Posted on 08/19/2024 5:48:46 AM PDT by MtnClimber
My repeated calls for a Demonstration Project of a zero-emissions electrical grid have led to a spirited debate among knowledgeable commenters. While most back my position, some say that a Demonstration Project is really not necessary and would be a waste of effort.
The gist of the argument of those disputing the necessity of a Demonstration Project is that it is so obvious that a zero-emissions grid powered predominantly by wind and solar generation cannot be achieved that the expense and effort of building an actual physical facility cannot be justified. Before the building of a physical demonstration project there would inevitably be an engineering feasibility study, and such a feasibility study would not get through its first day before everybody involved realized that this could never work. All it would take would be a few back-of-the-envelope calculations using basic arithmetic and the whole endeavor would be sunk.
Regular commenter Richard Greene leads the forces arguing against a demonstration project. From a comment by Richard on my August 10 post:
A good demonstration project that included manufacturing and farming is very likely not needed. A real local utility Nut Zero grid engineering plan on paper would have grid engineers laughing hysterically. The money allocated for backup batteries would be nowhere close to paying for the battery GWh capacity needed. Backup natural gas power plants could do the job, but gas backup is not wanted. . . . 100% wind and solar can never work due to compound energy droughts, wind drought and solar droughts (batteries are far too expensive).
Representative of the pro-demonstration project side is a comment from “dm” on the August 13 post. Excerpt:
Because many people doubt paper analyses, lived experience is a necessary teacher. Thus, demonstration projects are NEEDED to prove the folly of "sustainable" electricity grids. Furthermore, the demonstration projects MUST be in regions heavily populated with nut zero enthusiasts, and ALL costs MUST be paid SOLELY by households, businesses, institutions ... located within the demonstration areas.
My natural sympathies here would lie with Richard’s side of this debate. How can spending what would likely be billions of dollars of public money be justified when calculations that I have made or verified myself show that the project will never come close to success?
But then we must look at what is happening in large states and countries that are proceeding toward the stated goal of a zero-emissions grid without ever having had a working demonstration project. In some of these cases (Germany, UK) the wasted resources are now into the trillions, not billions. And at some point the whole effort will inevitably be ended with some kind of hard-to-predict catastrophe (long blackouts? multiplication of consumer costs by a factor of ten or more?). By then, many of the working resources that have made the grid function will have been destroyed and will have to be re-created, at a cost of further trillions.
Consider the case of Germany. Germany is a very substantial country (80+ million people, making it twice the size of California and four times the size of New York), with the world’s fourth largest GDP at over $4 trillion annually. Germany was one of the first to start down the road to a zero-emissions grid back in the 1990s, and formally adopted its “Energiewende” fourteen years ago in 2010. Germany has proceeded farther than any other large country in converting its electricity generation to wind and solar.
And yet, as I look around for information on Germany’s progress toward zero-emissions electricity, I can’t find any concern or recognition that this might not be doable in the end. Perhaps that exists in German language sources that I can’t read. But from anything I can find, it looks like Germany is forging ahead in the blind faith that if only they build enough wind turbines and solar panels at some point they will have the zero-emissions electricity that they crave.
Go to the website of the Umweltbundesamt (Federal Environmental Agency) for the latest information. At least on the electricity front, you will not find any indication that there may be problems in achieving the zero-emissions utopian future:
The “Energiewende” – Germany’s transition towards a secure, environmentally friendly, and economically successful energy future – includes a large-scale restructuring of the energy supply system towards the use of renewable energy in all sectors. . . . [T]he switch towards renewables in the electricity sector has been very successful so far. . . . While in the year 2000 renewables accounted for 6.3 percent of electricity demand only, its [sic] share has been growing significantly over the past years, exceeding 10 percent in the year 2005 and 25 per cent in the year 2013. In 2023 renewable energy sources provided 272 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and account for 51.8 percent of German electricity demand. With wind power being by far the most important energy source in the German electricity mix.
Some 30+ years into this process, and they’re only up to barely over 50% of their electricity from “renewables.” And while they may claim that “wind power [is] by far the most important source in the German electricity mix,” in fact when you get a breakdown you find that wind and solar together provided well less than 50%. According to solar advocates Fraunhofer Institute here, in 2023 “biomass” provided some 42.3 TWh of Germany’s electricity (about 8%), hydro provided 19.5 TWh (about 4%), and “waste non-renewable” (I think that means burning garbage) provided 4.5 TWh (about 1%). That leaves under 40% for wind and solar.
If they keep building solar and wind facilities, and expect batteries to be the backup, has anybody calculated how much battery storage they will need? Not that I can find. Here is a website of a company called Fluence, which is an affiliate of German industrial giant Siemens. They excitedly predict a rapid expansion of grid storage in Germany:
Storage capacity will grow 40-fold to 57 GWh by 2030.
Wow, a 40-fold increase! It may sound like a lot. But Germany’s average electricity demand is about 50 GW, so the 57 GWh of battery storage in 2030 will come to about 1 hour’s worth. Competent calculations of the amount of energy storage needed to back up a predominantly wind/solar grid run in the range of around 500 to 1000 hours.
Here from another website is a chart of the growth of energy storage in Germany up to this year.
Look at that acceleration! But the 10 GWh of storage that they currently have will last no more than about 10 minutes when the wind and sun quit producing on a calm night.
In short, this large and seemingly sophisticated country is completely delusional, with no sane voices anywhere to be heard. A demonstration project that fails spectacularly is the only thing with any hope of saving them.
The climate cult is a cult. You can’t reason with them.
Manhattan Contrarian ping.
The reason an actual demonstration project will not be done is that it will show what an utter fraud and waste of taxpayers’ money a zero-emissions e;ectrical grid really is.
If a demonstration project is done it will likely be as fraudulent as the zero-emissions shell game.
That chart shows the big jump in “home storage” of electricity.
What induced people to put batteries in their homes? It sure wasn’t unencumbered free-market economics. The leftists yammer all the time about “sustainable,” but the federal subsidies that made that home storage economical is anything but “sustainable.”
Whatever they build will take a lot of Coal/Oil to build and whatever they build will not work and they’ve wasted all that Coal/Oil , LOL
Battery Energy In Germany built by Coal/Oil maintained by Coal/Oil
Why not ask JF’nK to adopt a totally Carbon free existence to show us how it’s done?.
Just west of here we have a “demonstration project”, complete with its’ own logo. Something that’s supposed to remind you of a raindrop or something.
When I traveled the NYS Thruway sometimes I would see semi’s carrying these black coffin shaped steel boxes with stenciled letters “WVDP” on them with the same raindrop logo on them. That’s West Valley Demonstration Project, a place to store high level radioactive liquid waste above ground.
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I personally like home energy storage, not to replace regular sources, but because weather happens and just like a generator it’s good to have emergency power. More backups are even better.
Similarly, socialist bureaucrats exist and while thankfully not everywhere, we’ve all read, and some experienced, man-made outages and rolling blackouts. I do not wish to subject myself to such dictates.
Unfortunately the township-sized self-contained nuke reactor hasn’t hit the market yet.
Re the main topic— even if/when Germany falters, or an intentional pilot, that never stops leftists. Even the millions of dead at communist and socialist hands are, in their ongoing efforts, just denied, u til they have to back up to “it wasn’t done right,” followed by memoryholing them once the mass murder isn’t fresh on everyone’s minds.
Great article. Thanks for posting it.
The Germans are reducing themselves to the de-indusrialized, agrarian 18th Century-style economy that some victorious Allies and US presidential advisors wanted to force them into in 1945 as punishment. Amazing that they are doing it to themselves.
We put in a natural-gas fired generator to handle blackouts. Of course, since we installed it three years ago, we haven’t needed it once!
There’s no way I would put a huge lithium-ion battery pack anywhere near my house!
The Germans could turn their closed nuclear plants back on and that waould solve the problem. Nukes are like big zero emmission batteries.
“What induced people to put batteries in their homes?”
I suspect that they’re trying to take credit for EVs as home storage is still TINY, and will stay that way until the blackouts hit.
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