Posted on 09/17/2022 4:05:56 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDL40wstWj8
I didn’t recognize Meredith Angwin’s name but when Ixquicked it, I ran into this 53 minute interview by The Rational View. I’ll pick up a copy of the book and read that too.
For the record, I’ve worked on the fringes of energy analysis for decades and the primary issue that is my hot button is just how useless wind and solar are.... and by useless, what I mean is that they don’t actually provide produce a NET increase in electrical supply, or if they do it is so miniscule to be inconsequential. Here is why (and since this is a complicated subject, I’ll take a lot of shortcuts with what follows so don’t be looking for this to be either precise and definitive). This is meant as a very general statement but for a more detailed review, I think that what you’ll find is that this can be easily substantiated....
Wind and solar are variable loads and as such, they have to be accommodated by something else that is variable. When wind and solar are up, something else has to be backed down. When wind and solar are down, that something else has to ramp up. The grid always has to be satisfied to meet the demand. Thus it goes without saying that whatever is ‘backing up the grid’ has to have the features of variability to accommodate the unpredictable and unreliable nature of wind/solar (which for the most part have priority access to the grid). Wind and solar are totally unreliable but they are the tail wagging the dog... and that is the crux of the problem.
Nuclear basically can’t be ramped up and down to accommodate the randomness of wind/solar... not in any kind of practical way (although the French have developed some technology in that regard). Hydraulic power can be varied but all that means is that the water is diverted around the turbines... this is called ‘spilling the water’ and how stupid is that. This leaves coal and gas fired generation and they ramp up and down just fine (within limitations). Here’s the problem and I’ll just refer to natural gas for this.... in order to accommodate the ups and downs of wind/solar, the gas turbines used will very likely have to be run in simple-cycle (open loop) mode so that they can vary quickly up and down with their generation capacity. This is as opposed to combined-cycle mode (which takes a long time to adjust to meet the load). Here’s where the rubber hits the road.... there is a huge difference in the efficiency of simple-cycle versus combined cycle... to throw out some rough numbers, the efficiency difference goes from 40% to 60%. To summarize how important this point is..... in order to accommodate the ups and downs of wind/solar, the gas turbines that are trying to make up the demands on the grid are burning that much more gas to generate the same amount of electricity i.e. commensurate with the difference in efficiency, 40% to 60%.
When I listen to folks extolling the virtues of wind/solar as far as what it contributes to the overall grid, here are the questions I ask them.... “So how much gas was wasted due to operating the gas turbines in simple-cycle mode to accommodate the wind/solar? And how much electrical energy could the gas turbines have generated IF they had of been operated in their more efficient combined-cycle mode? How much wind/solar would NOT have been required if the gas turbines had of not been forced to run in the less efficient simple-cycle mode?
If the numbers are crunched through, it’s absolutely shocking how useless wind/solar are. It’s not a difficult analysis..... when I crunched through it recently, the difference for a new state of the art Siemens SGT6-9000HL gas turbine was such that in simple-cycle mode, it had a gross power output of 440 MW. In combined-cycle mode, it had a gross power output of 655 MW. That difference of 215 MW is equivalent to approximately 350 wind turbines... the assumption for this is that the wind turbines have a max output of 2 MW each and are able to operate 30% of the time (capacity factor).
Even then, there is a significant difference in reliability because there are times when there is simply no wind blowing so all 350 wind turbines could be down. And don’t bother to get me started on what the maintenance and reliability costs are of having all this equipment ramping up and down like yo-yos....
Here’s where you can find the specs for the particular gas turbine used in the example above... there’s enough information here that anyone can do this sort of cursory analyis... https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/offerings/power-generation/gas-turbines/sgt6-9000hl.html
Hey Gavin, a great, really quick start would be cutting the 500kV lines from Palo Verde nuclear in Arizona! Go for it! You’ll be loved by all! Yay green!
It took 70 long, dreadful years for the Soviet Union’s communist policies to run their course to failure. What has risen from the ashes of the Soviet Union isn’t very pretty or successful. Do we REALLY want to go through a century of misery, privation, and totalitarian control in the USA?
The overall capacity factor for wind is 28%, close to your 30% number.
For comparison, the capacity factor for conventional fossil plants is close to 80%. Most capital investments operate with better than 70% capacity factor.
What rational person would invest in something that operates at such a miserable capacity factor AND requires you to invest the same amount in another system to back it up? On that basis alone, it is sheer lunacy.
You raise a great point about combustion turbines having to run in simple cycle mode with poorer efficiency to back up renewables. I hadn’t thought about that. One quibble — a CTCC (combustion turbine combined cycle) plant would not be operated in simple cycle mode. CTCCs operate in base and intermediate load. It requires a separate peaking combustion turbine to handle the peaks and valleys caused by wind and solar. Both systems are available and commercial. But your overall assessment is correct.
In this discussion, we haven’t even touched on the impossibility of producing enough minerals to enable the “green revolution.” Even if we could produce enough minerals from the earth’s crust, we cannot do it quickly enough to make Newsom’s fantasy world possible. Is he going to suddenly permit and fast-track scores of new mines in California to produce the minerals? Yeah, sure he will.
Lastly, the other big negative for renewables is the horrendous land requirement. They mean taking lots of arable farm land out of service curtailing food supply.
ACADEMIC (ak-uh-DEM-ik): An individual educated beyond his intelligence who is unwilling or unable to create or provide anything of value to others, who while hiding out in a think-tank, college or university pontificates and expects to be paid for it, usually from public funds.
It’s called STAYING ON OFFENSE - something Republicans can learn from.
It’s almost as though the EU is a canary in the coalmine ;p
...but move along, nothing to see there.
Good analogy
An old joke: “What did the Liberals use before candles? - Electricity”.
The overall capacity factor for wind is 28%, close to your 30% number.
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I was being generous but from what I’ve seen, your 28% number is likely generous too. This obviously is a variable that changes from one location to another and often gets overinflated by the IWT operators when they are trying to sell a project... I saw some data for a location recently where the capacity factor was way under expectations. If I recall correctly, it was closer to 20%.
Regarding what you called a ‘quibble’, you are correct. The original article that caught my eye was one posted in Power Engineering where they were discussing a project done at Duke Energy. https://www.power-eng.com/gas/simple-cycle-gas-plant-in-north-carolina-achieves-guinness-world-records-title/?utm_source=power_engineering_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2022-08-30
In the article, it says this....
- Duke Energy’s Lincoln Combustion Turbine Station is now certified with the Guinness World Records title for the “most powerful simple-cycle gas power plant.”
- The turbine has fast-responding capabilities, with a ramp up and down rate of about 85 MW per minute. This is an important quality when integrating with renewables.
One other thing related to all this particularly since this is all sold as being ‘good for the environment’.... Gas turbines typically produce more CO in a start than they do in 10 hours of operation. Thus when they are not needed due to a time of decent wind/solar production is that the operators are loath to completely shut them down for this reason.... and this of course leads to more waste.
Interesting stat about CO emissions during a start vs continuous operation. I didn’t know that, but it makes sense.
My son and I drove from the San Fran Bay Area to North Idaho last March and we passed through the huge wind farm along the Columbia River. There are thousands of wind turbines there and not a single one was turning. This is close to Goldendale, WA which has some of the best wind characteristics in the entire country. My dad led the wind program at General Electric in the early 1980s and they did a lot of wind surveys. Goldendale, the San Gorgonzola Pass in CA, and a site in Hawaii came out tops. That’s where they installed the prototype Mod 1 and Mod 2 machines. So even the #1 wind site has extended times when not a single kW is being generated.
This whole “green” thing is sheer lunacy, but the rubes who had one general science course in tenth grade fall for the “earth is on fire” lie and the concomitant lie that “renewable energy will keep the earth from burning up.”
Looks like a perfect target for the north eastern storms they can be brutal.
“Ready to make the change”
I doubt it.
It is pretty dumb to build windmills in the ocean. The ocean will destroy all of them in no time.
They mean taking lots of arable farm land
out of service curtailing food supply.
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Interesting thought. I have no idea what the future will hold.
Nor will I live long enough to see much of it.
I have no idea what humans will need for intake to live 100 years
yonder. Heck by then they may have tablet to take a couple times
a day. Or maybe an injection once a month and on your way.
Bookmark
Well, it’s time for some enterprising greenie to make a ton of money selling those backup generators that are run by solar and wind. Oh, wait.
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