FOREWORD: There has been a lot of back-and-forth over this topic, perhaps so much that it has become tiresome. A lot of the back and forth could have been avoided if the so-called “Pollack limit” was simply refererred to as a curve. Therefore this will absolutely be the last essay published at WUWT on this. No rebuttals, no, “yes buts”, no exceptions; my “limit” has been exceeded. Take it to direct email or peer review. – Anthony Watts
By Chistopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Pollock limits on the amount of wind or solar power that may be installed in a given grid without disproportionate increases in cost and waste have aroused much interest in many quarters, particularly among grid operators.
Willis Eschenbach, has contributed an interesting post in which he shows that the Falkland Islands, Denmark, Lithuania, Ireland and Uruguay are generating wind power in excess of what appears to be a global mean capacity factor of 26%.
However, electricity grids are local, and the capacity factors for the weather-dependent renewable generation sources likewise vary from place to place, depending upon regional weather. Seeking to apply a global average wind capacity factor is, therefore, inapposite.
The Falkland Islands (I was there) have ideal conditions for generation by windmills. I do not know what the grid capacity factor for the Islands is, but it will considerably exceed 26%.
Willis also proposes Ireland as a counter-example to the Pollock limits. He cites BP’s estimate that the Irish wind capacity factor (also its Pollock limit) is 27% on average, and shows that, following recent increases in installed wind capacity, wind power is contributing to grid output about 5% more electricity than the corresponding Pollock limit.
The grid operator, however, puts the multi-year mean capacity factor at 28.5%, suggesting that the overage in the past year or two is only 3.5%. One reason why it is physically possible (though wildly uneconomic) to generate above the Pollock limits is that in some years – 2022 was a striking example – the weather was atypically favourable to wind and solar generation.
Another influence on the Irish grid in recent years is frequent thermal-generation outages, caused by the dash for wind and the consequent failure to maintain adequate thermal supply. In 2021-2 thermal availability was 12% below the usual 77%.
Furthermore, as I have already pointed out, even if wind or solar power on a grid approaches but does not exceed the Pollock limit, costly and wasteful over-generation will occur at times when wind and sun are strong and demand is low. A fortiori, wasteful excess generation will occur where the Pollock limit is breached, and the cost, waste and grid destabilization will rapidly increase the greater the excess of installed capacity over the Pollock limit.
Sure enough, EIRgrid has been making wasteful do-not-generate orders on a large scale in recent years. Willis’ initial reaction was that no cost to consumers would result. However, the subsidy-farmers will either pass on the cost of the downtime to their customers or have priced in such stop orders in their existing price structure. It is ultimately the consumer who pays.
Likewise, EIRgrid is interconnected to the far larger UK grid and can dump excess power to it, though usually at heavily loss-making prices. In this respect, the UK grid is acting as though it were battery backup for the Irish grid.
However, Willis also fair-mindedly concludes that there does appear to be evidence of an asymptote above which adding wind or solar power does not commensurately increase renewables penetration. To that question I now turn.
Let me simplify the derivation of the Pollock limit, beginning with some definitions.
The mean grid capacity factor Z of wind or solar power is the ratio of generation achieved by that source in multi-year-averaged annual mean weather to its nameplate capacity in a grid.
The grid penetration factor f is the fraction of total multi-year-averaged annual generation actually contributed by wind or solar generation to a grid.
The grid penetration coefficient q of wind or solar is the multiple of Z required to achieve the grid penetration factor fof that source. These definitions lead to the equation
A grid penetration factor freaches its economic maximum fmax, the maximum value of fattainable without wasteful surplus generation, where there is enough wind or solar capacity to meet the entire grid output: i.e., where q= 1.
Where q = 1, as the equation shows, fmax = Z. Therefore, the economic maximum grid penetration factor fmax for wind or solar generation is equal to that source’s capacity factor Z on that grid (for example, 25-30% for wind generation in a typical western European grid).
Penetration factors qfor illustrative Z= 0.25 and f= 0.15, 0.25, 0.35
Above the Pollock limit Z, any wind or solar capacity added to the grid causes excess generation (see the diagram above), which must either be exported to neighboring grids (usually at a loss) or prevented by capacity-constraint payments (expensive and market-distorting) or desist orders (a waste of capital invested in Pollock-breaching capacity) unless used for backup by static batteries (expensive and, at global scale, impossible) or by “green”-hydrogen generation (again prohibitively expensive, not least thanks to the large second-law-of-thermodynamics loss in conversion of electricity to hydrogen and then back to electricity, and in the use of rare and costly iridium and platinum in the oxygen-hydrogen barrier).
In Ireland’s grid, then, with a multi-year mean wind capacity factor Z = 28.5% (the Irish grid’s wind-power Pollock limit), the economic maximum grid penetration factor fmax for wind power is also 28.5%. Generation in excess of that limit is already causing heavy expense.
Most grid authorities know by hard experience what the long-run average grid capacity factors for wind and solar power are on their grids, given the average weather patterns in their regions. Therefore, no complex calculations on their part are needed. In Ireland, penetration appreciably above the Pollock limits would be disproportionately wasteful and expensive.
Wind and solar power are already disproportionately wasteful and expensive. Given that thermal backup for all unreliables must be kept turning at wasteful and inefficient spinning reserve at all times, it follows that if the windmills and solar panels were altogether discarded the existing thermal capacity would be capable of generating the entire grid output. Accordingly, the entire cost of wind and solar power is an undesirable and unnecessary net addition to the grid, and a gross imposition on the grid’s hapless customers.
For this reason, it is doubly important that the Pollock limits be widely understood and respected by grid authorities, so that the already grossly wasteful wind and solar boondoggle does not fling those nations whose governments have been foolishly captured by net-zero mania into outright bankruptcy.
Take Britain. Thanks to the Thatcher effect, by the end of her term of office foreign direct inward investment used to exceed the entire FDI of the rest of the European tyranny-by-Kommissar. However, the price of electricity (higher in the UK than just about anywhere else on Earth) is no small part of the reason why foreign firms no longer see us as a good place to invest. Manufacturing, as a fraction of GDP, has rapidly collapsed to just 8%, and the last few heavy industries still standing are already begging for subsidies to keep them here or simply upping sticks and going to China, which has announced that it is about to double its capacity to generate coal-fired power.
Now, the generating companies, which usually hold a mix of thermal and unreliable power sources, would be delighted to conceal the existence of the Pollock limits, because they benefit hugely from the savage increases in the cost of electricity that, through the idiocy of net-zero-obsessed governments, they get away with inflicting on the mere proles.
However, grid authorities, though in the new climate of intolerance and censorship they do not dare to say so publicly, are privately concerned at the implications of nut zero not only for electricity prices to end-users but also for the increasingly difficult task of trying to stabilize the grid as Pollock-breaching weather-dependent unreliables capacity is added.
To grid authorities everywhere, the Pollock limits will come as a revelation and a lifeline. Now, the operators will be able to say to their governments, “Enough is enough!”
The limit seems to be a product of area coverage compared to the scale of synoptic weather systems which determine cloud and wind.
If we could transfer energy across large enough distances the problem could be resolved.
To achieve that is currently unrealistic given global political instability and the sheer cost involved.
Stephen ,
it can already be transferred over very long distances but as a means of sharing power that is subject to considerable losses. The big but is that even then, with weather dependant generation there will be times of a shortfall.
I take the point about losses but a global network would iron out all but whole globe variations in wind and sun.
I do I agree that it is impractical though so the theoretical Pollock limit is still useful.
It is cat-belling of the first order.
Only very young mice think its smart.
i did have to look up the concept of cat-belling. Thanks for broadening my horizons 🙂
I put a bell on my new indoor cat Mr. Sneaky, who would blast out of the house every time the front door opened, or run into the garage when that door was opened. We wanted to hear him coming. He tore it off and chewed it up like it was a mouse.
Try a kevlar collar.
sorry the cat already has a bell
doest have to be global. look at the BRI
https://am.pictet/en/us/mega/china-uhvdc
You want to rely on China for power? Ask the Germans how they got on with relying on Russia for gas.
It needs power to traverse gigantic distances to provide a reasonable level of leveling. Remember, wind droughts can, and do, cover the entire South-East of Australia. Much further than is economic to distribute power. The losses are already considerable.
no problem, chinese are doing it
It doesn’t solve the problem. Minimum wind generation across the whole lower 48 US was just 8.2 simultaneous GW last year. The Chinese are connecting coal and hydro from the interior to keep Shanghai supplied.
If we could transfer energy across large enough distances the problem could be resolved.
To achieve that is currently unrealistic given global political instability and the sheer cost involved.
hina already figured this out so monkton appears to be less wise than a communist
False. China is relying on dispatchable power. Global stilling – simultaneous low wind across almost all continental land masses and nearby seas – is real.
The only reliable hydrogen fusion process covers a fairly large area.
So long as you need to locate wind farms on land or not too far from it, and so long as you exclude windswept remote locations such as the Greenland plateau, there is no hope of being able to solve the problem for wind. Global stilling across the real potential wind estate happens far too frequently to make it a possible source of reliable power output, and incapable of providing a global scale continuous resource. Perhaps if you could harness the deep remote oceans in the Roaring 40s…
dont waste time trying to educate the lord
https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-state-grid-corp-crushes-power-transmission-records
Perhaps I should not waste time trying to educate you.
The UHVDC lines may be of help in sending western solar power back east to deal with the early evening peak demand, but likely of no help with peak demand in the western US. The size of the transmission lines will likely stir up a hornets nest of NIMBY’s of BANANA’s.
The project to link Australian solar to Singapore has just collapsed. It would have produced a surge of power before dawn that would be unwanted, and then fail in early afternoon before peak demand. Even if it were given for free it would have been highly disruptive.
Having followed this interesting discussion I think it is a very valuable contribution to the overall renewables debate .
Whilst as has been demonstrated we can pick holes in the data to question the actual validity of the hypothesis it is the fact that by putting a number on it where no number has been that makes it interesting.
Wether it is accurate or just a good generalisation the fact that the over generation required by the system does come at ever increasing costs.
This thesis puts a number where the point of inflexion may be expected to commence, based on considered reason and observation. If is out by a little it does not matter as it highlights the problem in a way anyone can understand.
With the Pollock limit a better understanding of the issues surrounding renewable s generation will benefit all.(particularly the political class??)
Thanks for bringing this to us.
There is another limit, although one difficult to define as grid events are variable and mostly unpredictable, and that is the amount of wind, solar etc that the grid can accept and remain stable and under control, particularly when an event occurs. Such events either are due to equipment failure and loss of supply or line faults.
U.K. still has considerable system inertia from conventional generators although we will steadily lose that as old nuclear stations are shut down. I don’t know but guess that the system runs with more inefficient spinning reserve than is required for pure power capacity readiness, simply to keep up the level of inertia?
The more renewables as a percentage of grid supply, short circuit circuit current level drops. The grid protection system needs high short circuit levels for timely and proportionate operation of the protection at times of fault.
The National GridESO must be aware of these limitations (and others) yet they say that the grid will be de carbonised by 2035. What I don’t understand that with the very much increased likelyhood, (Certainty) of grid failure and that the National Grid must be in the firing line when the investigation into the cause is determined that they are not telling the government that it cannot work?
Yes, the grid will almost certainly fail catastrophically. Probably well before 2035. We’ll need flaming torches to see at night. But the people responsible for the failure will have moved on and be beyond the reach of the mobs with flaming torches and pitchforks.
This is what batteries are being deployed for. Not to covere periods without wind, but to act as electronic ‘spinning reserve’ . The hype about them solving intermittency is egregious fraud. They are there to keep the grid up when a wind farm trips. Loin enough to get some hydro opened up, or a gas turbine set
That is presuming the Gas Turbine has available fuel since potential future Drilling will be disallowed. Most domestic drilling already is and so Other Nations like Russia controls European Gas pricing and availability.
I was just reading about the battery installations planned by Zenobe
The investment spans four sites at Blackhillock near Keith, Kilmarnock, Wishaw and Eccles, all chosen for their proximity to vital transmission networks.
The latter comprises the largest facility at 400MW/800MWh, followed shortly by Blackhillock and Kilmarnock at 300MW/600MWh, and Wishaw at 50MW/100MWh.
The batteries are also forecast to lower consumers bills by over £1 billion by reducing the curtailment of windfarms over the same period.
All projects are contracted to provide stability services to National Grid Electricity System Operator (NGESO) support the influx of more renewables. They will operate under the first commercial contracts in the world to use transmission connected batteries to provide short-circuit level and inertia, essential for the grid to function efficiently as fossil fuel plants phase out.
Crucially, Zenobē will provide 4.4GVAs of inertia, equivalent to 5-10% of the UK’s total requirement.
Of course a somewhat exaggerated claim: NGESO has no plans to reduce inertia below 102GVAs at present, and are operating at 140GVAs as the current minimum, which is hairy enough at around 3 seconds of demand, giving little time to react to trips. Also, a rather expensive way of doing things: £750m is not far short of what a 1GW CCGT plant should cost, and that generates electricity.
It seems to me that there was a grid responsible agency that existed since about the beginning of a sizeable grid in the UK, comprised of technically competent individuals, who, a few years ago, did tell the UK government that their plans were pointless day dreams. In short order that agency was gone, replaced by a new organization staffed by political appointees. Is this just a fairy tale I read?
The Pollock Limit is a prediction backed by minimal data
Predictions are rarely correct
The Pollock number is speculation
Speculation is not data.
Sorry, but I do not agree that starting a discussion is an important factor in determining the value of an article. As a blog editor, I read up to two dozen climate science and energy articles every morning. I publish lists of the best articles. always keeping in mind this question: “How does the author know that?” This article does not qualify for my recommendation. And that’s my two cents.
“The Pollock Limit is a prediction backed by minimal data”
No, it’s actually a tautology. As Lord M says, q is defined by q=f/Z. And so, if q=1, f=Z. Can’t argue with that.
The fallacy is that q=1 is an economic limit. It isn’t, even less for wind/solar than for other methods of generation. The reason why it is less is that there is no fuel cost to over-production. So no marginal cost for the excess, so it is very competitive in the export market.
The fuel cost of wind/solar is demonstratively zero, even if the collection cost is far higher than zero. Extreme, even. Look at all that capital going unused when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Worse, we need reliable generating capacity, but we’ve just crippled the income stream for coal and gas by forcing use of wind/solar on the rare occasions they work.
That cost comes back to bite you on the bum during a wind drought, as has been demonstrated very effectively.
“Look at all that capital going unused”
Capacity factor is by definition the extent to which capital is unused. I showed earlier this plot of CF in the US:
The CF of wind is lower than FF, but not that much. Eg coal at 48% means capital is less than half used. For different reasons, maybe, but still that is what it means. The question then is how much capital – what is the actual capital cost? Wind is pretty cheap.
The chart is the usual Nick the Stroker deception
Many natural gas power plants are used as peaker plants, reducing the average natural gas capacity percentage in a way that is deceptive.
More coal power plants are now deliberately no longer being used full time, to lower CO2 emissions, and some get permanently shut down mid-year. Before these changes the capacity percentage would be near 75%.
You are exhibiting yet more ArtStudent arguments and thinking.
Capacity factor is not the issue, if wind power ran 24×7 at 30% that would be fine. Its a question of availability. A gas power station may, because it gives way to wind, only run at a capacity factor of 50%, but its availability is 90% or greater.
Once again your ignorance and bias is laid bare.
With a gas fired plant, all you have to do is press a button and the plant automatically goes through its start-up procedure, and puts out full power is a short time, i.e., ON DEMAND
TRY DOING THAT WITH WIND
In Texas, only 6% of wind’s INSTALLED capacity is counted towards the system generating capacity
“Natural gas combined-cycle systems, which involve both a steam turbine and a combustion turbine, account for more capacity than any other generating technology in the United States. Most of those systems can reach full operations in between 1 hour to 12 hours, although some can start up within an hour.”
About 25% of U.S. power plants can start up within an hour
If in a spinning reserve situation,
“Spinning reserve – sources of supply that are synchronized to the frequency of the grid and can ramp to full capacity within 10 minutes in response to a dispatch order from the system operator.”
Frequency response · Energy KnowledgeBase
The 6% capacity factor in Texas is the ERCOT lower limit worst case expectation for wind power for a week. The percentage reached 4% just before the February 221 blackouts. It would have been about 8% if half the windmills did not have to be stopped for blade icing. No optional blade heater on Texas windmills.
People go berserk when I say the Texas windmills did not cause the Texas blackout in February 2021 — they did what windmills often do, about 60% of the time — they produce little or no power.
That’s why windmills are unreliable sources of electricity that need 100% natural gas backup. Natural gas backup that MUST work properly in very cold weather, which does not happen in Texas. As in February 2011, and in February 2021, and extreme cold weather blackouts will probably happen again in Texas.
Average over a week doesn’t keep the grid going from second to second. The fact is wind generation in Texas fell to just 649MW, simply because the wind died. Icing made no real difference.
It would have been better if they hadn’t turned off the power to the EPA’s mandated electric pumps for their NG pumping stations. Wind power collapsed in TX at Christmas time. I didn’t read about icing. It was just very cold, still air.
Richard,
I was talking about wind’s FIRM capacity, not it’s capacity factor, which is a different concept relating to actual production divided by rated production
Even better if it ran at 20% overnight and 35% during the winter rush hour, with special abatement at weekends and holidays, cranking up for cold snaps.
“A gas power station may, because it gives way to wind, only run at a capacity factor of 50%, but its availability is 90% or greater.”
Availability is no use if you can’t use it. And if you could use it, you would. The wind fluctuates. Demand fluctuates (always has). The grid has to accommodate both.
You seem to be ignoring the very high cost of over generation arising from overbuilding, both of which must be paid for regardless of their uselessness.
Yep. In the UK industrial demand for electicity has fallen by 20% since the year 2000 but because of unreliables generation capacity has increased by 20GW to meet a significantly lower demand.
Now we are in the process of installing an extra 40GW of wind in the North Sea!
“Yep. In the UK industrial demand for electicity has fallen by 20% since the year 2000 but because of unreliables generation capacity has increased by 20GW…”
Yes “unreliable” wind, as opposed to the highly reliable nuclear-generated electricity provided by Hinkley Point C. :-/
There’s a big difference between capacity factor being limited by economic dispatch and capacity factor being limited by the nature of the energy source.
The capacity factor of peaker generation may be a few per cent, but peaker generation is almost always available when needed. That is the peaker generation can be brought on-line during times of peak demand (hence “peaker”), while peak demand usually occurs after sunset.
The waste of capital is coming from construction of unreliable generation displacing reliable generation.
“There’s a big difference between capacity factor being limited by economic dispatch and capacity factor being limited by the nature of the energy source.”
Not really. They are both unavoidable, and in both cases, the outcome you have to build more equipment than you would theoretically need if all went perfectly.
There’s still a big difference in having a 20% overbuild in dispatchable power to be able to reliably meet peak demand when some of the generation is down and >100% overbuild to reduce time the system is unable to meet peak demand from say 40% to 20%.
Your ignorance of electric power systems is still showing.
Nick,
you cannot compare capacity factor of wind against gas, for example, the former cannot react to increasing demand the latter can, which is more useful?
Capacity factor just reflects the amount of use you have got out of your generator before something stops you. It could be lack of wind, or lack of demand. It doesn’t matter what, if you’re stuck, that’s it. The CF just tells you where you are stuck.
A number of people have posted the zero marginal cost meme over the last few months, which seemed a bit “off”.
The light has finally dawned, so here’s how the trick works.
It’s verbal sleight of hand which relies on loose terminology.
in economic terms, the marginal cost is the cost of producing another unit at the margin. Just another waffer-thin mint, as it were. The cost includes the fixed costs and the variable costs. Once the production limits of a facility have been reached, the only way to produce one more unit is to increase capacity. This can be be expanding the facility, or building a new one. This leads to a sawtooth chart of marginal cost instead of the smooth curve we usually see in Economics text books and on the Web. There is a jump in the marginal cost as the new capacity is added, but the new fixed cost is shared across the additional output, so comes down as more units are produced.
The other usage of “marginal cost” is shorthand for “marginal variable cost”, and this is the sense used in the “zero marginal cost” meme.
It’s worth producing another unit of product if the price received is higher than the marginal variable cost. Fixed (or sunk) costs are left out. This really only applies if there is excess capacity, and it runs into a hard wall at the capacity limit. The usual example is manufacturing a “widget” which requires a small number of materials + labour.
To make it more concrete, let’s say it’s welded sheet Aluminium tool boxes.
While the staff aren’t fully occupied, the marginal variable cost is just the cost of materials (sheet Al, electricity, filler rod, Argon). There is no additional labour cost, they’re just working a bit quicker.
Once the staff are fully occupied, the next step is typically to go to overtime, which requires more hours at a higher rate, so the marginal variable cost is now higher.
Adding another shift has a similar effect.
Note that up to this point, there have been no additional fixed costs.
As soon as all of the TIG welders are being used all of the time, the only way to produce “1 more unit” is to buy another industrial TIG welder. That “1 more unit” has cost the material and labour as before, plus a new TIG welder, which is a fixed cost. On a larger scale, it’s building another shed on the site, or acquiring more land to build another shed, or…
Note, also, that each “1 more unit” is intentional. Unless the intention is to build up inventory (that’s another can of worms), once it has been built you don’t build another one.
Large-scale solar and wind may not have a fuel cost, but. at least currently in Australia, are working at capacity. The only way to produce that “1 more unit” is to add additional capacity (wind turbine, bank of solar panels)
Tool boxes may not have been the best example, because they don’t individually require a lot of input. Scale it up from tool boxes to field bins, portable grain silos, light aircraft, …
The thing is when you add another wind turbine or solar panel in South Australia it is mainly contributing to already curtailed output, with very little contribution when all the other wind turbines and solar panels are producing little to nothing. Which means that the marginal cost of useful power becomes astronomic, as you are throwing away most of the output somewhere in the system.
Is it being curtailed? I thought the surplus was being shipped back across the interconnect to Victoria.
In any case, it doesn’t support the “marginal cost is zero” meme.
Check our curtailment here:
http://nemlog.com.au/nlog/nem-and-regional-curtailment/7d/
Thanks
“but. at least currently in Australia, are working at capacity”
They aren’t working at machine capacity. They are limited by wind. If the wind blows a bit harder, you get another unit of electricity. So what are you going to do with it? Sell it. But for what price? Whatever you can get. There is no price at which you are making a loss if you sell it.
You can say that marginal cost is relative to the business case for building the enterprise. For a gas plant, you might say that you spend $X capital, $Y on fuel, get $Z on sales, and make $P profit. Then if you can sell a bit more (for whatever reason),
ΔP=ΔZ-ΔY so you need ΔZ>ΔY
But with wind, Y=ΔY=0, so its all good.
Hence, they are working at capacity. The capacity is determined by the rated output of the machine and the energy source at that instant.
That’s the difference between marginal cost and marginal variable cost. Any sale price above marginal variable cost is worth taking. If your marginal variable cost is (as near as makes no difference) zero, any price is worth taking for that particular output.
No, the marginal cost is the marginal cost – it is what it is. The business case may be limited by the expected marginal cost (actually it will use NPV, IRR or similar), but the marginal cost is just the cost of producing “1 more unit” of output.
The fixed cost component of the marginal cost reduces as output increases (it’s an average – fixed cost / output); the marginal variable cost tends to reduce and then increase, as in the example above.
Yes, that’s Net Present Value in its broadest sense. There are a lot of refinements, but it basically comes down to “we think it will make an acceptable risk-adjusted amount of money over the life of the project.” One of the reasons for hedging with long-term contracts or options is to reduce cost and price variability,
Yes, that’s the marginal variable cost. As a rule, marginal variable cost should be lower than the price received or producing “1 more unit” is a waste of resources.
But if you’re already at capacity, you can’t produce “1 more unit”.
Marginal variable cost only applies where there is excess capacity.
Something which most people have trouble getting their heads around is that variable output is quite different from marginal production.
It’s the difference between a fabrication shop fulfilling an existing contract for 10 toolboxes a day and knowing they can produce another 5/day using overtime if an order comes in for another 25 by the end of next week, and the local Men’s Shed producing between 2 and 20 per day depending on who happens to come in.
“But if you’re already at capacity, you can’t produce “1 more unit”.
Marginal variable cost only applies where there is excess capacity.”
You’re over-complicating. The basic idea of marginal cost is this. You have something that you regard as a normal level of business operation. I described it above as X,Y,Z and P from a business plan, but it really doesn’t matter why you adopt it as the default. But it envisages that you have covered fixed costs (interest etc).
Then you get an opportunity to make an extra sale. It doesn’t matter why that arose (and why you couldn’t do it before). It could have been an unexpected new customer with a proposition (when you are not flat out), or an extra puff of wind. The question is, should you do it? You’ll get ΔZ revenue, but you may have to use extra fuel, pay overtime, etc. That is ΔY. It’s just the difference between the operational costs of saying yes and saying no.
I know what you’re saying, but marginal variable cost is not the same thing as marginal cost.
In your X, Y and Z, X is fixed cost, Y is variable cost and Z is the revenue.
If X is $1000.00, ΔY is $5.00/unit and ΔZ is $10.00/unit, I have a marginal variable cost of $5.00, a marginal revenue of $10.00 and a marginal return of $5.00.
If I produce 1 unit, my marginal cost is ($1000.00 + $5.00)/1, so $1005.00
If I produce 100 units, my marginal cost is $1,000.00 + $500.00)/100, so $15.00
If I produce 1,000 units, my marginal cost is ($1000.00 + $5000.00)/1000, so $6.00.
Before you ask, when marginal variable cost is constant, the marginal cost equals the average cost. This is rarely the case.
These are conceptually and practically different.
For the new customer, you are intentionally producing more.
For the extra puff of wind, you just had a stroke of luck and overproduced.
Marginal cost applies to producing “1 more unit”, not to flogging off a perishable item in inventory which has already been produced. It’s the cost of the next item you plan to make, not the last one you made.
For excess perishable inventory, think of the $2 shop selling discounted short-dated or end-of-line groceries. It was cheaper for the wholesaler to sell them below cost to a “chancer” than to have to pay somebody to take them to the tip.
We cockies know far too well about variable output 🙁
We also know far too well about supply and demand curves.
Prices are always good when you don’t have anything to sell.
As long as the marginal return is positive, of course you should.
However, if the return is lower than the cost, you won’t do it for long. You have to cover all your costs over the longer term
Addendum:
My apologies, Nick.
Like so many things, there are conflicting definitions, just to make life interesting.
A number of online references do indeed regard marginal cost as what I have classified as marginal variable cost (i.e. ignore fixed costs). while others include the change in share of fixed costs.
Short-run marginal cost and long-run marginal cost may be the better split, though this still leaves the unqualified term “marginal cost” ambiguous.
“If I produce 1 unit, my marginal cost is ($1000.00 + $5.00)/1, so $1005.00”
That shows why that is a useless definition. What you want is the ability to say whether any particular transaction is worthwhile. The return has to exceed the marginal cost. But on that basis, you want that one transaction to return the entire fixed cost. You’d never do it.
What it does give you is the cost if you made that transaction and no others. That would be just very bad business.
You haven’t read the addendum yet, have you?
In any case, planning to add capacity is a long-term exercise involving NPV or bigoilbob’s preferred IRR. Projected fixed costs, variable costs, volumes, sale prices,short-run and long-run marginal costs, financing costs, project risk, phase of the moon, etc all come into play.
Price exceeding marginal [variable] cost is a for short term and excess capacity.
No, I hadn’t read it. I started my reply earlier, then broke for dinner.
But I don’t see how what you are describing is a marginal cost. The key feature of a marginal cost is that it leaves out fixed costs.
It depends on which definition is being used, unfortunately.
Yes, one definition does leave out fixed costs, the other doesn’t.
Leaving out fixed costs is useful for short-term decisions, but disastrous long term.
For larger firms, it’s probably akin to the split in areas of responsibility of the manager and board/owner.
If you’re still following this thread, here is an interesting discussion on the rationality of selling down to marginal cost – https://www.quora.com/How-is-it-rational-to-sell-goods-at-marginal-cost?share=1
There are a variety of opinions, and some good insights. Tom Longwell’s comment is quite good.
This discussion (https://www.quora.com/Why-is-price-greater-than-marginal-cost-in-a-monopoly?share=1) is interesting as well.
I should be outside Doing Things, but have been caught in the web 🙁
The answer seems to be that if the market is competitive, if you don’t sell at the marginal cost price, someone else will. The market doesn’t care about your fixed costs. And the lowest marginal cost will win.
That is why the near-zero marginal cost of wind means they will out-compete gas whenever they have supply.
The electricity market in Australia isn’t Perfectly Competitive; it’s an Oligopoly/Oligopsony.
If the marginal cost is zero, the average cost will always be higher than the marginal cost (because of the fixed costs), so players will exit the market because they’re losing money.
High barriers to entry (e.g. equipment costs) and flat or falling marginal costs are a recipe for Natural Monopoly.
The Perfect Competition case of marginal cost == average cost == marginal revenue largely results from marginal cost increasing beyond some output, so the intersect is at least a point of not losing money (negative economic profit)
There’s a reasonable overview at https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-microeconomics/chapter/profit-maximization-in-a-perfectly-competitive-market/
Monopoly is covered at https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-microeconomics/chapter/profit-maximization-for-a-monopoly/
and here’s a nice comparison of the different market structures – https://kstatelibraries.pressbooks.pub/economicsoffoodandag/chapter/__unknown__-5/
btw, thanks for this discussion. It’s forced me to brush up on stuff I thought I remembered from ages ago.
What’s the saying? “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know” Some days it seems I’ve forgotten than I ever knew 🙁
Well, intellectual stimulation is supposed to help delay the onset of senility. Now, what were we talking about?
The market isn’t perfect; in fact it is very uneven. Three cases:
And so the world goes around.
Perfect Competition has a very specific meaning in Economics. The Wikipedia entry is quite good.
Electricity generation is inherently a Natural Monopoly, which in Australia has effectively been turned into an Oligopoly/Oligopsony.
What you’re describing above is using prices to mediate the mix of technologies in use at any given time, with a very short time interval.
Solar seems considerably less capricious than wind. Apart from cloud cover, it has a predictable daily and seasonal pattern, so potentially works in much better with the other slow-response generation facilities.
Hopefully, Snowy Hydro 2 will assist greatly in smoothing out the short-term wind noise.
Leaving aside the pricing aspects of determining which generation category is used in any particular short interval, have you given any thought to optimising the mix of delivery characteristics of wind, solar, hydro/gas peaker, and steam?
Wind an hydro/gas peaker seem to have response time characteristics which complement each other, as do solar and steam (coal, CCGT, fission)
“Wind an hydro/gas peaker seem to have response time characteristics which complement each other, as do solar and steam (coal, CCGT, fission)”
Yes, that seems right to me. Hydro is ideal, even if it has to be augmented by pumping.
Precisely. It’s a useful quick and easy first pass for CapEx decisions. That’s why I calculated it for various production volumes.
In the example, the investment is worth making once the share of the ($1000.00) fixed cost is under the unit sale price ($10.00) – unit variable cost ($5.00) = $5.00. 1000 / 5 is 200, so that’s the breakeven production volume for the investment.
D’oh! Brain fade 🙁
How embarrasment.
How on earth could I average a capacity increase into the subsequent marginal cost? It’s a 1-off spike as far as marginal cost is concerned.
It just goes to show you can go from young and foolish to old and silly rather seamlessly 🙁
Prices regularly go negative in South Australia. That’s an incentive to curtail. It turns out that solar farms are first in line to do that, presumably because they attract lower subsidies to offset negative prices, and also because the largest surpluses are solar in origin. Domestic rooftop solar is not exposed to wholesale pricing, so only curtails when operationally forced by voltage triggers.
Oh dear, here we go with another fallacy.
The cost of wind power is all about the fuel cost to build install and mainatin it and the interest on that debt. Coal is free, At the coal mine. Gas is free, underground. Uranium is free, underground.
What counts is the total levelised lifetime cost of getting it in a usable form on the grid.
Windmills don’t provide usable energy at all, unless they are is such oversupply that the while world would be covvered by them and interconnects .
The point is, that mutatis mutandis, the CARBON cost alone, let alone EROEI or even pure cash, is so much more expensive than nuclear power that anyone who thinks its a real solution needs to be instutionalised.
I did the sums. 100 times higher electricity price and nowhere left to live was the 100% wind solution
I’d rather have a couple of nukes at the same price as now, thanks.
The issue is not where it works or can be made to work, it is the monumental cost of renewables for the zero benefit they bring
You are correct and they know this. The reason for renewables is not to zero emissions of CO2 (as there is no CAGW anyway) but to reduce the West to third world status with expensive and intermittent energy and, very importantly, bring total control of the population through the electrification of everything using smart meters.
“The cost of wind power is all about the fuel cost to build install and maintain it and the interest on that debt”
That’s all in the capital cost. All generators have a capital cost, including similar items, and the cost per Joule generated is fairly similar to wind. But FF generator budgets are dominated by the ongoing cost of fuel. Here, from Paul Homewood’s WUWT post of last Thursday, is the LCOE of UK CCGT gas:
Fuel is 40. Other costs of actually making the gas come to just 13. The carbon cost is a calculated cost to the environment.
Actually the carbon cost has nothing to do with the social cost of carbon. It is calculated to achieve a given arbitrary emissions target across the whole economy without further justification. the target is deemed to be justified, whatever the cost.
The real point is that the capital and maintenance costs are extremely low, so the penalty of lower average throughput is small on that account. Indeed, it turns out that inefficient modes of operation under constant ramping have a much bigger effect on cost because of higher fuel use and some increase in required maintenance.
With high capital cost generation (nuclear, wind when you include the on-costs of extra grid resource, balancing and stabilisation etc.) utilisation matters much more to the economics, especially if you have to start throwing away output when the units are at their most productive.
‘No, it’s actually a tautology.’
You’re way too polite re. the ‘Limit’, but otherwise wrong in presuming that renewables are efficacious due to their having no fuel costs. The reality is that intermittent generation increases total service cost because it increases the variance of the net load that has to be met by conventional sources.
Under what government? Have you heard of constraint payments to producers and of paying other jurisdictions to take the excess generation?
I see that along with many others, you simply haven’t understood what it is.
Or are being paid by renewable interests to protect them.
Your comment is as facile as saying;’ just because ten gob stoppers cost a penny, doesn’t mean that twenty will cost tuppence, there is no data on that’
Fortunately most of us got beyond that by age 5
Please do not drink alcohol before posting.
Your comment is incoherent.
I have written more than once that the first windmill and the first solar panel connected to an electric grid, are overbuilding.
After all my anti-renewables comments, you claim I am “being paid by renewable interests to protect them”
That is an incoherent and false statement.
The only sort of positive statement I have ever made about windmills in the last 10 years was claiming they did not cause any blackouts in Texas.
They didn’t help.
They were a waste of money.
But they did what windmills are designed to do: They do nothing about 60% of the time by design.(when there is little or no wind).
I refused to blame windmills for doing what they were designed to do. I blamed ERCOT for subsidizing them in Texas, rather than funding new hydrocarbon fueled power plants. Based on their decisions, you’d think ERCOT was run by people who hate Texas.
IIRC there was an incident where wind generation fell very dramatically and suddenly that did lead to a limited blackout. However, the rate of ramp down of wind was not a factor in February 2021, where the fundamental problem was insufficient dispatchable capacity to meet demand, which was also the reason TVA and Duke initiated rolling blackouts a few weeks ago.
Gold star for Anthony Watts on his declaration this will be the last Pollock Limit story here!
The Pollock Limit is a fish story — and the wrong fish too!
My Flounder Limit is correct.
Windmill and solar panels are all overbuilding, from the first one
The overbuilding will stop only for two reasons:
(1) The money runs out, or
(2) A Flounder Limit is recognized
The Flounder Limit is a belief that if there is a serious blackout — an electric grid flounders — that disaster will be analyzed. And it will be determined that the percentage of energy coming from solar and wind had reached a level that made the electric grid involved unmanageable.
Let’s say it was an average of 40% of electricity from wind and solar power when the first big blackout happened. The result would be a fear of trying to get more than 40% of electricity from wind and solar power. That will be the Flounder Limit from then on. A fear factor.
The people forcing Nut Zero are politicians and bureaucrats. They are the de-facto managers, not grid engineers. Government people do not know science and engineering. A mathematical Pollock Limit will mean nothing to them, Just a fish story.
The Nut Zero project will fall apart if there is more than one serious blackout, in my opinion. People do not like blackouts. One blackout can be blamed on anything but Nut Zero. Two or more blackouts could kill public support for Nut Zero, and the politicians who lead it. So there will be a high political risk from more than one blackout.
The Flounder Limit is about the political fear of failure, not about science and grid engineering. Because climate change scaremongering and Nut Zero are about political power and control, not about climate science and grid engineering.
I will open a new bank account for my Flounder Limit Nobel Prize.
My Nobel Prize for my 1997 climate prediction is pending:
“The climate will get warmer, unless it gets colder.
Daily list of the best climate science and energy articles I read each day, which will not include this one, is always at:
Honest Climate Science and Energy
PS: I anxiously await Mr. Monckton responding by calling me a “climate communist”.
I think you are correct.
Thanks
I’m trying to learn how to think like a leftist so I can help defeat leftism, which includes climate scaremongering, Covid scaremongering, Nut Zero and media censorship.
I know “think like a leftist” sounds like an oxymoron. But they do think, and they have been out thinking conservatives politically. As a result, they have gained great political power in the world, and unfortunately in the US too.
I think my observations can be useful for others too:
To think like a leftist:
Delete reason and accountability
Substitute a lust for political power and control
Power and control require scaremongering (one or more boogeymen) and censorship of opposing views.
No science or engineering knowledge is needed, except figuring out how to use bogus scientific studies to create fear and gain political power.
Problems caused by the Rule by Leftist “experts” must be blamed on others. But there can’t be too many serious problems, like blackouts, or political power will be lost, no matter how much election fraud there is. Leftists can’t blame every problem on climate change, Trump or Putin.
The goal of leftists is a transition from capitalism to socialism (US is already socialist, in my opinion), to fascism, and eventually to Marxism.
That “fundamental transformation: requires ruining the current economic system, so that most people will want something new.
The something new is not going to be pleasant — we’ve already experienced some of it, starting in 2020 with Covid scaremongering, Covid lockdowns and the Biden crime family media coverup.
My BS degree is worthless for thinking like a leftist.
My MBA degree is worthless for thinking like a leftist.
Sometimes i think it might help for me to fall down and hit my head on a sidewalk, and while still dizzy, I could think exactly like a leftist.
Knowing thy enemy. is the first step to defeating the leftist secular religion, the fastest growing religion in the past century.
As a libertarian since 1973, who wants less government and more personal freedom, The last few years have been disappointing. I’m going to do whatever I can do to understand leftism, and defeat leftism, until I take my last breath. Leftism is evil.
I see you have watched ‘as good as it gets’
“How can you portray what a woman thinks and feels so accurately in your novels?”
“I think like a man, and remove or logic and reason”
That’s the source of my inspiration!
Good catch.
Richard,
You start on the wrong foot by “trying to learn how to think like a leftist”
That is an oxymoron, because leftists do not think.
If they did, they COULD not be leftists.
I mentioned the leftist – thinking oxymoron myth.
But leftists are smarter than conservatives on how to gain political power and control people. Very successful in the past century. They are even mastering election fraud and censorship in the privately owned media. That’s devious thinking, but it is thinking.
Leftists are not incompetent in getting what they wan: Power and control.
Leftists link their enemies (Trump and his supporters) to Russia, Putin, climate change denial and racism. That seem stupid to us because it’s false. But it works.
You have to read the two Saul Alinsky books to figure out why — I read then in 2014 and wrote a feature article on them in my ECONMIC LOGIC newsletter. Said that Republicans had to adopt the same Alinsky strategies to win elections. And then came Trump in 2016, insulting leftists left and right, in the Saul Alinsky style. Trump went too far, however, insulting some fellow Republicans too, and some of them later turned on him.
Mr Greene is a climate Communist.
“costly and wasteful over-generation will occur at
times when wind and sun are strong and demand is low”
The new simplified presentation of the Pollock limit is welcome. It basically says that if you have, for one source, just enough nameplate capacity to meet peak demand P, then that source will on average contribute Z*P. Since other generators at capacity could also meet P, that means that that source would be fraction Z of the total.
The logic is stated for “wind and solar”, but in fact works for any generator source. So why don’t they have a “Pollock Limit”? Because we don’t have the same notion of wasteful surplus capacity. Instead it is called redundancy, and is reckoned a good thing. You need more than just enough capacity to meet peak demand.
“Over-generation” does not happen for FF generators because people are conscious of the cost of fuel, and so idle them. For wind and solar, the fuel costs nothing, so the logical thing to do is to leave them running and find something useful to do with the surplus. The simplest is to export. With some investment, you can use the surplus for pumped hydro, or electrolytic processes that can operate intermittently.
The worst case is, you disconnect them, as is done anyway for FF generators. But unlike them, you don’t save on fuel, for the pleasant reason that there was no fuel cost anyway.
“‘Over-generation’ does not happen for FF generators”
This isn’t actually true. All practical grids have spare FF capacity, which will be called into play when some sort of outage happens, such as routine maintenance or unplanned failure. The amount of overcapacity depends on the size of the grid, but will often be in the hundreds of megawatts.
Overgeneration is strongly avoided with electric grids:
Electricity supply must match electricity demand.
If too much electricity is fed into the grid in relation to the quantity consumed, the electrical frequency increases. During overgeneration conditions, the supply of power could exceed demand, and without intervention, generators and certain motors connected to the grid would increase rotational speed, which can cause damage.
“The amount of overcapacity “
I said that over-generation does not happen (cost of fuel). Yes, overcapacity is necessary. That was why Monckton’s claim that you can’t exceed q=1 is wrong. It is routine, and there is no reason why it should not happen with wind.
Of course, if you can export the surplus, then over-generation is a very good thing indeed.
This was a response to Hivemind.
“The new simplified presentation of the Pollock limit is welcome. It basically says that if you have, for one source, just enough nameplate capacity to meet peak demand”
That is a meaningless statement
Peak demand can be estimated.
But nameplate capacity means little
Actual wind power output at a peak demand hour can not be predicted.
It will depend on wind speed and nameplate capacity during every minute of the peak demand hour.
With a hypothetical 100% windmill electric grid … or a 100% windmill and solar panel electric grid, except for the hours from 10am to 4pm:
— It’s possible the wind speed will be so slow that total wind output for a whole state, such as Texas, might be under 3% of nameplate capacity. Or even less than 3% for one minute. At 3%, you would need 33.33x overbuilding to meet the peak electricity demand. At 10%, you would need 10x overbuilding of windmills. Electricity customers can’t afford to pay for 10x to 33x overbuilding.
In my opinion, the first windmill or solar panel connected to an electric grid is overbuilding.
Cue the distinction between availability – when your generator COULD be producing power, with capacity factor, which is how often it actually did.
Capacity factors indicates profit. Not how effective a generator it was or could be. CANDU did a paper once on the cost of electricity versus capacity factor with nuclear and coal. The short answer was if your nukes went below 50% it was cheaper to burn coal, at that time.
But all fossil and nuclear plant has availability of 90% or better. Hydro is good – you may run out of water but normally if you play the rainfall/power game right, you are up around 70% availability
Renewables of the wind and sun sort are basically averaging at 30% and 20% availability respectively with extremely long periods of being down completely.
The British solution of telling you to limit demand because they can’t supply is so offensively risible that I cannot see how they can announce it with a straight face.
The conclusion?
Renewables are unfit for the purpose for which they are allegedly deployed.
The conclusion?
Renewables are unfit for the purpose for which they are allegedly deployed.
I agree 100% with that conclusion!
“Capacity factors indicates profit”
Yes. And you can’t, in the long run at least, stay in business selling electricity that you generate at a loss. So not generating for lack of profitable sales opportunity is just as forced as not generating because of lack of wind.
The problem is intermittency. This is what makes wind and solar useless. You have argued that they are justified as additions to a conventional system because of the fuel savings from the conventional system with them added. But you’ve never shown a study which has evaluated and concluded that.
Yes, 100% and that intermittency is expressed, not by capacity factor, but by availability.
I looked at the hour-to-hour wind output in New England (ISO-NE website) for an entire year, 8766 hours.
I was bleary eyed.
I found there ALWAYS was some wind. It was NEVER zero.
What makes wind useless, or very expensive, or very uneconomical (take your pick) is the VARIABLE output, because OTHER generators HAVE to counteract the variations, up to NEAR ZERO, 24/7/365, year after year.
By exporting excess, DOMESTIC generators need not do less, but FOREIGN need to do more counteracting
That expense, in terms of all-in LCOE, becomes very large at high levels of wind penetration, because the other generators will be operating less economically.
That increasing LCOE will be almost entirely ON TOP of the wind LCOE, at high levels of wind penetration
Yes. Nick’s claim, though he has never provided any evidence for it, it that if you install wind in a situation where you have a conventional network the savings on fuel in the conventional network will more than pay the cost of installing and running the wind.
It seems very doubtful, partly since the price of installing wind is that your conventional network which has to fill in the gaps becomes less fuel efficient owing to the perpetual rapid starts and stops.
Still, the rejoinder is, please show a worked example. There’s the UK and Germany and Australia where there should be some. You just write down all the cash flows by year and then discount. If its such an obvious case, someone should have done it.
Its also never the objective of the programs. The invariable stated aim of the renewable installations is Net Zero. So Nick’s justification of wind is a very large concession from what policy makers have been giving up to now as the reason for the policy.
‘Nick’s claim, though he has never provided any evidence for it, it that if you install wind in a situation where you have a conventional network the savings on fuel in the conventional network will more than pay the cost of installing and running the wind.’
That’s the gist of his argument. Clearly, Nick has no experience with grid operations and has no idea how load serving entities, e.g. utilities, and generators coordinate their activities to minimize the cost of providing electric service to customers.
He also has no idea that grid operators are actually pretty good at predicting load over short time horizons, e.g., 24 hours ahead, nor does he understand that automatic generator control allows grid operators to easily meet instantaneous fluctuations in load. Instead, he emphasizes wind and solar’s lack of fuel costs while completely ignoring the fact that their inherent intermittency not only increases the variance, but reduces the predictability, of the net load that needs to be covered by conventional sources.
The only way of knowing whether or not this trade-off between fuel cost and load variance is worthwhile is by putting both conventional and renewable on a level playing field with respect to dispatch rules.
It’s like he’s never driven an ICE car along a moderately hilly road where the vehicle’s speed can be kept constant by gently modulating the gas pedal. In Nick’s world, the driver would not only need to deal with the hills, but would also have to deal with one or more cylinders either randomly dropping out completely or attempting to rev up to redline.
Observe frequently updated fuel sources for electricity in the UK, Ontario, Canada and Texas, at the following websites:
UK
National Grid: Live (iamkate.com)
Ontario, Canada
Power Data (ieso.ca)
Texas (ERCOT)
Real-time Operating Grid – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
I look at PJM’s data from time to time. Similar story in that the load forecast is usually within spitting distance of actual load, hence nothing AGC of conventional sources can’t handle.
One other thing I’ve noticed there is that hourly changes in wind generation are actually anti-correlated with load. I know Nick dabbles in financial engineering, so what he should realize is that wind is an awful hedge candidate for load. In fact, if you could actually ‘short’ wind energy, you’d be ahead of the game.
Across the entire lower 48 states in 2022 the minimum hourly wind generation was 8.2GW, the maximum 90.9GW and the average 49.6GW from a fleet of approx 132GW. Drop down to individual ISOs and you can expect the minimums to be 2-3% of capacity, instead of 6%. In Feb 2021, ERCOT got down to 649MW out of ~28GW just when demand would have been at ~75GW (their forecast) if they had had the capacity to deliver it.
In case of ISO-NE, the total capacity of generators connected to the HV grid is about 33,000 MW, of which wind is about 1450 MW, at end 2022, and solar about 2740 MW, at end 2022.
Each source MW is multiplied by a factor (based on decades of experience) to determine the RELIABLE MW available to serve peak conditions, concurrent with various outage conditions.
In NE, wind and solar are given a credit of 0% of installed capacity towards RELIABLE MW
In Texas, with much more reliable winds than NE, wind is given a credit of 6% of installed capacity towards RELIABLE MW
It has nothing to do with capacity factor.
And we know that ERCOT greatly overestimates its reliable factor for wind. That over estimate (actually, IIRC they were assuming they had 6GW of equivalent firm capacity from 28GW of wind capacity back in 2020/21) was one reason why they ended up with blackouts as that assumption was no longer met.
Wind dropped as low as 670MW in ERCOT on Jan 5th, and on 8 separate occasions in January it has been below 5GW for several hours at a time.
This may be of interest to you
https://cdn.misoenergy.org/2022%20Wind%20and%20Solar%20Capacity%20Credit%20Report618340.pdf
Wind and solar are being Molly-Coddled up to their armpits
About 45 to 50% of the “all-in LCOE” (levelized cost of energy) of a wind turbine project consists of various financial in incentives.
Owners would have to sell at almost 2 times the price, c/kWh, they now receive, which would be very bad optics for wind.
THE FINANCIAL INCENTIVES ARE THE REASON MANY $BILLIONS OF $DOLLARS ARE MADE AVAILABLE BY RICH-PEOPLE SEEKING LUCRATIVE TAX-SHELTERS, SUCH AS WARREN BUFFETT
I looked at the hour-to-hour wind output in New England (ISO-NE website) for an entire year, 8766 hours.
I was bleary eyed.
I found there ALWAYS was some wind output. It was NEVER zero.
Wind output is variable about 99 to 100% of the time
What makes wind useless, or very expensive, or very uneconomical (take your pick) is the VARIABLE output, because OTHER generators HAVE to counteract the variations, UP TO NEAR ZERO, 24/7/365, year after year.
By exporting excess electricity, DOMESTIC generators do less counteracting, but FOREIGN generators have to do more counteracting
The counteracting cost will add to the “no-wind-all-in LCOE” of the other generators.
That cost becomes very large at higher levels of wind penetration, because more of the other generators will be operating less economically, i.e.,
1) Ramping up/down, and
2) On hot, synchronous standby, and cold standby, and
3) Having more start/stops, and
4) Having more wear and tear.
The increase of “no-wind-all-in LCOE”, due to wind’s presence, will be ON TOP of the wind “all-in LCOE”
Not looking at the money and the lifetime adverse environmental consequences is exactly what rich folks want.
They have set up a PR structure to lie and cheat every-which-way to get their projects built and paid for.
In that manner, wind is ARTIFICIALLY made to LOOK economically and socially, palatable to the kept-ignorant ratepayers and taxpayers.
The PR ideal is to make wind a “perfumed skunk at a garden party”.
Wind gets:
1) Various federal and state financial incentives,
2) Plus, free electric grid expansion/augmentation,
3) Plus, free backup/standby power plants,
4) Plus, free grid management,
5) Plus, free hazardous waste disposal during life, and at end of life,
6) Plus, free killing of bats and birds, including bald eagles, and whales,
7) Plus, free ruining of the fishing industry,
8) Plus, free sickening of people and animals with infrasound, felt, but not heard,
9) Plus, free visual blight all over the place
There would be no wind, solar and battery systems without the huge, politics-inspired, financial incentives
Thank heavens, ISO-NE has, till now, adequate backup/standby plants to INSTANTLY COUNTERACT the ups and downs, and absences, of wind and solar, 24/7/365, year after year.
The more wind and solar, the larger the electricity quantities that need to be counteracted
It would frighten me to think that MISO are relying on such flawed methodology. Reminds me of that cinema scene “Do you fell lucky, punk?…. Well, do ya?”
Despite evidence that the lowest output can coincide with the highest demand from the early years of their records they go on to assume that this is no longer going to be the case just because it hasn’t happened recently. They are looking at what happened to be wind output during peak demand hours, instead of looking at lowest outputs and considering the risk that they might occur during peak demand, which their data shows is a much higher risk.
Truly scary.
It has nothing to do with capacity factor.
Yes and no. Surely the prevailing weather conditions in a given location determine both the capacity factor and the reliable MW, so they correlate to an extent?
Overgeneration does not happen on any grid that is still functioning. Even in Australia they have to curtail all that solar and a lot of the wind. The problem with renewables is that you can more or less guarantee you will need 100% alternative backup to meet peak demand on the one hand, while the more you install the less productive it becomes once maximum potential output exceeds minimum demand. This chart illustrates the nature of the tradeoffs you can expect for different demand profiles. Each profile is 50% baseload, and 50% peakload, with peakload set at a multiple of baseload as indicated: P=1 is flat baseload demand, while p=3 might be associated with a peaky seasonal aircon demand.
The classic country exhibiting wasteful renewable overbuild must be Germany with 130GW of installed capacity producing 45% of their electricity compared to 74GW of Fossil Fuels and Nuclear producing 54%.
And massive flows across their borders to places which have gas and hydro that can be throttled back to absorb german overproduction being dumped on them…
UK is similar. About 40GW of wind and solar (25GW wind, 15GW solar), and demand of 35-45GW depending on time of day and season of year. And gas is still contributing about 60% of generation.
The evidence is that Net Zero simply cannot be done. Or not without prodigious amounts of storage, which the gas is essentially replacing. So Nick falls back to justifying the renewables on the basis that they make the conventional cheaper enough to run to justify themselves.
You notice how the argument has moved from regarding the gas as backup to the renewables to in effect regarding the renewables as a supplement to the gas.
Characteristic of left thinking and argument: when the program fails by reference to its original objectives, redefine the objectives so it succeeded. Except in this case there’s no evidence that even the revised objectives are being met.
There are two quantities which are logically independent:
— the average capacity factor of the wind parc
— the average percentage of total generation the wind parc produces.
The argument is that these will be the same. If you have a country in which the wind parc generates on average (eg) 27% of faceplate then this will also be the percentage of total power generation you can get from wind, no matter how much you install.
At least, that is what I took the original argument to be. In this piece it seems to have been modified to be that (eg) 27% is the highest percentage of power generation you can get at acceptable economic cost, no matter how much you install.
There is no logical relationship between these two percentages – its not a matter of definition that they should be the same. So if they are the same its due to there being some causal factor which operates to keep both in step.
Let’s ask what drives the average capacity of the parc, the average percent of faceplate that the parc delivers. Its the strength and pattern of the wind. You can imagine that somewhere the wind blows continously and strongly 24 x 7 it may be around 90%. In Northern Europe it seems to be between 25 and 30%. It is higher for offshore than for onshore wind farms, which also must be due to wind strength and patterns – in particular the fact that there are fewer calmer periods offshore.
Now ask what drives the percent that the parc can contribute economically to the grid. We have to make some assumption about the rest of the generating capacity to do this, but assume its neither under nor over provisioned in relation to demand and switches in and out as required by wind outages and falls.
Then the amount contributed by wind will be driven solely by the performance of the wind parc. Its clear that this will be the same as the capacity factor, because its the amount of power generated by the wind.
With a caveat however. As the total amount of wind installed rises so will wastage. The same capacity factor of 27% will, when very large amounts of wind are installed, generate more and more of its power when its not needed and cannot be used.
Suppose in the example you are getting 27% on average from 100 GW of faceplate coupled to 35GW of demand. This does not mean you can get 27GW of your supply from wind. Because that 27GW of supply comes in, some of the time, at the wrong times, and sometimes when its needed its not there.
Suppose for the sake of argument that your 27GW of supply leads to your getting on average 25GW of usable supply.
What happens if you double your parc to 200GW? Will you get double the amount of usable supply?
No. You will now be getting on average 54GW of supply, which will be matched to the same 35GW of demand. Obviously much of that 54GW will be wasted, because its at the wrong time, or because it exceeds demand. Also there will still be the same calm and low wind periods when only a small fraction of the 54GW is generated.
So one can see that adding capacity will lead to diminishing returns, and this will indeed be a limit on the economic value of adding more wind. Anthony is probably right to say that presenting this as a curve will be much clearer. The curve of percent of supply generated by wind will approach some limit as you increase the size of the parc, and each increment in size of parc will add less and less to the percent of supply you are managing.
This is just putting it in general terms, to make the argument properly scientific you would have to base it on the actual distribution of the weather in a particular region. This would allow you to put some numbers on exactly what the UK, for instance, would most likely get from doubling its installed wind faceplate from 25GW to 50GW and then to 75GW.
This is the analytical work which needs doing. Alas, I have neither time nor competence to do it, but it would be a definitive contribution to the UK Net Zero debate.
The underlying point is, if I have got it right, very simple. Its that the driving factor on how much of your demand you can meet from wind is the weather. OK, then quantify the weather, and the debate can be brought to an unarguable conclusion.
Sorry typo. You’ll get 50GW usable… Should have proof read!
The problem of an unstable grid has only come about because of political interference. If companies hadn’t been bribed or if their lobbying hadn’t been so good then grid operates wouldn’t have bothered with wind and solar. If, in the beginning companies who wanted to build wind or solar farms were told that there are no subsidies and you only get paid for the electricity you produce then we would have a true picture of how efficient wind and solar are.
Perhaps if grid operators or politicians use the Pollock limit to say that any new wind or solar over that limit will get no subsidies and only get paid for energy generated then perhaps we will get a more stable grid and hopefully cheaper electricity. Which I thought was the whole point of national power generation?
No. The point of national power generation is to reinforce the power of a centralised bureaucracy and transfer as much of the plebs money into crony’s pockets as possible.
Yawn. When I rolled the numbers, it became pretty clear that the cost, both in cash terms and in EROEI terms made renewable energy unsustainable about a really very low penetration compared with the cost of nuclear power. All this has been known about for a decade at least,
Why people are magically rediscovering it and hailing it as radically new, I do not know.
The total lifetime cost of a ‘renewable’ solution in terms of CO2 emissions, EROI and pure cash terms is so ghastly compared with nuclear/fossil, that only someone who hasnt run the numbers (or hopes no-one else has) would propose it.
It seems from this debate that some people only just HAVE run the numbers.
Where ya bin, Dudes?
As many have stated previously, the first eagle shredder is a heinous waste. The first slaver panel, likewise. The economic optimum penetration of unreliables is zero. No further formulae are needed.
The discussion has been, on net, harmful to the cause of climate realism. It has generated far more heat than light.
It unnecessarily provoked pointless ad hominem attacks among those whose time wasted on internecine squabbling might have been profitably spent cultivating collaborative efforts to convince the general public that there is no climate emergency.
Thankfully the unfruitful exercise draws to a close.
“It unnecessarily provoked pointless ad hominem attacks among those whose time wasted on internecine squabbling might have been profitably spent cultivating collaborative efforts to convince the general public that there is no climate emergency.:
Are you trying to ruin our fun, Mr. Smarty Pants?
Mr Davis says the Pollock limit is “an unfruitful exercise” that “draws to a close”. No: it continues to be developed, but will no longer be developed at this site. Watch out for further news at American Thinker and at Climate Depot.
Christopher, I would suggest doing it like this.
Take a jurisdiction where there is proper data for a year on how much wind generation there was. For the UK all this stuff is available in csv format from https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=generation/
You can also get total demand, so from the two you can calculate the total number of MWh supplied from wind, and the total supplied by the rest on an hour by hour basis.
You get this by the hour, and then add it up.
Now what you do is just double the wind MWh for every hour and do the same sum.
What you should find is that doubling the wind output does not correspondingly lower the total supplied by the rest. Because calms, and because peaks.
So you will be able to make a devastating argument. You’ll be able to say, I took detailed actual generation in the UK weather with what it has installed now, and it contributed X, leaving Y to gas, nuclear and interconnect. Then I assumed that the UK had double the amount of wind in exactly the samehourly distribution, and if it had, it would have supplied Z.
You could do it with tripled wind. It will be impossible to argue with, you will have shown for one country, real data, diminishing returns.
If you want the Pollock limit to be useful, it has to include seasonality.
Summer and winter peak load days can have 1.5-2x as much electricity consumption as spring and fall in areas with air conditioning and/or electric heating.
On the generation side, hydro tends to produce most during spring because of snow melt.
In non-drought years, California curtails lots of solar during spring because the hydro has to run and there isn’t much load. A few months later, they’re using every solar electron to run air conditioning.
Vboring makes an interesting point about seasonality. However, once windmills and solar panels are installed they are there all year round: therefore, the fairest and most straightforward way to evaluate their capacity factor in a particular grid is to derive it on the basis of multi-year-averaged annual weather at that location.
This chart shows the monthly average diurnal generation for the US Lower 48 (based on EST time). Summer shows much more exaggerated daily ramping to meet peak demand, and hydro helps achieve that, whereas in the early part of the year it is run more as baseload. Wind contributes less during the high demand summer. Gas provides the key flexibility to the whole system. Nuclear has maintenace seasons in the low demand spring and fall months.
I suspect the theoretical Pollock Limit for any geographical power grid could be ascertained with the stroke of a pen requiring a supply level playing field for consumers. Namely all suppliers of electrons to the communal grid can only tender that amount they can reasonably guarantee 24/7/365 (ie short of unforeseen mechanical breakdown) along with FCAS or keep them for their own use. Naturally that would require the unreliables to invest in storage or partner with dispatchables and pay them in order to lift their average tender. But of course that’s the great political lie exposed for all to see.
It seems more than fair on the face of it. But upon further pondering, the investments required are/would be many and distributed over the entire grid system. Since the grid operators almost always have the responsibility to provide properly conditioned power, they should be the entities to deciding how to do so and how to price it. They should also have the authority to use the power mix that does so most practically.
If this goes to a discussion on “subsidies”, then we can get to the end of it now. I’m happy to lose them all, if you don’t cherry pick what a “subsidy” is. For example, the continued shirking of coal ash clean ups, funding of coal miner medical/pensions, proper bonding of past and present oil and gas asset retirements )with future bonding keeping up as liabilities accrue), should instead be amortized over future economic production schedules. And the environmental and AGW* costs of fossil fuel extraction/transportation/burning are as much “subsidies” as the green start up helps.
*I realize that this cost, in this fora, is mostly denied. But I’m even happy to let the grids evaluate energy sources without consideration of it. Especially given the latest “non Biden” boring old geological and petroleum engineering/economic realities that have the juiciest oil pay – the Permian – on track to not replace the 2022 SEC PDP boe reserves now being booked, next year. Since the Permian – our best play – will effectively then be passing into Peak Oil, so will the CONUS, in toto…
The problem with letting grids decide is that they pick solutions that maximise the business of the grid. That is exactly what has been happening in the UK, and is not to the benefit of consumers. It is much more interesting to the grid to need to install lots of transmission and stabilisation assets on which it can earn a return, which means it favours the least copathetic renewables.
Observa is correct at all points. Grid operators already know the capacity factors for wind and solar power at their locations: therefore, they also know (but did not until now know that they knew) the Pollock limits for those sources. The Pollock limits thus give grid operators a powerful weapon against governments bullying them to connect ever more wind and solar to the grid.
In Oz we actually pay these people silly money to turn a blind eye to one of the purest forms of dumping on the grid by solar and wind any first year Economics freshman or woman could imagine-
https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/australian-competition-consumer-commission/accc-chair-commissioners
A rerun of The Village Glee Club and should anyone mention ‘dumping’ it will be a unanimous call- ‘I think that could be discussed later in the basement at supper!’
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/235982732
This is an interesting theory, but frankly one which is utterly unvalidated.
There are lots of ways by which intermittent generation capacity can be offset to some degree including: short term storage (4 hours), overcapacity, (very) long distance imports/exports, long term storage (1 day or more), etc etc.
Classify this as a Drake equation of “science-y” sounding nonsense.
The real impacts of intermittent generation on grids are highly unlikely to be “physics” based so much as “economics” based; the large power pools such as the SPP and ERCOT are seeing negative market prices 30% or more of the time. This could be a sign of overcapacity installation, duck curve mismatch, ITC/PTC subsidy fallout or more likely some combination of all of the above and more – and the impact isn’t on the intermittent generation but on the market viability of the peaker plants.
“Clue” says the Pollock limits are “utterly invalidated”. No: they are proven by very simple algebra. See the head posting. The problem with battery backup or green-hydrogen production is that both are cripplingly expensive, and both involve huge and wasteful second-law-of-thermodynamics losses, and the techno-metals for sufficient battery backup do not exist.
The Falkland Islands (I was there) have ideal conditions for generation by windmills. I do not know what the grid capacity factor for the Islands is, but it will considerably exceed 26%.
Willis also proposes Ireland as a counter-example to the Pollock limits. He cites BP’s estimate that the Irish wind capacity factor (also its Pollock limit) is 27% on average, and shows that, following recent increases in installed wind capacity, wind power is contributing to grid output about 5% more electricity than the corresponding Pollock limit….
It is obvious that you can exceed the Pollock Limit by any arbitary figure if you alter your required demand from the wind – for instance by storage and backup, or by demand management. And most country-wide installations will do something like this – interconnectors are always useful.
The point of the Pollock limit is that it indicates the practical and efficient limit. Go beyond this, and you need to buy in energy at shortage prices, run a battery farm or operate expensive intermittent fossil fuel generation…
Dodgy Geezer is correct: The Pollock limits are indeed practical and efficient economic limits.Their principal utility is in assisting grid operators to plan more sensibly in future. For instance, if Germany had realized the existence of the Pollock limits it would not now be breaching the weighted-average wind and solar Pollock Limit for its grid by almost double, at huge cost to its customers.
The head post’s algebra omits an important factor: how correlated wind speeds at different turbine locations are.
The plot nearby is based on a couple of years’ data from the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas, whose capacity factor for that interval was about 39%. If we just scale up that wind farm’s output so that it’s as though a great many such wind farms were replicated with identical wind-speeds as functions of time, the marginal cost of increasing penetration does indeed seem to start taking off at the “Pollock limit.”
On the other hand, if the different wind farms’ outputs, although identically distributed, are temporally independent, the cost doesn’t take off nearly as fast. That’s what the dashed line illustrates.
What unreliables advocates often argue is that when the wind is calm in one location it’s blowing hard somewhere else: the sources are uncorrelated. Me? I’m of the impression that (1) we don’t currently have enough transmission capacity to take advantage of that fact(oid?) and (2) providing such capacity, together with an efficient market, would be impractical. But that’s the response you’d have to make in response to the correlation argument.
The head post’s algebra doesn’t address it.
The head post’s algebra does make it plain that the capacity factor of a renewable species in a grid is its multi-year-averaged annual capacity factor. That applies to the whole grid and, therefore, takes account of the spread of weather conditions. Grid operators in fact have a good idea of the capacity factors of wind and solar on their grids. What they have not known, until now, is that those capacity factors are also the economic maximum penetration factors. Exceed the Pollock limit and the cost to customers will rise sharply. Ireland, for instance, exceeds the weighted wind and solar Pollock limit by more than 50% – and, in the absence of extremely costly static-battery backup or “green”-hydrogen production – must either waste capital by do-not-generate orders or waste capital and current spending by capacity-constraint payments. Or, as Ireland does, it can dump the surplus on to a neighboring grid at a massive loss. The customers lose out, heavily, either way.
True–to the extent that the “spread of weather conditions” affects the capacity factor. But that doesn’t mean the algebra takes into account correlation (or, for that matter, the load’s coefficient of variation, which also has an effect).
The two scenarios plotted above have identical capacity factors and thus identical “Pollock limits.” But their penetrations of diminishing returns differ greatly because their correlations do.
Correlation runs over large areas. Take the data I posted on the US lower 48: minimum hourly wind was just 8.2GW last year, while the maximum was 90.9GW (on a fleet of about 132GW). If there was a good degree of anticorrelation that spread would be nice and tight around the system average of 49.6GW.
I don’t disagree. I believe–although I’m not as conversant with the data as you are–that the correlation is relatively high. My point, though, is that this is the argument you have to make: correlation. Lord Monckton’s algebra doesn’t do it, because it doesn’t rule out zero correlation.
Maybe it would help to put it this way. The point of diminishing returns is determined by the load’s and wind power’s coefficients of variation: as those coefficients approach zero–and, again, I’m not saying they approach it in the real world–the penetration achievable without increasing the marginal cost of increased penetration approaches 100%. And for wind power the coefficient of variation approaches zero as the number of independently variable sources gets large.
To be clear, I’m not saying that the capacity factor wouldn’t affect the marginal cost of increased penetration if both coefficients of variation were near zero. It would; the lower the capacity factor is, the higher the marginal cost at zero penetration will be. But for near-zero coefficients of variation the penetration at which that marginal cost begins to increase from its zero-penetration value would be nearly 100%.
Anti-correlated geographic spread simply implies a lot more interconnection to try to use more of renewables output. It helps temporarily when two areas are on the opposite sides of a weather front, but once the front moves through they are both in the same weather system again and the benefit disappears. Studies that rely on correlation statistics usually pick up the short term fluctuations but fail to recognise the longer term synchronicity. They assume that every hour has a similar probability of similar or dissimilar weather. Instead they need to recognise that weather systems persist. Correlation and serial correlation in time at different timescales are important. An El Niño disrupts weather patterns for months or even years, for example.
Interconnection is not cheap. If what you really need is dispatchable capacity you may spend as much for the interconnector capacity as you would have done to build your own power station, and you will still have to pay for someone else to supply the dispatchable capacity and run it.
Poster boy example is the BritNed interconnector, which lands in Kent where the Kingsnorth D coal fired power station was to have been built. That got cancelled because of green protests, led by now Lord Goldsmith. Meanwhike at Maasvkakte, Rotterdam, at the other end of the line the Dutch built a large coal fired power station to supply it.
Do you have any good sources for that? Obviously, costs vary greatly, but I’m looking for a rough idea of what HVDC transmission costs in the U.S. would be. Say, so much per megawatt plus so much per megawatt-mile? Also, operation and maintenance per megawatt per year and per megawatt-mile per year?
I don’t have much confidence in what I’ve found so far (although I have to admit I haven’t yet done much digging). There’s been a lot of new transmission-line construction in the U.S., but I haven’t found evidence that we have much recent experience with really long-distance projects.
Timera, writing in 2014 noted:
The BritNed line (UK to NL), commissioned in 2011, provides a reasonable benchmark for the capital costs of laying shorter interconnectors across the English Channel. BritNed cost roughly £500m for 1GW of capacity, or 500 £/kW on a normalised basis. This broadly compares to the ‘all in’ cost estimates for the proposed Belgium to UK project (NEMO) and a new UK to FR interconnector.
Costs can vary around this 500 £/kW benchmark depending on project characterstics. The 1GW Eleclink project (being developed by Eurotunnel and Star Capital) is likely to be significantly cheaper, given it involves laying cable through the existing Channel Tunnel. The proposed 1.4GW NSN link between Norway and Scotland on the other hand is over a much greater distance with costs closer to 1000 £/kW.
Western Link HVDC is 262 miles and 2.25GW for £1.2bn.
By US standards these are short distances, although they are subsea links.
Thanks a lot.
To the extent that the transmission lines’ purpose is to diminish correlation rather than merely connect source to load, I’m guessing that in the U.S. distances on the order of a thousand miles, carrying a substantial fraction of the entire load, would be necessary. So, although I assume the costs per megawatt-mile would be less here, it does seem that enough transmission to reduce back-up substantially would be a significant factor.
Should any electricity supplier wish to run on 100% wind power and use “excess” electricity to produce hydrogen as a store of energy for when the wind doesn’t blow then I have the following calculation for the additional amount of installed wind capacity needed
This involves electrolysis -> stored, compressed hydrogen gas -> electricity from standard generators as and when required (viz when the wind drops).
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, for instance, UK North Sea offshore wind turbines is 33% (onshore is less) over a complete year, so the average amount of power over a year supplied by such a wind turbine is 0.33P GW and consequently we will require 0.67P GW of storage.
[The capacity factor being the average output over a given time as a percentage of the installed/nameplate capacity due to the variability of the wind]
The efficiencies of the hydrogen production, compression/storage and the burning of the hydrogen to produce electricity 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.
In other words for each 1 GW of reliable/dispatchable power it is necessary to build 7.5 GW of installed wind capacity.
Mr Brown’s calculation is most useful. I shall draw it to Mr Pollock’s attention. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
You actually have to do the sums hour by hour. When you do that you get results like this:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ZmrQw/1
I found you would need a bit over 150GW of wind for a hydrogen based storage solution assuming you manage to capture all the surpluses, which is more like just under 5 times average demand. In reality, it would never pay to capture all of the largest surpluses, so you would overbuild some more to give a higher utilisation to the electrolysers.
I visual the Pollack Limit this way. Let’s take an ideal location like a windy hilltop in sunny California and let’s postulate we have fossil, solar, and wind built to 100% capacity. The sun shines and satisfies 100% of load requirements for 25% of the day, 6 hours. Wind then picks up 35% of the remaining hours (.75*.35 = .26 or 26%). So the intermittent power combined provides 25%+26% = 51%. With no storage capability Net Zero will never happen since fossil fuels must provide 49% of the daily load (on average). Recall to achieve this mix you have built 100% capacity of solar, wind, and fossil or 300% of what you really need. If you add battery backup, your over capacity grows even more. This makes no practical sense and the utilities and grid operators all know this.
Mr Bidwell is right on all points, except in one respect: at present, the grid operators do not know that the capacity factors for wind and solar power on their grids are also the economic-maximum penetration factors beyond which adding further capacity will be expensive and wasteful, whether or not it is backed up by batteries or “green”-hydrogen generation.
This is not too dissimilar to when Wall Street decided you could create regular returns out of junk paper. Expect similar results.
They bet that house prices could never fall. There is a similarity there.
looks like your final nail in the coffin is bent
“The Falkland Islands (I was there) have ideal conditions for generation by windmills. I do not know what the grid capacity factor for the Islands is, but it will considerably exceed 26%.
”
i was there!!!!!!! thats some evidence.!!!!
https://www.worldometers.info/electricity/falkland-islands-malvinas-electricity/.
energy created in excess of the mythical pollack limit is not a problem its an opportunity,
there will always be an excess you need it!
you need excess to manage frequency, so countries like finland create frequuency management markets, letting the free market offer solutions to manage demand and supply.2.grid scale storage will beat fossil fuel generation, so excess will be more profitable than FF
We should take the advice of someone who can’t spell “Pollock” after seeing it spelled in the article, or use even remotely proper punctuation.
I am but a simple sailor and no scientist, however, the concept of a Pollock limit is very clear to me. It is the point beyond which every increase in generation is either wasteful, costly or both even though you can do it. Displacement power boats are the same, they have a limit in speed beyond which generating more speed is wasteful of fuel and therefore costly and generally results in no meaningful increase. It seems to me that is exactly the point being made here. You can increase generation beyond the Pollock limit but doing so, although physically possible, is wasteful, costly and not worth the effort.
No spherical cows were harmed in this research to enlighten farmers.
M of B
Single data points can always be misleading. A country by country graph of % renewables vs power prices should settle the question.
The equation itself seems trivially correct. When baseplate capacity reaches demand, you are at a limit.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68349.pdf
“The National Renewable Energy Lab reports that a large grid system with 30 percent VRE can operate with minimal system disruption. Going beyond 30 percent, however, can present new challenges.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianmurray1/2019/06/17/the-paradox-of-declining-renewable-costs-and-rising-electricity-prices/?sh=7876195961d5