Posted on 12/04/2022 4:51:18 AM PST by MtnClimber
Today my long-awaited energy storage paper was officially published on the website of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Here is a link. The paper is 22 pages long in the form in which they have published it plus another few pages for an Executive Summary and table of contents. They have given it the title “The Energy Storage Conundrum.”
Most of the points made in the paper have been made previously on this blog in one form or another. However, there is a good amount of additional detail in the paper that has never appeared here. I’ll provide one example of that today, and more of same in coming days.
The main point of the paper is that an electrical grid powered mostly by intermittent generators like wind and sun requires full backup from some source; and if that source is to be stored energy, the amounts of storage required are truly staggering. When you do the simple arithmetic to calculate the storage requirements and the likely costs, it becomes obvious that the entire project is completely impractical and unaffordable. The activists and politicians pushing us toward this new energy system of wind/solar/storage are either being intentionally deceptive or totally incompetent.
If you follow the news on this subject at a general level, you might find this conclusion surprising. After all, there are frequent announcements that this or that jurisdiction has entered a contract to purchase some seemingly large amount of batteries for grid-level storage. The Report cites data from consultancy Wood Mackenzie as to announced plans or contracts for storage acquisition in all major European countries, and cites other reports as to announced plans from California and New York in the U.S. The title of the April 2022 Wood Mackenzie paper on Europe certainly gives the impression that these people have the situation under control and know what they are doing: “Europe’s Grid-scale Energy Storage Capacity Will Expand 20-fold by 2031.” Impressive!
But this is one of those subjects on which you have to look at the actual numbers to evaluate whether the plans make any sense. In this situation, you need to compare the amount of energy storage that would be required for full backup of an almost-entirely wind/solar grid (with fossil fuels excluded), to the actual quantity of grid-scale energy storage being acquired.
Consider the case of Germany, the country that has gone the farthest of any in the world down the road to “energy transition.” My Report presents two different calculations of the energy storage requirement for Germany in a world of a wind/solar grid and no fossil fuels allowed (both of which calculations have been previously covered on this blog). One of the calculations, by a guy named Roger Andrews, came to a requirement of approximately 25,000 GWh; and the other, by two authors named Ruhnau and Qvist, came to a higher figure of 56,000 GWh. The two use similar but not identical methodology, and somewhat different assumptions. Clearly there is a large range of uncertainty as to the actual requirement; but the two calculations cited give a reasonable range for the scope of the problem.
To give you an idea of just how much energy storage 25,000 (or 56,000) GWh is, here is a rendering (also from my Report) of a grid-scale battery storage facility under construction in Queensland, Australia by Vena Energy. The facility in the rendering is intended to provide 150 MWh of storage.
Remember that 150 MWh is only 0.15 of one GWh. In other words, it would take about 167,000 of these facilities to provide 25,000 GWh of storage, and about 373,000 of them to get to the 56,000 GWh in the larger estimate.
And against these projections of a storage requirement in the range of tens of thousands of GWh, what are Germany’s plans as presented in this “20-fold expansion” by 2031? From my Report:
In the case of Germany, Wood Mackenzie states that the planned energy storage capacity for 2031, following the 20-fold expansion, is 8.81GWh.
Rather than tens of thousands of GWh, it’s single digits. How does that stack up in percentage terms against the projected requirements?:
In other words, the amount of energy storage that Germany is planning for 2031 is between 0.016% and 0.036% of what it actually would need. This does not qualify as a serious effort to produce a system that might work.
The story is the same in the other jurisdictions covered in the Report. And remember, these are the jurisdictions that consider themselves the leaders and the vanguard in the transition to renewable energy. For example, New York, with an estimated storage requirement for a mainly-renewables grid of 10,000-15,000 GWh, is said by trade magazine Utility Dive to be “forging ahead” with plans to procure some 6 GW of grid storage (presumably translating into about 24 GWh). That would come to around 0.2% of what is needed. Unless, of course, New York simultaneously “forges ahead” with its plans to triple the demand on the grid by electrifying all automobiles and home heating; in that case the 24 GWh would be back down to less than 0.1% of the storage requirement.
California? The Report cites another article from Utility Dive stating that the California Public Utilities Commission has ordered the state’s power providers to collectively procure by 2026 some 10.5 GW (or 42.0 GWh) of lithium-ion batteries for grid-scale storage:
The additional 10.5 GW of lithium-ion storage capacity, translating to at most about 42 GWh, would take California all the way to about 0.17% of the energy storage it would need to fully back up a wind/solar generation system.
However bad you might think this situation is, it’s worse. Am I the only person who has ever made these simple calculations? I certainly have never seen them anywhere else.
I would be very happy to be proved wrong about any and all of this. All I say is that the proponents of this miraculous fantasy energy future owe it to the rest of us to build a working demonstration project before forcing us all to adopt their utopian scheme at ruinous cost, only to find out that it won’t work and can’t work.
Here’s what tells you all you need to know: not only is there no working demonstration project anywhere in the world of the wind/solar/storage energy system, but there is none under construction and none even proposed. Instead, the proponents’ idea is that your entire state or country is to be the guinea pig for their dreams. After all, they are “saving the planet.” If there has ever previously been something this crazy in the history of the world, I certainly can’t name it.
UPDATE, December 2: A commenter points out that 150 MWh is 15% of one GWh, rather than 0.15%. That is correct. I have corrected the text. The number of 150 MWh facilities to get to 25,000 GWh or 56,000 GWh does not change.
The problem is that the green energy is not about building something workable. It is about collapsing society into a UN Agenda 2030 subsistence “utopia”.
Yup. You nailed it.
We were too close to energy independence here in America.
“The problem is that the green energy is not about building something workable.”
It’s a Noah’s Ark with several holes drilled in the bottom of the hull. Get everyone on board believing they are saved, and the damn thing sinks.
Our electrical systems are setup to use power on demand.
Wind and solar do not provide power on demand. They provide intermittent power when the wind blows or the sun shines.
Therefore, wind and solar do not work with our current electrical systems.
Energy storage is not feasible due to the capacity required to “smooth out” the fluctuations in generation from wind/solar.
Energy storage also adds immense cost, making wind/solar even more expensive and impractical.
But the further down the road they go with wind/solar and taking coal, oil and nuclear plants offline, the closer we get to a point of no return, meaning an economic collapse will occur with massive power shortages that result in product shortages, rationing and mass death.
Thanks to the recent elections, there is no changing course now.
Of course this “green new deal” energy solution cannot possible work. The physics of it are absurd. But at least the motives behind this attempt are noble. Right? We must save the world from the impending doom of Global Warming. But, then, that is a complete and utter hoax. Always has been. So it looks like you are correct. There is a dark agenda behind this nonsense.
That’s basically about the only thing that renewables might be good at, generating energy to be stored until it is needed.
Noah’s Ark, and there is no flood coming. God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more flood, the fire next time.
Never fear, we are all in this together. What could possibly go wrong?
As we get closer and closer to no grid. Shutting down perfectly good clean coal power producing facilities in the name of environmental fantasy.
Replacing them with precisely nothing to secure the fantasy.
Congress mum. We the people neutered, God weeping or laughing depending on the day. Environmentalists invigorated for the moment, but soon running to escape the retribution that will be coming their way whether by the hand of man or the hand of God, whose son is scheduled to return about the time all of this comes about.
Here's one apparent failure - Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project.
;>)
Leftists don’t run the math because their minds work “backwards”. They start with a conclusion, and that’s it . No analysis. No proof. No plan to achieve a goal.
“All cars to be electric by 2035”. That’s it. That’s their “plan”. How? Can it be done? What is the impact of the decision? They don’t care. It’s as if a statement can will something into existence.
“The problem is that the green energy is not about building something workable. It is about collapsing society into a UN Agenda 2030 subsistence “utopia”. “
Yes. It is not an engineering or mechanical solution rather it is a political ideological imperative.
I thought it was some kind of Special Paper that miraculously stored energy in the Paper. Like a flat battery. One side +Positive and the other -Negative. 1 volt DC per sheet and just stack it up to get the desired voltage.
I guess maybe I should go back to sleep...
And here I was all ready to whip out the Visa Card and logon to Office Depot or Maxx...🤪
” the fire next time.”
Yeah, from the battery farms self-igniting.
Great, and important, article. Thanks for posting it.
Somehow this reminds me of the collectivization of agriculture in Soviet Russia. Any analysis showed that the system would not work. Those who pointed out the failure were either sent to the gulags or shot. In the end people starved.
The solar, wind and storage schemes cannot possibly provide reliable energy let alone power any modern economy. The added strain on the grid of massive numbers of EVs will only compound the problem. The result will be massive blackouts, people freezing in their homes, businesses shutdown and even the water supply compromised. Imagine the recent Texas blackout disaster, but covering half the country. Of course those who point out this folly are deemed climate deniers, dupes of the oil companies or accused of wanting to despoil the earth.
In addition to the fact that this grid back up system, described in the article as woefully inadequate in every case cited, simply cannot work because it lacks the capacity, there is no discussion of the cost or environmental impact of using so much lithium in order to build the back up capacity. Lithium mining is highly toxic, and there probably isn’t enough lithium available at a reasonable cost, and certainly not in the timeframe being discussed (a couple of decades), to accomplish this goal, even if there was a (somewhat) sensible plan to accomplish it. Add to that the fact that a substantial amount of the lithium currently available is in China war in Afghanistan, which is effectively control by China. What a great plan!
We are dealing with one of two possibilities: the first is that the people pushing this agenda at the very top know that it will not work, and that is their goal. They want to take down the grid, they want to induce mass starvation across the world to vastly reduce the population, they want the chaos, and all that it brings. The second possibility is that everyone on the Leftis simply a five-year-old child in an adult body. They are in capable of seriously analyzing the first-, second- or third-order effects of what their proposed utopian policies will bring to the world. While I am a big believer in the idea of stupidity being the cause of most problems in the world, the stupidity here would have to be so vast, so monumental and universal as to be almost impossible (even for humanity which, as a whole, has never impressed me as being too bright). Therefore, I am going with Door #1, that this is a planned take down of most of civilization had a good part of the planet’s population. The degree of sheer evil necessary to contemplate such a plan, let alone to implement it, makes characters like Hitler, Stalin and Mao look like some kids playing in a sand box in comparison.
“I guess maybe I should go back to sleep...”
Put that quart of Jack, away.
Thanks for posting. My summary: it’s literally nearly impossible to run any country on green energy.... wind/solar etc. We all know our hydropower dams are slowly being taken out my environmentalism. We need to change our current course and invest in nuclear fusion and fission. This author also has an article on how hydrogen is not a viable choice either.
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