Posted on 01/23/2022 5:21:38 AM PST by MtnClimber
Most comments at this site tend to have a perspective generally consistent with my own. But sometimes a post will attract comments from people with a very different point of view. That occurred on a post earlier this week titled “Two More Contributions On The impossibility Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar, And Batteries.”
That post and the one immediately preceding it (“Calculating The Full Costs Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar, And Batteries”) had both focused on a particular issue inherent in the project of replacing dispatchable carbon-based sources of energy (coal, oil, natural gas) with intermittent “renewables” (wind, solar). That issue is that, as the intermittent renewables come to provide a greater percentage of electrical generation and as dispatchable fossil fuels get phased out, there is an accelerating need for enormously expensive energy storage to provide the electricity at times when the renewables go quiet. The two posts linked to detailed studies written by four different authors, each of whom had provided a detailed description of their methodology. Two of the four authors even provided spreadsheets, so that a reader who believes the assumptions of the author are wrong can change those assumptions and derive a new cost estimate from the altered assumptions.
The import of all of these studies is that as renewables come to dominate the mix of electricity generation, and particularly as their share of generation goes above 50% and on towards 100%, and fossil fuel backup gets phased out, then the cost of necessary storage becomes far and away the dominant cost of the overall system. Therefore, any meaningful proposal to replace fossil fuel generation with renewables must grapple with this issue.
So what is the solution that the dissenting commenters offer for the problem of increasing need for expensive storage? They don’t offer any at all. Instead, they appear to think that the whole problem can be assumed away or ignored.
The dissenting commenters were three in number, and posted under the pseudonyms “Johnathan Galt,” “GKam,” and “reneawbleguy.” Galt and GKam each posted only one comment, but “reneawbleguy” posted over forty.
The gist of all these comments really comes down to the same thing, namely that the renewables are rapidly becoming cheaper than fossil fuels to generate electricity, if they are not so already, and therefore fossil fuels are a dying industry. Mixed in with this point is a good deal of snide and accusatory language, essentially asserting that anyone who may disagree as to the relative full cost of renewables must necessarily be both ignorant and politically motivated. (e.g., GKam: “More science nonsense from this group of political hacks. . . . Give it up You have already lost.”). Meanwhile, all three fail to deal in any real way with the storage problem inherent in expansion of generation from the renewables.
Here is “reneawbleguy” on the relative cost of fossil fuel electricity generation versus renewables:
Energy costs savings. RE will be cheaper that FF business as usual. 10.43 cents per kw-hr FF 7.81 cents per kw-hr RE. Dollars into our pockets is a clear difference favoring RE. Clear difference. Money cost savings per person.
No source is cited, but I would agree that approximately these numbers can be found in some studies of relative costs of the renewables versus fossil fuels. But the studies that get these numbers it do so by ignoring the entire storage problem completely.
Similarly, from Galt:
[T]he only consideration to consumers is, was, and always will be “what is the delivered cost to me?” That is neatly quantified in Lazard’s excellent publication providing LCOE.
As I have pointed out on this blog numerous times, the Lazard numbers for “LCOE” (Levelized Cost of Energy) specifically omit any inherent costs of necessary storage. Since the cost of storage is the dominant cost of the all-renewable system, LCOE is the opposite of a “neat quantification” of comparative electricity generation costs, and rapidly becomes completely misleading as the percentage generated from renewables increases beyond 50%.
GKam is even less sophisticated, simply relying on his own personal experience with a home getting its power from rooftop solar panels:
My entire household and both electric cars are powered by the PV system on our roof, as "Galt" can tell you, and it gives us free power having paid back in three years.
GKam does not enlighten us as to how he gets his electricity at night, or overcast days in the winter, or whether he has purchased batteries sufficient to store up power from the summer for use during those long winter nights. If he lives in the United States, it is almost certain that he relies on his local grid — in other words, on fossil fuel backup, with perhaps some nuclear thrown in — for power during those times.
Of the three dissenting commenters, the only one who addresses the storage issue at all is Galt. He asserts, with great confidence, that new battery technologies are coming to make the storage problem go away:
At least two separate technologies, Ambri and Form Energy, will almost certainly have their first large factories up and running within 5 years. Both use common materials (antimony and calcium, iron), both are environmentally safe. Ambri’s battery is 100% recyclable, and in theory may last more than 100 years. Form Energy’s product is likewise 100% recyclable, should cost only 20% that of Lithium Ion, and although the lifespan is not yet advertised it has the potential for similar lifetime of use (simply a “reversible rusting” process).
So the proposal is that a government-mandated total transformation of the entire energy system of our economy should depend on one or another of two not-yet-invented-or demonstrated-at-scale technologies, which may or may not work, and the cost projections of which may be wildly off. Galt does not do any actual numerical calculations. But at a cost of “20% that of Lithium ion” the storage systems he is talking about would still imply a cost of around $100 trillion in Ken Gregory’s spreadsheet, some 5 times current U.S. GDP. Shouldn’t this be acknowledged as a problem? And how can you advocate use of Lazard’s “LCOE” numbers for relative costs of energy sources when those calculations omit a $100 trillion item applicable to wind and solar but not to fossil fuels?
So I say to these three commenters: it’s time to step up your game. Don’t just make unsupported assertions that wind and solar are cheaper. Give us a spreadsheet with a numerical demonstration of how much storage a fully wind/solar/storage electricity system for the U.S. will need, what technology will be used to provide it, and how much that will cost. Without that, you are just dealing in fantasy. I for one will be happy to have the all-renewable system if someone can demonstrate that it can be built and will work at reasonable cost.
This article presumes that the leftist plan is to make green energy work. However I believe the green energy plan is designed to fail in order to collapse our system. Then the lef will say “Well we tried to make the free market system work, but it looks like we need to rebuild our society based on government central planning and rationing.
And boy, we all know how well THAT works, don't we?
Starvation 'might' be useful to lose a few extra
pounds - but I don't want to lose all 194 of them.
Personally, I'd rather just fry up one less strip
of bacon to go with my two eggs & coffee.
That reminds me - it's time for breakfast...
There is no such a thing as a fossil fuel
7.81 cents per kw-hr RE
I do not know where this guy lives.
For me, I pay bout 17.81 per kwhr
FF is by far the economical choice
There was one clown here recently that didn’t bother to do the math and figured that we could use pumped storage for storing the amount of energy required.
I did the math, and we’d have to be willing to empty the Great Lakes to get the energy required to get through the worst-case scenarios.
...and then what gets done with all that water? If you send it down the Mississippi, and ignoring the flooding that would occur, you no longer have great lakes, so you have to start trying to refill them with rain and runoff. Not very smart and would likely take years. If you do what’s done by TVA, where they do have pumped storage, you need multiple lakes to move water back and forth...which is the case there. But where we do put a second set of Great Lakes - they’re pretty damn big as it is!
And no, I won’t talk about the hundreds of Hoover Dams required to power things at night or pump up the water during the day...
Peaches come get your peaches off the tree I planted in my yard only cost you 49¢ per pound, go to the evil polluting non green grocery store and it’ll cost you a buck49. What a deal and you are being green¿
Wake up America!
The cheap? renewable energy is just like the fresh peach.
When you have it it’s great but when don’t….
Until the greenies can sunshine or bottle wind I’ll take my electric power straight free market capitalism style delivered on demand without government interference.
We The People decide. Vote 2022.
We are currently on the Cesar Chavez model of the Venezuela system. The Socialists are ahead at this time.
“Ambri’s battery is 100% recyclable”
I was digging a bit into that too. Gets rather interesting as it presently cost FAR MORE to recycle and build a new battery, than to strip mine the raw materials and build a new battery.
So be careful with the word ‘recyclable’. The batteries have to be FULLY REBUILT to get back to a new state...it’s not just a matter of zapping them or something to get their life back. If there isn’t a cost effective way to ‘recycle’ a battery, they won’t be ‘recycled’ without coercion and huge added costs to society.
critical theory
My daughter & Son in law are building their retirement home in KFC* along with a casita for my wife & I in our dotage. The plan was complete solar until I argued for a backup, even in the Sonoran Desert, especially since there is no “grid” in KFC*. So now we are adding Propane and a couple of large generators.
I am also gonna try a couple of homemade windmill generators.
*KFC: Has nothing to do with chickens.
Green Energy needs 3 hours of battery storage to cover the start up time for backup generators. When the wind goes calm or clouds move in you need to to run your generator. Since it takes 3 hours to start, it has to run all the time without 3 hours of battery backup.
Being someone that has lived off-grid (solar), I cam tell you storage is and always has been the issue. Ignoring any environmental issues with the manufacturing of solar, storage alone is the dirtiest aspect of renewables. For accessible area applications there are now kinetic batteries that store energy in a spinning weight. These are not able to be scaled up due to material properties and basic physics. Funny thing is, the ideal storage medium for renewable energy appears to be the hydrocarbon. Of course, dirty evil carbon... therefore that cannot even be considered. So we rape the world and mine lithium instead.
The Ludington Pumped Storage Plant is a hydroelectric plant and reservoir in Ludington, Michigan. It was built between 1969 and 1973 at a cost of $315 million and is owned jointly by Consumers Energy and DTE Energy and operated by Consumers Energy. At the time of its construction, it was the largest pumped storage hydroelectric facility in the world.
It consists of a reservoir 110 feet (34 m) deep, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) long, and one mile (1.6 km) wide which holds 27 billion US gallons (100 Gl) or 82859 acre-feet of water. The 1.3-square-mile (3.4 km2) reservoir is located on the banks of Lake Michigan. Because impervious bedrock is more than 800 feet (240 m) below the reservoir, the builders had to line the reservoir with a layer of asphalt and clay to prevent water seeping into the ground.
The power plant consists of six reversible turbines that can each generate 312 megawatts of electricity for a total output of 1,872 megawatts. Water is delivered from the upper reservoir to the turbines by six penstocks each 1,100 feet (340 m) long that taper from 28 to 24 feet (8.5 to 7.3 m) in diameter.
At night, during low demand for electricity, the turbines run in reverse to pump water 363 feet (111 m) uphill from Lake Michigan into the reservoir. The plant takes advantage of the natural steep sand dune landform of eastern Lake Michigan. During periods of peak demand water is released to generate power. Electrical generation can begin within two minutes with peak electric output of 1872 MW achieved in under 30 minutes. Maximum water flow is over 33 million US gallons (120,000 m3) per minute.
This process was designed to level the load of nearby nuclear power plants on the grid. It also replaces the need to build natural gas peak power plants used only during high demand. The Ludington Pumped Storage plant is connected to six 345-kV Transmission lines, all owned and maintained by METC, a subsidiary of ITC Holdings.
The project was given the 1973 award for "Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement" by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Communists don’t care about solutions, they only care about destruction.
The Robert Moses Power Station in Niagara Falls uses the same principle, but the water flows into the reservoir from culverts above the falls so there is little need to pump the water, it is then released into the hydro generators during peak hours.. a marvelous piece of engineering, but how many Niagara Falls are there?
Show me a gov’t program that has worked.
War on poverty
War on drugs
War on crime
War on terrorism
All failures because they were not funded sufficiently.
The gov’t needs more money, more power and then they can fix everything.
The same will be true of Climate Change. Failure will be blamed on starting late due to delays by deniers. Failure will be blamed on lack of funding. Failure will be blamed on lack of gov’t authority.
They need fake crises like Global Warming so they can legislate their way to solve it. Same way they are pretending to solve Covid.
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