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.
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.
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.