From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
One colleague contacted me regarding his MP, who is vice-chair of the Climate All Party Parliamentary Group. She supports the Net Zero agenda and agrees with plans to massively increase offshore wind capacity.
He asked me to prepare a summary of the “No” case, to put alongside her version.
I have therefore prepared a Factsheet, which I show below.
It might come in handy if anybody else wishes to grill their MP!
OFFSHORE WIND POWER FACTSHEET
COSTS
- The new Administrative Strike Price for offshore wind is £73/MWh at 2012 prices. This equals £100.27 at today’s prices. By the time new projects are commissioned they will be much higher because of indexation. (1)
- The market price of electricity was £78.22/MWh in October, according to OFCOM. (2)
- According to the latest DESNZ data, the levelised cost of CCGT gas-fired electricity is currently £54/MWh, excl Carbon Tax. (3)
- New offshore wind power is clearly much more expensive than gas, even before taking into account the extra billions in wider system costs – system balancing, standby generation, upgrades to transmission grids, constraint payments, etc.
- Existing offshore wind power is even more expensive, averaging £176/MWh this year for those generators with CfDs. (4)
- Currently, subsidies to offshore wind are costing electricity users £4.8 billion a year. (5)
- The cost of offshore wind power is so high that many projects off the US east coast have been cancelled because they are not viable
- Because CfDs are inflation indexed each year, these costs will continue to rise. This will lock households into permanently high and increasing electricity bills.
UNRELIABILITY
According to research, wind power, (both onshore and offshore) produces less than 20% of its capacity for 20 weeks a year, and less than 10% for 9 weeks. (6)
Under government plans, all power will be decarbonised by 2035, leaving us with the following capacity in broad terms under current plans:
Offshore Wind – 56 GW
Onshore Wind – 28 GW
Solar Power – 70 GW
Nuclear – 5 GW
Biomass/Hydro – 10 GW
Acccording to the National Grid’s Future Scenarios, peak demand will rise to 98 GW in 2035, because of the electrification of transport and heating. (7)
When wind power is only supplying 10% of its capacity, there will clearly be a massive shortage of power, in the order of 70 GW. (Bear in mind that solar power only supplies 3% of its capacity in winter).
REFERENCES
- DESNZ – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-6-core-parameters
- OFCOM – https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-data-and-research/data-portal/wholesale-market-indicators
- DESNZ – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electricity-generation-costs-2023#full-publication-update-history
- LCCC- https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/actual-cfd-generation-and-avoided-ghg-emissions
- Notalotofpeopleknowthat – https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/11/17/offshore-wind-costs/
- Capell Aris – http://www.iesisenergy.org/agp/Aris-Wind-paper.pdf
- Future Energy Scenarios – https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/future-energy-scenarios/documents
“You’ll heat, cook, and run nothing and be happy about it”.
Welcome to Sub-Saharan Africa…TODAY!
The peasants are not like real people. They don’t feel the cold nor get hungry like us real people and don’t really need light after the sun goes down.
But it looks like they are Doing Something!
Wake me when a politician is swayed by facts.
John Kerry in the US is a prime example; he will even repeat those facts back to you!
These are the facts that politicians are looking at.
At least in the US, 61% of adults support finding alternative energy sources.
Even 67% of Republicans under the age of 30 support finding alternative energy sources, and 42% of Republicans overall support it.
Ninety percent of Democrats support it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/
The brainwashing is very inclusive.
A favorite brain washing technique is a Push Poll.
Jus’ sayin’.
Well it appears to have worked on you, you’re still repeating those poll results on every available topic as if they actually mean something.
peee-ewwww.
That is what you say when something really stinks !!
Pew is infamous for its far-left bias. !
As mentioned on another comment – you are a one trick pony who posts the same poll over and over on various posts and multiple times within a post.
How do you reconcile the implied* conclusion with many polls that show “Climate” at the very bottom of US citizens concerns?
I thought not.
But how many of those would support wind and solar if they understood the real facts about usefulness, reliability, and cost?
So are you saying that number of Americans are either unintelligent, ill-educated, or both?
Judging by the numbers who support Trump & Biden, I can believe that.
At least you have a choice of polarised politics.
In the UK we are now virtually a one-party state.
As my old granny said – “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, corrupt politicians always win”
Pew is worthless for any serious topic.
Facts?
No facts at all.
Those are all alleged opinions, that is, bogus claims to supposed majorities oddly supporting Pew’s own positions.
When some poll service cites amazing support from “Even 67% of Republicans under the age of 30”, that’s proof the polled audience was at a college where kids get to claim adulthood and republican registration.
Even so, ask every one of those persons what they’re willing to personally pay for unreliable alleged renewable energy.
Not included yet are the future replacement costs, renewable energy is incapable of mining, smelting, refining, producing, assembling, etc. additional renewable energy machines.
Thus making all energy and practically everything else far more expensive, especially when renewable energy equipment hits it’s very short end of life.
Then your only renewable energy supporters will be basement dwellers under 30 dependent upon their parent’s good will.
The US-EIA is engaging in a gross deception regarding the costs of wind, solar, batteries, EVs, etc., which is fed to politicians and the public and the Media.
The purpose is to brainwash the people to pay more for electricity/kWh than would be the case if only fossil and nuclear and hydro were used.
The public is told wind and solar are competitive with fossil, which is total BS.
Levelized Cost of Energy by US-EIA
The wind/solar/battery bubble is in meltdown mode. This is not a surprise, because the US-EIA makes LCOE “evaluations” of W/S/B systems that purposely exclude major LCOE items.
The EIA deceptions reinforced the delusion W/S are competitive with fossil fuels, which is far from reality.
The excluded LOCE items are shifted to taxpayers, ratepayers, and added to government debts.
W/S would not exist without at least 50% subsidies
W/S output could not be physically fed into the grid, without the last four freebies.
1) Subsidies equivalent to about 50% of project owning and operations cost,
2) Grid extension/reinforcement to connect remote W/S to load centers
3) A fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract the W/S up/down output, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365,
4) A fleet of power plants to provide electricity during low-W/S periods, and during high-W/S periods, when rotors are feathered and locked,
5) Output curtailments to prevent overloading the grid, i.e., paying owners for not producing what they could have produced
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/biden-30-000-mw-of-offshore-wind-systems-by-2030-a-total-fantasy
EXCERT from
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
Example of Turnkey Cost of Large-Scale, Megapack Battery System, 2023 pricing
?itok=lxTa2SlF
The system consists of 50 Megapack 2, rated 45.3 MW/181.9 MWh, 4-h energy delivery
Power = 50 Megapacks x 0.979 MW x 0.926, Tesla design factor = 45.3 MW
Energy = 50 Megapacks x 3.916 MWh x 0.929, Tesla design factor = 181.9 MWh
Estimate of supply by Tesla, $90 million, or $495/kWh. See URL
Estimate of supply by Others, $14.5 million, or $80/kWh
All-in, turnkey cost about $575/kWh; 2023 pricing
https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/tesla-hikes-megapack-prices-commodity-inflation-soars
Annual Cost of Megapack Battery Systems; 2023 pricing
Assume a system rated 45.3 MW/181.9 MWh, and an all-in turnkey cost of $104.5 million, per Example 2
Amortize bank loan for 50% of $104.5 million at 6.5%/y for 15 years, $5.462 million/y
Pay Owner return of 50% of $104.5 million at 10%/y for 15 years, $6.738 million/y (10% due to high inflation)
Lifetime (Bank + Owner) payments 15 x (5.462 + 6.738) = $183 million
Assume battery daily usage for 15 years at 10%, and losses at 19%
Battery output = 15 y x 365 d/y x 181.9 MWh x 0.1, usage x 1000 kWh/MWh = 99,590,250 kWh delivered to HV grid
(Bank + Owner) payments, $183 million / 99,590,250 kWh = 183.8 c/kWh
Less 50% subsidies (ITC, depreciation in 5 years, deduction of interest on borrowed funds) is 91.9c/kWh
At 10% usage, publicized cost, 91.9 c/kWh
At 40% usage, publicized cost, 23.0 c/kWh
Excluded costs/kWh: 1) O&M; 2) system aging, 3) system losses from HV grid to HV grid, 3) grid extension/reinforcement to connect the battery systems, 5) downtime of parts of the system, 6) decommissioning in year 15, i.e., disassembly, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites.
NOTE 1: The 40% usage is close to Tesla’s recommendation of 60% usage, i.e., not charging above 80% and not discharging below 20%. Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded be owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve.
They added Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system and to increase the rating of the expanded system.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
If only it were this simple. First almost no one, so no MP, knows what MWh and GW are. So they will ask a green expert who will say these numbers are true but irrelevant. They will say intermittency is solved by storage and these modest cost increases are far smaller than the cost of climate collapse. The MP can then ignore it.
The complexity of the issue is part of the problem.
When JFK said we’ll go to the moon- he got world class engineers to make it happen, not ideologists and propagandists.
AND it was doable, unlike net zero.
It didn’t make a bit of difference in the rate of CO2 increase when human production of CO2 dropped by 6%, according to the International Energy Agency, in 2020 when COVID-19 hit and much of the world shut down.
It was at 410 ppm, it should have dropped by 25 ppm if humans were causing the increase. Instead, it kept rising at the same rate.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
The world didn’t “shut down”. The most aggressive estimate was that human production was reduced by maybe 10% for about 3 months, and it quickly returned to normal after that period.
Even if human contributions were to stop completely, why do you believe CO2 levels would have dropped quickly?
Um, no, scvblwxq. A 6% reduction in the rate of increase (if it really even was that much) means that CO2 should have continued to go up at a rate 94% of what it had been going up.
It would take roughly a 50% reduction in emissions to hold the CO2 concentration constant because about half of our emissions are absorbed by natural sinks and half raise the concentration of CO2. Given current CO2 sink rates, a complete cessation of emissions globally probably wouldn’t result in more than a 2ppm annual drop in CO2 concentration. 25ppm would take well over a decade after a complete end to fossil fuel use.
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY. It’s counterproductive to make unscientific claims like this that discredit the climate realist argument. Our emissions are increasing CO2 concentration without any doubt. How much this might be contributing to the current beneficial milld warming trend is unclear. It certainly is contributing massively to agricultural output.
Not measured in any sense of the word. In fact, no measurement system showed a drop.
the 6% is one of many estimates made by desk jockeys with minimal facts.
You certainly believe in a lot of make-believe fantasies.
David,
Unfortunately, I have to respectfully disagree with your statement. The is NO preponderance of scientific evidence that shows that human emissions of greenhouse gases (principally CO2) are causing “climate change”.
In fact, paleoclimatology evidence and, more recently, these intervals falsify that assertion:
— a 1880-1913 global cooling (a 33-year interval),
— a 1946-1976 global cooling (a 30 year interval),
— a 2004-2023 global warming “pause” (an 8+year interval),
all occurring while atmospheric CO2 continued unabated on its exponentially rising trend since the beginning of the Holocene.
Once one recognizes this simple fact, it is likewise simple to conclude that all efforts to control “climate change” via substitution of green, renewable energy sources for fossil fuel energy sources are bogus.
Ooops typo in third paragraph: s/b “There is NO preponderance of scientific evidence . . .”
Consider Wojick’s second law: “The weight of evidence is relative to the observer.”
In complex cases different people can look at the same evidence and draw opposite conclusions. Many alarmists, including scientists, regard the modeling results as convincing evidence for alarmism. They are not irrational, just wrong.
In fact their counter argument is that paleodata is irrelevant because human interference is unprecedented (a word they use often).
Wojick’s first law is also relevant: “Complex issues have a tree structure so the number of arguments increases exponentially with level of detail.”
See my crude 1975 textbook:
http://www.stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf
In the climate science case almost every argument has a counter argument, on both sides. Nothing unusual about this.
In 2020 at the start of the pandemic, human output of CO2 dropped by 6% when the world went into lockdowns, etc., to prevent its spread.
Human emissions dropped 6%, which would have been 25 ppm if increases were caused by humans, it was 410 ppm before the shutdown.
Instead, the CO2 rate went up at the same rate as before the shutdown.
That was a natural experiment that showed human emissions of CO2 aren’t causing the continuing rise in CO2.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
This argument is well known. What are the alarmist counter arguments? I am sure there are several.
By the way, scientific language would be “natural experiment that suggested…” not showed. That result is far from conclusive.
Human contributions to CO2 emissions are increasing atmospheric levels by about 2ppm per year.
That 6% drop in emissions would be a decrease in that 2ppm per year. Assuming that this drop continued for an entire year, it would have resulted in a drop of 0.12ppm in the rate at which CO2 levels were increasing for that year.
However that maximum rate only continued for about 3 months, after which it quickly returned to normal, so the actual decrease would have been a lot less for the entire year.
The annual additional, to and from all sources and sinks, of 2.5 ppm is a 2.5/420 fraction, 0.6%, which is within the error band of the Mauna Loa measurements.
Thus, it does not show on the graph, if, during a few months of a year, human CO2 was 6% less
The alarmist GISS data does not show what you claim and the modelers have supposed explanations for the periods of no warming. For example the 46-76 period is supposedly due to increasing aerosols.
See
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/graph_data/Global_Mean_Estimates_based_on_Land_and_Ocean_Data/graph.pdf
It really is not simple. Wish it were.
It is—and remains—a simple matter if your look beyond the GISS “data” and are also aware that models do not create data. IOW, follow the money.
Please let me know when the highly-adjusted GISS (aka ERSST.v4-based) data agrees with UAH data, the gold standard for reporting of satellite-derived global atmospheric temperature measurements. You appear to be unaware that UAH measures temperature in the lower troposphere, on average a couple of kilometers above the surface, while NASA GISTEMP measures temperature at the surface. (https://theclimatecrisis.quora.com/Why-are-the-data-from-UAH-and-GISS-NASA-so-different-especially-over-the-past-decade )
Lastly, I put
littleno faith in explanations that include the word “supposedly”.Bogus and doomed to failure.
You are so right about that David.
The public is innumerate and cannot distinguish between something that is true but irrelevant and something that is truly a problem.
Unfortunately on our side we have many who are impatient with complexity. They try to shortcut the argument by claiming that it’s simple. That is not only ineffective but also powerfully undermines the case for climate realism. It plays into the ‘science denier’ meme that helps the alarmists discredit our argument.
Nobody who has bought the alarmists’ simplistic arguments will be convinced by simplistic skepticism.
Yes, we are forced to be more complex because their starting arguments are simplistic.
“The simplest explanation is preferable to one that is more complex.”
— Occam’s razor, itself simplified
—Albert Einstein
The road to ruin, the emperor has no clothes, he has been called out but no one in power is listening.
“ (Bear in mind that solar power only supplies 3% of its capacity in winter).”
I’m guessing the trick here is to use a misleading definition of capacity, otherwise this is an outright lie. Solar panel production goes down by about 50% in winter.
In the UK solar production drops by 80% in winter compared to summer as confirmed by my own array and confirmed by PVgris the EU database. And even in summer the sun does not shine 24 hrs a day so it never gets to 100% of installed capacity.
https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/photovoltaic-geographical-information-system-pvgis_en
It depends on where the solar panels are. The article above is for Britain where solar power in winter is extremely limited. In Scotland, solar power declines by over 90% in winter and falls to just 1% of capacity.
http://euanmearns.com/solar-pv-potential-in-scotland/
Yesterday I achieved 0.5% of rated capacity, best so far this month is a 2% of rated capacity day when there was a frost and no clear sky. May was my best with 5 consecutive days of 16%.
Solar power capacity is measured in watts (W/KW/MW/GW). This implies it is the maximum power a solar array can supply when the sun is in the optimal position. There are 16.25 hours of sunlight a day maximum in Vancouver, BC. That compares to almost 8.25 hours of sunlight in the winter. I assume that’s where you get “50% in winter.” That doesn’t take into account the lower incidence of sunlight nor the extra atmosphere it has to pass through. More importantly, it doesn’t take into account clouds blocking the sun or snow on the arrays. I assume Vancouver is not always sunny and snow free in the winter. I lived in Renton, WA (south of BC by about 150 miles) for 3 years and definitely experienced both cloudy days and snow in the late ’60s. Admittedly, that was during “Global Cooling” and the existential threat of global glaciation.
I’m surprised that they get as much as 3% on some winter days. On a stormy winter day in the mountains above Reno, we don’t get any measurable power out of our array. Canada is a lot further north. I would expect more snow cover on their arrays, more cloud cover to block solar radiation, and of course, shorter days than we have.
Right now in the UK:
Sunrise: 07:54
Sunset: 15:38
London receives 0.52 and 4.74 kWh/m2 per day in December and July, respectively. Look at the resulting yearly generation numbers here:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
You can see that in December there is just about no solar.
You can also see that you only get any at all between about 11am and 3pm.
Go north to Scotland and it just about vanishes. Days get shorter and the production falls off during the days even more.
Peak usage? A cold, calm weekday evening in December, January or February.
Net Zero as presently planned for the UK is not going to happen. Either there will be nationwide blackouts, lots of them, and a closing down of all activities requiring reliable power, also power rationing, so forget using your heat pump when you need it, or charging your car during the evening. Or the country will wake up in time and install a lot more gas generation. Wish I believe it will be the second, but there’s no sign of it.
Ah Michel, so if it drops to 1% all you have to do is install 100x the solar panels. Then for sure you’ll have power for your heat pump all night long! Back me up on this, willya Nepal?
To innumerate this little factoid: (Total solar Investment X 100 = 100% of solar output (when the Sun shines)), except at night when it is ZERO.
We then add Wind backup with a similar calculation reaching near ZERO.
We then add the third ?renewable? backup (battery, hydro, etc.) with a similar calculations, also reaching near ZERO.
In the end after investing many, many times over current investments for these variable/unreliable weather related sources of energy/electricity we still periodically end up at ZERO and needing other backup.
They still remain NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE, but no one lists the purpose. Net Zero, replace fossil fuels, lower costs for ???, are all lip service to purposes, but NONE ARE ACHIEVABLE.
Why are we doing this?
For the Great Reset, of course.
Agreed. Being saying it for a few years here now. Unless and until we see (multiple) power outages, nothing will change.
If you want to compare seasons, compare peak power to peak power, or average to average. It is utterly useless to compare the winter average power to the summer peak power. Unless, of course, your goal is to produce the most eye popping number.
What exactly is your point? That in the Scottish winter (September through June, or something like that), solar power isn’t needed?
What good is a power source that has no significant capacity most of the year?
Complete and utter bullshit.
If you want to talk about the usable power that is being generated by solar, the only number that makes sense is the average power. Peak power is arguably the worst number that you can use. You only get “peak” for a few seconds a day, and not every single day.
The winter average is the power available to be used. That’s the only number that matters to those people who are trying to use that power to live their lives.
When you buy a solar system, it is already expected that the sun does not shine 24 hours a day (at least I hope it’s understood). That is priced in. So there is no reason to imply that the performance in winter is 3% of what’s expected. That is not true.
Arguing that white is black will not change how the world is set up. In the UK, because of the latitude, we get a low angle of incidence even in summer, in winter that changes and we get an even lower one. What that means is that the amount of energy in sunlight that was concentrated into a 1m2 area at the equator is now dispersed over a far greater area, and far more in the winter. Solar panels in the UK get around 10-15% of the energy that the same ones at the equator will get and that then drops to below 5% in the winter (less when you take into account reduced daylight time). That is fact, not opinion – you cannot change the physical world to satisfy your own ignorance – the world is not static, fixed in a permanent summer, it changes; seasons change, hours of daylight change and the amount of energy received changes. Don’t you understand that or is your ignorance so total that you have no idea what I’ve been talking about?
“What that means is that the amount of energy in sunlight that was concentrated into a 1m2 area at the equator is now dispersed over a far greater area, and far more in the winter. Solar panels in the UK get around 10-15% of the energy that the same ones at the equator will get and that then drops to below 5% in the winter (less when you take into account reduced daylight time)”
The angle of incidence, in itself, does not decrease the average energy generation of solar panels. Yes, it disperses sunlight over a greater area, but this can be fixed completely simply by tilting the panels.
More important is the attenuation of sunlight by passing through more atmosphere when it is at a lower angle. And clouds.
3% of rated capacity is a physical measure.
3% of “expectation” is a psychological measure.
That solar power systems produce a lot less power in the winter compared to the summer is expected. The fact that this fact disturbs you so much is quite interesting.
While it is of course possible that people could buy solar panels at their actual cost without subsidies and tax credits, and then try to live their lives depending on them as their sole power source (presumably with a prodigious investment in batteries), the reality is that most people who get rooftop solar are entering into an agreement to lease space on their roof and purchase power from the company that owns the panels. They get some and often all of their power from the grid, without which connection the arrangement would be totally intolerable.
This financial relationship is totally distorted by government subsidies, mandates, and incentives. Thus the users of solar power systems are perhaps making rational economic decisions, but the reality is that they are deriving a benefit from an irrational government policy at the expense of tax- and rate-payers who do not avail themselves of the scheme.
Its 3% of faceplate (or something like). Just as wind falls to under 10% of faceplate for 9 weeks a year. Faceplate is important because its usually cited as what is installed.
But there is an additional problem with solar, especially in the UK. Wind fluctuates more or less randomly. Solar however vanishes totally every day, and in winter if you get even the tiny amount that winter this far north allows you still only get it for a couple of hours a day.
The point is, the variability by day and by season make solar useless as a generating technology in the UK. Its never there when you need it, either by season or by time of day. And no-one has a storage solution which will come even close to helping with that.
Trying to get to Net Zero while only attacking power generation is futile. Doing that by trying to use solar for the attack is even more futile. As is trying to use wind. What is impossible will not happen.
Just not fit for the purpose, but please someone define the purpose(s).
There are many things that affect how much solar power is impacted by winter.
The first and most obvious is the increased hours of darkness.
The second is that the sun is lower in the sky. This lower angle of incidence can have an outsized impact on how much power a solar array is capable of generating.
The third is that for many regions, winter is cloudier and stormier compared to summer.
The fourth is frost and snow, which can completely stop the generation of solar power until they are cleared.
Dear Mr. Homewood, allow me to confirm in two different paths the stupidity that the green (red) MP advocates for so much.
First of all, the correct calculation of generation capacity towards 2035 is as follows:
Offshore Wind – 56 GW x 0 = 0 GW
Onshore Wind – 28 GW x 0 = 0 GW
Solar Power – 70 GW x 0 = 0 GW
Nuclear – 5 GW
Biomass/Hydro – 10 GW
TOTAL: 15 GW
Why are renewables zeroed? Because of a minor issue, one of no importance to these little green men and women: by 2035, electricity generation based on fossil fuels will have disappeared in the Kingdom, therefore, poor renewables will not have backup generation so that they will be able to work. And of course, an asynchronous source of generation, where production goes one way according to weather whims and demand goes another completely different, simply do not work when you try to plug them into a grid.
So, Houston, we have a problem!, for this 15 GW total available generation capacity represents around 1/3 of UK’s current annual generation which will be used for demand and not to backup those Medieval intermittent generation sources.
Secondly, the UK is already saturated with renewables so that any extra renewable installed capacity will continue to be a dead weight, incapable to inject any new MWh of green electricity to its grid because all energy in excess of the maximum renewable installed capacity will be necessarily lost. The only thing that will continue to dramatically increase is that little thing called cost of electricity.
I wish you luck.
Where is our evil villain to put a shutoff switch into all the interconnectors that allow the European Nut Zero countries to claim their electrical systems work? UK, Germany, and Cali NY and New England in the US, to do the shutoff and prove the systems do not work and force MASSIVE extorsion payments to allow the interconnects to function?
One supervillain would call BS on the whole scheme.
Or whoever blew up the Nordstream pipeline could serve that function without any ability to turn the interconnect back on for weeks or months. That may be even better.
Yes, they will have to install a lot of new gas generation.
If they don’t its back to the forties of the last century.
The 1940s was not a time of critical energy shortages. Everyone (well, almost everyone) heated their homes with coal, lit them with coal-generated electricity, cooked with coal gas and did a big part of their travelling by coal-burning steam trains. It was a dirty world, but it worked just fine – unlike the net-zero world that our leaders have planned for our near future.
I don’t remember the 1940s much, being just a toddler. All I really remember is that London was grey and dirty, and big swaths of houses were missing. And I was terrified of my grandparents’ nanny goat (which they had got to provide milk during the war years).
“”The Case Against Offshore Wind””
A modern Nantucket Sleighride
That image at the top- isn’t it just a matter of time when some humongous storm at sea destroys an entire wind farm? Like, a hurricane- what will a big one do to it? Are they designed to survive a hurricane? Now that so many wind farms are planned for the American east coast- which gets hurricanes- it’s gonna happen. When we get a power outage that knocks down a power line- it’s a matter of days or hours before they fix it- and I don’t know if any storm ever knocked out a ff power plant? But if an entire wind or solar farm is destroyed in a big storm or tornado- that’s long term damage to the grid. I admit to knowing little about this subject- just asking. No doubt this topic has been discussed a lot- by skeptics, not those with the green faith, of course.
I believe the image at the top is AI generated, and therefore could be a form of disinformation if they are too realistic to be seen as obvious editorial cartoons. WUWT should be very careful to add “AI generated image” captions to such images.
Most are AI, as I’ve asked. Some such note is a good idea. And, something about how “this could happen”- certainly a storm like that is inevitable sooner or later- then what will be the consequences. It’s hard to believe there’d be no damage. It could be catastrophic with a total loss. I’m curious what the engineers who build them say.
No real wind farm would have the individual turbines that close together.
Supposedly turbines are designed to survive 75m/s winds – 168mph, well into Cat 5 territory. They cut out and stop generating at ~25m/s, so they’re left pinwheeling during the hurricane. I suspect that the worst actually endured so far would be gusts of ~120mph at hub height. However, they are faced with other problems with wear on bearings due to fluctuating stresses and erosion of blade surfaces: it seems that they are not as robust in more normal conditions even if they don’t acutally break in a hurricane.
Oooops . . . FACTS, those darn pesky things that upset many a belief system.
Obviously, they should be outlawed.
/sarc
Don’t worry, governments are on it! See Ireland for a recent example.
Biden tried to set up a new department charged with rooting out misinformation, which ended up being any information that was not helpful to those in charge of government.
Are there any industrial scale battery systems in place right now? If so, are they actually charged since you need excess power production to charge them?
The first ones are in place in the UK as are the diesel generator farms !!!
However they cannot be said to be ‘industrial scale’ They will effectively only be able to supply x homes for y hours and so only useful for grid balancing services. Doubtful if ‘y’ will be more than 2 hours.
I’m referring to battery systems.
Just checked and according to National Grids ‘Future Energy Scenario published earlier this year the UK has 2.8GW of battery storage with ” one hour discharge duration”
Do they manage to keep them charged? I suppose they do- but once they have way more of them, that’ll be a problem.
Getting way more of them, aye there’s the rub!
Mostly they operate either side of half charged. Main use is in ancillary services, charging and discharging as grid frequency goes high and low with gusty wind, and stepping in to provide replacement for inertia support when there is a sudden trip outage (most of these are now on interconnectors, so can be 1GW+): CCGT takes over to provide the real oomph once up to speed. There are limits to flex arbitrage because of the need to swing both ways on frequency support, but that is additional. Usually times to charge up and discharge are well signalled by market prices in advance, so much of that operation can be planned.
The problem they face is there is now more capacity on stream than is needed to provide battery based ancillary services, so revenues have collapsed, and they are now looking for other avenues to earn revenue, lobbying hard for protected status in particular circumstances.
We need to prospect for more metals before we can make those. Hot stock tip: buy mining shares.
Main fact that makes off-shore wind (and on-shore wind and solar) not acceptable: There is NO climate crisis which can be solved by renewable energy replacing fossil fuels. Therefore, any expenditure on renewables is a waste of money and resources and should be stopped immediately. Our functional and reliable coal and gas based energy reduction facilities need to be restored, upgraded and expanded to include the billions of people who currently suffer from severe energy poverty.
Not only that, but when human emissions of CO2 dropped by 6% in 2020 when the pandemic hit the CO2 level kept rising at the same rate as before the pandemic.
Humans cutting their CO2 emissions didn’t matter at all.
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
What this list fails to include is that by 2035 EVERY existing offshore bird chopper will need to be replaced at the massive costs that have already been spent to just maintain the current level of unreliable “capacity”.
Paul, this is so messy a tally, that most (none?) of your readers are not going to get it. I have no idea what prices a consumer is going to actually have in their in their power bill. I believe it’s because you used the government’s obfuscatory info to make some kind of line by line comparison. 2012 prices !!!
Suggest you boil this down to an annual scenario, factoring in ranges of wind performance (x% of capacity) plus cost of back up. Include the carbon tax in the back up gas as part of the cost of renewables. Don’t leave a dog’s breakfast of calculations to be figured out by the reader.
I most often find sceptics’ costings for power unusable. Interconnection costs are real and paid for by the consumer, too. Take a picture also of a typical monthly power bill. It’s worse than you present.
I have a new theory that many of these green zealots subconsciously know this wind and solar transition won’t work. But they are more like spoiled ( rich)children that are used to always getting their way even if “ their way” is ridiculous and self destructive.
So once again it is “ give me what I want, give me everything I want and put me in charge of everything! Or ,or I will make a huge scene scream bloody murder scare all the little children, bang my head against a wall. And if that does not work I might glue myself to something to really show you..
This is the bit that gives me chills….
“””Because CfDs are inflation indexed each year, these costs will continue to rise. This will lock households into permanently high and increasing electricity bills.
Because they are talking about the price of ‘power’ or ‘energy’ and that impacts every aspect of the price/cost of everything.
As I understand, the manufacturers/makers of anything work on a retail markup of usually 100% – if they buy in a raw material, add value to it by whatever means, they then (try to) sell it at twice the price they paid
Energy will count as a significant ‘raw material’ so when they sell, the inflating price of the energy input will cause more inflation, which will then guarantee a higher cost/price for next year’s energy etc etc etc
They have constructed a self-compounding snowball that will only work to ramp up the price of everything at a compounding rate – they have built a compounding mechanism into Inflation.
Was that intended – I cannot believe so because it is utter insanity. They have installed rocket boosters onto Thelma/Louise’s car and we are all sat in the back seat
OK, maybe not soooo bad if wind powered leccy was a small part of Total Energy but they want it to be, as best they can get, 100%
It will drive Inflation into skyrocket mode
Not my area of interest but I have read numerous times that some major businesses, such as grocery, run on a 1% profit margin.
True that retail margins are slim – but their costs include much more than what they pay per case of items on the shelf. For those a substantial markup is quite normal to cover the costs of their buildings, warehouses, distribution, computer systems, staff, power bills, property taxes, etc.
Yes, profit margin and markup from wholesale to retail are different things that should not be confused.
At this point in time, replacing fossil fuel energy production with wind and solar power must be considered an experiment. No one can know with certainty if this experiment will prove that the transition is financially sound or even feasible. Since this is true, wouldn’t it be wise and proper for the experiment to take place in a smaller area, an area made completely dependent on renewable energy with no fossil fuel back-up? Of course it wouldn’t be morally right to perform this experiment on unwilling private individuals so it’s a requirement that it take place where its mandatory nature originates, in government. Let’s start with the all the federal facilities in and near the District of Columbia. Windmills and solar panels providing all the power for the Pentagon, the Justice Dept., the White House, Kamala’s temporary digs at the Naval Observatory, the Capitol itself. If, over a time span of 25 or 30 years, this experiment shows success in both scientific and economic terms it could be extended to other areas in stages.
It’s totally irrational to commit the entire country, or even a small portion of it, to something as important as an alternative energy source for an uninvolved public, at the scale being contemplated. This could, and should, lead to a disagreement more seminal than those that led to the War Between The States. Hopefully, if a “Net Zero” or even less draconian ending is the goal, it will be achieved by a truly informed and voluntary process after being proven viable over time.
The experiment was already done in 2020 when human emissions dropped because of the pandemic.
In 2020 when COVID spread worldwide, human emissions of CO2 dropped by 6% according to the International Energy Agency, yet the rate of increase of CO2 didn’t change a bit.
That is a natural experiment that shows human emissions of CO2 aren’t causing the continuing rise in CO2.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
Fortunately, you’re probably not in charge of anything more complex than keeping the dog’s dish supplie. The experiment I mentioned doesn’t concern CO2 or any other atmospheric gas. It’s about the ability to supply un-interuppted power from renewable sources for whatever reason. Maybe you are an example of the failure of the US education system, which is why the climate change mania exists.
You feel that the IEA can actually determine world wide emission of CO2 by a single percentage point? And you call that an experiment? And what does that have to do with the reliability of renewable energy?
Why do you keep spamming the threads with this same misinformation? Are you a bot designed to discredit climate realists?
CO2 emissions raise the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s absurd to argue otherwise. That doesn’t say anything whatsoever about whether the slightly higher CO2 concentration is having any significant effect beyond record harvests of nearly every staple crop important to mankind. If there is any actual warming effect at all, it is a mild beneficial warming.
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY. Denying obvious facts only discredits our skeptical message.
People can know with considerable certainty that it will be very expensive and definitely unreliable.
“Mechanisms + electricity + open ocean = Bad idea” said every engineer ever.
Very nice but the rolls should be reversed, she should have to prove to you beyond a doubt that off shore wind is cheaper, more consistent, more dependable, longer lasting and will not disrupt the grid. These knuckleheads have been given a pass for far too long.
even these statistics exaggerate power supply. statstics may say that soemtimes they onyl produce 10%, but weather, you know, weather, says that at night when no wind = no solar or wind power. not 10%. 0.
i want to know what is powering my kettle at 16:00hrs on a windless winter evening. it needs to be nuclear.
No; it really needs to be coal.