[see update at the end]
Meet the new federal Western Solar Plan. Much of the land in the Western US is federal and managed by the appropriately named Bureau of Land Management or BLM. In some Western States, over 50% of the land is federal.
Using that land control, BLM has just proposed a monstrous (in size and scope) plan for solar power development called the Western Solar Plan. The Plan covers the eleven westernmost states, from border to border. From Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico to Utah, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington state, and Wyoming.
They also have a draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for the Plan, which they are taking comments on through April 28, 2024.
The PEIS and other Plan information is available here: https://blmsolar.anl.gov/
Comments should be sent to solar@blm.gov
The really important number is simple and round. It is also breathtaking. They want 100,000 MW of solar capacity developed, more than doubling US capacity. A better choice would be zero, which is also round, but I digress. This incredible number is not based on a needs analysis, as there is no need. It is just a number somebody pulled out of somewhere.
There are lots of environmental concerns with this huge number. Given that a solar facility can take 15 acres per MW, we are talking about something like 1.5 million acres of industrial plant. Plus thousands of miles of access roads, no doubt. These are mostly remote areas, and you do not deliver a thousand acres of solar panels on pickup trucks, so a lot of heavy-duty roads will be built.
These concerns are, of course, shrugged off by the PEIS in the usual industrial green way. There are lots of vague promises that care will be taken when the actual facilities come to be planned, approved, and built, which they will be no matter the environmental destruction.
But the biggest concern by far is not addressed, namely, what this monstrosity is going to cost the poor people who have to pay for it. These are the people and outfits that use electricity, many of which are already struggling to pay ever-increasing prices. What will the bill be?
One might think that perhaps cost is just not part of environmental impact assessment. Not at all, as there is an entire section of the PEIS titled “Socioeconomics”. It includes a lot of money, stuff like tax revenue, local construction revenue, jobs, etc. There are even dollar estimates for some revenue items. So, people paying for all this stuff is certainly a central socioeconomic consideration.
By coincidence, the standard estimate for conventional utility-scale solar is also nice and round at $1,000,000 a MW. So the Plan costs one hundred billion dollars ($100,000,000,00) to build, plus all those access roads.
But that is just the construction cost. Projects like utility-solar are financed over the long term, so there are big interest charges. These, plus the profits for the facility owners often can double the cost. This two hundred billion dollars is what is called the revenue requirement for the Plan, which is what the poor electricity users must ultimately pay.
Two hundred billion dollars for something they do not need. Pure Bidenomics!
In reality, the cost is higher, maybe much higher. This is because the intermittency of solar greatly reduces the efficiency of the reliable generators in the system, in effect raising the cost of their output.
The reason is simple — steam. Most of our electricity comes from what are called thermal generators. These are coal and gas-fired plus nuclear. They use heat to produce steam in giant boilers, which steam then runs a turbine generator.
The problem is that this is extremely high-temperature steam, so you cannot just stop making it when the solar generation is producing energy, which is just 8 hours a day at most. You have to keep the boilers going even when solar has replaced the output.
Thus, you are consuming fuel with no output. This adds to the cost of the output the thermal plants do produce. In this way, solar and wind both increase the cost of thermal power, making wind and solar look cheaper than they really are.
Let us call this cost of keeping the thermal generator steam hot while the sun shines the backup cost of the Solar Plan. It, too, should be estimated as part of the socioeconomic impact.
In short, the PEIS is omitting a lot of socioeconomic consumer costs. Missing costs include facility and access road construction, operation, maintenance, and repair. Also, there is decommissioning and a great deal of hazardous waste disposal. Plus financing and profit. And then the backup cost. Three hundred billion might cover it, but BLM should provide the estimates.
I urge people to comment on this incredible hidden cost aspect of the Western Solar Plan PEIS. If you do comment, feel free to post that comment here as well so we can all see and learn from it.
[UPDATE BY WILLIS, I trust the powers that be won’t mind]
Hmmm … let’s start with the fact that in Utah, which is in the area they are talking about, electricity costs the consumer about $0.11/kWh.
Next, say $300 billion, for a 100 GW nominal capacity solar plant. Solar capacity factor is about 15% because of night-time and clouds, so that’s 15 GW of actual capacity.
That calcs out to 131 billion kWh/yr.
That’s just CAPEX, capital expenditures. Then there are annual O&M, operation and management costs. These are currently running at ~ $7.90/year per kW of installed capacity. That’s $790 million per year.
Suppose we want a 10-year payback period, not unusual for business investments. We’d have to get a return of $30 billion per year on top of the $790 million O&M costs.
So. $30.79 billion / 131 billion kWh =
…
…
$0.235 per kWh.
Oh, yeah, then there’s the “wheeling cost”, the cost of transmitting the power to where it’s needed. This is on the order of $0.04 per kWh … so we’re up to about $0.28 per kilowatt-hour.
In other words, insanely expensive even ignoring the fact that government projects invariably take longer and cost more … see California’s “Train To Nowhere” or Boston’s “Big Dig” as the poster children for cost overruns
Best to all,
w.
PS—It would require 1.5 million acres of plant to be installed. Suppose it takes 10 years. 200 working days in a year, so that’s 2,000 days. So we’d have to clear, install roads, pour the concrete footings, put in the frames to hold the panels, put in solar panels, install the ancillary electrical switches etc., and wire them to the grid at the rate of 750 acres per day. That’s about 1.2 square miles (3 sq. km.) totally and completely converted from raw scrub brush land to functioning solar power plant EVERY SINGLE DAY!
Madness …
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Weather dependent sources should be restricted, and the costs of spinning backup should be charged as a cost of wind and solar.
They would be, by markets. It’s only when government gets involved that sanity goes out the window. TANSTAAFL!
There’s yet another hidden cost associated with Solar…
Battery Storage!!!
Solar can only produce power from 8am until 4pm and only potentially Nameplate from 10am until 2pm local time. From 4pm until 8am production is essentially nil and absolutely Net Zero at night.
Problem is, the electricity generated from 10am until 2pm might not be needed then. Peak isn’t until 4pm (after Solar becomes ineffective) until 9pm. Until then that energy needs to be stored and storage is costly
Already covered in the article. Battery backup is not even remotely doable. Thermal power plants (mostly natural gas but sometimes diesel) backup is what will actually be used.
As those thermal plants are decommissioned, their backup role would have to be provided by electricity storage, probably batteries. Battery backup would need to be equal to approximately 25% of annual solar generation. (100,000 MW * 8760 hrs/yr * 0.3 = 262,800,000 MWH * 0.25 = 65,700,000 MWH storage). That’s 3,350,000 Tesla Megapacks (65,700,000 / 19.4 MWH) at $8,128,870 each, though the feds might be able to arrange a volume discount and provide subsidies.
Look at all those horizontal panels….new research in Germany sez vertical may be better. All the leaves are brown….and the sky is grey….and the true costs of solar/wind and Evs is not being told….becuz the truth is not very green.
Problem with vertical panels is Wind. They become huge sails and require beefed up construction support at an even higher cost
Vertical panels are likely also more heavily ablated by blowing dust.
But isn’t this just land taken from the original inhabitants by the federal government following the wars against those inhabitants? What say will they have?
And presidents should remember when they were elected, what day it is, who is president of Mexico and how much money they took as graft from foreign enemies, but we don’t seem to live in a world that enforces rational standards.
Yes, and the article said , “Thus, you are consuming fuel with no output. This adds to the cost of the output the thermal plants do produce. In this way, solar and wind both increase the cost of thermal power, making wind and solar look cheaper than they really are.”
It is far worse then that. The wind and solar take precedence, so conventional revenue is greatly reduced, while operating cost are the same or higher. (Be ready 24 – 7, but no business allowed for much of that]
You left out financial and environmental costs of transmission lines and energy storage. Which makes the plan even more of a boondoggle.
This is NOT a real ‘plan’. It is a BLM extension of Biden’s obvious cognitive impairment—apparently contagious to his government bureaucracy.
Remember when environmental activists went crazy whenever they saw a 1 mile by one mile (640 acre) clearcut area of forest? Even though the forestry industry immediately replanted these areas and explained that the clear cutting allowed for plenty of sunlight to regrow healthy new trees, the enviros demanded an end to clearcutting because it looked ugly. Those vast solar farms will require massive permanent deforestation and all the ecological devastation that goes with it. Surely there are spotted owls, endangered frogs and all kinds of other critters that will be wiped out by the proposed solar farm that will put and end to this nonsense.
I have heard no one explain how solar farms intend to keep the panels from being overtopped by weeds, vines, and tall grasses. One and a half million acres of Roundup, maybe?
And 1.5 million acres of Windex, at least once a year.
Add who will administer all that Windex? How many towels will that take?
Solar power companies: “We are going to need at least 200,000 menial laborers per month to Windex all of the solar panels and pull the weeds.”
Biden Administration: “Order up!”
Yes, there’s lots of illegal aliens to fill that need!
Texas is getting that many a month at the border
Work for the new wave of migrants at the southern border?
Place them 15′ above ground??
yep, closer to the Sun! And make that space reflector even bigger to comepensate for the black panels on earth, and make certain it does not operate above them.
One million gallons of round up killing all life
Has the endangered species list included: endangered ranchers, anglers, wild life lovers, and Indians?
There is a hierarchy of importance to these things. Solar and wind are far above owls, frogs, landscape views, and environmental damage.
Never mind huge clearcuts- now the tree huggers want an end to all logging. Gotta keep the evil, poisonous, earth destroying carbon in the forest! It’s called “proforestation”.
If Trump can make some money off it he will support it.
So the only guy that held a powerful office in DC from 2017 to 2021 and LOST money is the one you identify as the hog in the trough?
Are there also prompts on your computer screen reminding you to “Breathe in, breathe out”?
Rud,
Zhao Bai Den’s “obvious cognitive impairment” is not a bug of this regime, it is a feature! The corrupt and potentially treasonous cabal running our country and government off the proverbial cliff use his dementia as a beard to hide behind! They are most upset over still having to put up with some opposition from the Repubicans (the Stupid Party,) but they are hopeful that further corruption of the state and federal court system will lead to a year round open hunting season on anyone who tries to speak out against the madness and tyranny!
An obvious example is the Mann v. Steyn trial result; open dissent and any conservative stances are now presumed guilt in US courts! The DemonKKKrats (the Criminal Party) are intent on ramming through their platform of Krime, Korruption, Koverups and Kraziness before the American voter wakes up to no longer living in a constitutional republic, but being involuntary participants in the largest mind control experiment in human history!
…except that it ain’t The Pretender running this country, it’s his puppeteers, pulling his strings from behind the curtain. Last thing Moldering Joe decided on was what kind of ice cream to get.
Are you sure about that?
It’s not Dementia Joe’s puppeteers running the country either. That part is just a show, to wake up the sleepers. It’s working!
Lord only knows how many solar panels we are talking about here. The BLM proposes this project with absolutely no consideration to the toxic waste left behind when all these panels reach the end of their useful lives. The sources I’ve read say they are largely non-recyclable.
And how many of those panels will be from China? Like CAGW, solar energy (with current technology) is a religion with little or no consideration to these issues.
Depends on which of three types.
The monocrystalline silicon (deep blue, most efficient [24%], most expensive) are not recyclable.
The polycrystalline silicon (mottled light blue, [20%], most coming from China) are not recyclable.
The utility scale CdTe (black, [nearing now 18%], First Solar) are and First Solar does. Simple reason. Both cadmium and tellurium are toxic, so if First Solar did not recycle them they would not be allowed to sell them.
Details.
The big solar problems are that all three commercial types are by definition intermittent, and all three are uneconomic absent subsidies, except in special circumstances that NEVER include the general electricity grid.
Thanks Rud. I didn’t know that one of the panel types was recyclable. The sources I read didn’t mention it.
However, as you said, we still have the intermittency problem which is not easily remedied without a massive investment in batteries. Thus, we have the bad economics.
I don’t know how many panels will be required for a 100,000 MW project, but I’ll hazard a guess that it would be substantial. So much for minimizing our human footprint on the Earth.
Remember the capacity factor. 100 GW capacity is about 20 GW actual capacity.
In other words, the equivalent of 6 Palo Verde plants – plant has three 1270GWe units and allowing for 2 units to be down for refueling at any given time. Downside is getting adequate cooling water.
I’d rather be dealing with Palo Verde sized plants than with 100GWe peak capacity of solar installation.
100e9 W / 300 W per module = 333 million modules.
Ouch.
Dats alotta Coal to purify that much silica
These panels only last 15 to 20 years before they need replacement.
Long term, you are going to need to replace 5 to 7 percent of the panels every year.
If it takes more than 15 years to build the entire array, you are going to end up using all of each years production of panels just to replace old panels, with nothing available for further expansion of the array.
Those panels are going to be a lot darker than the deserts that they are covering.
How much extra heat will that result in?
Silly Mark, that will be offset by the big white reflector in space soaring over them…
The current “trick” is the backup is ignored, and if questioned there’s just a shrug and a sort of euphemistic reference to “The Grid”, which for the most part means those existing (or replacement) fossil fuel plants that provided all the power before the advent of Intermittent Renewables. And then, to add insult to injury, the fraudsters have introduced the Levelized Cost of Electricity, which means that you take all the power produced from a plant and then divide by the total cost spent on that plant, including all the time the plant must be kept operating at full temperature but not producing any power, just so it can be the instantly available backup for all that intermittent power when it drops out, and this is not if, but WHEN!!! In other words, Renewables not only get to ignore the cost of backup (bad engineering, where I come from), but the cost of that backup is assigned to the very plants that provide that backup! So, boys and girls, can you say FRAUD? I knew you could!
Rud: So what happens if First Solar goes bankrupt in, say, 10 years with a few million of their panels in the field? Who’s going to recycle them and who’s going to pay?
No one. And no one to pay out on the warranties.
So, BLM presents itself unquestionably as yet another federal agency where Trump will need to clean house next year after his re-election.
This BLM proposal is insane both technically and economically. Inspired by Biden non compos mentis problems now formally acknowledged by Special Prosecutor Hur in his non-charging report on Biden’s willing classified documents violations.
Trump re-election is at best on a par with Mann losing his suit against Steyn and al.
I think Biden’s various agencies are going to be throwing out all sorts of new proposals and regulations as Biden’s term comes to an end.
Here’s another one:
Story tip
https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/national-ambient-air-quality-standards-naaqs-pm
Rule Summary
On February 7, 2024, EPA strengthened the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter (PM NAAQS) to protect millions of Americans from harmful and costly health impacts, such as heart attacks and premature death. Particle or soot pollution is one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution, and an extensive body of science links it to a range of serious and sometimes deadly illnesses. EPA is setting the level of the primary (health-based) annual PM2.5 standard at 9.0 micrograms per cubic meter to provide increased public health protection, consistent with the available health science.”
end excerpt
As for Biden’s classfied documents lawbreaking, the Special Counsel says he won’t prosecute Biden because he is too mentally deficient to prosecute and because it is good for the country not to prosecute Biden.
I have never heard of such a ruling as this. It is a blatant whitewash. An in-your-face whitewash.
Mark Levin did an excellent review of the Biden case on his Fox News show last night. Anyone who is interested in the truth should listen to it.
There is now a much better chance that Biden will not be the nominee of the Democrat Party. Even the Democrats are in a panic now over him officially being declared incompetent to stand trial.
They should be in a panic. Trump is winning.
There is no proof that particulate matter is a problem currently. The EPA had to cobble up and then hide the results of their P25 studies as they did not show a problem. They actually applied P25 to real people and expected them to die, which they clearly did not—one woman had an asthma attack, which might have been nerves. It’s all a coverup to pretend that our current particle controls are inadequate. It’s a lie.
Note that we are still waiting for the NAAQS for CO2 required by the EPA Endangerment Finding 15 years ago.
The failures will be blamed, unsucessfully on Biden. I doubt he does anything except what he is told, including how to walk off stage. His role is all but over.
So, a cunning plan to produce a vast facility with a nameplate capacity of 0.1GW. Unlikely to produce a third of that during daylight hours only.
Drax, in the UK, in the late 1980s was producing, 24/7, around 90% of the nominal 4.0GW capacity. Now, less that half that burning US forests. Thanks, Yanks!
Meanwhile, the modern Ultra Supercritical plants burning coal are producing energy at a level higher that the designers of Drax dreamed might be possible.
And no solar panel, anywhere, will produce enough energy to win and refine the materials, produce the panel and eventually construct, maintain and scrap the solar park it at end of life.
It will, however, make the correct rich people richer. And hand more control over the serfs to our Beloved Leaders.
Correct except the nameplate capacity is 100 GW not 0.1 GE.
Dang! Of course you are correct! So old that, give me half a bottle of wine and my brain goes back to the old British (and European) Billions and Trillions that I learned at school.
That’s my feeble excuse, anyway.
The rest of it is near enough and Willis has nailed it now.
Do not forget that solar panels age and will be down 50% in ten years, if not already destroyed by hail or sand.
I belive that modern panels degrade their output much slower then that. However it is an insane wasteful and destructive project.
Ultra Super Critical Coal in China is running about 43% net thermal efficiency (depends a bit on plant size) and because of flue gas scrubbing produces nothing except CO2, which is greening the biosphere. China gets it.
So the question that comes to mind here – Is China building wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and BEVs for the west to meet the market demand or is it to build western dependency so they can eventually have total control over the global economy?
You have answered your own question. China builds USC. Oral for themselves, in order to build renewables for the west.
China is building renewable energy machinery that is unwanted? No, US government policy requires that such machinery be installed. Where it comes from is a secondary consideration and unimportant in saving the planet. Of course, Chinese interests could torpedo sales of these products to the US, as the Yankees have done with computer hardware to the Celestial Kingdom. But they won’t.
The WUWT commentariat keeps refusing to believe that, at bottom, the entire climate change anxiety syndrome is a construction created by the forces of academia, media, government and capitalism on steroids. There is an immense amount of money to be made in the transition away from hydrocarbon energy and the mostly anonymous commercial titans of today intend to gather in as much as they can. These are a new generation of the same 19th century profiteers that built the railroads, steel mills, oil refineries, packing houses, etc. with the federal government by their side. The “trusts” of the past have been replaced by monopolies of thought and research in academia, on-line opinion discipline, government for and by the bureaucracy and a renewable energy complex that doesn’t need a real market to function, operating on the basis of government demands. We’ve already seen virtually the same process in the US defense industry, now supplied by a handful of immensely profitable firms that sell monstrously expensive hardware to a military that seems incapable of winning a war over medieval tribalists. Voting won’t remedy this situation.
But what about all those “high paying union jobs”. Will they all go to Uighurs?
Monoplies and regulation capture are not a tennant of capitalism, yet power over others, the basis of most all crime, is a syatemic pre requiste for statism. The WUWT community is well aware of the political reasons for the CAGW nonsense. What makes you think they are not?
Well, most of the WUWT community, I would say, David. Probably. One notable exception is, of course, our very own editor Willis, who refuses to grasp that he is being systematically lied to about radiant greenhouses for political reasons. And he has quite a lot of fans here (since he sounds all sciency and everything), all of whom are equally uninformed and unsuspecting.
Steve, I made a number of valid, mathematically based objections to the plan. And in response, you wave your hands and engage in yet another ad hominem attacks.
When a man starts throwing mud like you are, it’s an infallible sign that he’s out of real scientific ammunition.
And what are these “radiant greenhouses” you’re mumbling about, and who is “systematically lying” to me about them? (Not just lying, but systematically …)
w.
Willis, there is nothing wrong with your mathematical objections to BLM’s plan. However, we (meaning “general custer” and David A) have gone off on a bit of a tangent to that, into the political scheming behind the whole CAGW scam. (“the political reasons for the CAGW nonsense”, as David A put it, without which BLM would not be talking about solar panels in the first place) It’s a tangent, yes, but a highly relevant one.
“general custer” made the point that a lot of the WUWT community fails to see the political machinations. David A countered that the WUWT community is well aware of the political machinations underlying CAGW. I then pointed out that it looks like most of them are, except when it comes to “radiant greenhouses”, which is a shorthand for the “radiant greenhouse effect”, or in other words “positive DWLWIR power measured by surface station pyrgeometers”. You, Willis, in particular, swallowed that false “radiant greenhouse effect” hook, line, and sinker, to borrow a fishing metaphor. I and many others have pointed out to you in the past, many times, that not only is the physics false, but your standard objection that “it can’t be false because all the scientists agree, that’s just common sense” constitutes not only a logical fallacy, but more to the point here, a complete and intransigent failure on your part (and that of all your fans) to grasp the political (and therefore economic) reasons why all the climate scientists are lying to you about this. Systematically, and repeatedly. Do you see my point now? (No, it has nothing to do with BLM and solar panels directly, but everything to do with the same politics that results in BLM wanting to install a preposterous number of panels, at astronomical expense, with zero benefit, as I’m sure you will agree)
As a related point, you have also described in the past how climate scientists are engaged in the most arrogant, least scientifically supported naked power grab in all of human history. They don’t have our best interests at heart, and we shouldn’t fall for it. This is true, of course. (I can look up your exact quote if you need me to, since you’re a big fan of quoting people’s exact words, not that it ever does any good) But you fell for it anyway, didn’t you? At least parts of it?
Steve, this is probably a wasted effort, but I’ll give it a try.
It seems that by the “radiant greenhouse effect” you refer to downwelling LW radiation from the atmosphere. You don’t believe it exists.
Me, I do.
You seem to think I believe it because lots of scientists believe it, or because lots of scientists agree, and you rightly ridicule that logic.
But in fact, I believe it exists because lots of scientists measure it, all around the world, all the time, both manually and automatically. Not “believe”. Not “agree”.
Measure.
You are right to not believe something because others believe it or agree about it, whether they are scientists or not.
But you are foolish to not believe something that scientists of different groups, in different countries, with different beliefs, and using different instruments measure on a regular basis.
It’s measured manually by scientists with hand-held instruments. It’s measured automatically by instruments mounted on the TAO buoy array all across the Pacific. It’s measured automatically by instruments at the dozens of SURFRAD stations across the US.
And you can measure it yourself. Buy a hand-held IR thermometer and point it at the clear sky. Does it read 0K? Now point it at a cloud. Does the reading change?
I have no clue why you want to ignore all of those measurements, not beliefs but measurements … but you’re not doing your reputation any good by denying obvious reality.
That’s my last word on the subject. Like they say, you can lead a horse to water, but teaching it to do the backstroke is a real problem.
Best regards,
w.
Willis, that’s a good try, but you have lost the plot again. We have explained to you many times that no one has measured DWLWIR from the sky. They claim they have, but they are lying. All of them. Systematically.
You refuse to believe that they are all lying to you, and of course that is your prerogative. You simply can’t fathom that that could be the case. But a lack of imagination and political comprehension on your part doesn’t mean they aren’t lying.
If you look closer at how those pyrgeometers work, you will see that the raw measurement is negative. But that’s not what they report, is it? No. They adjust the measurement, and then report a positive number. This is a very common tactic in climate “science”, and it is done to thermometer readings, tree rings, and just about every other proxy you can think of. Most of the various kinds of “adjustments” they use are pretty subtle (but always in the direction of more alarm), except when they report proxy measurements entirely upside-down, which has been known to happen at least once (the famous Tiljander proxy). But the pyrgeometer adjustments are not subtle at all. No sirree.
And no, IR thermometers are not supporting your case either. They read either a positive or negative voltage from the internal bolometer depending on whether the target is warmer or colder than the IR thermometer itself. You can verify this by taking one apart and measuring the voltage from the bolometer. This corresponds to positive or negative incoming power, i.e. energy being gained or lost, respectively. Then, they make another adjustment, based on their own internal thermometer reading, to try to guess what the absolute temperature of the target is, based on the relative reading from the bolometer. Along with some assumptions about emissivity and absorptivity etc.
Pyrgeometers could do the same thing as IR thermometers, and get the same results, but they don’t. They actually assume that the temperature of the pyrgeometers themselves is 0 K in order to make their adjustment. That is obviously false. At least, it’s false where I live, and I’m in the frozen north. (Fortunately it’s not quite that frozen.) But it’s even more false where you live, in California!
Everything I said here is easily verifiable by either reading the documentation, or making your own direct unadjusted measurements from the internal instruments. Or, indeed, learning what “energy” and “power” mean by reading a physics textbook, which would be a good idea in any case. Have you tried any of those things? Or do you just repeat the nonsense you were told and have swallowed hook, line, and sinker? Is this a case of “parroting the consensus”, Willis? What did you call ChatGPT when it parrots the consensus? I can remind you if you’d like.
And that’s your “last word on the subject”, is it? Coincidentally, it was also your first word on the subject, and there has been zero visible thought or experimentation or investigation on your part in between, despite many years having elapsed, and you being retired and having lots of time on your hands and all. I think you have a mind like a steel trap… rusted shut.
Willis, since it looks like you meant it when you said you weren’t going to defend your words any further, because of course you can’t, did you think that leaving in the middle of the debate would constitute some kind of victory?
How are we to avoid the conclusion that you are nothing but a coward, a liar, and a hypocrite?
That’s quite an impressive trifecta of shameful conduct, even for you. Do you think The Captain would be impressed? Do you think anyone else is, apart from your three equally undereducated fans?
(Insulting those who know better than you is a whole other level of arrogance, and I won’t even try to describe that particular failure of yours in any more detail right now. We’ll just stick to the trifecta.)
A coward, of course, simply leaves when things aren’t going his way. So that one’s straightforward. And who else do we know who is too cowardly to engage in scientific debate? Oh, right, the climate alarmists. For the same reason.
Why do I say “liar”? Well, you state regularly that you choose your words carefully, and you can defend them. Both of those claims are obviously false, and you know it. Here you aren’t even bothering to try, which is a new low for you. Hence this favourite statement of yours is now clearly a lie. (It was before, too, but now it’s more obvious.)
And “hypocrite”? That’s because you obviously aren’t following the debating rules you expect everyone else to follow, as usual. Here they are again, attached below. You have fallen off the bottom. Move up.
While we are here, though, since you seem to think that the word “measurement” is some kind of magical talisman that you can hold up and use to win any argument without having to actually think, let me explain what the pyrgeometer scientists have done to you in terms that you might understand better – since physics obviously isn’t in your wheelhouse.
Let’s say I go fishing. I have my fishing rod, and some 8-pound-test line, and a hook and some bait. I catch a nice trout. (No, I have never actually done this, but I have read that it is a plausible scenario. Let me know if I am wrong.) I measure it with my ruler, and it measures up as 1 foot long. So far so good. But now I come up to you and I say “Hey Willis, look, I caught a 400-foot-long whale with my fishing rod!” Do you simply swallow my claim hook, line, and sinker? Or do you look suspiciously at my fishing rod and my 8-pound-test line and my 1-foot-long trout and think to yourself that I might just be fabricating things out of whole cloth? Remember, I measured it! You can’t argue with that, can you? It’s a measurement!
(Getting from the 1-foot trout to the 400-foot whale, by analogy with what the pyrgeometer scientists are doing, would consist of an argument along the lines of “naturally every trout has a 399-foot whale in its tail, no you can’t see it, but it’s definitely there, trust me. We’ve always done it this way, so it must be right. Right? Right.”)
I keep trying to engage what looks like your intellect in an honest scientific discussion, Willis, but every time I try, it runs away. It is very difficult for me to believe that you actually have one. Please convince me!
And those cost are treated as if they are one-off, given all the ‘renewables’ puffery and flat-out lies that go on, the efficient life of P V panels is probably a lot shorter than claimed.
There are also the opportunity costs associated with the ill-use of capital and valuable land for those idiotic things.
And then all those solar panels will have to be replaced at some point in time. Over and over and over again.
This isn’t a ‘plan’. It’s pure fantasizing. It gives the alarmists and demonstrators the answer to “how” we can replace fossil fuels with renewables despite not coming close to the answer. Carpeting the world with solar panels doesn’t answer the question of “what happens when the sun isn’t shining?”
I looked at https://blmsolar.anl.gov/ and only saw a map, with very small blue areas designated for solar energy development. Where do all your numbers come from?
BTW, the map very nicely outlines Area 51 in Nevada.
well, on the plus side, all those service roads should affect the last few well situated weather stations.
Figures. I am surrounded by BLM. There is some kind of solar PV farm getting built a couple miles away. That is on some commercial property that has been for sale forever. It almost became a state prison.
I’ve been in the fight for the last 30 years to keep some public access to “public” lands. There is relentless pressure to close roads. In some cases, NG volunteers illegally put up barriers and fences on roads and trails. Every inch is fought over, now BLM will just give it all away, because the current admin orders them to.
20 or 30 years ago, somebody calculated that if all of the land managed by BLM were to be sold, it would produce enough money to retire the national debt of that time. Unfortunately, the national debt is many times bigger than it was back then.
And the Chinese will burn millions of tons of coal and work thousands of slaves to produce them, so that they can pay off Biden.
At least Biden hasn’t raped any women.
Congratulations! Your brainwashing and thought control has been a complete success! You can now look forward to official designation as an NPC!
NPC ==> Non-Player Character which intuitively has no meaning. so a further search is required. Here’s the Wikipedia link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)
What has Clinton got to do with this thread?
Even proven nutcase E Jean Carrol could not get a NYC jury to agree to that. Not a nice try.
Does the name Tara Reid mean anything to you? That’s the one we know of, a nasty f***er like him probably has dozens too cowed to come forward.
“At least Biden hasn’t raped any women.”
Tara Reade, maybe? or D.J. Hill?
According to reports of Ashley Biden’s diary, he committed statutory sexual assault on her and his niece.
“At least Biden hasn’t raped any women.”
So you know this how? Do you have continuous video evidence that he never rape anyone? I guess not. You’re just a Biden apologist.
Says who? Ask Tara Reade.
How much has already been spent on the Plan and the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for the Plan? All those working on this should be terminated, right into the White House. They are all superfluous, providing no value to the tax payers.
That accurately describes all of government in general.
Initially, the founding fathers didn’t want to itemize a list of rights for citizens. It was thought that any list would limit their powers. They itemized a list of powers the federal government had, but the federal government has blown through that list by many times. Thank goodness for the Bill of Rights, or we’d be under a full blown tyranny by now. As The Constitution is now just a suggestion, that full blown tyranny isn’t far away.
What happens when a tornado shatters/scatters an entire “Solar Farm’s” worth of panels over several square miles of farmland. Who picks up the tiny pieces, and who pays for the environmental damages? Cows won’t be able to graze, do you just plow the crap into the ground, plant, and hope the plants don’t absorb the toxins?
Before putting solar voltaics in place, a well thought out plan for cleanup/recycling/weather-loss must be drafted and approved by potentially affected parties, and the money for same must be held in escrow before a shovel hits the ground. See: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65602519
Huge Scottsbluff, ND photo voltaic array destroyed by 5″ hailstones: See: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/solar-farm-pelted-by-giant-hail-as-severe-storm-ripped-through-nebraska/
According to cancer biologist David H. Nguyen, PhD, toxic chemicals in solar panels include cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper indium gallium (di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, and polyvinyl fluoride. Silicon tetrachloride, a byproduct of producing crystalline silicon, is also highly toxic. See: https://sciencing.com/toxic-chemicals-solar-panels-18393.html
Does the public understand that with P.V. installations around the country, what we are in fact doing is distributing toxic materials on residential rooftops, along roads, along and inside farmlands? We are distributing the same kinds of industrial waste that environmentalist used to go bat-shit nuts over to prevent. Now the same eco-Nazis actually encourage spreading this crap all around where people live?
Once NutZero is achieved, the weather will be perfect and tornados will be history.
All the insurance costs to replace the panels that get shattered by hail and wind turbines losing braking and spinning to a catastrophic end will add to weather losses and help justify more of the same on the road to perfect weather.
NE, Not ND
“What happens when a tornado shatters/scatters an entire “Solar Farm’s” worth of panels over several square miles of farmland.”
The “farms” will also be vulnerable to terrorists.
“and who pays for the environmental damages?”
That comes from the many billions of GDP the Biden adminsitration says the illegals generate.
We could have nuclear power plants coming online all around the US in less than ten years. But this kind of huge solar daytime power hump closes the door on nuclear power. Why? To be cost effective, nuclear power must satisfy steady baseline demand as the fuel cost is virtually zero and the largest expense is the amortized capital cost. Nuclear power cannot be used to chase the ridiculous daytime hump and 18 hour valley of almost zero solar output. Engineers know this. Even idiot politicians should know this. This fantastically ugly and destructive solar policy is simply an obvious way for the anti-nuke crowd to block clean, reliable, cheap, abundant nuclear power. Wake up and smell the bulldozers.
I believe, if government got the hell out of the damn way, we could have brand new nuclear power coming online in less than a year, possibly as little as 90 days. Prove me wrong?
Not sure about that. How fast is China doing it?
What does China have to do with this conversation? They’re a communist country and have no concern whatsoever for the welfare of the workers, and the workers behave accordingly. I’m talking about us, we, the United States of America, whose ingenuity created a train system that was the envy of the world to the point some countries are STILL trying to replicate it, developed mass-produced automobiles, created a nuclear weapon, from concept to detonation, in less than 5 years (and if the government had stepped back and simply awarded $$$HUGE.00 prize to the first one to do it, would have probably taken half that time). Get government out of the damn way™ and watch what happens!
That’s not a proof.
No its not expensive. It is still low cost compared with Europe and Australia.
USA still benefits from the Trump era lag in planet saving “renewables”. It has only been pushed by certain State Governments. Australia was a couple of years behind Europe due to 2 years of Abbott but that is changing as fast as the installation of storage can enable. The Australia grid is now “renewables” saturated and can only increase with the addition of more storage. Adding new capacity lowers the Capacity Factors of existing generators.
In fact, the 15GW based on 15% CF estimate can only work if the solar farm lean on other network generation for firming. Even then, saturation point is reached around 30% penetration. The attached chart from ERCOT shows how the Texas grid is essentially saturated. More solar just lowers wind or more wind just lowers solar.
With present cost of solar panels and batteries, the most economic solar CF is around 5%. So 100GW of solar capacity equates to one modern Chinese coal plant. They commissioned 5 of those of that size in 2022.
I have rooftop panels in Melbourne Australia and yesterday, Saturday, was the first Saturday this summer that my system was not backing off due to over voltage. One of the hottest days so far this summer and through Saturday lunchtime, all regions in the National Grid had negative pricing except tiny Tassie. Negative pricing goes down to the level of subsidies then the grid scale stuff voluntarily pulls out of the market so they are not paying to generate. There is no price signal to rooftops. They only reduce on local overvoltage.
“USA still benefits from the Trump era lag in planet saving “renewables”.”
That’s a good point. Trump has delayed the damage to the U.S. economy that has happened to the economies of the UK, EU and Australia.
Biden is trying to make up for that delay, but he only has about 10 more months of damage he can do, and then hopefully, the whole world will change for the better.
In a stroke of environmental genius, a series of successive ridiculous policies by Greta awed politicians have conspired to raise UK electricity to around $0.48c a kWh (EDF deemed tariff from 1/1/24). We’ve been softened up, so all these green thingies appear ‘affordable’. Coal used to be 5c/kWh not long ago, until we blew most of them up, on live TV!!
$0.28/kwh is indeed expensive, when contracts could be had (in the absence of any “renewables” mucking things up) for $0.04/kwh. Don’t tell me I’m making things up, I held those bills in my hands.
This is just an elaborate perpetual motion machine. It will take more energy to produce, install, provide power lines, and parallel backup systems, than this solar boondoggle will ever produce.
Solar PV is the least efficient form of electricity generation with an EROI number for Germany around 2 (including storage) well below the economic threshold compared to nuclear around 75 (Weissbach 2013).
Ferrari et al (2016) found that “presently available PV systems in regions of moderate insolation like Switzerland and countries north of the Swiss Alps act as net energy sink”.
Ferrari(thanks auto-correct) Ferroni et al (2016)I expect your figure of 2 for Germany way overstates the amount of energy you can get out.
Bloomberg provided an estimate of USD200tr to go NutZero globally. At current prices, that would buy 1600Gt of thermal coal. That translates to 200 years of current global coal usage or 70 years if for all primary energy. So the “renewable” stuff would need to last 70 years to return more energy than went into making it. That is an unlikely prospect given the state of the technology.
I did the same sums for my off-grid solar and battery and that worked out at 200 years to produce as much energy as I could convert from coal, Although burning coal in a residential setting would not be practical..
It once was. My grandfather’s furnace was coal-fired until about 1979.
Right. Coal powered heating and cooking systems were common over much of the earth and no doubt still are in use some places.
Not mentioned in the above article, nor Willis’ addendum: the recurring cost of having to replace the large sections of this massive total acreage of PV solar panels that are totally demolished by hail dropped from thunderstorms . . . said hailstorms not being uncommon in the states of, oh, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
Think those solar panels are built to be hail-resistant . . . think again . . . link here for all the evidence (with great photos of documentation) that one needs: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/29/paving-the-road-to-net-zero/
BTW, that linked article was also authored by Willis Eschenbach.
My personal observation: solar PV panels may represent a “strange attractor” for hailstorms in a similar fashion that trailer homes do for tornadoes.
Considering that all 11 states mentioned are quite mountainous, and that solar farms do best on relatively level land, they may be looking at a wide array of quite small solar farms, with associated high interconnect costs.
Enviros always rant against urban sprawl for being ugly – apparently they’ll enjoy solar sprawl.
You are correct, PV modules only have to withstand impacts from 25mm ice balls at terminal air speed. Real hail can be much larger with higher speeds from winds. The 25mm test governs the thickness of the top glass sheet, which translates to using 3mm glass.
A solar “farm” built next to my ‘hood in ’12 got damaged by lightning 2 years ago. A large section had to be replaced.
From the above article:
“. . . we are talking about something like 1.5 million acres of industrial plant. Plus thousands of miles of access roads, no doubt. These are mostly remote areas, and you do not deliver a thousand acres of solar panels on pickup trucks, so a lot of heavy-duty roads will be built.”
For a buildup of this physical size, spanning eleven states, the Environmental Impact Statement better by about a million pages long and take the better part of century to produce . . . and then it will have to be approved!
Good luck with that . . . but then again, perhaps all that is needed is an EO issued by Biden?
FJB
Here’s a start…..
Largest US solar-storage project goes online – pv magazine International (pv-magazine.com)
This project highlights why the USA is going down the gurgler so fast.
The on-demand guaranteed output of this system will be around 45MW at a cost of $1.7bn. Meanwhile China permitted 50GW of new coal fired capacity in 2022. Roughly 1GW of real generating capacity added each week for about the same cost as 45MW of solar/battery in the USA.
Those coal plants will provide electricity to make the solar panels and batteries, or parts thereof, that will be installed in USA so the USA can leave less carbon in the ground than China liberated back to the atmosphere to make the panels and batteries.
I’m guesstimating that the finished plant should give about the same electric energy production as a 250MWe nuclear plant. As to whether the $1.7bn covers the finished plant or just the first phase isn’t clear to me. Suspect that covers just the first phase though.
I will give the plant designers kudos for installing about 4 hours of storage as that would be enough to do the 4 hour shift in electric power production needed to make solar somewhat usable for high penetration of generating capacity.
Not sure about the batteries, but China did not make those panels. Those are First Solar thin film (chemical vapor deposition) using micron scale CdTe. The Te BTW is coming in part from Bingham Canyon copper byproduct recovery in UT and the original patent for the process came from the serial inventor from Ohio (Harold McMaster). FS is the largest panel producer in the western hemisphere and the only non-Chinese producer in the top 10 globally. They are also the only ones with a recycling program to recover the materials.
The photo of the solar “farm” in that link only shows a small part of it. A photo showing all of it might be too ugly for even solar fanatics. It’s 4,600 acres- that photo probably shows only 10 acres. The total is maybe 7 square miles.
Your linked article doesn’t make sense to me. It says the solar project ‘spans’ 4,600 acres and could serve 238,000 homes. When you do the math, and assume that, at best, the solar farm has 50% coverage of solar panels considering there are service roads and buildings, that works out to 400 square feet of panels for each home.
at even 10 Watts per square ft and 5 hours per day of power. That gives only 20 kWh per home on a good sunny day. In electric bill numbers, at 15 cents per kWh, that comes to 3 bucks a day worth of electric bill. That’s barely enough to cook dinner, much less heat or cool the house, charge the 2 EVs, run the lights and light the TVs. And then, store enough left over to cover tomorrow’s rainy day.
That brings up the storage. 3.3 gWh of storage gives about 14 kWh of storage per home. That’s less than one day’s worth, a couple of bucks of electric power. What happens if there’s rain like last week’s “Atmospheric River”, with rain for a week. How do you run the pumps?
In other words it powers zero homes and puts communting miles only on one or two cars in the home.
The first phase is described as 346MWac, while the overall project is 875MWdc (peak). There’s at least inverter losses and battery round trip losses to subtract from the DC number. The storage is surprisingly large at 4 hours for the entire peak capacity, rather than just a peak lopping portion of it. At~$500m/GWh, it would take up the entire project cost on its own. Then again it won’t want to supply at negative prices during the midday duck curve.
From the project site:
Note the U. S. Air Force
I guess they need this to charge fighters and bombers! 🙂
“.. use heat to produce steam in giant boilers, which steam then runs a turbine generator.”
Not totally correct. The most efficient fossil fuel gereration is a natural gas combined cycle system. About 65% of power generated from this plant is by direct firing of the gas turbine with a gas/air mixture. No steam. The exhaust of the gas turbine is then used to generate steam which drives a separate steam turbine which then generates about 35% to the total power produced.
Otherwise, thanks for this article. This is an extremely important issue. In a recent report issued by Bank of America addressing investment in nuclear fuel stocks, they stated that an all in solar plus battery, that would match the same delivery capability of a nuclear power plant, would cost about 3.5 times the cost of the nuclear option. Wind and batteries, only 2.5 times.
And there you are, back to that steam again, just like WE stated. I will give you this point, though, the steam cycle part of a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Generation uses a much lower pressure steam than the forms of generation WE mentioned, so it does come online way way way quicker than any other form of generation, which is why it’s often used as peaking power, while the high pressure steam generation should be confined to base-load; i.e., once started it will run for hours, days or even weeks before it need to shut down again.
Those “wheeling costs” I believe apply only after all the transmission is fully amortized… the costs the utility charges for “transportation” are to pay for the maintenance, upkeep, and eventual replacement of the existing lines. When ALL the lines to carry this power must be new, I think the calculation needs redone. I could be wrong, though.
Additional capacity to take the power away from the solar farms will only get low utilisation, unlike say linking in a nuclear plant. It will be largely additional because it won’t be located where existing power stations are.
Nice report. It is time for all renewables to provide their own back up. They are getting another free ride by being allowed to fall back on fossil fuel and nuclear when when wind and solar don’t generate. All subsidies, tax preferences, regulatory forgiveness, mandates and grid preference must be stopped now. I am not against someone wanting and building their own systems but they have to pay for it themselves and it can never be hooked to the grid.
The average citizen has no idea what is taking place since this bunch of maniacs seized power. It does not matter that this makes no economic or engineering sense. Someone will siphon off a bunch of money from yet another boondoggle get rich and leave the tax payer with the tab for another malinvestment.
All the major economy’s are just a combo of shell game Ponzi scheme and institutional investors psycho path billionaires that push money around taking a cut every step of the way. It does not matter to them if it all goes bankrupt in the end because they have already made their money out of the scheme or locked up control of the political class.
Off topic but the entire government backed home loan mortgage origination /mortgage servicing /title insurance /mortgage insurance FHA VA government bail out / incentivization programs/ COVID relief/ rent relief coupled to “ to big to fail” in the banking industry is now a simmering potential repeat of the past but with more of a slow burn features this time. And these are just some of many systemic risks created by criminal fascists that have somehow gotten almost complete control of the worlds economies. Collateral crisis coupled with a currency crisis brewing too. —Ok maybe too much doom surfing tonight.
I plan to attend the meeting in Las Vegas. I have attended meetings done by the NRC. Those can be interesting.