In this post last week, I took note that New York’s electric grid system operator, NYISO, has recently issued some clear, if muted, warnings of the impossibility of the energy transition mandated by the state’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). In a November 2023 Report, NYISO stated (deeply buried at page 52) that “DEFRs are needed to balance intermittent supply with demand,” and those DEFRs must be “significant in capacity.” DEFRs are the elusive and not-yet-invented “dispatchable emissions-free resources.” At a conference the following month, NYISO’s VP for System Integration Planning, Zachary Smith, reiterated the need for these DEFRs in large amounts. Smith presented charts quantifying the capacity of DEFRs needed for New York to “balance” its prospective intermittent wind/solar supply as something in the range of 30+ GW. 30 GW is close to the peak electricity demand for the entire state, and is approximately equivalent to the existing capacity of New York’s fleet of natural gas plants, all of which are mandated to be closed by 2040.
So what is the answer to the great DEFR conundrum? New York’s Public Service Commission, operating from its usual playbook, has initiated a proceeding, under the name Proceeding 15-E-0302, to uncover the answer. My New York co-blogger Roger Caiazza calls this the “DEFR Proceeding,” although I don’t find the PSC using that name. Everybody gets to submit their brilliant thoughts and ideas. So far there seem to be well over 22,000 items entered in the docket — more than any human being can ever read.
In just the past few days, some big comments from important players have floated in. On Monday (June 17), a comment appeared on this DEFR docket co-signed by two environmental NGOs, Earth Justice and the Sierra Club. These are two of the very biggest, best funded, and most vociferous advocates of the urgent necessity of an immediate energy transition away from fossil fuels. With their hundreds of millions of dollars of annual revenue and scores of staffers, surely these guys must have found the answer to the DEFR conundrum.
In fact, incredibly, they have no clue. The basic approach in their Comment is to pooh-pooh the entire idea that large amounts of DEFRs may be needed, on the sole ground that there may be some (unspecified) flaws in the modeling used by NYISO. Their preferred solution is to turn off everybody’s electricity via a central switch when generation drops. Back to the Stone Age!
Here is their topic sentence:
Commenters are concerned that NYISO’s presentation at the December technical conference overstates the need for dispatchable, emissions-free resources (“DEFRs”) and downplays the value of taking steps in the near term to minimize this gap.
OK then, if perhaps NYISO has “overstated” the need for these DEFRs, then what is your alternative calculation of the amount of such resources that will be needed, and what are the assumptions that go into that calculation? They don’t provide any of that, not even a rough estimate or guess of any kind. Instead, they seek to discourage and stop any development whatsoever of these DEFRs:
Rushing to deploy expensive and untested DEFRs risks committing New York to flawed technologies, as it is unclear at the present time which technologies will emerge as commercially scalable and cost effective, much less which ones of the often talked about DEFRs would actually be emissions free.
So if there is to be no development or deployment of DEFRs in the next several years — during which New York is scheduled to close its natural gas plants and electrify both building heat and large numbers of automobiles — then what do you propose as the way to provide the electricity? Basically, all they would allow is “storage, wind and solar.”:
Rather than picking DEFR technologies to subsidize that may end up being sub-optimal, the DPS should focus on accelerating the build out of storage, solar, and wind, along with other existing methods to minimize the DEFR gap.
If “storage” is to be the back-up of intermittent wind and solar, how much will you need, and how much will that cost, and will the storage technology be capable of holding charge as long as will be needed? The only answer provided to these questions is a touching hope for some magical results from a tiny and barely-initiated federal program:
Deployment of new long duration storage to fill any gap may also become a viable avenue for filling whatever gap remains. In fact, just this April the US Department of Energy disbursed $15 million to advance projects seeking to “enable a long-duration capable (10+ hours) energy storage technology. . . .
As readers here know, 10 hours of storage is not enough to get through even one long calm winter night. The real storage need to back up wind and solar for an entire year is more like 1000 hours.
So it looks like we’ll be resorting to those “other existing methods” for balancing supply and demand to potentially fill the DEFR “gap.” What are those? It turns out that that phrase refers to some combination of hoping for imports from neighboring states (don’t they use coal?) and doing away with the idea that you can have electricity when you want it:
Some of these existing methods include but are not limited to improving inter-regional coordination, expanding import capability with inter-regional transmission, expanding intra-regional transmission, increasing energy efficiency and mandatory demand response, and incorporating flexibility of large loads if possible.
“Mandatory demand response” is Maoist-speak for turning off your electricity from central headquarters when the wind isn’t blowing.
Interestingly, about half of this Comment is then devoted to the issue of potentially developing hydrogen infrastructure as the means to back up a wind/solar system. Given that these guys are against investigating any other DEFRs, you might think they would be fans of hydrogen. But you would be wrong. In fact, from this Comment you will learn that they echo the Manhattan Contrarian on the many problems of hydrogen:
[P]ipelines constructed specifically to transport hydrogen do not exist in New York. [E]xisting gas pipelines in New York cannot safely transport more than de minimis concentrations of hydrogen, and creating a new pipeline distribution system for hydrogen would incur enormous costs. Leakage of hydrogen is a serious concern. Due to its small molecular size, hydrogen is prone to leakage rates on the order of 1.3-2.8 times greater than methane. . . . Increasing the mileage of pipelines in New York capable of transporting hydrogen also presents significant cost challenges. . . . [H]ydrogen embrittles steel and cast iron pipelines, necessitating a costly replacement of existing pipeline infrastructure to accommodate hydrogen. . . . [E]ven if existing natural gas pipelines could be easily repurposed to transport higher percentages of hydrogen, the amount of energy flowing through the pipelines would be drastically reduced. . . . [S]toring hydrogen presents both cost and feasibility hurdles.
And on and on from there. No known means of generating reliable electricity meets their standards of environmental purity. Although they will only say it in the Orwellian terminology of “demand response,” these guys are clearly advocating for the end to the idea of electricity whenever you want it.
Mr. Caiazza has many more detailed thoughts on this Comment at his website here.
Bottom line: nobody has the answer to how to keep the lights on after the natural gas plants are closed. For now, we continue to careen toward the disaster.
[Ctrl-f] search on “nuclear” comes up with a big fat zero.
They’ll need more…much more than 30GW. That’s just Current Peak Usage.
What happens to demand when Heating and Cooking is electrified?
Then further demand increase when Transportation is electrified??
Then when extra “Dedicated” generation is required to allow for DEFR replenishment???
10 plus seriously large nuclear plants or 100 plus small modular reactors.
The great nuclear renaissance had better start soon…
8 plants the size of Diablo Canyon to provide the 30GW. 8 more similar sized to electrify in state transportation and perhaps another 8 for electrification of heating and cooking. Then however more for DEFR replenishment. Except if it’s all nuclear, DEFR is unnecessary.
Nuclear IS “DEFR,” but they act like it doesn’t exist because it’s unpopular with the Eco-Nazis.
Everyone is also forgetting the energy required for industrial process hearting…
Don’t forget federal surveillance system
I would think that to be an offshoot of AI
Called UY (Up Yours)
Then further demand increase when Transportation is electrified??
Fortunately a lot of battery charging for EVs can be time-shifted and the same rational for charging the hypothetical DEFR batteries can apply to when EVs can be made ready for another day.
Of course slow wind or cloudy days means a bump increase of compulsory Work At Home alerts.
When nobody’s car is getting charged and the magic batteries aren’t being charged, then absent something else that actually works, you’re back to coal, oil, gas, and nuclear.
Unless total grid failure is suddenly “deemed acceptable.”
I do have the solution, multi-pronged. Gas, oil, coal, hydro and nuclear. Problem solved.
Those aren’t the droids they’re looking for.
Better that the Rhoids there giving us though
And yet those are the droids that are going to fix the problem.
It would appear their first step is, freeze half the people to death.
You’re an optimist, aren’t you?
It’s more like 95% as the ultimate goal.
Population Matters / The Optimum Trust springs to mind
Nuclear would be the ideal dispatchable emissions-free resource. But since it is so perfect, why not use it all the time, and do away with the bird choppers and solar panels and their associated infrastructure?
It’s much easier to skim off of multiple loosely controlled projects than a single, though much larger, controlled one.
The Cuomo Machine was proud of closing Indian Point. Nukes are doubleplus ungood!
You assume that their goal is the control of CO2, rather than the control of populations.
The B&W Once through Steam Generators NSSS were designed and confirmed to “Load Follow” at a minimum of 10% power per hour in the design specifications. I personally confirmed two plants met the minimum and actually exceeded the minimum. They only had problems with poison build up when exceeding significant power excursions over 10% for several hours. German plants easily handled 20%/hr. excursions and did not have significant limitations [number of excursions per lifetime] on 40% or even 60% excursions. Even the French plants do it.
An onsite once through NG generator at each plant could easily handle faster load changes. I also witnessed several planed and inadvertent Main Steam safety lifts with the NSSS held at 20 percent and thus eliminating a Shut down. The plant was back on line within three hours! ! Before I retired the NRC squashed this practice/capability and forced the plants to have automatic shut downs on these type of events.
One has to wonder is the “Vulture Capitalist’s” down in lower Manhattan are
in on this..
DEFRs =Unicorn farts?
The Electricity Fairy’s Magic Electric Wand
Fairy farts
Infinitely renewable
Has anyone seen an analysis of how much energy it will take to produce a given quantity of H2 versus how much energy would be liberated by the generated quantity? I suspect, if storage and transportation costs are included, its a net zero sum. The same amount of energy liberated would be the amount required to generate it!
Plus, anyone that has any experience at all working with gases…especially highly explosive H2…will immediately recognize the exceptionally high danger using H2 will pose.
The second law of thermodynamics is at least partly derived from the observation that there’s always a loss in usable energy from any transformation/conversion.
Engineers are able to calculate heat and mass balance accurately these days, in fact there are software packages that do this for them with little effort.
I work with hydrogen very often, and I continually have to remind myself of its inherent dangers because it’s safe until a stupid decision or unanticipated failure occurs.
Yes, it’s LESS than zero. Hydrogen is an energy SINK, not an energy SOURCE.
Worse, the pressure loss is faster [Order of magnitude] than the loss of pressure in a Propane cylinder or typical commercial Fire extinguisher cylinder. Worse than gasoline stored on a Sky Boat.
Danger, as in unusually large range of H2 to air ratios for explosive mixtures?
Hydrogen is far lighter than air and immediately dissipates upwards, unlike natural gas or gasoline vapors. Very little dissipation/dilution is necessary with H2 with atmospheric air to bring it far below the lower explosive limit or flash point, unlike fossil fuels. It happens instantly.
For these reasons, a leak of hydrogen with its very low molecular weight does not displace breathing air in indoor spaces or vehicle passenger compartments, as does natural gas or gasoline vapors. Hydrogen is not directly toxic to humans as are hydrocarbon vapors and the exhaust gases from the burning of fossil fuels.
Also H2 is a gas only at atmospheric pressure, and thus cannot drench the clothing, skin and hair of humans as does gasoline or diesel, which turns the victims into human torches.
Hydrogen is one of the most commonly used industrial gases in the world, and ironically H2 is a critical component of crude oil refining.
Duane,
That is very, very correct for gases that are at the same temperature and pressure.
Now do the sums for a cryogenic hydrogen supply, having just leaked from a high pressure vessel. You might be surprised by how dense it can be, (being very cold), and still well within it’s explosive range, all at ground level.
Most leaks occur in enclosed areas, thus dissipation is irrelevant.
Hydrocarbons are toxic in high doses after long exposure, the occasional splash has no long term health consequences. The only gas that’s a problem from the burning of fossil fuels is carbon monoxide, which is virtually non-existent for properly tuned combustion.
If I am refueling at a “Gas Station” and someone tries to steal my car I would prefer to be dispensing A liquid fuel that I could “Drench” them with to drive them away…works every time!
Move to a better neighborhood?
Duane,
I have never worked with hydrogen, but the British Oxygen Company (Industrial gas supplier) warns that when attaching a regulator to a hydrogen cylinder, do not vent the cylinder, as is the practice with other gases, as it can self ignite and burns with an invisible flame.
In other words a high presure leak may well ignite?
Can you say Fukushima?
“burns with an invisible flame.”
Do not recommend waving your hand over the leak to see if it is burning.
It is an immutable fact that it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than that hydrogen then contains before you get to the storage and transportation costs
The analogy I have read: A counterfeiter washes the ink off a $10 bill to use the paper
to make a $5 bill.
False analogy
Are you arguing that you don’t lose energy when you create, then burn hydrogen?
If not then you agree that it is an apt analogy.
Remind me ofiar, Liar…
“I OBJECT, your honor!”
“Why do you object, Mr Reede?”
“Because it’s DEVASTATING to my case!”
“Denied.”
All methods of energy availability and conversion to work entail losses. Only 25-30% of the stored chemical energy of fossil fuels is available to do work due to waste heat loss and internal mechanical losses. Hydrogen energy powered engines’ conversion to work is far more efficient than fossil fuel engines. Fuel cell vehicles generally exceed 60% energy to work conversion, and this percentage is improving over time.
Hydrogen fuel cells can be very efficient, however, they are rapidly destroyed by impurities. And that’s why hydrogen is more often burnt as a thermal fuel rather than taken into a fuel cell unit.
And there he goes again, touting absolute lies as if he actually knew what he is talking about.
First off, automobiles have been doing better than 25 to 30 efficiency for decades. As to heating, the bets natural gas furnaces are in the high 90’s in terms of efficiency.
Too bad hydrogen fuel cells are low power, heavy and unreliable.
So what! PRODUCING hydrogen will consume MORE ENERGY than burning it will ever yield!
It’s “combustion efficiency” really DOESN’T MATTER, given that FACT!
The Advanced Ultra Super-Critical (AUSC) coal fired power plant are decimals away of 50% thermal efficiency. CO2 emissions are as good as or better than CCTG NG especially when running at peak efficiency.
All energy production, storage, and transportation involves losses. That is true of fossil fuels as it is of hydrogen. The production, storage and transportation of gasoline and diesel for use in a vehicle results in a loss of approx. 15%.
The predominant methods of hydrogen production – steam reforming of natural gas and electrolysis of water involve larger production and transportation losses, about 30% (but recent tech advances in electrolysis can shrink those losses to as little as 5%).
But the game changer is that the conversion of hydrogen to work is far better than internal combustion engines – about 60% vs 25%. Hydrogen overall, from production to power delivered at the wheels or KW produced by a power plant, is a net improvement over ICVs or gas or coal fueled power plants.
Which is why the typical hydrogen fuel cell vehicle gets 2-3 times the mileage of gasoline powered vehicles on an apples to apples basis known as GGE, or gallons of gasoline equivalent.
And hydrogen fuel can be produced anywhere at any scale unlike fossil fuels. All that is needed is an electrolysis machine and a supply of electrical power and water. FCV owners can literally produce their own fuel at home. Or a convenience station can produce its own hydrogen fuel for retail sales, eliminating any need to transport hydrogen by pipeline.
DUane seems to feel that repeating nonsense makes it sound better.
It DOES NOT MATTER. Hydrogen IS AN ENERGY SINK, NOT AN ENERGY SOURCE.
It TAKES MORE ENERGY TO PRODUCE THAN BURNING IT WILL EVER YIELD, which renders your entire discussion MEANINGLESS!
Eliminating leakage [in the piping, pipelines, storage tanks and point of use. How many miles of NG piping in the US?] to below that of NG would be expensive to the point of impossibility.
Hydrogen is safer than natural gas for multiple reasons. Fact
It’s no good as a fire extinguisher. And in the case of a spill, there can be no odourant with hydrogen, that makes it much more dangerous.
It is safer in a few limited situations, however the many problems with it make it completely unsuitable as a source of energy.
Yeat another misapplication of terms.
Hydrogen IS NOT an energy SOURCE at all, it takes more energy to produce than it provides as a “fuel.”
Natural Gas is certainly an ideal way to store and deliver Hydrogen.
4 Hydrogen atoms at a time (bonded to Carbon)
Easy to storeEasy to separate (just add heat and oxygen)Process is self sustaining (just add more CH4)Byproduct is what plants use to create their energyPlant byproduct of energy production is OxygenOxygen aides in separation process above (bullet 2)
If it were as useful and practical as you insist, it would not need to be implemented at the point of a gun, and people would be lining up to invest in it.
It would be foolish to transport hydrogen, for all of the reasons in the article – and more. Since we’re looking for dispatchable power, and a backup for wind and solar, it would seem more reasonable to set up a central facility that would store it in some form, and deliver power back to the grid on demand. Batteries will never be practical, but hydrogen could be at least doable.
Producing hydrogen from water by electrolysis is about 80% efficient. Producing electricity from hydrogen in a fuel cell is somewhat less than that, but it would be impractical with present technology. Hydrogen can be used directly in a combined cycle generator meant for natural gas, and would deliver reliable power at the scale required. The hydrogen from electrolysis could be stored at moderate pressure in some very large tanks, and used on demand to feed the grid. A combined cycle plant is about 60% efficient, so the round trip efficiency would be 48%. I’m assuming the electrolytic unit could produce gas at the required storage pressure.
So all of the hydrogen handling and storage would be in a single dedicated facility, safely away from the public.
I’m not advocating this, mind you. Far from it. I’m opposed to the whole “energy transition” for a great many reasons. I’m just surprised that this one didn’t come up in connection with hydrogen.
If only we had affordable, energy-dense ways to store energy for on-demand consumption.
Wait! Fossil fuels! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
They’re not making them anymore.
They’re not making then any less. Nature just takes her time
Lol! true enuff.
That is debatable. Surely (don’t call me that) the same processes that created today’s fossil fuels are ongoing.
More importantly, we’re nowhere near running out. By near, I mean we aren’t in danger our running out in the next few decades. If we learn to harvest methane clathrate (also called methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice, fire ice. etc.) we have centuries worth.
Nuclear is a good power source, too, but it’s not something that we can spin up and down as needed. Is it?
Even without methane clathrates, we have hundreds of years worth of fossil fuels. With them we have thousands of years.
If it has been designed to “spin up and down”, nuclear can. It’s just that most current plants were designed to provide base load so the ability to change power levels rapidly was not included.
We’ve got enough for hundreds of years of continued use.
Nobody EVER “made” hydrogen in “stand alone” form, unless you’re going to “collect” it from a star – which would consume more fossil fuel energy than you could get from the “collected” hydrogen, even IF something so ludicrous was possible.
So what was your point?
And another thing – the notion that fossil fuel resources are “finite” is constantly being equated with the ridiculous notion that we “need” to stop using them NOW, when there is NO need to do that.
Wasting such resources to produce worse-than-useless things like windmills, solar panels, EVs, and hydrogen-as-fuel will not make those “finite, but not running out” fossil fuel resources last any longer.
So what’s your point?
U235
Is nuclear a good source to meet on-demand power needs? I think it’s better suited for baseload power. Or do new designs make it easy to spin up and spin down nuclear power as needed?
“DEFR” technologies will never exist if you include the carbon dioxide emissions for all the extraction, processing, manufacturing, and transportation of the units themselves (of whatever technology), transformers, switchgear, etc.
We need to ditch the unsound concern about emissions to begin with. Natural gas is plentiful and cost effective. Nuclear works fine too, longer term. We the public must insist on reliable and affordable electricity that no central office can just shut off.
I’d invest in uranium and copper miners if I thought there was any serious thought to an energy “transition.”
I have been waiting for it since 2001. Its slowly happening, too little and far too late
Five and a half years to 2030, the clowns will be frowning.
Natural Gas is certainly an ideal way to store and deliver Hydrogen.
4 Hydrogen atoms at a time (bonded to Carbon)
The same magical thinking and innumeracy is evident here in Britain where the Labour party (which is likely to be the next government in two weeks) has declared that the electricity grid will be powered entirely by renewables by 2030. No plan has been put forward demonstrating how this can be achieved other than building more wind farms. Apparently, these wind farms do not suffer from intermittency issues so these can obviously be used as the elusive DEFRs that New York is looking for. We are saved!
“the electricity grid will be powered entirely by renewables by 2030”
Heck, no problemo- they’ve got 5.5 years. Lots of time. /s
See above: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/06/22/in-case-you-think-someone-has-the-answer-to-new-yorks-looming-energy-disaster/#comment-3929923
A lot of new infrastructure has to be built over that 5.5 years. I don’t see any of it developing on any timeframe.
Solar in a maritime climate? No sufficient offshore wind bids? No ongoing development of adequate transmission nor distribution grids?
To top it off; NIMBY to the max!
There will be a whole new government in by then for them to blame. No sarc.
Its completely mad. They are proposing to have about 50 GW of solar plus about 90 GW of wind, at the same time as they move everyone to EVs and heat pumps. So they have peak demand now of a bit over 45 GW. and that will rise to at least 60 GW.
At 5pm in January there is no solar. There will be days, maybe a week or ten days on end, where wind delivers about 10% of faceplate or under.
There is basically going to be a 50 GW gap. Maybe interconnect and nuclear and other bits and pieces will deliver 10 or 15 GW. But however you look at it, they are going to be short at least 30 GW.
In winter, with barely insulated houses.
Totally agree so why isn’t National Grid telling them?
I’m guessing something about money and heating their apartments during the long, cold winter…
And not JUST “telling them” in some cryptic and footnoted quiet speech, but SHOUTING at them and beating them over the head with it.
Because clearly, that’s what is necessary. They aren’t getting the message.
I concur. But we’re going to go way, way, way down that road before reality sets in.
Might as well make it 150 GW and 270 GW, zero is still zero.
Just looked.
At this moment, England seems to be importing 26% of its electricity, followed by gas on 24%
Lemmings to the left, lemmings to the right. But, mostly on the left.
Interestingly, when a building manager is faced with the necessity of “load shedding” to stay within the electrical consumption the local utility says is available before “brownout” or “blackout” in emergency situations….it will be the air conditioning that is switched off. Apparently people and businesses prefer to be able to continue their basic activities that require electricity. Being a few degrees warmer is secondary. Is there a lesson for politicians here about CC ?
People in general, and politicians in particular, succumbing to “wishful thinking” isn’t a recent phenomenon.
“For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer … which is wrong …” — H. L. Mencken (around 100 years ago ?)
So what is the answer to the great DEFR conundrum?
The answers are
1) Don’t worry about it. They’re doing amazing things with computers and stuff and somebody will invent something someday that fixes the problem. We can probably force invention through more regulation.
2) Don’t worry about it. Somebody else will have deal with that in the future. We’ll be retired or promoted to higher positions. The bills come due on the next guy’s watch, not ours.
Option 2 might be the plan for the Labour party in Britain. If they win the General Election, their term will run from 2024 to 2029, one year before their deadline for a fully renewable electricity grid. Are they planning to leave the whole mess to the next government after them?
Of course they are. They will build more windfarms, ban gas extraction and obstruct new nuclear. The lights will go out and another party will take over the mess.
I’m going with “3. Never mind, because the very idea that we “need” so-called “DEFRs” was based on a make believe “crisis” that doesn’t actually exist.”
Better emigrate to China…
… not-yet-invented “dispatchable emissions-free resources.”
A conundrum in three parts >> (not yet invented) NYI and DEFR,
all to be in-place and functioning (IP&F) by 2040. Imagine the
probability of each and multiply: NYI x DEFR x IP&F = success
To the nearest whole number: success = Zero
Advice to New Yorkers: leave now
The “about” page on the Manhattan Contrarian web-site comments on the “West Village” as a great place to live. Then, we are told of the stifling political and ideological orthodoxy.
My view, perhaps, is cynical and harsh. I’d be blogging from a more suitable geography by Global Handwashing Day (Oct. 15th).
In NYC in the summertime, when there’s not enough power for A/C, stifling is a term you will hear much more of. Heard interesting stories back when I did some contract work at Carrier in Syracuse.
A/C rasdically changed the office environment.
And when there’s not enough power to charge all those imaginary cars, reverting to the power of the horse will be brought up by the ‘experts’. And when the smell of horse manure and rotting horse flesh gets to be too much, the ‘experts’ will …..
Yes the problem being that modern high-rise buildings were designed with the assumption that they would be air conditioned.
The underlying assumption of course being that a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week reliable electric grid would always be available.
What a quaint idea.
And leave your politics behind when you do.
So, isn’t shutting down existing supplies without DEFRs like jumping out of an airplane with a parachute kit? To assembled on the way down.
Quiet from the peanut gallery; Leftist deep thinkers (liberal arts grads) are at work ensuring your utopian future.
I’m reminded of a particularly funny and poignant scene in the BBC’s version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, after the B-Ark crashes on the primitive Earth, where the graduate marketing manager is conducting a progress report meeting among the survivors of the crash. It is all summarized by the response to the ‘hero’s’ negative reaction to her presentation of the wheel and axle prototype — an octagon with the axle parallel to the plane of the octagon, with each of the triangular sections of the octagon painted a different color — hands on hips in a petulant stand, she angrily says, “Well if you’re so smart, what color would you paint it?”
We are being led down a path of destruction by those who can’t actually ‘do,’ but have managed to grab the reins of power because they weren’t qualified to be hired for jobs that produced tangible results.
More like your dystopian future…
This problem is 100% politically created, based on bad science. Too bad there isn’t a clause in the Constitution “lex mala, lex nulla” (an evil law is no law, a quote by Thomas Aquinas).
Any and all laws based on bad science could then be thrown out. We know that CO2 only blocks a specific range of infra-red heat frequencies. At 300 PPM most of the infra-red heat is blocked, and at 400 ppm (we are currently at around 418 ppm) no further heat blocking occurs. Thus, all laws based on limiting CO2 emissions could be thrown out.
Water absorbs most of the incoming and out going IR. There isn’t much CO2 in air. A cubic meter of air at 20 deg. C contains about 0.8 grams of CO2.
Yes, the best summation I’ve heard I’d “Attempting to “trap heat” with CO2 is like trying to “trap mice” with a chain link fence.”
In actuality, it’s probably more like “Attempting to “trap heat” with CO2 is like trying to “trap mice” with a split rail fence.”
Rather than picking DEFR technologies to subsidize that may end up being sub-optimal
Which is exactly what they did to give us the terminally problematic renewables grid. Patching up a failed tech is a Rube Goldberg machine. Imagine the Wright Brothers having been satisfied with flying a couple of hundred feet then choosing a dirigible “patch” to hold it up in the sky and saying “There, that ought to do it!”
Here’s a Rube Goldberg machine for turning on a tv set:
http://www.pxleyes.com/images/contests/rube%20goldberg/fullsize/rube%20goldberg_4a3c0e06144db_hires.jpg
and
These are mutually exclusive objectives. If you have a NatGas plant that is supposed to close no later than 2040, exactly how much capital are you willing to dump into that plant for maintenance and “increasing energy efficiency”? I’m thinking that the bean counters have already calculated a “the plant is totaled” number and any repair (say from a rogue hurricane or super storm or terrorist incident) will be met with a “close it now” sort of response. That number keeps decreasing as the terminal date of the mandate looms. It may even creep even lower as NatGas itself becomes more expensive than any sort of electricity rate permitted by the NYS public utility commission.
When you have an hostile occupying enemy force that is bound and determined to destroy your business model and has the temerity to even name your execution date, the State and the consumer doesn’t get the benefit of a free market response. Rather, there are escape plans and bailout, reasons to close early.
Furthermore, as the Left becomes even more insane, energy producers have every reason to believe in the Darth Vader Negotiation Tactic – “I’m altering the deal, pray that I don’t alter it further”. The Left will likely tighten the deadline or pile on additional regulations, particularly as the State runs into bankruptcy and a growing welfare state from the illegal aliens demanding free or cheap energy.
The GOP has also learned that whatever Gentlemen’s Agreement is made with the Left, the reminder comes quick that they are not dealing with gentlemen. Why would this be any different with NYS government and the utterly corrupt courts? We have seen in recent months the complete jettison of Rule of Law as NYS turns into a Show Me The Man, I’ll Show You The Crime state and thermal energy producers are already considered Guilty of something.
Very nice Francis. This is a disgusting exhibition of government abuse. They are lying and purposely using language that hides all the shortcomings of wind, solar and storage. We must immediately stop referring to DEFRs. There are no DEFRs we must force them to admit that flat out. We also must stop accepting the language they use when they admit that wind, solar and storage can not substitute for fossil fuel and nuclear. All of these guys need to be fired.
Use Google and search for “small wind turbines”. There are many types of these for home and remote site use.
Remote site use? Fine that’s where they can be useful on occasion.
THEY DON’T BELONG ON THE GRID, where all they “accomplish” is making the grid LESS reliable and MORE expensive.
Welcome New York to the third world club.
When we debate the technology choices, we ignore the central problem with the dilemma; the intrusion of government where it does not belong. Rent seeking players drive government into all the corners of our lives that have previously been the sole domain of expert practitioners.
You can see this in energy, health, employment practice, immigration, etc. Name a domain and you will find emotion riddled activists, infesting the halls of political idiots, making decisions they have no business being involved with.
It reminds me of a Monty Python movie.
DEFR?
Surely if you have DEFR you don’t need wind or solar? I wouldn’t count batteries as DEFR as they cannot be relied on and hence are not truly D.
Translation: Build nuclear power plants, remove worse-than-useless windmills and solar panels from grid.
I greatly appreciate Mr. Menton’s contributions to the discussion, but I wish he would stop using 1000 hours as his value for the required amount of battery storage.
Now, let me be clear: I arrived at a similar value (specifically, 957 hours) when I based a back-of-the-envelope calculation on a year’s worth of ERCOT wind output. But I think that this metric is misleading because it unrealistically assumes no overbuilding. That is, it’s based on the assumption that the average output available from the wind turbines wouldn’t exceed the average load.
In my opinion, any reliable system employing batteries exclusively for back-up would instead be overbuilt significantly: it would drastically reduce storage requirements by including more wind turbines than would be needed to make the average wind-turbine output power equal the average load. That’s because overbuilding reduces not only the amount of time during which the current load exceeds the current turbine output but also the time required to charge up the batteries when the turbine output exceeds the load, and up to some level overbuilding is less expensive than the battery storage it avoids.
For example, I found that overbuilding wind-turbine capacity by 60% would reduce the storage requirement from 957 hours to 143 hours. Even based on a hopelessly optimistic $80/kWh battery price, moreover, the cost-optimal level of overbuilding would be 120%, which would reduce the storage requirement further, to only 69 hours. True, my calculations made several assumptions favorable to battery storage. But the point remains that a little overbuilding results in a lot of storage-requirement reduction.
So, although I agree with the proposition that battery storage is far too expensive, I also think that using the 1000-hours figure over-eggs the pudding.