Even as I regularly repeat my calls for a Zero Emissions Grid Demonstration Project, I’m ready for the next move in the back and forth. Suppose someone claims that a steady zero emissions electricity supply has been achieved? How can we determine and verify whether that is true? The facts can be sufficiently complex, and the incentives sufficiently perverse, that fraudulent claims are to be expected.
Consider the simple case of El Hierro Island. They set out in 2008 with the objective of building a wind/storage electricity system that would provide the island with zero-emissions electricity. To this day, the website of the wind/storage electricity company, Gorona del Viento, proclaims on its opening page “An island 100% renewable energy.” Proceed through the website, and you will find lots of happy talk about tons of carbon emissions saved, and about hours of 100% renewable generation. But if you are persistent, and finally get to the detailed charts of the latest statistics, you find that the percent of electricity from the wind/storage system for the most recent full year (2023) was only 35%. Because El Hierro is an island, it lacks the ability to cheat by sneaking in some electricity from gas or coal from a neighboring state or country and not counting it.
But now consider the case Switch Inc., which is one of the largest (maybe the very largest) companies that specialize in operating data centers. Like its colleagues in Big Tech, Switch is obsessed with the desire to show its virtue by claiming to have “emissions” as low as possible, preferably zero. As I discussed previously in posts here and here, the likes of Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Amazon all have the same obsession, and they all put out annual “sustainability” reports that loudly proclaim their virtue in the headlines and introductions; but then, all of them ultimately admit in the fine print that their emissions are actually increasing with the voracious energy demands of data centers and AI.
Well, such honesty is not good enough for Switch. Go to their website here and you will find this unequivocal statement: “All Switch data centers have run on 100% renewable energy since 2016.”
Really? How have they accomplished that? Of course, you will not find sufficient detail in their own statements to check the veracity of their claim. However, Bill Ponton has done an excellent analysis at RealClearEnergy on August 6 definitively proving that their claim is fraudulent. The title is “Tech Titan’s Quest for Net Zero.” Although Switch has supposedly contracted for sufficient solar power and backup storage to supply the steady electricity requirements of its facilities, in fact basic math shows that they have not purchased nearly sufficient quantities of either to accomplish the job. Despite their claims to the contrary, they are thus sneaking undisclosed amounts of power from reliable hydrocarbon sources to keep their centers operational 24/7.
Checking into Switch’s claim of “100% renewable” energy for its data centers, Ponton focuses on a particular center (Citadel) outside Reno, Nevada. He goes to Switch’s 10K for 2021, where Switch discloses that it has contracted for 130MW of renewable (in this case, solar) power to run the facility. But is that enough? To figure that out, you would need to know what is the baseload power requirement of the facility, and also how much storage is available to turn the intermittent solar power into a continuous baseload supply. Switch omits that information from its 10K, but Ponton tracks it down in an article about the facility in Greentech Media for July 2020: the baseload power requirement of the facility is 30MW, and the available battery is a 60MW/240MWh Tesla Megapack.
So is 130 MW of solar arrays plus 240 MWh of storage sufficient to provide 30 MW of firm baseload power? Ponton goes through the calculations, and here is the conclusion:
For more than half of the year from September through March, solar generation is not enough to handle both daytime and nighttime demand of 720 MWh. Increasing battery storage from 240 MWh to 330 MWh will have some effect in reducing the system’s dependence on gas power backup, but above 330 MWh of battery capacity, the system is limited by its solar capacity.
Switch has the option of increasing both its solar and battery capacity to reduce the percentage of gas generation required to back up the system. However, even with 200 MW of solar capacity and 420 MWh of battery capacity, gas will need to generate 1% of the total energy required to provide steady-state baseload of 30 MW both day and night.
So they would need to nearly double the storage capacity (240 MWh to 420 MWh) and multiply the solar generation capacity by more than 1.5 (130 MW to 200 MW), and still that would leave them needing to draw their supply 1% of the time from backup natural gas. Now 1% of the time may not seem like very much. But 1% of a year is 87 hours, which is close to 4 days. And for those four days, you need the whole 30 MW of gas power that you would need to run the data center the whole time with no solar power at all. You need to keep the gas plant fully maintained and ready to step in at all times. And you need to pay the gas plant’s full cost of capital even though it may be idle 99% of the time.
If I am reading Mr. Ponton’s piece correctly, even to get to the figures of 200 MW of solar arrays and 420 MWh of storage to provide 30 MW of baseload power, he is assuming (1) zero turnaround losses on stored energy, and (2) no such thing as a cloudy day reducing solar irradiance. I’ll let Mr. Ponton run the numbers on his spreadsheet, but I’ll bet that one good fully-overcast week in December or January could send the storage need from 420 MWh to a multiple of that.
Ponton provides this as a link to all of his calculations.
So the mighty Switch Inc. is exposed as no more honest about its assertions of zero emissions than our friend gkam. The moral is that we should accept no claim of achievement of zero emissions electricity from anyone who maintains a continuing connection to a grid with hydrocarbon generation on it. Otherwise, there is way to much potential for cheating.
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Francis, thanks for the detailed analysis. It’s always interesting to see data and mathematics spirit thing out.
My thought on the Switch quote you provided: “All Switch data centers have run on 100% renewable energy since 2016.” is that if they had only lit one 60 watt light bulb in their various facilities with renewables, they could claim their statement is 100% correct. They HAVE RUN on 100% renewable. <– this is democrat speak, it’s intent is to deceive.
Someone puts a 16 oz. glass of water with 8 oz. of water in it in front of you and asks, “Is the glass half full or half empty? On the surface of the Earth at sea level, the correct answer is always, “It’s full. It’s half full of water and half full of 14.5 lbs sq/inch of air. “Half-full”, “half-empty” come about because of making assumptions. Anyway, that’s the way I see it.
I’d always qualified the answer based on the last path the water took. If being filled from empty, the glass is half full. If being drank from full, the glass is half empty. However, if the direction can’t be determined, it’s simply half a glass of water.
The old joke is:
Pessimist: Half Empty
Optimist: Hals Full
Chemical Engineer: Full but two phase
Mechanical Engineer: The Glass is over specified.
Yes, my fave is the local grocery store powering their refrigeration equipment with 100% wind energy.
I guess they let the ice cream melt when the wind doesn’t blow?
100% of the wind energy comes from wind.
“All Switch data centers have run on 100% renewable energy since 2016.”
Which could mean that they have used 100% of the energy that renewables provided. The fact that this is only a small portion of the amount of energy they used in total is not discussed. UK power companies such as Octopus and Eco-Tricity use similar semantic skullduggery to persuade customers that they supply 100% renewable energy, but they are only agents for the national grid which is always a mix of gas/wind/solar/biomass/interconnects. They sell you 100% of the renewables output, although some days that isn’t very much at all.
It would also be true if each data center had run on nothing but renewable power for on day (or hour, or minute) at some time since 2016. That may sound silly, but there have been claims of grids achieving 100% renewable supply even though it only happened for a few hours.
yes claims…
9 woman pregnant each for 1 month will produce a child.
Same math.
And to keep that gas plant ready to go, i.e., in hot standby, such a machine will consume up to 40% of its full power gas consumption. So just how much CO2 reduction are they really getting?
There are a few errors in the estimates but get close to the mark. For example, you would not need a 30MW gas plant because you can anticipate the battery going flat and run say 5 to 10MW plant continuously when you are likely to run the battery down. Also the solar array should be tracking with enough space between panels so long shadows do not cast over the more northern rows of panels.
In reality, the panels, batteries and gas turbine are more coal intensive than just burning coal to make electricity. You pay say $600M to buy all that junk made in China to produce the 30MW for 20 years plus a bit of gas. You could have bought 6Mt of coal, ask the local power station to burn it and you could operate for 90 years just burning through the coal you bought. The coal savings would be HUGE.
Such schemes simply demand China burns a lot more coal to supply all the junk. People building these schemes should display images of the latest Chinese built long wall miners:
http://www.zmj.com/static/upload/image/20210715/1626315203199872.png
This is what is keeping the western fantasy alive. It is fundamentally the productivity of Chinese coal mining.
If China stops mining coal, the western NetZero fantasy is dead.
What is Nut Zero?
It’s an engineering green fantasy!
Over 80% of global primary energy for the world’s 8 billion people comes from hydrocarbon fuels
Nut Zero is a fantasy engineering project that starts with secondary energy (electricity) for about 1 billion people.
Almost 7 billion people, of the 8 billion total, live in nations that do not care about CO2 emissions. … other than wanting to manufacture EVs, batteries, solar panels and wind turbines for the 1 billion Nut Zero “victims”.
Electricity use is under 25% of the primary energy consumption for those 1 billion people living with the Nut Zero fantasy.
The Nut Zero fantasy is to have no natural gas backup for intermittent wind and solar power. The only other choice is batteries.
The most common use for batteries will be to provide electricity on low wind or windless night.
That will require up to 16 hours of battery output.
A larger problem would be two low wind nights in a row. That means as little as 8 hours later full battery power would be needed again for up to 16 hours.
The batteries would have to be fully charged just 8 hours after being discharged.
So far not one electric utility has a plan for battery power for just one low wind night.
One low win night will require battery output for 7.5 to 16 hours.
The summer solstice in June is just short of 16 hours and 38 minutes long, while on the day of the winter solstice the length of the day is a mere 7 hours and 50 minutes.
The electric utility will need up to 16 hours of battery power to replace solar and wind on just one worst case low wind winter night. Typical plans call for 4 hours, sometimes more, but never 16 hours.
That’s a simple feasibility analysis.
No demonstration project is needed to prove the obvious.
I did not need to add more battery capacity for a safety margin. Or for two low wind nights in a row.
Or increased future electricity consumption for more EVs, more electric appliances more electric heat or more AI / cryptocurrency electric demand.
Why complicate a simple analysis, or waste money on a demonstration project, when the back of the envelope calculations predict failure with high confidence?
If people want to believe politicians and bureaucrats, but will not believe grid engineers, you can’t fix stupid.
There have been several small scale demonstration projects. They ignore the carbon dioxide emissions for products and food importe to these residential areas. Even with that advantage, they were complete failures requiring burning garbage or diesel fuel generators for power when there was no wind. Both were spun by the leftist media as a success.
The only possible way to back up intermittent energy for the entire Australian is with fossil fuels if you are too stupid to use Nuclear.
Fossil fuels create emissions, therefore, it is simply not possible to get to zero emissions using intermittent wind/solar without base load Nuclear.
Below is a summary of the costs involved in backing up the entire Australian grid with batteries, assuming it was run on 100% renewables.
Storage requirements in a 100% renewable electricity system: extreme events and inter-annual variability – IOPscience
Storage needed is 11% of Annual load when 35 years of variation in wind/solar is considered.
This translates to 7% of Annual Load actually supplied after energy loss and other inefficiencies are considered.
Australia’s Annual Load is 200 TWH so storage required is 22 TWH for reliable power.
The Akaysha battery (Third largest in world) will store 1660 MWH at a capital cost of $650 M
This implies battery capital cost to back-up Australian grid of approximately $8.6 Trillion in 2024 or 3 to 4 times our GDP.
Francis Menton I love your articles! VERY informative, interesting and revealing.
There’s different types of data centers. Not all run at max power all the time.
It is a fine spreadsheet, though.
1000 scientists can say I am right, but it only takes 1 to PROVE I am wrong.
At the moment it’s windy on El Hierro: you have to go back to the 12th for last use of “motores diesel”. The hydro is being used in grid stabilisation mode, pumping up one penstock, and letting water return down the other without generating.
https://demanda.ree.es/visiona/canarias/el_hierro5m/acumulada/2024-08-12
Here is what is I think still the record no diesel spell
and here is the bad diesel dependent December 2022
I haven’t checked recent history to see if there’s a longer diesel free or diesel dependent spell.
Good stuff.
No one estimates the requirement properly. Forget wind if you are between 40S to 40N.
Select the worst 4 days for solar and optimise the panel mounting to maximise the sunlight over those worst 4 days. There are not many places between this latitudes that will get less than 4 hours of full sunshine equivalent over 4 days. So if your daily load is 1MW, then you need 1MW of solar panels.
You need storage for two days without sun – round to 50 hours. So 50MWh battery for 1MW load.
El Heirro system designers simply under estimated the energy collection requirement. They may well find that addition of solar collection would be an economic option for further fuel saving.
No one is saving coal with these things but It is convenient to let China mine the coal efficiently, build the junk and then use the junk elsewhere to avoid burning coal in your own back yard.
El Hierro suffers from the physical constraint of the small size of the lower reservoir of their pumped storage. Additionally the upper reservoir started by leaking (hence the concrete lining in the image). The upper reservoir isn’t actually boring enough anyway, but it’s not the constraint.
Another thing they found was that wind was very grid unstable, so they were operating with at least 1MW of diesel to provide inertia. They did learn how to use the pumped hydro to provide stabilisation.
They are long way off from being able to cover the December 2022 Dunkelflaute.
In the Azores, Graciosa finally implemented its wind/solar/battery/diesel system after much corrupt overspend and technical problems. It was managing close to 80% renewables, although EdA now rarely reports the data.
And none of this job creating and profit creating would be possible without huge, ongoing operating/modification/babysitting subsidies from Brussels, EU.
A total boondoggle kept alive to avoid more embarrassment, like fitting a square peg in a too small round hole
Just imagine, if it were shut down as being an economic failure, if Private Enterprise prevailed, with real investors putting up real money on which a real rate of return is required
There is a technology for solar panels called zenith following. This puts the panels on 3 axis motor systems to keep the panels pointed directly at the sun dawn to dusk, 365.
I have not run the costing. I have not estimated the power usage or power gained. Then do exist and if solar is to be installed, they might prove to be worthwhile.
The problem is that they must be widely spaced to avoid shadowing each other. The land cost in most locations kills the economics, let alone the added costs of mechanisms and controls and maintenance.
In Australia, utility solar that can angle panels favourably after dawn and before sunset may pay for the fact that rooftop solar can send prices negative during the day.
May depend on marginal rate of electricity.
Anthony Watts invested in photovoltaic solar panels for his house, because the marginal rate was headed toward $1/kwh. Time of day pricing was part of that IIRC. I’ve been told that parts of AZ are similar.
OTOH in SW BC ‘Step 2’ is $0.14/kwh. NW WA probably somewhat higher but nothing like Chico CA.
But solar warming of swimming pools is worthwhile in that region, because air temperature thus water is not high in the shoulder seasons. (Just uses black plastic mats/tubes water is circulated through.)
And using similar panels to heat household hot water is worth considering but much more expensive because a water-water heat exchanger is needed with antifreeze or such in the side exposed to the sun thus to freezing temperatures.
Oh so NOW the climate changers work out what’s going on with all the fickles and their Great Transition?
Radical change needed to upgrade system to handle tidal effect of renewables, EVs and rooftop solar | RenewEconomy
Way to go guys and fills us all brimming with confidence you have a handle on anything to do with changing the global climate. Fantasize globally and stink locally. Riiiiight!
“the country accepts there is a problem.”
Yes, an infection of erratic unreliable energy sources.
The solution is very simple..
STOP building all the erratic, unreliable, short-lived, environment destroying, unsustainable crap of wind and solar
And build either new COAL or new NUCLEAR.
I prefer gas and nuclear.
One in the eye for Dale Vince. His most famous asset is a 2MW wind turbine that sits beside the M4/A33 junction South of Reading, often being powered to avoid brinelling since it averages just 15% capacity factor. Here’s what the visual footprint would be if it were replaced by an 850ft behemoth as sanctioned by Ed Miliband. Horizon parked by blue lines. Areas of visibility shaded maroon. You can explore the detail at the link.
Interesting.
Now consider the eyesores of all those existing overhead power lines? If we are going to address esthetics, we much do the right thing and include all of the eyesores.
Combining a NASCAR oval with Westwood Circuit turns?
:-o)