Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Christopher Monckton recently put up a fascinating post entitled “The Final Nail in The Coffin Of “Renewable” Energy”. In it, he references the work of a man named Douglas Pollock who has proposed that there is a limit to the share of energy that a given renewable source can supply to the grid without battery backup. Further, Pollock says that the limit is the “capacity factor”, the fraction of the nameplate capacity that a renewable source can actually supply.
A rebuttal of this was put up as a post entitled “Sealing The Coffin Of “Renewable” Energy May Take A Few More Nails“, and Lord Monckton posted up a re-rebuttal entitled “Why Climate Skepticism Has Not Yet Succeeded“.
(Unfortunately, in the comments of the latter post I fear I waxed wroth when Christopher falsely accused me of being “openly and deliberately dishonest” … ah, well, I know that science is a blood sport, but I won’t take that from any man. However, I digress …)
While interesting, Lord Monckton’s posts are theoretical exercises. He has not provided any actual data to back them up. And when I looked at the data, I found a problem—most countries are well below the “Pollock limit”, and thus they can’t say anything at all about what happens when the windpower share of total electrical generation nears the Pollock limit.
Figure 1. Percentage of electricity from wind by country. Dotted line shows the global average wind capacity factor, which is the average fraction of the nameplate capacity that a wind turbine can actually supply in the real world.
However, a couple of countries have renewables shares that are above the Pollock limit. I picked Ireland as a test case. I got the annual information on the Irish electrical supply from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Here, on a year-by-year basis, is the annual windpower share of total Irish electricity versus the annual installed capacity (red/black line), as well as the annual capacity factor (yellow/black line).
Figure 2. Annual Irish wind share versus installed wind capacity, and wind capacity factor. 2022 values are from here and are preliminary.
There are several interesting insights from Figure 2. First, in contradiction to the proposed numerical value of the Pollock limit as being equal to the capacity factor, the wind power share of total Irish electricity is well above the wind capacity factor.
Next, it’s interesting how much the wind capacity factor varies year to year, swinging about ± 5% above and below the average value,
Next, in agreement with the concept of the Pollock limit, as the installed capacity has increased, the windpower share has moved more and more in parallel with the wind capacity factor.
Finally, the last four years are particularly interesting. From 2019 to 2022 Ireland added about 4 TWh of wind nameplate capacity … but the share of the total generated by wind only increased slightly. So it certainly appears as though it’s approaching some kind of limit.
These facts taken together suggest that there is a limit, as the Pollock limit states, but that in the Irish case, it’s higher than the capacity factor.
To visualize this in a different way, I looked at the annual windpower share as a percent of the annual capacity factor. Here’s that result (yellow line), along with theoretical calculations of what it should look like if the Pollock limit were 100% of the capacity factor (blue/black dashed line), and also what the real limit curve might be (red/black line).
Figure 3. Irish annual windpower share of total generation as a percentage of annual wind capacity factor (“Pollock limit”)(yellow), along with theoretical Pollock (blue-dashed) and possible real-world (red) limits.
In Figure 3, the curves show the situation when as the share of total generation approaches some physical li limit, each addition of wind capacity will make less and less difference as it slowly approaches the limit.
So … is there a limit?
The Irish data strongly implies that such a limit exists. And at least in the case of Ireland, it’s likely higher than the current value of 22.5% above the Pollock limit. Is it on the order of 40% above the Pollock limit as the speculative red curve illustrates? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The problem is that we don’t really have enough data to say definitely what the limit is for Ireland, or even if such a limit exists. What’s shown in Figure 3 could just be a temporary slowdown … or not. A few more years should make things much clearer.
And that’s what I have found out about the Pollock limit. I have exactly zero idea why Ireland is able to exceed the Pollock limit. The claim is that, absent grid-scale batteries, the Pollock limit is a real physical limit equal to the capacity factor. But that is certainly not the case for Ireland. It’s already 22% above the capacity factor. Why? How?
The reason cannot be economics, because Christopher’s mathematical derivation in his original post doesn’t contain any economics-related terms. (Or alternatively, if economics is the reason, then Christopher’s math must be incomplete.)
All thoughts on that question considered, although perhaps not replied to. So many drummers, so little time …
My best to all, and thanks to Christopher, Lord Monckton for highlighting Pollock’s most interesting theory.
w.
As Always: When you comment please quote the exact words you are referring to. I can defend my own words. I cannot defend your (mis)interpretation of my words. Thanks.
A Footnote Worth Noting: I am an honest man. I do my very best to tell the truth as I know and see it. Yes, I have been wrong, and more than once. And when I’m wrong, I admit it. Heck, I even have a whole post called “Wrong Again“, and to cap that off, another post called “Wrong Again, Again — who does that but a scrupulously honest man?
But despite being wrong at times in matters big and small, wrong far more times in my life than I’d prefer, I do my honest best to not ever lie, shade the truth, misstate facts, or deceive people.
So I’ll thank everyone to avoid accusing me of any of those misdeeds, as it angrifies my blood. And if that happens, it may well result in me conjecturing about the probable species and personal hygiene of some of your recent progenitors … and it also would involve a significant chance of me politely inviting you to engage in anatomically improbable acts of sexual auto-gratification and self-congress …
Willis- You did not mention overbuilding. What can you say about that?
Is Ireland overbuilt?
Since Monckton’s initial set of equations said nothing about overbuilding … neither did I.
w.
Ok, then I will. I think Francis was right. You can exceed the Pollack limit by overbuilding. You just need to build enough windmills to generate your total demand when wind generation capacity is generating any power at all. Suppose wind energy is only available 60% of the time. You can’t overbuild to cover the 40%; nothing you can do about that. But suppose that the first increment of windpower meets 1% of demand. Then you must build 100 times that in wind generation capacity to satisfy all the demand. But that is not economically practical. There may be an optimal level of overbuilding and if there is, I suppose someone has figured it out. I will leave it to them.
Overbuilding has decreasing return so it too has a limit. Without huge storage no amount of overbuilding will cover when wind is too low to generate, typically below 8 mph, which is often in most locations. It is especially true during peak demand which tends to be a low wind condition.
I guess you mean a decreasing return of power per unit of installed capacity. That is really just a diminishing economic return. If economics were the only consideration, we would not be building very many wind turbines at all, or at least not until fossil energy became much more expensive. Suppose the minimum output of a wind turbine is 10% of its nameplate, at which point it goes offline. That means in order to meet 100 percent of demand when turbine output is at minimum, you need to build nameplate capacity that is ten times greater than your total demand. On top of that you need standby capacity equal to 100 percent of demand (or more). I realize this is a gross oversimplification, but if you’re going to build wind turbines for non-economic reasons, then there is still an optimal level of installed wind capacity based on the characteristics of the turbines, their cost, and wind availability.
But the overbuilding will “return” huge costs.
In a captive market, such as a government monopoly or by regulatory fiat, that doesn’t matter. Those costs just get passed to the consumer and they don’t have a choice. Well, they can not use electricity, but I suppose that’s what the greentards want anyway.
Even with batteries, you still need substantial overbuilding in order to have enough excess power to charge the batteries.
Careful Willis,
Christopher’s math analysis “said nothing about” countries. It was about grids, yet your analysis here is by country. Logically, you would need to discuss factors relating grid to country, where that relation is arguable, to ensure that “country” was a valid proxy for
“grid”.
I am suggesting that the “said nothing about” style of analysis can be problematic.
Geoff S
The island of Ireland is one grid and two countries. At least for now.
Dennis Gerald Sandberg January 19, 2023 4:09 pm
Dennis, here’s Monckton’s description of the Pollock limit.
Please point out where in all of that math is a single economic term. You can’t. It says NOTHING about overbuilding, or cost effectiveness.
And as Monckton says, “That’s it.”
Now, further down Monckton says (emphasis mine):
Again, no mention of overbuilding. And Ireland has no battery backup.
And in fact, Monckton doesn’t even mention “overbuilding” in the entire head post. It’s only way down in the comments that he even considers it. And when he does, he contradicts his own claim (emphasis mine) that “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.
So I’m sorry, but I didn’t “miss two or three paragraphs”. Instead, you’ve imagined Monckton talking about overbuilding. He only brought it up three hours after I’d pointed out that there are several countries that exceed the Pollock limit. At that point, he had to do some plain and fancy tap-dancing to fix up his claim that the Pollock limit represented a no-battery physical limit.
w.
I think part of the problem is the complicated nature of capacity factor as it applies to wind. It arises not just from wind being present at useable velocities, but also on the relationship between wind speed and power output as well as timing of output level variation versus load demand variation.
It might be simpler to consider the issue of a limit for solar where the biggest capacity factor is a result of sun/no sun (day/night). If, for example, we have a solar powered grid which gets sun sufficient to produce useable output 33% of the time we could install enough panels to meet 100% of demand during that 33% of the time. But those panels would produce no power the other 67% of the time. Now, can we just over build and triple the panel area to get more power? No, not unless we install storage capable of taking in and later supplying the 2/3s of power needed when the sun doesn’t shine.
Maybe Pollock’s on to something, but has overly simplified to problem.
Willis writes “Ireland has no battery backup.”
Ireland has an interconnect to mainland UK.
Ireland simply dumps its excess on Great Britains grid and if that overflows it gets sent to Norway, France, Belguim, or the Netherlands
Monckton is his own words:
1. 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.
2. That limit is equal their capacity factor (also sometimes known as the load factor). If one were to add more unreliables to the grid, one would be wasting surplus electricity.
3. Calculation of the capacity factor must be performed with some care for a particular grid. In the UK, Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University is the ranking expert. He reckons it is about 24% of nameplate capacity for onshore wind in the UK, and perhaps 30-35% for offshore wind.
4. In practice, then, installing significantly more unreliables capacity than the Pollock limit will be wasteful, and the more that limit is exceeded the more wasteful the outcome.
5. The Pollock limit – adding renewables to the grid is pointless, wasteful, expensive and destabilizing.
Comment:
” If one were to add more unreliables to the grid, one would be wasting surplus electricity” (That’s clearly a description of “overbuilding”)..
“installing significantly more unreliables capacity than the Pollock limit will be wasteful” (That’s clearly a description of “overbuilding”).
“The Pollock limit – adding renewables to the grid is pointless, wasteful, expensive and destabilizing”.(That’s clearly a description of “overbuilding”).
Normal conversation considering the context of the discussion does not require adding parenthetically behind “unreliables” (overbuilding). Surely not!.
Monckton in the head post first (as you quote) said that without batteries, the Pollock Limit was the “fundamental limit fmax on the contribution that unreliable can make to the grid”.
But as the data showed, it’s nothing of the sort. So then in the comments he had to back off from that clear claim. He didn’t start waffling about “overbuilding” until I and others pointed out that there are countries exceeding the limit. Your other quotes are from well after that point.
READ THE MATH! READ THE HEAD POST! Monckton clearly said the math proves it is NOT POSSIBLE sans battery for renewables to contribute more than their capacity factor to the grid. It was only when that claim ran aground on a reef of hard data that he began to waffle about “costly” and “wasteful” …
… and unfortunately for his attempt to fix his argument, renewables are costly and wasteful at any level of market penetration. That has exactly zero to do with Pollock’s limit, and so it does nothing to rescue his flawed claim.
w.
Did you read my Monckton in his own words posting were he talked about “overbuilding”, without stating it explicitly? I’ve read your postings for years and have always been impressed by your intellect. But I think you missed a point in the Monckton article,
Most WUWT readers would agree that wind and solar may have questionable merit beyond a five (5) percent grid penetration. The Pollack cap suggests that a questionable investment in W&S becomes horrible at capacity factor. It does not say it can’t be exceeded it suggests it shouldn’t be..
Regarding the Ireland grid, The Pollock Cap doesn’t tell if the overbuilding is bad for the generator, the utility, the rate payer, or the taxpayer, if the general fund is being robbed, like in Germany, to pay the tariff, It simply demonstrates the sharp break in the diminishing returns;
Someone posted, yesterday, that the Ireland grid doesn’t pay for curtailment. Do you know if that is correct? Under that arrangement that would confuse the “Limit”, but as described above someone is still “getting stiffed”.
Of course I read your claims.
Monckton claimed that the Pollock Limit is a fundamental limit on what renewables sans battery can provide, and he says that his math proves it. That’s the whole thesis of his article, that you can’t argue with the math.
Please point to the part of his math that considers overbuilding or cost, or that shows that at some point the cost suddenly increases or in your words “becomes horrible”.
w.
Yes, overcapacity would come from overbuilding, but it sounds like he is ruling it out ‘a priori’ as too expensive. A very windy place might find it cheaper to overbuild a lot and have small battery backup. From what I’ve seen 4hrs battery backup cost is in the same ballpark as wind power, and 4hrs is nothing. Might need as much as 3 weeks worth like in windy UK to make up for calm periods or even for low wind/high demand periods when there’s not enough juice to charge the batteries, but only for demand.
It’s just a nightmare of calculations and we’d be better off just passing on the whole nut-zero fool’s errand.
And I forgot to add that, esp. in Ireland’s case, its Pollock Limit, Pollock Suggestion, is greatly enhanced by the fact it can sell its overproduction to the UK.
Really, Pollock Analysis has to be done over the whole grid, whether the grid is only Texas or whether it spans Europe.
Ireland has major connections to the UK and French grids, both of which are much larger than the Irish grid.
That means Ireland can have its wind output balanced by these two grid, in just the same way Denmark, balances its grid with major ties to the Nord Grid
Denmark and Ireland just become wind power states, just as, for example Russia is a petrostate
Christopher’s essay was about a grid, so examples of two or more grids with interconnectors do not apply.
I see the Pollock Limit as a useful concept for those designing grids and grid changes. Easy to calculate, easy to compare with other grids, easy memory jogger to treat design with caution beyond a recognised point. Geoff S
Well put, Geoff S.
Almost all grids have connections to nearby grid and that trend will be increasing with HVDC lines, as it did in Europe, which is about 10 years ahead of the U.S. in that area.
Long before the Pollock limit is reached, these connections will be in place, as happened in Europe. After that, the Pollock limit was comfortably exceeeded
That’s a fallacy of composition, since there is far too much correlation of demand and solar and wind output across neighbouring countries. The likely result is hoping that someone else has the dispatchable capacity and finding they don’t (see Duke and TVA just recently), coupled with surpluses that must be curtailed at other times because no-one wants them at any positive price.
Regarding Germany and Denmark, the Norgrid is the go-to place with many hydro plants
Regarding Ireland, the UK and French grids are much larger; similar to a pee in a lake
Regarding Spain, it and Portugal have many hydro plants, including pumped storage and strong connections to France, which has many hydro plants, including pumped storage.
The lack of “composition” is due to a lack of inter-regional planning
There has been plenty of intra-regional planning at ENTSO-E which has developed a large number of interconnection projects. However they have not paid attention to the limitations on usefulness and other impacts of interconnection. There are for instance severe limits on the extent to which Norway can provide useful backup to its neighbours, and already the consequences of doing so are uncomfortable for Norwegians. But if we ignore those economic factors, the physical limitations are soon exposed anyway.
http://web.archive.org/web/20160801042131/https://euanmearns.com/how-much-wind-and-solar-can-norways-reservoirs-balance/
Norway’s problem is a lack of water. It can still balance, but not export.
Germany had a lack of wind in 2021, was hoping for electricity imports from France (which had a lack of water), and Norway.
I agree about physical limitations, especially when offshore wind is built on the East Coast
HQ may become less of an exporter to NE and NY, because of EVs and HPs
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-biden-administration-s-offshore-wind-fantasy
note he never said “isolated grids”
rule #1 when a skeptic says X is impossible, you can know with certainty they are wrong
A 100% renewable grid is impossible.
Time travel is impossible.
Driving Russia out of
Ukrainethe new part of Russia is impossible.“Impossible” can be hard to hear but is sometimes true.
Willis,
I have let my Excel Monte Carlo software package subscription expire.
But if R has this capability, I suspect you might be able to run some Monte Carlo type simulations to see how 2-30% capacity factor suppliers (random on periods) do not equate to 1-60% dispatchable demand supply.
The first windmill is overbuilding
The first solar panel is overbuilding
They should be in museums
Not attached to electric grids.
Totally underbuilt.
Jest for the record: I’m not so young that I can’t remember when the Irish Space Agency were raising money from the sinking Pacific Islands green-energy COP-out fund run by WWF and Greenpieces for an expedition to land astronauts on the sun.
They had a combustible flag made of eucalyptus sticks so they could do a smoking ceremony and thereby claim sovereignty over the solar systems’ 2564^18654^120 year old indigenous population.
I swear it’s true. Hatrick Poppycock said it was, they were going to do it at night so they would not get burnt. As Dr Poppycock was a climate scientist she knew everything.
Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
Does Ireland have an interconnection to a separate, stable electricity grid?
If so, then that may be playing the role of “battery backup”. That would allow Ireland to exceed the Pollock Limit.
As I see it, it is not a limit. You can exceed the limit whenever you want. It just gets more expensive.
So is their electricity expensive?
Solar power at night must be expensive.
Spain apparently has demonstrated that.
Just as expensive as wind power when the wind isn’t blowing.
That’s exactly as I saw it. People are acting as if any windmills built after exceeding the limit will topple over or just cease to function.
There are two to the UK
The East–West Interconnector is a 500 MW high-voltage direct current submarine and subsoil power cable which connects the Irish and British electricity markets. The project was developed by the Irish national grid operator EirGrid. Wikipedia
The Moyle interconnector between Scotland and Northern Ireland, NI has quite a bit of gaa generation.
There’s another being built.
Northern Ireland and Eire are a single market for electricity I think.
Thanks for the additional info!
I suspected that was probably the case to some degree.
Likewise, my family budget would also be more robust if I could just take money out of other people’s pockets when things got tight.
100% correct. What a pleasure to see someone check their facts before posting. Eirgrid is geographically rather than politically aligned, and is actually pretty well run.
I know someone who was employed to establish just how much fossil fuel the windmills svaed. Oh dear. In fact 50% otf te clained gains of the renewables turned out to be lost in spooling up the gas turbines when the wind dropped and letting the whole shebang cool down when the wind started up again.
Ireland has two. One 500MW for Republic and another for The North. Both connect to the vastly bigger UK grid
They also have piped natural gas from scotland and coal generators as well
‘Controversially, several new gas-fired power plants are expected to be built over the next decade to “bridge the gap” to renewables as the mainstay of Ireland’s energy. These gas-fired plants will supplement and act as back-up for wind energy.’
https://www.breakingnews.ie/explained/explained-where-does-ireland-get-its-energy-from-1330872.html
It is certainly connected to the British grid, via the East West interconnector and the Moyle interconnector.
It is not yet connected to France via the Celtic interconnector, scheduled to complete in 2027.
They are also toying with a second interconnector to parallel EWIC, called (it is Irish after all) Greenlink.
Does Ireland have an interconnection to a separate, stable electricity grid?
Well it’s either that grid backed by dispatchables and/or storage or Ireland relies on same within its own boundaries. As Richard Greene succinctly put it-
The first windmill is overbuilding
The first solar panel is overbuilding
They should be in museums
Not attached to electric grids.
My immediate thought was that’s not true because my nameplate 6.64 kW rooftop solar in South Australia even with zero FIT is very economic because it can heat up my resistance storage HWS or heat/cool the home with RC aircon plus any other load I can think of under the sun. But then it’s my connection to a dispatchable stable grid voltage and frequency that permits my reactive inverter that privilege.
OTOH the only truly independent solar generator I can think of is one the farmers use for bore water pumping to storage tanks and in turn they’ve dismissed windmill driven bores to the scrapheap. As RG notes if my rooftop solar was to become a truly independent minigrid I’d need some very costly battery storage with no electrons to spare except when my like setup neighbour had some to spare too.
Ipso facto sans such batteries we’re simply eco-bludgers/dumpers on the dispatchable communal grid which under this fallacy of composition requires rollback to some sensible ‘Pollock Limit’-
https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/ERC0352_Rule%20Change%20Request_Scheduled%20Lite%20-%20including%20Appendix.pdf
The old windmill driven bore pumps gave good service for a very long time, but required a lot of maintenance and repair. Of course, they also had a habit of breaking down during wheat harvest 🙁
Most people will be unfamiliar with them, so a quick summary.
The bore pump was a piston suction pump with an automatic valve, and was located far enough below the standing water level of the bore to keep it fully submerged at all times. The windmill head had a crankshaft which drove a pull rod which lifted the piston in the pump body on the upward suction stroke. It also operated as a pushrod to some extent on the down stroke depending on the weight of water in the pipe above the pump. This required a rigid pipe down the bore, and these were usually galvanised iron. The pump was brass, so formed a galvanic cell which corroded the galvanised iron pipe. The higher the salinity, the quicker it rusted.
Pulling the pipes up and reinstalling them required specialised equipment and partially dismantling the tower.
In addition to this, the head of the windmill needed the oil to be topped up regularly. The head consisted of a fan wheel, shaft(s) and oil-filled casing. Our Comet windmills were direct drive, and the Souther Cross were geared. The fan wheel and mainshaft were supported on bearings in the casing. The whole head also had a turntable, with wind pressure on the tail turning the fan wheel to the correct angle to the wind.
The tower had a ladder up one side, and a plank platform of sorts near the top to walk on while checking and oiling the head
The oil needed to be topped up every 6 months or so. OH&S didn’t exist when they were manufactured and erected, so oiling them was a little like Tom Cruise at the start of Mission Impossible II.
Electric submersible pumps, by contrast, are almost set and forget. Polypipe doesn’t rust, and doesn’t need anywhere near as much special equipment or labour to remove or re-install.
</reminiscence>
My younger brother in 1950 was convinced at age 7 that he could fly as shown in comic books.
By extreme good luck, I saw him in time to stop his launch from the top of the windmill ladder. Later, he broke an arm launching from a lower level and meeting that horizontal pipe 18 inches above the ground.
What, you ask, were his parents doing to allow this danger? Answer, both working their butts off to get adequate food, clothing, shelter after a difficult world war. Geoff S
That dredged up an old memory.
My younger brother had similar inclinations, but from memory the windmill platform was the crow’s nest of a pirate ship.
Dad turned the bottom section of the ladder upside down so the open side of the angle iron rungs were facing up and made climbing very uncomfortable for small hands and bare feet. I don’t think we ever turned it right way up.
It was uncomfortable even for a fit young adult wearing work boots.
I find this puzzling: “From 2019 to 2022 Ireland added about 4 TWh of wind nameplate capacity”. I did not know there was nameplate capacity in Wh. It is usually in W. Or are you multiplying W by hours per year? Or something?
I’ve converted the nameplate capacity in MW to TWh/year for ease in comparison to generation, which is in TWh.
w.
Good idea.
Does Ireland have any external interconnections? I know Scotland often sells power when the wind is blowing strong and buys when not, making generation versus consumption a fantasy.
Ireland has one interconnector, EWIC to the UK. As UK has 2 connections to EU (France) effectively so does Ireland. It has another, Celtic, planned directly to France but not yet operational.
Which means that Ireland is depending upon nuclear power to supply a portion of its dispatchable electricity needs — as are other nations in Europe who buy electricity from France — and who will be doing so well into the future.
So ….. the Irish are depending upon French nuclear power even though Ireland banned construction of nuclear power plants on their own soil in 1999; and presumably would not give even the slightest consideration to taking advantage of the oncoming SMR nuclear technologies for purposes of maintaining long term energy security for their own island nation.
The island of Ireland operates as a single grid. The interconnector from Moyle in Scotland to Larne is now operated in tandem with EWIC, with the North-South interconnector providing a significant connect between the two countries, which previously had almost no interconnection.
https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all/interconnection
Set the timespan to month, and explore some history with the back arrow.
It’s been said that the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun is always shining somewhere. For those who don’t really care how and where their zero carbon electricity is being generated, the nuclear fuel rods are always glowing somewhere.
This paradigm works as long as you can gain access through some transmission pathway into the nuclear power plants where these fuel rods are glowing.
Hunterston is close to Moyle, and Heysham not far from the Deeside landing point for EWIC. However both will disappear as GB nuclear closesin the next few years on end of life and lack of replacement.
Except, the farther you have to reach out to procure your electricity, the greater the transmission loss will be. I don’t know this for a fact, but it seems reasonable to me that those supplying power will charge the user for the power they send, not the power that is usable at the receiving end. That is, you end up paying for the transmission loss and it becomes more expensive than if one is close to the source.
I see you linked to this website also as I was typing up my comment downthread.
As I understand it there are two connectors UK to Eire and NI and the whole of Ireland is a single market for electricity
The UK has connectors to France, Belgium, Netherlands and Norway
So western Europe could conceivably be interconnected, to some degree, and the so-called Pollock Limit/Suggestion should be calculated based on the data of the whole system.
I was thinking too that a factor should be added that would indicate how well wind production correlates with demand (calm nights and early mornings in the spring and fall shouldn’t be a problem as demand would be low probably)
It is connected now, apart from the UK connections above
France – Spain, Belgium, Italy, Germany and Switzerland
Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden and possibly Baltic states
Germany = France, Poland and possibly
So an electron could in theory make its way from a solar panel in Andalucia to a flat in Warsaw
Ireland has two interconnectors, EWIC to the UK from the Irish republic and the Moyle interconnector from Northern Ireland. Ireland, north and south, has one unitary grid run by Eirgrid.
Rud, your info is way out.
“Ireland has one interconnector”
No, Ireland has 2 interconnectors with UK … the East West interconnector and the Moyle interconnector.
“As UK has 2 connections to EU”
No, UK has 6 interconnectors to EU connecting the UK with France, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Belgium.
Three more are under construction
Nb: UK also has 5 gas interconnectors to EU
The UK only has 3 subsea gas connectors to the EU: two bidirectional from Bacton (one to Zeebrugge, Belgium, the other to Balgzand, Netherlands) and one from Moffat, Scotland to Gormanston, Ireland (near Dublin) which is export only from Scotland: this line has been doubled, and also serves the Isle of Man. There are several gas import lines from the North Sea servicing UK and Norwegian fields. Norway is not part of the EU. There is also an interconnector piping gas to Northern Ireland also originiating from Moffat, Scotland, but for now Northern Ireland is still part of the UK. An onshore connector flows between Gormanston and Belfast, avoiding the need for doubling the subsea line to Northern Ireland.
Two points:
1 – the Pollock Limit is a theoretical figure which makes various assumptions, such as an ‘average’ demand and no storage. If we consider a hypothetical country where the demand always matched generation with respect to timing and quantity, it is obvious that wind power could provide 100% of required energy. I suggest that there are a number of varying features of Irish demand which tend towards matching demand to supply, and these would allow generation to peak over the Pollock Limit. What these may be I do not know – perhaps a wide use of smart meter demand mnagement?
2 – Eleanor Denny has written extensively on wind power in the Irish Grid. Worth reading what she has to say.
A link to Denny’s? Ironically grid features tend to mismatch renewables. Daily peaks tend to be when solar is small or zero, early morning and late evening. EV charging will worsen that. Yearly peaks tend to be low wind, with stagnant highs. Winter peak is worst with low wind nights. But summer low wind heat waves last many days. The required storage is astronomical.
Renewables are an expensive emission reduction technology, not a generation technology.
A name that rings a bell – she is indeed an expert, though I never managed to track down her PhD thesis which sounded very interesting. Also highly relevant to the discussion is this:
https://euanmearns.com/co2-emissions-variations-in-ccgts-used-to-balance-wind-in-ireland/
The other side of the coin in terms of the imposition on backup generation in terms of frequent and sharp ramping, etc.
https://euanmearns.com/commercial-measures-to-reduce-the-cost-of-wind-integration-in-the-island-of-ireland/
Then you would have a 100% capacity factor if the wind was always blowing enough to generate rated capacity.
My personal experience, including some regrettable flame wars and some enjoyable flame wars, is that everybody makes mistakes, even me, but almost all mistakes are able to be misconstrued as deliberate lies. To call someone out as a deliberate liar is not an accidental mistake.
I have also learned that when people a lot of people call out problems with a comment, it is more likely to be from misunderstandings or chosen policy differences than deliberate fraud.
When I have paid attention to misconfusions about a post of mine, and concluded everyone had misunderstood me, it is a real clear sign that I did not write clearly enough, and I try to remember that for the future, to look over my comment before clicking POST, to read it as if for the first time, and see if there are assumptions which should be explained, or ambiguities which should be cleared up. I do not always succeed.
It sure looks to me like Monckton of Brenchley made that mistake; he assumed everyone would infer something from his post that was explicitly denied by “cannot”. But rather than admit it, apologize for the confusion, and learn a lesson for subsequent posts, he blamed multiple readers for reading only his words, not his mind.
He is like that. A strong will tends to be unforgiving of others, especially when it comes to admitting mistakes.
Strong-willed or willful?
There is no shortage of ego amongst those of us who are willing to wear the badge of “skeptic” proudly, and stand up to authority.
You are not a skeptic
You live in climate reality
Not spouting always wrong wild guess predictions of the future climate and related green dreaming. You are not skeptical — you recognize the Climate Howlers as religious fanatics, with beliefs unrelated to real science and engineering. That’s a realist, not a skeptic.
Thank you for this. Has our tongue healed from biting it yet?
I analysed some rain data from Willis on Ireland.
ireland rainfall.xlsx
I hope you can see sheet 2/
it shows my hind cast of rainfall is only 6 mm out so my forecast is probably right on target.
I suggest rainfall is related to windfall…
That sounds right for islands on the East Side of the Atlantic where the prevailing wind comes from the South West, the warmer part.
Ja. Ja. Rainfall = windfall. It works just like the pendulum of a clock. But every place on earth got its own pendulum.
When I see people hanging on to AGW I can just laugh. Because I see them trying to jump on the pendulum trying to get it to change direction….
That won’t work. R square is usually 99- 100%
Please visit bomwatch blog for the more important relation between rainfall and customary land temperatures. Geoff S
Although I agree with your points you do have to be cautious about the figures given for the wind energy generated since this is often inflated by including electricity sold at low cost off the grid. If it was an even swap where energy from another source was returned at later time that would be reasonable, but with intermittents it’s usually the case that they just padding the stats by selling below market rates.
If I am reading Figure 2 correctly, the “Wind share of total” ordinate says that about 1/3 of Irish electricity is produced by wind. However ref 1) below says that its about 12.7% while ref 2) says 43.3%. Hmm? Reliable info re Irish electricity seems hard to come by. Of interest perhaps that nearly half of Irish electricity is presently produced by diesel engines, about 1/3 by natural gas and about 8% by coal with the balance from wind. It seems that Ireland has plenty of backup battery equivalence at this time in the form of diesel engines which are by their nature ready to go at a moments notice). Perhaps because of this unusual situation, the “Pollack limit” has to be rethought. Ireland will surely will face problems when they retire the diesels and expand wind over the next few years as they are presently planning to do.
1) https://www.breakingnews.ie/explained/explained-where-does-ireland-get-its-energy-from-1330872.html
2) https://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/library/EirGrid/208281-All-Island-Generation-Capacity-Statement-LR13A.pdf
That they will face problems is an understatement. It cannot be fine.
POLLOCK.
Geoff S
One problem with the Pollock limit for smaller regions, like Ireland, is the possibility that they are able to buy electricity from nearby regions when wind power is not sufficient.
Exactly. And it will work well enough for them as long as dispatchable power is readily available precisely when they need it at a price they are willing and able to pay.
willis
(Unfortunately, in the comments of the latter post I fear I waxed wroth when Christopher falsely accused me of being “openly and deliberately dishonest” … ah, well, I know that science is a blood sport, but I won’t take that from any man. However, I digress …)
you mean the post where he also argued
“Climate skepticism has four failings: a lack of elementary professionalism; a tendency to be over-skeptical of both sides of the argument; a striking absence of the intuitive ability of the mathematician, who wanders cheerfully and competently from the concrete to the theoretical and back; and unjustifiable discourtesy towards the scientific labors of fellow-skeptics.”
I am fond of quotations, especially science-related ones.
A (very ?) strong case can be made that I am overly fond of them.
Despite that I will inject a plethora of them into this comment thread anyway …
– – – – –
Buried in the 372 (at the time of typing) comments under the original “The Final Nail …” WUWT article referenced above, CMoB ended a reply to Willis as follows :
In the messy world of “weather / climate data” we are not dealing with “irrefutable theoretical arguments” like a (Euclidean) proof for the Pythagorean Theorem.
I learned “The Engineer’s Motto” before discovering it originally came from Yogi Berra :
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice – in practice there is”
He apparently modified it from a quote usually attributed to Albert Einstein :
“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”
– – – – –
Other quotes that came to mind on reading the cited responses by CMoB included :
“The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” — Thomas Huxley
“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” — Richard Feynman
“Of course, if one ignores contradictory observations, one can claim to have an ‘elegant’ or ‘robust’ theory. But it isn’t science.” — Halton Arp
“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.” — Claude Levi-Strauss
NB : I often ask the “wrong” questions. In my experience Willis tends to ask the “right” ones (not 100% guaranteed but a very good indicator, often leading to “interesting” investigations I would not have launched otherwise).
– – – – –
PS : While checking who came up with the original “theory versus practice” quotes I came across the following new (to me) one.
“It may come out all right in practice, but it’ll never work in theory !” — Jan van de Snepscheut (a Dutch mathematician …)
Thanks, Mark. The way I heard it was much more epigrammatic:
“The difference between theory and practice is much greater in practice than it is in theory.”
w.
From the 1960s we used to joke that an economist was a person who, seeing something working well in practise, would wonder how it worked in theory.
when i read the good Lord on the pollack limit i knew it was wrong.
well
https://www.statista.com/statistics/536065/finland-share-of-electricity-produced-from-renewable-energy/
the pollack limit of ciourse is rather intuitive
a. if you have no storage
b. if you have no frequency regulation market
then you plan to build out up to the capacity factor.
hint : theres opprtunity in frequency regulation markets.
coal is dead, Oil is dying. human will figure out ways to make renewables work.
If coal and oil are so dead why does their consumption keep climbing ?
The only way humanity will make ruinables work is by returning to, at minimum, Medieval Times and more likely, the Stone Age.
They are not dead yet, but they are beginning to smell that way.
There is no argument. Fossil fuels are a finite resource with a lifespan in decades to a few hundred years.
Renewables don’t work, because of energy density and intermittency and too low EROEI.
There is only one technology that will allow civilisation to continue and that is nuclear power.
QED
COAL AND OIL ARE ENERGY ZOMBIES — leftists try to kill them again and again — but they keep coming back to life, stronger than before.
“coal is dead, Oil is dying. human will figure out ways to make renewables work.“.
Triple fantasy. Coal use is higher than ever. Oil is going strong and likely to hit a new record in 2023. Wind and solar are effectively nowhere to be seen.
But in the end times, the savior will finally return
California is only part way toward eliminating fossil fuels. Yet they are already having to limit charging of EV’s when grid loads are high. It’s only going to get worse. How do you “figure” your way out of that?
simple
get rid of many humans, keep the windmills
Mosh, you said “coal is dead, Oil is dying.”
Mike Jonas beat me to it. Neither of those is true in any sense.
Coal use is higher than ever.
Oil is going strong and likely to hit a new record in 2023.
So … you gonna defend your claims, or is this more of your “Comment and run for the door” style? Heck, even Finland used more coal in 2021 than in 2020 … go figure.
Next, your Statista link claims 42% of the primary energy consumed in Finland is from renewables. But the BP Stats Review of World Energy says only 35% comes from renewables, and of that, a third comes from hydro. And of the rest, a total of only 6.9% comes from the total of wind and solar … and that’s far less energy than comes from coal.
When you figure out how to move Finnish-style mountains and rain to say Senegal, get back to us. Finland is lucky. Most of the planet has nothing like their hydro resource.
My best wishes to you, may you be healthy and happy,
w.
Hydro should be excluded from any considerations about “renewables” because all those places who are geographically fortunate enough to be able to harness the power of gravity+ turn-on / turn-off water (dams) driven turbines has been doing it for ages.
It wasn’t “green” virtue signalling that enticed them to build hydro – it was just practical and economically sensible.
And if they haven’t already, it’s probably because they were/are also blessed with accessible coal resources.
The IEA expects the EU’s coal use to drop 29% by 2025 compared to 2022, de Pous said. “This will be the result of action taken in as many as 19 EU countries to accelerate renewables,” he added.
Richard Black, a senior associate at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a climate advisory group, said that despite the increase in China’s use of coal, the long term direction for coal in China and India – another major coal user – was clear.
“Renewables are going to be providing an increasing share of the generation and the role of coal is going to transition from being a baseload fuel to being a backup,”
read more than the title, fool
The IEA and Richard Black are the fools.
In other words, Steven, what you meant to say was not “Coal is dead”.
You were trying to say “Coal is predicted to die, by the folks who are occasionally right”.
In fact, the EU’s use of coal increased, not decreased but increased, by 13.6% from 2021 to 2022 … I think the IEA is just doing the usual, peddling “renewables” as fast as they can.
As regards China and India, again, you’re channeling your inner Monckton—lots of theory, zero data. Here’s the current situation to 2021, usage in both countries has increased in 2022.
Mosh, your “authorities” are people who a) make their living in part from climate alarmism, and b) pay absolutely no price either financially or reputation-wise for failed predictions. If there was no climate alarmism, nobody would pay the slightest attention to Black and the IEA.
Since you’re working on some renewable-related grid project for Finland, I fear that these days, you’re in the same boat. Talk is cheap … and as Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
And as Thomas Sowell observed, “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
Sadly, that’s exactly what you are advocating.
w.
coal is dead. it’s a fossil fuel. literally its limited
has no future dead.
Oil likewise. dead. no future.
human will figure out ways to make renewables work in grids
batteries.
frequency markets
nuclear
fission.
these all have Futures
coal and Oil only have a glorious past.
finally, they are not my authorities. i didnt cite the article as evidence
who did?
Oxygen is dead. No future. It gets consumed, it is a measurable, non-finite resource that one day will be all used up.
Be a green environmental conservationist sustainable future chappie, call for net zero oxygen use by 2050.
(Sadly, some people might pick this sarcasm up and run with it. Fools rush in, etc). Geoff S
coal is dead. it’s a fossil fuel. literally its dead. limited
has no future dead.
Oil likewise. dead. no future.
humans will figure out ways to make renewables work in grids
batteries.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/12/21/china-connects-220-mw-440-mwh-battery-to-grid/
frequency markets
https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market-information/reserve-market-information/automatic-frequency-restoration-reserve-afrr-realised-hourly-transactions/
nuclear
https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/SMRs-A-Viable-Option-for-Clean-Energy-Future_2021.07.19_Final.pdf
fusion
https://c3newsmag.com/major-breakthrough-on-nuclear-fusion-energy/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwpnY9IXX_AIVqMqUCR040gUxEAAYASAAEgJIPfD_BwEhttps:/
these all have Futures
coal and Oil only have a glorious past.
bottom line i refuse to believe in the doomsaying i read here.
Steven Mosher January 20, 2023 1:06 pm
You said this before. I provided figures showing that we have decades worth of both oil and coal in the ground, and that the usage of both is increasing.
Your replying by simply restating your claim is a joke. You can say it fifty times, doesn’t make it true.
That article says that the Ningxia region has added a 440 MWh battery to their grid.
The Ningxia region uses 978 terawatt-hours of electricity per year.
This means that their battery could replace the grid for about …
…
… wait for it …
…
14 seconds.
w.
Willis, most users of a 100% renewables supply wouldn’t register a 14 second delay in the onset of a full power outage.
I mean, they must have already experienced calm days of zero wind.
And then there’s these periods called “night-time” . . .
These conditions can often occur together at the same time.
Who would have thought?
Or supply 1% of peak power for over 20min.
”coal is dead”
Lol. Are you supposed to be some kind of scientist are you?
coal is dead. it’s a fossil fuel. literally its dead. limited
has no future dead.
Oil likewise. dead. no future.
human will figure out ways to make renewables work in grids
batteries.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/12/21/china-connects-220-mw-440-mwh-battery-to-grid/
frequency markets
nuclear
https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/SMRs-A-Viable-Option-for-Clean-Energy-Future_2021.07.19_Final.pdf
fusion
https://c3newsmag.com/major-breakthrough-on-nuclear-fusion-energy/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwpnY9IXX_AIVqMqUCR040gUxEAAYASAAEgJIPfD_BwEhttps:/
these all have Futures
coal and Oil only have a glorious past.
You got that dead wrong Steven.
Coal hit 8 billion tonnes in 2021 .
I would not call that dead.
Oil and gas are still going gangbusters .
If you believe that fossil fuel use is going to change the worlds climate why are you not advocating nuclear power plants at least for base load .
Humans have already figured out how wind and solar power can be integrated into a supply net work but it is now politicians that are caught up in carbon neutral that are making stupid decisions and delaying sensible decisions..
So many countries and governments seem to think that the UN is the holy prophet and that the the UN should be obeyed with out question..
Hydro dams on many small rivers in gorges can be used as needed to generate electricity that acts the same as battery back up using a lot less resources than battery backup .
Hydro power stations can be turned on and off as required remotely as the sun and the wind ebbs and flows .
The problems are the greens who are against damming any river or using nuclear power .
It has been calculated that there is no where enough rare earth minerals in the earths crust to manufacture storage batteries to power the world when wind and solar stop generating ,so if that is the goal some other solution has to be looked at .
The argument that coal usage is increasing, therefore it will contunue to increase is as specious as the argument that between 1970 and 1995 global temperatures appeared to increase, so they will cointinue till the earth catches fire.
Please, let’s have some sanity. Fossil fuels are a finite resource that will eventually become uneconomic, and renewables already are – they are only propped up by fossil fuel and taxpayers money.
If we dont go nuclear we are headed for the Dark Ages.
The ultimate question is simply whether or not the Urban Western snowflake is so bewildered by the propaganda that they come to prefer the latter choice.
yep. thanks for the sanity
yup
meanwhile smart money is running to a different future
https://www.pv-tech.org/longi-to-invest-us6-7-billion-in-building-new-production-base-in-china/
Leo Smith January 20, 2023 1:09 am
Sorry, but those two situations are not parallel in the slightest.
Yes, coal is finite, as is everything on this planet. However:
Current proven coal reserves are 1,074,108,000,000 tonnes (a trillion tonnes).
Current coal usage is 8,172,000,000 tonnes per year (eight billion tonnes).
So at current usage rates, we have ~ 131 years of coal.
Whining that coal is finite, boo hoo, can’t depend on it, we HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TODAY, when we have 130 years’ worth of coal is a sick joke.
That’s just alarmism, and you can only pull it off when you don’t include the facts of the case.
w.
Better to wait until much closer to the end before we move to new energy sources. When energy starts to be uncontrollably scarce and the poor are dying, that’ll be great incentive.
Also its a bad idea to fund research now because that money is much better used prospecting to wring every last year out of fossil fuels.
Moving to new unreliable unpredictable energy sources while simultaneously driving up the cost of fossil fuels is a plan so stupid it could only be dreamed up by a liberal, an idiot, or a Democrat politician. Or by Tim The Tool. But I repeat myself.
You want to move fast? Your insane drive to get off of fossil fuels RIGHT NOW is already screwing the poor, driving inflation, and causing people to shiver in energy poverty.
You want to move fast? How about you move fast in solving the problems YOUR policies have caused?
w.
I don’t want to move too fast.
On the one hand you post showing how ridiculous it is to think we can be substantially there by say 2050 and yet you cant reason that stretching the timeline still means heading towards the goal with some sort of speed.
TimTheToolMan January 21, 2023 12:54 pm
Tim, we moved painlessly from wood to coal, not because of subsidies and government pressure and media hype and pressure from folks like you to HURRY UP, IT’S AN EMERGENCY, but because coal was cheaper.
And we moved painlessly from coal to oil, not because of subsidies and government pressure and media hype and pressure from folks like you to HURRY UP, IT’S AN EMERGENCY, but because oil was cheaper.
When and if renewables get cheaper, I’m happy for the same shift to happen. But to date, all they’ve done for California is to DOUBLE MY ELECTRIC BILL, and you seem to think that’s fine because of your insane insistence that there’s an imaginary “climate emergency”.
So yes, you DO want to move too fast, because you want to move faster than the market, and the poor get screwed whenever people like you try to outsmart the market forces.
And you don’t seem to give a damn about forcing people into energy poverty. People in Germany are cutting down forests to heat with wood because of the insane stupidity of people like you and your uneconomic “green” policies, and you just avert your eyes and plunge blindly forward.
The “green” lunacy would be pathetic if it weren’t so damn ugly and destructive. Point out to me where the “climate emergency” started on the following chart.
w.
Tell me how renewable energy will become cheaper than fossil fuels. Talk me through it.
Coal became cheaper than wood despite men having to crawl through tunnels to mine the stuff with hand tools and using early steam engines that had efficiencies in the low single digits to pump water out of the mines.
Coal became cheaper than wood because
• it was more available, particularly as suitable forests became more scarce
• it contains ~ twice the energy per ton
• coal burns longer than wood
• it’s easier to transport and handle
• it doesn’t require labor-intensive cutting to short lengths and splitting
• a number of early mines were open pit
• it’s far more densely concentrated in nature
• it was often available closer to the cities where the big demand was
Not seeing any of that happening with renewables.
w.
So with that in mind and with fossil fuels being a finite resource that is waning, I ask again, talk me through how renewable energy will become cheaper than fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are not “waning”. They are being driven more and more expensive by the insane actions of demented pseudogreen folks like you, people who don’t care that the poor are getting screwed by your policies.
Here’s the current situation, after throwing $5 TRILLION at sun and wind in the last 2 decades.
w.
We have an incredibly long way to go after a lot of research and a lot of resources expended. You’ve posted just how hard it will be.
I suspect you want to say we should let the market drive the transition (when demand exceeds supply) You’ve said it before. But I think you know that will be disastrous. You must know that given the scale of the problem.
How do you think the poor will faire in a world that is actually energy constrained and not just politically constrained?
TimTheToolMan January 22, 2023 12:35 am
The market worked perfectly for all the prior energy transitions—wood to coal, whale oil to kerosene, coal to oil, oil to nuclear. No problems, no need for sanctions, no lack of energy during the transitions.
What makes you think this one is special?
Since you and the rest of the green lunatics are doing your very best and are succeeding in making an energy-constrained world by destroying fossil fuels before we have any replacement, how about YOU answer that question?
Because it is you and folks like you whose insane ideas have the German people shivering in their homes and cutting down ancient forests for wood to stay warm … don’t ask me to explain about the poor that YOU are shafting.
That’s your job.
w.
Willis asks “What makes you think this one is special?”
Because renewable energy sources are not abundant. Nor are they cheap. And they wont be fast to implement.
You keep shooting yourself in the foot regarding Germany. Their problem is a lack of gas supply. Their renewables are doing just fine. Imagine if instead of expanding the renewables they’d expanded their reliance on gas.
Fossil fuels aren’t being destroyed, they are still there and you can be 100% sure we’ll use them if and when we need them. Meanwhile during this period of energy abundance we’re doing the sensible thing by understanding they will end and doing something about it.
If only the emphasis was on the transition and not climate change then we’d be making better decisions.
And regarding the poor in an energy constrained world? When demand exceeds supply, they die. No amount of government assistance can help them. Our choices are gone.
TimTheToolMan January 22, 2023 11:28 am
I don’t think the fuel of the future is renewables of any kind. We have nuclear, which is getting better, and a possibility of fusion. We also have lots of time to transition to either of them.
The Germans shut down their nuclear plants, duh, what did they and you think would happen?
And not only that, the Germans are sitting on top of 3 shale natural gas fields containing a trillion cubic metres of gas, but noooo … folks like you won’t let them utilize them. Yes, they’re short of gas … so start drilling, double duh.
“Destroyed” was merely a shorthand way to say “Driven to an insanely high and unaffordable price point by the well-meaning but insane policies of folks like you”. Sorry for the confusion.
You and yours seem to truly think that your Magic 8-Ball can predict the future of energy far better than the market can … which is why wordwide oil prices as well as my home electricity prices are through the roof and screwing the poor. Stop thinking you can manage the transition. That’s a sick green fantasy.
Their deaths will be, and in some instances already are, on your hands. It’s your insane insistence that you and yours somehow magically have the insight, knowledge, and data to prematurely force an energy transition away from fossil fuels to your pet source is killing people.
We have DECADES of fossil fuels left, and that’s not even touching the methane clathrates … so how about you just stand back, end the war on fossil fuels, and let the market handle it?
When renewables are actually cheaper in the real world, not just cheaper in your bizarre fantasies, the market will jump on them. Until then, keep your grubby hands off the fossil prices. You are actively harming people.
w.
Further information:
The Cruelest Tax Of All
We Have Met The 1% And He Is Us
Talk me through this. Step by step.
Sorry. I could explain how a free market works to you, but I can’t comprehend it for you.
w.
We both know how the free market works but how it works for energy has important implications for your entire belief system of ignoring renewables until the market dictates otherwise.
How the market works with energy isn’t the same as how it works with say iPhones.
And I’d like you to face up to those differences by spelling out the sequence of events and conditions that lead up to renewables being viable.
Pass. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think.
w.
In this case its textbook cognitive dissonance.
not only have i advocated for nuclear i actually worked trying to solve the problems
thats DEEDS not words
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/what-the-past-decade-can-tell-us-about-the-future-of-coal
coal is dead.all fossil fuels are. by definition.
you look at the past, typical head in the sand negativist
https://www.pv-tech.org/longi-to-invest-us6-7-billion-in-building-new-production-base-in-china/
So are Uranium and Thorium , by that token
Or are they alive because they are undergoing radioactive decay?
In that case, so is coal, because it contains traces of radioactive materials.
Couldn’t help myself, sorry.
Your faith in humanity is heart warming. When do you think that humans will perfect the Perpetual Motion machine? Or, the Infinite Improbability Drive? After all, humans can do anything. I’m reminded of Disney’s First Law: “Wish and it will come true.”
He may be working on engineering but he is a classic ArtStudent™ at heart.
These people are ultimately philosophical Idealists. They believe there is no reality beyond what we (can) imagine it to be. The limits are not real physical limits, they are limits of imagination only. If you can imagine yourself as the opposite sex you are the opposite sex…etc. etc.
Normally these people are an amusing diversion. But in a majority controlling real economic policy they are an utter disaster. Which is why Stalin sent them all to the Gulags. Mind you he was no better – Marx was himself just another ArtStudent™. Full of intellectual ideals about how the world ought to be, with no attention paid whatsoever to how it actually was.
technically a pragmatist
https://www.pv-tech.org/solar-to-dominate-us-capacity-additions-73gw-expected-through-2025/
art my ass
its not faith. its looking at centuries of human ingenuity. experience says
we rise to the challenge. im skeptical of your catastrophic view
if you cant invision a fruitful future, you’ll get the failure you fear
https://www.pv-tech.org/solar-to-dominate-us-capacity-additions-73gw-expected-through-2025/
Whoopee! That is likely to deliver an average of around 12GW out of US demand of 465GW last year.
…
….
… RA000 Renewables and biofuels (FI)
… R5100 Solid biofuels (FI)
^ Home – Eurostat (europa.eu)
Gross Electricity Production (FI)
Gross Electricity Production (FI) : RA000 Renewables and biofuels
Coal is dead, Oil is dying. Gas is finite. Human will not figure out ways to make renewables work.
So it will have to be nuclear wont it?
Its the only energy source that is multi-millenium sized
ya oil and coal and gas are finite and rely on a globalized economy.
thats all coming to an end. humans will find ways (storage/curtailment markets)
to make renewables work on distributed smaller grids, supported by SMR
Steven Mosher January 20, 2023 7:09 am
As I pointed out above, we have ~130 years of coal reserves at current usage rates.
Regarding oil, in 1968 we had ~30 years of proven oil reserves. In 2020 we had ~50 years of proven oil reserves.
As you said, “Humans will find ways” … except bizarrely, you seem to think that’s only true about renewables.
Frantic hysterical claims about THE END OF FOSSIL FUELS IS NEAR!!! have been a staple of the alarmist media since I was a young man … and I’m 75.
Your pathetic attempt at reviving that alarmism is WAY beyond its use-by date.
w.
In 1968 we had a lot of discovery to be made. Today? Not so much.
50 years sounds like a lot but its a declining resource (yes fracking has revived old wells for the moment to maintain production levels) but over the 50 years we need to transition from oil to something else (likely electric) and its going to take decades for that to happen with a bearable amount of pain.
Wait 20 more years before we start and the pain will be unbearable.
If we can make fusion work in the meantime then great! That one has traditionally always been 50 years away too, in practice.
“Coal is dead” That’s obviously why the latest BP Statistical Review of Energy 2021 said
Coal is the dominant fuel for power production generation in 2021 and its share increased to 36%
The first thing to understand about the Irish grid is that it is being operated to a maximum share of 75% of non-synchronous generation. That defines their “Pollock” limit.
https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all/snsp
This is somewhat higher than the 50% they were limiting themselves to at the time of Storm Ophelia in 2017. This chart shows how they were running the system back then:
They were making use of their ability to rely on interconnectors both to be able to import power when wind was inadequate, and to export it when they had a surplus. However, with limited export capacity they might be forced into curtailing wind particularly overnight when demand is low.
Both ahead of Ophelia’s arrival and after it departed, wind generation fell back close to zero, necessitating interconnector imports. On the day the storm passed through demand was even below the Sunday the day before, with wind generation falling well short of forecast levels. It appears that many wind farms shut down as a safety precaution ahead of the storm which made landfall at around 11 a.m. as it moved North. There was a move to restart some of them to meet the early evening peak, but it seemed to falter at first, and the second attempt appears to have been cut short by curtailment as overnight demand fell to the lowest of the week, before the wind itself died away.
Interconnector exports allow them to accommodate a larger volume of renewables. Demand peaks at approximately 7GW, and when working the interconnectors allow them +/- 1GW, which also saves on the amount of dispatchable backup they need – at least so long as they can prevail upon GB to provide the balancing services. In fact, in recent months Eirgrid has been afraid of being outbid by GB at times of Dunkelflaute, and has at times forbidden or limited exports because its own capacity would otherwise be stretched and risk the need for rotating blackouts.
The chart you reference says Ireland is running about 25% non-synchronous and about 75% synchronous at this time, the opposite of what you say.
At this moment it is not windy in Ireland. Try setting the chart to display a month at a time (click on DAY), and the 75% limit will jump out at you.
Like this
The Pollock arithmetic seems to be just that if you limit wind capacity to that which would meet average demand at full blast, then the average generated will be the capacity factor times demand, pretty much by definition. But do you have to do that?
1. It’s a rubbery limit. If the wind blows full at times of low demand, there will still be excess supply.
2. But you can handle excess. It isn’t even too bad to just disconnect turbines. But it is much better if you can export the excess. And it is still good if you can create extra demand, as with hydro pumping, or adjustable industrial processes like electrolysis.
If you do install more wind power than average demand can accommodate, then you will exceed the Pollock limit, with little penalty.
Nick,
Care to show data for “little penalty”?
There is a rather large penalty for installing W&S in a national-size grid.
Data shows many examples when large grid electricity cost increases in rough proportion to W&S penetration percent. Geoff S
Not true in S Australia. They used to be highest cost – now with big investment in wind and solar, they are mid-range cost and exporting.
How about some data on what the pnealty for exceeding the Pollock Limit actually is?
Prices are now capped in NEM. That is why they appear to be mid range.
Nick
So is it good that South Australia destroyed hydrocarbon plant and grew more expensive W&S? Mid range is higher than lowest cost. What is the benefit of replacing well-known, cheap, efficient, reliable generation with a system that is not any of those?
Geoff S
Unless you are taking into account the costs (peaker generation, energy storage, etc) to make wind and solar play nice with the grid, the claim that costs are mid-range are B.S.
Unstated assumption: W&S can be built out beyond the Pollock Limit for free. Resources can therefore be allowed to be idle because there was no cost to build it.
Nick,
Since you’re one of the resident math experts here, and ignoring all the political sturm and drang surrounding renewables, I’m wondering what you think of a derivation that depends on at least two assumptions, specifically, that both f = f_max and that renewables will be producing energy at their average capacity factor, R, when N = D.
Take 3 windmills each with 33.3% CF. Place them all in the same area such that they all produce power at the same time and at best they will produce power 33.3% of the time.
Now place these 3 windmills in 3 magical locations such that one windmill is always producing power while the other 2 sit idle.
Now you have 1/3 the power 100% of the time. This latter case would allow wind power to reliably produce 100%:of the grid.
The Pollock Limit needs to account for this. The more you can distribute the variance the greater the average allowed.
Exactly.
(Well, almost exactly. To make it complete you have to say that demand is constant. Or, as I too-obscurely put it, the demand’s coefficient of variation is zero.)
Unfortunately the wind is never so cooperative. In fact, we regularly see periods when there is almost no wind blowing anywhere on land – globally, and only limited amounts in reasonably accessible offshore locations. If you want fairly consistent wind you could try living on the Greenland plateau.
Put the windmills in California, Massachusetts, and Ohio.
How do you get the 100% from CA to MA and OH when the CA windmill is the only one operating?
A VERY long extension cord — made with superconducting material that can operate without cooling at Summer temperatures.
Then that wind turbine would have a capacity factor of 100% not 33% and Pollocks limit would still be intact.
Meanwhile, here in the real world …
For the island of Great Britain (= England + Scotland + Wales) it is roughly 1000 miles from Land’s End (SW corner) to John O’Groats (NE corner).
Just over 27 GW “Nameplate Capacity” of onshore and offshore wind turbines have been installed on and around GB, let’s say in a rectangle 750 miles wide (total area = 750,000 square miles ~= 1.94 million square kilometres).
Under CMoB’s re-rebuttal post I replied to a comment by “old cocky” with a graph of the GB grid’s “Wind” and “Solar” output at the end of last year (direct link).
Below is a “zoomed in” version of that graph, covering the three days from the 26th to the 29th of November 2022.
For 4 or 5 hours late in the evening of the 26th of November total “Wind” contribution to the GB electricity grid from the dozens (/ hundreds ?) of turbines distributed over that “large” area peaked at just over 20 GW.
48 hours later the output from the exact same number of “widely distributed” turbines had fallen to less than one GW, a level it remained below for roughly 9 hours (from 28/11 ~4PM to 29/11 ~1AM) and “stuck at” for a further 12 hours (until 29/11 ~1PM).
Maybe, but not as much as you seem to think “we” can.
Obviously the answer is storage but its still possible to transmit energy for thousands of kms to balance the grid. We could do that if we had to… but we wont have to with a couple of decades of research into improving storage (I’d ultimately back sodium batteries for grid storage, myself) and another couple of decades rolling it out.
Thanks, Willis. Interesting.
It looks like Ireland is not strictly a stand-alone case which the BP statistics could fully represent for the purposes of the Pollock limit analysis.
This website linked below appears to be the grid operator for Ireland and Northern Ireland. All time all-island high demand is 7,031 MW. All time high wind generation is 4585 MW.
For Ireland only, all time high demand is 5,544 MW; all time high wind generation is 3604 MW.
There are interconnectors between Northern Island and Scotland (called Moyle) and between Ireland and Wales (called East West or EWIC) which can import and export.
https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all
So the BP data may not have any way to have represented what happens between Ireland and Northern Ireland and on the interconnectors.
There is some Moyle and EWIC data here showing active import/export management.
https://data.nationalgrideso.com/demand/historic-demand-data/r/historic_demand_data_2022
I see commenter It doesnot add up has also posted about this as I was looking this up.
Yeah, lots of us found it. Willis didn’t even think to look.
Tim, I provided this post as a place to encourage discussion and exploration of the issues in a less confrontational manner than Lord Monckton’s post.
I made no attempt to do a thorough hour-by-hour analysis of the Irish situation. Not my goat, not my rodeo.
And my conclusion was:
Don’t like it? Fine. But don’t bust me for not doing the deep dive, that was neither my intention nor my goal.
And if you’re so damn smart, how about you write up a post correcting all my shortcomings and post it up here?
Oh, wait, I forgot. You’re just the critic, and I’m the man in the arena.
See that part about “cold and timid souls”? Grab a mirror.
w.
That one fact undermined your analysis.
The point is you have a lot to learn about the grid. Maybe take a slice of humble pie.
Tim, you’ve gotten to the point where I’m invoking the First Rule of Pig Wrestling.
w.
And I shall point out that you’ve run out of ammunition for your flack cannon.
You do you, Tim.
Stay well,
w.
Not a single mention anywhere if Ireland has any battery backup. If it does then the Pollock limit must be higher than the nameplate rating per the equations.
Ireland has very limited grid battery provision at the moment: in any event batteries are not used to provide serious storage – their purpose is assisting with grid stability. That is of course a vital role, and has allowed Ireland to move progressively from curtailing renewables at 50% of generation to now operating at up to 75% renewables. There is a 292MW, 1800MWh pumped storage facility at Turlough Hill. It operates at a relatively low round trip efficiency – reported a few years ago as low as 54%. That means it need to buy the electricity for pumping at half or less of the price it gets for supply.
Ireland’s battery is the UK.
A mathematical point: The penetration at which curtailment starts to be necessary in the absence of storage depends on the demand’s coefficient of variation and on the correlation among the individual wind turbines’ uncurtailed outputs. To take this to the limit, the penetration at which curtailment starts to be required–and thus the point of diminishing returns to adding unreliables–approaches 100% as the demand’s coefficient of variation and the correlations among the (large number of) wind turbines approach zero.
Of course, those statistics don’t get at all close to zero in the real world. But I’m pretty sure that there’s a significant difference in those statistics’ values between, say, Texas and Germany. So we should not be surprised if the points of diminishing returns for different locations differ even when their capacity factors are equal.
If you are really lucky you can get anti-correlation between different parts of your geography. But it is frighteningly rare. See the between country correlations for the European area in this table
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/6yqhP/1
Thanks for the link. (Not surprised that you had the information at your fingertips.)
The chart nearby illustrates how even without storage a low-variance load and low correlation among the turbine outputs could in theory cooperate to provide a wind-power penetration approaching 100% even though the Pollock limit is only 25%.
Your system requires very precise anti correlation – scheduling, in fact. Low correlation produces entirely random outputs, so you could expect output ranging from zero to full capacity.
Yes, it would have been better in that case, where I used a small number of turbines for the sake of exposition, to make it clear that by “low correlation” I was including negative correlation.
When you have a large number of turbines, though, near-zero correlation results in a coefficient of variation that approaches zero as the number approaches infinity. When I simulated a large number, for example, I added together 10,000 independent identically distributed sequences (correlations usually between -0.01 and +0.01), and the resultant coefficient of variation was a little over 0.01.
The wind doesn’t switch on and off every millisecond, which is what you are assuming. There is a high degree of autocorrelation across time (I.e. if the wind was blowing a moment ago it is likely to be blowing now).
Of course it doesn’t. In fact, that was my original point: that the point of diminishing returns is a result of the correlation we encounter in the real world; it isn’t required by Lord Monckton’s algebra. Although the example in that last plot is not like real life, it is entirely consistent with Lord Monckton’s math.
As I said before, the point of diminishing returns that the accompanying plot illustrates for those ERCOT data does seem roughly to coincide with the Pollock “limit.” But, again, to the extend that this phenomenon is general–as you’ve demonstrated it probably isn’t–it results from correlation among the turbines’ outputs.
I’ll repeat it yet again: the previous chart was intended as a simple example to show that the math doesn’t necessarily require that returns diminish at that purported limit. It wasn’t intended to represent real life.
If instead of real-life correlated turbine outputs we used uncorrelated turbine outputs with the same, ERCOT demand data, here’s what we get:
Sorry, I just realized that I misread your comment.
Yes, although I had considered including individual-turbine autocorrelation in my simulations, I decided against going to that trouble, mainly because it was the cross-correlation effect I wanted to demonstrate, but, frankly, also because real-world autocorrelation turns out to be somewhat complex, and I just didn’t want to to take the time.
Hi Willis, thanks for getting to grips with the data. I suggest that the place to look for the answer is in the time pattern of wind power, ie, how much of the time is there significant wind and how much time there is not.
In comments on the original Christopher Monckton article, I said “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.“. In his response article, Francis Menton says effectively the same thing. He said that with overbuilding the amount you can get to is well more than the Pollock limit, and “happens to correspond exactly to the amount of time when there is any usable wind at all. In simple terms, overbuilding can get you above the “Pollock limit,” but no amount of overbuilding can solve the problem of complete calms. For solar, the same principle applies to nights.“.
In his second article, Christopher Monckton also indicated that something like this applied, saying “Later in the article, I drew further attention to the cost and wastefulness of installing wind and solar capacity in excess of the Pollock limit” and that he “had of course mentioned the “cost and waste of overbuilding”“.
It seems to me that we three (Christopher Monckton, Francis Menton and myself) are all on the same page, ie, that the Pollock Limit can be exceeded by overbuilding but that the cost soon becomes prohibitive. The real disagreement IMHO stems from Christopher Monckton’s judgement that overbuilding is so prohibitively expensive that it is not worth considering, while Francis Menton and I have taken a more theoretical / mathematical approach. I suggest that the final answer is that if you follow up the theoretical / mathematical approach with costings, you will find that a modest amount of overbuilding can be at a cost that is not completely prohibitive but after that we are all three effectively correct.
The real tragedy, of course, is that the very high cost of building to the Pollock Limit, and the extremely high cost of overbuilding past the Pollock Limit, are both taken from taxpayers’ money, which politicians are happy to waste in vast quantities in pursuit of virtue signalling. If politicians paid a price for mistakes like this, they wouldn’t happen so much.
“It seems to me that we three (Christopher Monckton, Francis Menton and myself) are all on the same page, ie, that the Pollock Limit can be exceeded by overbuilding but that the cost soon becomes prohibitive”
In fact the arithmetic of the Pollock Limit applies to any power source, not just wind. Here is a listing of US capacity factors:
Coal, at 48.3%, is not that much higher than wind. But of course grids have often operated at more than 48% coal. That just means that they overbuild – ie redundancy. Clearly the cost of that does not soon become prohibitive. It’s just normal.
As I pointed out on the previous discussion, inflexible nuclear is essentially subject to its own limit, which is baseload demand – i.e. minimum demand. Beyond that its output must be wasted or stored. Just the same applies to wind: as they are capable of producing at times of minimum demand (not the case for solar), then you will start curtailing when capacity can generate sufficiently to exceed minimum demand (actually sooner, since you need inertia providing generation). As capacity is further increased, there will be more hours where they exceed demand, and the extent to which they exceed demand in lower demand hours will grow.
Comparing capacity factors between dispatchable generators and weather dependent generators is a pointless exercise.
Adding more generating capacity to a fixed demand network must lower the capacity factor of other generators.
The capacity factor for coal plants in Australia is not constant in total or for different units. It increases every time a coal plant is permanently shut down then gradually reduces as more weather dependent generation is added.
Australia has a looming tipping point in the network in April when the three remaining 500MW coal fired units at Liddell close down for good. The capacity factor of the rest of the coal feet will jump up following that. Prices will again go through the roof. And there is a high risk of rolling “load management”.
Rick,
Agreed. One has to ask why politics is driving higher costs of essential services, when there is no measurable benefit other than me-too virtual signalling that I think we can assume matters not much at all to your average Joe.
There used to be accreditation incentives for engineers (as for medicos) meaning that they could take away your badge if you produced work that endangered the health and life of people. Do no harm.
Do engineers still have this? Can it be used for engineers who promote (or do not object to) engineering designs that have demonstrable, avoidable harms?
Geoff S
Nick,
You need to include political factors that can prevent coal generators from operating at best capacity. Too many hydrocarbon plants have been forced away from efficient base load operation towards inefficient load following when W&S fluctuate. As they do, big scale.
You cannot do a valid math analysis with eyes closed to such large political variables.
Geoff S
“You need to include political factors that can prevent coal generators from operating at best capacity.”
No, you don’t. The Pollock Limit purports to follow just from the arithmetic of capacity factors; there isn’t any place in that arithmetic for political factors. But in fact coal and other generators have always operated at about half capacity on average when they are the main source. The reason is simply that you have to have enough capacity to meet the peak demand, and mostly you are well below that.
So coal is overbuilt relative to average demand. So can wind be.
Nick,
I agree that Christopher”s discussion of the Pollock Limit does not include political factors.
Why, therefore, do you discuss the limit using examples that are perturbed by politics? That is why I mentioned that your examples should include political effects.
Have you ever been inside a hydrocarbon electricity generation plant? Ever explored consequences of minute-by-minute balance of supply/demand for not just Watts, but also voltage stability, frequency stability of a.c., harmonics, resonances, phase stability and other quality factors? Do you really understand the significant factors affecting and defining concepts like “half capacity on average”?
It is a while since I have been inside such plant, but maybe not much of the fundamentals has changed. Geoff D
What are the storage and constraint payment costs for coal? That, and only that, is what the Pollock Limit is about (be it wrong or right).
Intermittency is the key. If a new wind turbine is added to existing wind turbines, its output is at exactly the same times as the others. Same for solar. If a coal, gas or nuclear power station is added to existing coal, gas and/or nuclear power stations, its output can be scheduled to cover periods when others are under-producing, eg. to cover peak periods, scheduled maintenance or a plant failure. The formula fmax = 1-z that I suggested does apply, and for wind and solar 1-z is too small for comfort. For coal, gas and nuclear, z is very close to zero, ie. fmax is close to 1. Which is what one would want it to be.
Nick, it looks like you don’t have much experience with the design and operation of an electric utility. Would do you good to have a nice long chat with “Planning Engineer”.
The fundamental rule of running an electric power power system is that power suply must equal power demand plus system losses.
#1 Virtually every utility has a peak demand well in excess of the average demand, which means that the average capacity factor of all generation will be less than 100%.
#2 Generation is typically scheduled lowest cost of generation based on incremental cost, which is typically lowest with hydro, solar, wind and nuclear. Of those four, only the capacity factor of nuclear is predominately under the control of the utility, where there other are predominately limited by nature. This is why nuclear has the highest capacity factor along with 135Xe making load following a challenge.
#3 Read up on “Planning Engineer’s” essays on the penetration problem. Getting back to “the fundamental rule of running an electric power system” is that wind and solar can have wild swings in generation which can threaten the stability of the grid.
One last comment about the limits of overbuilding: If reducing CO2 emissions is a priority, the planning for generation must take into account the overall production of CO2 (e.g. cement production). My assertion is that use of fossil fuel generation to make up for drop outs in renewable generation will result in less emission of CO2 than overbuilding renewables and storage to handle the worst case. OTOH, the lowest total CO2 emissions would likely be from moderate overbuilding of nuclear and rooftop solar in conjunction with 6 hours worth of electric energy storage.
“Nick, it looks like you don’t have much experience with the design and operation of an electric utility.”
No, I don’t. Nor I think do Lord Monckton, Francis Menton, or even Willis. Nonetheless, Lord M has advanced a simple arithmetic proposition, the Pollock Limit, and I discuss it accordingly.
Point taken wrt Monckton’s knowledge. It’s been my experience that few people who have not worked for a utility or have had at least taken courses on electric power systems have any clue of what actually goes on with running a utility.
Hence the “Penetration Problem” essays that appeared on Climate Etc and re-posted on WUWT, have a more accurate description of the practical limits for renewable energy than the Pollock Limit.
Nick “how can I trick people with statistics” Stroker
Natural gas power plant capacity factor is reduced by including all gas peaker plants in the average, that are INTENDED for part time use each weekday.
US coal capacity factor for coal has fallen from about 70%, 15 years ago, to 48% for reasons that have nothing to do with the capability of coal plants. The output suffers from a growing number of coal power plants being shut down during a year, reducing the overall capacity percentage for that year. There are also coal plants increasingly being used seasonally, for economic reasons, when they could be used all year.
“In an effort to improve the economics of coal plants, owners are evaluating plans to run plants on a seasonal basis, when electricity demand allows for steadier operation. Under these plans, coal plants would only operate during periods of higher electricity demand, from December to February (winter) and from June to August (summer). The expectation is that completely shutting down plants when electricity demand is low will limit financial losses. So far in 2020, four large coal-fired plants announced plans to operate on a seasonal basis.
Two of the plants, totaling 1,193 megawatts (MW), are in Minnesota. The other two are a 793 MW plant in Arizona and a 645 MW plant in Louisiana. The two units in Minnesota will run during the summer and winter. The plants in Arizona and Louisiana will only operate during summer because they are located in warmer climes.
Whether or not seasonal operation sufficiently improves the economics of coal plants remains to be seen”
SOURCE OF QUOTE:
U.S. Energy Information Administration – EIA – Independent Statistics and Analysis
Nick, you’re either falling for, or committing, an error of conflation. The “capacity factor” of coal is not an equivalent of the capacity factor of wind. The latter is defined entirely by physical limits; when the wind doesn’t blow, the turbine doesn’t turn. The former, coal, is defined by operational parameters. Coal plants can operate as long as coal is supplied, with shutdowns for maintenance, so they have a theoretical capacity factor of 100% and a realistic capacity factor of something like 92%, similar to nuclear. They are, however, often taken offline in order to maintain the stability of the grid, which reduces the apparent capacity factor by a significant amount.
It isn’t the same thing, though. Referring to it as if it is is like saying that chihuahuas are wolves, because they’re both canids.
“The “capacity factor” of coal is not an equivalent of the capacity factor of wind.”
Capacity factor is a matter of simple arithmetic – what you actually generate divided by what you could have generated if the equipment had been working 24/7. We are talking about Monckton’s “Pollock Limit”. That just reframes the arithmetic to say that if you build enough equipment to meet no more than (average) demand if working 24/7, then what you will actually generate is limited by the capacity factor. Just a trivial rearrangement of the logic. Doesn’t matter why the factor arose.
The fallacy is of course that you aren’t limited to building just enough to meet average demand. Coal doesn’t do that, and nor should wind.
In 2021, the total wind energy generated in Ireland and Northern Ireland was 11,695 GWh, while 938 GWh of wind energy was dispatched down. This represents 7.4% of the total available wind energy in 2021.
In 2021, the share of electricity demand from renewable sources in Ireland and Northern Ireland was 35.4% (Figure 2). This is broken down as follows:
• 30.6% provided by wind;
• 0.4% provided by solar;
• 1.9% provided by hydro; and
• 2.5% provided by other4 renewable energy sources.
Note that since the percentage figures are presented for centrally dispatched generation (based on metered data), they do not account for non-dispatchable embedded renewable generation, which includes biomass, land-fill gas and small-scale hydro.
4 Other renewable energy sources include CHP, bioenergy and ocean energy.
https://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/library/EirGrid/Annual-Renewable-Constraint-and-Curtailment-Report-2021-V1.0.pdf
That is about 8% of generation ‘dispatched down’. What does dispatched down mean?
“Dispatched down” means rejected by the grid, either because a) it’s more than the grid needs, or b) it’s more than the grid can physically handle.
w.
There are lots of useful charts and tables in the report.
Eirgrid have been conducting plenty of studies into grid constraints and curtailment in the light of their ongoing programme of installing more wind. Demand in Ireland is increasing because it has become a popular location for data centres on account of tax advantages. Whether that will be maintained if electricity becomes too expensive is an interesting risk for their economy.
Their 2020 study noted:
Ireland has a key target of meeting 70% of electricity demand from renewable sources by 2030. This target is set out in the Government’s Climate Action Plan, published in June 2019. The 70% target means more renewable generators than are studied in this report. This will mean higher curtailment (unless measures to reduce curtailment are found), and depending on the location of the additional generators, higher constraints in some locations for existing and new generation.
A polite case of litotes.
https://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/library/EirGrid/ECP-1-Solar-and-Wind-Constraints-Ireland-Summary.pdf
They were looking at a limit of 60%. Now where have I mentioned that figure before?
In their more recent work they state
Currently, through our Shaping Our Electricity Future Roadmap, we have a plan to deliver at least 70% renewable electricity for the all-island power system. For this GCS 2022-2031, our forecast of renewable generation is aligned to 70% renewable electricity by 2030 for the median demand. Achieving 80% renewable electricity will require a seismic shift in thinking, as the scale of the task is unprecedented and there are significant challenges in terms of deliverability, technical scarcities and economic considerations.
That’s a move from litotes to panic, and a big warning to politicians about potential infeasibility and massive (unaffordable?) cost. That’s just for 80%. I think net zero truly scares them – as it should.
The Irish return to peat for heat: “It costs approximately €500 to heat a household with peat for a year versus several thousand euros for more climate-friendly sources [sic] of energy”.
There is also a human patience limit.
Looked up the numbers for Germany. They show that the Pollock limit is anything but a hard and fast rule. It depends on grid details.
For 2022, German wind was 23% of grid generation, despite its capacity factor for that year being only 20.1%. This is possible because Germany uses Norway (via interconnectors) as a ‘battery’. When Germany has excess wind generation, they ship it for ‘free’ to Norway, allowing Norway to reduce its hydropower and conserve the water. When Gemany is short wind, they buy hydropower from Norway at high prices. This is a good deal for Norway, but a bad deal for Germany.
Wind is always a bad deal. Some years ago I redid the egregiously wrong EIA LCOE, where EIA said wind and CCGT were at cost parity. In truth (using Texas ERCOT real numbers for 2016) CCGT was about $68/MWh while on shore wind was $146 before adding subsidy costs. Wind is more expensive, intermittent requiring underutilized grid backup (Germany uses Norway), and provides no grid inertia.
Germany benefits by upping its “renewable” share. That builds the countries’ green energy cred. I do not know anything about EU carbon trading but there may also be some economic benefit there.
Not in a predominantly hydro grid that is perched water constrained. And Norway has had that problem. It is inevitably a much faster and lower cost option than building more storage dams.
When Tasmania was isolated from the Australian mainland, they were installing wind turbines for conserving perched water. New Zealand gets the same benefit from wind and solar as their hydro is perched water constrained; plenty of hydro generating capacity but useless if there is no water in the storages.
It has turned into a bad deal for Norway. They get to import scarcity prices from Germany, and are now looking to place a ban on exports to prevent that. See chart
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fLVEo/1
They also found that demand for exports was seriously threatening their reservoir levels, and thus their security of supply.
Germany has grid connections with all its neighbours. As it has closed nuclear and coal capacity it has found itself moving from being a significant net exporter towards a more balanced position.
http://pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/graphics/european_flows_2021.jpg
Last year it dug deep to help out France with its nuclear woes.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-extends-power-exports-neighbours-2023-01-05/
The Pollock Limit doesn’t say anything about how much electricity it is possible to produce from W or S; it is only about the costs and efficiency. Does Germany have inexpensive electricity?
Andy, here’s Monckton’s description of the Pollock Limit:
Please point out the part about either costs or efficiency. I’ll wait.
w.
First, I am not seconding the claim that the Pollock Limit is an absolute limit. I have questions of my own, which I attempted to make clear in comments here and in response to Monckton’s own articles. Others have essentially raised the same issue, in different words. I wondered if my examples could be expressed as a corollary to the presented mathematics, or if they are actually an exception to the claim, or if there is some way to show they are not an exception.
At the end of the his development of what he claims to be a proof, he has this paragraph:
You will note the final clause.
First, there is no statement in his work that W & S cannot produce more electricity than that limit, only that, on average, or at least often, something else has to be done with generation beyond that limit, and that something tends to be quite expensive, if even realistically possible. In the above paragraph he only mentions battery backup. Later in the discussion he talks about constraint payments. Many objecting comments talk about using battery backup, as though he had not acknowledged batteries, or just turning off the excess generation, as though constraint payments are not part of (at least most) contracts.
The Pollock Limit hypothesis would seem to assume a bound system. You, and others, who point out grid interconnect use for the excess generation are certainly correct that at least that one other option exist (which is close to battery backup in most respects) – until everyone within reach has overbuilt enough that there is no place to offload excesses.
In the absence of some major flaw in my writing, I consider this reply sufficient answer to the other objections, such as the one you made further on.
Oh, if it was only that good. It used to be, when the interconnection was limited. Now, they opened a substantial interconnection to both Germany and the UK, with the result that Norwegian hydropower went from being cheap and a factor in favour of Norwegian energy intensive industry to being an overly expensive liability in lieu of “saving the planet”. Most people have come to understand that it is really “saving Germany from its green follies”, but for some reason our politicians seem to believe the “save the planet” stuff still.
The end results is that Germany balances its wind power with us and Sweden, but we get crazy high prices and drained reservoirs because Norwegian producers can sell all they want at European prices.
Modern Norway was built on our generous supply of hydropower. We use electricity in ways very few others can, because we have so much of it. Now, instead of continuing to use it in our favour, we are forcing ourselves to give it away to europeans. Politicians are dumbfounded why this has not turned out good, because it was supposed to because climate.
Interconnectors import the problems at the other end of the line.
The Pollock Limit is, regardless of the precision with which it can be identified and proven, a very useful way to look at renewables, and certainly refutes the notion that it is practical to supply 100% of our electrical generation demand with renewables .. which is what the warmunists insist upon. With solar power, the limits on production are pretty clearly defined as hours of daylight, taking into account that daylight varies throughout the day. Wind power is a little less clearly because windiness is not solely determined by direct sunlight, being determined largely by regional wind patterns.
But exact or not, this is still a good theoretical model, and I think makes it easier to explain to the non-techy persons why we’ll never get to an all renewable power grid.
The whole analysis fails due to this choice. Ireland is not an isolated network. There are interconnections to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Interconnections allow one region to use the other region as a battery having the power capacity of the interconnector but infinite storage capacity. That means that the local grid has the equivalent of substantial storage so overbuilding results in achieving penetration greater than the capacity factor.
I expect you will find France is the bunny that tolerates the intermittency on its mostly thermal generation.
Selecting Ireland is a strange mistake by Willis. As you say it has inter-connectors that flows power in both directions so they acts as a battery yet as I understand it the Pollock limit specifically excludes there being a battery in the system.
NB : My ICT data for the GB grid is from the ESO (National Grid) website, and has some inconsistencies with the Irish ICT (Moyle and East-West) data provided by the EirGrid website linked to by “It doesnot add up”.
For detailed graphics of ICT flows for the Irish grid I would recommend using their data, not mine !
Following the various “Pollock limit” posts here I isolated the ICT data (from ESO) for the GB grid for all of 2022.
Note that “24 GWh per day” of energy production is (to a first approximation) equivalent to a constant power flow of 1 GW.
From April to November the GB grid was exporting to France, at a rate of 1 to 3 GW, while EdF flew in experienced American welders to repair the pipes in their nuclear reactors.
I have read that Germany also exported a lot of electricity to France during this time period as well.
That process is now slowing down (it should be completed around March/April), and is a “one-off” situation unlikely to be repeated in the near future.
Power cuts here in France in the next few weeks are more likely to come from strike action than production / grid stability issues.
I think that EdF already announced they were planning to return some plants to maintenance in February having pulled out the stops to bring back capacity temporarily to cover cold weather demand in December. IFA1 is due to return to 2GW in the next few days, so if the weather turns cold and windless across Europe it could still be “interesting”. GB tends to outbid France during shortages: in December they were pleading to be let off their contracts guaranteeing supply to the UK under the Capacity Mechanism, and now they will have a bit more at risk.
That will certainly help UK green credentials.
I would like to know if France is importing intermittent power to the detriment of their nuclear generators under normal circumstances or if they just schedule them to maximise their economic value to France.
In Australia, the coal generators have to bid significant blocks of energy at negative prices so they undercut what the intermittent generators are willing to accept. Scheduling is entirely based on pricing with the occasional oders and compensation for dispatchable generators to remain connected to provide stability services. The FCAS market income is sometimes insufficient to cover losses in the energy market within the market operation so “orders” work outside the normal generator scheduling.
My data are only for the GB grid, but my “ICT sum” numbers were dominated by the IFA and IFA2 links until (at least) Q4-2021 / Q1-2022.
The “dip” from March to November 2022 in the attached graph correlates well with the (daily) graph at the end of my OP, which would indicate that the French demands on the Europe-wide electricity market for that particular time period can indeed be considered as “unusual”.
France built their nuclear fleet in the 1970s and 80s in reaction to the early 70s oil crisis. By scheduling refuelling and maintenance over the summer they were able to provide some seasonality of nuclear output. They used hydro and a small amount of gas to provide intra day balancing, and added exports to neighbouring countries as a further means of balancing. They were willing to take cheap French power at the margin, and provided small amounts of support in the other direction.
Because the nuclear plants were built in a surge they are all coming to the end of their lives at similar times, and the EPR replacement design of reactor has been in trouble ever since they attempted to build the first one. Macron’s first energy minister, the former clown, Hulot, decided to resolve matters by aiming to “replace” half the nuclear fleet with wind. It allowed him to ignore the festering problems for the nuclear fleet, while cozying up to German Greens in their anti-nuclear stance as a way of helping Macron to secure more influence within the EU. The French now have a problem that their previously neglected nuclear needs attention (“grand carénage”) so they are running short of capacity and have been importers from most of their neighbours paying top prices last year. The wind has not been a great success, and falls far short of anything useful anyway. In fact, if they continue to pursue it, it will become a nuisance because of the inflexibility of nuclear output. They will become importers at high prices when the wind doesn’t blow, and curtailers or exporters at low or negative prices when it does, while ruining the economics of their nuclear. They should revert to the successful grid design of the past.
Interesting, but once again we’re having the wrong discussion.
All adding wind and solar into the grid does is (1) make electricity more expensive and (2) make the grid less reliable. There is no benefit. There is no upside.
As for debating what percentage of wind and solar constitutes a practical limit to the share of energy that a given renewable source can supply to the grid without battery (or some other) backup, the answer is simple. ZERO percent.
Because when the wind does not blow hard enough, or when the wind blows too hard, windmills produce NO electricity. When the Sun is set for the day or there is heavy clouds or fog or the panels are covered in snow, the solar panels produce NO electricity.
In any of these cases, 100% of the electricity that would otherwise be generated by the windmills or solar panels must be dependably produced BY SOMETHING ELSE. They therefore REQUIRE 100% BACKUP. The “practical limit” is ZERO, unless we’re ready to return to kerosene lanterns and coal or wood stove heating.
While I sympathize with your conclusion, it is for economic rather than physical grid reasons. As a practical matter, most grids maintain a 12-15% spare backup capacity to insure absolute reliability. Some of that is hot spinning reserve, some is peaker. So a small renewable low single digit penetration is not a grid problem. Anything above becomes an increasing problem, incurring extra costs for backup and grid inertia. UK, Germany, and ERCOT are to the point where there are now BIG grid stability problems.
There is the argument on fuel savings. I don’t know if that actually reduces net costs but the idea is that some amount of wind or solar will be more that paid for by the fuel it saves at the thermal generation plants.
The thermal plants are necessary backup unless periods of no (or too little) power available is acceptable. They could supply all the power needed all by themselves but they use fuel to do so. By curtailing them when W or S is producing well, the fuel savings can/will more than pay for the W and S costs. As I said, I don’t know about the validity of this claim but whether or not it is a valid argument depends on the numbers, not the emotions.
It also ignores the severe medical effects of wind turbines.
See my links to posts at Euan Mearns’ site where the impact of wind on CCGT efficiency was dissected for the Irish case. Another way to look at it is that for the GB grid, the average efficiency of CCGT is about 48% compared with potential if operated as baseload of almost 60% (the best units manage slightly more). It’s quite a fuel penalty.
If All of the time =1, and Part of the Time is zero, 1, what’s bigger?
1 = 5/3
2 5/3 – 5/12* Part of the time. I.e. 2. must be less than 1, for all possible values of Part of the time, except zero.
So, tell us more about his “fuel penalty”.
Folks, now the 2 cycle engine powered goal posts…..
Folks, kindly belay this post. I still contend that that the “fuel penalty” is bogus, but this was a bad case of distracted posting. Arithmetic mistake and all. The first d.t. would be mine, if it was allowed. It will be superceded.
The fuel penalty is real. What it means is that the fuel savings from allowing more wind on the system are a lot less than assuming that specific fuel consumption per MWh generated is unaltered. Moreover, it was documented in a detailed study for the Irish grid.
A better comparison than the one I boned – badly. You either use free fuel most of the time, and fuel that costs 25% more than what it would cost for if you used it all of the time, a tiny part of the time. So, pick a use fraction, and then do the evaluation based on the parameter that you chose – fuel use.
It’s more of a technology mix question.
Solar and CCGT seem to be complementary (at least in places like Australia and Texas), because solar output is reasonably predictable.
Similarly, wind and OCGT seem to be complementary because wind is far more variable over short time periods and OCGT can respond quickly.
Sufficient pumped hydro might help in both cases.
Calculating the optimum mix to a first or second order approximation for various locations could be an enlightening exercise.
According to https://www.energymagazine.com.au/australias-top-performing-solar-pv-asset-in-2021/, solar in Australia has a capacity factor of around 27%, and wind around 40%.
OCGT uses around 50% more fuel than CCGT, so it seems the solar/CCGT and wind/OCGT mixes come out around the same fuel use.
bigoilbob January 22, 2023 10:49 am
With wind having a global average capacity factor of 25% and solar at 15%, your claim of “a tiny part of the time” is simply wrong.
With the benefit of a good portion of my lifetime having been spent at sea, I am intimately familiar with the old sailor’s saying, viz:
“The wind is free … but everything else costs money.”
Which is why just looking at fuel use is a fool’s game …
w.
You would need to do a cradle to grave economic analysis of hydrocarbon fuels consumed by the W&S industry, including mining of raw materials, smelting, transport, construction and disposal/rehabilitation.
I cannot recall any such study, though it might exist.
You cannot simply decide that W&S is cheaper because operational fuel costs might be. It is rather more complex.
Again and again, it makes me wonder why people have bothered to revive discarded technology like windmills. Geoff S
“Again and again, it makes me wonder why people have bothered to revive discarded technology like windmills.”
Yes, the cradle to grave analyses to date suffer from the bias of renewable subsidies. But renewable cost evaluations include most of your referenced costs. FYI, the relatively tiny (and diminishing) green start up helps are ~an order of magnitude lower than the (also skipped) externalized ES&RC and AGW fossil fuel costs that are now communized upon the rest of us.
I’m happy to have future decisions based on incremental, stochastic economic ROR evaluations of all the costs.
bigoilbob January 22, 2023 9:29 am
That’s not true at all. For example, the recent US bill provided $369 BILLION for renewable energy, and you can bet that the overwhelming majority of that never shows up in any renewable cost evaluation.
And as another example, the Lazard Levelized Cost Of Energy doesn’t even mention the cost of the necessary backup power for intermittent renewables, or the costs of the necessary grid stabilization equipment …
“Relatively tiny“??? Get real! Over the last two decades the Manhattan Institute calculated that we’ve spent $5 TRILLION on wind and solar. $5 trillion dollars, that’s equivalent to spending a million dollars per hour 24/7 for 570 years … and here’s what we got for that money.
We’ve subsidized wind/solar/biofuels $5 trillion over 20 years.
OWID says that they’ve delivered 9.12 petawatt-hours in 20 yrs.
That’s $0.55 PER FREAKIN’ KILOWATT-HOUR! Show me where that, or even half of that, shows up in the bogus cost calculations of wind and solar.
Finally, I don’t mind small subsidies if they deliver valuable goods. But here’s the comparison of fossil and renewable subsidies …
Sorry, not impressed.
Best regards,
w.
“That’s not true at all. For example, the recent US bill provided $369 BILLION for renewable energy, and you can bet that the overwhelming majority of that never shows up in any renewable cost evaluation.”
Another way of saying what I said.
““Relatively tiny“??? Get real!”
Your Manhattan costs are not for any real evaluations of projects. They are a lump of many years, which don’t include the recent geological and petroleum engineering/economic trends in CONUS oil and gas production. Nor do they include the exponentially declining renewable costs. And BTW, your subsidy v subsidy chart is FF industry bloviation. Most of thiri shirked costs aren’t included. Not the ES&RC costs Ben Dovered by regulators, not the AGW costs, not the 11-12 $ figures of asset retirement costs (just in the CONUS) now being shirked by either bonding at pennies on the dollar, or being “delayed” altogether because these Chevrons and Exxons will certainly make good on them.
I say again, I’m happy to look at actual incremental,stochastic evaluations that include ALL costs. But this picking and choosing from someone who still believes that the 2/21 Texas storm cost us less than $16B, is a nonstarter.
https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2021/oct/winter-storm-impact.php#:~:text=14%2D20%2C%20and%20almost%20half,%2480%20billion%20to%20%24130%20billion.
My apologies if it was Andy May who pulled out this boner.
bigoilbob January 22, 2023 10:26 am
Renewable costs are NOT “exponentially declining”. In fact, after declines in the early years, solar PV costs are hardly declining at all.
SOURCE—NREL
The same is true about wind power.
SOURCE—EIA
Decreasing, but hardly exponentially. And maintenance costs are increasing, not decreasing.
Note that as always, neither of these include the cost of load-balancing gear, synchrony gear, or backup generation … and those cost are going up with increased market penetration.
“Exponentially decreasing renewables costs” is just more alarmist bafflegab.
w.
At the same time though the W and S are also forcing up the price of the fuel used by, for example, gas plants in the UK because they do not know when they will be called upon and so cannot secure long term contracts with the gas suppliers.
Another data point
“Wind power production in Saskatchewan went into negative territory”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/01/19/wind-power-production-in-saskatchewan-went-into-negative-territory/
dear gods what a mess – how can supposedly clever people blind themselves with their own brilliance.
While nobody has the balls, ‘cept maybe willis here, to call them out on it.
Moncton in his imitable style, far too mat words, has confused everybody and its not clear why or how.
So, take a really simple trivial case of, lets say, My House
In my house I use, on average 1kW or 24kWh per day
I want renewable energy so what’s to stop me planting a 100kW nameplate windmill at bottom of my garden.
In its depressing state in the UK, it will produce its 25% capacity factor of 25kW.
So on average, I will have 24kW of electric I can either give way or ‘feather’ the turbine and let it blow away to the next turbine or wherever.
How Is That A Problem for me?
At first sight I have masses of electric and its all renewable.
The only problem I would have is if the wind stopped blowing all together.
C’mon peeps, play the game. We’ve been through this via the UK agency charged with rolling out renewable energy.
I forget their alpabettispagetti name but they asserted that wind could power the UK apart from only 7 days per year = 7 days when there was No Wind across the UK incl. territorial waters
The essay we had here at WUWT asserted that that was pie-in-the-sky dreaming. That anyone could go look at UK weather history to see that the wind stopped for 70 (seventy) days per year and not 7 (seven) as claimed by the BSIESSRESISEESSIS Agency, or whatever they call themselves now.
See now where Pollock went wrong?
Pollock has confused the capacity factor of the actual turbines with the capacity factor of the wind itself
So: UK turbines have a capacity factor of 25% of their nameplate, as recorded, but the UK wind itself has (as recorded in the climate record) a capacity factor of (365-70)/365 = 80%
……and if you built enough turbines that is what you’d get.
Hence Ireland and theirs should be even higher, sitting out in The Pond as they do with an endless stream of anticyclones tracking along the Gulf Stream
Et Tu Monkton: Ipsum Laudum Loadium Confusium Bullshittium Et Bolloxium
The question is really about how the costs of obtaining that 80% vs the benefits increase over buildout, not about whether it is, in theory, possible. The cost considerations is what the Pollock Limit is about, not the possible maximal generation.
To make an analogy, the really stupid ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ arguments only address the (supposed but quite irrational) detriments of using fossil fuels while refusing to compare any downsides with all the benefits, or with the detriments of curtailing fossil fuel use.
Another analogy is to how non-linearly costs increase with the efforts to increase efficiency or cleanliness or any other desired gradient between the real world and human aspirations.
AndyHce January 19, 2023 4:40 pm
NO!!! That is simply not true. Look at the math claimed to underly the Pollock limit. There’s not one term in there about costs, or overbuilding. It is claimed by Monckton to be a “FUNDAMENTAL LIMIT” (his words) on what, sans battery backup, a renewable source can supply. Not a cost limit, not an overbuilding limit, but a fundamental physical limit.
w.
WE wrote:
Which, as I tried to explain (poorly apparently), for solar PV it cannot be such—calculating a capacity factor from the “nameplate” power rating on a PV module is a very bad metric with little connection to how much energy it might deliver when installed. Pick a different power rating, and you get a completely different Pollock limit (yes, there are alternative power ratings).
You said “And that’s what I have found out about the Pollock limit. I have exactly zero idea why Ireland is able to exceed the Pollock limit. The claim is that, absent grid-scale batteries, the Pollock limit is a real physical limit equal to the capacity factor. But that is certainly not the case for Ireland. It’s already 22% above the capacity factor. Why? How?”
A bit more analysis: If a particular type of renewable is 100% on for part of the time and producing 0% for the rest of the time, then Pollock’s limit would be true. When the capacity was sufficient during the time the renewables were producing 100% of capacity, there would be no point in adding more since it would be unused unless there was storage. But consider solar, it produces 100% for a few hours in the middle of the day but decreases to almost nothing in the morning and afternoon. Adding more then the Pollack limit will have a small benefit since a bit extra will be produced in the shoulder times even though power produced at the peak time will be wasted. The cost/benefit trade off is terrible because the extra panels will only be useful at a time of day when solar panels can’t produce much power anyway.
That’s the trade-off for one type of renewable. If there are two types that produce power at different times, for example solar and wind, then it can pay to exceed the Pollack limit in total as long as neither does alone, since sometimes one will operate at peak power while the other is at low power.
Storage changes the equation again. At present, I think the only feasible storage is pumped hydro.
One way to estimate the cost of it all is to run a simulation. I did one in VBA. I set a % output for solar for each hour of the day, and set the % of wind to be random. The profiles were set to add up to the capacity factors. I set %s for power requirement at each hour compared to average usage. The simulation stored excess power as pumped hydro and could assume 80% or 90% return on pumped hydro after allowing for pumping losses.
I can send you the code for the simulation if you like.
The limit would be load on the grid after all other baseload and dispatchable sources have been displaced off the grid since generation and load must balance. Battery storage is a farce; ridiculously expensive to ride through lulls that last a few days. As other reporters have noted on this site, generation has to be overbuilt by several times actual load for net zero – 3x-6x wind/solar + 1x baseload + 0.3x dispatchable.
The Pollock Limit is fishy
The Flounder Limit is correct
(Nobel Prize pending)
Politicians will force spending on unreliables untli the money runs out ( they can always print more ) or until a nation’s grid flounders with a big blackout.
If that nation happened to be getting an average of 35% of electricity from wind and solar, then 35% will be considered the danger zone for other nations. The 35% will be their arbitrary Flounder Limit.
And this ain’t no fish story.
PS to Willis E:
You have not lived until Monckton has called you a climate communist, as he did to me in a comment. I put that on my resume — could get me a job in the Biden Maladminstration.
“Flounder Limit”
I like it! 🙂
It is just pollocks.
Perhaps others have already pointed this out. I have not yet read any comments but in relationship to Willis’s statement, exactly quoted here, That is NOT what the Pollock limit says.
What it says is not that electricity above the average capacity cannot be provided through wind generation but that total costs will rise sharply if generation capacity above that average capacity, is built. For reference look at California’s solar generation, and the UK and German wind generation vs total electricity costs.
Also, it isn’t completely clear to me if the ‘Pollock Limit” value considered here for Ireland is actually for Ireland or the globe average shown in figure 1. I think Monckton’s inclusion of figure 1 was a tactical mistake. It apparently led to many people believing that particular value should be used everywhere while in fact it is a variable, dependent upon location.
As most of us understand, wind and solar produced electricity often does not match demand for electricity in the time domain. Constraint payment to producers, or payments to other geographical area to take the excess generation off the hands of the producer, rise sharply during hours when generation is high and demand is (relatively) low. Another theoretical way to handle this is storage, which is even more expensive than constraint payments or ‘I’ll pay you to take it away’ payments.
I’m not arguing that the Pollock limit is complete correct or incorrect, I included some questions in the Monckton articles that were not addressed. In fact, my second post, addressed to Monckton specifically, in which I tried to rephrase and be more detailed. Apparently did not pass moderation. It isn’t there.
I will try to repeat the question here in a hopefully intelligible form.
Is the claim that the calculation of the Pollock limit is independent of the generation temporal distribution, such as over a year’s time?
If the distribution of electricity generated over the year were to be normal (seems unlikely but is a simple example), 50% of the time generation would exceed the average capacity factor. Does that effect the costs bias that the Pollack Limit is supposed to predict? Does it effect storage requirements or constraint payment requirements? It seems likely to me that it does even when build is somewhere significantly below the Pollock Limit, if said figure is calculated based simply on the average capacity factor.
As a particular example, some years ago, in a discussion about the future of wind in Iowa (not on WUWT) I obtained data from an official Iowa web site. One interesting factoid was the extreme between the six coldest months vs the six warmest months. The capacity factor for the warm times was 16%, for the cold times it was well above 40%; I think it was 48%. Perhaps that has changed but I don’t see why it would unless Iowa weather has changed markedly.
I don’t see the average for the year (32%) as having any meaning whatever. Any overbuild of less than 6+ times would still mean an average deficiency during the warm months and any overbuild of more than 2 times would mean considerable excess during the cold times (except perhaps during some exceptionally cold storms where heating requirements rose extremely – if wind still worked under that circumstance).
‘ total costs will rise sharply if generation capacity above that average capacity, is built.”
Nonsense. The cost of building a new wind farm, or a new solar farm, does not depend on the existing percentage of electricity created by wind and solar energy.
The capital costs for wind farm #133 should be similar to the capital costs wind farm #3, adjusted for inflation. Maybe lower if the windmills used are more efficient.
The incremental value of new wind and solar farms should gradually decrease, from being almost a total waste of money for the first farm, to a total waste of money for later farms. That is assuming the first wind farm will be built in an exceptionally windy location, and the first solar farm will be built in an exceptionally sunny location. There will be diminishing returns as the best locations are used up.
But the bottom line is really that EVERY wind farm and EVERY solar farm is overbuilding.
Iowa viewed in isolation has winter peaked demand and windiness. For the ConUS 48, demand is heavily summer peaked for aircon, with only subsidiary peaks in winter. The low demand seasons are in Spring (April) and Fall (October). The result is that you need an admixture of solar to minimise the amount of storage or backup TWh of generation (but you still need lots of GW of backup generation).
The storage/backup requirement is surprisingly insensitive to the wind/solar ratio over quite a wide range. However, higher solar deployments require more grid/storage input capacity if they are not to be wasted.
This chart shows the distribution of electricity generation/demand for the US lower 48 by month and over the year as a whole, using hourly EIA data.
Your smooth sigmoidal curves look to have empirical support so far but the worry is that the numerator of your ordinate axis “Annual Share of Generation” which, unlike the weather-determined “annual capacity factor” in the denominator, is a function of the thinking, intentions and actions of those that determine energy policy/infrastructure build in governments/generators. Since outbreaks of irrationality/hysteria (e.g. climatophobia) are unfortunately too common in human thinking, often driven by malign forces, there is no guarantee where the empirical trend could go (i.e. does it have a theoretical upper asymptote? – given the above, the answer is no i.e. massive and continued overbuild makes it linear not sigmoidal if you do not run out of raw materials). After a good start I had a bleep in my early career being employed as an econometrician but thankfully I steered back to biometrics (statistics applied to biology) for the remainder. As an econometrician how does one project future fossil fuel prices when a meglomaniac in Russia out of nowhere invades Ukraine and causes more than a major bleep??
Your megalomaniac claim is wrong. I would explain why but every post I have ever made here criticizing Ukraine has been censored, so why bother?
“And at least in the case of Ireland, it’s likely higher than the current value of 22.5% above the Pollock limit.”
Although not covered in Monckton/Pollock theoretical math, the limit itself may be closer to correct when you take into consideration real world degradation of cap. factor over time – they are found to lose 1.6 ± 0.2% of their output per year, with average load factors declining from 28.5% when new to 21% at age 19 (calculated using UKs 282 wind farms). So, you would have to know the progress of cap factor increments over time, to do calcs. (decommissioned in the 20th year after cap factor has declined to 74%). Perhaps we are seeing a real inflection point and things will flatten at current levels over the next several years.
BTW, Monckton did mention the cap factor reflected the regional weather conditions so they are higher or lower for various countries. Ireland may be windier than average.
Ireland does have the ability to export electricity, maybe that is how they are able to get higher than the Pollock Limit.
The external grid acts as a defacto battery.
I think the “Pollock limit” would not depend on the average capacity factor of the world, but on that of Ireland, which apparently is well suited for wind power.
It should also depend on what storage is available, and of course depend on how much your neighbouring countries are willing to buy your excess power.
One could conceivably install 100% wind capabilities if there’s generous neighbours available with deep pockets.
And I think geography will come into the equation, put only once wide spread grids become available so that windy areas can share with calm areas. That happens now but not on the scale large enough. Imagine if Texas could share power with California or New York, or Portugal with Germany, on a scale of 10s of gigawatts.
I don’t think a renewable grid will be reliable and cost effective, but it’s amazing to me that green fanatics are pushing more for money to be spent on the power lines to create continental grids, or even transcontinental grids (Africa – Europe – Asia) instead striving to build with the current turbines and panels that will be obsolete and junk in a few short years. In last few years quite a lot f resources have gone into using 10-14 MW turbines, but recently 16 and 18 MW units have been announced. While it’s fine installing a few current models here and there as test pieces, but it doesn’t make sense to build out GW farms with them.
Better to save our resources by waiting until we can put 25MW on a stick or perhaps 100MW, whatever it is when we get closer to the practical limit. Or course its best to forego the fad and just stick to ccgt and super critical coal plants, whichever works best with the resources in your area (like the way nuclear and hydro work really well for Ontario)
Willis,
Two issues, I have hesitated posting either here or on Manhattan Contrarian, but they may be pertinent. Ah don’t raht so gud, but here goes:
First, near to a year ago, featured in WUWT and nearly simultaneously in some other online publications, Stein and Stacey describe why nameplate ratings alone (for renewables vs reliable energy sources), and capacity factors derived from ratings, are unfit for evaluating the contribution of usable renewable power an electrical grid, and propose an alternative: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/29/we-should-not-compare-electricity-sources-using-nameplate-ratings.
Misleading are the public relations efforts intending to make people feel good about weather dependent electricity from wind and solar “taking root” and “replacing” traditional continuous uninterruptable means of making electricity.
Comparing nameplate ratings of various electrical generating powers sources is comparable to using IQ as the only or most appropriate measure of the value of an employee to the company he or she works for… If everyone had the same health level, skillset, and work ethic, it might suffice. But we don’t. And neither do different kinds of power plants.
…
For wind and solar “nameplate rating” is neither a measure of expected electricity generation over time nor their contribution to system reliability. Yet time and time again we see government entities, grid operators and especially news media spouting GENERATING CAPACITY (nameplate rating) in comparisons with conventional generating technologies.
…
PJM, the largest wholesale electricity market operator in the world seems to agree in this statement describing the priorities in their most recent renewables transition study: “Correctly calculating the capacity contribution of generators is essential: A system with increased variable resources will require new approaches to adequately assess the reliability value of each resource and the system overall.”
This speaks directly to the importance of accurate system adequacy contribution comparisons between different generating technologies as the headline metric of value – instead of nameplate rating.
…
A better way of estimating system adequacy contribution looks at recent historical generating patterns of renewables in the context of the load patterns and amplitudes they might serve, independent of the existing generation mix. We favor one called “Mean of Lowest Quartile generation across peak load hours (MLQ) suggested by the market Monitor in its 2012 SOM report on MISO.
—
Realistically, by this metric, the following shows both nameplate capacity (outlined, not color-shaded) and system adequacy contribution (color-shaded) of the US electricity mix as of the end of 2018.
{Failed attempt to paste S&S image here, with the above caption, but better viewed at the Stein/Stacey article linked in first paragraph. Image may appear below)
At a glance, Stacey/Stein appear to be on scale with Pollock per Monckton.
Second, From your statement
“… in contradiction to the proposed numerical value of the Pollock limit as being equal to the capacity factor, “
seems to itself contradict the Monckton text you have quoted above https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/19/the-pollock-limit/#comment-3668590
“…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.”
[emph mine]
..
My reading puts the Pollock limit per Monckton, not as the same as the wind generation capacity factor, but equal to the Mean Hourly Demand divided by the Hourly Average Capacity factor of the RELIABLE portion of grid generation capacity.
By adding short time dependencies to both demand and generation, Pollock may be addressing the same concerns as described by Stein and Stacey.
Remarks and color commentary,
Monckton’s hyperbole aside, while different both S&S and Pollocks approaches seem to support one another in their answers, and at least undermine calculations made from public “happy” claims by press releases from European government and industry.
Generally I find Monckton alternately supercilious, hilarious, hyperbolic, annoying, sometimes educational, and entertaining; and often all of those within a single sentence. Among other occupations, he is a past professional maker of logic and math puzzles, and in what I’ve read, it seems that he delights in posturing, puns, non-sequiturs, and laying of small traps for the unwary (ie agreement among skeptics as a measure of success seems especially absurd), but seldom does he place any of those in a piece where they might directly contradict his main point. While he may be, as another Brit once quipped “so sharp that he cuts himself,” I am nowhere close to being able to challenge his, yours or F. Menton’s reasoning or math. In this case I think you may all be talking past one another, and I’ve hesitated to post rather than amplify the noise. But your “value of the Pollock limit as being equal to the capacity factor” is not in line with my (sadly labored) reading of Monckton, and may require your attention.
Illegitimi (et Trolli) nil carboundum.
Stripped of graphs and blather, it is easy to understand the Pollock limit and why it can be exceeded.
In short if you add more renewable energy to the grid so that the peaks exceed the demand ( or the average exceeds the Pollock limit) there will be times when you have excess energy available that you simply have to dump.
You can simply throw it away – this happens on a local basis when the cost of paying wind farm operators to shut down is less than the cost of building a bigger cable from e.g. Scotland, where the bird mincers are, to England, where the electricity is consumed.
You can export it to somewhere else at super low cost), whose intermittent renewables haven’t yet reached THEIR Pollock limit. In the case of Denmark, for example, Sweden has masses of hydroelectricity and is no more than a couple of miles away across a shallow strait. Plain hydro power isn’t exactly storage, because not much of it is pumped, but when you have hydro capacity, but not so much rainfall, you can conserve your water in times of (someone else’s) high wind.
Or you can pump water up hill and store a percentage of the surplus nearby.
Note that, in theory, all these are possible solutions, but all of them are expensive solutions, And that explains the dichotomy.
Ultimately if all grids become interconnected, then the Pollock limit holds as the limit of unaffordable production, and above that renewables become completely ruinous.
In the case of intermittent renewables plus hydropower, in a closed isolated grid, Pollock limit still holds as the point at which you start throwing windpower away. In an interconnected grid, you can’t really talk about e.g. Denmark in isolation, because it isn’t. It’s sharing its limit with Sweden. And Germany, and indeed, all the way down to Spain and Switzerland. Western Europe has but one grid in reality, although interconnections between the national grids can be severed and are not of infinite capacity.
My conclusion is neither of the people in this fight actually understand the real facts.
The first misconception is that the Pollock limit is anything other than financial.
The second misconception us that national figures have any meaning in an interconnected world.
I hope this clarifies.
A useful comment. The answers lie somewhere between examining the positions of individual countries, and the “copper plate” grid assumption that surpluses and deficits can be matched anywhere and everywhere. The latter assumption is often compounded by “wind is always blowing somewhere” assumptions, coupled with completely unrealistic assumptions about the performance of future wind turbines and solar panels when studies are done in support of justifications for net zero type policies. There is no way that 500GW of wind will be built in Greece and its output distributed across the EU, just because wind in Greece shows low correlation with NWE.
Willis, I have no idea whether the Pollock limit is real or not. My intuition says not because the ecoloons don’t care whether overbuilding makes economic sense, although that will be their downfall in the long term.
I also often find CMs arguments difficult to follow because of his overblown style and need to inject latin tags at every opportunity. He makes lots of good points that imo don’t always get across to people because of his style.
I sometimes don’t follow your maths either (my bad), but your style is very clear and understandable and I suspect there is some jeaiousy about this.
Keep up the good work both of you !
Maybe I am finally understanding how the Pollock limit might happen? Which is to say, why there should be a correlation between the percentage of power you can get from intermittent source (say wind) and the capacity factor of that source (your wind plant).
Imagine a country where the wind is very constant but light. Then it can generate a very high proportion of its power from wind. But its capacity factor (assuming it does not ridiculously overbuild) will also be very high, because the wind is continuous and it will be generating all the time.
Now imagine a country like the UK with long dead calms, lots of low wind periods, also lots of high wind periods. The capacity factor has to be lower (assuming again no ridiculous overbuilding) because adequate provision will require more capacity than in the first case, but it will be idle quite a bit of the time, and also overgenerating quite a bit.
You could raise the percentage in the second case by doing something useful with the excess generation, like charge batteries.
So I can see that capacity factor could be rough proxy for the percentage of generation you can get from a rationally planned intermittent installation. Its because there will be a correlation between the capacity factor and the distribution of the generation.
If the distribution of your intermittent generation is pretty much flat due to the local environment, this leads to both high capacity and continuous supply. If its very sharply peaked with long tails, this leads to lower capacity factor and more times when it produces a very low percentage of demand.
The argument would be that in almost all of the world wind generation distributions are pretty much the same, having the same peakedness and spread, so the capacity factor is a decent rule of thumb for how much of your demand you can expect to meet from wind.
Is this right? I think, if I have understood them its pretty much in simplified language what quite a few others have said in different ways on this and the other threads, particularly “It doesnot add up”.
The way to make the point to politicians is not algebra. You have to say, this is how generation in your country works. Show a graph of the distribution. Then say, because this is how the local winds are, you are never realistically going to get to a higher percentage of generation than [this].
You could also show them why it works – different distribution patterns, different max percentages.
I tried that. They chose to suppress my evidence.
Yes. None so blind as those that will not see.
Yes, it’s not complicated. Incredible how many commenters went to extremes trying to find some trivia to discount the accuracy of the Pollock Tool; and even more effort into finding fault with Monkton’s description of its usefulness and application. Petty and Nasty IMHO.
Dear Willis,
In fact there is a practical limit for the maximum amount of renewables that can be allowed on any network: that is at about 70% of the total production.
Germany has a an overbuilt number of renewables of near 160% of average winter use: 130 GW of wind and solar installed:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2022&chartColumnSorting=default
and maximum winter working day use around 80 GW:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE
That means that they need to dump (even at negative price!) some 60% of their wind and solar capacity at the neighbors when there is maximum wind and sun. Up to now, that is possible, as the neighbors have not the full amount of renewables installed, but when these catch up, they have to get their windmills and solar panels stopped.
Moreover, there is another important constraint: renewables have no own frequency (solar) or an independent frequency (wind), that needs to be converted to the 50 Hz of the main network.
Up to now, the converters use the 50 Hz of the network itself to convert the DC or other frequencies to the 50 Hz of the network.
That only works when there is enough “spinning” production from water/steam/gas turbines/generators and on the other side enough users with spinning motors to keep a stable 50 Hz in the network.
That “spinning” minimum is around 30%, or any disturbance (like a lightning strike on a high voltage line) is enough to get reinforced by the non-spinning sources and the whole network shuts down…
Could it be something to do with Ireland being connected to the UK grid?
In Ireland, the average demand is about 3500-4000MW, and there is something like 4500MW of wind installed. So we can get in or around 35%-40% of energy from wind – at times it will be significantly curtailed / dispatched down. However through a sleight of hand, the regulator deems any wind above system demand as market oversupply – so you have an oversupply category and then a dispatch down category where you curtail wind for operational reasons. The government plan is to reach 80% wind, which will involve installed something like 12000-15000MW of wind, so that the average value taking into account capacity factor is around 4500MW. How all this gets paid for, or how many birds will be killed, well the government and regulator don’t bother with those sorts of details. Of course the whole thing is madness, and is driven by green party policies and EU policies, and a permanent government / civil service class who refuse to ask the hard questions.
Note that the interconnector flows (HVDC) to GB are driven by market prices, and can flow in either direction. It is not correct to say we just export excess wind – Scotland and Wales have plenty of that already, they don’t need ours.
Ireland will export at least as long as they get a positive price for it. I suspect they even on occasion accept a negative price rather than go through the expense of rebalancing the system. Irish export prices consistently average below GB system prices, and their imports average higher, as you might expect being tail end Charlies on the European grid.
The Pollock limit is nonsense in one key sense; has real world impact in another and there’s a 3rd hand. Apologies in advance for a long post.
The nonsense part is name plate capacity of intermittent supply vs. the same capacity in dispatchable.
Intermittent = solar PV and/or wind; dispatchable = fossil fuel and/or nuclear.
Pollock is clearly trying to say that the ~30% capacity factor of wind and ~20% capacity factor of solar PV do not equal the 60% to 80% (or more) capacity factor of dispatchable even if net installs of capacity factor equal out. While this is absolutely true, the problem is that he is failing to recognize that this can be offset by simply overbuilding to an enormous degree. If 2-30% GW of wind is not equal to 1-60% capacity factor coal plant, then just built 3-30% GW of wind and 1-20% GW of solar PV. If that’s not enough, just add more.
The real world impact, on the other hand, is valid.
In reality, both solar PV and wind have serious mismatches vs actual demand. Solar PV supplies electricity primarily between 10 am and 2 pm – which is the lowest point of demand in waking hours. As such, solar PV beyond a very small percentage is always going to be supplying electricity when it is not wanted – and this is a serious problem for the grid because grids are designed with “input only” controls. Or in other words, a grid operator has zero control over demand and thus must break supplier contracts when supply exceeds demand by a significant degree. This is where curtailment costs come from: 807 million euros for Germany in 2021; 200 million GBP/year average for the UK in the last 2 years and $210m/year for Texas (excluding Winter Storm Uri 2021 which would skew the average up by a multiple).
For wind, at least in Texas but likely everywhere, it turns out that a significant portion of generation occurs at midnight. Midnight is also a period of very low demand – hence curtailment cost as grid operators break wind supplier contracts. Breaking a supplier contract means paying for power even if it isn’t actually used. In theory – once this initial set of contracts expires, there should be new contracts where the curtailment costs are reduced/negated but politics may make this impossible as it would very possibly cause wind/solar PV projects to be uneconomic going forward.
The third hand point, and the most important, is probably where Pollock and Monckton are trying to get to. That is: wholesale electricity prices whipsaw enormously from literal negative prices (it seems around 30% of the time = wind cap factor?) to infrequent but severe situations where shortfalls cause ginormous price spikes due to intermittent suppliers output.
This is problematic for many reasons.
First: because the negative prices are completely unpredictable – nobody can make use of them (yet. What I am working on, can).
Second, as the overbuild of intermittent supply increases, there is a real possibility that the price spikes become so unpredictable that dispatchable backup becomes uneconomic to maintain. The fossil fuel types call this the “spark spread” – the difference between the fuel cost burned to make electricity vs. the actual price paid for electricity. Prior to the advent of mass intermittents/overbuild into the grid, there were some plants that were economic to operate simply because the normal morning and evening duck curve spikes induced price increases such that a dispatchable plant could be economic to operate even if it only turned on during those periods. However, if a massive overbuild of intermittents (beyond even present levels, such as the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to induce), then the massive overbuild – despite curtailment cost – is potentially going to even make that model uneconomic. At which point, the dispatchable operator either sits around waiting for a Winter Storm Uri type situation or just mothballs the plant. The latter seems most likely. And the result would be bad – which means the actual outcome will be even more payments to dispatchable operators because the variability of solar PV and wind on short, medium and even annual time scales is such that you pretty much are forced to have significant dispatchable capacity. It isn’t actually 100% for a large grid like Texas, but it isn’t that far off either.
I’ve posted in the past 2 different days in the summer last year where Texas hit record demand. The amount of electricity supplied by wind or solar PV on those 2 days varied A LOT – this gives an idea just how much intermittent variability is a problem for 1st power electricity supply reliability. On day 1 (7/11/22): intermittent supply was 897 MWh wind with solar at 12005 MWh. On day 2 (7/13/22) intermittent supply was 4975 MWh wind and 6573 solar. You can see that on these 2 days just 1 day apart – wind and solar varied dramatically even in a very extreme heat case. And on both days, the vast majority of actual demand was met by dispatchable (66882 MWh and 67015 MWh, respectively).
When I read Monckton’s latest post, I was concerned that there didn’t seem to be any discussion of the fundamental physical reasons for the Pollock limit. Did I miss something?
No. Intermittent energy sources would not have access to the grid but for the political alignment of climate alarmism and economic rent seeking.
Is Monckton proposing the limit on an economic basis or physical basis? The mention of battery storage suggests that is physical, but I can’t be sure.
This essay gives a single example from a rather small island country. No indication is given or any uncertainty, error bars or even C.I.s, or any other idea of whether or not the data is accurate or is all estimations.
Given the uncertainties that must be involved, your “back-of-an-envelope” calculations seem to confirm Pollock’s hypothesis of a limit, rather than refute.
Remember, “neither Mr Pollock nor [Monchton] was asserting that it was physically impossible to exceed the Pollock limit.” Only that doing so could/would lead to problems.
And Ireland’s grid did have, and continues to have, problems.
In any case, this one little incomplete example certaintly does not disprove Pollock.
Kip,
I’m uncomfortable with Pollock’s ‘proof’, since it necessarily assumes that both f = f_max and an aggregate estimate for the renewable capacity factor, R, necessarily apply under the specific condition that N = D. These clearly make for a short, back of the envelope, derivation, but are they true?
But to your point that Ireland’s grid may not be representative, I took a look at PJM, which is the grid operator in my former neck of the woods. They’re a big grid operator, with a lot of renewable generation, given their operations includes several REGGI states. Anyway, I looked at the load / renewables problem the same way a portfolio manager might look at managing financial risk, i.e., by hedging. Here’s my data:
PJM RTO: 2022 Load and Renewable Generation
2022 Hedge Ratio from Hourly MW Changes
Load 1.00
Wind -0.49
Solar 1.51
Renewable 0.35
2022 Hedge Ratio from % Hourly Changes
Load 1.00
Wind -0.01
Solar 0.00
Renewable 0.02
Portfolio Characteristics in MW:
Load Only Load – Wind Load – Solar Load – Total
StDev 16,116 16,602 15,818 16,288
Min 60,754 54,360 60,750 54,366
Max 147,716 143,385 144,810 140,373
Average 90,766 87,173 89,762 86,169
NB: Hedge Ratio = corr * sigma_Load / sigma_Renewable
None of the hedge ratios suggest that covering load with wind, solar or both are appropriate ‘hedges’ for PJM’s load, and in fact, wind is actually anti-correlated with load, meaning one would rather short it than own it. And while both wind and solar do make a contribution to load and reduce the amount of conventional power that needs to be scheduled (min, max and average), wind, and the combination of wind and solar actually increase the variability (stdev) of conventional energy scheduling.
A more comprehensive analysis would need to incorporate costs, but it’s safe to say that these would need to be demonstrably lower in the case of adding renewables to off-set the increase in load uncertainty. My gut feel from looking at CA, UK and Germany is they aren’t.
Frank ==> Monckton/Pollock Limit isn’t my issue….the men who would know is Lars Schernikau or Willam Hayden Smith who wrote “The Unpopular Truth about Electricity and the Future of Energy”
The issue isn’t something that can be comprehensively proposed as an hypothesis or refuted in a blog post or two…certainly not by one-off quicky analyses of a single non-representative local grid.
Sounds like a good read, thanks.
I am inclined to agree. I have now spent almost a decade looking into renewables performance and assumptions made for future projections of what is claimed to be feasible in very different circumstances in terms of natural endowment around the world. Most politicians show zero interest in reality, and prefer to push towards systems that are becoming increasingly costly and fragile, and risk failing to support a modern economy and way of life. For some that is their objective anyway.
When I dissect studies produced by consultants commissioned on behalf of governments I regularly find all manner of hidden assumptions that allow them to pretend that everything will be hunky-dory, and so the politicians plough on. They seem able to recruit senior professors who should know better (Dame Julia King is a classic example). Politics trumps science and engineering.
I have found that there is really no substitute for detailed and lengthy calculation, using as near to real data as I can get at high resolution. If you want to get some idea of the risks on a 1 in 50 year basis, a one year study incorporating an artificial yet carefully callibrated difficult week will not crack it. If you want to understand the value or hazard of interconnection it does not do to assume that the other end of the line will solve your problems. You have to look at the real grid implications, rather than assuming a “copper plate” where local surpluses and deficits are automatically diffused. Proper understanding of the sensitivities is also essential for pointing out the risks.
When you do a lot of this work, you do get some feel for how things work and how they fail. It is certainly true that beyond modest levels of penetration costs start escalating. The detail depends on local circumstances of resource and demand and the interaction between them. Over the course of these threads I have tried to illustrate some of these things.
The Irish problem is the same with many grids that are attempting to push renewables heavily. They end up short of dispatchable capacity, often the result of political whim (see Alok Sharma blowing up Ferrybridge and Sturgeon blowing up Longannet, Germans closing nuclear etc.). EirGrid had at least identified the problem and told politicians they need more CCGT capacity, and that they needed to be prepared to restrict exports at times of system stress, which they have since done.
First, I did not say that the Irish data “disproves Pollock”. Read the post. I said:
Next, the data is from the source listed in the graph. They don’t give any CIs on the numbers. I can only work with the data I have. So sue me.
Next, you say “neither Mr Pollock nor [Monckton] was asserting that it was physically impossible to exceed the Pollock limit.”
In fact, Monckton said EXACTLY that, and then he had to backtrack and did so very poorly. This is from his second post:
That is not a “corollary” in any sense of the word. That’s a totally different claim that he is making in a pathetic attempt to fix his foolish error. And if that was his meaning, yes, he DID need to state it. He made a claim he couldn’t back up, and then, in his second post, he’s trying to put peanut butter over the giant crack in his claim in the hopes no one will notice.
Finally, Ireland only down-dispatches about 11% of wind generation, but they’re 22.5% above the supposed “fundamental limit”. Go figure …
w.
w. ==> I gave up trying to reason with you long ago, Mr. Eschenbach. Chris Monckton should have too after the first exchange.
I gave clear, referenced answers to the points you raised.
I see you don’t like my answers, so you’re running for the door. Run away all you want, Kip, doesn’t bother me.
w.
Mr. Hansen has written a number of guest posts about things I thought and still think he knows more than I do, so I provisionally accepted what he wrote. But words have meanings, and so does math, and I’m now reconsidering in light of his above-betrayed inability to comprehend what Lord Monckton clearly wrote and to draw the conclusions logically to be inferred from it.
Is the Pollock limit particularly meaningful when any amount of installed wind capacity can result in zero or close to zero power when the wind doesn’t blow? And what is the value anyway of variable and intermittent energy as compared to reliable and dispatchable energy?
A more important calculation is surely the overbuild necessary for intermittent wind energy to provide a guaranteed amount of dispatchable/reliable power, such as by using hydrogen as a store of energy:
Electrolysis to produce hydrogen from excess wind power -> stored, compressed hydrogen gas -> electricity from standard generators as and when required (viz when the wind drops).
The calculation is as follows :
Suppose we want P GW of power to be “dispatchable”, meaning always available “on demand”.
Let us start with P GW of installed wind turbine power and calculate the extra installed capacity required to produce P GW of dispatchable power.
Now the capacity factor of offshore wind turbines is 33% (onshore is less), so the average amount of power over a year supplied by a wind turbine is 0.33P GW and consequently we will require 0.67P GW of storage.
The efficiencies are :
Electrolysis : 60%
Compression : 87%
Electricity generation : 60%
So overall efficiency = 60% x 87% x 60% = 31%
So the amount of excess power required to produce the missing 0.67P GW is 0.67P/0.31 = 2.16P GW.
Since the capacity factor is 33%, this means we will need 2.16P/0.33 = 6.55P GW of additional installed wind power to provide the needed 0.67P GW of dispatchable power.
Hence a total of P GW + 6.55P GW = 7.5P GW of installed wind turbine capacity is required to provide P GW of dispatchable power.
Note : Any reductions in efficiency or losses will result in the figure of 7.5 being even higher of course.
This makes wind power very expensive unless the customers can (be made to) accept intermittency…..
Suggest the answer lies in when and where the turbines stop producing. If one area fails, while another is 100% producing, can the 50% drop in local faceplate production equal 25% drop in deliverables while the fridge is still fully functional?
I’m having trouble visualizing the math here …
Methinks the error in the Pollock Limit is an assumption that renewables all drop to zero for the average %l oss of faceplate time.
Or is it this: could the reduction in generation occur during reduction in consumption such that one cancels out the other?
If a 50% drop in both occurs at the same time, the grid will remain operational as if nothing happened.
So the change in volume of renewables provuded has to be plotted against the change in demand. You don’t need 35% of electricity when demand drops 25% but you have 10% additional emergency if short-term backup.
Willis – I greatly appreciate your well presented articles. However, it seems to me using penetration numbers compared to capacity factors for interconnected countries does not disprove the proposed Pollock Limit, Effectively, interconnections relieve both the need for electricity storage and backup generating capacity in the short term for the presently over achieving countries. If as proposed, all countries convert to wind and solar, these constraints will drive all systems toward the Pollock limit absent an affordable, effective means of storing electricity. I can not find any reported interconnections for the Falkland Islands, so perhaps their values are encouraging. Penetration is high but I suspect so is the capacity factor (I have been unable to locate any) since wind resources there are reported as some of the most consistent on earth. I agree with Francis Merton, somewhere on earth build or present a demonstration that achieves adequate and reliable supply comparable to what exists now without fossil fuel, hydro or nuclear backup. That should be easy-peasy since wind and solar are so cheap.
Willis,
your analysis is interesting, but you missed the more serious consequences of exceeding the capacity limit. In South Australia, they have reached 50% capacity for renewables, with some extreme consequences.
Firstly, the system only continues to work because of hundreds of megawatts of power imported from other states. It’s constantly teetering on the brink. Second, the price of electricity has skyrocketed. This is happening everywhere renewables reaches these giddy heights. Thirdly, SA suffers from what’s euphemistically called demand management. Industry has to shut down in periods of low wind/solar and residential consumers suffer rolling blackouts.
This is incorrect, and perhaps a source of the disupute. Perhaps my previous comment attempting to bring this to your attention was too verbose and it was buried. I’ve lead with it here, and tried to keep it short. My apologies for obfuscating, but I believe your statement to be in error.
Because it doesn’t. You’ve miscalculated Pollack for the reason stated above. These Irish (nor your previous Scottish wind data) cannot be used to compute Pollock. One must have hourly average data for all the power sources on the grid segment/system in question in order to compute the Pollock limit per Monckton’s description. Annualized and averaged data from public information sources is both likely to be misleading and not precise enough to be useful.
Irish data are available at half hourly resolution. They have very explicit rules and future assumptions about the maximum non synchronous generation they will tolerate, allied to investments in batteries, stations, extra grid capacity, synchronous condensers etc. to provide stability. If their is a weakness in their work, it is likely to be mainly in their assumptions about being able to use rising amounts of interconnector capacity to assist with grid balancing. They have already made clear to politicians that costs of higher renewables penetration are rising more and more rapidly and the latest political target of 80% is not known to be feasible. I have quoted from and linked to Eirgrid studies to that effect.
If the politicians don’t take notice they will kill their golden goose of providing huge numbers of data centres, which will move elsewhere if electricity is too expensive. Unfortunately Irish politicians have a track record of making a mess. They created the property boom and bust that ended with half built tumbleweed estates, vast numbers of unemployed and bankruptcy necessitating bailout after the financial crash. They are wide boys, thinking they can ignore economic reality. Their status as a special EU corporate tax haven (effectively granted so they could pay back their post financial crash International borrowing) is coming to an end. Add in mistaken energy policy, and there will be more hard times ahead.
Most assureadly true! I am completely confident that those data exist. Those were not what Willis presented, even if what he presented here was somehow derived from that same raw source. Any modern power generation system MUST have or develop such data as you describe in order to operate.
The questions therefrom usually being, are those data published, are the published data reliable, and are the data properly quoted or are they misused for propaganda or fraud?
Search for my own earlier, overly verbose comment on this thread. Others before Monckton on Pollock have pointed out the potential errors and obfuscation deliberately created when applying standard generation engineering capacity factor and nameplate capacity ratings to irregular and/or intermittent, unpredictable generators, mostly to wind and solar. Pollock, and the year-old post from Stein and Stacey on WUWT (link on earlier comment) have proposed different ways of correcting for the uncertainty of irregular (“unreliable” per Monckton is more than justified), and have seemingly arrived at similar results. (Seperate theoretical methods broadly in agreement sounds awfully sciency to me).
Repeating: Neither Pollock per Monckton nor Stein and Stacey’s MLQ ratings can be considered equival to annualized average electrical generation capacity factor or to electrical share derived from solar or wind generator name plate ratings. Such critiques are false premise (strawman?) argument.
I will re-read your previous comments re Eirgrid. Thanks for bringing those comments to my attention.
Coontinuing to follow this discussion, I suspect the problem is a very simple one. If I am understanding it!
There seem to be two quantities:
the capacity utilization percentage of wind, that is, the percent of faceplate that an operator generates over a year
the percent of total demand that is generated by wind from a combined wind and conventional installation
Christopher, and perhaps Pollock also, seems to think that there is a logical relation between these two quantities which means that under all weather patterns the percentages must be about equal.
In fact if there is a relation its empirical and only holds under some patterns of weather. If you have the right weather pattern (and this may be the most common one) then the rough identity will hold.
If this is right then when talking to policy makers the thing to do is not focus on the alegebra, but on the weather. Explain to them that in this particular place, with this sort of annual weather pattern, you cannot realistically get to more than about 30% of your supply from wind and solar.
To get beyond that you will have to overbuild to a ridiculous extent and also install some form of storage at unaffordable cost. But the thing that is driving this is the weather, when the wind blows ahd how strongly it blows over the course of the year. This is what drives the relationship between average annual capacity utilization and the percentage of total annual demand that the intermittent installations, with that capacity utillzation, can deliver.
I am not certain of having got this right, but this is how it looks to me, if its wrong please tell me.
Would imagine that this problem could be solved if you have a customer for the electricity with a highly adjustable consumption rate.
A customer that bought all the excess power to a somewhat reduced price.
One such customer could be someone into hydrogen electolyze.
Hydrogen is needed in many industrial processes.
When you start to look at the prospects for hydrogen by electrolysis they are not bright. Some will happen because governments are determined to waste large subsidies to make it happen. But electricity surpluses are going to be very intermittent, and very variable in size. That means it will not be viable to try to provide capacity to take all the larger surpluses, and that even the economics of the smaller ones will be stretched by low capacity factors and intermittency reducing plant efficiency. Producing hydrogen by electrolysis already starts at a big cost disadvantage to doing so by steam reforming of methane, which is how almost all industrial hydrogen is produced. Moreover, reduced prices on output (zero or negative?) just mean that consumers will have to pay a higher price for the power they do consume if the wind farms are not to go bankrupt. Alternatively, you increase the size of the direct subsidy for hydrogen production in order to ensure a more continuous supply of power at an unsubsidised price – but that does nothing to solve variable surpluses, and only serves to make them bigger because you are adding baseload demand which requires more capacity and hence bigger surpluses and deficits as the wind varies.
Lord Monckton’s proof of the Pollock limit is a mathematical card trick, not a proof.
Do you remember the riddle where a group of 10 traveling salesmen arrive at a motel that has only 9 rooms available? They all want a room to themselves in case they get lucky with the innkeeper’s daughter. The desk clerk puts two guys in the first room, promising one of them he’ll come back for him. Then he puts the third guy in the second room, the fourth guy in the third room, … until he puts the 9th guy in the 8th room. Then he goes back to the first room and gets the salesman who was temporarily doubled up and puts him in the 9th room. Voilà!
If you recite this story quickly enough, most people won’t spot the trick. Here’s where Monckton pulls off a similar sleight of hand:
“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.”
You see how he specifies in bold that N must be less than C, i.e. no over-building. But there is no mathematical reason why this must be so. Economic, sure, but this is alleged to be a mathematical proof. After he does his arithmetic he gets fmax = R. But because of the specification that N must be < C, he just proves trivially that the maximum value of a variable constrained by the language of the problem to be no more than R is, surprise, surprise, R. The trick is in the statement that N < C.
There is, of course, no mathematical Pollock limit because N can in principle be any fraction or multiple of C that the grid designer is willing to pay for.
Francis Menton of Manhattan Contrarian identified the problem with that ambiguously worded N < C statement but I believe my modest contribution is the recognition that it’s just a trick. There is no proof at all.
Being so far last of a long line who have presented something like this as an argument, perhaps you can succeed where they’ve failed and help me to find where it is described how building more wind turbines of ever greater capacity causes precisely enough wind to blow over the ever expanding wind turbine “field” during, or better just before, those times when electrical energy is needed?
It seems to be a common belief that more and bigger wind turbines somehow do this.
Rainmakers were once a thing, taking money for the ability to bring rain to parched farms. Perhaps we should name the faithful of this church as Windmakers?
It has been done to death that wind power being intermittent and unable to be summoned when you need it can’t work as a sole power source no matter how many windmills you deploy and how big they are. But that’s not a mathematical constraint. It just reflects the reality that the wind doesn’t always blow. That’s not the point.
Monckton was claiming that Pollock had mathematically proved that you can’t deploy more windmills than limited by the average capacity factor. That is like the apocryphal proof that bumblebees can’t fly because they violate the laws of aerodynamics, or the mathematical proofs that a steamship couldn’t cross the Atlantic Ocean because it would burn more coal than it could carry, or that heavier-than-air flight is impossible. In fact he has not proved anything at all. It’s the empiric observations of what happens when you try to close the intermittency gap by building more that shows the folly. Not arithmetic.
Yes, I know Monckton has argued at great length that he really meant that it applied to the self-evident (to him, after the fact) that he was placing the constraint to avoid expensive and wasteful overbuilding. But in doing so he admits that it’s not an arithmetic proof, merely an empirically observed one.
I’m sorry I can’t help you find out how building more windmills solves the intermittency problem because they don’t. But it’s not because of some mathematical card trick that just proves R = R..
Wind power capacity factor is limited by how much the wind is blowing. This is unlike the capacity factor of reliable and dispatchable energy sources where capacity factor and nameplate rating are used for planning and engineering, and when appropriate fuel supply is assumed.
“can’t help you find out how building more windmills solves the intermittency problem”
It’s okay, wasn’t really worried. Pollock, per Monckton, has shown that it is theoretically impossible to “solve the inetermittency problem”. This was precisely the point. And be happy, you are in with a great congregation of the faithful.
Its because of the distribution of the wind strength. Plot wind strength by hour across the year, and the shape of this distribution will determine how much supply you can get.
I don’t know where to get the data, or even how to do the analysis if having it, but it seems likely that its the shape of the distribution that will be the driving factor of how high a percentage of load you can satisfy from the intermittent source.
If this is right, Irish wind should be a flatter distribution than another example case where you get a lower contribution, one nearer the Pollock limit.
Maybe the Pollock limit is valid, but only for a certain case of wind distribution?
Thanks Willis for providing data to this Pollack limit debate. In any case this is being tested in many countries so more data is on the way.
We can already see how well it is going with Europe’s industry for its low cost Russian energy supply to be cut and replaced by 4x more expensive US LNG. The sweetest irony of all is that this externally imposed energy bankruptcy has made it impossible for Germany to supply its Leopard 2 tanks to NATO in ukraine. Their massively increased energy costs mean that Germany can no longer make tanks at a price at which anyone including their own government will buy them. And these tanks were popular. Thus Germany have said no at Rammstein to any Leopards for ukraine. This condemns them to a (slightly earlier) defeat. You can’t chase green energy fantasies and also win wars.
(Oops did I mention the war??)