Kevin Kilty
An Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) is a roadmap of sorts showing a contemplated electrical energy delivery system. The steps to build one are: 1) project likely future demand; 2) determine resources that meeting such demand requires; 3) cataloging what resources are available; and 4) propose how the utility can meet this demand over the current planning period (20 years). Utilities are required to present an updated plan every two years.
In Wyoming we recently formalized the IRP process which now requires the utility to make a formal application to submit their plan followed by a public hearing. The Public Service Commission (PSC) will then decide to accept, acknowledge or reject the plan. I attended the formal hearing last week. It involved only three intervening parties and only three additional members of the public who made statements. I was one, of course.
Interestingly, the standpoint of one intervenor (a large environmental organization) and that of one member of the public coincided and prompted me to ponder the ramifications of their advice which was to reject this IRP. I paraphrase their argument as:
“We are disappointed that this IRP does not propose more solar and wind resource opportunities. This exposes the rate payers to the risk of volatile fuel prices and higher utility bills. We advise the PSC to reject this deficient IRP.”
Of course I objected to this line of reasoning in my commentary. I have reviewed each of the last four IRPs (2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025), and see this current one as the most rational and reasonable of the group. I’d submitted an 11 page dissection of the IRP a year ago. Thus, I may return to the specifics of this IRP once the Commission decides on the fate of this current (2025) plan, because there are interesting things to report.
However, the immediate topic here is to explore this idea that adoption of wind and solar protects rate payers from price increases, zero fuel costs notwithstanding.
Does Adoption of Wind and Solar Protect or Expose Rate Payers to Rate Increases?
No one paying attention can have failed to note that as utilities adopt more wind and solar energy, claiming that the zero fuel cost will save rate payers money, rates nevertheless climb rapidly. Why is this so?
Roger Caiazza, writing as the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York, has shown that the ideas behind adoption of renewables in New York State will necessarily foist some system costs onto ratepayers in the form of adoption of new appliances. Francis Menton, writing as the Manhattan Contrarian, has emphasized the enormous storage demands to make a renewables dominated grid reliable no matter where it occurs. Many other people make similar arguments.
In brief, the idea of using a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) analysis as the basis for choosing low cost generating resources is flawed. While looking at generating technologies individually seems like a way to optimize costs to rate payers, this is only true for technologies that possess similar operating characteristics. LCOE, unfortunately, compares generating sources individually without recognizing that 1) thermal generating sources and renewables behave very differently, and 2) that not recognizing the LCOE flaw leads to making thermal generating stations slaves to renewables which end up absorbing some of their costs.
Figure 1, from reference [1], shows that LCOE measures of the cost of a generating resource are similar across the spectrum of possible choices with renewables being modestly less costly than other choices. However, a full system cost, as advocated by Robert Idel (reference [2]), diverges markedly between thermal and renewable choices. The reference from which Figure 1 came provided no vertical scale, but it appears to be dollars per MWhr of energy.
Some time ago I wrote a brief essay about estimating battery storage using Hurst’s algorithm for estimating reservoir volume behind dams.[3] My method arrived at a horrifying cost for the needed battery storage.[4] However, as I said in that essay
“Maybe I could get a lower cost by adding solar energy and reducing wind. Maybe not. …”
In other words, there is a possibility of finding a lowest cost system implied here. Not long after producing this essay I corresponded with Joe Born about his efforts to do the same, but Joe actually worked to optimize a solution, in Ercot I recall, by trading an overbuild of renewables against storage. Moreover, Emblemsvag tried to estimate full system cost by simply looking at costs of a solar generating system augmented with battery storage.[5]
Gathering all these efforts together, I decided to look at the PacifiCorp East (PACE) balancing authority area, which is essentially the utility involved in the recent IRP hearing and determine what rate customers would see if the entire system were converted to renewables only. Do the rate payers see a rate shock or not?
EIA data used to simulate PACE in summer 2023
To estimate rates what a person needs first is the volume of revenue producing generation (for PACE this is around 51 million MWhrs per year). Currently the season shortest of generation is summer, when air conditioning demand in Utah is high. Thus I focussed my attention on the half-year from May 1 to October 31. Since I had full data for 2023 at my disposal I settled for using it.
In the relevant time period the amount of renewable generation available appeared to be approximately 3900MW of wind and 1700MW of solar. Using these figures I found that the capacity factor for wind in the relevant half-year is 19.7% and that of solar is 35%. These seem very reasonable for the season involved.
Since the simulation is for a completely renewable electrical grid, I eliminate all other generating sources and scale wind and solar in their 2023 ratio (69.6% to 30.4% respectively) up to being able to supply 6362MW which is 110% of average area demand. This translates into 26,505 MW of renewables in my imaginary thermal-free grid. I also provided 1.5 million MWhr of battery storage completely full on May 1. The history of how storage behaves in this system is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. This hypothetical system fails and is unbearably expensive to boot. The system needs more generating capacity.
The result of running the PACE area with this system is that battery storage is completely exhausted in early September. One sees that the PACE area, despite having great solar resources in western Utah and what are considered excellent wind resources in Wyoming, is so becalmed during the summer season that once the summer becalming appears, renewables cannot ever fill the batteries again until the wind returns.
This becalming is a characteristic of the entire continental U.S. during the summer. It is not unusual to find that the entire fleet of wind resources across the U.S. operates at 10%. In a PSC hearing I stated that in PACE presently there are probably 120 periods in each year, lasting from 1 to 15 hours, in which both wind and solar operate below 10% capacity factor – i.e. less than 400MW trying to supply nearly 6,000MW of demand. Luckily we have lots of coal and gas generation to fill in at present.
Let me reiterate that the system costs here are two-fold. There is first the great amount of overbuild caused by the poor capacity factor of renewables. When thermal sources are available on a grid, the renewables can externalize their poor capacity factor by enslaving thermal generation to back them up. In a renewables-only network this becomes an explicit cost. Second, battery storage, which is essential to running a grid without other dispatchable power sources available, is very expensive.
Overbuilding the Renewables
What to do from here is obvious. Battery storage is so expensive that one must overbuild renewable generation to reduce the need for it. Running the same simulation, but with renewable resources scaled up by 20% to 27,550MW, again at the wind to solar ratio as of 2023, shows that one could reduce storage by ⅓ to 1 million MWhr. Figure 3 shows it.
Figure 3. Trading more renewable generation capacity allows one to reduce expensive battery storage.
The run is a success. We come close to running out of storage, though – 200,000MWhr is a day and a half of average demand. Of course, how probable is it that one would be looking at only average demand? Well, the answer to that is 50% probable. Averages are the basis of bad designs.
The decline in the battery storage required in Figure 3, suggested an overbuild that might let me minimize battery storage. A system overbuilt by a factor of 1.76, including 42,500 MW of renewable energy, allows the system to reach a state of minimal energy storage. Once again, this is 42,500MW of renewables to supply an average demand of 5,800MW. This system also included a reserve of 24 hours worth of battery storage – 140,000MWhr. No one in their right mind would neglect having some amount of reserve despite whatever excess renewable energy might be available. Twenty-four hours worth of reserve is probably inadequate, but might be close to what is needed.
Figure 4. Storage history with a renewables overbuild of 76%. Even in this extreme case we constantly use battery storage and even drop below 10 hours of remaining storage reserve.
Figure 4 shows how the battery storage performs. There are innumerable short periods, at most several days at a time, when this system still draws upon battery storage. In fact, in a season of 4416 total hours there are 1284 hours in which batteries must supply some part of demand. In the worst period storage has fallen below 10 hours of reserve. Is this an adequate reserve? One might examine many historical summer’s worth of data to answer this, though the EIA data only goes back to 2019.
One other interesting observation is that the annual curtailed energy in this system is 38.8 million MWhr which is 76% of the delivered revenue energy. Now, in addition to poor inherent capacity factor and expensive storage to provide a dispatchable backup, there are obvious opportunity costs involved also.
Estimated Service Rates
The calculation of rates involves many complications as PACE crosses into various jurisdictions with different tax structures and PUCs that set different rates of return on rate base. However, we can get a reasonable estimate by using the rate on rate base current allowed by the Wyoming PSC (7.65% on rate base [5]), ignoring taxes which are minor, ignoring decommissioning costs for thermal plants, and ignoring some adjustments for new bulk electrical system transmission lines and ignoring that industry make up about 60% of the load in Wyoming and are lower than residential rates. All things considered, the estimate is thus low.
Using either recent cost estimates for wind plant applications in Wyoming, or published construction rates for solar plants, and costs for battery storage for a recent 3MWhr facility, the total construction costs are $54.1, $19.3, and $51.4 billion USD for wind, solar and batteries, respectively. Since we should think of the power system as a perpetuity, there will always be this level of invested capital involved. The rate base will not decline.
The return on rate base is then 7.65% x 124.8 = $9.54 billion USD.
Annual depreciation will be, using a straight line method and twenty years duration,
5% x 124.8 = $6.24 billion USD.
And O&M costs, using published figures of O&M being around 2% of capital investment, are $2.39 billion USD.
Using the equation common to simple explanations of required utility rates the result is:
Rate = Costs/Volume of Service = 18.5 Billion USD/51 million MWhr = $356 per MWhr.
As my current rates exclusive of Net Power Costs (NPC)[6] are roughly $75.9 per MWhr (7.59 cents per kWhr) this represents a cost approaching five times present – even greater than EIA published average rates for California.
Interestingly, if one uses Figure 1 to guess the rates of a weighted average wind/solar system using a Texas benchmark, it works out to $328 MWhr. Though the full system cost in Figure 1 is not exactly the same as utility service rates which include taxes and fees, this estimate turns out to be closer than I might have guessed in advance.
Power service rates of this magnitude should wreak havoc on all Wyoming industries. China will out compete Wyoming in Trona production. Farms will have unbearable irrigation costs. Every other utility one can name has electrical power as an input. Finally, some 40% of Wyoming petroleum production comes from stripper wells that depend on low-cost coal powered electrical energy.
Other Externalities
Before one says “Yes. Expensive. But doable and we must do so.” Look at the other externalities.
At the current Wyoming rate of 100 acres per MW of wind plant, the wind portion of this power system will take 3 million acres. Views, birds, bats, big game animals, and tourism are all likely to suffer. The solar energy portion of the system will take 300,000 acres. One would hope they build sufficient alleyways for large birds to take off when they land in the solar farms thinking they are landing near or on water bodies.
Conclusions
Hopefully this analysis has revealed some of the reasons for rising utility rates when incorporating renewables into the electrical grid despite the renewables having no fuel costs. It also shows why these cost drivers are present but not apparent in a network containing sufficient dispatchable thermal sources of energy. Analyses done on an asset level insensitive to costs of interaction among generating plants will likely never explain the mystery.
References:
1- Jan Emblemsvåg, Rethinking the “Levelized Cost of Energy”: A critical review and evaluation
of the concept, Energy Research & Social Science, 119 (2025)
2- Robert Idel, Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity, Energy, Volume 259, 15 November 2022
3- – Hurst, H.E., Long-Term Storage Capacity of Reservoirs, Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers Archive, Vol. 116, No. 1, January 1951.
4 – I’ve decided that all storage systems containing a stochastic element behave the same. Whether we are storing water, food, energy, products in inventory (like munitions for the military) stochastic I/O makes needed storage difficult to calculate and produces a storage history with worryingly long periods of decline and curtailments. Even my refrigerator contents behave like this.
5- J. Emblemsvåg, On the levelized cost of energy of solar photovoltaics, Int. J.
Sustain. Energy 40 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2020.1867139.
6 – Return on Rate Base is calculated from the capital structure of the utility.
Return on Rate Base = Interest on borrowed capital x fraction of borrowed capital + Return on equity x fraction of equity capital
The PSC sometimes adjusts the capital structure of a utility to reduce costs to rate payers.
7- Net Power Costs are defined as any expenses incurred as a result of inadequate station power. Many things can fit in this category. My Net Power Costs at present are over 3 cents per kWhr. They will change most likely in each successive general rate case.
Once you have used up the battery storage, how do you recharge them without having to have an excess of “renewables” to provide everyday demand for electricity as well as recharging the batteries.
What will be the effect of net zero and the increase planned for heat pumps and EVs?
In the particular year I used to simulate this system, winds began to return in late September in earnest to recharge batteries, and then luckily there was only a small period without storage backup. But other years could be different.
Transitioning to electrical energy for heating buildings will be a bigger problem than data centers. The issue at present is that people are told that the COP (heat transferred into the building divided by the electrical energy input) of the heat pumps will be 6 or so. Thus, they imply that there will be an overall efficiency gain to burning natural gas in the electrical generating plant rather than in your home furnace.
However a COP of 6 is only available in cool seasons, and in cold season only by using a geothermal heat exchanger which is not likely to be economical in urban areas.
Integrated Resource Plqn…IRP?
A better name given the more appropriate acronym would have been…
Resource Integration Plan
Because integrating Intermittent Generation as your Grid’s Primary Source and your grid can RIP!
Good to inject at least some reality into the situation, Kevin.
“But other years could be different.”
Other years WILL be different, without warning.
That is a crucial question. If you are running low on fuel, you bring in more fuel. If you are running low on battery your grid faces collapse. If you over-install renewables and batteries, you only reduce the number of times you face grid collapse. There isn’t enough money to get that number to zero.
Note: if you have a mix of fuels – coal, gas, nuclear – your risk goes down even more.
Over-buld also incurs maintenance and repair costs, plus what to do with the toxic wastes when a storm wipes out sections of the WTG and WV farms.
We will not mention the ticking time bombs called batteries.
And financing costs.
You don’t need to be an expert to see that every location that incorporates wind and solar into their energy delivery causes rates to go up …. drastically. You also don’t need to be and expert to know that the wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun goes down at night. These people want energy failure, there’s no other explanation. Money being made on renewables? Yes, that’s the only way to get the capital to install it but who’s really footing the bill?
Beside all the money it saved the EU (and esp. Spain) in the last few years.
Spain has French nuclear power to tap into when the unreliable electricity goes missing.
(which is at sundown e.v.e.r.y. s.i.n.g.l.e. d.a.y.
and also when nature turns off the winds at its whim)
You can always store extra Gas and Coal fuel on site if more generation is needed but you can’t store extra Wind or Sun fuel on site for when needed. You only get it delivered when Nature decided to.
https://www.cer.eu/publications/archive/policy-brief/2025/power-losses-whats-holding-back-european-electricity-trade
France is already at around 13% wind and solar by now
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?country=~FRA
“opening its market to cheap Spanish solar power”
Excellent point MUR. If you have an excess of solar (or wind) power, the prices sometimes go negative, driving all other power sources out of the market, including nuclear. The investment return for the nuclear plants then decreases and can drop below market loan rates, causing the owners to shut them down.
So, no more nuclear, who cares? You should, when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow. It can (and has) happened here in the good ole’ USA.
I wonder how much money the renwabl… atmospheric anomaly related blackout destroyed in spain and how many months it took renewable to compensate for the damage.
Just for fun I looked up electricity prices in Europe…Estonia (low), Germany (high) and Europe (average) for 2010 2015 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025.
In Estonia (one of the lowest prices in Europe) … Per KWh 2010-€.097 ~ 2015 €.095 ~ 2020 €.124 ~ 2021/.132-2022/.20-2023/.21-2024/.23-2025/.23
In Germany (one of the highest prices) … Per KWh 2010-€.238 ~ 2015 €.288 ~ 2020 €.343 ~ 2021/.328-2022/.373-2023/.47-2024/.44-2025/.396
Europe average 2010-€.17 ~ 2015 €.211 ~ 2020 €.213 ~ 2021/.236-2022/.253-2023/.285-2024/.288-2025/.29
Now the interesting part…I asked Google AI What the current cost of electricity would be in a 100% Coal and Gas generation grid and the reply was .13-.18€/KWh
Estonia gets 37% of it’s electricity from wind and solar. So I’m not sure what you are trying to say.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?tab=discrete-bar&time=latest&country=~EST
Could you please format your post in a way that it is readable?
Google ai is not a source.
That 37% figure is the percentage of all renewables wind/solar/biomas
But percentage of all generation sources is just 24.2% with FF (non renewables) pulling the load at 75.8% of electric generation.
The above Estonia pricing is reflective of the gradual increase in wind…
Wind generation percentage in…
2010 – 2% .. 2015 – 9% .. 2020 – 15% .. 2021 – 10% .. 2022 – 10.5% .. 2023 – 12% .. 2024 – 20% .. 2025 – 15% .. 2026 (YTD) 24.2% at .25€/KWh
Something something correlation causation
Wind + Solar + Biomass is 59,08%
Also is it now 37% renewables, 75,8% FF or 24,2% wind. Your numbers don’t add up.
According to Google A.I. you are WRONG!
In Estonia …
Answer:
Estonia, one of the lowest prices in Europe, electricity prices are €0.23 /€0.13 = 77% higher than if the electricity was produced by coal fueled generators.
Could you please make an intelligent post and not just regurgitate something someone else published.
Is already said AI slop is not a credible source.
More Google AI slop:
With the right prompting and quoting only parts I can make it say everything. What now?
Enjoy me laughing at you.
More catnip, kitty?
Try explaining why why those places that have closed supposedly expensive FF generators and replaced them with uneliables that are as cheap as you show are paying much more than this. Explain why counties like Germany and England are looking to baseload nuclear plants instead of more and more wind and solar.
As their industries disappeared to China.. !
This ^
Money saved implies lower costs paid by consumers. Somehow I think you missed the conclusion that unreliable generation has increased what consumers pay for electricity. Fuel costs are not the predominate factor in providing electricity.
Ah, it’s catnip time.
Here kitty!
I am laughing at your nonsense.
People and companies will start to produce and use their own electricity because it is cheaper for them. The utility death spiral will happen – the question is how to deal with that.
Utility “base charges” will continue to increase and customers leaving the grid will not be allowed.
So what do the the people do who rely on the industries for their jobs, since the industries can’t function on unreliable power, and close down / relocate?
Both is already happening in UK and Germany…tough luck peasants.
It is WAY WAY more expensive for each person to produce their own electricity.
Requires massive government subsidies and even then, very few people can afford the cost.
Certainly in a 15 minute city, basically no-one will be in that situation.
Will?
They have had decades to make that transition and implement it.
It is not cheaper if one looks beyond the idiocy that sunshine and wind are free and ignore the cost realities.
It has not happened except due to government interference.
Oh, right. Technology hasn’t evolved since the 50s.
Pakistan as the current prime example of that happening without government interference? Heard of it?
Nuclear has come a long way and has further to go. At some point unreliables will fail and the populace will force the move to nuclear. At that point, your free fuel will be meaningless.
Totally different economic and energy situation.
Their choice was buy and install or do without.
Different weighting factors in a different environment.
Nonsensical argument.
More catnip?
People and companies that produce their own electricity will use the least expensive option which is FF at .11€-.18€ per KWh
It is strange to see the statement “renewables use energy with no input cost”. Coal and natural gas also have “no input cost”. They exist, free, in the ground. There is a cost to extracting them, just as there is a cost to extracting electricity from solar and wind energy. So it is not really a valid comparison to say solar energy has no input cost, and coal does. No. They both exist and they are both turned into electricity by machines we build that have a cost.
I am trying to think of an energy source that has a cost. None of them do. Nuclear power destroys atoms in a manner that reduces the embodied energy by some fraction. We didn’t charge the universe – we just extract energy and use it in various ways.
The pro-renewable energy boffins have to come up with a new way of describing their technologies because all the input energy sources have zero cost. Once this is admitted, it becomes a comparative cost study of taking that energy and turning it into a useful form: heat, electricity, cold, radiation, magnetism or travel, lift and propulsion.
Renewables, including wood, are clever ways to provide some of the energy we need. In several ways, their costs are unsustainable. An electricity generation system that only produces enough energy to manufacture an identical replacement system during its working life is a dead loss for the rest of us. It is a terrible way to use resources. One pundit suggests a 9:1 return on energy embodied in the generation system to make society viable. One unit is for replacing the system and 8 are available for other productive uses. Hydro power is renewable and returns ~75:1 so that’s a pretty good deal, and the water is free. People agitating against hydro are usually selling something with a return of 0.8 to 1.2. Stop giving them money.
Good points, all true.
But a caution re hydro – the potential for lots of new hydro sites must be limited.
The “low hanging fruit” sites must have been harvested by now just about everywhere suitable?
Yes! The poster child for hydro: Lake Mead [Arizona/Nevada (& Lake Powell in AZ)]; both fed by the Colorado River system. Both are nearing “deadpool,” which means curtailed or no electricity production.
Rain is “free”, but is not dispatchable. [It also can be deadly: see the Grand Canyon National Park flash floods of this past week]
“Renewables, including wood, are clever ways to provide some of the energy we need.”
I’d have to disagree with that statement. The are colossally stupid ways to generate energy. Be it because of intermittency (wind and solar) or the need to be constantly tended (wood used for heat), they are poor energy sources. Wood (or other biomass) has the additional disadvantage – it burns faster than it grows.
There are a limited number of niche specific applications where solar voltaic and wind turbine generators can fill the need. Being able to fill the need does not infer they are the most economical choices.
Beyond things like roadside signage and parking lot street lamps, and those cute little lamps that line my sidewalk, you are spot on.
THE TRUTH ABOUT IRP
IRP, as commonly practiced, = Institutionalized Revenue Plundering. Basically, the way it works is regulators authorize a maximum profit margin for a electric utility company. In return, the electric utility is given a monopoly within a service territory where no one else is allowed to generate and sell electricity. Electric utilities main source of competition is from alternatives to electricity (usually in the form of another regulated gas utility). However, utilities that only provide natural gas services are getting rare; usually due to mergers/acquisitions with electric utilities. These “combo” (electric and gas) utilities usually prefer to invest whatever is more expensive (as long as the utility can get it into their “rate base” (approved energy service portfolio). Consequently the direct use of natural gas is segregated and relegated to the “back of the bus” even if natural gas can provide superior consumer economics.
A good case-in-point is cogeneration where a facility has a steady demand of electricity and has a simultaneous demand for thermal energy (either process heating or cooling).
Data centers are such a case because for every Watt of electric usage,3.412 BTU per hour of “waste heat” must be removed. Traditionally, this is done with massive electric motor driven vapor compression refrigeration systems thus further increasing electricity demand.
STORY TIP
Two years ago, Tom Tanton and I posted an article titled AI & Data Center Load Growth: On-Site Generation, Not Government Planning that WUWT ran. It outlined a approach whereby electricity would be self-generated and the waste heat would be recovered and used to power industrial type absorption chillers. Alas, the concept never got traction and now I’m retired and getting too old to give a $hiite anymore.
I analysed the effect of overbuilding here. It certainly drastically reduces the costs of underbuilding, as in CFACT analyses. But batteries are continuing to get cheaper, so they pay for themselves in allowing owners to buy low, sell high.
From “here”:
> The capital cost of building W&S is set at $1647 per KW. And for storage, $347 per KWh.
Plus or minus an order of magnitude. Offshore wind in the North Sea doesn’t average out with solar farms in North Las Vegas.
The analysis was for USA. But it was also for what is possible. You don’t have to build off shore. If you do, it will be because there is a productivity gain which balances the capital cost.
Don’t forget the seafood industy’s losses and absolute ecological damage to the offshore areas…but what’re a few jobs, some dead whales, some defense radar issues compared to the “productivity gains”? Define the gains. Another thought-when (not if) the batteries burn, who picks up the tab? Who cleans up-or rather writes off-the resultant heavy metals pollution?
Climate change and offshore drilling cause far more damage. Lucky for us we don’t believe in that.
If you don’t test there are no cases…
Here’s your test case: The Moss battery fire in Cali. Tons of heavy metals found miles away, downwind from the fire. A water area poisoned to death downwind…and lawsuits from the poisoned neighbors are already filed. Are you a lawyer perhaps? Those are the ony people who are going to benefit from this event-which has already happened twice there.
You left out the tipping points on tourism.
Ah, true…it was early.
As you know Nick, in Australia it’s the taxpayers who are getting the shake-down for making the batteries cheaper.
(The spin – it’s always required whenever intermittent solar & wind power generation & supply is being promoted. Why is that?)
Australia now has a federal home battery subsidy called the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which began on 1 July 2025. It provides an upfront discount on eligible battery installations, generally reducing battery costs by about 25% to 30%.
Typical subsidy amounts depend on battery size:
The discussion here is about utility-scale batteries.
For which Australian taxpayers also get soaked for subsidies.
Verified federal ARENA grant subsidies to utility-scale batteries, 2018-2026: about A$257 million.
However, that is not the full subsidy picture because:
CEFC support is often provided as loans or concessional finance rather than grants.Several states (NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia) have provided their own battery grants and underwriting arrangements.Since 2023, the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) has provided revenue-underwriting support for batteries, but the government’s eventual cost depends on future market prices and therefore is not known in advance.
Renewables plus batteries are so much cheaper that obviously they don’t need subsidies and mandates. If the government just got out of the way, renewables plus batteries could compete freely on their merits. Then they could really take over, unshackled by government regulations that control the rate at which they are taken up. Couldn’t they?
Agree, and hope this isn’t sarc.
Carrying on to one of the usual deflections – decommissioning/asset retirement – I’d be happy to hold renewable sources to the same terms that fossil fuel sources SHOULD be. That is, cash in fist or proper insurance, in advance, and catch up, for P90 costs as they are accrued. Fossil fuelers are currently 13 USD figures in arrears by this metric, just in the US, and add to the l.h.s number if you ever hope to clean up the rest of the trash cans in the FSU, Venezuela, and others. So, have both sources catch up, now, keep up from now on, and then watch the future action.
🙂
Batteries, wind turbines and solar panels don’t last very long, so you have to factor in running replacements at a factor of 3x (at least) the replacement needs of thermal plants, which you can’t get rid of because dispatchable backup is still required.
“Renewables” do nothing but add cost and complexity for minimal fuel cost reductions that don’t come close to the additional costs of the “renewables.”
All pain, no gain in pursuit of non-solutions to an imaginary “problem.”
It’s true that private groups can purchase batteries, set up a BESS facility and engage in arbitrage. There is a lot of room for such when a utility gets to the point of curtailing generation equal to 76% of its revenue services. In fact PacifiCorp points out four such groups (I’ll bet they are arbitrage groups) that are bringing 4GWhr of storage to the PACE balancing area in this IRP. However, that is only 1/35 of the small amount of storage that I end with here.
With regard to the cheapening of batteries, perhaps 50% or 60% of the cost of BESS facilities is in the building and facilities the batteries need. So the batteries can become very cheap but the facility will still be $200 or higher per kWhr because facilities aren’t getting cheaper.
Batteries may well continue to get cheaper, but fuel elecricity continues to be cheaper than renewables electricity, by a large margin. Why not simply get government out of the way and let the grid operators decide what they use? That way, they will all go to renewables+batteries when they are cheaper, and everyone wins.
“ but fuel elecricity continues to be cheaper than renewables electricity, by a large margin”
No it isn’t. Here from the latest AEMO quarterly report, are wholesale prices by state. Qld and NSW are mostly coal. SA mostly renewable – Vic mixed, but lots of W&S. Vic is cheapest – NSW, Qld and SA about the same.
I asked Grok to find a country without its own fossil fuel supply and with low wind and solar usage, and to compare its household retail electricity prices with South Australia after allowing for all government taxes, subsidies and mandates. The answer:
Singapore [which uses nearly all gas for electricity generation] is cheaper on the gross price by about US$455 a year (~30%).
“compare its household retail electricity prices”
No, that is the wrong thing to do. Wholesale price, as above, is the level at which generators compete with each other. The very large markup in going to retail depends on irrelevant things, but not on generation type, since all the electricity is mixed together at that stage. SA obviously has to deliver to customers over a huge area – Singapore not.
Do the wholesale prices include the cost of backup fossil fuel generation? If not, apples and oranges.
Backup costs = “unmentionables”
Lazy Lazard LCOE numbers are a joke.
South Australia , with its wind and solar, with diesel back-up, has the highest retail cost of electricity in the NEM.
Victoria with its brown coal.. has the cheapest.
.
Essential Energy in NSW delivers electricity to most of the regional parts of the state.
Arguments that solar and wind have no fuel cost is nonsense. So far as I understand, God has not charged us one single penny for all the coal, oil and natural gas accessible to us. However machinery and manpower is required to extract and convert these fuels to useful energy and then deliver the product. The very same is required for sunlight and wind. While there are wide differences between the machinery and manpower needed to make use of each of these fuels, that is simply an accounting exercise. Nothing is free.
“God has not charged us one single penny”
This is a nonsense argument. The fact is that if you want to fuel your generators with coal or gas, you have to pay real money. With wind and sun, you don’t.
What, generators & solar panels don’t cost a dime to install, run & maintain?
“Some ideas are so stupid, only an academic would believe it”
It costs nothing to “fuel your generators”
how do you store this “free fuel” so that you can use it, say on a still, pre-dawn freezing morning when you really need to run every heating device you can lay your cold dead hands on?
‘
Batteries, as discussed here. But better, if you can, in a hydro dam. Drain the dam only when you have to – otherwise W&S.
So people go ape-shit over the prospect of having a nuclear generation plant anywhere in their state, but will be ecstatic about having industrial-scale battery farms in every postcode?
So they can keep warm like this –
(image of batteyy farm fire burned up all by itself before I could put it out 🙂 )
That’s the advantage of coal. No NIMBY because you just have no BY anymore.
Germany plans to destroy this village for a coal mine.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/14/europe/lutzerath-germany-coal-protests-climate-intl
Do you realize that you just destroyed your assertion about free fuel? In essence, the batteries and ALL their costs add to your fuel costs as they are replacing the missing free fuel. Coal and gas generators don’t need that additional fuel.
Drain the dam? Oh for God’s sake…aside from the sheer idiocy of such an idea, the ecological damage would be immense-you trolls really have a problem with eco damage-if it ain’t forests being whacked for wind toys, or whales being killed, or birdies getting blended, now you want to kill the wee fishies? Maybe we should let the local indiginines deal with you fools-I hear they have some interesting ideas for helping morons see the light.
You mean Super Expensive and Highly Volatile Batteries…Those Batteries???
Coal costs nothing.. all you have to do is dig it up and burn it !
But they last 1/3-1/4 as long before you need to go to the expense of replacing them.
.
And, while the “Fuel” is free you only get it when Nature decides to give it to you which isn’t necessarily when you need it most.
Their manufacturing also requires huge amounts of mining, as well as large amounts of toxic chemicals, which in China, are often disposed of in huge toxic sludge lakes.
Dig up a tonne of coal you get a tonne of coal you can burn.
To make the a one tonne magnet for wind turbines you need 8-20 tonnes of ore and several tonnes of toxic solvents like acids and organophosphates.
Or an idiot or a liar-but I repeat myself.
Tell that to Sonoma County.
Sonoma Clean Energy 100% renewable Wind/Solar/Geothermal
56¢/KWh
Wind and Solar AIN’T CHEAP!
To see their current pricing all I have to do is look at my monthly bill.
A very good article . . . until I tripped up over this first sentence in the Conclusion section:
“Hopefully this analysis has revealed some of the reasons for rising utility rates when incorporating renewables into the electrical grid despite the renewables having no fuel costs.”
How’s that???
“Renewables” do have fuels costs over their life-cycle—significant fuel costs—during both their initial equipment fabrication and site emplacement, as well as for the annual maintenance, and at their end-of-life. This is especially true for hydro, solar and wind.
These points:
1) It takes significant energy (predominantly provided by fossil fuels; little percentage-wise provided by existing “renewables”) to create/provide:
— cement and concrete (pretty much ubiquitous across all “renewables”)
— metals and metal alloys (mainly aluminum, steel, copper)
— copper-based electrical conductors
— fiberglass and plastics
— water turbines and their supporting structure(s)
— wind turbines and their supporting structure(s)
— electrical generators that convert mechanical energy to electrical energy
— semiconductor PV cells,
— inverters and transformers that convert low voltage DC to high voltage AC, and even generator-output AC to grid-required AC
— monitoring and control electronics for any sizable “renewable energy” complex (“farm”)
— lubricants that keep moving parts from seizing due to friction.
2) It takes significant energy (predominantly provided by fossil fuels; little percentage-wise provided by existing “renewables”) to provide:
— regular maintenance parts/paints/fluids on any and all types of “renewables”
— repair parts, as needed, on all types of “renewables”
— transportation of operators, inspectors and maintenance/repair crews to/from the sites of any and all types of renewables
— teardown, removal and proper disposal of all “renewable” energy-producing devices and their associated infrastructure at their end-of-life.
3) Should the fossil-fuel “costs” of providing backup batteries or even complete backup FF power plants to cover the intermittency of “renewables” over their life-cycle be considered in the analysis?
As a career engineer, I learned it long ago: TINSTAFL . . . There Is No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.
It saddens me that this lesson-of-history is being overlooked by so many today that follow the siren-call of “renewables”.
I wasn’t looking at life cycle costs, like decommissioning and so forth, but just at what it takes with respect to rates in order to build and run a renewables grid. My view is it is far too expensive to pay for the small benefits involved, if there even are any.
The costs you speak of are built into the purchase price in constructing the plants, grid or the O&M, or into the endless rejuvenation of the facility — what a person should consider a perpetuity. The front end costs you list are “behind the contract” so to speak. Paid for but not explicitly called out.
You missed the point. You listed a whole load of costs but none of them was “fuel”. The point is that saying renewables have no fuel cost avoids the fact that they are insanely expensive.
The point is that batteries are a fuel cost to wind and solar. They replace the missing free fuel that is converted to electricity by wind and solar. Their cost must be added to the fuel costs ($0 + battery)! Technically, fossil fuels backup generators are a replacement for the free fuel that is missing and should also be added into the fuel costs of unreliables.
Please understand that all of the energy costs I delineated do indeed include the costs of associated fuel usage . . . I even stated, twice:
“It takes significant energy (predominantly provided by fossil fuels; little percentage-wise provided by existing “renewables”) to provide:
I don’t know how I could have made this more clear . . . you know, with regards to “missing the point”.
Correct.
Parts is parts and fuel is fuel.
Limiting the accounting to merely the fuel feed into the generator is fiscal malfeasance.
Very nice Kevin.
A study done by IEE Japan for implementing variable renewable energy into the Vietnam grid came up with a similar graph…
much higher costs for wind and solar
.
Note at the bottom what ISN’T included in the costing !
They also don’t include the massive pollution cost in the manufacturing of wind and solar.
Thanks. All references on this topic are useful.
My own study of the BPA’s wind and solar capacity factor data covering two full years of continuous generation here in the US Northwest used a 6X overbuild factor with equal nameplate capacities of wind and solar.
The results of that study have been posted several times here on WUWT.
Anyway, in my study, 9000 MW nameplate wind plus 9000 MW nameplate solar plus 3.6 terawatt-hours of storage were needed to reliably produce 72,000 MW-hours per day continuously 24/7/365 at a baseload capacity of 3000 MW.
What my study shows is that as solar output is declining while the fall season progresses, demands on battery storage begin to increase, reaching a peak in December and January.
If one does an analysis covering all four seasons, one sees periods in December and January lasting ten to fifteen days where the combined capacity factor for wind and solar together falls to 5% or less.
This brings up a point related to claims that “The wind is always blowing somewhere; the sun is always shining somewhere.” Therefore, as this claim goes, massive volumes of battery storage aren’t needed. 24 hours at the very most.
The PACE area of load balancing authority in Wyoming is attached to the Western Interconnection. Other states attached to the Western Interconnection have ambition plans for decarbonizing their regional power grids.
These other states are depending on load balancing authorities in other states and regions to supply electricity when their own renewable generation falls short of demand.
I have two questions:
(1) What does PacificCorp’s IRP say — if anything — about future demands for power which will be placed on PACE generation capacity when other areas of load balancing authority attached to the Western Interconnection fall short of power?
(2) Similarly, what does PacificCorp’s IRP say — if anything — about future demands for power which will be placed on other areas of load balancing authority attached to the Western Interconnection when PacifCorp’s own sources of wind and solar generation inside PACE can’t supply enough power?
So you are looking at 6 times overbuild to reach some level of reliability? 3.6 TWhr is close to what I found for the NW, though I don’t recall my overbuild. At 7 times overbuild I can reduce storage to 24 hours of system average demand in PACE in summer. Actually in Summer 2023 is more accurate.
These are interesting points. I don’t know that they are addressed in the IRP as concerns about what might happen in neighboring balancing areas seems outside its domain. As you know undoubtedly when we are short of wind generation, the neighboring areas are too. However, in the entire NW region there is some anticorrelation of wind. Size helps I think as storms bearing wind take multiple days to cross the region.
As nearly as I understand from a question a commissioner asked, PacifiCorp is dropping enrollment in WRAP and it was WRAP that required each participant make its resources available to others. According to something I was reading in the IRP and would take me a while to find again possibly, the EDAM is not so comprehensive as I had feared. It looks to me that the times of day in which there is trading is somewhat restrictive. There appears to be caution and defensiveness.
I’ll know much more about EDAM results next May when the first annual review of how it is working out is due. Here in PACE we had the big blackout of November 13, 2025, but we had a couple of multiple hours of blackout in southwestern Utah just lately; we had an hour of blackout in my neighborhood in Laramie plus several blinks per week in the past two months — all in the hottest periods of Summer. It’s apparent we are seeing some stress when A/C demand is high.
Deficiencies in the nation’s regional power planning documents go well beyond what is contained in the individual utility IRPs. See my extended response here.
A point to add is the batteries have reduced capacities at cold and also require heating and cooling environmental controls. That energy is not delivered to the grid. If the batteries get too cold, the have to be replaced.
The more renewables are installed, the higher the price of electricity goes. But the Greens claim that the price increase is caused by gas, not renewables. This is how it works: Renewables take over the grid while they are producing enough. Gas only gets used for the balance. The price of gas electricity therefore goes up because its capital and fixed costs are spread over a smaller volume. But the price for electricity is set for the highest-priced supplier in the mix, which is gas. So the Greens have no difficulty blaming gas not renewables for the higher prices
The odd thing though, is that grids supplied mostly or entirely by gas have cheaper electricity than grids with a lot of renewables in the mix. And the odder thing is that the media never asks why. In the UK they even blame gas for UK power prices being higher than everywhere else that uses the same gas at the same price.
And maybe the oddest thing of all is that when renewables can produce more electricity than is needed, they are paid to not produce it. I want a return to sanity, please
It is easy to explain. The point is to distract from what the customer AND taxpayers have to pay for the product, electricity.
If we went back to the system at the turn of this century where the balance was between reliability, a regulated rate of return to attract capital, and minimal cost to the customer, there would be no fossil fueled generators an no unreliables, there would only be nuclear in order to meet net zero.
Shorter analysis of the above:
Wind, Solar, Battery grid connected electrical systems consume more energy to construct and operate than they are able to produce in their lifetimes. This is the fundamental reason they cost so much.
And they produce FAR more real pollution…
.. and do FAR more environmental damage.
At the request of several Wyoming state senators in 2024 I did an analysis to provide an answer to the question “Do wind turbines produce net energy over their lifetimes?”
There are several ways to investigate this. The impossible way is to get a bill of goods and transportation costs and find out how much embodied energy is involved in the entire bill of goods and services. It’s far too large.
Second way is through a model of an economy and see how it would produce such a good and at what cost in energy.
Third way is to simply look at the purchase and service prices. This way is complicated by the fact that the major producer, China, doesn’t have honest accounting for costs because they subsidize favored export industries so heavily.
I took option 2 and found that at the one-third annual average of capacity factor characteristic of Wyoming that it took around 2 years to reach an energy break even. I did not account for O&M but I doubt that changes things greatly and all energy generating methods have O&M anyway.
What my analysis here shows is that the amount of overbuild required to reach all wind plus solar reduces capacity factor to around 14% annual averages, thus extends the break even point by nearly 2.5 times — in other words around 5 years to reach energy break even.
Related Story Tip.
Maryland Electricity Prices Soar 50% As State Shutters Reliable Power, Pushes Wind And Solar – Climate Change Dispatch
To be a reliable generator of electricity, one cannot then say, but to be reliable someone else must replace my fuel at their own costs but not charge me for what it costs to do so. If no cost fuel is not reliable, then the costs of replacing it, must fall on the provider using it.
Simply saying that coal and gas are expensive when replacing missing wind and solar fuel and the costs of coal and gas while doing so and must be paid by others is abdicating what the term – reliable provider – actually means.
As a fellow electrical engineer, ToldYouSo said this:
Mr. Stokes is trying to justify a “free lunch” by having other pay for it. I would advise him, as an engineer, to move his point of reference to the connection point of the distribution grid. This is the point where consumers start to absorb the cost of generation. It is where the provider costs should be compared.
We have reached the point in time that is comparable to the early twentieth century when regulation began in order to place some consistency among free market providers. It is time for state regulators who still control the distribution grid to place consistent financial accounting to providers that wish to connect to the grid. That is the only way to insure consistent consumer pricing and accountability as to the breakdown of consumer costs.
Yes, an additional category of costs must be disclosed for all grid-connected w&s projects.
The extra costs category could be called –
“Smoke & Mirrors”
Wyoming area is about 62.6 million acres.
The estimates for WTG and SV farms are: 3.0 M + 0.3 M = 3.3 million acres. or 5.3% of the State.
For comparison, crop producing acreage is 2.4 million.
Roughly half of the State is not compatible for energy or farming.
I guess we just have to have priorities. The question is which?
I guess it’s modern math: (3.3 million + 2.4 million)/62.6 million = ~50%.
I guess that’s implying my priority rite now should be reading, riting and specially rithmatic.
Nice try. Wrong read.
Maybe add critical thinking to your special needs priorities.
The roughly half the State incompatible for both energy and farming was a boundary condition, not a calculation.
Wyoming: approximately 28.8 million acres are public and/or privately used for or qualified for use in farming and grazing.
If one includes the Federal and State leases, it increases to 45 million useable acres (includes forests).
Oh, now I see . . . crop producing acreage is only 2.4 million . . . but wait!, approximately 28.8 million acres are used for or qualified for use in farming and grazing . . . but wait again!, “useable” acres (whatever that means) is really 45 million acres.
And somewhere in that mix: “Roughly half of the State is not compatible for energy or farming.”
Got it. Let’s see, ummmm, carry the two, round off the number . . . darn, no I don’t. Obviously, I need to revisit my special needs.
Catnip time.
Please, don’t let me stop you.
2 things that citizens in modern-day advanced countries should have to spend no time thinking about –
1. reliable, affordable energy supply;
2. reliable, affordable food supply.
The Big Picture for Zero Emission Electricity:
The zero emission requirement for power generation is far from dead in the United States. The requirement is currently active at state and local levels in a number of states through a variety of legislative dictates. Wind and solar backed by batteries is most often the dictated solution.
Practical achievement of a zero emission wind and solar power grid without buying massive volumes of battery storage requires that the Mark Jacobson Vision — i.e, the wind is always blowing somewhere, the sun is always shining somewhere (the ‘MJV’) — must be implemented near simultaneously everywhere in the United States over a period lasting no more than a decade or so.
A ‘successful’ MJV zero emission transition will require huge overbuilds of wind and solar in every region of the country, combined with substantial upgrades to the power transmission network throughout the entire United States as a whole.
Moreover, a misalignment of zero emission project phases between regions will result in huge imbalances in the grid reliability of some regions in comparison with others. As the transition moves forward, projects in one region of the country must be fully synchronized with projects in all other regions of the country.
Where We Stand Today:
The great burden for achieving zero emission power generation in the United States now falls upon individual utilities, both publicly-owned and investor-owned; and also upon the largely isolated state and local regulatory commissions which maintain governance over those utilities.
Effective coordination and synchronization of zero emission projects is largely absent throughout the US. Individual areas of load balancing authority (e.g. PACE, the BPA, etc.) are now largely on their own to maintain reliable electric service in their own area of control as the zero emission transition moves forward.
A US Northwest Power Planning Example:
The Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee’s 2026 Northwest Regional Forecast (2026-2036) lists 139 individual investor-owned and publicly owned electric utilities as members.
By political dictate, all future additions to the US Northwest power grid must come from wind and solar backed by batteries. The great burden of this requirement falls directly on those 139 utilities, and on the decisions they make individually concerning where and how they will be getting their zero emission electricity.
The PNUCC 2026-2036 forecast predicts that within the next decade, another 32,000 megawatts nameplate of wind and solar must be procured and installed in the US Northwest in order to generate 8,000 average megawatts of new-build renewable electricity.
The battery capacity now in the pipeline for the US Northwest covers only a tiny fraction of the capacity I estimate will be required if the region must rely mostly on its own resources for maintaining grid stability and reliability.
Extending my 2024 Study:
The numbers I came up with in 2024 for a 3,000 MW new build of wind and solar backed by batteries baseload can be scaled up directly for an 8,000 megawatt new-build W+S baseload. (See the results of my 2024 study here.)
Using the BPA’s wind and solar capacity factors for modeling the seasonal generation patterns; and applying a 6X W+S overbuild factor in order to minimize battery storage; I come up with 48,000 megawatts combined wind and solar nameplate backed by 9 terawatt-hours of battery storage in order to deliver 8,000 MW new baseload capacity 24/7/365 throughout all twelve months of the year.
In summary, this is why we must examine the larger planning picture, not just the plans contained in an individual IRP for an investor owned power utility, or contained in an individual Resource Plan for a public power utility.
Excellent commentary Beta Blocker. I do not understand what people are thinking with batteries supplying the dispatchable portion of a grid. They obviously do not understand MW versus MWhr with batteries. I have no reason to disbelieve your numbers as I came up with 4TWhr myself for what the EIA calls the Northwest. 9 TWhr will cost close to three trillion dollars. But because the IRPs and practically everyone measures batteries in MW it disguises what the issue and expense actually are.
I can say that PacifiCorp is dipping their toes into battery reality by using MW for batteries but stating what they really mean by adding the MWhr in parentheses. That’s progress. They are also keeping around 3,000 MW of coal and gas through the study period (2046). That is also progress. Unfortunately they can’t quite articulate a plan for keeping coal and gas running so long.
I don’t know, however, that broader planning will help. Will it perhaps spread the crazy ideas further? For a time Wyoming, Utah and Idaho were thinking of leaving PacifiCorp and striking out on their own. Wyoming can do it because our total load is so small (1GW).
You may know that PacifiCorp is divesting its generating plants, some transmission and distribution in Washington state to an entity that is a joint venture of Portland Gas and Electric and Manulife IM. Though the PR about this deal is carefully said, I think they couldn’t find a plan to deal with Washington State politics. Oregon can’t be much better to deal with.
Response to Kevin Kilty, Part 1 of 2: The ‘Jacobson Vision’ and ‘Area of Authority’ Zero Emission Grid Types
Kevin Kilty said: “I don’t know, however, that broader planning will help. Will it perhaps spread the crazy ideas further?”
Well, that depends on whether or not the broader planning exercises are thoroughly honest and realistic.
Let’s ask this question: ‘If you are a strong advocate for the renewables, is performing broadscope realistic planning to your advantage in pushing for more wind and solar?’
If wind and solar backed by batteries really is cheaper than coal-fired, gas-fired, and nuclear for power generation — well then, strong advocates for a zero emission power grid ought to welcome an all-up, highly detailed engineering feasibility study for the United States as a whole which is totally realistic in estimating what that zero emission grid will actually cost and how much time will actually be needed to build it.
Two Engineering Feasibility Studies are Needed, not just One:
What would be most useful would be two all-up highly-detailed engineering feasibility studies, one for a Jacobson Vision zero emission grid, and another for an Area of Authority zero emission grid:
Study #1, a Jacobson Vision Grid — i.e., the wind is always blowing somewhere, the sun is always shining somewhere — a national grid which minimizes battery storage through use of massive wind and solar overbuilds in all national regions, combined with a massively upgraded power distribution network covering the entire nation.
Study #2, an Area of Authority Grid — a power grid which retains most of the nation’s current areas of load balancing authority and which includes enough battery storage inside each load balancing control area to insure reliable power delivery 24/7/365 when wind and solar capacity factors fall to seasonal lows.
The feasibility analysis study for each type of national grid would include these common planning elements:
— A complete inventory of land locations and offshore locations thought suitable for siting new-build wind and solar power generation facilities.
— An assessment of the effects of local, regional, and national weather patterns on the capacity factors of wind and solar generators sited in each and every location thought suitable for a wind or solar power generation facility.
— The numbers, types, and physical locations of all wind, solar, battery, and power distribution/transmission systems.
— Facility and system design, project financing & funding, regulatory review & approval.
— System procurement, facility siting & preparation, system installation & startup testing, system operations through time.
— Inter-regional and intra-regional grid operations staff and their grid control hardware and software.
— The total Scope of Work for the grid type, Jacobson Vision or Area of Authority, including an integrated project schedule for the particular type.
— Financial resources and financing costs, project risk assessment.
(End of Part 1 of 2)
Response to Kevin Kilty, Part 2 of 2: Further Remarks on the ‘Jacobson Vision’ and ‘Area of Authority’ zero emission grid types, follows in a second comment.
Response to Kevin Kilty, Part 2 of 2: Further Remarks on the ‘Jacobson Vision’ and ‘Area of Authority’ zero emission grid types
Remarks on the ‘Jacobson Vision’ Grid Type:
Practical achievement of a zero emission wind and solar power grid without buying massive volumes of battery storage requires that the Jacobson Vision Grid — i.e, the wind is always blowing somewhere, the sun is always shining somewhere — must be implemented near simultaneously everywhere in the United States over a period lasting no more than a decade or so.
A ‘successful’ Jacobson Vision zero emission transition will require huge overbuilds of wind and solar in every region of the country, combined with substantial upgrades to the power transmission network throughout the entire United States as a whole.
Moreover, a misalignment of Jacobson Vision project phases between regions will result in huge imbalances in the grid reliability of some regions in comparison with others. As the transition moves forward, and as fossil generation is being systematically retired, projects in one region of the country must be fully synchronized with projects in all other regions of the country.
The need for intense project synchronization and control across all Jacobson Vision projects carries substantial project and financial risk. If every project isn’t properly managed and isn’t delivered on time, then costs for the Jacobson Vision grid increase substantially and the risk of power blackouts also increases.
Remarks on the ‘Area of Authority’ Grid Type:
By default, the nation is now pursing an Area of Authority style of transition into a zero emission future. Effective coordination and synchronization of zero emission projects as would be needed for a Jacobson Vision approach is largely absent throughout the United States.
Individual areas of load balancing authority (e.g. PACE, the BPA, etc.) are now largely on their own to maintain reliable electric service in their own area of control while the zero emission transition moves forward.
A ‘successful’ Area of Authority grid also requires huge overbuilds of wind and solar inside a particular region. But these overbuilds must be combined with enough regional battery storage to handle seasonal shortfalls in wind and solar power production.
As it now stands, the great burden for achieving zero emission power generation in the United States falls directly upon the individual power utilities, both publicly-owned and investor-owned; and also upon the largely isolated state and local regulatory commissions which oversee those utilities.
The volumes of battery storage now being procured by regional power utilities in order to insure reliable 24/7/365 power delivery fall dramatically short of what an Area of Authority style of zero emission power grid will require.
Using an Area of Authority approach, if sufficient battery storage isn’t being continuously procured as legacy generation systems are being systematically retired, then the risk of power blackouts also increases.
The Bottom Line for Wind and Solar Advocates:
Getting back to the basic question …. If you are a strong advocate for the renewables, is performing broadscope realistic planning to your advantage in pushing for more wind and solar?
If wind and solar is inherently cheaper than coal-fired, gas-fired, and nuclear generation, then wind & solar advocates ought to be pressing hard for the two engineering feasibility studies described in Part 1 of this two-part comment — one study for a Jacobson Vision grid and a second study for an Area of Authority grid.
Assuming the two studies were each thoroughly honest and thoroughly realistic, and that each study demonstrated conclusively that wind and solar are inherently cheaper than our legacy fossil fuel and nuclear power generation systems — then the issue of which energy policy is better for the American consumer would be resolved very quickly, once and for all.
I think you and I know what the result of each would be. Such duplicate studies for the entire country would be quite expensive, though probably not much more expensive that the current rounds of IRPs every two years. They might end up being the political documents that I’ve heard you complain about before–Think of what goes on in New York State.