Posted on 04/26/2023 4:50:02 AM PDT by MtnClimber
It’s obvious to any person with the faculty of critical thinking that intermittent renewable “green” energy will never work to power a modern economy. So as various U.S. states and foreign countries press forward on their crash programs to go fully “green” with their electricity generation, the next obvious question immediately arises: who will be first to hit the green energy “wall”? That is, which state or country will be the first to find that without enough reliable generation its electricity system no longer works? And how will that impact the population?
In previous posts I have examined the progress toward energy disaster of various wealthy jurisdictions that have embarked on this supposed transition to renewable electricity. For example, here is a December 17, 2021 post titled “Which Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Renewable Energy Wall?” That post focused on California and Germany. My March 15, 2023 post, “Countdown To New York’s Rendezvous With Energy Impossibility,” considered New York as another candidate for the first to hit the wall.
But let’s now look at South Africa. South Africa is one of the wealthiest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is not saying much. The World Bank gives its per capita GDP as about $7000 for 2021. (For comparison, the U.S. per capita GDP is around $70,000. while wealthier European countries like Germany, the UK and France have per capita GDP in the range of about $40,000 - $50,000.).
Unlike wealthy Western countries, South Africa is far from completely developed, and has never achieved a fully-built-out electrical grid. The country has a legacy electricity infrastructure, almost entirely based on coal generation, dating from prior to the accession to power of the ANC in 1994. But South Africa needs a big increase in its electricity supply to become a fully-developed economy. Its population has grown rapidly (from about 43 million in 1994 to 60 million today). Meanwhile its electric utility, Eskom, is heavily indebted with little further ability to raise private capital. Thus the country substantially relies on Western aid to support and expand its supply of electricity. As an example of what is occurring in the realm of Western aid for electricity infrastructure, the World Bank stopped financing coal power plants in 2013 and stopped financing oil and gas extraction projects in 2017.
And thus South Africa has become a mostly-willing guinea pig for the green dreams of Western elites. According to Climate Home News from September 19, 2020, the South African government put out a so-called Integrated Resources Plan in 2019 “outlin[ing] a transition from polluting coal generation to renewable sources like solar and wind.” In September 2020, according to the same CHN piece, “the South African cabinet . . . approved a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is on record on multiple occasions over the past several years as supporting a Net Zero transition for his country.
On the ground in electricity generation in South Africa, here’s what I can learn. The New York Times reports on March 14, 2023 that over the past decade plus, since the wind/solar fad took hold, the country’s coal power plants have been allowed to become “dilapidated” due to poor maintenance and disinvestment. Meanwhile, the focus going back as far as the turn of the century has moved to developing wind and solar resources to provide electricity. A December 2021 piece from the Alexandria Engineering Journal provides a comprehensive overview of the growth in renewables in South Africa. The initial demonstration wind project was constructed by Eskom in 2002. Here is the lengthy list of wind projects subsequently completed:
Nor has South Africa lagged in the march to solar energy. From the same piece in the Alexandria Engineering Journal, here is a list of solar projects (for some reason not including the years, but they are almost entirely post-2010):
So surely by now the wind and sun must be providing the abundant and nearly-free electricity for all? Hardly. Here is a pie graph of the current electricity generation mix, stated to be based on data from the UN’s International Energy Agency:
Yes, after all of that effort, the wind generation is up to a full 2% of South Africa’s electricity, and solar 1%. And, from CNN, January 18:
South Africans have endured power cuts for years but 2022 was the worst on record with 205 days of rolling blackouts, as aging coal-fired power plants broke down and state-owned power utility Eskom struggled to find the money to buy diesel for emergency generators. So far this year, there have been outages every day. The situation worsened again last week when Eskom said it would implement more cuts because of breakdowns at 11 coal-fired generating units.
According to CNN, any individual home or business is getting hit with about 12 hours a day without power, generally coming in increments of about 4 hours at a time, and often without notice. It’s disgusting to watch what the self-important international functionaries are doing to this poor country. But at least we’re learning what the green energy “wall” looks like in practice.
Maybe they should try to go to 100% EVs first.
Renewable is good if it is cost effective and we have sufficient fossil fuels generation to take the load when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow.
It is not cost effective and due to mandates from the federal government we do not have sufficient fossil fuel generation to take up the load. Thus it is very evident that renewables with the exception of hydro suck.
The answer is nuclear and it should be noted that CO2 is plant food.
You wrote: “Renewable is good if it is cost effective and we have sufficient fossil fuels generation to take the load when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow.”
Now think about what you are proposing. You are (correctly) saying you need a 100% solar and wind plant AND a 100% coal plant when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
So you are saying you need to now build TWO complete power plants to meet needs and “green” requirements, whereas before you only had to build ONE plant to do that.
So you have DOUBLED your electricity capital cost. And you have to maintain both plants, so you have greatly increased maintenance expenses (maybe not double because none of the plants is running all the time). Maybe your overall maintenance costs go up 1.5X of what they were when you were running a single plant.
Does that make any economic sense to you?
People will argue “Yes, but you won’t need that conventional plant when we have utility scale storage batteries.” The fallacy there is you STILL need TWO plants — the solar and wind generation plant AND a battery plant of the same capacity as either the solar/wind plant or the fossil backup plant. So you have the same problem — you need to DOUBLE your capital costs for renewables.
There is no way out of this doubling capital cost dilemma because you need something to ride through the times when there is no wind or sun. Or, you just let the power go off as they are doing in South Africa. Take your pick.
Like you so succinctly said......
“The answer is nuclear and it should be noted that CO2 is plant food.”
The correct pick is small inexpensive nuclear generators
Correct
Another market the Chinese have cornered!
The largest wind farm on the list is 140 Megawatts.
Barely enough generation for a small city. Equivalent to a small peaking gas power station.
Given that wind turbines are unreliable intermittent generators industrial development will not locate to an area where wind power is the prime supplier of electricity.
Industrial development will not occur when the electrical supply is undependable.
I can foresee mining companies building their own fossil power stations in Africa to power mining operations for materials to build renewable power generations
Electricity users in South Africa probably should turn to their own solar panels.
Infrastructure now tends to get pilfered in the country.
I believe South Africa is quite a sunny place.
“New York as another candidate for the first to hit the wall”
The Canadians are not going to export cheap hydropower to NY and then pay for expensive solar and windmills.
At nighttime?
ProtectOurFreedom:So you are saying you need to now build TWO complete power plants to meet needs and “green” requirements, whereas before you only had to build ONE plant to do that.
My take: Protect is right that implementing cpdiii's idea would involve double investment. However, I could see it possibly play out in the long run if we're talking about some of the solar saving on fuel costs in the conventional plants. For example, if I was a senior engineer for a power company in a red state and was worried about the Dims making coal and natural gas and uranium costs skyrocket nationally, which makes my power generation costs skyrocket, which makes my customers' power bills skyrocket (something we've been experiencing), I might do the numbers on some solar here and there in optimum places to offset some of those costs.
But even then, there's the issue of operating costs for fossil fueled plants even if they're in standby or low mode. If I understand things correctly, coal powered plants, natural gas plants, and nuclear powered plants don't operate efficiently when in low output mode. Even natural gas powered plans, which you'd think would be the easiest to get decent throughput from when turned down some, don't operate efficiently at a low setting from a kwh/ft3 perspective. That'd have to change before implementing cpdiii's plan at the utility level.
But I did that kind of math at a personal level and it's exactly why I installed a bunch of solar for my home and converted my two natural gas appliances to electric. In the $30.76 power bill I got yesterday, the cost per kWh (15.9578¢/kWh) was up 19.1% YOY (compared to last April's cost). UP NINETEEN POINT ONE PERCENT! The Dims' stupid war on energy makes me sick!! But at least some of us have found a solution to keep their energy policies from wiping out our retirement investments.
No, silly. I agree with Brian that solar is good at the residential level where the homeowner, not some bureaucrat is in charge. And it depends on the region, I imagine it'd be as good in South Africa as it is here in Alabama. But you have to do your homework to get enough solar, battery storage, and inverter capacity to handle most of your power needs and wants without investing too much (trying to be 100% power independent throughout the year runs into the law of diminishing returns).
In the power bill I got yesterday it was $30.76 for pulling only 96 kWh from the grid even though I consumed 1,602 kWh that billing period in my all-electric home. And I don't sell power to the grid, so my low power bill has nothing to do with any buyback program. The low power bill is entirely from pulling little power from the grid. To the power company I'm just a normal customer like everybody else except I pull a lot less power from the grid like a hermit, even though the reality is my wife and I live in a 2,300 sq ft two-story home, charge an EV with 564kWh of the charging done at home this past billing period, and enjoy our hot tub. Literally almost all of those 96 kWh I pulled from the grid was just the constant 110W power pull I have my inverters do as a kind of constant ping on the grid so that the utility neither cuts off my power automatically (thinking I've shut off my main and moved away) nor automatically signs me up for their power purchase plan (which they'd do if my inverters were to slip and put power onto the grid if I set them to maintain 0W, which it wavers from about 20W up and down).
Of course, that's in the month of April, an optimum month for solar power in Alabama. But across the year it produces 80% of all the power we consume (less than 80% in the winter, more than 80% in the spring, summer, and fall with the main dollar savings coming from it meeting almost all of my high demand in the summer running the A/C).
If the Dims keep making our power experiences more like 3rd world places like South Africa and California, you'll see more and more conservative minded Americans doing like I've done.
Many have turned to small home use generators. Some of these are integrated such as activating automatically with loss of main power. The article is correct—typically no power for about 12 hours a day and often unannounced. It is miserable and difficult. How does a restaurant or other business exist?
Ford plant is protected but everyone else struggles.
All for nonsense of selfish unobtainable goals imposed by non-affected royalty.
The Western world has spent something like $5 Trillion in the last 25 years to convert about 3% of total energy usage to non-hydro “renewables.”
Like so many leftist social-engineering schemes, the energy-transition was built on fiat money and debt, at low interest rates.
Since the world is geo-politically realigning, materials inflation is spiking, and cheap money is no longer a thing, green energy scams will falter.
Their biggest problem, as I understand, is both corruption within the state-run system - AND the ANC demands that power be subsidized, or provided for free, to its cronies and urban areas, who then don’t pay their bills. ie) Socialism
Its like if Obama and Democrats demanded cheap power be supplied to Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Oakland, etc... - and then users in those cities didn’t even pay their bills - and no politician would allow power to be cut off
The ANC, effectively a marxist political party, is using SA power to subsidize demand in poor urban areas (and doing it badly)
I agree they should allow locals and individuals to create their own power sources, and make their own decisions, with solar/wind whatever (unsubsidized of course)
But what SA really needs is to do is first stop political rationing and subsidizing of power, and simply build a lot of coal fired plants
But they won’t do any of these things, and they will continue the path to collapse.
Electric Grids Must Balance Supply and Demand
Electricity grids collapse if supply does not exactly balance demand at all times. Using intermittent and largely unpredictable sources of supply such as wind and solar to meet demand is very difficult, particularly at a modest cost that users can afford.
Grid collapse can be monumentally expensive, as can arbitrary reductions in demand known as load shedding which force users to halt all electricity use, usually on an arbitrary rolling basis between various regional areas. Traffic lights, hospitals, and manufacturing cannot do their jobs without reliable, continuous electric power.
Solar and Wind Cannot Provide Power During Some Periods
There are periods when both solar and wind provide little or no useful electric power because the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. These periods can and have lasted for as much as a week in Germany.
Without other sources of supply the grid will collapse during these periods unless demand is arbitrarily reducedâÂÂeven if the periods are only for a few minutes. Rapid response fossil fuel or hydro backup is required in order to meet demand during these periods...
...The alternative is to build and maintain enough fossil fuel capacity which must be in âÂÂspinning reserveâ in order to respond instantly to fluctuations in demand and wind/solar supplies.
Parasitic Power: Intermittent Wind & Solar Take More From Power Grid Than They Ever Add
...If some malfunction happens at any time and shuts down a generating plant, a back-up plant needs to kick-in and pick up 100 percent of the lost power in seconds. If itâÂÂs a few seconds too late, the electrical demand will overwhelm the grid, causing a âÂÂbrown-out,â or worse, a âÂÂblackout.â ItâÂÂs as if all the customers of a bank show up at the same time, demanding to take out all their money immediately. ItâÂÂs a disaster.
The only way to ensure that this blackout doesnâÂÂt happen is to have a back-up fossil fuel power plant already running at about 90-95 percent of rated power. It burns fuel but creates no electricity. They will burn almost the same amount of fuel as they would if there was no solar or wind plants connected to the grid because solar and wind can not serve as backup power. The backup power must be 100% reliable. All existing solar and wind power must have fossil fuel back up, while solar and wind power can not be used to back up fossil fuel power as a result of its unreliability. (The wind may not blow adequately and the sun may not shine). As a result, electric utilities are wasting capital, fuel, and operating costs thinking wind and solar can contribute a significant portion of their available energy. It just increases the cost of community power....
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