Roger Caiazza
Francis Menton (here) and I (here and here) have previously written about the magical dispatchable emissions-free resource (DEFR) technology that New York State agencies are using to describe the resource needed during periods of extended low wind and solar resource availability for an electric system that relies on wind, solar, and energy storage. This post describes another flaw in the magical DEFR solution that advocates ignore.
David Truver writing at the Eigen Values Substack wrote an overview article about the Royal Society Large Scale Electricity Storage report that predicts how much large-scale hydrogen storage (fulfilling the DEFR role) will be needed for a British electric system dependent upon wind and solar. A more recent Turver article follows up on his attempts to get the Climate Change Committee (CCC) to address the problems he identified. Both of his articles are well worth reading on their own because he identifies weaknesses in the reports being used to establish targets into law that I think are common problems wherever net-zero transition plans are in place.
Quantifying the Renewable Resource Gap
In Turver’s first article he hinted that the CCC had made an error in its calculations about how much storage is needed to keep the lights on with a grid powered mostly by intermittent renewables. He explained that the Royal Society (RS) Large Scale Electricity Storage report authored by Professor Chris Llewellyn-Smith claims that Great Britain can meet its demand for electricity with wind and solar, supported by large-scale hydrogen storage. Large-scale hydrogen storage is the placeholder DEFR technology in New York’s plan, so this is directly applicable to New York.
Turver argues that the RS report is deeply flawed and makes extraordinary claims that are not backed up. Among his concerns are the following:
They begin by assuming that electricity demand will be 570TWh in 2050 which represents roughly halving the energy demand across residential, transport and industrial and commercial categories. The evidence from Our World in Data shows that rich economies require high energy consumption to thrive. There are no rich countries with low energy consumption and those countries that have reduced energy consumption have grown more slowly, or even shrunk. The first extraordinary claim of low energy consumption fails because the evidence shows that if we allow that to happen, we will be much poorer.
The report then goes on to assume that the profile of electricity demand will be the same as today. However, as we move from gas to electricity to heat our homes and offices, the winter surge in electricity demand will be further exaggerated. Moreover, demand will change from year to year such as during the cold winter in 2010 that also coincided with a calm period when we would have generated much less renewable electricity. These variations in demand profile will lead to more generation capacity and an even bigger energy store than RS assumes, pushing up costs.
He goes on to argue that there are other flaws. The report assumes unrealistic load factors for both onshore and offshore wind. It underestimates the amount of offshore wind needed and goes on to assume efficiencies and costs for hydrogen electrolyzers, storage, and generation that do not stand up to scrutiny. He also points out that the economic assumptions are flawed.
I was interested in the “main positive aspect of the report”:
The thing that stands out most is the painstaking analysis that has been conducted to understand the very significant changes in the weather that occur on yearly and decadal timescales. They analysed wind and solar records over 37 years to estimate the level of variation we might expect from wind power.
I have commented numerous times in New York proceedings that a similar analysis is necessary. The analysis of 37 years is longer than anything done to date for New York. He also points out an aspect of DEFR that relies on hydrogen storage that I had not considered previously. It is not just the annual worst-case episode but there can be multi-year issues:
They found that we can sometimes have several consecutive years where the wind speed is lower than average. This means that if we are to have a grid powered solely by wind, solar and storage, then we need to build up massive stores of energy in the windy years to be used in the calmer years. They conclude that to consistently deliver their 570TWh of electricity each year, we would need 123TWh of hydrogen storage. Some of that hydrogen may have to be stored for a decade or more before it is used.
He also points out that the requirement for decadal storage is another flaw for any DEFR backup resource that I think is applicable to all DEFR technology viability:
This has important implications for the economics of storage and effectively rules out batteries as the storage medium. Who would want to spend millions on building a battery or hydrogen storage cavern, even more to fill it and maintain it, yet not see any revenue from it for years after it was completed?
DEFR Backup Reliability Risk
Turver’s article raises what I think is the ultimate reliability risk for any weather-dependent electric system. Today’s electric system resource planners for a conventional system base the amount of capacity that they determine will be needed based on decades of observations of the fallibility of power plants. The result is that they have a good understanding about the probability there will be a shortage of available capacity to meet load when the installed reserve system capacity margin is a fixed percentage of the expected load. In New York State the installed reserve margin to meet the accepted probability of a loss of load expectation of an outage no more than once in ten years reliability metric is around 20%.
A fundamental observation of that approach is that there is no expectation that the failure of conventional power plants will be correlated. We do not expect that many will fail at the same time for similar reasons. That in turn means that even if we decided to set the reliability metric using a longer period there would not be much of an increase in the installed reserve margin needed.
That all changes when the electric system transitions to one dependent upon correlated wind and solar weather-dependent resources. We know that solar energy is zero and night and much lower in the winter. Similarly, we know that wind energy is much lower in a high-pressure system, and that those systems are huge and cover all Great Britain and much of western Europe or eastern North America at the same time. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that those conditions are associated with the hottest and coldest episodes with the greatest expected electric loads.
This impacts the amount of DEFR expected to be needed. For example, the Independent System Operator of New England (ISO-NE) Operational Impact of Extreme Weather Events completed an analysis that addresses the DEFR requirement needed in New England. The study evaluated 1-, 5-, and 21-day extreme cold and hot events using a database covering 1950 to 2021. The results found that the system risk or “the aggregated unavailable supply plus the exceptional demand” during an event increased as the lookback period increased. If the resource adequacy planning for New England only looked at the last ten years, then the system risk would be 8,714 MW, but over the whole period of record, the worst system risk was 9,160 MW which represents a resource increase of 5.1%.
Turver’s post explains that the CCC did not even use the worst identified in the Royal Society report: “They used 1987 as a 1-in-20 year stress test, when they admit that 2010 was a 1-in-50 year event”. His requests to address that problem and others identified have been ignored and concludes that if an “incompetent and damaging” analysis is used to set the law that the results would be impractical.
I believe his analysis raises the point that the DEFR gap is an insurmountable problem. We know that if an even longer record of weather observations is used to identify the gap that there would very likely be an even worse event. Instead of the confidence in the current planning process that increasing the lookback period will not markedly change the resources needed for the worst case, relying on weather-dependent resources means that it will increase substantially. Inevitably there will be a period of extreme weather that exceeds the planning criteria chosen and the expected resources deployed based on the chosen criteria. The costs to provide DEFR backup support will be extraordinary and building excess capacity for a very rare event will significantly add to those costs. Providing even larger capacity for an even rarer event is untenable. This trade-off means that eventually there will be a catastrophic blackout when the load exceeds DEFR capacity.
Conclusion
Turver’s articles are further evidence of the DEFR “gap” problems for any electric system that relies upon weather-dependent renewable resources. The first problem is that you must determine how much DEFR capacity is needed which is limited by the amount of available data. The second problem is that there is no commercially available DEFR technology that is available to deploy for the aspirational 2050 net-zero targets. Thirdly, until a DEFR strategy is proposed we have no idea how much this will all cost so any claims that the 2050 net-zero transition will be “affordable” are incomplete. Finally, there is the insurmountable weather-related probability that eventually there will be a unusual set of weather conditions coupled with extreme load requirements that exceed the DEFR resources deployed.
To sum up: we know that a new resource will be needed, we don’t know how much, what it will be, how much it will cost, and that whatever we do some day it won’t be enough. People will eventually die in a catastrophic blackout when electricity is unavailable when it is needed the most. This is insanity.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of his previous employers or any other organization he has been associated with.
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DEFR is like unicorns—one can discuss a fantasy entity. Heinlein’s Shipstones would be a better goal if one is imagining science fiction solutions.
Now tell us about the Little Red Hood.
I prefer antimatter and dilithium crystals.
Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor does it for me.
Mr. Fusion?
I like the fusion driven rockets depicted in the books and Amazon series “The Expanse”. We might even build something like those, but reaction mass is needed to effect actual thrust.
It makes perfect sense if the ultimate goal is depopulation and rigorous social control.
while bringing back dire wolves and woolly mammoths- give the world to them and other extinct species- maybe homo erectus- they can’t damage the planet too much- not smart enough 🙂
the world was paradise when they had it- unless they got eaten by a lion
That would just repeat the process, and the next advanced humans might even be more ridiculous!
“Implication of Assessment of Extreme Renewable Resource Lulls”
That’s quite a title! I like it. 🙂
EDFR sucks was the original title but I changed it
Hydrogen is a dependent DEFR, since it depends on the availability of sufficient surplus renewable generator output to charge and recharge storage.
https://www.therightinsight.org/Classes-of-DEFRs
Renewables surpluses are both highly intermittent and very variable. The consequence is that utilisation of electrolyser capacity will be low and inefficient (intermittent operation us bad for efficiency). Take a look at how that would work out in the UK for different levels of wind capacity.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nZM72/1/
Ditto for batteries.
Excellent review. These dire prospects for the “DEFR” approach are well-supported by straightforward thinking and calculation. Let’s hope that the current administration in Washington can pressure states like NY to back off from the “climate” lunacy.
I would encourage NY to go for it.
An instantaneous DEFR demand load of 9160 MW could be fulfilled by eight 1200 MW Westinghouse AP1000 size reactors. At 15 billion dollars per reactor, the total capital cost comes to roughly 120 billion dollars.
Let’s say we would actually need ten AP1000’s to be completely certain that 9160 MW was always available as DEFR whenever called upon. So now we need roughly 150 billion dollars capital cost for nuclear-supplied DEFR.
New-build nuclear will not happen in the US unless the states and/or quasi-government corporations pay for it directly with taxpayer money.
New York State’s annual budget is 252 billion dollars. If a decision was made today to acquire those ten reactors, then somewhere between fifteen and twenty billion dollars would have to be added to the NYS annual state budget.
But at least with nuclear, once those ten reactors are built, they can run for as long as 80 years. Or even longer, possibly. (Unless a Governor Cuomo descendant comes along and shuts them down prematurely.)
But there is another issue. Building ten AP1000-size reactors over a period of say fifteen years would consume the bulk of the nuclear construction industrial base inside the US, leaving little left for any other state to contemplate.
Not to worry. Neither New York state nor any of the states in New England will be building nuclear reactors. The reality here is that New Yorkers and New Englanders must learn to live with less electricity than they use today, and to pay a good deal more for it than they pay today.
With 10 AP1000 reactors, who needs renewables? 😉
Nuclear is the only solution if they want to decarbonize without destroying reliablity
The largest political obstacle now operative against nuclear is that while the cost of wind and solar can be successfully hidden from the public and from the taxpayers, the cost of nuclear can’t.
Will a majority of New Yorkers ever wake up to what is happening in their state? Here on the west coast, will a majority of Californians, Oregonians, and Washingtonians ever wake up to what is happening in their respective states?
My New York and California relatives believe the cost of electricity is falling even while their own electricity bills are rising.
I will not be too surprised if New York, California, Oregon, Washington, and the New England states all make an attempt to go it alone with their commitments to wind and solar in spite of the Trump administration’s opposition to it.
“But there is another issue. Building ten AP1000-size reactors over a period of say fifteen years would consume the bulk of the nuclear construction industrial base inside the US, leaving little left for any other state to contemplate.”
I don’t understand. We can’t build more than 10 reactors??
Rebuilding America’s nuclear industrial base in order to restore it to the condition it was in at the end of the 1980’s is a twenty year proposition.
For example, because we don’t manufacture AP1000-size reactor vessels anymore, if you want to get one, you have to go to an offshore supplier and you have to wait in line for it.
One reason why it will take so long to reconstitute what we had in the 1980’s is that the nuclear industrial base rests on the back of the nation’s larger industrial base.
If we are going to get serious about new-build nuclear power, then we also have to get serious about bringing back the nation’s larger industrial base — working just as hard at that task while we are in the process of rebuilding the nuclear industrial base.
True enough. Yet the French managed to build 55GW of PWR starting in 1972 with most of it complete by the early 1990s from essentially a standing start. A touch of dirigisme worked wonders.
True enough. Yet the French managed to build 55GW of PWR starting in 1972 with most of it complete by the early 1990s from essentially a standing start. A touch of dirigisme worked wonders.
It doesnot add up: “True enough. Yet the French managed to build 55GW of PWR starting in 1972 with most of it complete by the early 1990s from essentially a standing start. A touch of dirigisme worked wonders.”
French nuclear power in 1972 wasn’t ramping up from a standing start. The French already had a robust generalized industrial base which could be quickly drawn upon to support a fast nuclear expansion.
The German experience was similar. They had a very robust industrial base in the 1970’s and 1980’s which could be drawn upon and redirected when they decided to start building nuclear.
Fifty years later, it’s all different. Europe’s industrial base isn’t what it was fifty years ago. Nuclear is industrial with a capital “I”. The Europeans face the same problem Americans do in that the larger industrial base must be reestablished before the construction rate for the large AP1000-size reactors can be accelerated.
In theory, the oncoming SMR’s will be one solution to the problem. However, someone has to pay the upfront costs to fund the development of an SMR-focused nuclear industrial base.
“New-build nuclear will not happen in the US unless the states and/or quasi-government corporations pay for it directly with taxpayer money.”
I disagree. The current problem is regulatory, not financial. Big bespoke reactors are ridiculously expensive. IMHO, factory produced SMRs and micro reactors will cut the costs dramatically.
JamesB_684: “I disagree. The current problem is regulatory, not financial. Big bespoke reactors are ridiculously expensive. IMHO, factory produced SMRs and micro reactors will cut the costs dramatically.”
Citing government regulation as the sole and primary driver of the high upfront cost of nuclear power in western nations is a hobby horse position which does not stand up to examination.
Here in the US, today’s nuclear regulation covers NRC requirements in the areas (a) basic nuclear safety, (b) LNT radiation exposure theory; (c) ALARA worker exposure requirements; and (d) system and component quality assurance requirements.
The next ten years will see a reduction in those NRC regulations covering basic nuclear safety, LNT radiation exposure theory; and ALARA worker exposure requirements. These changes will save 10 to 15% on nuclear’s capital costs.
We will not see a reduction in the NRC’s system and component quality assurance requirements as described in 10 CFR 50 Appendix B. The public must have firm assurance that a nuclear plant which is claimed to be safe has actually been constructed and tested to the design specification which was approved by the public’s representative, the NRC, as being safe.
In theory, the oncoming SMR’s will be one solution to the problem of reducing nuclear’s upfront capital costs.
However, someone has to pay the upfront costs needed to fund the development of an SMR-focused nuclear industrial base. This is an expensive proposition, and at this point in time, only governments and quasi-government corporations have the deep pockets needed to get over the industrial base issue.
NEW ENGLAND ELECTRICITY 100% FROM WIND AND SOLAR by 2050?
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/new-england-electricity-100-from-wind-and-solar-by-2050
By Willem Post
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New England has Net Zero nut cases. They know nothing about energy systems and fantasize lots of nonsense.
“Keep it in the ground”, they say. “All electricity from wind and solar”, they say.
When presented with numbers and facts their eyes glaze over
Here is a simple analysis, if no fossil fuels, no nuclear, and minimal other sources of electricity
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-example-of-electricity-storage-with-tesla-powerwall-2-0s
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It is assumed, 1) all W/S output, based on historic weather data, is loaded into batteries, 2) all demand is drawn from batteries, based on historic load on the grid, as published by ISO-NE.
An annual storage balance was created, which needed to stay well above zero; the batteries are not allowed to “run dry” in bad W/S years. The balance was used to determine the wind and solar capacities needed to achieve it.
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New England would need a battery system with a capacity of about 10 TWh of DELIVERABLE electricity from batteries to HV grid.
Daily W/S output would be fed to the batteries, 140 TWh/y
Daily demand would be drawn from the batteries, 115 TWh/y in 2024
Battery system roundtrip loss, HV to HV, would be 25 TWh/y, more with aging
Transmission and Distribution to users incur additional losses of about 8%, or 0.08 x 115 = 9.2 TWh
The battery system would cover any multi-day W/S lulls throughout the year
Batteries would supplement W/S output, as needed, 24/7/365
W/S would charge excess output into the batteries, 24/7/365
Tesla recommends not charging to more than 80% full and not discharging to less than 20% full, to achieve normal life of 15 years and normal aging at 1.5%/y.
The INSTALLED battery capacity would need to be about 10 TWh / (0.6, Tesla factor x aging factor x 0.9, outage factor) = 18.5 TWh, delivered as AC at battery outlet.
The turnkey cost would be about $600/installed kWh, delivered as AC at battery outlet, 2024 pricing, or $600/kWh x 18.5 billion kWh = $11.1 trillion, about every 15 years.
I did not mention annually increasing insurance costs of risky W/S projects.
If 50% were borrowed from banks, the cost of amortizing $5.5 trillion at 6% over 15 years = $557 billion/y
If 50% were from Owners, the cost of amortizing $5.5 trillion at 10% over 15 years = $708 billion/y
The two items total $1265 billion/y, about the same as the New England GDP.
There are many more cost items
Less 50% subsidies (tax credits, 5-y depreciation, loan interest deduction)
Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
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No banks will finance W/S projects at acceptable interest rates and no insurance companies will insure them at acceptable premiums, no matter what the woke bureaucrats are pronouncing.
The sooner the U-turn, the better for New England, US and Europe
What’s a few trillion between friends? (And just your friends in NE.)
One factor never mentioned is batteries self-discharge. This means that they have to be constantly trickle charged to keep them at full capacity.
Ranges from many battery chemistries are 1% to 5% per year.
Wilpost, for my own amusement and edification, I’m now in the process of doing a rough cut design of a 5 TWh pumped storage reservoir for use in supporting wind and solar in the Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington.
The Golden Goose High Dam and Reservoir would be located in Kittitas County in south central Washington state twenty miles east of Goldendale just north of the Columbia River. It would impound a huge body of water tentatively named ‘Lake Muchomoolah’.
The reservoir would draw roughly 15 water-flow-days-equivalent of the Columbia River during the late spring and early summer runoff season and then release it during late fall and winter for use when solar and wind production is at an extreme low for the region.
At 2000 feet high at its highest depth, and at roughly 15 miles in total length, the Golden Goose High Dam would be the largest embankment dam on earth. Somewhere between thirty and fifty 150 MW reversible turbines would be needed to support its seasonal pumping and power generation operations.
I should be done with the rough calculations and the rough cut design by early June and will post the illustrations on a WUWT Open Thread when it’s all finished.
Very nice Roger. Your posts are hard to read, I can’t believe these councils and boards are this stupid. Wouldn’t it make sense to take the state or the council to court? Since the Chevron decision reversal and all the ammunition we have from people like you, Francis and others I can’t help but think we could whip them. Since the court no longer defers to these monsters and we can show when they are lying they would have to speak the truth or risk perjury.
I have my fingers crossed that when the costs finally cannot be hidden and the peasants show up outside of the Governor’s mansion with pitchforks and torches that they will reconsider this nonsense.
They will give all the deplorables “smart phones” loaded with games and movies to distract them.
Thanks for your continuing attempts to keep this issue in front of people whose lives are about to be upended.
The problem of year to year variations in weather was a well known problem with depending on hydroelectric generation 100 years ago. The solution back then was to have some sort of fossil fuel backup.
Intermittent renewable energy does not imply just short term variability. Denmark and Germany are in a ‘feast and famine’ mode due to multi-year wind declines (e.g. 2007 to 2014). As wind farms are now growing larger and more base power stations are dynamited; wind deficits and wake effects will produce declines more often and more seriously.
Wind and PV are a disastrous waste of $trillions.The elite do not care, of course. They will be feasting in Biarritz, powered by their diesel generators.
They promise us to come to Alice in Wonderland on Unicorns?
Nice summary of the key points of analysis.
There are circumstances when problems for conventional generation become more highly correlated, and they occur when there is inadequate capacity. Texas February 2021 provides the examples.
Because of the extreme cold weather and inadequate capacity to meet the extra demand, ERCOT sought and secured permission to dispatch plant by “turning it up to eleven”, beyond normal maximum export limits. This permission was mainly to breach emissions limits if you read the application. However, operated beyond normal safe limits the risks of plant failure increase sharply, and indeed several plants broke down while wind output was steadily declining. Only some of these breakdowns could really be attributed to weather factors, although that clearly provides another source of correlation.
The progressive loss of plant eliminated reserve capacity, so when a further plant was lost at 1:52a.m. there was no spinning reserve available, and grid frequency fell sharply, in turn leading to the other correlation factor: a cascading trip that was only arrested by heavy demand disconnection (which I believe ended up on a purely automated basis at 59.3Hz, out of ERCOT control, despite the official claims). That of course then created the final correlation: interruption of fuel supply because of no power to key compressors.
With adequate dispatchable capacity we would not have seen that for want of a nail the kingdom was lost.
The problem with assuming DEFR in a high renewables grid is that you make all these problems much more likely.
This is insanity.
Nailed it.