Wind & solar are not “intermittent”; they are unreliable, unpredictable, uncontrollable and worthless
While driving home after a great Labor Day weekend with friends and family, we ran into scattered showers. My wife helped me figure out the switches that control the timing of the intermittent windshield wipers for both the front and rear windows. (She is the primary driver for our recently purchased family vehicle; I had done a very non-nuclear thing by never getting around to reading the owner’s manual.)
We want our power to be smooth, reliable, and utterly under control. We want it to be there when we need it.
After a brief tutorial, I recognized that the controls were conveniently located beauties of ingenuity that allowed me to pick exactly the right interval at which to make the blades clear the windshield and the rear window. Even as the rain intensity varied and the spray from other vehicles changed, I could find the perfect speed. I was able to adjust the interval to prevent both the annoying squeak of rubber on a dry surface and the vision interference of a window covered with too many drops.
The experience made me realize that Americans most likely associate the word “intermittent” with their easily controlled windshield wipers that can be adjusted to match the demand of clearing their windshield through a variety of conditions. However, “intermittent” is also the word that is frequently used by people like me who are trying to explain to others why we are NOT enamored with the prospects of increasing the use of weather dependent energy collection systems like wind turbines and solar panels.
I now believe we have been using the wrong word and conveying the wrong meaning. Unlike our intermittent windshield wiper systems, with their responsive control systems that allow drivers to pick exactly the right speed to respond to changing demands, the desired output of wind and solar power systems are completely dependent upon the input weather conditions. If there is bright sunshine or steady wind, the output of renewable power systems can be varied a little, but there is absolutely nothing that the operator can do – other than wait for the weather to change – if the wind dies or the sun goes behind a cloud.
Some renewable system advocates wave their hands over that problem and offer the possibility that someday someone else will figure out how to build a better energy storage device than our very limited chemical batteries. That possibility seems quite remote to me, especially considering how much effort several generations of scientists and engineers have put into building better batteries.
More accurate and informative terms that better describe the limitations of weather dependent energy systems include “unreliable”, “unpredictable”, and “uncontrollable”. All of those terms help people to clearly understand that the inherent characteristics of wind and solar energy systems are exactly NOT the characteristics that we want from our electricity supply system.
We want our power to be smooth, reliable, and utterly under control. We want it to be there when we need it. We want it to be delivered at exactly the right rate, with no equipment damaging surges and no failures while we are cooking dinner, washing clothes, or watching an exciting football game.
From now on, I am personally going to avoid using the term “intermittent” and focus on using one of those more descriptive terms when talking about my dislike of efforts to sell wind and solar energy systems to unsuspecting customers. The renewable energy pushers have spend decades obscuring the level of risk those power sources are imposing on an electric power grid that we have all learned to take as almost a birthright of living in the United States or other industrialized, “first-world” countries.
(In support of that statement, here is a link to a 1993 study produced by contractors employed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The purpose of the study appears to be to sell a “don’t worry, be happy” attitude about increasing the penetration of power systems that are only as controllable as the weather.)
Note: The title of this post was changed on September 8, 2011 at the recommendation of a frequent contributor to the Atomic Insights discussion threads.
Excellent!
While ‘unreliable’ better describes wind and solar generation we must always keep in mind that these modes are little more than Trojan Horses for gas-fired generation. Thus the end users will never feel the intermittency directly.
Wind and solar are greenwash; no utility in its right mind would accept more of this type of generation than it could offset by more reliable sources.
Battery storage will probably never be cheap enough to be practical for base-load power. In the places where it can be used, pumped hydro may be the least expensive, but it is not cheap.
I don’t think it is a good strategy to say that wind/solar + storage is impossible, just that it is incredibly expensive and no nation employing it will be able to compete with those that use nuclear, either in trade (or if we turn protectionist) in standards of living.
My opinion on batteries and an all renewable grid might change when I see cell phone batteries that can be charged for two hours and then allow the user to talk for two weeks (i.e., high energy density and quick charge times). 😉
Different regions have different wind patterns. If you look at the wind generation in the Bonneville Power Administration (Pacific Northwest), the wind generation does appear to be rather chaotic, unpredictable, and random.
http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
However, the wind generation in Texas seems somewhat more cyclic.
http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/texas-electric-grid-declares-level-1.html
The problem in Texas, though, is the wind is anti-correlated with power demand. Wind generation is highest in the middle of the night, when power is not consumed as much. Then, when they really need the electricity in the hot afternoons, the wind dies down. Cyclic, but not very useful.
I have noticed a similar pattern in California, where wind generation tends to be higher at night, then down during the day.
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html
For almost the entire time that Humans have been Human, we have been working towards one goal… becoming less and less reliant on Wind and Solar Power. Almost every advance in science has been to over come the weakness that we have known about wind and solar power from day 1!
The Sun did not provide enough (heat) energy to grow all the food we needed, so we invented the green house.
The Wind did not push our ships fast enough, so we invented Coal/Gas fired ships.
The Sun did not provide the energy to cook our food or heat our homes so we began burning Wood to do these tasks for which the “Free” energy sources were not capable of doing.
So as I say.. All of human history has been a large race away from Solar/Wind dependency and now that we are on the verge of a energy source that will provide us with all the energy that we could ever need, some would have us give everything up for a power source that was abandoned by Cave Men, for the more far more reliable energy from Fire.
Found this little video which suggests that with enough plug-in hybred cars connecticut to the grit the could help stabilize the grid. I do wonder though what happens if the grid needed stabilizing just before you needed to use your car.
http://energy.aol.com/2011/09/02/the-magicc-of-millions-of-mini-storage-tanks/?ncid=webmail18
Not only do you need to worry about not having a full charge when you need to go somewhere (that just might be near the edge of your range even with a full battery), but you also have to be concerned about cycling of the battery by the power company reducing the life of your (expensive) battery. It might not be worth the hit to battery life even if the power were free!
Yeah, I keep running across people on the web which just seem to have a hard time comprehending reality. There’s a site I frequent called Slashdot.org, which posts summaries and links to other articles online, covering a variety of tech and science news (as well as ‘related’ things like news about tech lawsuits, legislation, antitrust proceedings, privacy, and such like).
Whenever an article gets posted about any energy-related topic, there’s always someone who posts this idea that all you need is enough solar panels and windmills all over the country, all connected by HVDC transmission lines, and our problems will be solved – “The Law of Large Numbers” – e.g. the sun’s always shining somewhere, and the wind’s always blowing somewhere.
They don’t seem to grasp that building that much generation would make nuclear plants look dirt cheap by comparison.
Good post Ron. I have been saying this for a loooong time now. Just finished reading a good book on the propaganda coming from the “green” energy crowd called “False Promise of Green Energy” which goes into considerable detail about the environmental, political, economic, and other problems with wind and solar. Their promises about all those “green” jobs are exaggerated too.
And now, with the failure of that solar panel maker in Fremont, CA, we taxpayers are out $535 million. It’s enough to make you sick to your stomach.
When it comes to electric cars they seem to be using all the wrong arguments. The potential is really about replacing oil with electricity from coal&nuclear – that’s all there is to it.
But instead all we hear is solar power which is the most expensive energy, wind energy which is intermittent and has nothing whatsoever to do with electric cars, and then they want electric cars to take on the duty of balancing the grid. They’re hijacking the trend towards electric cars to promote their failed green energy systems.
You’ve got that right, CD. Wind and solar have been completely worthless at creating new jobs in the US, in spite of that being one of their supposed “selling points”: they’re completely inefficient in terms of manpower. The whole thing has become “an unmitigated fiasco.”
The corruption in the Obama administration runs deep, with contracts being steered to “friends and family” and executives of firms that have been awarded stimulus tax credits being in bed (literally) with DOE officials.
Meanwhile, how are the loan guarantees going for new nuclear builds? Last time I checked, the DOE has granted only one loan guarantee for two new reactors and one loan guarantee for an enrichment plant. That’s not an impressive record, and by now, Obama has had as much time as Bush had to get those guarantees out the door.
Rather than “unreliable,” I recommend the term “worthless” — unless you are discussing the tax-dodge possibilities of these contraptions.
Are you sure about this?
Seems to me we’ve had a few weather related shut downs of NPPs over the last several weeks: either from debris clogging cooling water intakes, loss of external power, and flooding events (from just a little bit of rain and the decades old practice of draining wetlands and straightening rivers in the midwest). All of this cutting a wide swath of power supply interruptions in our diminishing baseload energy profile as nuclear power plants were taken off line, or powered down by some 90% (as a precaution) in Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, Nebraska, Vermont, and elsewhere. How did operators handle such weather related shutdowns? How did our distributed power infrastructure perform, and was our aging infrastructure overtaxed by these storms and these very large and unanticipated supply interruptions? Operators deal with such wide ranging shutdowns or small scale supply or demand variables all the time. One might even say it’s a part of the job description, and that planning and scheduling for weather related shutdowns (and steep ramps in demand from fluctuating work habits, season, variable industrial activities, and weather conditions) is why we have a grid in the first place, and a diversified energy mix as well?
And yes, I like your wiper analogy too. Your intermittent wipers seem perfectly adapted to the task: of fine tuning wiper timing to “uncontrollable” droplet frequency on your windshield. I remember the days of less “controllable” or “adjustable” technologies, a single constant speed control (hi, med, lo), and windshields that were not so aerodynamic, and didn’t shed water away from the field of vision of the driver. Are there some among us who remember those nostalgic days of 50s era optimism … a classic retro car with fins, they had a great deal more power (and weight) to them, and we measured the growth of the economy and the expansion of jobs by the abundance of steel foundries lacking emissions controls and the sooty haze that filled the skies. As I recall, those cars also lacked seat belts, and the steering was quiet bulky and hard to control at high speeds. A lot has changed in our power systems, and a lot will continue to change in the future. Cars have come down in price, they are a great deal more flexible and controllable, fine tuning is done by computers and don’t require human input, they are leaner and travel further on a tank of gas, and they come in many shapes and sizes (satisfying a wide diversity of popular tastes and uses). Our power plants too!
“Its always sunny, windy somewhere…”
Well if the average capacity factor is 25% for one of these systems. This means that when someplace is windy that there are 3 x as many other places that are not windy.
Its like having 4 cars in your driveway that each average working 25% of the time. It is very possible and likely that there will be days when you need to go to work and none of your cars work. Or days when they are all working, but you only need to use 1.
It may seem like a reliable system because your always able to make it to work on time by borrowing a neighbor’s car. But what happens when another neighbor who uses a similar 4 car system and you and already borrowed your other neighbor’s car?
Looks like your walking to work. Now if you want to prevent this, you need 2 neighbors with reliable cars, that sit around for the lets say 1 in 16 chance they need to loan out two. This means that in order to keep 8 unreliable cars working, 2 reliable cars need to be parked unused, for 28/30 days a month.
What a waste of resources when those 2 reliable cars could simply be used by the people with 4 unreliable cars. In other words the reliability of the backup cars obsoletes the need for the unreliable cars.
The thing with nuclear is, if it is used to back up wind/solar then enough nuclear will be needed to handle the low wind/solar days. Then there will be almost enough backup power to run the system primarily on nuclear. Thus obsoleting the need for the primary wind/solar system. The only reason why wind/solar are being build now is that they can make a case to offset fuel/carbon taxes for utilities. If there are no fuel/carbon taxes to offset then the financials for wind/solar sink like a brick.
@EL
As usual you are making assumptions without having done the background research to determine if these are relevant. If you had you would know that shutdowns of baseload generators, particularly when there is a fair amount of warning, is something that the grid and the power market is designed to deal with without problems. Intermittent supply of the sort we are criticizing here is a very different mater.
The difference is the degree of forward planing that can be done to create something called dispatchable power. Wind and solar are just not reliable enough to guarantee that they can assume load on schedule and maintain for a specific interval. This means that there must always be spinning reserve available running in parallel to backup the intermittent source.
In case you missed it, Rod’s analogy was that intermittent wipers are a good thing because they can be fine tuned, and thus applying the term to wind and solar suggested that they were something more than they are which is unreliable; something that would not be good in a windshield wiper.
Rod –
There is one point you left out. As an Engineering Officer on a sub, surely you have supervised the necessary measures required to ensure the proper capability of the batteries e.g. capacity test, float, SG measurements, cell voltage, etc. and are aware of the time/manpower to perform these activities. Most people also think batteries are like the battery in their cell phone that they charge once in a while and never have to replace (I have been told that the Apple products need to be sent to the factory for replacement and they just give you a new phone instead). Even the best batteries available for the electric cars are only warranted for 4 years. The batteries for the power tools only last 3-4 years with home mechanic use, less than two with commercial/industrial use. In high school, I worked as a signalmen in the summer and maintained the batteries that were on the crossing flashers. These lasted about 25 years but like the sub batteries were very high maintenance, were never abused or taken down to minimum voltage. I do not know what the life is for the backup battery at the average NPP, but every NPP I have worked at has replaced their battery after about 10 years – and they get serviced at least as well as sub batteries. I think part of this is due to the NRC mandated tests on the batteries shortening their life. The NPP battery replacement is at least a $1,000,000 project. I just cannot imagine ever seeing an affordable battery suitable for providing backup power for a windmill, especially taking into consideration the severe cycling/loads placed on these batteries and the maintenance they will get. Then you need to consider the number that will be needed to provide this source of power for just one windmill. Think of the size of the battery on the sub and how long it lasted under emergency load. Batteries are not a real option in our lifetime.
Plenty of folks I know in Oswego and St Lawrence County of New York State like them, because they generate revenue to land owners, which help maintain the tax base for County Government. That is the greatest dynamic I can see. County Government cares much more about their tax base than Energy.
10 Percent of the gasoline I put in my tank is a 2 Carbon Otis Campbell molecule with it’s stinkin’ hydroxyl hanging off it. Midwest legislatures want the Feds to raise it to 15 percent as a mandate that we would need to burn it. They should have to burn the crap in their distilleries instead of methane (notice no hydroxyl). Imagine a moonshiner who’s out of wood….Could he burn his product instead and come out ahead? Of course not, but they and their government lackies will pretend so, and force us to burn it. Notice also that you can not get gasoline without it that you may compare your mileage with and without alcohol.
We will get similar bizarre mandates for wind because it is so dynamic in it’s support for grassroots county government. We’re screwed. In the race to the bottom, America’s gonna win.
How many coal plants did you read/hear about being shut down? The NRC forces the shutdown of perfectly good plants to avoid the possibility that they might be shutdown automatically. How many NPP did you read about that were automatically shut down? More people have been killed by US coal plants tripping off line (automatic shutdowns) than from any US NPP tripping off line (NPP = zero, and I personnel know of 6 killed at just one coal power plant).
As I said earlier, the unnecessary shutdown of NPPs helps perpetuate the FEAR of nuclear power – it makes people think it is not safe, it is not reliable, etc, etc. The plants are designed to safely operate/shutdown under these conditions BUT when we know they are coming we are forced to BE SAFE and shutdown.
DV82XL – Good explanation.
Once again, EL has demonstrated the ability to take mindlessness to a new level.
New estimate: 94 and falling fast.
John – Well, there will always be rent seekers. That’s not going away anytime soon. I don’t think that such parasites are good for the greater economy, however.
But they make for great fantasies.
Brian – make that “conditional” loan guarantees. I do not think that a single dime has actually been made available to do anything for the two projects that you mentioned since both are awaiting an NRC license.
I could be wrong about the enrichment plant. I have not followed that one as closely as I have the Vogtle project.
@Rich:
Thank you for expanding the details behind this particular paragraph:
“Some renewable system advocates wave their hands over that problem and offer the possibility that someday someone else will figure out how to build a better energy storage device than our very limited chemical batteries. That possibility seems quite remote to me, especially considering how much effort several generations of scientists and engineers have put into building better batteries.”
As you stated, there are enormous limitations to chemical storage devices. I believe they are inherent and will never be overcome. Batteries are great for the set of uses whose needs fit within those limitations. Backing up the power grid for more than a few minutes is not one of the uses that fits the limitations.
EL – how many of the power interruptions to customers came as a result of powering down baseload generation and NOT as a result of the transmission and distribution system being knocked around by the weather?
The distributed generation system that you advocate is more dependent on having even more wires, transformers, and inverters that are generally exposed to the weather – unless you expect that every customer will have his own complex installation of wind, solar, batteries, and perhaps a fossil fuel powered generator. Otherwise, the only way distributed wind and solar systems can even pretend to supply reliable power is to have a very extensive transmission and distribution grid that reaches into remote places where there is more wind and sun than is normally available in the settled areas where people like to congregate.
If you think it takes a long time to restore power after a storm now, think about the effort it would require to get those trucks out to vast expanses of distributed mountain top wind farms (and their above ground transmission lines) or off-shore wind farms whose supporting infrastructure gets knocked around by high winds and heavy seas.
By the way, you happen to have exaggerated the impact on nuclear power plants. Here is a link to the Nuclear Energy Institute’s summary.
http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/newsreleases/impact-of-hurricane-irene-on-us-nuclear-energy-facilities/
By my count, there were 26 nuclear power units in the path of Irene. Of those, 1 was automatically shutdown when a piece of siding flew into the switchyard and impacted a transformer. One unit operated by my least favorite nuclear plant owner (but which has some very talented operational folks) was purposely shut down before the storm arrived – with some advanced publicity about that decision.
2 units temporarily reduced power to levels still above 90%. 2 units temporarily reduced output to 65% of rated power. 2 units temporarily reduced output to 50% at the request of the grid operator because of lowered overall demand as the wires went down.
That leaves 16 units that continued to operate at 100% power throughout the storm, supplying reliable power to the grid so that it could be distributed to all of those people whose power lines did not get knocked down or hit by a tree.
During the storm, what portion of rated output do you think was being supplied by wind turbines that were most likely feathered in self-protection or by solar panels that were either shaded by very dark clouds or in complete darkness? How excited would you be to have anything other than flat panel (low efficiency) solar panels on your roof if you were already hearing a lot of creaking and groaning under high winds? Would you want a tall tower hosting a personal windmill in your backyard – or in your neighbor’s backyard?
@Brian – good suggestion. I have updated the title of the post to include your descriptive term.
I think people like that simply believe that it is immoral to use any non-renewable energy source, and that money is no object when it comes to ending this immorality.
Just checking up on their summary, NEI needs to update their list.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Flooding-causes-2-NJ-nuke-reactors-to-power-down-2149650.php
Two in New Jersey impacted by flooding and debris in coolant water intakes: Salem I at 60% and Salem II at 90%.
Not really. Available research shows wind and solar penetration to 20% requires no additional reserve capacity. Planning reserve margins to 12-15% of peak load are sufficient to handle any variability from renewable sources (as we continue to improve forecasting and modeling approaches, expand load balancing areas, and more). Efficiency and balancing costs for spinning and non-spinning reserves are minimal: 4% loss in emissions benefits, 10% added to the wholesale cost of energy from renewable sources. This stuff isn’t that complicated. To suggest it is does a disservice to system operators (and the job description), and is a misreading of available research (which is quite extensive at this point).
http://www.ieee-pes.org/images/pdf/open-access-milligan.pdf
Not sure what you’re adding here … but who cares!
The article overlooks thermochemical conversion of a fuel stock into a more energy-enriched fuel. This technology is being developed in parallel by both the nuclear energy industry and the concentrated solar thermal energy industry.
In the solar version of this technology, gasification of coal and biomass can produce methane to fuel CCGT power stations or Compressed Natural Gas vehicles. Intermittency does not pose a problem in this mode of use.
More information and reference links are here: => http://goo.gl/w5PN4
Yes really. Continuously variable supply is very, very different to a scheduled outage by a baseload plant. It is sophistry of the worst kind to suggest they are equivalent. Even the odd time that there is an unplanned outage at one of these facilities, which is rare, the system must only adjust once from its projected topology.
Yes I have read documents such as the one you linked too. They all have one thing in common: they try and show how the grid can cope with wind and solar, and do so through rose-colored glasses, as this one does. The real question to ask, which is not addressed in these treatments, is if replacing ALL fossil-fuel burners with nuclear would yield better results than reducing the fuel the former burns by 10-20%. The obvious answer is that full replacement with nuclear makes wind and solar pointless. Thus wind and solar depend on the continued use of fossil-fuels to justify their existence.
Brian’s marking the continued drop in your estimated IQ every time you post.
Yes really. Continuously variable supply is very, very different to a scheduled outage by a baseload plant. It is sophistry of the worst kind to suggest they are equivalent. Even the odd time that there is an unplanned outage at one of these facilities, which is rare, the system must only adjust once from its projected topology.
Yes I have read documents such as the one you linked too. They all have one thing in common: they try and show how the grid can cope with wind and solar, and do so through rose-colored glasses, as this one does. The real question to ask, which is not addressed in these treatments, is if replacing ALL fossil-fuel burners with nuclear would yield better results than reducing the fuel the former burns by 10-20%. The obvious answer is that full replacement with nuclear makes wind and solar pointless. Thus wind and solar depend on the continued use of fossil-fuels to justify their existence.
Brian’s marking the continued drop in your estimated IQ every time you post.
The problem with this sort of technology is that it is not competitive with natural gas. This is why the old town gas/water gas plants that were still in use to the middle of the last century finally closed down. While there may be some synergies with nuclear for this sort of production, the point is moot unless there is some existing market that such fuel could service less expensively than natural gas.
I think DV82XL has misunderstood the nature of the material referenced in the linked article.
In any event, the material completely addresses the concern in the present topic – of intermittency of renewable energy.
On the off-topic issues introduced-
The solar gasification of biomass for instance exploits a 100% renewable solar energy resource. (Energy captured by photosynthesis plus solar thermal energy.)
The solar thermal gasification of coal is not more expensive than natural gas in a foreseeable market in which 1. Natural gas resources are finite and 2. Coal is available but unused in its native state due to carbon dioxide emission pricing
Another point to be noted about large capacity energy storage, should it ever exist; it would replace peaking plants, not be used to stabilise unreliables. For several of the reasons mentioned above, economics, maintenance and infrastructure being most prominent, assuming it were cost effective, it simply makes more sense to use large energy storage as a reservoir to absorb excess base load capacity and get rid of inefficient single cycle plants than attach them to an unpredictable source like wind or solar. Unreliables will always be treated more like a consumer (not a producer) by grid operators due to their unpredictable nature. The existence of large capacity storage would do nothing for unreliables, it would be used to balance the grid, much like we use peakers today.
I wrote that this technology is not competitive with natural gas. That sentence is in the present tense. Where as your assertion is in the future, a future which you are making assumptions about that are not true now.
Massive number of batteries using off-the-shelf technology would also address the intermittency of wind and solar. It is not a solution because it is not economically viable. Transparently you can’t see that the same stricture applies to your scheme for the reason I noted above: the price of natural gas is far too low to allow syngas to be competitive and will remain so for a very long time. That is unless this market is artificially distorted by governments as is already the case with wind and solar.
@EL
The research that you are pointing to comes from ivory tower academics or from people with products to sell. It is not coming from people who actually operate grids and have to account for all of the costs. Here is a link to one of many articles recently written by Willem Post on the effect of wind on power grids:
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/64492/wind-energy-reduces-co2-emissions-few-percent
Even without direct grid experience, the average person who drives a car and pays attention to gas mileage should understand clearly the effect on fuel economy from stopping and starting, especially if you have to ramp up and down very quickly in response to the way that wind can kick up or fall off. Remember those days in driver’s ed when the instructors taught you about the cost of “rabbit starts?”
Oops, I forgot. You are one of those who probably does not drive 10,000 – 25,000 miles per year and probably one who looks down on those of us who do.
I assumed you had read the document referenced in my first comment:
In any event, if you do read the referenced material you will find that:
1. A coal-to-SNG plant is to be constructed in Illinois – using Siemens AG technology.
2. A hybrid wind-turbine / solar thermal / CCGT plant is under construction in Turkey using new GE turbine technology.
3. A hybrid solar thermal / CCGT plant is to be constructed in California.
Solar thermal gasification of biomass should have a commercial edge over Natural Gas with carbon pricing in place.
@EL – there is a significant difference between a situation where power needs to be temporarily reduced in order to clear debris from a coolant water intake and a situation where a power generator can never do anything to control the input energy to their power system.
The nuclear plant operators can take action to clear those intakes. They might also be able to redesign or modify them to be less susceptible to the clogging in the first place. We invented this thing called a cooling tower a few decades ago that allows steam turbine plants to operate without any large cooling water intakes.
Going back to that list of nuclear plants in the path of Irene, only one of the power reductions was not under the control of the human operators – the one caused by flying siding. All of the rest of them were decisions made under controlled circumstances in response to factors other than weather related damage.
My point in this article is to point out that the characteristics of weather dependent power systems do not match the desired output of a power generation and delivery system without a lot of help from other contributors to the grid. Since we have a reliable power generation source that has extremely low fuel costs and emits no pollution, what good is spending enormous sums of money to build massive systems collect diffuse and unreliable weather related energy when they will be idle most of the time?
@Jason, excellent analogy.
Unreliable and mostly unavailable energy sources that interrupt production are always important in the economic computations of an industrial process that should be continuous. It is never economical to have idle capital or to stop and start chemical processes that take a finite period of time to stabilize.
I have run the numbers for endothermic reactions that upgrade various carbon containing raw materials into valuable liquid hydrocarbons. Some of them look promising as long as the heat source is reliable and can achieve a high capacity factor.
Ron,
Each of your assertions is contradicted by actual processes and industrial equipment:
eg 1. See the investment decision by a large energy supplier to build a peaking gas turbine power station for $1.5 billion planned to be operated for 200-400 hours per year. See => http://goo.gl/X3KZW
eg 2. GE and Siemens have engineered CCGT turbines to achieve rapid startup and shutdown for balancing rise and fall of wind-turbine and solar PV systems.
See => http://goo.gl/CIGhK and http://goo.gl/rkavx
eg 3. CSIRO development to commercialisation-ready “SolarGas” solar/methane/water chemical reforming technology. See => http://goo.gl/1IaYm
So some plants of this sort are being built. So what? These aren’t going to make any more money directly than current wind and solar installations that isn’t the result of heavy subsidies.
This doesn’t answer the point that this is not an economically viable technology given the price of natural gas right now. Evoking market distortions like carbon pricing might help, but do you seriously think that wind and solar could provide process heat as cheaply and at the same scale as a nuclear reactor for this application?
See anything solar or wind can do, nuclear can do better, and Watt per Watt (or BTU per BTU) do it less expensively over the long run.
An by the way I would like to see some proof for the statement: “Solar thermal gasification of biomass should have a commercial edge over Natural Gas with carbon pricing in place.”
While I can sympathize a bit with those who believe that it is immoral to use non-renewable energy, the real question is whether it is sustainable. If we look a nuclear power using breeder reactors, and consider that we can hardly exhaust the supply of uranium and thorium on earth before the sun swallows the planet, it really makes no difference that nuclear is not renewable.
Renewables have a problem in that large amounts of non-renewable materials are needed to construct renewable energy systems. Why is it morally superior to use renewable energy sources if in the process you run out of the (non-renewable) materials needed to capture that energy?
Excellent points here. Energy storage systems combined with reliable baseload power would be much more economical. For one thing, they need to be sized for only one day’s worth of peaking storage, unlike the storage system for unreliables which need to be sized for many days, up to a week’s worth, of peaking and baseload storage in order to be effective. Secondly, the “recharge” of the energy storage system can be scheduled when there is reliable baseload power to do the job. As a consequence, the “discharge” that follows can be scheduled as well.
The net result is that an energy storage system is much more economical when there is reliable generation — it can be cycled to it full capacity on a daily basis. And it need not be overbuilt to deal with unreliable power sources.
In these discussions about supposed ways to make unreliable renewable energy systems reliable, I keep remembering a statement I read early in my engineering career: “Engineering is the art and science of doing for $1 what any damned fool can do for $3.” It is obvious we have a lot of damned fools on the loose.
DV82XL,
You will have to wait till Ron reveals my comment at September 9, 2011 | 8:29 AM with the status: “Your comment is awaiting moderation”.
Emotional reasoning is where you become attached to a point of view, then refuse to look at evidence that conflicts. Here is one example:
1.
2. In an emotive response to the fact that coal to synthetic natural gas plants are being built in this century
To you, closure is evidence of non-competitiveness, and construction of new plants is evidence of non-competitiveness too!!!
Trolling and flaming are anti-social behaviours.
First I am not trolling (or flaming), and I take exception to your accusation that I am. I have contributed on this and other pronuclear websites for years and this is the first time anyone has had the temerity to accuse me of this simply because I do not agree with them.
Furthermore to claim that statements of fact like the closing down of town gas because they were noncompetitive are emotive responses is ludicrous on its face.
The point stands that solutions that are not practical or solutions that are not economically viable are no solutions at all. Synfuel technology has been around for some time, there is nothing new about it. The reason that it is not in wide practice is economic: int cannot produce fuel at a competitive price. Saying so is not trolling; it is a statement of fact.
Wind farms and solar farms are not competitive ether. They are built with heavy subsidies, direct or indirect and do not preform at levels more than a few tens of a percent of their nameplate ratings. They are not solutions to any practical increase in available energy.
Synfuel plans may not suffer this lack of efficiency, however the product they produce is not competitive with current sources. If they were they would now dominate the market. Claiming that carbon credits would change this depends on the type of carbon tax regime that could be legislated into existence, a point that fails to take into account the possibly of this happening.
The real point here is that nuclear energy can also reduce the carbon burden to levels far below any biofuel/synfuel option and could, if necessarily supply lower cost process heat for synfuel production if it was deemed necessarily. Ether way wind and solar lose.
Oh yea, I forgot … Brian Mays is the deferrer of degrees, measurer of merits, derider of dunces, bully of brilliance, layman of luminosity, and rote assigner of radiance. Is post count actually the specific measure of a cognitive deficit in this instance, because Mays has 5:3 by my count in this thread (so I think he appears to be leading the charge to a lower than average intelligent quotient by his own measure)?
Yes. This is a real question, and I definitely see your point. It would be nice to find a load following resource that produces no waste, emissions, is affordable, has no international security concerns, promotes conservation and intelligent use, is scalable for big communities and small (well developed and developing), grows the economy, has modest impacts when it fails, and is sustainable in it’s environmental footprint. I’m just not convinced this is nuclear power. We haven’t built a nuclear power plant in the States since 1977, but we’ve added nearly 34 Gigawatts of wind capacity to our grid (enough to power 9.7 million homes) in the last decade, or the equivalent of 10 nuclear power plants (assuming modest 30% capacity factor). Solar build out is just getting started with 30% renewable energy mandates in California, and lots of resource potential in the desert (and for baseload no less). Perhaps it’s just a matter of personal preference, but when it comes to taking a 20% chunk out of fossil fuel consumption (and associated emissions), and at zero marginal fuel cost and with much simpler technology (that is actually insurable), I’ll take it. I fully anticipate that in less than two decades, many renewables will reach cost competitiveness with fossil fuels (and will beat out nuclear on affordablility), and with better storage, demand management, baseload (hydro, geothermal and CST), transmission (HVDC and Superconductors), and biomass peaking plants, we’ll be in pretty good shape. Heck, we may even benefit from having a few nuclear plants around as well (keeping the technology on the table for the most well developed, politically stable, and energy intensive countries … and to clean up the mess we have created in HEU, DU, plutonium weapon’s stock, and spent fuel reserves). But as this story suggests, even this is not going all too well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/03/sellafield-mox-plant-close
On Willem Post article, the Bentek study (sponsored by Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States) and his other references are flawed. He’s not drawing on peer reviewed literature. UK did an extensive study in 2006 on efficiency losses from power plant cycling (and impact on costs and emissions), and they found: “There is no evidence to suggest that efficiency is reduce to such a degree as to significantly undermine fuel and carbon dioxide emissions savings” (p. 41).
http://www.uwig.org/0604_Intermittency_report_final.pdf
People can decide what they want regarding these sources and research summaries, but there is plenty out there to substantiate the UK research (and from many different vantage points and institutional perspectives … grid operators among them).
Naturally you are entitled to your opinion, but that is all it is. As I have written before all of the ‘issues’ so beloved by the antinuclear side exist only in their imaginations, and unless you can establish otherwise they are not relevant to this discussion.
Nor are fuel costs for nuclear a concern as they are only a small fraction of the cost from nuclear power.
Nevertheless if all this technology can do is assume 20% of total generation then it still begs the question of why bother, given nuclear can eliminate all carbon based power plants.
Your confidence in the forward development of things like storage, transmission and network control is just not backed up by any real facts – only hope. It always amuses me that those that criticize nuclear for what they consider unsolved issues (for which there are solutions) blithely assume that the problems associated with their favorite form of generation will be solved without problems.
When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, and this was true of wind and solar. But in many instances the failure of these schemes to deliver are forcing reevaluations of their utility and in many places plans are being put on hold or canceled outright. The fact is that wind and solar have had their day and while they will struggle on for awhile, the belief that they can solve the both the energy and the GHG problems is starting to decay. They serve only as greenwash now for increased use of natural gas.
Nuclear will win. It will win because in countries other than the US it is clear to both the politicians and an increasing numbers of the public that it is the only real choice.
I could see a Synfuel system deployed to Bagram Airfield as being competitive to the cost of transporting fuel from Pakistan. The Air Force has tested various blends of Synfuel in different platforms including the B-52. http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123026906
Synfuel based on what raw materials? It is not as if Bagram has a lot of biomass or coal lying around.
And the feedstock would come from where? Alternative fuels like those used in the B-52 experiments are produced from natural gas, coal and shale.
Have the locals grow it. Perhaps a demand for Safflower oil may displace land dedicated to poppies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17693692
Let’s look at some quote from your second link:
“It would be a travesty to misuse and abuse such an advanced CCGT for wind and solar energy balancing.”
And
Conclusions and Recommendations
Whereas the CCGT facility will improve the economics and reduce the operational difficulties of accommodating wind energy to the grid, the combination of this high-efficiency CCGT facility with a moderate-efficiency wind turbine facility will be less efficient than the CCGT facility in base-loaded mode and daily-demand-following mode.
The wind turbine facility contributes just 543,120/4,467,600 x 100% = 12.2% to the total electrical production, but adds 500,000,000/1,137,500,000 x 100% = 44% to the capital cost and adds 1,417/909 x 100% = 55.9% to the cost of reducing CO2 emissions.
Correct me if I am wrong, but this seems to support my contention that these are not economically viable , rather than your assertion that they are.
EL – You forgot user of paragraphs. Failure to break up a rambling stream of thought into more coherent, organized units is a sign of poor writing skills and, often, low intelligence (92).
I’m also someone who knows that the company that built the largest solar energy generating facility in the world, Luz Industries, went bankrupt shortly thereafter in 1991. The facility still runs today, but only because of various incentives and mandates provided by the state of California. If it were forced to compete in a even market, it would close for good.
Since 1991, solar hasn’t fared much better. Solar firms today not only are going bankrupt, they are being raided by the FBI after taking $535 million in low interest loans from the government and then going belly up.
This is a fine example of American tax dollars at work.
Plenty of people thought this in the 1970’s, which led to the Luz bankruptcy. Plenty of people think this today, which led to the Solyndra bankruptcy. This is a matter of faith, which apparently is immune to all empirical evidence.
DV82XL says:
“Your confidence in the forward development of things like storage, transmission and network control is just not backed up by any real facts – only hope. It always amuses me that those that criticize nuclear for what they consider unsolved issues (for which there are solutions) blithely assume that the problems associated with their favorite form of generation will be solved without problems.”
————————–
Exactly! It never ceases to amaze me how the green energy devotees have undying, never-ending faith in that technological pot of gold at the end of their green rainbow that is supposed to bless us all with a 30% wind-and-solar energy future — and never mind the technical barriers that may never be overcome.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, I try to explain to them the benefits of the technological advances looming on the horizon with nuclear energy as envisioned in the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) and GE-Hitachi’s PRISM reactor (among others). When I do, everything just seems to go in one ear and out the other. Nothing registers.
Admittedly, the above-mentioned reactor technologies are not yet commercially proven and are probably many years away from being proven. Nonetheless, I would bet on their chances of success long before I would bet on green energy’s 30% wind-and-solar energy future.
And yes, if wind and solar can only provide 30% of our energy needs, why bother when nuclear can provide all of it. Great point.
Or, to put it another way: nuclear plants are damned when they DO try to be safe, and they are damned when they don’t. They’re between an rock and a hard place — they can’t win.
30% is dreaming in color – even the wind and solar industries themselves are only promising 20%, and that’s a joke. The reality is maybe 12-15% if everything goes their way, and then only in areas that are particularly suited for deployment.
We should also take note of the fact that when tooting renewable energy’s horn, legacy hydro is always figured into the calculations, but rarely is the very high percentage to the renewable mix that it shoulders underlined. Take that away and even the modest penetration that is claimed for renewables shrivels away to little more than token amounts.
DV82XL:
Thanks for the reply. I stand corrected.
This makes listening to Greenpeace’s allegations that wind and solar can provide most or ALL of our electrical energy needs even more outrageous. Unbelievable.
Even if it isn’t justifiable on purely economic grounds, could it still be a good idea to build some in Europe for reasons of national security (ie buying less gas from Gazprom)?
What do you make of this? Some regions of Spain are now producing 70% of demand and China reckons they could produce 100% by 2030.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Spain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
Find me something other than Wikipedia boosterisim written by True Believers, and I might give it some consideration.
“And yes, if wind and solar can only provide 30% of our energy needs, why bother when nuclear can provide all of it. Great point.”
This is a point I make all the time to the renewies. Even if we ever get to 30% renewables, where do we go for the other 70%? It seems like we’re leaving 3/4s of the problem unsolved. Why are we spending so much time and effort on a system that at best will provide less than a third of our needs, when we could be putting our efforts into a system that can provide 100% of our demand, at low cost and with very little environmental impact? All I’ve ever gotten for making this point is to be called names, never have been given a straight answer.
some people say that there is a pile of birds under every windmill. And what happens when one of those 150′ blades comes flying off? The whole tower goes down. What a mess – fiberglass all over the place. You don’t get splinters shoveling graphite and plutonium!
Hi Rod,
That is one informative write up and hence, we have put it up on our site, ensuring that it reaches out to more and more people!
Regards,
Pooja
http://www.nuclearfriendsfoundation.com/people-speak-nuclear-detailswind-and-solar-are-not-intermittentthey-are-unreliableunpredictable-and-uncontrollable.aspx
Why don’t you edit the relevant pages to remove their bullshit then?
the residents of Fukishima agree with this utter nonsense and nuke industry propaganda.