The COP 28 climate confab opened today in Dubai. Some 70,000 true believers in the energy transition are said to be gathering. And not one of them appears to be either willing or able to do the simple arithmetic that shows that this can’t possibly work.
So far, no country that has made a commitment to “net zero” has officially backed off. (Argentina may soon become the first.). Things proceed as if all that is needed is to build sufficient wind and solar generation facilities, until eventually you have enough of them to meet demand. But that’s not how this works. The absurdity becomes more obvious every day. Can somebody please tell the poor people making fools of themselves in Dubai?
Let’s consider the latest from Germany. According to Statista here, Germany consumed 511.59 TWh of electricity in 2021 (latest year given, although the numbers have recently changed very little from year to year). Divide by 8760 (number of hours in a year) and you learn that Germany’s average usage of electricity is 58.3 GW. So, can you just build 58.3 GW of wind and solar generators to supply Germany with electricity?
Absolutely not. In fact, Germany already has way more wind and solar electricity generation capacity than the 58.3 GW, but can’t come anywhere near getting all its electricity from those sources. As of June 2023 Germany had 59.3 GW of generation capacity from wind turbines alone, and (as of end 2022) another 67.4 GW of generation capacity from solar panels. The total of the two is 126.7 GW — which would supply more than double Germany’s usage at noon on a sunny and breezy June 21. But, according to Clean Energy Wire here, through the first three quarters of 2023, the percent of its electricity that Germany got from wind and solar was only 52%. Capacity seemingly sufficient to supply double the usage in fact only supplies half. That’s because the supply does not come at the same time as the demand, and the wind/solar generation system provides no mechanism to shift the supply to a time to meet the demand.
And why doesn’t Germany just double the amount of its wind/solar generation, so that those sources would go from supplying 52% of usage to 100%. Because it doesn’t work that way. If they double the wind and solar generation, then on the sunny/breezy June 21 mid-day they will now have over 250 GW of electricity generation — more than 4 times what they need — so they will have to discard or give away the rest. But on a calm night in January, they will still have nothing and need full backup from some other source. Multiplying the wind/solar generation capacity by 10 or even 100 (referred to as “overbuilding”) will increase the costs of the system exponentially, but will never be enough to keep the lights on all the time. Or you can try energy storage to save up the surpluses to cover the deficits, but that also multiplies the costs of the system exponentially. For more than you will ever want to know about energy storage and its costs, read my December 2022 energy storage report, “The Energy Storage Conundrum.”
Renewable energy promoters and governments committed to “net zero” are engaged in a gigantic exercise of self-deception. They have come up with a thoroughly misleading metric to compare the costs of generating electricity from various sources which they call “Levelized Cost of Electricity.” Reports that claim to calculate these LCOEs are published by various organizations, including notably the investment bank Lazard and the International Renewable Energy Agency or IRENA. Here is IRENA’s 2022 Report covering supposed renewable energy costs for 2021, title “Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2021.” Key quote from page 17:
In 2021, the global weighted average LCOE of new utility-scale solar PV and hydropower was 11% lower than the cheapest new fossil fuel-fired power generation option, whilst that of onshore wind was 39% lower.
Wow, solar is 11% cheaper than any fossil fuel alternative, and onshore wind 39% cheaper. Why would any dope ever look to fossil fuels again?
And here’s their key chart:
Incredible! Solar is under 5 cents per kWh, and onshore wind is even lower at 3.3 cents per kWh. And how much is in those numbers to account for the cost of either overbuilding or energy storage in order to make a system that works 24/7/365 without fossil fuel backup? The answer is, exactly nothing.
The fact is that building a wind/solar/storage electricity system without fossil fuel backup does not provide cheaper electricity than a predominantly fossil fuel system, but more expensive electricity. And the additional expense is not some small amount like 10 or 20 or 30 percent. It’s more like a multiple of 10 or 20. Nobody knows exactly how much, because there does not exist anywhere in the world a working demonstration project from which costs can be benchmarked and extrapolated. As you start to eliminate the fossil fuel backup from the system, far and away the predominant costs become the energy storage and/or overbuilding. The costs of the wind turbines and solar panels themselves become relatively insignificant. As noted, Germany has gotten to about 50% of its electricity generation from wind and solar, with so far about a 2 times overbuild of capacity, and almost no storage. With the next round of overbuild of capacity, should they do it, they will be lucky to get to 60% of electricity from renewables; and each successive round of overbuild adds less useful electricity and more that must be discarded. Meanwhile, storage is ruinously expensive in quantities that are meaningful to keeping the lights on year round.
In the real world of investment decisions, the costs are becoming increasingly obvious. Greg Ip has a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, headline “Why No One Wants to Pay for the Green Transition.” Excerpt:
Investors and consumers balk at costs of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, highlighting painful economics of climate mitigation. . . . In the past few years, Washington and Wall Street started fantasizing that the transition to net-zero carbon emissions could be an economic bonanza. . . . This year the fantasy ended. . . . [T]he economics of getting to net zero remain, fundamentally, dismal: Someone has to pay for it, and shareholders and consumers decided this year it wouldn’t be them.
Of course consumers are never voluntarily going to pay $2 for energy that can be had for $1. Nor are investors ever going to invest to provide consumers the $2 energy when the consumers can go elsewhere for $1. As it becomes obvious that the whole LCOE “wind and solar are cheaper” thing is a transparent lie, all private money will exit the energy transition. The only possible way to get this wind/solar system built is government subsidies. Gigantic, massive government subsidies on a scale far greater than anything ever seen in human history. It’s a very safe bet that it will never happen.
Pull it.
‘Someone has to pay for it, and shareholders and consumers decided this year it wouldn’t be them.”Ah but you will, like most things the ruling liberals/elites want they will have the government massively subsidize the “clean power” companies and raise your taxes and run massive deficits to enslave your grandchildren so they can jet off to places like Dubai every six months to virtue signal and preen.
Subsidies aren’t the answer to anything. Once a wind or solar or wind and solar system has reached 120 percent capacity for an area fossil fuel and nuclear should be removed and sold elsewhere. If 20 percent over capacity isn’t enough for wind and or solar to stand alone then the question is how much over capacity is enough for them to stand alone? My guess is that no amount of over capacity would allow wind and or solar to stand alone. On the other hand what would happen if we removed all wind and solar from the grid? It wouldn’t be that bid of a deal. We would have to fire up retired fossil fuel and nuclear generators. We would have to invest in maintenance and upgrades in the fossil fuel and nuclear generators we are currently using. We would have to build new improved and more efficient fossil fuel and nuclear generators. In other words we could thank our lucky stars that wind and solar are no longer around to foul up the grid and we are free to invest in energy generation that actually works, is reliable, is dependable, is affordable and most important is dispatchable.
“We would have to fire up retired fossil fuel and nuclear generators.”
If only it were that simple. In South Australia, they actually dynamited the power stations so that nobody can ever use them again.
I always thought Australians were smarter than that.
They got the idea from the UK
Same here in Wokeachusetts. They have a big party to watch the smokestack go down.
The math does not matter. It’s about jobs. Their jobs, Most of these people are making well into 6-figures as part of the climate industrial complex. If the “climate crisis” didn’t exist, would most of these people be making that kind of money and be getting all-expense-paid trips all over the place?
Nope. It’s all about the well remunerated ride that they’re getting from taxpayers and rate-payers.
There are probably no net additional jobs. There are many lost in those “icky” other industries.
Jobs are also being lost in unreliable electricity production. As Wind Europe noted as long ago as Feb 2022
“The European Wind Energy industry is going through unprecedented tough times, closing factories and halting investments in the EU. In the last two years the industry has had to close factories making turbines in Germany, Spain and Denmark, Europe’s traditional wind industry strongholds………….Net result is the industry is cutting jobs………Germany alone has lost over 50,000 wind jobs in the last 6 years”
Wind Europe letter to Ursula von der Leyen 22nd Feb 2022
Meh. They should learn to code. Or so the smart people say.
And because of the figures given in the article, Germany is haemorrhaging industrial jobs which it shrinking their economy and so seeing other jobs go. And this seems to be a very good example of Net Zero working and of course their government is not telling the people this.
The rich who own the media and the politicians through their campaign contributions and most of the universities through their grants are hoping to make trillions off of so-called “climate change.”
Bloomberg’s green energy research estimates it will take $US 200 trillion to stop warming by 2050 and the rich are planning to get a big chunk of that. Other estimates are similar. Bloomberg also called that a bargain.
It still amazes me that there are people that don’t understand the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day and the wind doesn’t blow on demand.
If true, this is an accounting fudge only possible with an interconnected system able to draw on imports and export at will then dividing the total solar and wind production assuming it was all used in Germany. Imported fossil derived energy is reduced by the exported wind and solar. Germany is bludging off the EU grid as South Australia does in the Australian National grid. Without substantial internal storage, it is not possible to get 52% of power from wind and solar with just 120% overbuild. This chart shows the German reliance on exports and imports:
South Australia regularly gets all its lunchtime power from rooftops but that is only possible with enough gas plant connected and generating power into Victoria. Accounting will show that SA has 100% rooftops and Victoria is taking their gas generated power despite the necessity of the gas for system stability in SA.
A lot of German renewable energy (surplus wind) goes via Denmark into/out of pumped hydro schemes in Norway.
It’s a nice little earner for them
As is Norway selling gas to the UK, then importing electricity from the UK after we’ve burned the gas in CCGT stations.
There’s The Fudge – how much of that juice finishes up in Germany – how would anyone ever know?
While Scandavia endlessly proclaims their Low Emissions Virtue and how clever they are by installing heat pumps everywhere.
And there is another big problem too. Outsourcing more and more of your countries industrial base and then saying “ see we are up to 50% renewable “ is kinda of like forgetting where money and “stuff” comes from.
Some one somewhere has to manufacture and “ produce”. Libs always have a problem with basic economics; and they don’t understand debt is real too. If you are not producing things more efficiently than the year before then there is no increase in standard of living; and the volume of economic activity alone does not tell the whole story either.
The rich who own the media and have brainwashed more than half the country, liberals and conservatives alike, and are planning on making trillions from so-called “climate change.” They also own the politicians through their campaign contributions, and the universities through their grants.
Bloomberg’s green energy research team estimates it will cost $US200 trillion, and the rich are planning on getting a good portion of that.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-05/-200-trillion-is-needed-to-stop-global-warming-that-s-a-bargain#xj4y7vzkg
Even two-thirds of the Republicans under thirty support the climate change agenda, as well as 61 percent of Americans.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/
I’m not an energy expert, other than from signing some incredibly large cheques for the stuff while doing a stint as a mine manager, so can one of the experts evaluate this principle as feasible or not:
What if, when a renewable energy producer wants to connector his/her/their supply to the grid, it becomes incumbent on them to supply whatever percentage of load demand that contribution entails at any time? In other words, the energy supplier takes on the responsibility of providing their own backup when they can’t supply the power from their renewable capacity.
If a 500MW wind farm wants to be paid for a maximum of 500MW of energy, if at any time the grid requires their 500 MW it is up to them to supply it from whatever means they can–but it has to be supplied if grid demand depends on it, wind notwithstanding.
There seems to be something wrong that wind and solar can displace other producers when it suits them, and then just waltz away when the wind dies or the sun goes down and tell everyone else ‘not my problem’. What happens to renewable economics if reliability is demanded?–and why shouldn’t it be?
You’re right. Put it a bit more simply, the way to stop this nonsense is to have network operators go out to tender for supply. Technology neutral, with defined parameters which apply to all responders. Probably they will use the specifications currently routinely delivered by coal and gas.
Then if you are a would-be supplier all you have to do is provide defined power levels 24 x 7 with defined amounts of scheduled downtime, just as a coal or gas plant does now.
How you do it is up to you. Use whatever technology you want. Gas, solar, wind, geosource The network operators have gone out to tender for a given supply. You could choose to meet the spec with solar, and have huge batteries to cover night and winter. Or you could do it with solar and have gas generation to cover. Similarly with wind. You could use hydrogen and start digging those caverns the Royal Society has proposed. Meet the spec at a competitive price and you get the business.
This is not complicated. Take off all the subsidies and the purchase obligations and the requirement to take and pay for whatever the weather permits your suppliers to deliver, and the market will take care of it. And largely eliminate wind and solar except in some niche applications.
Very simple
Just require wind and solar systems to have batteries, or whatever, to provide STEADY to the grid, 24/7/365, the same as is already done by fossil plants
Add the word electricity
To paraphrase:
Wind and solar must have fossil fuels, or an overly expensive energy storage system, available in the background to make them dispatchable. Those fossil fuel plants need to be available on a moment’s notice. And the amount of power needed available in the background has to be 100% of the maximum power needed at any one time on the grid because renewable power can drop to zero at any time.
On the other hand, fossil fuel plants do not need renewables to make them dispatchable.
There is no way that renewables can be cheaper than fossil fuels.
Your ‘paraphrase’ is accurate, but still not sufficient. In the never-never fantasy of Net Zero, wind and solar must not only supply electricity demand, it also must supply all heating, transportation, fertilization, agriculture, etc., demand, too. That would at least double the electrical energy demand. Even if “overly expensive energy storage systems” were possible, there is simply not enough wealth in the world to produce them.
Notice that I said ‘wealth’, not ‘money’. Even if governments printed money to produce these necessary items, inflation would still make it impossible. There is simply not enough land area for solar, wind turbines, pumped hydro, or even batteries (do you want fire-prone battery storage near your home?). There’s not enough steel, lithium, copper, and other minerals that are needed. There’ are not enough transmission lines, transformers, maintenance equipment and personnel in the electrical supply industry. Distribution of sufficient hydrogen to power vehicles or Storage requirements for practical hydrogen energy, even if there were sufficient generation of it from excess energy produced. Even if there were, the required technical advances would be overwhelming. There are simply not enough qualified engineers and scientists to do in short order.
The entire energy marketplace has become warped due to a multiplicity of convergent external factors:
Government funding of rent seeking research and regulatory agencies.
Private funding of political candidates by green wacko PACs.
Media manipulation of clickbait agendas.
DEI pollution of staffing.
I could go on, but it’s all artificial nonsense driven by $$$ down the rabbit hole.
The unsubsidized W/S cost/kWh, plus the cost/kWh of crutches to enable W/S to ENTER the grid, plus the cost/kWh of subsidies, without which W/S would not even exist
The image at the top can be used to explain the problem. Note the small triangle-shaped item on the lower right. Members of the ClimateCult™ (CC) live in this accommodation that is heated and powered by the happy Sun just above. CC members see through the hole in the shaded front of their existence. They cannot know nor understand the complexity of the system they do not see.
Further, there is no way of disabusing them of this situation.
Disabuse
Because they live in their own lalaland
Not mentioned in the article are the very large costs for grid stability that must be met by other means because wind and solar cannot maintain the critical AC frequency not the stable delivery of power needed in the moment.
AS exactly is happening about 2 miles from my front doorstep.
> A sizeable ‘substation’ was constructed, complete with 2 240MWatts 400kV transformers, so as to connect winfarms off the Norfolk/Lincolnshire coasts into the National Grid.
Now also, myriad solar farms are springing up and connecting into it as well
Result: The substation is currently a huuuuuuge construction site once again as 2 very large ‘synchronous capacitors’ are added.
And just like the 2 big transformers and the substation itself, all engineered by Siemens
Let’s hope they work better than some of the recent Siemens-Gamesa wind turbines
Yep. In the UK grid balancing costs in 2000 were under £500m and remained around this level to 2015. By 2020 they had risen to £1.2bn and by April 2022 to £2.2bn. Not all of this increase is because of unreliables but much of it is.
In 2021, the electricity generation in Germany from wind power was 23.1%, from solar power it was about 9%, and from biomass it was 8.7%1. Together, wind and solar produced about 162 TWh, which was a decrease compared to 2020 due to weaker weather conditions2. The share of renewables in the public net electricity generation fell to 45.7%, compared to 50% in 20202. Wind power remained the most important source of electricity in Germany, followed by other sources2.
Learn more:
1. trade.gov2. ise.fraunhofer.de3. ember-climate.org4. cleanenergywire.org5. renewableenergymagazine.com+2 more
How did the author come up with wind and solar at 50%? Incredible. I thought the Manhattan was reputable. A high school student would get a F for a report with such a conspicuous mistake (while back in the day anyway)
…In crony capitalism
… in Marxism.
Using the power of government to generate wealth has nothing to do with capitalism.
It is however the definition of socialism.
In socialism, the state owns the means of production.
The rich are planning to make trillions. They own the media and control the politicians and the universities. Bloomberg estimates $US200 trillion to stop warming and says that is a bargain.
It actually should be possible to come up with a simple formula for the true cost intermittent energy. Something like (true cost)=(cost/(CF^n)).
Do a curve fit to solve for n. It will be greater than 1 and maybe as high as 2.
So far fossil fuel extraction has kept up with demand but there is some legitimate concern that this will not continue forever.
Solar panels and windmills do get some traction in people’s minds because of this regardless of climate change because shortages lead to lineups and huge price increases. As many of us have seen in the past.
Unfortunately you cannot make an omlette without breaking eggs and politicians find it much simpler to be seen to be doing something approving solar panels instead on nuke plants.
There is a simple solution. Carbon free gasoline, diesel, and natural gas.
The refineries could do carbon capture equal to the CO2 in their products.
Motorists could then choose the way we did with unleaded fuel years ago.
There would be no reason to push EVs if carbon free fuels were available.
Anything carbon capture is an idiot game
A simpler solution is to stop believing CO2 causes any warming. Just say no.
Is that a Pink Floyd influence in the headline picture?
About as original as the sentiments of the article. But then I remember, this is a website not a treatise, and one hopes to inform the naif that lands here first time.
…which they do with remarkable capability. If I was not fully aware of the discrepancy between promises and sums already, this would be a good introduction to reality.
This particular author may benefit from a bit of down-to-earthiness. The people you need to reach, may find the style a bit, erm…. academic? Try talking like the guy in the supermarket queue.
Another splendid piece from The Contrarian! Succinct, to the point, irrefutable. If anyone wants to see this in action, take a look at the recent performance of wind in the UK.
There is currently a blocking high in place, as there is every winter and most summers. Sunrise is 7.45, sunset 15.42. Not that it matters much, at this time of year solar is not delivering anything at any time. The temperature, outside of the cities, in the south of the country, is around 0C. In the north the days are a bit shorter and the temperature quite a bit colder, -5C and lower.
In short its one of these classic episodes of clear cold calm days and clear cold calm and dark evenings and nights. The calms vary in length from a couple of days to a week or more long, and there are usually several a year.
So how has their 28GW of installed wind been performing for the British in this latest one?
Right now its doing 1.7GW. Which is up a bit from earlier today when it was 0.725GW. Yesterday it hit a grand high of 3.815.
Maybe November was a bit better? Afraid not. 29th it was 4.20GW, 30th 4.39GW.
If you look at last summer it was truly dire. From May through September it fluctuated wildly, but (for instance) between August 23 and September 16 it was below 5GW, and around August 8 there were a couple of days of under 0.5GW. The minimum for this year so far has been 0.071GW. No, that is not a typo!
Was May-June any better? Yes, there were some sharp peaks of around 10GW, but there were also long periods under 5GW.
This is a technology, for anyone who just takes the trouble to look at the numbers, obviously unfit for purpose. Trying to get to Net Zero, which means no gas and just using wind and solar, is a recipe for continual blackouts. It cannot be done. It would actually be the abolition of electricity supply.
What, you may wonder, is demand doing while this farce unfolds? Well, yesterday it was between 32GW and 45GW.
If 28GW regularly goes below 10% of faceplate, often a lot lower, then how much wind would you have to have to meet 45GW? Or, under the Net Zero plans, the 100GW that will be needed due to moving everyone to heat pumps and EVs?
You’d need at least 500GW for current demand, for 100GW demand you’d need 1TW of wind, to meet demand when generation falls to 10%, and even then you would have to have huge amounts of storage to get through the several hours or days of dead calms when production is below, well below, 10% of face value.
This is, as Francis says, completely hopeless.
Real time readings here:
https://energynumbers.info/gbgrid
Charts showing daily, monthly and yearly performance:
https://gridwatch.co.uk/wind
(check out the contribution of CCGT while you are there)
Or here, more detail, which gives a link to csv files of the data:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
The OVERBUILD needed for the UK grid is a simple calculation. (Demand/Lowest renewable supply), or 28GW/0.071=394.4. That’s not twice or thrice current build INVESTMENT but almost 400 times current renewables build investment.
This is, as Francis says, completely hopeless.
Note: my mistake! I used the Wind nameplate value instead of 40.5GW actual demand. The revised numbers are: 40.5/0.071=570 times current investment.
Yes, and peak demand, which has to be met or blackouts, is not 28GW but around 45GW. You need at least 10% safety margin. It just cannot be done with wind. Its why the Royal Society resorted to the insane idea that the solution was to excavate and seal 900 caverns, and fill them with hydrogen against calms. I guess it might work, if there was hydrogen, and if there were caverns, and if you could seal them….
It would have been interesting to eavesdrop on the meetings which finally resulted in this idea.
Well there was a Report leader and 14 major contributors to the Royal Society Report plus 37 other contributors. The Report leader was from the RS, all others apart from 1 Met Office person were all from UK Universities (several Oxbridge). So I think the expertise was probably quite good.
As we learned in engineering school, if you size your production capacity as being precisely equal to average demand, you will never reach that average.
Here are some calculation of the wind/solar/batteries approach, favored by the brain-washed, Net-Zero climate nuts, if it were applied in New England.
The costs of the batteries becomes astronomical
The wind/solar overbuild, MW, is at least 4 to 6 times average annual NE demand
Most rational people have to come to the conclusion, the wind/solar/battery/EV, etc., approach will lead to bankruptcy.
A much better approach would be, continue using our God-given abundance of fossil fuels, enjoy the beneficial aspects of increased CO2 (increased fauna and flora), while building more nuclear plants, which reliably produce steady electricity, at reasonable cost/kWh, and have near-zero CO2 emissions
See Appendix of article
BATTERIES IN NEW ENGLAND?
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/batteries-in-new-england
.
EXCERPT:
Currently, the variable output of wind and solar is counteracted by fossil-fired, CO2-emitting, quick-reacting power plants. Some people want to replace such power plants with large-scale battery systems to reduce CO2 emissions. This article presents an analysis that shows, using such batteries systems for counteracting, and storing electricity, even for one day, has a very high owning and operating cost, even with 50% subsidies.
NE has variable weather conditions, with frequent periods of very little wind, even offshore, and very little sun, which means wind and solar power, already highly variable 24/7/365, is frequently minimal, throughout the year.
This analysis shows the cost of battery systems, if they are used to store electricity for a W/S-lull lasting one day.
In this analysis, we ignore hydro, for simplicity.
As part of our analysis, we assume, at some future date:
.
– CO2-emitting power plants will be shut down, such as fossil fuel, wood burning, refuse burning, etc.
– Nuclear plants, once shut down, will not be replaced
– Existing hydro plants, about 7% of NE annual generation, will remain.
– Wind and solar installed capacity, MW, will be sufficient to provide 100% of average daily demand each day of the year.
https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix
A Wind/Solar Lull Lasting One Day in Winter in New England
If such a W/S lull occurs, batteries will make up the electricity shortfall
We assume, at some future date, NE has installed:
60000 MW of solar, which produce an annual average of 8700 MWh/h, at capacity factor = 0.145
60000 MW of onshore and offshore wind, which produce an annual average of 21000 MWh/h, at CF = 0.35
During a W/S lull, we assume the production will be only 10% of these values during winter, which frequently has days with very little wind, and snow on most panels
We assume the average electricity fed to the grid is 21000 MW on a January day, and during that entire day the average W/S output fed to the grid is 0.1 x (21000 + 8700) = 2970 MW.
W/S electricity shortfall is 24 x (21000 – 2970) = 432720 MWh
Batteries are rated as providing a level of power for a period of time, or MW/MWh
Our required battery capacity is (18030 MW)/(432720 MWh/0.45)
There are some system design factors that reduce rated capacity, but we will ignore them, for simplicity
Tesla recommends not charging to more than 80% full, and not discharging to less than 20% full
That means the recommended maximum delivered electricity is 0.6 of capacity.
We assume the battery is 75% full, at start of lull, and is drawn down to 25% full, in 24 hours, i.e., 0.5 of capacity is drawn out of the battery, if we are lucky.
But that 0.5 “in battery” must be reduced by 10%, due to system losses, i.e., 0.45 is fed to HV grid
NOTE: Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded by the owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve, in Australia. They had to add Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system, and decided to add more Megapacks to increase the rating of the system. In the article, the Hornsdale graph of operating conditions confirms:
1) the about 20% round-trip loss, explained below
2) the output reduction, due to rapid aging
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
Battery System Loss: There is about a 20% round-trip loss, from HV grid to 1) step-down transformer, 2) front-end power electronics, 3) into battery, 4) out of battery, 5) back-end power electronics, 6) step-up transformer, to HV grid
That means, of the electricity taken from the HV grid, about 10% is lost to recharge the battery to desired levels, then, upon discharge, another 10% is lost, before feeding to the HV grid.
This article is a good source of information
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
Capital Cost: All-in, turnkey capital cost of Tesla, Megapack-based system = 432720/0.45 x 1000 kWh/MWh x $575/delivered kWh as AC, 2023 pricing = $553 billion
Double that amount, if the W/S lull lasts two days.
W/S lulls of 5 to 7 days are not uncommon in New England, throughout the year
Dealing with such multi-day lulls will require batteries costing about $2.8 to $3.9 trillion, just for New England!
Those capital costs can be reduced by extreme “demand management”, including rolling blackouts and complete blackouts, often practiced in Third World countries.
Imports from nearby states is not an option, as those states face similar wind/solar/battery challenges.
M0RE…
“The costs of the batteries becomes astronomical
The wind/solar overbuild, MW, is at least 4 to 6 times average annual NE demand”
Resistance is building rapidly here in WK to the big battery systems, especially in western WK. Not by people who are oppossed to the climate lunacy but by people who are climate lunatics. Their argument is that some proposed the battery systems are to be buil on forest land- but these activists are determined to protect the forests- not for forestry work but to lock them up to “save the planet”.
There is a broad spectrum of climate lunacy, that chimes in with different voices, like the sounds in the jungle, because they are all in unco-ordinated hysterics modes
The energy the batteries need to hold is around that of a nuclear bomb.
If they actually build a big enough battery farm, mAke sure you relocate outside the blast area.
How much overbuild do you need in a fossil fuel grid?
Go do the research and post what you find.
Hint: the two are not the same.
In the conventional grid you oversize for two reasons. One, to have a safety margin to deal safely with unforeseen demand peaks. Two, to allow for scheduled maintenance. You have to do this regardless of technology, so in a wind and solar system you have to oversize for these cases exactly the same.
But in the case of wind, you have to oversize for another reason in addition: to provide for fluctuations in the weather. This is the killer for wind. Its not an issue for coal or gas. This is why I said above that if you look at the actual performance of the UK wind parc, you would need at least 10 times peak demand as faceplate. Because your whole parc will often be only putting out 10% or less of faceplate.
That’s a good question. Using Texas’s ERCOT data, Thermals can provide 114% of demand. They have planned and unplanned outages of ~11%. Given today’s conditions ERCOT’s thermals do not NEED overbuild.
Of course this is not based upon minimal thermal outputs which would allow for ~20GW as shown by Winter Storm Uri estimates, which would indicate that an additional 26% of current investment would cover that need.
I dunno, but +.26 is a little smaller than ~+400 for overbuild needs.
This is, as Francis says, completely hopeless.
The US-EIA has been playing games with the levelized cost of energy, LCOE, of wind/solar/batteries, etc., for decades, by hiding major components, to perpetuate the fantasy wind/solar/batteries are lower in cost/kWh than fossil fuels.
Every country that has more wind/solar/batteries systems, such as Germany, Denmark, etc., without exception, also has the highest household electric rates.
Here are some “omitted” LCOEs:
Levelized Cost of Energy by US-EIA
1) Subsidies equivalent to about 50% of project owning and operations cost,
2) Grid extension/reinforcement to connect remote W/S to load centers
3) A fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract the W/S up/down output, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365,
4) A fleet of power plants to provide electricity during low-W/S periods, and during high-W/S periods, when rotors are feathered and locked,
5) Output curtailments to prevent overloading the grid, i.e., paying owners for not producing what they could have produced
NOTE: W/S variable outputs could not be physically fed into the grid, without the last 4 items, of which the LCOEs are provided for free by taxpayers, ratepayers, or added to government debts
Dubai is a beautiful city. I can understand why they enjoy meeting there. I wonder if any of them consider that Dubai would be just a small village of a few tents and fishing boats if it weren’t for fossil fuels? Do the rulers of Dubai think they could run their city on wind and solar?
Hopefully this should end the lie that the coal, oil and gas economy only exists because of subsidies. Maybe it’s because the fossil bio-fuel energy is what generates the economy which then makes it possible to have the subsidies to pay for the renewable nonsense. What the fossil bio-fuel energy derived wealth should be doing, considering it is finite, is developing better nuclear energy.
While I don’t believe the ‘global warming’ scam, the author of this article obviously doesn’t own solar panels for his house, and doesn’t understand how solar inverters work. They use MPPT – Maximum Power Point Tracking, to adjust the current which is drawn from the solar panel, to achieve the maximum power output from the solar panels, at any point in time. An inverter doesn’t produce the full amount of power that the solar panels are generating unless there is a large enough LOAD on the inverter. So if you have 10kW of solar panels, your inverter isn’t constantly putting out 10kW on a sunny day, just because it CAN produce that amount – it adjusts the current that it allows the solar panels to give out, in order to produce the actual amount of power that is needed for the load. For example, I have 12kW of solar panels, and a 12kW inverter. I have 10kW/h of Pylontech batteries, cost about £2,600. My inverter charges the batteries during the day, until they are full. It also gives power to the house for all loads, taking this from the solar panels, unless there is insufficient sunlight, then it uses the batteries, if there is no power left in the batteries, it uses the grid.
So normally the inverters work like this: from sunrise, the inverters are using some battery power to power the house loads, and the rest is solar power. As the sun rises and the solar panel output increases, and becomes larger than the load in the house (say it’s 500W for background items like fridges, freezers, and a computer and monitor.) The inverter then powers the house AND starts to charge the batteries up. Let’s say that by midday the batteries are completely recharged. (Normally, in the summer, my batteries are fully charged by 11am.) The sun is out and the solar panels are capable of producing 12kW. Well guess what – the inverter doesn’t continue giving out 12kW because the batteries are fully charged, the inverter now only gives out as much as the house load is – maybe it’s 3kW because I’m cooking, or the washing machine heater element is heating up water. The inverter HAS to be able to instantly adjust the amount of power it is taking from the solar panels, to match the load required of it.
So the idea that if you double solar farm output, you will have to find something to do with that double amount of power when it isn’t all needed, is completely incorrect – you would know this if you had a home solar system, because you quickly get used to how the system works, through constantly monitoring its output on Solar Assistant, or MultiSIBControl.
Secondly, my three bedroom house uses an average of 10kW/h of electricity per day, according to ten years of electricity bills. So two 5kW/h LiFePo4 batteries for £2,600 would cover all overnight need, (presuming you use gas for heating, not electricity), and if the electricity companies were to install two batteries in every house in the country, I imagine they could sell them to their users at zero profit (in order to help with the use of solar power from the electricity company) for about £1,500 the pair – and they last more than TEN years.
You have to have owned a home solar system for at least a year in order to understand how much power you can get from a given size of solar panel set up in different weathers, at different times of the year. Then you’ll understand that powering all the houses in a country by solar IS possible, and would indeed by cheaper than using power stations (of any kind). Please note – I do not believe in ‘global warming’, I know that Net Zero is insanity and that electric cars cannot possibly go mainstream because we don’t have the electricity generation capacity, even with coal and gas fired power stations, nor the infrastructure, etc.
If every house in the country had all of its roof covered in solar panels, and 10kW/h of batteries, we would probably only need a limited number of solar farms, and no wind turbines (which I believe are rubbish and will never compete with solar power), to produce all the electricity each house needs. Solar panels don’t have to be facing South to work, they don’t have to have the sun perpendicular to them to work (my 12kW of panels produces around 2kW when the sun is PARALELL to them, in the early morning, in the Summer), they still work when it’s raining, but output is dramatically reduced, I’ll give you that, but they are DIRT CHEAP. You can buy a 400W panel for £100 in the U.K. today. That’s £2,000 for 8kW of panels. I know you need roof mounts, and inverters, etc. But the panels are literally like ‘magic’ – they are all guaranteed for AT LEAST 25 years of 80% of the original output, some will still be giving out 86% of the original output in 25 years, and will be useful for another 25 years after that. They are AMAZING technology, because they are outdoors in the rain, snow, endless sunshine, which we know damages so many other things, and yet they just keep on working, with no user input required for decades. They are incredible technology, and you are doing us all a disservice be speaking from ignorance about them.
MPPT explained in five minutes:
What happens in winter, with little sunshine, and often panels covered with snow?
In Vermont, I have a similar set up, with better solar than the UK, but also have a propane generator that kicks in, as needed, throughout the year
Inverters have a voltage window, outside of which they don’t convert DC-AC. If the voltage from the PV array is too small or too large, the inverter is off. It can be non-trivial to match an array with an appropriate inverter.
I don’t think so… The voltage from the PV array is controlled by the MPPT controller in the inverter… It isn’t difficult AT ALL to match an array with ‘an appropriate inverter’.
BTW, the amortized cost of my system is far greater than buying electricity from the utility. If I wanted, I could live “off the grid”, but I kept my connection, in case my system is down, for whatever reason.
“BTW, the amortized cost of my system is far greater than buying electricity from the utility.”
After the massive tax breaks”?
You have to build sufficient solar panels to output the 10kW/h that the average house needs, both on roofs and in solar farms. Panels that have snow on them will warm up if the sun is out, and the snow soon falls off. If the sun isn’t out, you would have to manually clear the snow using a simple scraper on a long pole.
But there is no reason to do any of this. Why spend the money?
Small is beautiful. For example – if every house in the country (and every business premises) had their roofs covered in solar panels, and every house had 10kW/h of battery storage, huge costs involved in power stations and the transmission of electricity could be avoided. Electricity generation would be done locally, rather than at remote locations. You simply overspec. the amount of solar panels you have, everywhere. Do any of you own home solar systems? If not, you don’t have first hand experience of how solar panels and inverters actually work.
I don’t think so, Steve. I agree that for the individual home- or business-owner, your argument is sound. But it isn’t scalable. I could use a PTO generator to provide juice to the house, but that doesn’t mean every farm in the region can or, much less, should. Ceteris paribus just ain’t so.
Your understanding of energy is in not well informed.
UK currently has primary energy demand of 1.4E15Wh. So using the same overbuild as you have on your house, it requires 1.17E15W of rated solar panels. Solar panels are rated at 1000W/m^2 of sunlight and operate, at best, 20% efficiency That means rating is based on 200W/m^2. To get 1.17E15W means you need 5.85E12m^2 or 5,850,000sq.km of land for the solar panels.
The total land area of UK is 248,532sq.km. Making the entire land area able to produce 4% of the current needs.
UK has given up on manufacturing as the attached chart demonstrates. The solar panels needed for the conversion would be sourced from China but China has no need for UK currency. So the only way to purchase the solar panels is to borrow from China. UK already has a balance of payment deficit so it will get harder to pay for stuff from China.
The fundamental problem with solar panels is that they do not save coal. They are essentially coal burnt today to make something that can extract less energy in the future than was embodied in the coal.
I have a friend who built a house with enough solar panels and battery storage to run his house. Not because he is a warmunist, but he was determined to be off grid and independent.
I told him he will be mighty annoyed when a cell In the middle of the battery pack shorted at night in February and he’d be there load testing every cell to find the bad one. Well, it happened twice. He called the power company to hook him up.
Why didn’t he have a backup generator as part of the setup. $5 k plus installation for 22 kw from Costco, delivered!
I skipped all the solar and batteries and installed a BU genset so when the power goes out, which it does regularly at our mountain cabin due to scheduled shutdowns or storms. Nice when the power kicks back on after about 8 seconds. With a battery setup you could configure it so you would never lose power.
Strongly suggest you do a “Future Value” calculation on your solar panels and include ALL Expenses, including loss of income for your down payment, interest on your loan, increased taxes and insurance cost due to higher home value. You will find that you have lost money. Enough that after ten years you could begin paying your electric bill with the profits that you would have from investing the same amount of your purchase price and monthly investment of your actual cost for having that sinkhole on your roof. I Have been doing a Future Value calculation since 1973. It has Never shown I would save money even if I was paid for every watt I gave to the electric company, and I assumed that I would make all repairs and perform all maintenance my self. Maintenance on Solar Panels will cost you more than maintenance on a furnace of AC. The last time I had my HP repaired they wanted $100 to determine the problem and ~$250 to repair it, and that was 20 years ago – a rodent ate some of the wires. As an Electrical Engineer with experience testing/repairing NPP Instrumentation, I now repair it myself.
Years ago my utility sent me an email of there offer to provide me with a Solar Panel on my roof. It included a Calculator showing how much I would save. After putting in all numbers they asked for the result was that I would NOT have a Zero Electric bill or even a lower Electric bill. I would be paying mor than twice as much for the first ten years, the time to pay off the solar panel, and $100 more each month [not corrected for inflation of price increases] after that. I called the number on the notice and asked them “What Gives.” The answer was “You have a Heat Pump!”
It appears that you live in the UK, thus, Enjoy that mandatory Heat Pump. P.S. your home will feel 2 degrees C colder when you try warming your house with a HP. Mine was set at 70 F before the HP, it has been set for 74 F (Winter) / (Summer) since purchase. Problem is that in the Winter a HP blows air that is only a degree warmer than the room and does not humidify the air in the Winter. In the summer, all humidity is removed from the house and it is like living in a desert.
You make some valid observations Steven, but there’s a world of difference between harnessing solar energy via panels on the roof of a stand alone house for its own needs, and for operating a utility-scale electrical grid from house rooftop solar panels.
Solar is used extensively as an effective and efficient supplemental power source for remote facilities such as outback cattle stations and mines, and will continue to do so.
So it’s proven its usefulness for decades now.
But most householders are not as technically or mechanically savvy as you clearly are about the operation of sophisticated building utilities and systems.
Geez, I’ve got old ladies in my street who need help to set their baseboard heater knobs at appropriate settings 🙂
Did you find a statistic somewhere about an average home using 10KWh per day? Because that seems very, very low to me. Our 4 BR Colonial in a suburb about 35 miles west of NY City averages about 25 KWh per day, with individual months averaging from 14/day to 35/day. That is WAY DOWN from when we had kids living here. With teenagers using the hot tub outside during winter, we routinely had 60KWh/day monthly averages. Luckily our heat, hot water, oven/stove, and dryer all use natural gas. Wish the hot tub could.
Our wooded lot provides great shade in summer, but makes solar a non-starter. When I had the guy come out, he almost immediately said the trees, mostly 80+ ft. tall oaks, were a problem, and he was right. Up on the roof there was no way solar panels would be worth it. Probably the same for most of my neighborhood.
Then there are those that rent apartments, roughly 1/3 of all US households, and over 40% in NY and CA.
But Bob, Steve didn’t explain that he does not have or need AC in the summer.
He did mention he has gas heat.
So he lives in a Goldilocks place, just right.
So at least 90% of US homes would not work as his does.
And with his supposition of EVERY house in the UK installing solar and batteries, what happens when EVERY house has a heat pump for home and water heating? Time to install 5 to 10 times the solar panels and batteries.
Well it is good that it works for him, but the assertion that “If every house in the country had all of its roof covered in solar panels, and 10kW/h of batteries, we would probably only need a limited number of solar farms, and no wind turbines”, struck me as a bit too much as a generalization. Would not work for anyone here.
One only need look a the map of any city to see that about half (on the lower side) of the roads/streets run North/South and about half (on the lower side) run East/West. And as you said about 1/3 of the inhabitants live in an apartment building. That means the Apartment buildings can not provide enough electricity for their residents with roof top solar panels. Worse 1/2 of the private home only have 1/2 of their roof facing the south (in the NH) and those home with homes that have a home that the roof runs North/South will only develop 1/2 of the Name plate rating of their Solar panel un less extreme, costly , measures are taken to improve output. Even if every inch of a roof was covered with solar panels the sum total would be far less than 1/2 of the name plate output. And even that would be for less than 8 hours a day on average.
It is not clear to me if you are operating off-grid with 12kW of solar panels and 10kWh of battery. If you are not off-grid then you are proving nothing with your system.
So 12kW of solar panels producing a daily output of 10kWh means you are operating them at 3.4% capacity factor. That capacity factor for solar is viable in Australia for off-grid with 48 hour battery back up. I have doubts that it would be enough in UK with just 24 hours of battery. Maybe if panels were mounted near vertical and having clear view south! Not possible for many installations in the UK.
The only reason you can afford so much overbuild is that the panels were not made in the UK. The silicon wafer at least would be from China and possibly the whole panel. Only countries that burn coal can make a profit from selling solar panels to countries unwilling to burn coal.
“Economically feasible” is an elastic term. Warmists are dedicated to eliminating alternatives until what they want then becomes “feasible.”
As a refresher for those attending the COP28, wind and solar do different things than crude oil.
Renewables only generate occasional electricity but cannot manufacture anything.
Crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity but when manufactured into petrochemicals, is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800’s.
We’ve become a very materialistic society over the last 200 years, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products and different fuels for jets, ships, trucks, cars, military, and the space program that did not exist before the 1800’s.
Until a crude oil replacement is identified, the world cannot do without crude oil that is the basis of our materialistic “products” society.
It has been pointed out by advocates for building more nuclear power in Washington State that while 14 billion dollars has been spent in our state so far installing a total of roughly 4,000 MW nameplate wind capacity, there are periods in the dead of winter lasting a week or more where these wind farms produce only 7% of their nameplate capacity; i.e., 300 MW.
In contrast, the Columbia Generating Station produces 1,100 MW of nuclear-generated electricity 24/7/365 regardless of what the weather is doing. A second similar size reactor located at the same site could produce another 1,100 MW of nuclear-generated electricity 24/7/365 regardless of what the weather is doing.
During these winter-weather wind droughts, the shortfall in regional wind energy production is made up from other power generation resources attached to the Western Interconnect. These other resources include coal-fired and gas-fired power plants located throughout the western United States, plants now targeted for early closure under the dictates of the Biden Administration’s war on carbon.
How will the power production shortfalls be handled once these fossil-fueled power plants are gone from the Western Interconnect?
The plans developed by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to deal with future shortfalls rely in large part on energy conservation measures. Inside the region’s power planning models, this planning approach is implemented by counting real-time reductions in power demand as being fully equivalent to real-time power generation capacity.
And so we are now being expected by our regional power planning authorities to reduce our consumption of electricity while at the same time converting nearly everything now powered either directly or indirectly by fossil fuels to electricity. (Such a deal!)
“Gigantic, massive government subsidies on a scale far greater than anything ever seen in human history. It’s a very safe bet that it will never happen.”
You underestimate Leftist politicians, Deep State zealots and rich profiteers.
The rich are the big ones pushing this. They own the media control the politicians and hope to make trillions from “climate change”.
Even two-thirds of Republicans under 30 support the “climate change” agenda. 42% of Republicans support developing alternative energy sources according to Pew’s polls.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/
Years ago Tom Steyer got ballot measures on the ballot in Nevada and Arizona. They were to require the utility to get a minimum of electricity from unreliable generation.
In Arizona, the Republican AG required the addition of “regardless of the cost”. That was not on the Nevada ballot explanation.
The measure failed soundly in Arizona, it passed easily in Nevada.
Steyer then used millions of his “unreliable energy” dollars to defeat the AG in his next election.
Ignorance is what it is.
The author reports,
But, according to Clean Energy Wire here, through the first three quarters of 2023, the percent of its electricity that Germany got from wind and solar was only 52%.
That is incorrect. Germany last year was at 26% wind and 9% solar. The 52% includes bio-waste recovering and hydro. No way they jumped from 35% to 52%. How is everyone missing this? I reported it last night, but I don’t see it.
what keeps the lights on in Germany this cold calm snowy winter night?
Their Backup?
Burning lignite.
Next door Nuclear France – while Germany shut down all their NPP.
Next door Poland from more dirty Lignite
Thanks for this very informative article. It confirms a suspicion I’ve had for a while. I was musing on how much land would be required to completely replace, our traditional FF generation network, with totally wind generation. I found that it requires about 1.5sq miles of land for a 20MW (nameplate capacity) farm.
To provide the UK, at 25% capacity, would require somewhere around 15,000 sq miles. Obviously, that’s a massive area, and wind strength/characteristics would vary significantly. Some locations might have a strong wind, whilst others were in the doldrums. So, the result, would still fail to provide total demand. Consequently, adding more turbines, over even more land, would simply increase the variability, and would not provide a pro rata increase. In effect, some form of inverse exponential relationship.
It wouldn’t surprise me, if some of you guys, with the maths capability, could create a statistical formula, to predict the implications.