Posted on 08/09/2023 5:55:02 AM PDT by MtnClimber
A recurring question at this blog has been, how do the world’s politicians plan to provide reliable electricity without fossil fuels? Country after country, and state after state, have announced grand plans for what they call “Net Zero” electricity generation, universally accompanied by schemes for massive build-outs of wind and solar generation facilities. But what is the strategy for the calm nights, or for the sometimes long periods at the coldest times of the winter when both wind and sun produce near zero electricity for days or even weeks on end?
When pressed, the answer given is generally “batteries” or “storage.” That answer might appear plausible before you start to think about it quantitatively. To introduce some quantitative thinking into the situation, last December I had a Report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation titled “The Energy Storage Conundrum.” That Report discussed several calculations of how much energy storage would be required to get various jurisdictions through a year with only wind and/or solar generation and only batteries for back-up, with fossil fuels excluded from the mix. The number are truly breathtaking: for California and Germany, approximately 25,000 GWh of storage to make it through a year; for the continental U.S., approximately 233,000 GWh of storage to make it through a year. At a wildly optimistic assumption of $100/kWh for storage, this would price out at $2.5 trillion for California or Germany, $23.3 trillion for the U.S. — equal or greater than the entire GDP of the jurisdiction. At more realistic assumptions of $300 - 500/kWh for battery storage, you would be looking at 3 to 5 times GDP for one round of batteries, which would then need replacement every few years.
But even these numbers wildly understate the real world costs of storage that would be needed. Here’s why: the calculations that I presented were based on actually data for particular years, and what storage would have been needed to make it through that year. For example, here is the chart from my Report of the annual charge and discharge cycle for a collection of batteries that would have been sufficient to get California through the year 2017 on a wind/solar system, fossil fuels eliminated, without running out of electricity:
As you can see, the calculation assumes that California would run its batteries right down to zero in March with the expectation that they would then begin to recharge.
But if you are planning a system that must have 99.9% reliability, you can’t just look at one year and assume you can run your storage down to zero. You need to consider the worst-case year. This is particularly true in the case of an electricity system consisting only of wind and solar generation plus batteries. If the batteries run down to zero, then what? It is not at all obvious how to restart. You might need to dedicate the generation exclusively to charging the batteries for weeks or even a month or more before you can have confidence that you can restart without immediately crashing again.
So, in the real world, how would you run such a system prudently?
There actually exists a closely analogous type of system from which we can make inferences of what kind of margins are necessary to assure reliability. That analogous type of system is the system for water supply. The supply of water from a reservoir system, like generation of electricity from wind and sun, is dependent on unpredictable weather. What kind of margins for storage are necessary to assure reliability?
The New York City water supply system makes lots of data available to investigate this question. Here are some key data points:
- New York City consumes about 1 billion gallons of water a day from its reservoir system. (Although the population has grown somewhat over the past couple of decades, that figure has remained quite stable, and actually decreased by a little, largely due to universal metering and increasing prices.)
- The New York City reservoir system has a capacity of approximately 550 billion gallons — which is about 1.5 years of consumption, or 18 months’ worth.
- Rainfall, on average, is a generous 4 inches per month, year-round. However, there can be droughts, which can continue for months on end.
The New York City reservoirs have a usual annual cycle. Usage exceeds replenishment in the summer and fall, and then the reservoirs refill in the spring with run-off from melting winter snows. In a typical year, the reservoir level never falls below 70% of capacity. However, there are periodic drought years, when reservoir levels can get much lower.
Here is a chart from New York City on historical droughts going back to the 1960s. There were droughts in 1963-65, 1980-82, 1985, 1991, 1995, and 2002. The lowest level reported for the reservoirs in this chart occurred on January 19, 1981, when the level reached 33% (which would represent approximately 6 months of usage). A drought “Emergency” was declared at that point. Another “Emergency” was declared in April-July 1985, with the reservoir level ranging between 55% and 62% (10-11 months of average usage), and again in April 2002 with the level at 57.5% (10 months average usage).
I would contend that this represents government over-reacting as usual and trying to scare the people into compliance. All of these drought conditions resolved themselves when rains came and refilled the reservoirs long before they emptied out.
But the point remains: Nobody is going to let the reservoirs get anywhere close to zero before declaring an emergency. After all, there is no further back-up when the reservoirs are empty. At that point, there is no more water until some rain shows up. And so we consider it a drought emergency when the remaining storage is somewhere in the range of 6 to 10 months of water.
Now apply that to a prospective wind/solar/battery electricity system with fossil fuel back-up eliminated. Are we really going to run such a system in accordance with the models in my Report, where we allow the batteries to drain right down to zero every spring? What if the wind and sun don’t cooperate for the next month (or two, or three)? Won’t we insist on having at least a month’s worth of spare storage at the normal low point of the year, just in case we have a worst-case situation?
In that case, I suggest that the number presented in my Report for the cost of batteries to back up a fossil fuel-free system are low by at least a factor of two, and probably more.
The problem with these analyses is that the assumption is that the delivered power will remain the same. The reality is that shortages and rationing are the goal.
Manhattan Contrarian ping.
Good piece.
No one in the climate change cult cares about real world anything.
Too bad we can’t capture lightning for storage...
how do the world’s politicians plan to provide reliable electricity without fossil fuels
/\
They don’t
At least not to the slaves, us.
THEY will always have reliable 24/7 electricity.
Aka
” the plan “.
“On July 4, 2011, a company in Spain celebrated an historic moment for the solar industry: Torresol’s 19.9 MW concentrating solar power plant became the first ever to generate uninterrupted electricity for 24 hours straight, using a molten salt heat storage.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
“The first commercial molten salt mixture was a common form of saltpeter, 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate. Saltpeter melts at 220 °C (430 °F) and is kept liquid at 290 °C (550 °F) in an insulated storage tank. Calcium nitrate can reduce the melting point to 131 °C, permitting more energy to be extracted before the salt freezes. There are now several technical calcium nitrate grades stable at more than 500 °C.
“This solar power system can generate power in cloudy weather or at night using the heat in the tank of hot salt. The tanks are insulated, able to store heat for a week.”
Fossil fuel power plants will not be vaporized by the sun. Existing fossil fuel power plants are capable of producing most of the electricity you now use and unless destroyed by stupid government mandates, will remain available for backup electricity generation.
I am all for feasibility projects for new methods of electricity production. I am not opposed to implementing then on a large scale if they prove feasible. What I am not for is the government taking over control of the means of production.
My home solar and batteries provide close to 85% of our power across the year (less in the winter, more in the other months). That's the sweet spot for our power consumption habits and power production and storage capability before we start running into the law of diminishing returns. Any attempt to try to be 100% energy independent beyond this would be horribly costly with little result. And that's with very predictable power consumption habits (just my wife and I now in the house after our kids have grown and moved out).
Most of the 15% of power we have to buy from the grid comes from the somewhat unpredictable (but not surprising) events. Such as a cold snap (this past winter we had a few days that never got above the teens, an unusual event in my part of Alabama) or family staying over for the holidays (forcing me to switch my hybrid water heater from heat pump mode to using standard heating elements, among other energy consumption extras like more time the hot tub is running, etc.). And that's just one household's random occurrences.
I couldn't imagine trying to do that with the grid and trying to account for all of the variations millions of people exhibit in energy consumption habits. For example, having to make sure Tuscaloosa, AL gets more power than normal on weekends that Bama has a home game, while the next weekend there might be a lot of extra power needed at another location to house all the underage call girls used at a DNC convention people fly into on private jets to fuss about pollution or whatever. But then other days not much going on and mild weather (meaning homes and businesses not having to run their A/C or heat as much).
It is sad to those of us who have worked to attain degrees in the STEM subjects to read the absolute bilge that appears daily in our science challenged media.
Green Energy is a government sponsored social-engineering effort. It has some connections to reality, but is mainly political
It will fail. It had 20 years of tail-wind, due to primacy of the USA in the world and control of trade system, globalization and stable prices, low interest rates, ability to grow debt, trust in government
Now every single one of those things has reversed - we face bloated government debt, high interest rates and interest costs, stagnant wages/income, China/Russia holding key minerals hostage, spotty global supply chains, the rise of BRICS
Our woke Uniparty Fed.gov will continue to push the green-energy fantasy, but there is NO WAY America will be able to afford it. Its a crash waiting to happen.
As a STEM degree holder, I completely agree with that.
so sorry
the grid is not big enough
for everyone to have an ev
so shut up and get on the bus
Peter Zeihan who is an expert in Geopolitics. He gets paid to lecture on the subject around the world. He has stated that there is no way for everyone to have an EV car. Especially by 2035.
Peter is a liberal too. He has solar panels on his house in the mountains of CO because that area has more days of sun per year than almost any other place in the USA.
What he points out is that the amount of mineral excavation for Lithium batteries is the real problem. It is not just the amount of lithium. It is the amount of copper, nickel cobalt and a few other minerals would have to increase 10X from the current world levels. That is why Chile and another South American country just nationalized their Nickle and Copper deposits. They do not want China to gain control of it like they have COBALT production in the Congo. The Congo is where almost all the cobalt comes from.
FYI, Peter also points out that solar panels are a good idea for the mountains of CO, NM and other places that get 300+ days per year of sunshine. Especially in the higher elevation because solar panels work better in colder temperatures. He points out that they are an incredibly bad idea for places around the Great Lakes that get a lot of cloudy days. He also pointed out that they are incredibly stupid for a country like Germany where it is overcast all the time.
You mean you don't trust the genius in the White House to skillfully manage the ship of state?
There is only one “real world” battery. A reservoir. But we all know there is no way the democrat nazi demons will allow any dams to be built in this day and age.
How big physically will these batteries be?
How much land will be needed to house them?
How expensive are they to build and maintain?
Is the power needed to maintain them in their environment in the total battery storage calculation?
The people having unicorn dreams don’t need no stinking calculations.
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