Posted on 05/22/2023 5:13:39 AM PDT by MtnClimber
As discussed here many, many times, the big problem with generating electricity from wind and solar sources is that they are intermittent. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they don’t work for days on end. The times when both wind and sun fail at the same time for multiple days tend to be concentrated in the very coldest days of the winter. This poses a huge problem for central planners’ dreams of “net zero” electricity. Try to solve the problem with grid-scale batteries, and suddenly you’re talking wildly unaffordable costs in the trillions of dollars.
Not to worry. Recently everywhere talk has emerged of a new and seemingly easy solution to the problem of intermittency. Have you heard of it? It’s the “Virtual Power Plant.” I mean, today pretty much everything can be “virtual” if you want it to be. We have the “virtual” meeting, the “virtual” office, and the “virtual” school — even “virtual” reality. So why not a “virtual” power plant?
But, in the context of generating electricity, what does this business of “virtual” mean? Don’t you actually need to have something to produce the juice? A Manhattan Contrarian investigation now reveals that the Virtual Power Plant is exactly what you undoubtedly already suspect it to be: another new level of Orwellian doubletalk. “Virtual Power Plant” turns out to be another term for pointless enforced sacrifice in service to the climate cult.
If you have been paying attention, you probably have already noticed that this “Virtual Power Plant” thing is the latest talking point of the central planners. For those who have been paying less attention, let me provide a little sampling: here is the web page from the federal government’s Department of Energy (“Virtual power plants, generally considered a connected aggregation of distributed energy resource (DER) technologies, offer deeper integration of renewables and demand flexibility, which in turn offers more Americans cleaner and more affordable power”); a recent (2023) Report from the Rocky Mountain Institute (“Virtual Power Plants, Real Benefits: How aggregating distributed energy resources can benefit communities, society, and the grid”); a piece from Reuters, January 31, 2023 (“Explainer: What is a virtual power plant?”); a piece from Elektrek, September 2, 2022, informing us that none other than Tesla is in the middle of this new fad (“Tesla virtual power plant is rocketing up, reaches 50 MW”).
OK, then, this VPP thing has something to do with “a connected aggregation of distributed power resources.” What the heck does that mean?
Trying to get to the bottom of this, I come upon a piece from Utility Dive on May 5, and a Report from the Brattle Group with a May 2023 date. (You may recognize the Brattle Group as the people who put out the 2021 New York Power Grid Study that I criticized in this post on April 22.)
Both Utility Dive and the Brattle Group start out with excited descriptions of this VPP thing as some magical concoction to defeat the intermittency problem with almost no cost or sweat. From Utility Dive’s summary of the Brattle Group’s conclusions:
The net cost for a utility to provide resource adequacy from a virtual power plant is about 40% to 60% less than natural gas peaker plants and utility-scale batteries. Deploying 60 GW of VPPs “could meet future U.S. resource adequacy needs at $15-$35 billion less than the cost of the alternative options over the ensuing decade,” Brattle’s report said.
And it gets even more magical. From page 12 of the Brattle Group Report:
In fact, a VPP does not even need to generate power.
Wait a minute — what is a “power plant” that doesn’t generate any power? Let us in on the secret! We have to get that by working our way through a model set forth in the Report. In that model, the “Virtual Power Plant” derives its input (if you want to call it that) almost entirely from the following three things:
Smart Thermostats. A/C and electric heating are controlled to reduce usage during peak times. Customer comfort is managed through pre-cooling/heating. Smart Water Heating. Electric water heaters act as a grid-interactive thermal battery, providing daily load shifting and even real-time grid balancing. Home EV Managed Charging. EV charging is a large, flexible source of load that can be shifted overnight.
It’s “smart” thermostats, and “smart” water heaters, and “managed” EV charging. If I might, let me translate that into layman’s terms. On the coldest days of the winter, when the grid does not have enough power, first we will take the liberty of draining the power out of your EV battery. In the all EV utopia that we envision, you are now stuck at home. Then, we will remotely turn off your heat and hot water. Hey, it’s to save the planet!
In this vision, the convenience and comfort, let alone the physical safety, of the people are of no importance. No more the American dream, where you can improve your life by hard work. Now it’s to be forced sacrifice to satisfy the jealous gods of the pagan climate cult.
It’s one more front in the all-out war against your well-being now being waged by our government.
This is why our home solar produces 80% of the power my wife and I need in our all-electric home, with a plan to increase that if necessary. It's also why we're doing a lot more gardening, again with plans to increase our food production if necessary. The self-reliant Americans might sit back and let the elites wipe out their loyal Dim voters, which will reduce the power of the elites.
Self-reliance is the bane of the elite. Self-reliance is the backbone of a Republic, within limits. Everyone is reliant on the rule of law and ordered liberty.
“Distributed Generation”
This is dozens — tens of thousands of roof tops and other spaces — tops of shopping malls and parking structures as just two examples — all equipped with their own (smaller) battery banks, and all contributing to “the grid”.
Massive centralized generation and massive battery banks are inefficient, and “ten-ring vulnerable” as targets.
Distributed generation can’t easily be knocked out, as it comes from literally everywhere.
All the technology is now on the shelf to do this. Now. Today. Some residential solar electric systems already are tied in to their local grid and generate more than they use. Right now. Today.
Just make or incentivize many more. (Probably each one would be made a bit larger than they are at the moment, to provide some extra margin.)
The elites will confiscate your stuff before they will allow their power base to be affected. Do not assume they are stupid.
All the devises in your home will be controlled by the government and utilities.they will regulate the among a time of use. Not to mention the cost Apple seems to have started this already with their optimal charging.
In their utopian world all things are possible.
They can take my Bible, my garden, my solar panels, and my guns from my cold dead hands.
And you will be prioritized based on your social credit score.
Replacing 1 100MW Coal plant requires 4 100MW solar farms and 1800MW of energy storage.
If you want to have backup for rainy days replacing 1 100MW coal plant requires 4200MW of energy storage and 8 100MW solar farms."
It's actually much worse than that. Your math would be correct only if storage and removal of power with batteries was lossless. It is not. The most optimistic models are that you can only get ~80% of the energy you put in to come back out in the form of usable electricity.
So, if you put in 100MW of power, you'd return 80MW of power in an optimal situation. Your 4 100MW battery-storage banks would need to be 5 100MW banks. And, then that only applies if you have full-sun each and every day.
Because you don't know that the sun will shine every day, or that solar arrays will be generating peak power (which they don't on cloudy days), you need enough storage to potentially cover you for multiple days of no (or low) solar generation.
Another technology being studied is to make power-generating reservoirs (lakes), where your solar arrays power pumps that move water into a reservoir. When power is needed, it is released through hydro-generating turbines to make electricity, effectively "recycling" the water. Good luck with this too, as you're not going to move 100% of the water back upstream (so there's loss), and rivers that are capable of the volumes required for hydro-power are already used for that (but without the round-trip use). I can only imagine the greenies' heads exploding when they hear new reservoirs and new dams will be required.
That is exactly their plan.
Only at extremely high cost.
The ability to tie this all into the grid is not feasible at this time. Perhaps it can be in the future. The problem is in shutting down the grid and bringing it back up. You have to be able to shut down each contributor to the grid and isolate them from the grid. It is very difficult in practice, though it sounds easy.
I have one of those systems. It generates more than I use. It is tied into the grid. When the grid goes down, the system is shut down. Including battery charging into the system is expensive, and not so easy to do. Not impossible, but currently, residential systems which are tied into the grid are shut down when the grid goes down, so as to prevent repair crews from being fried.
It’s one more front in the all-out war against your well-being now being waged by our government.
What is the purpose of government?
Correct math. But nobody gets to hear that math. The-powers-that-be REFUSE to let that math be printed, be released on the news channels and even YouTube.
And NUKES!
And NUKES!
So, if "they" become targets of opportunity and we kill them, it is not murder, but self-defense.
So when they go down and my generator kicks in, they disconnect me, shut me down? Then what's the point of a generator?
“So, if “they” become targets of opportunity and we kill them, it is not murder, but self-defense.”
Pretty much how I see it too.
The virtual power plant will be using Unobtainium as fuel.
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