Roger Caiazza
I am fed up with rent-seeking capitalists and naïve academics who claim that wind, water, and solar resources are the only ones needed to provide reliable electric power. This post shows by way of example that this is an unrealistic argument.
My primary focus over the last several years has been New York’s the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). Robert W. Howarth authored sections of the Climate Act and was a member of the Climate Action Council that is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” . He submitted a statement supporting the Scoping Plan that exemplifies the narrative that no new technology is needed:
I further wish to acknowledge the incredible role that Prof. Mark Jacobson of Stanford has played in moving the entire world towards a carbon-free future, including New York State. A decade ago, Jacobson, I and others laid out a specific plan for New York (Jacobson et al. 2013). In that peer-reviewed analysis, we demonstrated that our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro. We further demonstrated that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago), that it could be cost effective, that it would be hugely beneficial for public health and energy security, and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs. I have seen nothing in the past decade that would dissuade me from pushing for the same path forward. The economic arguments have only grown stronger, the climate crisis more severe. The fundamental arguments remain the same.
https://climate.ny.gov/-/media/project/climate/files/Robert-Howarth.pdf
I addressed Howarth’s claim and others in his statement in a post here late last year. I include this because it exemplifies the idea that wind, sun, and hydro can power New York’s electric grid completely. In this post I consider the challenge of using wind, solar, and hydro to replace one component of the NY grid – New York City’s existing fossil fired units
According to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) Gold Book the New York City (Zone J) fossil generation summer capability in 2022 was 9,026 MW. This represents the capacity needed to replace New York City’s fossil generation capacity at any hour. For the purposes of this thought experiment I am going to ignore reliability rules related to transmission constraints and in-city generation. I assume only that New York City needs dedicated availability of 9,026 MW. There is no chance that an additional 9,026 MW of hydro can be developed in New York and there is no guarantee that the amount of capacity will only be needed during the day which means we cannot use solar. This example estimates how much wind capacity from somewhere will be needed to provide this dedicated capacity requirement.
New York Wind Variability
In May 2022 I published Climate Act and New York State 2021 Wind Resources that evaluated New York State onshore wind availability. I used a New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) resource that provides 2021 wind production and 2021 wind curtailment. The data sets list the hourly total wind production and curtailments for the entire New York Control Area (NYCA). I have summarized the data in the following table. Curtailments are those hours when the system load is small enough that wind production is greater than what is needed so the wind power is curtailed, i.e., not used.
Table 1: NYISO 2021 Hourly Wind Production at the Aggregated NYCA-Wide Level
These data are representative of every wind energy resource data set I have ever seen. See, for example, analyses for Belgium by Michel at the Trust Yet Verify website or for Australia by Anton Lang. The crux of the problem is that low-energy density wind resources are highly correlated across wide areas. Across New York, and other regions, the wind speeds drop across the entire area frequently. Frequently, as in every time a high-pressure system crosses over the area. As a result, the mean annual average availability for all the NYCA onshore wind turbines is only 22% and the median is 16%.
Moreover, I believe it is unlikely that additional sources in a region will change the availability much. I do not expect any significant change to the low-end onshore wind numbers when all the land-based wind resources proposed to meet the Climate Act net-zero transition are developed. The overall distribution of expected offshore wind will be similar although the numbers will show slightly higher availability.
Implications
Wind variability has implications on the use of wind energy to replace firm dispatchable generation. I use these data as a starting point for this analysis to explain why the fact that the wind is always blowing somewhere does not mean it can be used cost-effectively to replace dispatchable fossil-fired generating in an electric grid that relies on wind and solar as claimed by Dr. Howarth and others.
To estimate the wind resources needed to replace New York City’s 9,026 MW of existing fossil-fired generation I will use the distribution of New York land-based wind with the following assumptions. In the absence of offshore observed wind energy historical data, I assumed that the wind production would be increased by a five-percentile category from the onshore wind distributions. In other words, when the onshore wind is at the 75% percentile capacity availability level, I assumed that offshore wind resources are at the 80% capacity level.
Table 2 estimates the amount of land-based or offshore wind capacity from the New York Control Area necessary to replace New York City’s 9,026 MW fossil capacity. Because the observed wind production capability at the 99th percentile is 78%, 11,563 MW of wind turbine capacity are needed (9,026 divided by 78%) to assure replacement of the existing fossil-fired units in New York City. For reliability support the wind resources must be able to cover all the levels of wind resource availability. Half of the time (50th percentile) 55,068 MW of capacity would be needed. In order to ensure reliability, wind capacity must be available at all hours but the wind capacities at the lower end of the distribution are unrealistic so a system dependent upon only wind energy is going to have to go wherever the wind is blowing. The proponents of the wind is always blowing somewhere respond that all New York must do is to import electricity from outside the NYCA to address this but have not used this kind of distribution to determine how much, from how far, would be necessary
Table 2: NYCA Wind Capacity Support Requirements to Replace NYC Fossil – 9,026 MW
To determine how much wind capacity is needed outside of New York, I first determined the
potential wind energy availability within the New York Control Area (NYCA). For capacity potential I used the larger capacity projections for land-base and offshore wind from two different modeling analyses. The offshore wind capacity (MW) in the Integration Analysis Scenario 2: Strategic Use of Low-Carbon Fuels was 12,675 MW. The onshore wind capacity in the NYISO 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlookwas 19,087 MW. Table 3 uses those resource projections to provide estimates of the available energy in the NYCA at each resource potential level. For each percentile I calculated the available capacity at each percentile for on-shore and offshore wind, summed them, and listed the deficit if the sum was less than 9,026 MW. For this thought experiment, the projected wind resources can replace the fossil resources up to the 70th percentile if all the wind power can be dedicated just to New York City at the hour when 9,026 MW of wind capacity is needed in the City. This means that somewhere between 65% and 70% of the time, wind resources outside the NYCA must provide additional power to replace New York City’s existing fossil resources.
Table 3: NYCA Wind Energy Available from Climate Act Wind Resource Projections
Table 4 provides an estimate of the wind generated capacity available to cover the deficit margin in Table 3 outside the control area in an area similar in size and characteristics to the NYCA 500 miles away from New York City. For this thought experiment I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour in this region would be at a production percentile 25% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. I believe that there is higher level of spatial correlation than those who believe that the wind is always blowing somewhere acknowledge. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 65th percentile I presume that 500 miles away the wind resource will be at the 90th percentile. Because I believe that wind in all regions of a similar size to New York will exhibit the same wind distribution pattern, a key takeaway is that wind resources 500 miles away are insufficient to always provide support when power outside the NYCA is needed. The 500-mile resources only cover the NYCA deficit down to 55th NYCA percentile corresponding to the 500-mile 80th percentile. We must go out at least another 500 miles for reliable power.
Table 4: Wind Resource Availability from 10,000 MW of Turbines 500 Miles from NYC
Table 5 provides an estimate of the additional wind generated capacity needed outside the control area in an area 1000 miles away from New York City. I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour would be at a production percentile 50% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 50th percentile I presume that 1000 miles away the wind resource will be at the maximum level of 86%. Importantly, this assumption is the same as assuming there is no correlation between NYCA wind and 1000- mile wind. I do assume that the correlation has the same directionality. In other words, winds in both regions go down at the same time. Of course, it is more complicated because “somewhere else” winds could go up when NYCA winds go down. In order to address that issue an analysis for the entire onshore and offshore wind resource availability is needed.
The 1000-mile resource availabilities s cover the NYCA deficit down to 25th NYCA percentile and the 1000-mile 75th percentile so we must go out another 500 miles to assure replacement of the existing fossil generation.
Table 5: Wind Resource Availability from 10,000 MW of Turbines 1000 Miles from NYC
Table 6 provides an estimate of the additional wind generated capacity needed within NYCA and the 500- and 1000-mile resource areas in an area 1500 miles away from New York City. I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour would be at a production percentile 75% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 5th percentile I presume that 1000 miles away the wind resource will be at the 80th percentile. Even the addition of these resources is insufficient to cover all the power needed by New York City existing fossil resources. However, it is so close that adding another 1,049 MW of capacity in any of the regions would assure that New York City’s existing fossil generation could be replaced by resources where” the wind is always blowing”.
Table 6: Wind Resource Availability 1500 Miles from NYC
Discussion
The forgoing analysis confirms that the wind is indeed always blowing somewhere and that wind energy resources could replace the existing fossil generation in New York City as suggested by Howarth and others However, just because it is possible does not mean it is feasible. The fatal flaw is that New York City requires dedicated resources to replace existing generation when it is needed to keep the lights on. This is particularly important because the high pressure systems that characterize low wind availability over large areas also are associated with hottest and coldest periods of the year when the electric load peaks and the need for reliable power is the greatest.
Existing fossil generation capacity in New York City totals 9,026 MW. New York’s Climate Act projected onshore and offshore wind planned capacity is 31,762 MW. Relying on wind only requires another 30,000 MW located “somewhere else”. The fatal flaw to the wind blowing “somewhere else” argument for New York City is that those resources must be dedicated to New York City. The idea that anyone could afford to build 10,000 MW and 500 mile transmission lines for use as backup that will only be used 65% of the time, another 10,000 MW and 1,000 mile transmission lines for backup 50% of the time, and another 10,000 MW with 1,00 mile transmission lines for backup 25% of the time is disconnected from reality.
Of course, there are suggestions that the surplus power could be stored in batteries or used to make “green hydrogen” to address the low wind availability problem. However, Howarth claimed that New York “could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro” and that “it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago) and that that it could be cost effective”. This simple analysis suggests otherwise.
I agree with Francis Menton who has argued that we need a demonstration project to prove all the wind, solar, and energy storage components necessary for a zero-emissions electric grid that does not rely on nuclear power can work. In addition, I believe that a comprehensive analysis of wind and solar resource availability across the continent that addresses the correlation and energy density deficiencies of wind and solar is also needed. Based on my work, I think that this sort of analysis would show the need for far more resources than anyone is contemplating at this time.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
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Being innumerate is a requirement for being a Green.
“But it’s all free!”
The Bloomberg green-energy research team estimated $200 trillion to stop warming by 2050. That is about $US 1 million per middle-class household over 27 years.
The wind IS always blowing someplace…but…you have to get it from that Someplace to concurrent multiple other places where it is blowing too little or too much.
Not that CO2 controls the weather but controlling CO2 WILL NOT control the weather. Bad weather will still happen regardless and generation that can’t operate in less than optimal weather is utterly useless for a modern society where energy has to be available when needed rather than only when generated. Society can’t function with intermittent generation sources. Even if the fuel is free, storing it and transmitting it from source to load is expensive AND harvesting Free Energy is Costly
A Senator Kennedy style question that needs to be asked of “experts” at the next “Climate” hearing:
“If globally we were to make all of the CO2 reductions the IPCC suggests, does that mean we will never have another hurricane, flood or wild fire?”
“If not, what % reduction will occur?”
You will remember that at the last hearing when the Senator asked 3 experts “If we spend what you want, by what amount will temperatures be reduced?” None of the “experts” were able to answer – beyond “I don’t know.”
Or questioning like Lamar’s.
U.S. House Science Committee – July 9, 2015
CHAIRMAN LAMAR SMITH: “On the Clean Power Plan, former Obama Administration Assistant Secretary Charles McConnell said at best it will reduce global temperature by only one one-hundredth of a degree Celsius. At the same time it’s going to increase the cost of electricity. That’s going to hurt the lowest income Americans the most. How do you justify such an expensive, burdensome, onerous rule that’s really not going to do much good and isn’t this all pain and no gain.
ADMINISTRATOR GINA MCCARTHY: “No sir, I don’t agree with you. If you look at the RIA we did, the Regulatory Impact Analysis you would see it’s enormously beneficial.
CHAIRMAN SMITH: “Do you consider one one-hundredth of a degree to be enormously beneficial?”
ADMINISTRATOR MCCARTHY: “The value of this rule is not measured in that way. It is measured in showing strong domestic action which can actually trigger global action to address what’s a necessary action to protect…”
CHAIRMAN SMITH: “Do you disagree with my one one-hundredth of a degree figure? Do you disagree with the one one-hundredth of a degree?”
ADMINISTRATOR MCCARTHY: “I’m not disagreeing that this action in and of itself will not make all the difference we need to address climate action, but what I’m saying is that if we don’t take action domestically we will never get started and we’ll never…”
Virtue signaling counts more than people’s actual lives. Any bleeding heart liberal should be joining MAGA because of these traitors to social welfare. Just out of spite, if nothing else.
Sometimes the someplace is just out in the middle of the big oceans. There the winds can be very stormy, so turbines might have to pinwheel to try to avoid self destruction. They would have to be floating. Anchoring them in ocean 2-4 miles deep would be problematic and costly. Then cables to shore through the ocean deep…
Google “duldrums” – those are windless days/areas out on the ocean that could kill a crew in the days of sail.
So all the after tax money goes to the green cult building of rotating and/or shiny idols in the hopes of changing the weather.
Sort of like the Aztecs working everyone to death 💀 and then actually sacrificing some for real everyday to keep the Sun rising in the sky.
I wish the wind analysis had used daily wind info to work backwards what level of renewables would be needed – correct me if I’m wrong but looking at the statistical breakdown might hide the need for more capacity if there is a long stretch of low or no capacity.
Also guesses were used for outer areas, but isn’t there any real data available?
If it was free, then why does wind need large subsidies?
There is nothing more costly than harvesting low density free energy.
This is a great question, much like how I have to pay for someone else to drive a battery car.
Some of the most expensive things in life, are free.
“If it was free, then why does wind need large subsidies?”
Shhhhh, asking questions is part of old fashioned science. The new, consensus of the best minds science requires that we just believe the narrative.
Perhaps innumerate is an explanation, but even if they are able to muddle through calculations and are not technically innumerate, numbers don’t have any meaning for them. They are unable to visualize not just the factors of 10 involved but the factors of 1,000.
Wasn’t it Donovan who, in a famous song, used trying to catch the wind as a simile for a useless activity|?
Dylan.
Donovan – Catch the wind
I stand corrected.
I think I saw Donovan in the ’60s- but then again, if you remember the ’60s you weren’t there. (not sure who started that joke about the ’60s but I’ve always liked it)
Me too. Donovan’s “Young Girl Blues” (the live version) is worth looking up, too.
So the answer isn’t blowing in the wind?
What is the kinetic energy of a rolling stone?
Roger, This is a very good analysis that helps reveal the always moving goal posts in this topic as just magical thinking.
I often point out to people that there are no hydro resources left to develop in the U.S. that can act to balance non-dispatchable sources, nor any that can act as effective grid-scale storage; and people are determined to remove a lot of what we do have.
A corollary to this “wind is always blowing somewhere” theorem is and “we can have wind provide a balance with solar”. Probably not. I have looked nationwide and within various regions; wind and solar at times are somewhat anticorrelated so that one could balance the other in principle, but are postively correlated at other times, and have no correlation at other times still.
Out here we feel the wind blows all the time, but it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t here then it generally isn’t blowing in the entire 11 state surrounding region either. I have observed days when it isn’t blowing anywhere in North America except around Hudson Bay. We can be assured of times when everyone will be bidding on the imbalance markets for the same resource.
Regarding hydro resources- there is a lot of potential in the Adirondacks in upstate NY, but the enviros have most of that vast region locked up. That region also has a tremendous forest resource that may not be touched- while the price of wood in your local lumber yard is rapidly going up.
The enviros HATE hydro as an energy source and fight to take down dams everywhere- so there is no future for hydro in America. There will be less over time not more. The same for forest resources as more and more get locked up every year.
Kind of brings us back to every plan to save the planet with renewable energy will destroy the natural environment.
There are a lot of small hydros in the Adirondacks now but getting them re-licensed was challenging and, as you say, the opportunity for anyting else is nil.
A gentle breeze that is sufficient to cool the skin, usually isn’t strong enough to turn a windmill blade.
Just because the wind is blowing, doesn’t prove you can get energy from it.
The wind is blowing “somewhere”
Is there a lot of wind in that “somewhere” place?
Is the somewhere place moving around?
Do we have wind turbines in all the “somewhere” places?
Turn the US into a collection of pin cushions, plus a lot of wires to connect them and to where people are consuming the electricity?
US/UK 66,000 MW OF OFFSHORE WIND BY 2030; AN EXPENSIVE FANTASY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/biden-30-000-mw-of-offshore-wind-systems-by-2030-a-total-fantasy
EXCERPTS
New York State had signed contracts with EU big wind companies for four offshore wind projects
Sometime later, the companies were trying to coerce an additional $25.35 billion (per Wind Watch) from New York ratepayers and taxpayers over at least 20 years, because they had bid at lower prices than they should have.
New York State denied the request on October 12, 2023; “a deal is a deal”, said the Commissioner
Owners want a return on investment of at least 10%/y, if bank loans for risky projects are 6.5%/y.
The 3.5% is a minimum for all the years of hassles of designing, building, erecting, and paperwork of a project
Below contract prices, paid by Utilities to owners, are after a 50% reduction, due to US subsidies provided, per various laws, by the US Treasury to the owners. See Items 4 and 6
Oersted, Denmark, Sunrise wind, contracted at $110.37/MWh, contractor needs $139.99/MWh, a 27% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 1 wind, contracted at $118.38/MWh, contractor needs $159.64/MWh, a 35% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 2 wind, contracted at $107.50/MWh, contractor needs $177.84/MWh, a 66% increase
Equinor, Norway, Beacon Wind, contracted at $118.00/MWh, contractor needs $190.82/MWh, a 62% increase
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/liars-lies-exposed-as-wind-electricity-price-increases-by-66-wake
The EIA continues its phony LCOE evaluations of wind and solar, which exclude major LCOE items, regarding:
Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement and very expensive battery system storage
A fleet of quick-reacting power plants for counteracting/balancing the variable output of wind/solar
Additional power plants for making up the electricity shortfall during low wind/solar conditions
Output curtailments during high wind/solar conditions, i.e., paying owners not to produce what they could have produced
Wind and solar would not exist without at least 50% subsidies and above freebies
.
In the Pacific NorthWest, after 5 days of almost no wind there was an amazing burst for one day, then if dropped again. Here, hydro fills the need. That is not possible most places.
BPA Balancing Authority Load and Total VER
This is an active moving chart, updated at 5-minute intervals. In a few days that burst will no longer be visible.
Starting tonight (10/24/23) the first blast of winter is entering the region. Serious cold temperatures will occur for most of Washington State and eastward. Mountain snow will be big news.
For the many times that I have driven through the Wild Horse wind farm just east of Ellensburg, Wa,–most of the windmills don’t seem to be turning. I wonder how many raptors they kill a day? Isn’t it interesting that killing raptors doesn’t matter, if it’s in the name of climate change?
“Dont seem to be turning”
thats their little secret , brake the rotors and get paid to provide on call reserve generation.
That you might have oversold the actual reserves you have on tap due to variable wind is a bonus. All those extra smart ‘quants’ you have hired work it out that you can spread that risk like a bookmaker does and it turns out bad , maybe pay a penalty of some minor kind.
The battery backups are also onto that game, very little juice flows from the batteries , the majority of the stored capacity is making free money as reserves. Nice earner as you dont have to buy much electricity to recharge your cells
And our governor is a major AGW advocate. The next one in line isn’t much better.
“…thats their little secret , brake the rotors and get paid to provide on call reserve generation.”
Which touches on some further questions I have.
Does the author assume that the ‘other places’ have sufficient SPARE wind capacity to sell to New York when needed?
Might they have mixed generation backup capacity and would they be willing to sell only wind capacity to New York at a non-extortionate rate? After all, those generators probably quite like to turn a profit when possible.
Lastly, shurely New York has no way of knowing or differentiating how their imported energy is generated if they are trying to be true to their self-imposed mandates.
If they have anything to spare, it means that they have over built based on their own needs. The notion that the wind is always blowing somewhere means you want every region to over build, so that there will always be excess capacity.
In other words, every body (and I do mean everybody) has to first build what they need for their own needs, then triple it.
In addition to what Mark W said: In this analysis I tried to estimate what would be needed to completely replace New York City generation capacity so no SPARE capacity was considered because there is nothing to say that the spare capacity would be available when needed.
Your last two questions are reasonable because they reflect reality. I took the path consistent with the true believers that new wind located somewhere is sufficient to meet New York City’s fossil capacity.
In order to do this right, the renewable capacities across the continent have to be matched with the load requirements across the continent on and hour by hour basis to see what is needed and where. I think that is the only way to plan for the “net zero” emissions grid that does not include a lot of nuclear.
Thanks Roger.
The greens would sacrifice virgins in volcanoes if they thought that would produce electricity- and if they could find any virgins.
“Mountain snow will be big news.”
OMG! A disaster- caused by…. climate change! 🙂
Even in the broad peak of wind resources there was a spike in lower availability. The challenges for the grid operators are going to be immense.
There is a basic error with this analysis that makes it useless. There are not enough people feeling enough financial pain yet to vote the fools pushing the green agenda out of office.
A cold winter when the power dies could change that. That might swing the pendulum back toward sanity.
There’s a great post under Scott Adams’ X (Twitter) post: “Lol, we have learned nothing.
It’s a cartoon showing two red buttons. One says “Try the same thing,” and the other says, “Try the same thing.” The stupid liberal can’t figure out which one to push.
It drives me crazy that Howarth and others like him can lie flat out and not be held accountable. We must find or create a forum where he is made to show his work and fully answer and justify all shortcomings of his plan. This forum can not be a fixture of the CAGW crowd. If he can’t convincingly make his point he needs to shut up. If he doesn’t shut up he is arrested. Lying is not okay, it must stop.
If you believe in free speech, then lying comes with the territory. I reiterate, the term “honest politician” is an oxymoron. Buyer beware!
LOL.
I like the quip: “Definition of an honest politician: one that stays bought.”
But yes; the Howarths & Jacobsons and all the other climate grifters of the world need to be called-out with facts & ridiculed, not silenced.
And as Rick Will mentions above, a collapse of the grid during either a cold or hot spell is likely the only thing to finally discredit the alarmists’ climate hobgoblin. They are too well entrenched otherwise.
Even that may not be sufficient. Look how easy it was for them to convince the myrmidons that the problems with the Texas grid a few winters ago, were the fault of Natural gas, not wind and solar.
Robert W. Howarth is quoted as claiming: “and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs.”
How does that work? Same amount of power, more jobs – who pays for those new job holder’s paychecks?
Only answer I can figure out is taxpayer subsidies or in our power bills. Either way WE PAY MORE FOR SaME POWER. (Of course it’s not really the same as it will be less reliable.)
Thanks
JK
The greatest stimulant to ‘well-paying’ jobs is the expansion of the public sector. Of course this expansion of all the ‘imaginary’ high value jobs comes at the expense of the tax payer because no public sector worker pays any income tax, and every other tax they pay is simply other tax payers money, one step along on the circulation of money economy system.
When these carpet baggers/snake oil sales persons, or Climate Crisis advocates to give them their actual title, claim the new low cost renewable energy will provide lots of high paid employment, we should ask what are the specific jobs they imagine are being created? Further we might ask, how will they be paid for if energy being produced is going to be so cheap?
I was about to flag up “large increase” in head-count and payroll but you’ve beaten me to it.
We see often see that purported benefit trotted out. It needs to be shouted down. Every. Time.
I won’t bother explaining here why it’s a ludicrous thing to try to feature—it seems to be plain to everyone here already. I’ll just add that no one capable of thinking like that should be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.
Ron Clutz wrote an article describing an article by Irina Slav that lists the rules strictly followed by leaders of the Great Energy Transition at her substack Irina Slav on Energy.
Rule #1: We do not talk about the problems. (Unless we absolutely have to.)
Rule #2: Facts are obsolete. Only the transition matters. (Until facts punch you in the face.)
Rule #3: Tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it
Rule #4: If it’s failing, double down
Rule #5: Words and numbers are weapons
Rule #6: Questions are denial
I suggest Howarth is using Rule #2 – only the transition matters and facts are obsolete. Any politician making the same claim would have said large increase in well-paying union jobs to appeal to a particular constituency.
Rule #1: The Climate Scientist™ is always right.
Rule #2: If you ever find evidence that the Climate Scientist™ is incorrect, see rule #1
Only Climate Deniers go looking for the truth.
IIRC the Wall Street Journal mentioned renewable energy jobs in the US averaged ~$50,000/yr while oil/gas industry was ~$75,000/yr. And note that once a solar farm is built the major job is just periodically cleaning the panels.
rent-seeking capitalists and naïve academics
There’s nothing naive about the academics. Their goal is funding for their research institutes and that comes from research into catastrophic possibilities, even if they have to make them up. No government agency or NGO is going finance research into the content of dreams, alternatives to wood-based toilet paper or improvements in highway surfacing. When they propose the solution to serious imaginary problems, like boiling oceans or disappearing tropical islands, nascent businesses are quick to get in line for the contracts, especially when those contracts are on a twenty or thirty year time line.
The general public is aware that there are questions about ecology but the overheating of the earth is something that they don’t incessantly worry about. It doesn’t seem that immediate. No adult thinks that the earth will become even somewhat uncomfortable during his remaining life span because people drive Buicks instead of Teslas. At this particular moment they should be concerned about the willful detonation of nuclear weapons, something that is much more likely to occur than the disappearance of the Greenland ice cap. Maybe the climate warming mania is meant to mask the nuclear belligerence of the West so people don’t insist on a rational US foreign policy.
I agree about the academics but was giving them some benefit of doubt. I think they are naive because they don’t understand the power sector well enought to see the issues with their recommendations. If they are not naive then they are charlatans. Not sure how many fit that label.
If they fail to see the issues with their recommendations they are failures as academics. The fact that prominent professors usually end up at prestigious universities indicates that there’s a hierarchy in academia. Some academic figures thus occupy the lowest spots in that totem pole. This is the major way schools like Harvard maintain their perceived superiority, by hiring Nobel prize winners and published theorists in many fields for their faculties.
Academics are neither naive nor charlatans. In this case they are opportunists. The climate gurus recognize that this is their chance for financial and social rewards and that they would be fools to ignore something that their colleagues in liberal arts or some STEM fields will never have. Since they have sterling reputations that encourage parents to spend huge amounts to purchase admittance to a higher social class for their children, those same parents and the graduates will criticize the economics of education but remain convinced that the individuals involved are ethically spotless. It ain’t so.
Nuclear belligerence? Where?
The only countries being belligerent today are not typically associated with the West.
Rent seeking capitalists are more accurately called socialists. Or fascist to be even more precise.
The problem with the “wind always blows somewhere” nonsense is that every area then has to be massively overbuilt to be able to provide its own electricity plus that for at least two other neighboring “units”.
So New York has 20% solar availability (just like us in AB) so they must build 5x but because they have to do their part for the greater good they must build 15x
So 9gw is actually 135gw, assuming 5mw turbines that means 27,000 wind turbines just for New York as part of this fanciful renewable grid all tied together and supporting each other like true communists.
And don’t forget the massive transmission to connect all this.
Talk about impossibilities.
Think of Feb 2021, that arctic high pressure stretched from canada down to the gulf, a massive area.
Jacobson is a moron.
“Jacobson is a moron.”
Please! Don’t assign more intelligence to these people than they deserve.
Idiots. —Those so defective that the mental development never exceeds that or a normal child of about two years.
Imbeciles. —Those whose development is higher than that of an idiot, but whose intelligence does not exceed that of a normal child of about seven years.
Morons. —Those whose mental development is above that of an imbecile, but does not exceed that of a normal child of about twelve years.
— Edmund Burke Huey, Backward and Feeble-Minded Children, 1912
“And don’t forget the massive transmission to connect all this.”
Everybody hates transmission lines. Just wait until tens of thousands of miles of new lines are proposed to operate continental scale “green” energy. This problem alone might stop the green blight.
Remember to put a $ value on this overbuild need: “…for the greater good they must build 15x”. That leads us to 15 times $(current Wind & Solar investment) for every grid in the US of WORLD. All to be paid by their users/tax payers.
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The cost for every electron generated today will be increased 15 times.
Most intelligently ripped a new one by Blair King here:
https://achemistinlangley.net/2018/11/27/revisiting-100-wind-water-and-sunlight-for-canada-an-ill-advised-approach-to-fight-climate-change/
There is plenty of data from other parts of the country or the world about the pathetic unreliability of wind power.
The graphic shows Texas wind power in July of this year. Marked diurnal variation (desert with large swings in temperature during a 24 hour period) and marked day to day variation as well.
Wind is not fit for purpose for the electric grid.
The proponents must be brought to justice.
“The proponents must be brought to justice.”
It’s not too darn likely! One would wish it were so!
Dam Likely
Sounds like a good name for a hydroelectric facility.
while intermittency is a problem that cannot sensibly or economically be overcome (e.g. using storage for instance) that is by no means the only problem wind and solar have to overcome.
The grid must always be in load and supply balance on an instantaneous basis which means that it must be possible to finely control the input. which is not the case with wind and solar. Other deficiencies are a lack of inertia to damp frequency variation, lack of reactive power input necessary for stable voltage control and a lack of short circuit current level support necessary for proportionate and timely grid protection systems.
I have my doubts that theses ‘peer reviewed’ report authors are even aware of the technicalities involved in generation and grid operation?.
Why aren’t all the grid operators up in arms over this? Are they speaking up about it or have they been paid off?
Political correctness and optics are two reasons the operators are not publicly screaming. I hope that behiind the scenes they are talking to the politicians foisting this crap on us. I bet the next stage will be finding a scapegoat to deflect blame.
I dunno. This is all way out of my knowledge- so just guessing- perhaps the grid operators see gold in all this- if a vast new grid must be built?
When we consider Joel’s above chart put on an instantaneous vs averaged 1/4basis, then we can see how sever is the problem for: “The grid must always be in load and supply balance on an instantaneous basis which means that it must be possible to finely control the input. which is not the case with wind and solar. Other deficiencies are a lack of inertia to damp frequency variation, lack of reactive power input necessary for stable voltage control and a lack of short circuit current level support necessary for proportionate and timely grid protection systems.”
Then we must add the infrastructure (physical and management) to the above highlighted needs and almost5 instantaneously get those excess electrons to the right portion of the grid(s). The requires nationwide or even larger grid management.
f course that leaves grids like ERCOT where its managed for cost until they don’t and people die as in Winter Storm Uri.
Not fit for the purpose. Not feasible. Not rational. But, still DEMANDED by the GREENS.
It is an amazement.
If you let the grid and generation be run by companies who make a few percent profit supplying their customers needs, it will be more reliable for customers than a grid that is supplying what politicians think the grid needs to supply…..
Letting a politician be in charge of anything is always a mistake.
I’ve had this discussion many times in recent years. For the UK, almost twice the area of New York State, wind conditions are pretty similar across the country, north West Scotland being a bit windier. Expanding to Europe the Benelux, Denmark and Germany have similar wind conditions most of the time. Only Spain seems to vary slightly, possibly because of its Mediterranean coast.
All this is visible in the electricity generation data. Which shows today it’s lowish wind in NW Europe.
The wind doesn’t always blow somewhere in NW Europe.
Typo alert: What should be Table 6 is showing an image of a headline from the Telegraph
I do not see that problem in my feed.
Weird. I see the newspaper headline in the article, yet when I open the image in a new tab I get this correct version.
Very weird
Correction
we need a demonstration project to prove all the wind, solar, and energy storage components necessary for a zero-emissions electric grid that does not rely on nuclear power can work and is cost effective/affordable
Every green politician should be challenged to show one demonstration/pilot project to prove that the investment in their cause will work before we plough trillions into worthless green projects. Only a fool ploughs huge sums of money into something in the hopes it may work. It is like building a brick kiln for 1000 bricks to test new combinations of materials rather than setting up a production unit for untested materials and baking 100 000 bricks to see it flop.
“Only a fool ploughs huge sums of money into something in the hopes it may work.”
Even a fool won’t plough HIS OWN money into a hopeless venture.
Good point! There still is a chance, however remote, that one of these green schemes could “work”. Add cost effective and affordable and there is no way.
If I understand this, it seems to be saying that peak demand in NYS is 9,026 MW, and that to deliver this from wind you would need about 7 times that, or 62,000MW.
If we apply this reasoning to the UK, peak demand is about 48GW. So we would apparently need about 336GW to supply it, assuming the wind behaves pretty much the same as in NYS.
There’s 28GW of faceplate wind installed in the UK. We know what it produces. Last month’s hourly numbers were:
minimum: 0.099 GW
maximum: 15.426 GW
average: 5.589 GW
So the minimum, under the 336GW scenario, would be about 12GW. Now, the minimum doesn’t happen that often or last all that long. Maybe you can get by that with storage of some sort at a reasonable cost and effort. But less than 1GW happens frequently, and lasts for a day at a time.
http://www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind
Be careful when looking at these charts, because the lower ones are daily averages. You only really get an idea about the implications of intermittency as it is at the moment by looking at the hourly production fluctuations, as in the upper charts.
It can’t be done, can it?
Its impossible to build 336GW of wind, or anything close to it, in any reasonable time period. Even if you could build it, raw materials and construction constraints aside, you couldn’t afford it. If you could afford it and could do it, the thing that would really sink it would be the constraints. You’d often be producing 200gW+ for a day, when demand was around 40GW. The upside has the same peaks as the low side, its just the regular stream of weather systems across the Atlantic.
And even if you could afford and build it and manage the surpluses, its still not enough to deal with the calms. There are, two or three times a year, almost total calms which go on for a week or ten days. Even your 336GW is not going to cover for them.
And then, just to make it even more interesting, the UK is proposing to at least double demand by moving everyone to EVs and heat pumps. So we have, one cold, calm, dark January, demand north of 100GW and supply from wind at the moment under 1GW from the 28GW installed at the moment.
Under this new dispensation there would be 336GW installed, and it would be delivering well under 20GW for a full week or ten days, with peak demand hitting 100GW and average around 60GW.
At the moment the UK has 39 CCGT generation stations and 30 Open Cycle ones for a total of 69 gas powered plants. How many more Open Cycle ones would be needed to make this crazy scenario have even a chance of working? And how much transmission?
It is completely impossible. At the moment the wind auctions have failed to attract any bidders. So at the moment there is no way of moving any closer to Net Zero in generation, but also at the moment they are not backing off on the plans to move everyone to electricity and thus double demand. This carries on, its a recipe for nationwide blackouts, several a year, and rolling regional blackouts more often.
Set prices high enough to attract wind bidders, and you still don’t get enough power for the Net Zero plans. But you get high prices along with the blackouts.
The alternative, which they will not go for, is keep the auction prices low, get no wind bidders, and quietly install more CCGT to meet the extra demand. But no political party with a chance at power is going to even discuss that.
The Net Zero plans are impossible, even for electricity generation. As for the other two thirds of energy consumption, dream on….
Looking at the dominance of wishful thinking and innumeracy among all political parties on this subject, the obvious conclusion you come to is, get your bike serviced, and install a solid fuel stove! You will need both.
Let me clarify my thought experiment. The 9,026 MW refers only to the New York City existing fossil generation capacity. Environmental Justice advocates are demanding that these units be shut down as soon as possible because they believe that existing technology is available and cost-effective today. One line of reasoning to support this is the Jacobson wind, water, and solar approach that Howarth supports. I tried to limit this experiment just to NYC fossil capacity replacement and hopefully showed that using only wind, water, and solar won’t work.
The fundamental problem is the correlation of wind and solar. Trying to fill in when they are both low for extended periods is an enormous challenge as you showed. Net zero plans are impossible.
OK, thanks, I didn’t read carefully enough. To do the UK properly in the same way you’d have to figure out just what it would take to replace the gas generation. Same point though, double demand, as they are planning to do, and even 10 x the current faceplate isn’t going to cut it. Yes, its impossible.
The sort of amazing thing about the UK is that you can get detailed graphical info on performance of wind from three or four sites, you can even download, free, hourly generation stats for years back in csv form, Its not like its very hard to see what this is all telling us. And yet the politicians and media seem unable or unwilling to look and see.
The only question is whether they blink in time, and what happens if they don’t blink. From all I can see, there is no sign of them blinking, so get ready for blackouts.
To add to the stupidity the UK National Infrastructure Commission wants to take 8m households off the gas grid to ‘cleaner alternatives by 2035’.
They totally ignore the fact that current UK energy prices per kWh are 7p for gas and 27p for electricity (both inclusive of VAT) So almost a quadrupling in cost for those consumers.
Plus there are over a further 14m homes currently on the gas grid!
Yet still the myth of ‘cheaper clean energy’ won’t die
You can’t use wind, solar, or BES in a blackstart event. You need hydro. But even hydro needs a backup generation source to start back up and establish frequency stabilization. Another wind farm was taken offline yesterday. I say “offline” but the truth is that field never produced any energy. What a boondoggle.
If you look at the challenge of providing 24-7 365 electricity using generation from wind, solar, water, energy storage, and a magical emissions-free dispatchable resource, it appears impossible. When you add all the other stuff, like black start capabilities, that electric system operators rely on to keep the system working the impossibility factor goes up an order of magnitude.
The problem I see is who ponies up the capital to do this? Is New York going to furnish the investment and operational expenses at remote locations? My guess is that New York expects remote states to do the investment/operational costs and only pay minimal prices when the power is needed.
Other people’s money will run out very quickly!
May I suggest a different approach? First, identify periods of low wind affecting wind farms in NY. Then look up the wind speed map for the surrounding area including offshore at say 100m altitude, corresponding to a typical turbine hub height. As a simple example I looked at the past week of hourly data for NYISO here (scroll down for generation charts)
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/regional/REG-NY
and found 18th October was a low wind day (although there were a few hours with even lower wind output). I chose 1500 EDT or 1900Z for the map, which I set to report wind speeds in m/sec, as that is most commonly used in turbine power curve charts. Over a vast swathe of the Eastern seaboard wind speeds are inadequate even to achieve cut-in (typically around 3m/sec). You have to go a long way offshore to find strong enough winds. Go back in the history and you will find much more challenging situations.
The New York Independent System Operator and the New York State Reliability Council’s Extreme Weather Working Group are doing just such an analysis. NY will have 21 years of data available for onshore, offshore, and solar very soon. They calculated resource availability based on meteorological data for every county in NY.
I mantain that is not enough of a period and have recommended using a data set that goes back to 1950. They may not have to do resource availability for every hour but they could identify worst case periods and then calculate resource availability. The challenge is how many resources should be allocated to a once in 73-year event. Using renewables means your resources could run out. Using fossil fuels that can be stored and transported in to keep plants running is a much more robust approach.
I don’t know where you’d find data going back to 1950, unless it is from weather stations. There is this resource:
https://www.renewables.ninja/
which goes back to 1980 using MERRA-2 reanalysis. There are data for atmospheric density as well as wind speed, and a large database of turbine power curves (although not some of the very latest models where such data are evidently still considered proprietary). I’ve started looking at the turbine power curve data (available via github) to evaluate it for sanity checks such as efficiency relative to the Betz limit: I did find some implausibly high claims which I corrected in some cases by finding that the true swept diameter was larger than implied in the model name. More sophisticated analysis would account for blade degradation reducing efficiency and maintenance downtime.
Unfortunately pre-prepared data sets are only available for European countries. Worth exploring the site to understand what it does and doesn’t offer.
Thre is a data set of the iobservations used as to initialize weather forecast models that goes back to 1950. The idea is to use the every 12-hour information to create hourly meteorological fields that can drive the assessments of wind and solar resource availability. I am confident that such an analysis could identify the worst cast conditions by basically looking for really big high pressure systems that stagnate in one place. I have been whining that New York needs to do this for years now but I remain hopeful that someday it will get done.
Poor proof reading – what I meant to say: The idea is to use the every 12-hour information to create hourly meteorological fields using weather forecast models that can drive the assessments of wind and solar resource availability.
Among other things this all assumes that distant flyover states would be very willing to permit large wind farms and transmission lines with the knowledge that all the power would be exported to the likes of NYC. Most states can’t meet the goals they set for themselves 20 years ago anyway. I can’t see why they would agree to that scheme.
New York City’s existing fossil fired units
I would like to see even a small town powered 100% by wind and solar.
That’s OK. NYC can just get more hydropower from Canada or its resource colony (upstate NY) to supply its needs. Nothing must disrupt the international capital of entertainment and financial speculation as they signal their many virtues.
Keep your eye on the pea!
“with technologies available at that time (a decade ago).”
Then why have those technologies not been adopted by private industry on a large scale by now?
Because they were not economically feasible and still are not.
(That’s aside of the the question of whether they were really “technically” feasible a decade ago; this article being just one example.)
To me Jacobson’s paper was a collection of hopes and fairy dust when published; awaiting a series of “breakthrough” developments.
Let’s assume the world consists of two regions, Region A and Region B.
Under the theory that the wind is always blowing somewhere, we will assume that either Region A or Region B will always have wind.
Therefore if Region A has no wind, they can be supplied with electricity from Region B, which does have wind. And vice versa.
The unspoken assumption here is that Region A must have enough windmills to power itself and Region B. The same goes for Region B.
This means that both Regions A and B are going to have to build twice as many windmills. Enough to supply their own needs as well as the other regions needs.
Now for the real world. There are a lot more than 2 regions. Do the math.
I was trying to give a simple example how this is impossible but you did a better job. Thanks
It is of course insufficient to have reduced correlation between areas: you actually need anti-correlation, so that when one is low the other is high. That is where things get tough. This study
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/we.2095
makes a rudimentary attempt to look at Europe, but unfortunately the authors failed to recognise e.g. the importance of the Alps in dividing up European weather zones, and they made no attempt to consider periods of Dunkelflaute or long term data series that are essential in this kind of work. However, not one of their country pair correlations is even modestly negative.
When you look at the copper plate grid assumed for their interconnected model, we find that average capacity factors are a bit under 25%, but 10% of the time even if you had gross capacity equal to 10 times average demand (enough to produce around 2.5 times as much energy as demand over a year) production would fall short of average demand.
Great point! Thanks
Very nice!
Very nice, makes the point clearly and succinctly.
Very convincing. Anyone who says ‘carbon’ when they mean carbon dioxide is idle, has an agenda, or is lying
Roger ==> In your use of remote wind, isn’t it necessary to only count that remote area’s excess power? Power not consumed locally by that remote area ? NYC can’t use it unless the remote area is willing to sell it. They won’t sell it if their own area needs it.
I assumed that the required wind power would be built for and dedicated to replace New York City generation capacity. Howarth et al. don’t seem to be able to grasp the fact that in-city generation is dedicated to provide power for the City so whatever resources are supposed to replace those facilities also has to be dedicated. That means you cannot count on remote area excess power as you point out.