Posted on 11/01/2023 4:45:37 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Under the enlightened leadership of our expert bureaucrats in Washington and various state governments, we are embarked on a program to replace our functioning electricity generation system with an alternative system based on wind, solar, and energy storage. We are told that this will be easy, and in fact cheaper than what we currently have. Surely, if that is true for an entire country, it must be equally true for some small place like an island or a small town. Easiest of all for the demonstration would be an individual house, particularly if the house is surrounded by sufficient land to accommodate all the required elements of the system.
I have previously reported here that there is no such thing anywhere in the world as a demonstration project that has achieved anything close to 100% electricity generation from wind and solar sources without fossil fuel backup. The most significant attempt at such a demonstration project — El Hierro Island off the coast of Spain, which opened in 2014 — has barely achieved 50% of electricity generation from its wind/storage system in some years, while falling far short of even that level in other years. Today their website has quietly dropped or downplayed any mention of claims to be trying to achieve 100% renewable electricity generation. In the most recent year for which they provide data (2020), their backup diesel generator ran approximately 85% of the time.
On October 26, the Daily Sceptic website featured a piece by an anonymous Australian author who has set up his own do-it-yourself wind/solar/storage system to supply electricity to two houses on a plot of land in a rural area of Victoria. The headline is “Living Off-Grid Has Shown Me That Modern Society Cannot Function on Renewable Energy.” JoNova also has a write-up covering the piece on October 28.
It appears that the guy in question — who goes by the name Pseudonaja Textilis — has invested some $160,000 in his own wind turbines, solar panels and batteries in his project to go “off grid.” (The piece does not say if the $160,000 represents US dollars or Australian dollars. If it’s Australian dollars, that would be the equivalent of about $102,000 in US dollars.). He has both wind turbines and solar panels for each of the two houses, plus batteries. Here is a picture of one of the two houses, with the solar panels on the roof and the wind turbine behind:
The Daily Sceptic piece unfortunately lacks some basic data that would be useful, including the average and peak electricity usage of the houses, the capacity and annual production of the wind and solar generators, and the capacity (in kWh) of the batteries. But the piece does make clear that the capacity of the wind/solar generators is more than sufficient to supply usage when the wind blows and the sun shines. Unfortunately, that is not the case much of the time:
So how do [the wind/solar/storage systems] perform? In summer perfectly. We don’t have to do much other than check in with the laptop once a week to monitor the system, and we often take the wind generators offline for extended periods. In winter, . . . solar energy input per square metre drops to about 30% of peak summer level and then for only a few hours a day. . . . To some extent power usage can be matched to storage levels and fluctuating input from the wind generator. However, the total renewable input is just too patchy and unreliable so petrol or diesel powered generator backup is absolutely required. It’s not just in winter, but in autumn especially and sometimes in springtime too. When cloudy skies and windless days persist we need to make recourse to our petrol generators, sometimes everyday for a week at a time to keep the batteries charged and provide peak load supply.
“Textilis” reports that his diesel generators only run about 60 to 100 hours per year, which is only about 1% of the time. That sounds pretty good. But then, they need to be capable of supplying 100% of full electricity demand when called upon, even for such brief periods. Oh, and “Textilis” doesn’t use electricity for either heat or hot water. For those things he uses wood, grown on his own property — and which he cuts and hauls by labor-intensive means using a gasoline-powered chainsaw.
Conclusion:
It matters nought that you have massive renewable generation capacity if you can’t store power for extended periods. So you can have all the wind and solar farms you want, but without fossil fuel or nuclear back up you’ll need to buy a good supply of warm blankets and candles if you don’t want to be spending a lot of time shivering in the dark.
We’ll see if the likes of President Biden or New York Governor Kathy Hochul catch on any time soon.
A working demonstration project should be the first step.
Manhattan Contrarian Ping
Speaking of which, have the eco-Nazis ever set up an experimental town/area to see how it would run with 100% “green energy” and 100% electric cars? The DemoMarxistNazis seem very eager to ban all fossil fuel yet they can’t name one experiment that proves it would work out.
Last year I was stuck in a traffic jam in Connecticut for TEN hours after a major accident. The highways are few and far between in that state, so it was 2 mph crawling to the next highway for ten hours.
Around 6 to 8 hours what did I start seeing? Cars were being abandoned on the side of the road. First a few then more and more. What were they? Electric cars.
Australia is custom made for solar and wind.
“We’ll see if the likes of President Biden or New York Governor Kathy Hochul catch on any time soon.”
Oh, they know, or at least knew, in Biden’s case.
Once our side realizes that they know, we’ll be better able to fight them...but will our side ever realize that? I’m not optimistic.
We have a working demonstration of a solar setup and it’s a total failure.
We purchased a brand new travel trailer this year and in our shopping the majority of travel trailers restricts the buyer to running the fridge on 12v only supported by a solar panel.
We typically stay at federal CG’s such as National Forests or parks that do not have 110v AC hookups. We knew the 12v fridge and solar were a joke, so we paid $3,000 for the dealer to remove the 12v POS and install a AC/propane fridge.
The solar panel could not keep up with lights, water pump and other common 12v appliances on cloudy days. On sunny days the solar controller shut off the solar panel until the battery voltage got down to 12volts, which is considered a 3/4 charge. If this happens at sundown you are screwed, for evening battery use will bring the battery to the half charge condition before bedtime. THIS IS ALL WITHOUT HAVING A 12 VOLT FRIDGE!
We knew the solar panel was a political joke, so we brought our Honda generator and never ran out of power.
The dealer told us the RV industry was voluntarily going with California standards for the elimination of propane, which was why they started out with refrigerators. Next will be electric heat and water heater going solar for an RV.
Some dealers also had lithium batteries on their campers. That’s great, for if you run out of charcoal for the BBQ just wait until the battery sets your camper on fire so weenies and marshmallows can be roasted there.
We asked other dealers what happens if there is a cloudy day, they said just run the tow vehicle and plug into it to charge the battery. Great, run a V8 gas hog all night just to keep the steaks frozen.
“The DemoMarxistNazis seem very eager to ban all fossil fuel yet they can’t name one experiment that proves it would work out.”
Trying to tell an eco Nazi that green energy is a joke is like trying to tell a diehard Catholic the Pope is communist.
Solar Energy is a 6 hour solution to a 24 hour problem.
(Solar Cells produce at rated levels from 10AM to 4PM if there are no clouds or rain.)
There are always missing links to these type of perspectives. Off grid is doable but it mostly comes down to demand and that is a function of how the structure was built and how it is used. ‘How it is used’ is mostly a question of lifestyle and what is deemed as acceptable... and that is obviously an issue of individual choice and circumstances. How well insulated is the structure and how well does it accept and reject solar gain? How hot or cold does one consider acceptable? Do you want to cook or do you like to eat food that minimizes cooking? Do you want a fridge or mostly have dried food that doesn’t need much refrigeration? Do you want a hot tub you can jump into at any time... or will a 3 minute shower once ever few days suffice? Are you retired and have plenty of time to tend the place and go chop wood from time to time... or is it a working family with three kids and plenty of demands. The piece makes reference to a place in Spain built in 2014... lots of things have changed since then including the availability of LED lights that take a fraction of the power that incandescent did..... or as part of the lifestyle, have minimal lights and just get up and go down with the sun. And yes, it also comes down to the availability of other resources as befits a particular property..... such as wood that can be used for both heating the space and heating water.
Thanks for sharing that. I’m planning an overlanding rig and phase 2 will include a small refrigerator. I was considering solar but recently started thinking of charging the battery with the engine.
It helps that I have a friend who manufactures and sells wiring systems.
One other thing.... it often comes down to how much of investment one wants to make. Like a lot of things, there’s low hanging fruit but if taken to the nth degree, it gets very expensive and impractical.
There is no such a thing as a fossil fuel
Can we stop calling it ‘fossil fuels’?
It is a renewable resource and there are so many untapped oilfields in this world that the ‘powers that be’ want to cap off so we will be their slaves and dependent on this BS of solar, wind farms and EVs.
With 500w of solar panels + 300Ah battery storage i can keep garage fridge+freezer operating “indefinitely”. There will be times it may not keep up.
I would say your RV solar and battery are undersized. But even “right sized” your point is still valid
“Solar Energy is a 6 hour solution to a 24 hour problem”
There are mirror-based, molten salt storage systems that can generate power for up to eight hours after the sun sets.
Hochul is sitting on a massive amount of gas that can be accessed via fracking to provide cheap clean fuel for decades as they perfect other forms of energy....but nooo
I agree,
my working solar power setup:
8 300 watt solar panels $125 each, NEW on craigslist
8 220 AmpHour 6 volt batteries, Costco $90 each
1 60 amp MPPT charge controller, ebay $175
1 Magnum 240 volt 40 amp inverter, $2500
Setup on a timer so my well only runs from 11-1, will run the well pump for about 3 hours, but it only runs for about 40 minutes every other day to keep 10,000 gallon tank full, Batteries are fully charged within 2 hours of well shutting off. It would cost $200,000 to bring electricity to my well, so this is what I went with. and it works flawlessly for 15 years now.
If all you wanted was a Refrigerator, TV and lights, my system will run all night no sweat, every night forever. I camped on my property for a year before I built my new house and it worked great, until I tried using the coffee maker or microwave in the morning. They suck a lot of juice and drained what was left in minutes. I ran the washer and dryer during the day also without a hitch.
The failure of “renewables” is a feature, not a bug.
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