does the theoretical possibility of generating “green” hydrogen from surplus unreliables generation impugn Douglas Pollock’s fascinating result.
What battery capacity? The big battery that might support the grid’s demand for 6 minutes? 6 minutes, tops.
There are rumors of large batteries that can support an office complex for a brief time, But, no glowing reviews, e.g., ‘The mystery battery kept our building lights, computers, internet, water and heating/cooling running for days perfectly.’
None of the batteries extant are capable of supplying sufficient inertia to restart or stabilize a grid.
I am in complete agreement with the thrust and general content of this article. However….the following statement appears to be incorrect. “As a direct result of this fatuity, Britain now suffers the costliest electricity prices in the world.” A few fast checks show that Germany holds this dubious distinction (in Europe at least). Attention to this kind of detail is, I think, quite important – lest the remaining content of the article then becomes subject to accusations of discredence.
Actually, the most recent cost comparison I have seen, which has also been reported in the less untrustworthy media here, is that UK electricity is now the costliest in the world. If it is not quite the costliest in the world, that is a quibble that does not in any way undermine or impugn Mr Pollock’s important result.
We spent the summer and autumn exporting electricity to France, where prices were higher on account of their capacity shortages arising from nuclear maintenance. When it turned cold in Dunkelflaute our own capacity shortage was revealed and we paid top prices for imports to keep the lights on.
Prices actually realised by wind generation are much higher than the media propaganda tell us.
The chart is based on the data for actual CFD generation by wind farm and strike price, and actual production at each band of ROCs otherwise, with ROC values as reported by OFGEM for cashout plus recycle value, and day ahead market prices as measured by the hourly Intermediate Market Reference Price used to calculate CFD payments (in practice the APX average traded price for each hour). The December 2022 data are incomplete, awaiting reconciled settlement data.
Most grateful for that fascinating chart. And to think that the electricity from our nicely-amortized but now destroyed coal-fired power stations was just £20 per MWh.
He had been looking at nations such as Britain,
huge mistake. britain has no talent.
lost it all in the 50s.
stupid morons gave hong kong back to china
Perhaps only a stupid moron would think there was any feasible way for Britain to retain the rump of Hong Kong once the New Territories reverted to China.
Davs, Mosh is many things. A moron is not among them.
Like Mosh, I thought the people of Hong Kong should have gone to the Brits and said “We want to stay British” and the Brits should have backed them. I thought that was very foolish of Britain. Yes it was a “Treaty requirement”, but considering how many treaties have been broken by the Great Powers throughout history … so what?
w.
It was a Treaty requirement.
Seriously mosh…
Why continue to display your deliberate ignorance?
However, as Professor Michaux’ 1000-page paper of 2021 for the Finnish geological survey has established, there are nothing like enough techno-metals to provide battery backup of the entire grid worldwide.
page count = truth
It is always a good sign when Mr Mosher does one of his drivel-by postings. It means the usual suspects are worried by the head posting. And with good reason. I doubt whether Mr Mosher has either attempted to read any of Professor Michaux’s research, still less to discuss it with the Professor himself, before taking his characteristically uninformed and cheap shot. But then, Mr Mosher is paid not to allow the truth to emerge, which he finds difficult given that he is entirely incapable of distinguishing that which is true from that which is not. He is out of his league here.
Professor Michaux has reported that a number of vehement critics have attacked his work but not one has been able to refute the data or the calculations.
You could of course speculate that he has just lied.
You could speculate that there are actually oodles and oodles of easily recoverable metals that have just not yet been tripped over by unobservant hikers.
go long vandium!!
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312490/vanadium-production-volume-worldwide-by-country/
I did go long on “vandium”
I stuck an “a” in between the “n” and the “d”, which made the word longer, but didn’t do anything for its futures prospects.
Mosh has been going long on Valium !
His brain is nearly 100% in a state of non-functionality.
The whole point of “Nut Zero” is to confine hoi polloi to riff raff ghettos thus allowing the Davos Elite a much more pleasant environment in which to enjoy their wealth.
It’s well on track to achieve that objective so Monckton’s Law is not validated here.
No, no, no. You don’t understand. The answer is to build even more windmills. We must cover the country in them. I say this is jest, but it seems our politicians, from both sides of the House, seem to believe this is the answer. More is better!
You should always be careful with proclamations of what is impossible. Last year the solar+wind electricity production in ERCOT was 30% of total production (generation, not capacity). Of that 25% was wind, 5% solar. According to the EIA the solar capacity is set to triple over the next couple of years. That will push ERCOT to 30-35GW of solar. Check out ERCOT and find a summer day when the demand was below 35 GW. Additionally there is another 5GW of wind planned.
Given that the highest penetration periods for solar+wind were night time (high wind, low demand, no solar) we should expect solar+wind in ERCOT to hit 45% by 2025. I have said for a while that I expect solar+wind to easily pass 40% and likely drive to 60% in ERCOT. It looks like that 60% penetration may happen by 2030.
I’m not a net-zero fanatic. However, I think 60-70% annual generation by renewables is possible (and economically viable) in some areas on some grids (with ERCOT likely to be the king in that regard). The biggest problem with areas like Australia and UK is that they have done dumb stuff to force their grids toward renewables. ERCOT has achieved similar results without demanding action, and has done it with lower than average electricity costs. I genuinely expect MISO and SPP to achieve similar results. Given poorer wind resources I don’t expect the same from southeast or Florida. I also expect PJM to move slow since they are bound and determined to continue shoveling money at existing plants. Other areas in the Northeast will just screw up their grids like Europe.
You should always be careful with fatuous, ill-considered generalizations. ERCOT, the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (the clue is in the name) is in Texas, which, the last time I was there, had a whole lot more sunshine than the UK. In the UK, the renewables fraction is about 25% and, faced with the Pollock limit, cannot much exceed 25% of total grid generation however many additional bat-blenders and bird-fryers are added. In Texas, the weather is such that the capacity factor of solar power is very considerably larger than that in the UK.
Capacity of wind is also higher in Texas than UK. Wind is the biggest issue in the comparison since it makes up 25% of the 30% from wind+solar on ERCOT.
ERCOT is by far my favorite grid. It has world class solar, world class wind, some of the cheapest coal in the world (from Wyoming), and the world’s cheapest natural gas. Everything gets to compete at its absolute best. Top that off, it is a large grid (more people than Australia), mostly isolated (out of sync with any other grids). The biggest drawback is that it has no hydro (which should be used to balance the grid). If it seems like I am generalizing ERCOT that is my mistake. ERCOT is absolutely fantastic and cannot be generalized to anywhere else. It is a special case, and effectively the baseline for everything (again, except hydro).
The western grid should be able to perform as well as ERCOT if considered together (great solar in Arizona, great wind in Wyoming, and they have great hydro in the northwest), but can’t meet ERCOT on price, and are slowly losing on CO2/MWh. That is largely due to inability to adequately manage transmission buildout (think CREZ) because they have to align multiple state agencies and the Feds.
I love the comparison because it says the market structure in Texas completely outclasses that of the highly regulated California centered west.
On all of the above, I agree with chadb. But on whether it is sensible to install unreliables in excess of the Pollock limit, with the wastage, cost and lack of grid stability that that entails, we shall have to differ.
You state, “…60-70% annual generation by renewables is possible (and economically viable) in some areas on some grids (with ERCOT likely to be the king in that regard).”
At 40% CF for wind, and 25% CF solar that would average out to 65%. But what about a week of rainy, calm, cloudy weather? The storage cost for even a mere 100 hours of storage ruins your “economically viable”. What about that week of stiff breezes, clear sky and moderate temperature? How much will you spend on curtailment? Battery storage at $500 kwh is not an option (neither is $200 kwh). 1000 mw (typical conventional powerplant) *100 hours * $500,000 per mWh = $50,000,000,000 ($50 billion).Pretty soon you’re talking about real money,
Texas electricity is cheap because their near 60% natural generation is cheap, not because their 30% wind and 5% wind are so great. What would the electricity price be if all the capital poured into W&S had instead been spent on 66% CCGT? (and the $multibillions for HVAC to transport wind generated electricity from distant west Texas to Houston/Dallas)?
There’s too much invested in so-called renewables and net zero. Neither is going away soon. It’s going to take many well-publicized failures before things change.
Right now, stories that don’t fit the narrative are just kept from the public eye. The public has to know the stories are there and actively search for them.
Where can I find original papers from Douglas Pollock?
Mr Pollock is submitting his paper to a leading journal. If the paper passes scrutiny (and so far nothing in the comments here succeeds in impugning it) it will in due course be published in the usual way, whereupon I shall see to it that readers here are informed.
Vanadium in any serious quantity would be a byproduct of platinum group metals produced from the Bushvelt and potentially the 500km long Great Dyke in Zimbabwe (I believe these two deposits are genetically related, although I haven’t seen such a connection reported).
They might have to go lead acid. There is 20 million tonnes or so of lead in ICE cars the Net Z mummies want to abolish. Going with exotic metals is just another ‘sociological engineers’ conceit. Maybe experts like Niaomi Oreskes can be a help with this.
Grid scale storage is too expensive even if the batteries were free. The site prep, labor, enclosures, switch gear, overcurrent protection, fire suppression and more costs at least $200kW.h of the $500kW.h total packet price. It’s forever too expensive beyond four (4) hours of storage. Give it up.
“air-source heat pump“
These are fine in the right circumstances — that (apparently) few living quarters in the UK and Europe have. Single family homes in the US built in the last 20 years with good insulation and under-floor ductwork are good candidates.
This is true of solar also. Special niche situations. That’s a different story.
When we moved into our current house fifteen years ago, we replaced the original heat pump, then on its last legs, with a new one for a cost of $9,000. The quoted price for an equivalent replacement is now approximately $25,000. We will keep the current one until it can no longer be repaired if it malfunctions.
The major maxim that nut zero advocate ignore is the engineering maxim that states “do not replace anything that works well with an alternative that has not yet been proven to work at least as well UNDER ALL CONDITIONS.”
By that maxim we never should have traded rail or horses for automobiles. Rail can work in several feet of snow, horses work far better off road.
The real trade off is whether the positives outweigh the negatives. The net-zero crowd would argue that the positive of net-zero outweighs the negative of occasional blackouts and higher prices. I would disagree, but that is the real question. The net-zero advocate would argue that the cost is lower than sometimes presented (i.e. the “business as usual” crowd does not properly account for avoided fuel costs), and that the grid can be as reliable as today (especially with grid expansion).
I think you are stretching a bit here. Otherwise known as picking the fly shit out of the pepper. Unless of course you forgot the /sarc tag.
Actually my problem is that your maxim is the maxim that the FDA uses when considering new drugs. If a new drug is going to be approved it must meet or exceed efficacy of existing drugs. That prevents new drugs from entering the market if their claim is “it’s only 80% as effective, but it still works in 80% of cases and only costs 5% as much as the current drug.” That is, “this can be a first pass and treat most patients and save boatloads of money” isn’t sufficient if the drug isn’t also at least as effective.
I will frequently pick solutions that are less effective because they work better for me. That is, my car is not the best, but it works pretty well, and I don’t want to foot the bill for a vehicle that “works at least as well UNDER ALL CONDITIONS.” The reality is we don’t want to pay for that on the grid either. Nuclear has a 98% up time. I don’t want to pay for NGCT that can boast a 98% up time. It would be far cheaper to go with 90% up time and overbuild by 10%.
Actual application now:
Let’s say I own a NGCC plant in Texas (Yes Monckton, ERCOT). The current price of natural gas is ~3.80/mmBTU. Let’s assume I owned a piece of land next to my NGCC plant. If I build out a solar farm on that land I am going to pay a good chunk of money for it. Let’s assume I don’t build any other resources, all I do is plug it in to my existing grid connection and when the sun is shining I power down the NGCC plant. Over 10 years the money I save on fuel is more than the money I spent on the solar plant. To be fair, the same would not be true in Pennsylvania, Washington, UK, or Germany. But it would be in Florida, Spain, and Italy. In these locations the solar will not work as well under all conditions, and I have shelled out money for capital that is 100% backed up with Natural Gas. However, at the end of 10 years I have more money in my pocket than if I simply ran the NGCC.
That is why solar is going in to the tune of 20GW in Texas. In the UK (to Monckton’s point) it is going in because morons in power say “if it works in Australia and Texas it will work here.”
chadb continues to miss the point of Mr Pollock’s research, which is that the fraction of total grid generation delivered by a generating species cannot exceed the capacity factor of that species. Waffling about positives and negatives has nothing to do with. Mr Pollock’s result is a proven result.
I read through the equations again, and there was a problem nagging at me, but I finally figured it out.
Let’s imagine any grid in the world. It is going to operate somewhere between 30-50% capacity (i.e. peak demand will be 2-3x average demand). Now let’s install one giant load following unit. Think of a large diesel generator on an island. The diesel generator will have a capacity factor equal to the average capacity factor of the island. In this case you have a capacity factor of 30-50% for your generator, but 100% penetration. Clearly Douglas is wrong because his equations don’t require that the sources be renewable. Consider Norway for fun – it is a 90% renewable grid where the renewables operate at ~30% capacity factor. The grid generation by the load follower obviously exceeds the capacity factor for the species.
Where is the mistake? Douglas assumes
1) There is no overbuild of renewable capacity
2) Renewable generation is normally distributed (not the case, especially obvious for the diurnal cycle of solar)
3) The annual demand can be approximated by a flat line
If demand is correlated with generation (i.e. more demand during day than night), or if overbuild is feasible (then curtail excess generation), or if generation is dispatchable (not the case for wind/solar, but is the case for other renewables) then the underlying assumptions fall apart.
Chadb is still not getting the point. He says there are three mistakes, none of which is a mistake.
1) Mr Pollock does not assume there is no overbuild of renewable capacity: he calculates the fundamental limit above which any further build will be overbuild.
2) Mr Pollock makes no assumption that any species of generation is uniform throughout the day.
3) Mr Pollock makes no assumption that the annual demand will be uniform for each hour of the year.
His equations are silent on all these three points.
Chadb goes on to give the following purported conditions under which he says Mr Pollock’s equations do not hold. Chadb is, however, incorrect on all three points.
First, where generation is matched to demand. That condition self-evidently does not apply to unreliables, where generation is dictated by the vagaries of the weather, which are not under the control either of the generator or of the grid operator.
Secondly, where “overbuild is feasible”. That condition self-evidently does not apply to Mr Pollock’s result, which is silent on whether overbuild is either feasible or desirable. The Pollock limit merely reveals the point beyond which overbuild will inevitably occur.
Thirdly, where generation is dispatchable. That condition self-evidently dose noit apply to unreliables, and it does not apply to Mr Pollock’s equations, which are directed at wind and solar generation, which is not dispatchable.
Bingo!
You’ve changed the subject from unreliable wind and solar to dispatchable diesel generation. Any chance that might be a logical fallacy, presenting irrelevant information in an attempt to distract from the topic being discussed?
Amen to that!
It’s just a specific case of Conquest’s 3rd Law of Politics: «The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.»
But of course, even that is but a corollary to Parkinson’s Laws, in this case «[In any bureaucratic organization] Work expands to fill the time available for its completion». Obviously, any assigned task without an explicit time limit at all must grow indefinitely, creating ever more work to do. It can never be “finished”.
No: Monckton’s Law is a law of economics. I gave a lecture on it once at St Andrews University, using climate change policy as one of a dozen examples.
As much as I respect and enjoy Christopher Monckton contributions to climate science, those who read my work know that I’m a data guy.
So after reading his post above saying that that the share of renewables in electrical generation couldn’t exceed their capacity factor, I went to Our World In Data to get the data on the shares of electrical generation by country and fuel. Here are the results for wind for the top twenty countries.
And here are the results for solar.
Not sure how to interpret these results. It’s not because the capacity factor is high in those countries, I checked that.
All suggestions gladly accepted.
w.
Capacity factors are higher for solar in sunny countries and higher for wind in windy countries. I have been to the Falkland Islands, for instance, and they are reliably and quite steadily windy – ideal for wind generation. Even there, though, the wind-power capacity factor is half of nameplate, so the Pollock limit (which is not, repeat not, calculated as a global average but on a territory-by-territory basis) is 50%.
Thanks, Christopher.
I can’t find the 2021 capacity factor for the Falklands. However, in 2016 there was 2.32 MW of wind capacity, generating 9 GHW of electricity. This gives a capacity factor of 0.44, well below the claimed 50% …
However, the Falkland numbers are confusing because there are over 100 individual small windmills powering individual houses, some of which have their own battery. It’s unclear if, how many, and where they are counted either in capacity or generation. Also, the main system contains batteries.
I also looked at the capacity factor for wind in Ireland. It’s just about the global average, 0.255 … but the claim at least is that wind is providing ~30% of electricity.
And the capacity factor for Denmark is 0.26, but the claim is the wind is providing ~48% of the electricity.
I couldn’t find the wind installed capacity for the other top-tier countries.
As I said in my comment, “It’s not because the capacity factor is high in those countries, I checked that.”
Be clear that I’m not questioning the underlying math. I’m just trying to understand the reasons for the exceptions to that math.
w.
There are several reasons why grids can sometimes generate in excess of the Pollock limit. The first is the simplest. Until now, governments and grid operators simply didn’t know about the Pollock limit, so some of them (Britain egregious among them) have installed more unreliables capacity than the limit mandates, and are paying hefty capacity payments (also known as constraint payments, curtailment payments or, in the trade, capacity payments) to unreliables generators to switch off at times of high wind and sun and low demand.
Or, as in the Falklands, where most households live remotely, they have battery backup to store any surplus. That could on its own take the apparent wind capacity factor from 44% to 50%
Likewise, one would need to examine the detailed wind profile across the year in question to see whether the capacity factor for that year had risen because the wind was closer to optimal than normal. In Texas, for instance, where they keep good data, in the past six years the wind capacity factor has fluctuated from about 32 to 43%.
Like Willis, I am a data man, but I am also a theoretician. When an irrefutable theoretical argument is presented and the data appear inconsistent with the conclusion of that theoretical argument, I tend to suspect the data.
Yet on this graph, Spain, with the most sunlight in Europe, has a “solar percentage” of 10%, dead last.
This graph is not “capacity factor”.
karlo, you say “This graph is not “capacity factor”.”
You are 100% correct. That’s why the title of the graph says “Percentage Of Electricity From Solar”, and not “Capacity Factor”.
w.
Willis, the inset box says “Average Solar Capacity Factor”, so I’m still confused.
Sorry for the confusion. Christopher compared share of generation with capacity factor. I’m doing the same. The graph is share of generation. The dotted line is the average capacity factor.
Regards,
w.
Thnx Willis.
Willis—consider the PV operating temperatures. Also “Percentage of Electricity from Solar” and “Solar Percentage” does not square with the “Average Solar Capacity Factor”. To me these seem like two different quantities.
karlo, they are indeed different quantities. Christopher Monckton says that the % of electricity from e.g. solar CANNOT exceed the capacity factor. My graph, which contains both, shows that’s simply not true.
As a result of people noting that, Christopher has moved the goalposts. Now, without admitting that his original claim was wrong, his new claim is that installing renewables in excess of the capacity factor is wasteful and useless.
That may indeed be true, and I suspect it is. However, it’s also much more difficult to support or disprove.
w.
You state, “Christopher has moved the goalposts. Now, without admitting that his original claim was wrong, his new claim is that installing renewables in excess of the capacity factor is wasteful and useless
.
See below, you may have missed this:
Monckton quote from the original posting:
What Douglas Pollock’s brilliant and, at first blush, unexpected result means is that the miserably low capacity factor R is in fact also the fundamental limit fmax on the contribution that unreliable can make to the grid without prohibitively expensive and logistically unachievable large-scale static-battery backup.
Sounds like “wasteful and useless” to me.
Dennis, check my graphic. Ireland has a 25.5% capacity factor for wind and no battery storage, but produces over 30% of its electricity from wind. How? I have no idea. I’m just reporting the facts.
As to Christopher’s claim, you seem to have missed this:
Nothing about battery backup, and in fact, Ireland has none.
Best regards,
w.
Willis Eschenback appears to have missed the very large section of the head posting devoted to battery backup. To say “nothing about battery backup” is not a legitimate description of the head posting.
And his example from Ireland is within the error margin for generating capacity. In a good year for wind – wind stronger than usual but not too strong, and steadier than usual – the capacity factor for wind may exceed the long-run capacity factor, though usually by a smallish margin, such as 5%.
But none of that alters Douglas Pollock’s result.
Christopher, your “plain English” statement of the underlying claim says nothing about batteries, and the fact that you discuss them in other contexts elsewhere doesn’t change that. But that’s a minor point, and my own writing is never 100% clear.
As for Ireland, I fear your claim that exceeding the “Pollock limit” is simply due to changes in the wind regime and involve exceeding it by “a smallish margin, such as 5%” runs hard aground on the facts … here is the Irish record.
Ireland exceeded your “Pollock limit” in 2018, is continuing to rise, and is most recently 23.5% above that “limit”.
This is why I trust data over theory …
My best wishes to you and yours,
w.
And now much of the Irish generation is being wasted, with consequent capacity payments?
Couldn’t that 5% above the CF simply come from overbuilding? A very common result at high grid penetration rates.
Denmark is well tied in with neighbors. They can trade off their surplus wind and import from Norway and France. Also, do you know if the Percentage of Electricity from wind is local generation or of total demand? One reason I like ERCOT is due to its isolation. Denmark trades so much electricity (almost 50%) that it is really hard to know what is being plotted there. I suspect it is the total of electricity generated in the country.
For the solar capacity – the generation cycle matches diurnal demand variation. If your demand is higher in daytime than night time (which it is) then solar can exceed its capacity factor without storage offsets.
Denmark has at least three integrated renewable systems “species”. My understanding is that each would have to be considered and calculated individually for Pollock to be valid. I don’t have a clue how that would be done but based on your comments you might be able to if so inclined. Way beyond my reach.
The error is in “the minimum installed nameplate capacity C of renewables that would be required to meet the hourly demand H is equal to H/ R”. Places can install more than the minimum, ie. more than “C“. The real formula then depends on the profile of the intermittent energy – things like the proportion of the time that it is near zero.
In the Falklands, the wind ‘never’ stops. Your chart shows 50% for wind generation. They wouldn’t have to go much above “C” to achieve that
I understand that Denmark pays Norway to take excess wind power and use it to pump water uphill. Denmark then buys hydro power from Norway. So they would also appear to be well above “C“.
The other factor is that he treats the demand profile as flat, that is he models the entire annual power strip as a constant H ignoring daily and seasonal variations. If solar generation and demand both increase during the daytime (they do) then solar can outstrip this equation without overbuild.
Really all you are doing there is looking at H differently. Whatever H you apply, provided you don’t make it dependent on supply in any way (some analyses do do that) then the same formulae apply. But the formulae given in this article are IMHO incorrect.
Apologies, I didn’t get that comment complete. It only addresses a bit of the error. A much more important part is in “The renewables fraction f, of course, reaches its maximum fmax where hourly demand H is equal to N.”. H is demand and N is nameplate capacity, so it actually reaches its maximum (100%) when H = f N, not when H = N. The analysis is therefore completely incorrect. You can understand that this is so, because if you were at a place with completely constant wind (the Falklands in Spades) then installing enough capacity to meet maximum demand would give you >=100% of demand 24/7.
The correct formula here is entirely about intermittency. If z is the proportion of the time that generation is near zero, then fmax = 1-z. (f is defined as the fraction of total grid generation actually contributed by renewables; fmax is the theoretical maximum possible value of f). That formula is itself over-optimistic, because with any highly variable energy source, costs are likely to go through the roof long before one gets anywhere near fmax.
And that is why solar energy is the worst of the lot over the full year. However, you also need to bear in mind that the formula fmax = 1-z applies over every time period. Therefore, in any extended still period (as occurs in a typical cold British winter) fmax is very low indeed – just when demand is at its highest.
The last sentence applied to wind.
You state, “That formula is itself over-optimistic, because with any highly variable energy source, costs are likely to go through the roof long before one gets anywhere near fmax.
And that is why solar energy is the worst of the lot over the full year”.
Chadb, suggests 26% curtailment in a grid design. But the economics would be horrific. Solar generators here in California get paid average annual kW.h price to curtail midday during moderate temperature Spring and Fall weather ($millions). I know, I have roof top solar, and get credited for $0.32kW.h, when the fair market value is closer to $0.03kW.h. It’s insane, and it’s the only reason I have solar. I hope one of you math majors will put some real-world numbers into the formula proving or disproving it.
when I tried, I made a mistake, or there’s a slight error as written in the text.
With respect, Mr Jonas is incorrect. N is not nameplate capacity simpliciter. It is the minimum nameplate capacity N < C of renewables required to generate the fraction f of total grid generation actually contributed by renewables – the renewables fraction – is equal to f C, which is also f H / R. Recall that the the minimum installed nameplate capacity C of renewables that would be required to meet the hourly demand H is equal to H / R, for R the average fraction of nameplate capacity actually generated by renewables – their mean capacity factor.
Thanks, Christopher.
Upon much cogitation, I think the problem lies in the following statement:
Let’s assume a location where the offshore wind is relatively constant. Let’s further assume the location has lots of surface coal we can mine very cheaply.
We install enough offshore wind turbines to meet the total demand. However, because offshore turbines are costly to install and maintain, and because we want to guarantee power even if the turbine cable to the shore goes out, we decide to also install enough coal-fired plants to meet the total demand.
When they are installed, we choose to get about half the power from coal, and half from the wind. That guarantees that we’ll always have power, whether or not the coal or the wind are operating.
Now … what are the capacity factors R of the coal and the wind?
Well, the capacity factor of each one is about 50%. Each one is putting out about half of the nameplate capacity, they’re both just running at half throttle. When one dies or has to go down for maintenance, the other one can take up the total load.
And therein lies the problem. The capacity factor R is not fixed. It is calculated, based on how much of the nameplate capacity is actually used. And this is a choice, not a fixed value. In my example, we could just as easily choose to get 3/4 or 1/4 of the load from the coal plants, totally changing the capacity factors.
This is clear in the EIA numbers I posted elsewhere in this thread:
2021 US Capacity Factors
Coal: 49.1%
Gas—Combined Cycle: 55.0%
Gas—Gas Turbine: 11.7%
Gas—Steam Turbine: 12.5%
Gas—Internal Combustion: 18.2%
Geothermal: 69.8%
Hydroelectric: 36.0%
Nuclear: 92.7%
Biomass: 63.2%
Solar—Photovoltaic: 24.4%
Solar—Thermal: 20.5%
Wind: 34.4%
Wood: 59.9%
The fact that US renewable hydroelectric power only has a capacity factor of 36% is NOT a function of the technology. It’s a result of the choices we’ve made in the mix of electricity sources. In Norway, for example, the hydro capacity factor is 44%, much higher than in the US.
But in your calculations, you’ve assumed that R is some fixed unchanging number …
My best to you,
w.
Willis makes a good point that the definition of “capacity factor” needs to be very carefully made. It ought to be – but seems not to be – obvious that “capacity factor” in the head posting is the mean fraction of total generation contributed by, say, wind power without requiring battery backup to store any surplus, which would otherwise go to waste. After all, the whole point of the article is to show that above the Pollock limit surplus generation will have to go to battery backup. The obvious – and, therefore, unstated – corollary is that without battery backup the surplus generation would have to be suppressed by costly capacity payments. The Pollock limit provide a very simple method of assessing the point – already passed in the UK, for instance, beyond which installing more wind and solar power will not reduce grid emissions without battery backup.
Actually hydro capacity factors are usually determined by the projected availability of water upstream and the economics of installing more turbines. Figures in the 30s are quite common.
The Falklands is a good case as an isolated grid (but subject to the issues you note of private generators). However, I suspect the reality is the grid supplies Stanley and nearby areas, but other settlements and isolated farmsteads are probably not grid connected.
Denmark is not a good case. It is a connection hub between Germany, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. It can dump its wind surpluses on its neighbours much of the time, while calling on them for backup when the wind stops. That allows much more wind than if they had to curtail.
I don’t know about the the “average … capacity factor” at any of those particular places (which most likely vary from place to place with each country), but the claims of this essay are based on the average capacity factor of a given place, not the average across many places.
No, the head posting makes no claims based on the average capacity factor of the UK. That was merely taken as an example of the problem.
What is it with politicians all over the free world?
Heavy industry and manufacturing need affordable energy to produce goods and pay good salaries to compete with Asian countries .
Producing goods in Europe would actually reduce emissions with far less shipping and if these dimwits have a problem with coal why are they not prioritizing the planing and building of Nuclear power stations .
Why do these numb skulls in charge wreck their countries economies trying to go nut zero when it will make not one iota to world wide emissions .
Emissions are still increasing because China and other Asian countries are using billions of tonnes of coal more now than in past years .
World coal use was steady at 4.7 billion tonnes for ten years up to 2008 but coal use has now exceeded 8 billion tonnes in 2018 and 2021.
Why can’t politicians and voters in western countries wake up to see the futility of chasing zero carbon ?
We have the same madness here in New Zealand .
The majority of our electricity is generated by hydro with some geothermal and wind.
Fortunately our hydro stations can be used as back up for the wind turning hydro stations on and off as required .
You would think New Zealands emissions would be low by world standards .
They are untill politicians become involved and tell us that our farmed livestock are producing methane and nitrous oxide .
It is estimated that New Zealand produces food to feed 40 million people around the world from a country of 5 million.
The question that no one will answer is why do our methane emissions not get exported with the food ?
Imported fossil fuel emissions are counted in the country where they are used .
Why are food exports different ?
We have to de-industrialize western civilization in order to save the world (and be the last ones fed to the crocodiles)!
Valerie Gardner, founder and co-Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, an investment firm focused on nuclear energy projects, notes in an article on the Atomic Insights blog that the use of the term “renewables” rather than the term “clean energy” often has the effect of excluding consideration of nuclear power in a zero-carbon energy discussion.
Enough with “renewables!”
December 31, 2022 By Valerie Gardner
https://atomicinsights.com/enough-with-renewables/#comments
Some of the blog’s readers took the article’s title to mean that Valerie Gardner was criticizing the adoption of wind and solar as the primary future means of producing “clean energy” as opposed to new-build nuclear.
This was not her intent, certainly. But a few long-time participants on the Atomic Insights blog took the opportunity to make some pointed comments about how wind power is now being promoted inside and outside of government. To wit:
——————————————–
Brian Mays said:
Both the EIA and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have become less transparent in the statistics that they publish.
Fifteen years ago, the websites of these organizations were my go-to source for analyzing, understanding, and explaining how energy is generated and used in the US and throughout the world. Since then, their websites have become more convoluted and difficult to navigate. Instead of providing easy options to access the actual data, they tend to steer the user to their reports, which more and more read like a sales pitch or political propaganda than an honest assessment that allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
You can still find the actual numbers, if you work hard enough, but it has become much more difficult than it used to be. This is what happens when energy becomes more and more politicized and special interests become more powerful.
Ed Leaver said in response to Brian Mays:
I disagree, Brian. Perhaps you can find EIA’s actual numbers, but I sure can’t. And believe me, I’ve tried. .
Started with an attempt to compare EIA’s Levelized Cost of Energy values with those from other sources. No joy.
First, what is LCOE?
NREL knows what LCOE is, and gives a formula.
Lazard knows what LCOE is, and gives a slightly different (equally justifiable) formula.
EIA claims to know what LCOE is: it’s buried deep within their NEMS model.
NREL even has an online LCOE calculator. NREL can’t tell you what to put into it, but if you happen to know, they will cheerfully compute you an LCOE. So will your pocket calculator.
At this point I bit the bullet, swallowed my pride, and began looking into Lazard. In addition to an actual formula, Lazard also tabulated reasonably current inputs. Applied unequally in their tabulated results of course, but at least one can see what they are doing.
That was all eighteen months ago. I hope to revisit that LCOE morass someday and finish my article.
But wait! There’s more!!
Last night when I should have had better things to do, I came across an early (first?) Robert Bryce subredit Siemens Power CEO Confirms the Iron Law of Power Density. There Mr. Bryce provides a “Tons of material per TWh” graphic, with values taken from Table 10.4 (page 390) of EIA’s Quadrennial Technology Review 2015.
Fascinating metric, “Tons of material per TWh”. One supposes that if one could estimate tons of steel and concrete per MW installed capacity, and could estimate a plant’s capacity factor, and it’s projected lifetime, then one could indeed ballpark “Tons of material per TWh”. And if one were suitably intrigued, one could go to EIA’s reference 52 to look for them.
Of course, EIA’s reference 52 is to yet another of their black-box modelling programs, this time GREET — The Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies Model — with no further explanation whatsoever about what GREET does or how it was used to address this particular problem.
Sigh. Well, I might not be Engineer-Poet. But I’m still not totally bereft of resources:
Metal And Concrete Inputs For Several Nuclear Power Plants, Peterson et al. 2005.
Concrete Towers for Onshore and Offshore Wind Farms, Gifford, The Concrete Center, 2012.
Then from Peterson’s paper I’d estimate 204,500 m^3 concrete and 70,900 MT (metric tons) steel for an EPR. Using concrete density 2.4 MT/m^3, 90% Cf, and 60 year plant life I’d get 650 MT concrete and 94 MT steel per TWh for EPR, or 744 total “Tonnes of material per TWh” or 818 “Tons material per TWh”.
EIA GREET claims 920 tons material per TWh for nuclear, only 12% high. But they don’t show their work.
Similarly for wind, using Gifford’s 2012 values for 2.5 MW onshore wind turbine of 460 tons metal and 3100 tons concrete, and assuming 25 yr plant life and 40% capacity factor, then including stem and nacelle one finds 2100 tons metal and 14,155 tons concrete per TWh, or 16,255 total tons material per TWh.
EIA GREET claims 1800 tons steel and 8,000 tons concrete per TWH for “Wind”, or 9,800 total tons material per TWh. But they don’t say which wind, where, its alleged capacity factor, or assumed plant lifetime and whatever recycling. They don’t say.
They don’t show their work.
Richard Lentz said in response to Ed Leaver:
I have never found any mention anywhere on EIA or NREL indicating the fact that Wind turbines use ten to fifteen percent of “generated power,” annually, taken from a source other than the Output of the generator to maintain the WT in a state of readiness to generate power.
They ignore this power consumption as it is indicated on a different power meter. Thus, all of their “calculations” do not consider this in their glowing reports of the “efficiency” of these power hogs. When 15% of the annual generated power is put on a separate accounting sheet for a device that only has a 30 to 50% annual Capacity factor that means they are actually only achieving a 15 to 35 % capacity factor.
Even a search for “How much power does a wind turbine use.” mostly finds answers of how much it Generates.
Here are a few things to consider: [Note: this is not a complete list.]
The use of this power generates heat which adds to the required cooling for the nacelle in the summer months.
(End of Atomic Insight article comments)
——————————————–
OK ……
What is not being said by anyone of real prominence in the nuclear industry is that the impacts of wind & solar on the future price of electricity will certainly be one of the major factors making the relatively high upfront capital costs of nuclear more acceptable in the power generation marketplace.
My warning to all nuclear power advocates on that score would be this:
A strategy of depending upon future increases in the price of electricity in order to make nuclear competitive with natural gas — as opposed to pursuing diligent, rigorous, and tightly-focused efforts at keeping nuclear’s capital costs under control — would be a major mistake, one which could prove fatal to a 2020’s nuclear renaissance in America.
If there is one wind turbine anywhere in the world that meter’s electricity delivered to the turbine, I’ve somehow missed it despite several lengthy searches. Truly a closely guarded secret. One paper, a decade ago, by a graduate student in Minnesota came up with an estimate equal to 8% of annual output.
I drove by a wind turbine almost every day for a couple months and noticed that it rotated at an optimum speed when the wind was essentially nonexistent. It’s not just to help “the blades start to turn”, it’s to keep them spinning. Some writers have suggested it’s done to protect the main shaft bearings from the stress of the heavy propeller if left static, others have suggested It’s to avoid warping of the blades from differential heating by the sun. The lack of transparency is criminal, considering that these turbines wouldn’t exist without taxpayer funding.
I understand why Britain’s workers are going on strike, and they have got it right. All power to them. If they crash Britain’s economy they will only be doing quickly what Britain’s energy disaster would do slowly. Which means that it can be fixed sooner. Britain needs a Liz Truss back now, to get fracking going as fast as possible and bring down energy prices, but it’s already a bit too late. Thanks to the Tory cabal that installed the hypocritical Rishi Sunak and the Labour cabal that seeks power only for itself (pun intended), the British public will not be getting a reasonable political choice any time soon. Not that they ever chose Carrie Johnson or Rishi Sunak.
Go for it, British strikers! Learn from the Canadian truckers, and go hard before the government makes all strikes illegal.
Amen to all that! The Sunak government has become as strikingly isolated from the needs and concerns of its voters as it is isolated from the elementary science that demonstrates what nonsense the climate scam is. Britain is now closer to outright bankruptcy and societal collapse than at any time in my long life. This is trahison des clercs on an epic scale.
Interesting claims and calculations, but the good folks in Iowa (USA) would find this amusing. In Iowa, the annual capacity factor for wind turbines in 2021 was 34.1%, while wind generation provided 56.84% of annual electricity sold.
Mr Sowell has misunderstood the head posting. The algebra set out there shows why it is that if unreliables provide more electricity than the Pollock limit they will do so wastefully, expensively and destabilizingly.
Roger, correct me if I’m wrong, but six years ago (or thereabouts) when you were still a resident of California, you said that there should be no problem for California to reach 70% renewable-generated electricity by the year 2030.
CEO Anthony Early of PG&E was saying the same thing at the time when announcing that Diablo Canyon would be permanently closed by 2025. As an ardent anti-nuclear activist, you strongly defended PG&E’s decision.
My assumption has always been that the 70% figure for 2030 should be based on gigawatt-hours of electricity consumed within the state of California, using power generated from wind & solar resources located both inside and outside the state’s borders.
Six years ago, I asked if there was a comprehensive plan of action for California which described at a proper level of detail just how California could reach the 70% by 2030 target.
There was no response to my question because no such plan existed. Six years later, the situation is the same. California has nothing in the way of a credible plan of action for reaching the state’s 2030 goal.
It is now the year 2022 and President Biden has announced his goal of Net Zero for electricity generation by the year 2035, and Net Zero for the entire US economy by 2050. The effect is to compress a hundred years of technical and administrative evolution of the energy market between 1920 and 2020 into a time span of less than thirty years.
This is a daunting challenge, to say the least. As such, the Biden Administration owes the nation a credible plan of action for the Net Zero transition. So far, nothing in the way of a credible plan of action for reaching Biden’s Net Zero goals has been produced.
My question to you is this: Why have the climate activists and the advocates of wind & solar not pressed the Biden Administration for a credible plan of action which demonstrates, in an appropriate level of detail, just how exactly their Net Zero goals can be achieved?
Iowa is dumping their surplus wind on Illinois. They can absorb it without destroying their ratepayers because of their gigantic long serving nuclear capacity. I’m surprised Iowa is only at 34.1% CF. I’ve had wind aficionados claiming it’s 40%.
“True, on some days wind can generate about two-thirds of Britain’s electricity.”
This is only during the low demand part of the year where people and businesses are not heating their premises, as well as following the decimation of UK industry, so it’s not that impressive.
No no you forgot about the solar on top of the wind and the law of averages-
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-hits-stunning-new-high-in-race-to-renewables-only-grid/
Soon with all that VRE penetration and its negative pricing they’ll be paying us to use the power instead of the 40.7c/kWhr for 14 hours of the day now.
I thought they were considering charging for exports of domestic solar surpluses.
They are for the obvious to economic literates but here’s the rub for the NEM grid at 2 pm in the arvo in South Australia-
https://www.aemo.com.au/Energy-systems/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-NEM/Data-Dashboard-NEM
Checking the fuel mix tab solar is running at 24% with total fossil fuels at 66% because highly correlated wind is only 3% across most of Oz and that’s what these average numpties never get. It’s the marginals stoopids!
PS: Bearing in mind if you hit the Renewable Penetration tab it highlights the maxm renewable penetration was 68.7% at 18882MW at 12.30 on Frid 28th Oct 2022. Whoopee idiots!
“Nut zero, then, is a striking instance of Monckton’s Law, which states that any attempt by governments to interfere in the free market in pursuit of some political objective or another will tend to bring about a result that is precisely the opposite of that which was – however piously – intended.”
******
Or, as I like to say, to err is human, but to really screw things up requires government central planning.
Simple and beautiful! Love it.
Could the good Lord Monckton have a word with Minister Ryan in Ireland, who is proposing something like 10GW of wind (and a few GW of solar to boot on our notoriously rainy island), and where average demand is 4GW. The genius Ryan has simply decided to label any excess wind as “oversupply”, and so in the electricity market’s eyes, it never existed.
Most grateful to argon laser for his comments. The first step now is for Douglas Pollock to submit his paper to a leading journal for peer review. If it passes review and is published, then I can certainly intervene with Ministers to invite them to be more cautious in building windmills.
Two countries are at the forefront of MSR, China which has built and testing a MSR [1] and Indonesia is in the design or constructing of a much substantial MSR [2].
China and Indonesia’s TMSR-500 are not the only two countries that are building or designing MSR’s.. There are at least 17 other countries that are in involved in the design or research of MSR’s [3][4].
So what’s the future in the energy sector? It goes something like this
a) Fossil fuels will eventually run out say, 100, 150 or even 500 years.
b) ITER and Tokamak type fusion reactors are failed technology, the following are reasons why:
i) How do you get the fuel in?
ii) How do you get the waste out?
iii) How do you get the energy out?
iv) How do you do i, ii & iii while the fusion reactor is still running?
c) Nuclear PWR have many cons, ie; safety, fuel efficiency, nuclear waste and cost to build.
d) The only answer to the above PWR problems are, Molten Salt Reactors (MSR).
i) They are inherently safe, no water needed and low pressure
ii) Fuel efficiency is 3% for PWR as compared with virtually 100% for MSR
iii) Abundance of fuel is 3 (Thorium) times greater than Uranium
iv) Enough fuel to last 1000s of years. If Thorium breeder reactors then 100s of 1,000 years
v) Nuclear waste is minimal, 300 years as compared with 10,000+ years
vi) Can provide society with all the fossil fuels needed /sarc
Molten Salt Reactors means several types and in addition these MSR’s will still be cheaper than the existing PWR’s or LWR’s, because they will not have the pressurised components. In addition, MSR’s have numerous other benefits as well.
Regardless of whether the MSR’s exist or not at the present stage, they will be built and MSR’s designs are vapourware? Absolutely wrong, Oak Ridge National Laboratories built one in the 60’s and produced heat. If heat is produced then electricity can be generated from this heat.
It will take time and it will happen for MSR to come into being and they present to society or humanity a paradigm shift in the use of energy. Just like the industrial revolution went from wood to coal. Society will suffer pains as it transitions to the new energy source.
Renewables will not cut it for the current civilisation and fossil fuels will run out. The only viable alternative is MSR’s. Those who want provide snarky comments about MSR’s. I know where I’m placing my money on.
Regards
Climate Heretic
[1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-salt-reactor-cleared-for-start-up
[2] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/01/174503.html
[3] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/11/17-countries-cooperating-on-molten-salt.html
[4] https://aris.iaea.org/sites/MSR.html
Agree that MSR is critical, but not without challenges. As you know molten salt is corrosive. Do you have any insights?
Proposing molten salt reactors as the energy answer is exciting, much better than the current effort to replace “fossil fuels” with sunshine and breezes.
MSR technology via Bill Gates’ first commercial operation is supposedly to debut prior to 2030. I hope so. Accelerated testing methods of the corrosion resistant materials required will have had to have satisfied regulators much less investors. Such testing over a 5 or more likely 10-year period seems necessary to find the “best” materials but the “best” materials need to last 40 years to be commercial. I see comments about “cladding” for MSR corrosion resistance, but I suspect there’s patent protection issues that will discourage cooperation and extend timeframes.
The best hope we have for phasing in nuclear technology from 2030-2040 is NuScale’s small scale modular reactors, while molten salt fast neutron reactors are being perfected IMHO. I’m not by any stretch a expert, just a seriously interested old man who wants to see the beginning of the new generation nuclear renaissance before I kick off!
copy
TerraPower will run tests with depleted uranium, which is not used in fission, to determine which materials can hold molten salt without being damaged by corrosion
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333245378_Status_of_Metallic_Structural_Materials_for_Molten_Salt_Reactors
2018:
Hastelloy N has not been qualified for use in nuclear construction, and significant additional characterization would be required for Code qualification. …
… It is recommended that a systematic development program be initiated to develop new nickel alloys that contain a fine, stable dispersion of intermetallic particles to trap helium at the interface between the matrix and particle, and with increased solid-solution strengthening from addition of refractory elements.
With support from computational materials science tools, a speculative time frame for a down-selection program, using 20-30 kg heats, is about four to five years….
“What Douglas Pollock’s brilliant and, at first blush, unexpected result means is that the miserably low capacity factor R is in fact also the fundamental limit fmax on the contribution that unreliable can make to the grid without prohibitively expensive and logistically unachievable large-scale static-battery backup.”
============
I also find the results unexpected.
Imagine covering the earth with solar panels in parallel and a grid consisting of 1 light bulb.
Each panel would have an average capacity factor of say 33% but you could keep 1 light bulb lit 100% of the time. In this case the “effective” capacity factor is 100%
This suggests to me that the Pollock Limit is true but needs to consider effective capacity factor instead of average. Otherwise all looks good.
We’ll done!!