Andrew Dodson – Issues Integrating Renewables @ TEAC6
Andrew Dodson presents “Issues Integrating Renewables: Chasing the Wind on a Cloudy Day” at TEAC6 in Chicago (2014).
HIGHLIGHTS:
Wind causes severe frequency fluctuations both above and below 60 Hz.
Power Transients reduce reliability.
Non-dispatchability requires standby generation
Low capacity factor hurts payback (EROI).
Geographic non-optimal limitations.
Resonance between power line compensators and rotating machinery.
Sudden gusting behavior for wind, and cloud cover for solar both introduce serious transient behavior in power supply. Backup Power supplies that can compensate for this are inefficient in their use of fuel (Single cycle gas turbines vs. combined cycle) Regardless, operators must meet their obligations to provide high quality CONSISTENT power.
System Operators are SERIOUSLY penalized for violations of contractual power quality. Grid operators are heavily fined, sometimes millions of dollars per year for failure to appropriately regulate power. Brownouts/Blackouts are serious cost issues for large industry. Reliable power is the goal in utility industry. They typically operate at 99.5% or more (less than half a day per year)
A system is reliable if its components are individually reliable and connected in a fail safe configuration. Components are individually reliable if they have an appropriate MTTF remains constant across all modes of operation. Variability is more difficult to plan for appropriately and penalizes the cost structures built into utility financial models.
“There is not a single transmission expansion project in this country that is not currently being challenged by land owners.” – Pat Hoffman
“From Florida to California distribution feeders are being overloaded due to home generation of solar energy” – Pat Hoffman
“Many long lines in the western interconnect are currently being series compensated” – Pat Hoffman
(Pat Hoffman is Assistant Secretary of Department of Energy Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.)
REFERENCES:
IEEE Subsynchronous Resononance Working Group, “Second Benchmark Model for Computer Simulation of Subsynchronous Resonance,” IEEE Transactions on Power Apparatus and Systems, Col. PAS-104, No. 5, May 1985.
R.C. Dugan, M.F. McGranaghan, S. Santoso, H.W. Beaty, “Electrical Power Systems Quality, 2nd Ed.” McGraw-Hill, 2003.
J.D. Glover, M.S. Sarma, T.J. Overbye, “Power System: Analysis & Design, 5th Ed.” Cengage Learning, 2012.
A.M. Dodson, R. McCann, “A Modular Multilevel Converter for Series Compensation of an EHV Transmission Line with Battery Energy Storage,” Power Electronics Conference of Illinois, PECI Feb. 2013
M.G. Molina, P.E. Mercado, “Comparative evaluation of performance of a STATCOM and SSSC both integrated with SMES for controlling the power system frequency,” IEEE/PES Transmission & Distribution Conference & Exposition, 2004 Latin America.
M.H. Haque, “Damping improvement by FACTS devices: A comparison between STATCOM and SSSC,” Electric Power Systems Research, 2006.
L. Zhang, M. Crow, Z. Yang, S. Chen, “The Steady State Characteristics of an SSSC Integrated with Energy Storage,” Power Engineering Society Winter Meeting, 2001. pp. 1311 — 1316.
L. Zhang, et.al. “A Comparison of the Dynamic Performance of FACTS with Energy Storage to a Unified Power Flow Controller,”
M. El-Moursi, B. Bak-Jensen, M. Abdel-Rahman, “Novel STATCOM Controller for Mitigating SSR and Damping Power System Oscillations in a Series Compensated Wind Park,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol.25, no.2, pp. 429-441, Feb. 2010.
FIGURES:
Fig. 1 — Frauhofer Institute
Fig. 2, 3 – D. Rastler. Electricity Energy Storage Technology Options: A White Paper Primer on Applications, Costs, and Benefits. Electric Power Research Institute. 2010.
Fig. 4 – IEEE P1726™/D10 Draft Guide for the Specification of Fixed Series Capacitor Banks for Transmission System Applications. IEEE. 2010
TEAC6 & THORIUMREMIX:
Thorium Energy Alliance #6 (TEAC6) was held at Layola University (downtown campus) in Chicago, on May 29, 2014 (2014-05-29). http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/
Thorium Remix is an ongoing documentary about thorium and molten salt reactors. Lecture footage is captured to help propagate the lectures themselves, and also “remix” educational material into narrative form. http://ThoriumRemix.com/
For more on Grid integration issues, go to the Electrical Grid topic on ClimateTV
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Well, it does say the talk was in 2014. A lot has happened since then.
The intermittency of wind and solar is still the same
And, without the correct amount of storage no nation could ever afford, or indeed procure, will continue to be so
And with increased penetration (since 2014), more of a problem.
Yes, the bottom dropped out of the vegan fake meat market. Turns out it was dreadful.
Yep. It’s gotten worse.
I suggest watching this video to understand why transmission grids are not like legos
The wavelength at 60hz is 2175 miles. Lumped analysis wood be just as good up to 100 miles or so.
That’s pretty much the assumption when I took a power systems class in the mid-70’s. Transmission line effects start to get pretty serious at 250 miles.
Wood is not teribly useful as a power line. Would?
They used to use hollowed out logs for water lines. (There may still be a few out there in distribution systems.)
Why not power lines? 😎
Philadelphia and other major cities that were founded over 100 years ago frequently dig up wood pipes during construction. A surprising number are still working.
Instead of doing these silly drive-bys, why don’t you make the positive case for whatever you think?
Just say, for a given jurisdiction where we have plenty of data, like the UK or Australia:
— What you would install in wind and solar to meet the current demand.
— What storage of what kind you would install.
Lets help you get started. The UK, you have to deliver 30-45GW depending on time of day and season. You have to accomodate periods of several days when wind generates less than 1% of faceplate, and periods of a week when it does under 5%.
Lets hear it!
— What storage of what kind you would install.
Answer
ZeroZero
Add nothing, no more unreliables, more gas, coal and oil…It is when, not if the grid scale renewable fantasy ends…
Let me add the primary factual piece of data that needs to be decided upon.
What is the optimal global temperature?
We keep seeing alarmists going on and on about the growth in anomalies destroying the world. Yet, no one ever states whether we are already above the optimal temperature or are just approaching it.
It is time for climate science and alarmists to go on the record with what the best temperature is for the globe. No dancing, no going around the bush, no wishy washy answer. Just the facts.
One would have to incorporate all local optimums into the calculus. From the chaotic nature of weather/climate determining this is not possible. Even if it were, one could imagine that some locales would benefit and some would get screwed.
In any case, this year’s weather in my part of Colorado has never been better, at least in my lifetime, in my opinion. Some might have a different opinion based on their own personal preferences. I like to ski, so mountain snow factors highly into my weather preferences.
Warmists and alarmists, you know who you are, don’t worry about those issues. They just assert that we are already boiling according to the anomalies and must destroy economies to survive. As such they must know already what the global temperature should be. If they are able to calculate a global anomaly, the absolute temperature data must exist to also calculate an absolute temperature average.
I assure you they do not want to broadcast that because it will show that the earth is closer to an ice age than it is to losing the ice caps.
Yes, we must dismantle western civilization, otherwise in 75 years our economy’s GDP might only be 200% what it is today instead of 225% or something.
Isn’t the global average temperature just under 15C at the moment?
That is an estimate.
Look, anomalies are calculated by subtracting a station baseline from monthly average. Then the monthly anomalies are averaged.
If anomalies can be averaged, then so can the monthly station temperature averages.
If anomalies can be averaged, then so can the station baselines.
Here is the kicker, will those averages come out to the same numbers? IOW, the monthly station average temperature minus the global average baseline temperature should be the same as the global average temperature! Anyone want to bet what occurs.
Again, the global average temperature ANOMALY is NOT a temperature, it is a ΔT. A +2 @ur momisugly 30° plus a +4 @ur momisugly -10 = +3 anomaly. That basically, is summer vs winter when averaging anomalies in different hemispheres. Winter generally has a higher anomaly than summer. Guess what? That biases the globe to a larger anomaly. But is summer when the warming is worst?
Scissor, thanks for expanding Jim Gorman’s question on optimal global temperature to all local optimums and the complexity.
I often raise the issue of there being some 30 climate zones and sub-zones. We need to consider how, if we were able to make changes in one zone, this would effect the neighboring zones. But even if we were able to “improve” one area to the benefit of people and certain crops how this may negatively impact on other crops that ripen at different times. Then there are natural disasters like a farmer having his harvest wiped out by hail only to have a bumper harvest the next year.
It is utter lunacy to think we can engineer a perfect climate for every part of the world when we have such limited knowledge and because we so often intervene without considering unintended consequences and cost vs benefits.
Jim, Whatever temperatures we get adapt, do whatever it takes, except more wind and solar, that 40-yearlong experiment failed. If for some strange unimaginable reason CO2 is found to be an actual issue, liquify it and pump it to the bottom of the ocean where it will be neutralized by calcium carbonate’.
Get rid of wind and solar, gradually replace them with small scale modular and continue to phase out coal with CCGT. ‘Be all nuclear with a mix or SMR and fast neutron breeder by 2100 for all electrical generation and be exclusively fast neutron breeders by 2160 replacing all fuels for everything.
\
I wouldn’t attempt to electrify everything as it appears you’re implying Dennis. Even in the very long term. Battery electric vehicles are dangerous, expensive, and impractical due to the unavailability of raw materials and the need to virtually replace the entire grid. ICE should be here to stay.
Of course nuclear process heat can be used in biofuel and/or coal-based synfuel production to augment or replace conventional fuels when they become too expensive to extract. In that sense we could see nuclear eventually being the sole primary energy source (thinking of the synthetic liquid fuels as chemical storage rather than primary energy).
There would be no reason to go to zero CO2 emissions even if contrary to my expectation, CO2 were to be proven to be a problem. Natural carbon sinks already absorb about half of human emissions today.
Those sinks won’t decrease just because we decrease emissions, so long as CO2 remains at around the same concentration. More likely the sinks will continue to increase for a while (growth of biosphere). So cutting emissions in half should stabilize concentration. That would be net zero. Anything less than half should lead to a slow and steady decline in atmospheric CO2 while still emitting a great deal of CO2 from fossil fuels.
We still have centuries of economically-extractable fossil fuel. We have the infrastructure in place to use it and it’s the least cost solution. We can safely use it at at least 50% of our current rate of consumption. There’s no logic to abandoning it.
Rich, thanks for your comments. I agree that BEV’s are worse than ICE vehicles, I never mentioned that in this post but I have in numerous other postings here at WUWT, Facebook and Quora.
My vision is a breakthrough with hydrogen utilization from production by using cheap fast neutron breeder reactors.
I worked at a coal (lignite) synthetic fuel plant for five years back in the day (Great Plains Gasification/Dakota Gas). First as a lobbyist and business development and marketing coordinator for byproducts including both ammonia for fertilizer and CO2 for enhanced oil production; and later as a material specialist. I’m familiar with those opportunities and issues including being exposed to an ammonia release while visiting a plant in Wyoming so I have concerns about using it as a carrier/storage medium.
Keep in mind I’m not suggesting being all nuclear for all applications until 2160, 128 years from now (compare that to 128 years before current (1895).
What is a “global temperature”?
What most call a “global temperature” is not a global temperature. At best, it is an accumulated ΔT over points on the globe. I’ll say again, IT IS NOT a temperature.
Climate scientists should know better than to call it a temperature.
Ask a warmists what the best TEMPERATURE for the globe is. Are we below, at, or above that best temperature. You’ll get some real dancing about not being sure.
The biggest issue I see with a spatially averaged anomaly is that it doesn’t account for changes in latent heat. 40°C in Arizona is potentially more comfortable than 30°C in New York. A rising temperature trend may be simply due to a drought and vice versa. Ocean currents and weather patterns have a big impact on rainfall. Colder oceans could yield drier hotter land masses and vice versa.
If you want to know if the earth is warming or cooling, you need to at least account for humidity and ocean heat.
To me, a more important question is why alarmists think slightly warmer at night and in winter, with a bigger effect in frigid polar regions could ever be a problem.
You bet! I wasn’t trying to cover it in any kind of detailed manner.
If I am driving at 20 mph and speed up 5 mph, and you are driving 90 mph and speed up 1 mph, the average anomaly is 3 mph. Just what does that average anomaly tell you?
There’s that simple calculation again, and no response. I’m shocked (NOT) Nick has failed to respond even again.
c1ue, your state:
“Instead of doing these silly drive-bys, why don’t you make the positive case for whatever you think?
Just say, for a given jurisdiction where we have plenty of data, like the UK or Australia:
— What you would install in wind and solar to meet the current demand.
— What storage of what kind you would install”.
Let’s first see if all we climate and energy realists are on the same page:
I say CO2 at 700 ppm, battery storage, wind and solar at zero grid penetration. Here in the U.S and all new generating capacity beginning in 2026 would be with CCGT until 2029 when NuScale NYSE: SMR, first comes online.
Next, a gradual phasing out of all existing W&S being incrementally replaced with SMR and a gradual slowdown in CCGT. By 2060 begin phasing out CCGT and SMR’s with fast neutron breeder reactors and be full nuclear for all electrical generation by 2100.
Every Country can do whatever they want to meet their energy needs. What say you?
My post was directed to Nick, who seems to think wind and solar can power a modern industrial society. So the request was that he give some specifics, that he take an example of such a country where we have good data on electricity demand and production from various technologies, and tell us in a couple of key parameters what a net zero future would consist of.
I’m cautious about doing the same thing Nick and other wind and solar enthusiasts do. They are amateur ideologically driven grid planners with no accountability for the results of their recommendations, if implemented. I think this makes them overconfident and irresponsible. So the next remarks are very tentative, I’m not an expert.
I don’t know what a desirable CO2 ppm is, but as long as China, India etc intend continuing growing their emissions there’s not a lot the West can do to influence it. The most realistic scenario seems to be, by 2100, 600ppm and under 1C of warming. Which seems fine, far less damaging than the damage done by the current Western net zero programs which are producing fuel poverty at scale without reducing emissions or affecting global temperatures.
As to UK and Australia energy, wind and solar seem like massively expensive and useless technologies. The most likely sensible way of generating power seems to be to drop them entirely. The way to do this is impose the same standards of reliability and consistency and predictability on all systems that request connection to the grid. So only allow wind and solar to connect if they deliver to the same paramters as gas, coal, nuclear. Then all the costs of storage and transmission to achieve this will fall on the wind and solar operators and the financial cases will fall and no more will be built.
What to use? Nuclear, gas, super critical coal. In a few rare cases hydro. This is what we have that works.
This is a bit more than the kind of amateur speculation that Nick etc indulge in, because at least with this we have working examples of countries that run on those technologies at scale, cost effectively (maybe not nuclear so much), and they do the job. Unlike wind, where we can look at gridwatch.co.uk and see it failing the basic tests of consistency and reliability every month of the year, and where increasingly the economics of delivering even intermittent and unreliable supply seem to be defeating the wind companies. As the recent Vattenfall actions show. And unlike the activists’ dreams of storage where no-one has even attempted to install the level of storage wind requires to make it viable as the main energy source.
Actually 600ppm + 1C is probably not the most realistic middle range future, but the highest and hottest future that’s realistically possible given known supplies of oil and coal. Willis wrote a good appraisal of the question some time back:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/24/apocalypse-cancelled-sorry-no-ticket-refunds/
In AR6 the IPCC wrote (in the WG-I report, section 1.6.1.4, on page 239) that they considered both SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 to be “counterfactual”, and that the new worst-case option — the one with “the [ complete and total ] absence of additional climate policies … out to 2070″ were in line with “the medium RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and SSP2-4.5 scenarios”.
NB : The “old” RCP8.5 emissions pathway is neatly bracketed by the “new” SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 pathways. If SSP3-7.0 is above the “counterfactual” threshold then so is RCP8.5.
. . .
The atmospheric CO2 concentrations (/ abundances / levels) for the (CMIP5 for AR5) RCPs can be downloaded from Malte Meinshausen’s “RCP Concentration Calculations and Data” Potsdam Climate Institute (PIK) webpage.
URL 1 : https://www.pik-potsdam.de/~mmalte/rcps/
Each “Global Annual Mean Mixing Ratios” file contains annual CO2 (and other GHG) levels from 1765 to 2500 (AD).
NB : “RCP3PD” = “3W/m² Peak before 2100, followed by a Decline” is an alternative name for “RCP2.6” (2.6 W/m² in 2100).
. . .
For the (CMIP6 for AR6) SSPs the University of Melbourne has a very useful data website.
URL 2 : https://greenhousegases.science.unimelb.edu.au/#!/ghg?mode=downloads
The “Historical” data, from “Year 0” (= 1 BC) to 2014 is available in three formats on the “Historical : Yearly” line, but you’ll have to cycle through the “Choose a scenario” option to get to each “Future : Yearly” file, which go from 2015 to 2500.
. . .
In the post just before mine “michel” linked to an article by Willis 6.5 years ago that, if I’ve copied the URL “correctly”, included a plot which should “autoload” below that showed the (alleged …) relationship between “peak CO2 levels” and “warming around 2100”.
…
Removing the “counterfactual” options … including all -8.5, -7.0 and -6.0 options, as well as SSP1-1.9 for being “too optimistic” … gave me the graph attached below.
Note that the X-axis is three centuries long, not five.
“By 2100, 600ppm” ~= SSP2-4.5, but Willis’s box plot puts that nearer to 0.75°C than a full degree of warming.
NB : Roger Pielke Jr. thinks that SSP4-3.4 could be the “most likely” emissions pathway on socio-economic (/ political feasibility) grounds. Only time will tell whether he is right (or not).
NB : I can only attach one image file from my local hard disk per WUWT post.
For reference, and to show just how “counterfactual” the -8.5 and -7.0 scenarii really are, the attached graph shows all of the main RCP and SSP pathways [ + the “SSP4-3.4″ and “SSP5-3.4 (Overshoot)” options ] for the next 300 years.
“A lot has happened since then.”
Yep, more and more countries that are infected by solar and wind are finding themselves on the razor edge of electricity supply system collapse, while costs to consumers climb higher and higher.
btw, did you ever get around to listing the electricity price increased you have had to pay over the last few years…
or did you run and hide.?
Nick is neither a competent Engineer, nor a realist – a world run by Nick would be a poor, cold, hungry cave like existence for the masses, although Nick, whom I have recently outed as Klaus Schwab /sarc, will be ok in his elitist ivory tower, backed up by diesel generators of course
Specify “a lot”.
The ‘lot’ Nick pontificates about is all negative – his green new world was first encountered 200,000 years ago by early human entities, fortunately for us, they progressed
I saw a sign the other day.
It said “Lots for Sale”.
I don’t know why people can’t be specific. 😎
Yes, a lot has happened, grids have become more unstable due to the renewables connection solid state inverters, static VARs, compensation units etc
From harmonic penetration, emissions & distortion, to a lack of strong, stable inertia – grids will topple over from poor power quality issues without competent gas, coal or nuclear base load generation to keep them stable and resilient
I know, I have 40+ years working with them as a professional HV Electrical Engineer
Yes Energywise, I completely agree. The problem is that the people who want W&S only do not understand how difficult managing a grid is, and their glib answers do not help at all.
Nick, a few simple things:
1) There must always be a supply that exactly matches the load. It cannot be more or less, because both interfere with both voltage and frequency stability. Clearly this exact match does not come from wind or solar, as the supply available varies continuously.
2) To make the match we need very controllable sources, with considerable ability to provide a bit more or a bit less on a cycle by cycle basis, because, although the average load may be moderately stable, it does also vary cycle by cycle.
3) A large power station alternator has huge mechanical inertia, which provides this variable power and smooths it closer to the average. Wind and solar inverters cannot do this because there is effectively zero energy storage.
In simple language that is why a wind / solar system can never work. If we had a huge battery available (Calculated as about 1 months total power consumption) we could probably make a stable system, whatever the wind and sunlight did, although the exact charge status would probably have to be fed back to the wind turbines on a real time basis to adjust the blades as required. Obviously at present the turbines are controlled to always produce maximum power that a particular wind speed can produce (Money!) but this would have to change with drastic effect on profits (higher costs!). We would need (at 30% utilisation factor) a nameplate capacity of about six times the average load , along with the unbelievably massive battery. Why? You need to recharge the battery!
In a nutshell (very simplified) this is the reason why wind and solar are much less useful than you think, and why electricity will get very much more expensive as the wind / solar production gets bigger. The battery required would at todays prices cost £4Trillion, at todays load (destined to at least triple with vehicles and heating all being electric). Perhaps you now understand the complete folly being wrought on the unsuspecting public? There is also the slight snag that such a battery would need 10 years of total world production of lithium and other constsiuants, and be immensly dangerous as the energy available in a fault being equivalent to the worls arsenal of nuclear bombs several times over! There would not be a massive fire, there would be total destruction over a very wide area, followed by zero electricity for many years whilst it was rebuilt. That would be the end of a Country, wherever this happened. As you know there is a propensity for lithium batteries to self distruct, so it would probably happen whilst being built, total disaster!
“Wind and solar inverters cannot do this because there is effectively zero energy storage.”
That doesn’t have to be so. They can be used with batteries, like Lake Bonney. That gives power for frequency stabilisation, and for better use of the transmission line. They don’t need to be huge.
“In simple language that is why a wind / solar system can never work.”
But it is working. I often quote the case of South Australia, which is well over 50% wind and solar, and has reached times when it is 100%.
“The battery required would at todays prices cost £4Trillion, at todays load”
I did a modelling based on 4 years USA data here, including recharge(which isn’t a probel with sufficient build). It is nothing like that, even for the US.
Great reply.
I would add the overbuild to 6 times average load, MW, would be hugely expensive, as very often it would be in feathering mode, if batteries were already full.
Remember, Tesla recommends to not charge in excess of 80% and not discharge below 20%, to help achieve a 15-y life.
Think of the landfill waste, the likelihood of fires, the repeat of battery investment about every 15 years.
No rich country could afford it, without ensuring widespread poverty.
No poor country would even contemplate such a suicide
CO2 is an essential life gas, makes things grow better, as proven in green houses.
From the points you’ve made, could the same be levied against tidal sources?
“as a professional HV Electrical Engineer” That’ll do for me
A fatuous response Nick.
https://howlongagogo.com/date/2014
Now, why don’t you tell us:
during that time?
He seemed to say only 67.5% of the is lost in transmission and distribution. Does that sound right? I would have said that something like that is lost in energy conversion (from combustion heat to mechanical energy to electrical energy) and transmission and distribution, but to me that sounds high for just transmission and distribution.
Does anyone out there know this stuff?
Here is a statement that those losses in Australia are 10%.
And here is a statement that losses in conversion, ie from calorific value of fuel to electricity out of power station, are 67.5%. Looks like he has mixed them up.
AEMO says 10% too
You need to do a like for like comparison.
How much of the Kinetic Energy of the wind is extracted by a wind turbine?
You don’t pay for the kinetic energy of the wind.
But this is about what seems like a gross error regarding transmission lines.
We aren’t paying currently. As more and more wind generation is installed, what price are we going to pay in changed weather? Rainfall patterns may change. Other weather patterns may also change. Are these costs that have been evaluated in your assertion.
Of course you do, you pay when the wind is not blowing.
Yes, then you have to burn some gas.
Without wind, you are burning gas full time.
We pay King Charles III to rent the sea bed. .
100% energy extraction would make wind generated electricity considerably cheaper
Have you heard of Betz Law Nick – you will never recover more than 59.3% of kinetic energy from wind, to spin the turbine to generate electricity – in reality, due to engineering constraints, no turbine will ever get near that 59.3%, the highest achievable efficiency being around 35%-50%
Again, you don’t pay for the wind.
Had to happen, Nick is finally right about something, CCGT conversion efficiency is 67%, line losses are typically 10%. wind extraction efficiency is an aside, the capacity factor and variability are the issues. The problem with nuisance wind is the CF is always too low, and the variability too extreme to be an economical grid source.
I agree that Nick was right and we should say so.
Now if Nick would agree that you’re right about the too-low capacity factor and the disruption to the grid, we could break into a round of kumbaya. But that won’t be happening.
Rich. Agree, Nick is hopeless, but like most climate alarmists, it’s not a matter of intelligence, it’s a matter of how they process information: Primarily by confusing cause and effect, refusing to look at issues quantitatively, with all focus on the qualitative and ignoring cost benefit analysis: CO2 above pre-industrial bad, natura gas bad, coal worse, wind and solar great, nuclear not an option. It’s all about delusional group think consensus. Odd bunch IMHO.
In the oil crisis of the 1970s/80s the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) in the UK would not countenance wind because of it’s variability. Unfortunately today the National Grid just goes with the flow. (pun intended)
In this case, Mr. Stokes, you are correct.
However, the scam of “losses in conversion” is that the losses in conversion for solar PV and wind are conveniently ignored because they occur during mining, in the process of manufacturing, during the vast numbers of site prep plus widely distributed installations plus extra transmission connections and during backups being turned on.
Mining costs for minerals are far, far higher than fossil fuel extraction. Refining/grading costs are far lower than the. semiconductor/turbine+blade manufacturing.
Fossil fuel sites aren’t just lower in area of land taken, they are tremendously lower in terms of money spent to perform installations and maintenance as well as connecting to the grid.
And of course, backups cost money whether fossil fuel, pumped hydro or battery (nuclear doesn’t work well for intermittent backup).
In fact, the biggest scam after the ITC (installation subsidy), PTC (generation subsidy), carbon credits (could be either ITC or PTC), grid connection cost subsidies and exclusion of backup costs from LCOE is the “renewables get bought first” setup in many places. This specific policy makes a mockery of the existing tiered system of payments for peak generation because normal operation is that less reliable/less dispatchable systems must sell for lower prices than systems which can turn on/off at 5-7 second time frames.
It is the exact same type of bureaucratic/lawyer shell game as EV vs. ICE car CO2 comparisons: the percent CO2 emissions from an EV exclude/massage down their far, far higher emissions during manufacturing and similarly skew CO2 emissions from grid charging.
There are many more losses in wind & solar connection equipment – the static inverters, VARs etc all have their own losses that reduce the poor efficiency of the generator, even more
This is baloney, Nick. The present coal fleet in North America probably has 35% efficiency (i.e. 65% losses as you count it), but it is a mix of old and relatively new stations. Combined cycle gas plants and advanced ultrasupercritical coal plants are probably around 50% each. Simple cycle gas plant efficiency is highly dependent on demands to ramp up and down but I have seen figures as low as 20%.
An ultrasupercritical coal plant, even operating with cheap but wet PRB coal, could have a lower CO2 emission per kWhr delivered than a simple cycle gas plant.
Single number measures hide inconvenient facts. We could have made progress toward reducing CO2 emissions and have no concerns about dispatchability by allowing for advancements in combustion but the fixed-in-mind, outdated 35% efficiency and scare-talk of stranded assets has led to a geriatric collection of coal plants that can’t be replaced quickly — thus the “wind and solar are the fastest route to replacement” mantra. Rigged conclusions, self-fulfilling prophesy and self-inflicted wounds.
I worked at the best coal plant. The heat rate was 7800 Btu/kwh. 3412/7800=43.7%. At the time, the Mustang plants were coming on line, CCGT, efficiency 45%, now 50%.
The topic is transmission losses. Andrew Dodson says they are 67.5%. That is nonsense. I think he picked up a commonly quoted figure of 67.5% conversion loss. I’m not concerned about whether the figure he picked up is right for conversion. It’s wrong for transmission.
Nit-pick..
He didn’t say “transmission”
He said “transmission and distribution.”
OK, it’s wrong for transmission and distribution. About 10x wrong.
Yes Nick, he has muddled the figures, 10% is about right for average transmission and distribution loss. This is a reason why large power stations used to be sited near large loads (Cities), but this is not the best palce for wind or solar. This increases the losses somewhat, but this power is free isn’t it? Nuclear has to be on the coast for cooling water, so has the same problem. The SMR idea has a much worse problem, putting one in 95% of the Country is impossibe for 2 reasons, physical protection and cooling! It might be possible with a couple of cooling towers and a good water supply close to a city, but then is not the small building in the pretty pictures! The public are also told that smoke comes out of cooling towers, thanks BBC!
Ultra-super-critical, pulverized coal plants top out at about 42%, from fuel entering the plant site to electricity fed to the HV grid.
Pollution control, such as fabric filter systems, to collect a part of the sub-micron particles, consumes a major part of the self-use electricity
Gas-fired, CCGT plants top out at about 60% for larger turbines
Burning nat gas in an efficient in home furnace tops out at near 97% for some newer units. They may be able to bump that up a few points, with almost zero heat going out the flue.
The very worst ones are better than 78%. By law.
But you will lose a percentage in pumping. For a relatively compact grid close to production fields that will be similar to electricity transmission and distribution. Somewhat higher for a long distance pipeline from Siberia, or via LNG.
Nicholas,
For about 15 years, I have had a condensing, propane- fired Viessmann furnace in my house.
It is 95% efficient in condensing mode, 85% in non-condensing, IN THE MANUFACTURER’s BROCHURE.
My Vermont house would have to be highly sealed/highly insulated, very high R values, very low infiltration, to be in condensing mode on a year-round basis
Viessmann also provides hot water year-round, which occurs most of the time at less than 85% efficiency, because of warm-up heat loss and cool-down heat loss.
What concerns me is the utter irrationality of forcing everyone to get rid of all nat gas in home appliances and usage, in favor of electric for everything.
If I burn nat gas in my water heater or furnace, range or clothes dryer, virtually all of the thermal energy is released into my house, food, water, or to dry my clothes.
That efficiency is all thrown out the window when we burn that same gas to make power at a power plant, and send it down a series of wires to all the homes and into a multitude of appliances and devices.
It just makes no sense whatsoever.
For one thing, it more than cancels any savings in energy from outlawing incandescent light bulbs in favor of LED ones.
Everyone wants to argue that my figures are wrong and then miss the point I was trying to make. GE itself reports AUSC plants as 47.5% efficient and the goal of 50% isn’t impossible to achieve. There are figures of all sorts for efficiency of CCGT plants but the IEA has a page suggesting 52-60%. A figure of 67.5% CCGT efficiency is very likely to be for a combined heat and power district (CHP), but a coal plant run in such a configuration can achieve very high efficiencies as well — maybe 60%. The point is that how the plant is run, it’s working capacity factor, has a large influence on efficiency.
My point is, and remains, that had we been keeping the U.S. fleet up to current technology rather than just shuttering plants we’d be far better off now than we are. Period. And that using simple cycle gas to make up for the vagaries of wind/solar is going backward.
How can we continue to burn coal when all the coal miners have moved on to learning to code as Brandon advised them?
Table B-6 of the Transportation Energy Data Book says “generation and distribution efficiency is approximately 33%.” Presumably there’s considerable variation depending on local generation, transmission, and distribution modes.
Transmission loss is ~1%, but would increase as transmission distance increased.
Distribution loss is ~9%, but can double during periods of high load.
Generation losses range from 45% (CCGT) to 75% (SSGT).
Thanks a lot. The distribution:transmission ratio is interesting; I hadn’t been aware of that.
P = EI: The higher the voltage, the lower the current for a given power
P = (I)IR (I squared R) The higher the current, the higher the resistance losses (wires and transformers).
https://uk.farnell.com/i2r-loss-definition
Yes, I know the reason for high-voltage transmission, but I’d never done the math. That ratio suggests that there may be some interesting economic to be found in transformer siting and its relationship to North America’s house-voltage choice.
Modern CCGT generators have capacity factors of around 56.5%
Nuclear generation has a 92.5% capacity factor
Wind = 35.4% CF
Solar = 24.9% CF
I know which I’d rather have
I have seen lower numbers for wind and solar. However, there is a difference between the two. Usually, CCGT’s capacity factor is reduced due to demand, whereas wind and solar just can’t deliver full capacity.
Even the government in the UK only assumes 10.8% for solar. It varies hugely by location. I was surprised to find that 10S of the Equator could be as low as 17.6%. Clouds.
Agree, my data is particularly kind to renewables being at the upper end max, in perfect conditions – in reality wind & solar CFs are far less being weather dependent and we know weather can vary km by km
Transmission losses are often a bit higher that that, ore like 2%, or more in a dispersed grid with long distance links or using HVDC where the conversions will lose up to 2% on their own. Distribution losses also vary. A 240V system may be only 4-6%.
I’m not aware of any “distribution” lines that run at 240V. That is usually the voltage of drops into the residential and small business locations. The distribution lines run higher voltages that is reduced via transformers to 240V.
The real problem in distribution systems is the distribution transformers. Even if the individual loss is 1%, the total number of transformers can result in a pretty large loss.
Correct Jim
Transformers are very useful, but are basically huge lumps of inductive reactance that degrades the system short cct levels and increase losses – there are means of course of mitigating these, both in design and with reactance control schemes, so overall, transformers remain very efficient pieces of kit
Renewables are so cheap and such a success…
“”Industry figures warn climate crisis goals cannot be met unless government pumps more money into renewables””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/05/uk-offshore-wind-at-tipping-point-as-funding-crisis-threatens-industry
In fantasy land, that is.
I would love to know where the “more money” is to come from.
Oh, of course, out of my pocket. Silly me.
And I clicked on the link to read the Guardian piece. Good grief.
But if there is no more money then maybe the whole wind thing will collapse.
If only ….. .
More money….
Ideas like ULEZ fines and exorbitant parking charges
To park outside my own house cost £190 this year
And that’s why many people in towns in the UK are turning their front gardens into paved etc parking spaces increasing the run off when heavy rains fall leading to more flooding in local streets.
“Grid operators are heavily fined, sometimes millions of dollars per year for failure to appropriately regulate power”
One thing I don’t understand is why the grid operators don’t tell the regulators that their regulations can’t work, and that the regulations will be ignored whenever they put the grid at risk or prevent provision of reliable power at a reasonable price. A grid operator ‘on strike’ should sort it all out very quickly, shouldn’t it?
Grid operators are deathly afraid of woke state bureaucrats and politicians who are pressuring them to do away with electricity from domestic and imported fossil, such as by depriving fuel storage and supply piping from gas turbine plants.
Grid operators know the expensive wind/solar route is not possible, because:
1) a fleet of quick-reacting, gas-fired power plants is needed 24/7/365, at a cost of about 2 c/kWh, at 28% wind/solar on the grid, as the U.K. has proven in 2020
More costly in subsequent years, due to inflation, high interest rates and more build-outs of expensive wind/solar
It is hard to get bureaucrats, etc., to sober up regarding their follies; they have such big scare-mongering trumpets, aka Media.
2) batteries would be grossly too expensive, because they would add at least 20 c/kWh to the price of any electricity passing through them,
3) the additional grid extension/augmentation to connect all those wind/solar systems (never call them farms) would add at least 2 c/kWh
The US, with high energy costs, and a bloated government and defense budget, and $trillion dollar trade and budget deficits, a huge national debt, and an open southern border, would be hopelessly less competitive in world markets, which is exactly the intention of European, Japanese, Korean, etc., leaders, although they would never say so out loud
This article has details about wind/solar/batteries/EVs
BIDEN’s GREEN ENERGY POLICY MAY “END IN TEARS”
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/biden-s-green-energy-policy-may-end-in-tears-1
Here is an estimate of offshore wind electricity cost, c/kWh
Assume an offshore project consists of wind turbines and cabling to shore at $4,000/kW.
Amortizing a bank loan for 50% of the project at 6%/y for 20 years will cost about 4.36 c/kWh.
Paying the Owner for his investment of 50% of the project at 9%/y for 20 years will cost about 4.74 c/kWh (9% because of high inflation).
Offshore O&M, about 30 miles out to sea, is at least 6.5 c/kWh.
Total energy cost 4.36 + 4.74 + 6.5 = 16.33 c/kWh
After subsidies, and accelerated depreciation, and deduction of interest on borrowed money, etc., the ANNOUNCED energy cost is at least 8.17 c/kWh (what a bargain!)
Not included are the following:
The levelized cost of any onshore grid expansion/augmentation, about 2 c/kWh
The levelized cost of a fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract/balance the ups and downs of wind output, 24/7/365, about 2 c/kWh
The levelized cost of decommissioning, i.e., disassembly at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites
Floating offshore, as in Maine and California offshore, would be about $6,000 to $7,000 per MW, i.e., the bank loan and Owner return parts of the levelized cost would be correspondingly higher.
The levelized O&M likely would be higher as well
The various subsidies, added to national debts, to make it all politically sellable, would be higher as well
WHAT A BARGAIN FOR POOR MAINE AND DYSFUNCTIONAL CALIFORNIA
Most conventional electricity providers are subject to regulatory whim. If the generating companies do or say anything that doesn’t fit the political agenda, they will be subjected to ill treatment especially rate base regulations. A percent or two of rate case denial by the Regulators can bankrupt a utility. The “Power of the Purse”.
Correct Dennis
In the UK, the grid operator, NG ESO, are always stuck between a rock and an hard place
Having to deal with the Govt induced influx of non linear inverter connected wind, solar & battery storage loads, that swamp the grid with harmonics and degrade grid inertia, is a constant battle, fought every second in control centres
I have no doubt most, if not all, grid Engineers would rather have stable, reliable bulk base load generation from coal, gas & nuclear
Story Tip
Can’t say it’s a surprise.
Climate watchdog head behind boiler ban still has gas heating in his home
Chris Stark said the cost of heat pumps is too high and that it is ‘very difficult’ to install them in existing flats like his
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/12/heat-pumps-chris-stark-campaign-uses-gas-boiler-himself/
“”cost of heat pumps is too high “”
The chair of the CCC is paid £1000 per day, committee members are paid £800 per day – the total bill is over £2 million per year
I started taking a look in more detail at solar in the UK. Government data now includes domestic capacity installed per constituency, which gives an idea of density of installation relative to population, since constituencies are supposed to be similar in voting population.
Here’s the choropleth map in zoomable mouseover form that allows the detail to be examined by constituency.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ApSy6/1
The overall impression clearly shows more installation in the sunnier SW, though the densest installations are outside Cambridge. The Orkneys, Shetland and Hebrides show common sense with low levels of installation: capacity factors would be low. There are pockets of rural Greens that jump out – wealth enclaves – even up in Banff, Scotland. Virtue signalling and subsidy farming at its finest. What us equally noticeable is that the level of installation in cities is much, much lower. I’m not entirely sure why this should be so. In some parts housing is over multiple floors in flats, reducing roof space per home. But there are still plenty of areas with 2 storey homes, some quite affluent, where more might have been expected.
Observations welcome.
I don’t read that thing, (or the data download) as you do – it’s **only** giving the total domestic solar install – there’s no connection with population density.
In fact, the administrative areas are so divided up (if there is any rhyme/reason) so that each one contains a similar number of households to all the others.
Thus and on the zoom-able map, the largest installs are, not surprising, in the largest counties (administrative areas)
And in the SW England, also East Anglia where I am, the areas of ground are very large relative to the population. Not many folks live here
Cambridge does stand out but only because of the highly educated and technical/scienetific folks who work and live around there – Cambridge is a sort of Palo Alto Silicon Valley
If the map tells anything, what’s it’s saying is that the Land Area Density of solar installs in fairly constant = the MW per square kilometre
No, the SW England is NOT sunny, quite the opposite in fact.
The best place in all of UK for solar is = East Anglia and that’s where some immense solar farms are appearing.
Because: Low population density so few complainers and lots of dry, clear sunny weather
That in a way explains the amount of solar up Eastern Scotland. The Highlands/mountains clear the air of clouds so it’s quite sunny up there but the high latitude means that El Sol is in the sky for 16, 17 and 18 hours per day during summer.
(It’s why they grow lots of raspberries up there – the long summer days)
The divisions are Parliamentary constituencies. They are supposed to have similar numbers of voters, and thus of households. Domestic rooftop solar should be related to the number of households, not the area of a sparsely populated constituency such as Powys. Why should city dwellers be so much less inclined to install solar panels? Even supposedly greener hotbeds like Bristol, Bath and Exeter?
Here’s the map as an image as a teaser: the linked mouseover version is worth a look.
Wondering if all these rooftop and other small solar installations will have to be limited or turned off when the sun is shining as more are installed. Solar panels in Illinois are emerging as a supposed way to address financial shortfalls of homeowners, churches, cities and institutions (anyone with a parking lot, roof top or vacant lot). Not if they generate when the grid can’t use it. And, of course, not if the larger government doesn’t print some money to pay for the installation..
On a related note, we might not have our taxes raised by printing money. But inflation is the tax.
Would help the utility company to require that home solar start cutting back at 60.000 Hz all the way to off at 60.020 and above. There are fallacies in that logic unless some stability analysis is done first.
There is more than just frequency stability to worry about.
Distribution networks at the suburban level are not designed to work backwards. Transformers, breakers, fuses, substations are not designed to accept and properly distribute power going backwards in the system.
A really excellent talk.
Two statements near the end (paraphrased from memory):
“If there were more local plants such as nuclear (and it is noted that this was at a Thorium conference) so that regions could be decoupled from the grid then the instability problems would go away.”
and:
“You can spend a trillion dollars answering the wrong question.”
I will nominate this for the best of WUWT.
“I will nominate this for the best of WUWT.”
When the guy starts out trying to tell us that transmission losses are 67.5%???
But you liked the sentiments.
Ah, definitions.
So, Nick, what’s your definition of transmission and distribution losses?
Or do you just quote the AEMO without checking how they calculate it?
At about 1:07 to 2:05 the diagram shows the numbers so you can check if you want.
Yes, he says line losses are 67.5%. That’s nuts. He hasn’t a clue what he is talking about.
I thought that was the problem. Definitions matter.
In first year electrical engineering they sprang a very simple calculation on us, probably to teach us a bit of humility when dealing with the real world.
According to that, in a circuit that transfers electrical energy from one place to another the absolute best you can hope for is to get 50% to the other side. And that’s after any generation efficiency calculations, so a 40% generation efficiency gets only 20% at most to the endpoint.
So 67.5% transmission and distribution losses, not line losses, is in the right ballpark for the real world.
Engineers learn to be humble in the face of the real world because it doesn’t care. As Feynman said – if it doesn’t agree with experiment it’s wrong.
So your dismissal of the talk because of your perception of an apparent error is wrong.
Perhaps I should repeat an admonition from toldyouso below: Please read slowly and carefully.
Story tip. The Scientific American has the solution: Concrete buildings can be batteries. So far they can only get miliamps, but the future is bright.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/concrete-buildings-could-be-turned-into-rechargeable-batteries/
Green Energy: Scientists Propose Turning Your House Foundations into a Scary Supercapacitor
1/ Domestic solar inverters should have been made sensitive to grid frequency much more so that the bang-bang on off function they have.
They should have been made so taht when frequency rises, they throttle themselves down – exactly as all large grid-connected generators do.
But the their owners will grumble about not having enough juice for their own personal consumption but that’s easily sorted as well = that at a certain grid frequency the inverter can divert its output exclusively into the owners home
2/ A DC grid would make everything so much simpler – the grid would then act like one enormous ‘bucket’ and folks could add to it or withdraw from it as they like – within limits
The days of when appliances were dependant on a precise frequency and voltage are all long gone.
Almost everything connected to the grid nowadays (apart from huuuuuge electric motors) – they all convert the incoming power to DC as soon as it comes into them.
And even the big motors are fed through ‘proper’ power conditioning start-up circuits – else for the simple reason they would black out everyone for miles around if simply ‘just switched on’
3/ Putting DC through the existing pylons and wires means you instantly double the power handing capacity without having to lift a finger
The transmission issue was settled 100 years ago between Edison and Tesla. DC power lost the race.
From the above article:
“From Florida to California distribution feeders are being overloaded due to home generation of solar energy” – Pat Hoffman
“Solar energy produced through homes, businesses and other small-scale facilities generated 49 million megawatthours.”
— https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-solar-energy-do-homes-produce/
To put that in perspective, in 2022 the total US consumption of electricity was about 4.05 trillion kWh.
— https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php
So, if one was to conservatively assume 49 million MWh came solely from home solar PV systems and was ALL fed back into the grid, it would only amount to 49 million MWh/4.05 billion MWh = .012 =1.2%.
Thus, the amount of home generated solar PV electricity fed back into electrical grids across the US is actually far less than 1.2% of all electricity used.
I conclude that Pat Hoffman’s statement above is simply incorrect, with the assumption that home feedback into AC grid systems is actively managed by modern phase-synchronizing circuitry incorporated in a home’s necessary DC-AC conversion electronics. Both safety and electrical codes would require this necessary circuitry.
“I conclude that Pat Hoffman’s statement above is simply incorrect”
They are quotes from the 2014 video.
So, since the ratio of home solar electrical generation to total electricity consumption in the US was much lower in 2014 than it is today, her statement was even more absurd back then.
Logic fail. There was much less solar then.
Reading comprehension fail. Trying parsing my phrase “. . .since the ratio of home solar electrical generation to total electricity consumption in the US was much lower in 2014 than it is today . . .” real S-L-O-W-L-Y and C-A-R-E-F-U-L-L-Y.
Got it?
Yes, you’re right.
Home solar and low-power wind are opposed by utilities for the reason presented here, that they contribute to grid operation complications, but they also present a volumetric risk to utilities revenues. Rate setting is a guess as to what rate is needed to cover costs plus a reasonable return on capital. It is a guess based on how much electrical energy will be sold to consumers. Roof top solar presents a risk by reducing the volume sold.
. . . by an insignificant amount.
If you have a generator you want to put on line, you bring the new one up to speed and wait until both sources are in sync. In the old day you would simply use a light bulb and when the light bulb went out you were there and you could connect the two. After that you applied power to the new source and they would stay in sync because of the motor generator effect. If the new source attempted to pull the frequency, the load would be more or less causing the new source to return to sync.
It sound to me like something is very wrong with the design. Modern electronic could transform the shifting frequency to one locked to a time standard. The other option might be phase control in the windings or blade angle. There shouldn’t be enough current coming from a wind field to shift the entire grid. Not to say the grid doesn’t shift because it does but adjustments are constantly made so your digital clock seems to seems to keep perfect time.
As with everything green there seems to be a lack of thought about what if.
The points you made are why the turbines are not connected to the grid. Their output is transmitted to a substation, where it is rectified, combined with the output from the other local turbines and then converted back to AC. More complexity, more losses.
Everything is happening just like sane people said it would. They didn’t listen because 1. It didn’t fit their agenda 2. They believe they’re the experts even though it’s uncharted territory. 3. It would mess up their investment strategy.
Only about half of the electrical engine engineering stuff he was spouting was technically correct. The ideas he had were ok tho. Had to deal with two year tech school “engineers” that made up for their lack of deep understanding with word salad.
Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators and remove all wind and solar from the grid.
Good lord. There are a lot of valid issues touched on by this article, but that is all. Only touched on. What is the point?
One thing that never seems to be discussed is the shifting source of power. In the traditional system, the power stations are fixed and typically placed close to the main centres of demand i.e. cities and industrial complexes. The grid system is then like the public highway with HV transmission lines, and scaling down to serve remoter less demanding communities.
With wind & solar, you never know where the maximum input source is going to be. As a simple example, in the UK, the strongest wind could be right up in the NW of Scotland and SFA in the SE of England, twenty four hours later it could be the exact opposite.
The implications are, that they will have to over engineer the grid, with multiple HV lines, increased transmission losses, and the issue of balancing the grid.
With respect to the latter, the problems of load balancing are the same as how the Internet works, and the public highways. In regard of the last one, they still haven’t got it right.