By David Wojick
All around America there is an avalanche of proposed wind and solar projects. The idea is to replace fossil fueled electric power which is the dominant source in most places. Some States even have laws to this effect.
Setting aside that this is an impossible goal it is interesting, even amusing, to see how this avalanche might play out in Washington State. The majority of their power comes from hydro but wind and solar are poised to wipe that out as well. This is an objective losing its way!
I became aware of the avalanche a few years ago when PJM, the nation’s biggest power system operator, announced that it was swamped by wind and solar connection requests. The combined MW of the application queue actually exceeded PJM’s peak demand.
This seemed unbelievable at the time but it is now clear that this fiasco is nationwide. People are applying to build more generating capacity than can possibly be used. That is certainly enough to knock off most of the existing generation.
The knock off happens because wind and solar typically come with what are called “take or pay contracts.” If the utility does not take the power they have to pay the generator anyway, so there is tremendous incentive to use this power instead of any other source.
Which brings us to Washington State where almost 70% of the power comes from hydro. Much of this is thanks to the Federal damming of the mighty Columbia River and its tributaries. The big gun here is the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) which operates 31 hydro dams ranging up to the huge 6,800 MW Grand Coulee. But a number of state and local agencies run sizable hydro as well.
I do not have data specific to Washington as a whole but there is no doubt the wind and solar avalanche is underway there. For example BPA talks about “skyrocketing requests” in their 2023 Annual Report, saying this:
“Under the umbrella of Evolving Grid, we are reforming our process for managing skyrocketing requests for generation interconnections. Our intent is to shift from a first-come/first served process that studies requests individually in the order received, to a first-ready/first-served cluster study approach for large generator interconnection requests.”
This is in fact the same change as PJM made to handle their incredible queue of requests.
Then too there is the regional planning group called NorthernGrid whose region includes a good bit of Washington. They report this in their latest study:
“– The total NorthernGrid footprint, non-coincident peak load is 61,867 MW in July
— There are 2,611 MW of planned retirements
— There are 72,099 MW of planned generation additions”
The planned new generation, almost all wind and solar, exceeds peak demand by a wide margin. Pretty clearly this is true for Washington State as a whole.
What is really funny is that BPA makes no mention of what is surely a supreme threat to their power supply business. But they are a Biden-Harris federal agency so maybe mum’s the word for now.
Of course the Washington State electricity users are in the complete dark about the oncoming avalanche of what is bound to be expensive power. I can find no mention of this obvious threat.
There are lots of reasons to constrain the galloping growth of wind and solar. Issues like unreliability, excessive cost and environmental destruction. None of them is funny. But the idea that one form of renewables (wind and solar) might knock off another (hydro) is laughably stupid.
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I would imagine so who wouldn’t want to build a subsidy farm and farm subsidies from now until the cows are eliminated from the food supply
An important point!
But when, if ever, does Wind or Solar deliver nameplate?
If Solar is considered it must be either minor or used to recharge back-up as solar only produces power, near nameplate, from 10am until 2pm…far off 8am morning and 6pm evening peak demand times.
In fact, hydro and W&S complement each other perfectly. W&S won’t knock out hydro.
With hydro, the limit on power sold is the magnitude of river flow. Storage is large. So if hydro generators stick to generating when wind is low (ie high prices) they will do very well with the river flow they have.
So maybe the total will often exceed demand. The state can sell elsewhere and profit. They may need to upgrade interconnectors.
And Electricity prices charged to end users will increase
No, increased supply will lower prices.
Only in a free market. Take-or-pay is not even close to a free market principle.
Just because that has not happened yet, the proclaimed result will surely appear some day.
Nick, you are an idiot. Leave the current system alone.
As David makes clear, it’s all happening without any help from me. The economics are the drivers.
No, the climate idiots and environmentalists want to remove the dams. A couple of smaller ones have already been removed.
Profiting at the Tax Payer’s expense, aka subsidies, is what is driving it.
Wrong – the subsidies are the drivers
If the Economics were the drivers then subsidies would be unnecessary as would “Take or Pay”. But Government is the forcing not market demand…the market doesn’t want part time power.
Massive Leftist government laws, regulations and subsidies are the drivers.
No ‘economics’ are involved in taxpayer subsidies. Did you attend schools of ‘learning’ at all?
Where has that happened?
They’re paying nothing, or hardly anything, for electricity in Cuba right now.
And they’re paying pennies per gallon for gasoline in Venezuela…unless you’re A gringo tourist
It’s a workers paradise, don’t forget.
Good one!
Utopia
Don’t forget the eventual need for industrial scale battery systems at great cost – and include the cost of subsidies.
Increased reliable supply lowers prices. Increased unreliable supplies raise prices
Assuming existing hydroelectric systems are currently operating at close to maximal efficiency for their multiple uses (power production, flood control, irrigation and recreation while regulating reservoir levels and down-stream river flows) adding wind and solar with associated expansion of the transmission systems will do nothing more than increase costs and reduce reliability.
Additionally, significant hydroelectric generation is available only in a very few locations in the U.S. Its like geothermal in that respect.
“ will do nothing more than increase costs”
No. There is a reason why hydro displaces FF generation wherever it is available. It costs to build dams and generarion, but the fuel is free. That is why Washington State has low cost electricity now.
Wind and sun are free.
Everything that is on earth is free. Until you meet an owner with a gun.
Bullshit.
As a fuel source they’re close to free but damned expensive to harvest, not necessarily available when demand requires and not dependable requiring expensive storage or duplicate reliable generation to meet demand constraints.
Large PV systems must on land that is owned by someone—unless it is the government, real estate taxes must be paid.
“Wind and sun are free.”
Then why do we have to pay for the resulting power?
Wind and sun are free so only a Confidence Man would try to charge you for them…wanna buy a bridge?
“Wind and sun are free.”
But utilizing them is very expensive. And if your allies succeed in removing our dams, then that “free fuel” is gone too. Why are silly and dangerous alarmists always on the anti-human side of things?
Yes, this is the point. It is impossible to run on wind and solar alone. Therefore you have to have a hybrid system consisting of the dispatchable power, in this case hydro, with the addition of wind and solar.
The question is whether you lower the total cost of supply by adding the wind and solar. Nick has previously argued that if the dispatchable power source is coal or gas then you do. The savings in fuel are alleged to more than pay for the costs of constructing and maintaining the wind and solar, and the associated transmission. I have never seen hide nor hair of a business case of any sort showing this, but this is the argument.
However, if what is providing your dispatchable is hydro you have a different and much harder argument to make. You have to argue that adding the wind and solar somehow reduces the costs of running the hydro. In the case of hydro you do not have fuel costs to save, so that argument won’t fly. You could perhaps argue that you save water during wind and solar peak periods. Maybe, lets see the quantified business case for that. Even if its only a one page spreadsheet, lets see it.
Not holding my breath for that one.
If you cannot show cost reductions in the existing hydro, then there is no a priori reason to think adding the extra cost of wind and solar will reduce costs. Will it reduce prices? Maybe for a while, but lots of people will go broke if it does. Because costs have increased but prices fallen, which has a way of leading to a shakeout.
I guess you could use the surplus capacity when there is no demand to refill using pumped storage? Maybe, lets see the cases.
On the whole this sounds like sit down, stretch out your legs, reach for the popcorn. Its going to be quite a show as it really gets underway.
“. . . you could use the surplus capacity when there is no demand to refill using pumped storage . . . .”
You need a source of the water at the lower level. Rivers don’t usually provide that much of a source–especially under a dam.
“You have to argue that adding the wind and solar somehow reduces the costs of running the hydro.”
No, you don’t, and it won’t. And if the only competition is hydro, there is no point in displacing it.
But electricity can be transmitted. Other people want that hydro when the wind isn’t blowing, so the stored river flow becomes more valuable.
This is clarified in my environment. Tasmania runs almost entirely on hydro, and had no incentive to install W&S. But then they attractiveness of selling that cheap hydro on the mainland caused a underwater cable to be built. Tassie sold power so enthusiastically that their dams ran low ( there was also a drought). So they needed to import via that cable, but it broke.
They learnt from that. Sell the power (and use the water) only when the price is high. At other times, use wind power (from Victoria). So the cable net flow is about zero, but the Tasmanians are making money. But now they are realising that they may as well generate their own W&S (especially wind).
Of course Vic pays for this, but the benefit is the backup for the cheap wind.
Previously you called it “free”, now it is “cheap” — what changed?
Not necessarily, overbuilding will often cause increased prices as more money is needed to pay off construction loans. The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in the 1880’s to provide some regulation of railroad construction because oversupply of rail capacity was increasing costs to the shippers. A few years later, the various state level Public Utilities Commissions were regulating utility construction in order to minimize costs to the customers.
Increasing transmission capacity is a lot easier said than done. An AC line may be good for 1500MW, and HVDC line could be good for 3000MW – permitting alone can take a decade.
Any more, because of fire potential, all new transmission lines may be forced Underground. Building Underground Utilities is generally 4 times more expensive than building Overhead and cost of construction and maintenance is recouped through increased rates.
Hydro makes good backup but you have missed my point. The amount of hydro sold is far less than now. As for selling excess wind and solar into other states they are also overbuilding as I point out.
Neither Nick or you said anything about transmission capacity, which strengthens your argument and weakens his.
W&S turns hydro into gold. It can be used as backup for those other states, just as Norway hydro backs up a lot of Europe.
That’s assuming the shifts in stream flow from adapting to W&S will not adversely affect what is downstream of the dam. To recoup the most from combined Hydro and W&S, the generation capacity will need to be increased significantly, which will increase variations in stream flow.
What would make more sense is to rely on nuclear for baseload combined with rooftop solar and batteries to handle the demand curve. Wind turbines and large solar arms are a blight on the land.
Also, if you are selling overcapacity to other states you are likely selling at a deeply discounted rate or potentially a negative rate
Many enviros/greens HATE dams on rivers- so don’t be surprised if many hydro producers are put out of business.
And after the dams are removed the resulting floods will be blamed on climate change.
It’s already happened in WA State.
This is precisely the likely outcome: functional reliable hydro gets converted to pumped storage. Or in other words: something that works gets replaced by something that does not.
Only idiots break what is not broken.
Pumped storage only works if the land topography will support it, and the stream you’re pumping from isn’t having a fish run that day. In Washington, just try building new P.S. reservoirs along any fish-bearing stream.
If you have hydro you don’t need pumped storage. Nature does that. You just have to use the river flow judiciously.
No that isn’t true if you know how they manage the water flows in the state which are based on several factors to maintain generation of power balanced with keeping the flow rate sufficient for Irrigation, recreation wildlife and fish
It is indeed a pumped storage set up.
Lake Roosevelt is a massive, impounded backwater from the Grand Coulee going back into British Columbia.
Apparently fish ladders are not environmentally friendly. I guess “environmentally friendly” is in the same dictionary as “what is a woman?” (They aren’t there, obviously.)
Ah Nicky-boy, you’re back! Thanks for my morning laugh and tears. BTW, my elec. bill rose-suddenly-13% because the power for my CO-OP is now coming from a power provider that just went full W&S subsidy farming and dumped its coal and gas. My accessibility charge doubled and is almost the same amount as by elec. usage. And I still have to be grateful because I’m in a co-op and am only getting screwed a “little” compared to a small city (#3 in Missouri) just down the road who just got tagged for 20% rise at the MINIMUM with more to come-so sayeth their utility company. Too bad they blew up their coal burner a couple of years ago.
Nick, you are a know-nothing ideologue.
Hydroelectric systems are built and operated for multiple uses, including but not limited to flood control, irrigation and recreation needs as well as power production. Power production is also limited by the need to regulate downstream river flows to avoid large swings in their velocity and height. Fisheries and recreational users are just two of the entities that cannot adjust to large and frequent changes to reservoir and down-river heights that would be the consequences of your scheme. And you haven’t shown the economic and ecological costs of massive increases in wind and solar power production.
Mr. Stokes only cares about his political condemnation of fossil fuels. His obsession with anomalies is obvious in that he knows nothing about the science behind thermodynamic temperatures. What he does with temperature readings is not “scientifically” sound.
What they need to do is only approve those facilities that demand increase requires. And not every project to force the elimination of reliable sources.
Of course it would make more sense to eliminate the subsidy factor all together and let the sources stand or fall on merit alone
You Capitalist you!
/sarc
Guilty!!!
Ignernt question: Out of curiosity, I checked Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. Hoover is only 1/3 the power capacity of Grand Coulee. But their capacity factors surprised me — 23%/Hoover 36%/Grand Coulee. Is this typical for dams and takes into account seasonal variations in water flow?
No idea but my guess is neither is run as baseload just as intermediate. Demand fluctuates a lot.
Columbia River flow is far greater than the significant Colorado river plus there are additional turbines in the Grand Coulee dam.
I have been there several times to see it, which is MASSIVE and with water flowing right over the top when river is high.
Grand Coulee Dam
Only while you ignore the push to eliminate hydro dams.
California does not consider large hydro power a renewable source. Yes, that’s not a typo.
I’ll say it again. California does not consider large hydro a renewable resource. But that does not stop them from buying Washington State Hydro Power. Go figure.
Why add solar and wind turbines when hydro already meets the needs for users? Wind operators demanded priority on the grid of hydro capacity. So the dams spill water when the turbines produce. What a waste.
To add to the problem, requiring dams to vary their flow based on W/S loads creates excessive stress on the dams. This creates stress fractures which cause dam failure.
This conflict continues. A few years ago, the dams were required to operate in generation mode to make sure the oxygen levels met permit requirements and the water had to be released for reservoir control. Spilling the water without generating lowers the O2 content. So, the existing W&S generators had to be curtailed. The howling from them was dramatic because their profits were being impacted. Expect this to happen again with even more W&S.
This would be almost like for like in terms of the energy delivered although the guaranteed output of wind and solar is always zero. It would only be truly like-for-like if there was 2,611MW of battery installed with the wind and solar.
Wind and solar can play an economic role in a hydro system that is perched water constrained.
Lots of proposed projects include big battery arrays.
‘Laughably stupid’ sums up the western world’s approach to energy provision perfectly.
Historically “laughably stupid” ideas eventually show themselves and are abandoned – it’s just a matter of time. In the case of renewables, it’s already starting and will continue. In the case of global warming/climate change, like an intestinal parasite, it will just take more time and/or a worse ‘disease’ to shift priorities.
Just to let you know. Maybe this is a story tip. What I have always suspected, is apparently true. If you stop the wind where it should have gone, you are busy changing the weather. It will obviously change the rainfall pattern. They picked up this problem with the big windmills erected in China.
https://www.eldiario24.com/en/switched-on-the-largest-wind-turbine/2206/
That story has the following near the beginning, “China turned the tables and is now one of the nations going green”. I stopped reading.
That was not my issue. My issue is that these mills change the weather. Size and quantity matters in how much of the climate changes.
how much of the weather changes…
In 2023 China added 58GW of coal power to it’s grid bringing the total provision of electricity by coal during the year to 70%.
Wind and solar together only provided 12%.
I’ve been kicking that can down the road for a while now.
I keep wondering if I’m going to live long enough to see peak insanity reach its apogee, then begin to recede. Apparently, I’m not.
Aside from a general caution against “fixing what ain’t broke,” the obsession with renewables is bent upon replacing an affordable, good, reliable renewable — hydroelectric power — with expensive, unreliable, intermittent renewables — wind & solar. This initiative is retrograde to the level of insanity. It’s like throwing away your refrigerator and quitting grocery shopping, in favor of quitting your jobs, reverting to the wild, and trying to survive by foraging nuts & berries, and spearing wild animals with wooden sticks.
Maybe I’ll live long enough to see government subsidies for wooden spear makers.
This analysis makes little sense. I am not familiar with the concept of “take or pay”, and maybe that’s how it’s done in the state of Washington, but that is not how it works in most if not all other states. In any event, power demand is not only growing but accelerating due to a variety of factors. EVs are one element, the growing power demands of AI systems is another, and of course overall growth in population and expansion of home and business power needs. Hydropower provides dispatchable base load power, though it is affected by seasonal and climatological factors like the amount of annual rainfall, its distribution, and available storage. Solar and wind do not. If you take away the base load, the entire grid fails, and even the most notorious promoters of solar and wind understand that until battery storage ever becomes an affordable and practical thing, base load from other sources is required. And that hydro is a large part of that capability, I don’t see even the politicians in Washington trying to destroy that.
You are obviously unknowing about the politicians in Washington State, or in Washington, DC.
This is the sort of idiocy we will continue to hear as we don’t insist on watt-hours as a unit of electrical energy generation. An nMW wind power facility will rarely generate 0.3nMWh of electricity, and then in intermittent bursts of less than an hour.
Without an impractical amount of energy storage, electrical generation greater than demand is wasted as heat.
Reform FERC, get rid of subsidies and “take or pay,” and make wind and solar compete on an even playing field with reliable energy sources.
The entire state of Washington is above 45 degrees north latitude, so solar will never compete as a reliable energy source. Not to mention that it is cloudy almost everyday in Western Washington where the bulk of the population lives.
Long ago, anti-trust laws were enacted against anticompetitive practices like predatory pricing. Now these intermittent wind and solar sources are being deliberately incentivized even where non-emitting hydro has already been providing reliable power for decades.
Allowing the injection of near-zero-marginal-cost power into the system when the wind blows and the sun shines is predatory. Parasitic. Poisonous. Crippling. When the developers of wind turbines and solar farms can do this with no responsibility for delivering any power at all when it is calm or dark, then you know it was never really about the “climate.”
Or in terms of international trade, such practices are called “dumping.”
It cannot possibly end well.
Welcome to Command Economics.
Command economics is a polite way of saying fascist policy.
Hydro is great for blackstart. Solar, not so much.
“But it’s got electrolytes!”
Over here in MT Puget Sound Energy is building a 315MW wind farm, the power will
be sold in WA state======>
https://dailymontanan.com/2024/07/24/puget-sound-energy-building-two-massive-wind-energy-projects-in-montana/
Since the 1990’s MT has gone from the lowest price electricity in the country to the 4th highest.
It started with deregulation, it’s a mess I pay more now for a few days of irrigation than
I paid for a whole year before =====>
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-killed-montana-power-06-02-2003/
Colstrip 3&4 are still in operation and will be for a long time. The GreenMob hates
that place, it needs 1&2 which was decommissioned in 2020 to go nuclear IMO.
I’m guessing some ranchers just got rich.
The largest windfarm in MT is Clearwater which I believe sends the power
to Portland OR.
https://www.nexteraenergyresources.com/clearwater-wind/project-overview.html
The landowner financial payments were listed as $226million over the
life of the project
There is an unfinished reactor building at the Hanford Nuclear reservation that can be converted to Thorium power generation, that alone would eliminate any viable rationale for wind/solar proposals in the state.
But you have to have pro-nuclear regulations and a power company willing to expend the capital.
And a governor that’s not a complete buffoon.
…but there is no doubt the wind and solar avalanche is underway there.
Oh yes! Our dear Governor whipped up the avalanche, beginning with early schedules for retirement of reliable fossil fuel plants.
Of course the Washington State electricity users are in the complete dark about the oncoming avalanche of what is bound to be expensive power.
Of course! Our Seattle paper (a very junior version of NYT emulation) raves about green power, and sayeth nought about the grim realities of the conversion. But WA has another avalanche – the Sierra Club, and other holier-than-thou enviro mobs with fish runs in mind. I eagerly anticipate the fireworks when the priorities must include, who gets the river flow on sunless, windless weeks? It will be the battle of sacred salmon vs those devilish industrial power users. No one has yet done a reliable estimate of the costs of grid reconfiguration with that battle yet unsettled.
In response to low cost Federal and other hydroelectric generation in the region, most people went with electric resistance heating in that cold climate. As government mismanagement causes electricity prices to massively increase those people are screwed.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation build, operate and maintain their different multi-use Federal hydroelectric generating systems in the Pacific Northwest for power production, flood control, irrigation and recreation purposes. BPA builds, operates and maintains the associated Federal transmission system. They also serve as the regional power production and transmission coordinating body. In contrast, the Tennessee Valley Authority builds, operates and maintains all components of the Federal hydroelectric and other power generating system in their regional area of responsibility.
My guess is that if all take or pay contracts were eliminated wind and solar would perish on the vine.