My position on wind energy is quite ambivalent. I really do want it (and solar) to play an effective role in displacing fossil fuels, because to do this, we need every tool at our disposal (witness the Open Science project I kick started in 2009 [and found funding for], in order to investigate the real potential of renewables, Oz-Energy-Analysis.Org).
However, I think there is far too much wishful thinking wrapped up in the proclamations by the “100% renewables” crowd(most of who are unfortunately also anti-nuclear advocates), that wind somehow offers both a halcyon choice and an ‘industrial-strength’ solution to our energy dilemma. In contrast, my TCASE series (thinking critically about sustainable energy) illustrates that, pound-for-pound, wind certainty does NOT punch above it’s weight as a clean-energy fighter; indeed, it’s very much a journeyman performer.
The following guest post, by Jon Boone, looks at wind energy with a critical eye and a witty turn of phrase. I don’t offer it as a comprehensive technical critique — rather it’s more a philosophical reflection on past performance and fundamental limits. Whatever your view of wind, I think you’ll find it interesting.
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Energy debates in Wonderland
Guest Post by Jon Boone. Jon is a former university administrator and longtime environmentalist who seeks more more informed, effective energy policy in ways that expand and enhance modernity, increase civility, and demand stewardship on behalf of biodiversity and sensitive ecosystems. His brand of environmentalism eschews wishful thinking because it is aware of the unintended adverse consequences flowing from uninformed decisions. He produced and directed the documentary, Life Under a Windplant, which has been freely distributed within the United States and many countries throughout the world. He also developed the website Stop Ill Wind as an educational resource, posting there copies of his most salient articles and speeches. He receives no income from his work on wind technology.
March Hare (to Alice): Have some wine.
(Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.)
Alice: I don’t see any wine.
March Hare: There isn’t any.
Alice: Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it.
March Hare: It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited.
— From Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
Energy journalist Robert Bryce, whose latest book, Power Hungry, admirably foretells an electricity future anchored by natural gas from Marcellus Shale that will eventually bridge to pervasive use of nuclear power, has recently been involved in two prominent debates. In the first, conducted by The Economist, Bryce argued for the proposition that “natural gas will do more than renewables to limit the world’s carbon emissions.” In the second, an Intelligence Squared forum sponsored by the Rosenkranz Foundation, he and American Enterprise Institute scholar Steven Hayward argued against the proposition that “Clean Energy can drive America’s economic recovery.”
Since there’s more evidence a friendly bunny brings children multi-colored eggs on Easter Sunday than there is that those renewables darlings, wind and solar, can put much of a dent in CO2 emissions anywhere, despite their massively intrusive industrial presence, the first debate was little more than a curiosity. No one mentioned hydroelectric, which has been the most widely effective “renewable”—ostensibly because it continues to lose marketshare (it now provides the nation with about 7% of its electricity generation), is an environmental pariah to the likes of The Sierra Club, and has little prospect for growth. Nuclear, which provides the nation’s largest grid, the PJM, with about 40% of its electricity, is not considered a renewable, despite producing no carbon emissions; it is also on The Sierra Club’s hit list. Geothermal and biomass, those minor league renewables, were given short shrift, perhaps because no one thought they were sufficiently scalable to achieve the objective.
So it was a wind versus gas scrum played out as if the two contenders were equally matched as producers of power. Bryce pointed out wind’s puny energy density, how its noise harms health and safety, its threat to birds and bats, and how natural gas’s newfound abundance continues to decrease its costs—and its price. His opponent carried the argument that wind and solar would one day be economically competitive with natural gas, such that the former, since they produced no greenhouse gasses, would be the preferred choice over the latter, which does emit carbon and, as a non renewable, will one day become depleted.
Such a discussion is absurd at a number of levels, mirroring Alice’s small talk with the March Hare. One of the troubling things about the way wind is vetted in public discourse is how “debate” is framed to ensure that wind has modern power and economic value. It does not. Should we debate whether the 747 would do more than gliders in transporting large quantities of freight? Bryce could have reframed the discussion to ask whether wind is better than cumquats as a means of emissions reductions. But he didn’t. And the outcome of this debate, according to the vote, was a virtual draw.
Ironically, the American Natural Gas Association is perking up its louche ad slogan: “The success of wind and solar depends on natural gas.” Eureka! To ANGA, wind particularly is not an either to natural gas’s or. Rather, the renewables du jour will join forces with natural gas to reduce carbon emissions in a way that increases marketshare for all. With natural gas, wind would be an additive—not an alternative—energy source. Bryce might have made this clear.
What ANGA and industry trade groups like the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (see its latest paper) don’t say is that virtually all emissions reductions in a wind/gas tandem would come from natural gas—not wind. But, as Bryce should also be encouraged to say, such a pretension is a swell way for the natural gas industry to shelter income via wind’s tax avoidance power. And to create a PR slogan based upon the deception of half-truths. Although natural gas can indeed infill wind’s relentless volatility, the costs would be enormous while the benefit would be inconsequential. Rate and taxpayers would ultimately pay the substantial capital expenses of supernumerary generation.
Beyond Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
The Oxford-style Economist debate, which by all accounts Bryce and Hayward won with ease, nonetheless woozled around in a landscape worthy of Carroll’s Jabberwocky, complete with methodological slips, definitional slides, sloganeering, and commentary that often devolved into meaningless language—utter nonsense. It was as if Pixar had for the occasion magically incarnated the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter, and Humpty Dumpty, who once said in Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Dumpty also said, “When I make a word do a lot of work … I always pay it extra.”
Those promoting “clean” were paying that word extra—and over the top, as Hayward frequently reminded by demanding a clear, consistent definition of clean technology.
Proponents frequently defined clean energy differently depending upon what they chose to mean. At times, they meant acts of commission in the form of “clean coal,” wind, solar, biomass (although ethanol was roundly condemned), and increased use of natural gas. Indeed, natural gas in the discussion became reified, in the best Nancy Pelosi/T. Boone Pickens tradition, as a clean source of energy on a par with wind and solar. At one time, clean also referred to nuclear—but the topic quickly changed back to wind and natural gas. At other times, clean referred to acts of omission, such as reducing demand with more efficient appliances, smarter systems of transmission, and more discerning lifestyle choices.
Shifting definitions about what was “clean” made for a target that was hard to hit. Bryce mentioned Jevon’s Paradox. Bulls eye. So much for increased efficiency. Hayward demonstrated that the US electricity sector has already cut SO2 and NOx emissions nearly 60% over the last 40 years, and reduced mercury emissions by about 40% over this time, despite tripling coal use from 1970 to 2005. Zap. All this without wind and solar. Green jobs from clean industry? It would have been fruitful to have invoked Henry Hazlitt’s Broken Window fallacy, which illustrates the likelihood of few net new jobs because of the opportunities lost for other, more productive investment. Also welcoming would have been remarks about how more jobs in the electricity sector must translate into increased costs, making electricity less affordable. Such a development would substantially subvert prospects for economic recovery.
In arguing against the proposition that clean energy could be a force for economic recovery, Bryce and Hayward did clean the opposition’s clock (they had, as everyone agreed, the numbers on their side). But they also let the opposition off the hook by not exposing the worms at the core of the proposition. Yes, the numbers overwhelmingly suggest that coal and natural gas are going to be around for a long time, and that they will continue to be the primary fuels, along with oil, to energize the American economy.** They can be, as they have been, made cleaner by reducing their carbon emissions even more. But they won’t be clean. Outside Wonderland, cleaner is still not clean.
The proposition therefore had to fail. Even in Wonderland.
Capacity Matters
These arguments, however, are mere body blows. Bryce should have supplied the knockout punch by reminding that any meaningful discussion of electricity production, which could soon embrace 50% of our overall energy use, must consider the entwined goals of reliability, security, and affordability, since reliable, secure, affordable electricity is the lynchpin of our modernity. Economic recovery must be built upon such a foundation. At the core of this triad, however, resides the idea of effective capacity—the ability of energy suppliers to provide just the right amount of controllable power at any specified time to match demand at all times. It is the fount of modern power applications.
By insisting that any future technology—clean, cleaner, or otherwise, particularly in the electricity sector—must produce effective capacity, Bryce would have come quickly to the central point, moving the debate out of Wonderland and into sensible colloquy.
Comparing—both economically and functionally—wind and solar with conventional generation is spurious work. Saying that the highly subsidized price of wind might, maybe, possibly become, one day, comparable to coal or natural gas may be true. But even if this happens, if, say, wind and coal prices become equivalent, paying anything for resources that yield no or little effective capacity seems deranged as a means of promoting economic recovery for the most dedicatedly modern country on the planet.
Subsidies for conventional fuels—coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro—make sense because they promote high capacity generation. Subsidies for wind and solar, which are, as Bryce stated, many times greater on a unit of production basis than for conventional fuels, promote pretentious power that make everything else work harder simply to stand still.
Consider the following passage from Part II of my recent paper, which is pertinent in driving this point home:
Since reliable, affordable, secure electricity production has historically required the use of many kinds of generators, each designed to perform different but complementary roles, much like instruments in an orchestra, it is not unreasonable for companies in the power business to diversify their power portfolios. Thus, investment in an ensemble of nuclear and large coal plants to provide for baseload power, along with bringing on board smaller coal and natural gas plants to engage mid and peak load, makes a great deal of sense, providing for better quality and control while achieving economies of scale.
Traditional diversified power portfolios, however, insisted upon a key common denominator: their generating machines, virtually all fueled by coal, natural gas, nuclear, and/or hydro, had high unit availability and capacity value. That is, they all could be relied upon to perform when needed precisely as required.
How does adding wind—a source of energy that cannot of itself be converted to modern power, is rarely predictable, never reliable, always changing, is inimical to demand cycles, and, most importantly, produces no capacity value—make any sense at all? Particularly when placing such a volatile brew in an ensemble that insists upon reliable, controllable, dispatchable modes of operation. As a functional means of diversifying a modern power portfolio, wind is a howler.
Language Matters
All electricity suppliers are subsidized. But conventional generation provides copious capacity while wind supplies none and solar, very little. The central issue is capacity—or its absence. Only capacity generation will drive future economic recovery. And Bryce should say so in future debates. Birds and bats, community protests, health and safety—pale in contrast to wind technology’s lack of capacity. And Bryce should say so. Ditto for any contraption fueled by dilute energy sources that cannot be converted to modern power capacity—even if they produce no carbon emissions. Clean and green sloganeering should not be conflated with effective production.
Moreover, even if the definition of clean and/or renewable technology is stretched to mean reduced or eliminated carbon emissions caused by less consumption of fossil fuels, then where is the evidence that technologies like wind and solar are responsible for doing this? When in the debate former Colorado governor Bill Ritter claimed that the wind projects he helped build in his state were reducing California’s carbon emissions, why didn’t the Bryce/Hayward team demand proof? Which is non existent.
It’s not just wind’s wispy energy density that makes conversion to modern power impossible—without having it fortified by substantial amounts of inefficiently operating fossil-fired power, virtually dedicated transmission lines, and new voltage regulation, the costs of which must collectively be calculated as the price for integrating wind into an electricity grid. It is rather wind’s continuous skittering, which destabilizes the required match between supply and demand; it must be smoothed by all those add-ons. The vast amount of land wind gobbles up therefore hosts a dysfunctional, Rube Goldbergesque mechanism for energy conversion. Bryce and his confreres would do well to aim this bullet right between the eyes.
Robert Bryce remains a champion of reasoned discourse and enlightened energy policy. He is one of the few energy journalists committed to gleaning meaningful knowledge from a haze of data and mere information. His work is a wise undertaking in the best traditions of journalism in a democracy. As he prepares for future debates—although, given the wasteland of contemporary journalism, it is a tribute to his skills that he is even invited to the table—he must cut through the chaff surrounding our politicized energy environment, communicating instead the whole grained wheat of its essentials.
Endnote: You might also enjoy my other relatively recent paper, Oxymoronic Wind (13-page PDF). It covers a lot of ground but dwells on the relationship between wind and companies swaddled in coal and natural gas, which is the case worldwide.
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** It was fascinating to note Hayward’s brief comment about China’s involvement with wind, no doubt because it seeks to increase its renewables’ manufacturing base and then export the bulk of the machines back to a gullible West. As journalist Bill Tucker said recently in a panel discussion about the future of nuclear technology on the Charlie Rose show, China (and India), evidently dedicated to achieve high levels of functional modernity, will soon lead the world in nuclear production as it slowly transitions from heavy use of coal over the next half-century.
Brave New Climate 
368 replies on “Energy debates in Wonderland”
Gregory Meyerson, going back to your original set of questions, I was also interested in the implications of DC&K for the first of Peter Lang’s points:
The basis of this contention is that the efficiency of the fossil fuel generators is reduced when wind is introduced to the grid because they are ramping up and down to follow the wind fluctuation; and, the system as a whole burns more fossil fuel than the wind contributions offset.
In other words, adding wind to the grid increases CO2 emissions. This is counterintuitive, and shocking, and if true is the biggest strike against wind – it simply doesn’t do the job we hired it to do.
The DC&K model uses fixed values for gas turbine fuel efficiency (Table 1 – 35% for open cycle and 55% for closed cycle). So by assumption, the model cannot demonstrate this negative emissions abatement. It does not incorporate the physics that produces the effect.
But we know that assuming fixed efficiencies, independent of wind penetration, is wrong. The empirical analysis of the Dutch grid by le Pair and de Groot calculates the efficiency hit on the generators and finds that the additional fuel burned outweighs the fuel saved. Kent Hawkins has provided a commentary on this work, and notes:
Hawkins has built a model for the efficiency penalty, and the Dutch data validates it, so we can be reasonably comfortable that we understand what is going on, quantitatively.
Studies of two more grids, Colorado (6% wind penetration) and Texas (5% penetration) appear to show higher emissions with wind integration, and are also consistent with the model. Hawkins provides commentary on these also.
Coming back to the Dutch study, le Pair and de Groot use available Dutch data to back out the efficiency of the backup generators as a function of wind penetration. It goes from 45% without wind, down to 24% at only 5% wind penetration. This is a huge penalty at trivial wind penetration!
If this is at all correct, then DC&K have excluded an important consideration from their model. The cost of power would be greater than they calculate, the carbon abatement less, or negative, and the wind penetration at which you hit a wall is much lower.
But to answer your original question, I don’t think the DC&K paper challenges the idea the wind power may not save carbon emissions, and may actually increase them.
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@Cyril R., on 24 April 2011 at 12:04 AM
Unfortunately I no longer have IEEE access, but hopefully you can access the full text of this July 2010 paper: Calculation and analysis of capacity credit of wind farms based on Monte-Carlo simulation. The authors are at the North China Electr. Power Univ., Beijing, China. No doubt they have a keen interest in evaluating the real-world impact of wind generation. Abstract:
How to compare the wind power generation and traditional power generation in aspect of capacity is essential of power system expansion. The capacity credit is a convenient and effective way to compare these two different types of power generation. Unfortunately, the definition of capacity credit of wind farms is not clear and generally acknowledged. In this paper, a more clear definition of wind farms’ capacity credit based on well-known concept of effective load carrying capability (ELCC) is presented. As well as a calculation method of wind farms’ capacity credit based on non-sequential Monte-Carlo simulation, this method considered the failure of transmission lines. The secant method is used at capacity credit calculation process, and the modified direct current optimal power flow method is adopted in power flow calculation. Several different influence factors of capacity credit of wind farms such as the cut-in, cut-out and rated wind speed and the rated capacity of the wind turbine generator, transmission capacity of transmission lines and different integration solutions are analyzed in IEEE-RTS79 case studies.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5589289
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@ Gregory Meyerson, on 23 April 2011 at 10:49 PM: Yes. Remember, the system that provided that advice has enormous oversupply of hydro – averaging more than their own average total load, exclusive of exports to their neighbouring systems.
@EL:
You refer to “deficits, waste, fraud, and abuse”, but have not demonstrated that these exist. Don’t get me wrong – there may well be all three present in your notional system, but you have not even tried to demonstrate that this is so. Real analyisi requires real facts.
I have no problem with demand management. I do, however, believe that the energy supply and distribution should serve the demands of the marketplace, because otherwise will result in brownouts, blackouts, damage to equipment and severe loss of commercial opportunity… to say nothing of inconvenience and little things like lifesaving appliances ceasing to function when there is no power. The alternative appears to be for each consumer to be forced to consider providing personal backup power supplies, similar to the candles and UPSes which I used to need when I lived at the end of a remote two-wire supply years ago.
EL, Reliability is high on my personal list of priorities and, I suspect (no references) that it ranks highly with other users.
Your repeated attempts on this site to justify gross undersupply by calling it demand management are not winners. By all means, consider demand management, but not by draconian, economy busting methods.
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Why will China buy your plan?
Please excuse a short rant: There is a lot of thought being invested in this and related threads — examining various issues of interest to the rich countries (Australia, EU, …). No doubt Barry already has my proposed topic in his master plan, but I keep itching to see some of this effort invested in what really matters. I think of it as “Cheaper than coal” as a shorthand for energy options that will actually be adopted by China, India (alternatively, the “Chindi price”).
For any energy option to appeal to China et al it must have LCOE competitive with coal, and be scalable to keep up with their expected demand growth. China will probably use some wind in the “fat pitch” locations. But if Peter Lang is approximately right, China isn’t going to achieve a low carbon economy near mid-century by subsidizing “renewables” like the rich Danes and Germans.
So I think the key question that all these proposals need to answer is “show me why the Chinese will buy your idea”. If China doesn’t go for it, it really does not matter.
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@ John Morgan, on 24 April 2011 at 9:56 AM:
You have brought together contributions form several sources to present a convincing yet worrying thesis, which is that above trivial penetration in real systems, more wind actually results in more CO2. This is worthy of very careful consideration by both sides – pro and anti wind, because the ramifications are enormous. Thank you.
OCGT = Open Cycle GT. A jet engine on a shaft with a generator at the other end.
CCGT = Combined (not “closed”) cycle GT. One or more OCGT’s feeding their hot exhausts into a boiler which, with a bit of supplementary fuel, generates steam for a turbine and generator set and thus extracts more energy from the fuel fed into the GT. These are much less responsive than OCGT’s due to the thermal mass of the boiler side of things.
CCGT’s and Hydro are generally preferred by grid operators to support wind because, despite the lower thermal efficiency of OCGT, both are able to ramp up and down very fast and thus follow the variations in power which is derived from wind.
One instance which I am familiar with involved a proposal (never constructed) to install CCGT in stages, commencing with two OCGT’s, at an aluminium smelter to provide on-site power in times of high price or system failure. I mention this, not because of the link with wind, but to illustrate that there are other reasons, apart from balancing wind generation, to include OCGT and/or CCGT components in a grid.
OCGT has also been used for many years in a couple of coal fired power stations with which I am familiar, to provide black start capacity and at remote mining towns, because of its low capital cost, ease of construction, simple operation and excellent load following capability.
I guess that my message here is not to be too hard on OCGT – it may be relatively inefficient, but it is virtually essential in modern systems which has minimal hydro capacity.
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John Bennetts, on 23 April 2011 at 1:40 PM — This IEA wind study
Click to access T2493.pdf
about which DV8 writess that he is going to read it! Good, as I am sure he’ll see matters therefrom differently than I.
Regarding BPA and their wind woes, they have already stated that there will be times during periods of high flow that the wind operators will not be allowed to generate. So the current approximately ~3.3 GW namplate of wind is about all that 12+ GW of hydro can reliably regulate, although more than the 20% that BPA had initially estimated.
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The third (and last) item in the essay establishing this thread I wish to address (before later moving on to what is actually wrong with wind power in a leter comment) is Birds and Bats
Birds: A nonissue for modern wind turbines which rotate quite slowly. Bird lovers need to work on substantive issue such as feral cats and high speed automobiles; both of these kill far more birds than the wind turbines do.
Bats: This is a siting isuue as there is so far no way of aiding bats in avoiding the wind turbine impellors (blades). While there are Friends of Birds (Audobon Society) there doesn’t appear to be a Friends of BAts (and there ought to be). So don’t allow wind farms near bat caves and within bat hunting grounds.
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The interaction of wind turbines and birds is somewhat more complex than if they get chopped up by the things. For example the impact of large installations is to drive raptors away from these areas, as they cannot hunt successfully. This causes an explosion in prey species like mice, voles, rabbits, and such which can then do major damage to the flora, causing local breakdowns in the ecological balance. Some land previously used for grazing, which it was believed would still support that function after the turbines were installed, have be rendered useless due to this very sequence of events.
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DV82XL, on 24 April 2011 at 1:12 PM — That certainly sounds plausible. Another potentially quite serious siting restriction.
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The Sunday paper I sometimes get likes to romanticise green notions. Today it praised the deal whereby carbon guilt stricken Norway pays Guyana to refine from razing some of its forest. The principle seems to be that the underdeveloped country agrees to live simply while the emissions of the developed country are ‘cancelled’ . I’m not sure how that is physically different compared to the time before money changed hands.
Anyway it seems that the natives may take the money, raze the forest next door with unprecedented ferocity then spend the cash on SUVs.
http://www.forestjustice.org/2011/04/12/update-more-money-for-deforestation-the-norway-guyana-debacle/
Note that Norway has had carbon tax since 1991.
I think we can safely assume China and India won’t be paying other countries to officially absorb their emissions.
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That’s ‘refrain from’.
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@John Morgan, 24 April 9.56am’
Just like the DC&K paper, Peter Lang was assuming that wind power would be only backed up by natural gas fired power, but unlike DC&K he assumes NO storage(hydro or pumped hydro, or CAES), and total wind capacity limited to supplying 30% of power.
Considering that Australia has 4GW of reliable hydro capacity(24,000GWh storage) and an additional 2.2GW of short term pumped hydro(20GWh storage), in total about 25% of av demand, this is a major shortcoming.
There are 4 ways to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions using mainly wind based renewable energy;
1) collecting wind power over a very large geographic area(ie size of US or Australia)
http://www.oz-energy-analysis.org/analysis/BtCC_simulated_wind_farms.php
2) incorporate a small amount of CST with short term thermal storage, an efficient way of meeting daily peak demand(no CO2 emissions low losses)
3) us as much excess wind as possible to store energy as pumped hydro(20% losses, no CO2).
4) back-up low wind periods with pumped hydro and hydro capacity, then NG fired OCGT and CCGT during infrequent low wind periods(ie less than 20% capacity) or exceptional high demand periods(about 1% of time).
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David Benson, bird strike is only the zeroth order impact on bird populations. The bigger impact is habitat destruction, or changes in habitat that have deleterious effects, as DV82XL has just noted.
I was out in a national park yesterday chatting with the ranger about movements in the local bird populations and the factors at play. At the broadest of brushstrokes, his impression on what drove these changes was “habitat, habitat, habitat”. He said if you introduced feral cats, pigs etc. into an area, or provided some other insult (fire, drought) the birds would still do ok if there was sufficient habitat. But if the habitat were degraded or reduced, you could knock them out.
The habitat issue is what concerns me with wind. You need to protect the existing habitat, which is already degraded and under threat from many human activities. You need to ensure there is enough of it, of the right types, contiguous regions of the right scale, and connectivity between them (“wildlife corridors”). An expansion of wind at a scale large enough to achieve significant penetration into our grid comes at the expense of stealing a vast amount of habitat from ecological communities.
If you look at a wind resource map for Australia, you’ll see the high value wind is concentrated mostly tight on the coast, mostly south and west. In the comments to the TCASE4 post I estimated – very roughly – that meeting Australia’s energy demand with wind from economic sites would require about two thirds of the coastline to be packed 3-4 km deep with wind turbines spaced on a 500 m grid. I’m not suggesting that that is the way a deployment would proceed, but its inevitable that an attempt to generate real, climate change averting, power, would have a huge impact on coastal habitat. You would be preferentially impacting to an extreme degree a particular littoral collection of ecosystems.
Clear the sites for the wind turbines. Clear the land for the road access ways. Clear the pathways for the transmission lines. Bring in the heavy machinery and do the earthworks to plant the turbine towers and the power poles. Maintain the road access for service and replacement. Do this over the required scale in a particular selection of important ecosystems, and the impact on birds, and other denizens, is most assuredly not a “non-issue”.
Apart from the obvious things such as removing food resources, exposure to predation and sun, impact by vehicles, easy movement (especially in bush areas) of non-native species such as cats and dogs and cane toads, and the general fragmenting of habitat, the ecological impacts can be very subtle – to us.
Wildlife generally has evolved to fit into certain niches. Change them, and you can wipe out the animal. Take a human and assume he/she has only known life around the local shopping centre and dump them in the bush or desert. Take away the roads, electricity, shops, medical services etc. Some might survive, but most would not. We have heard of explorers and lost people starving to death in what the Aborigines would have regarded as a land of plenty.
Some wildlife can benefit from these changes. Water storages in the arid areas benefitted kangaroos; feral camels, pigs, goats. Cropping benefitted galahs, cockatoos rats and mice. Not things we liked, but also this leads to imbalance which has a knock-on effect on biodiversity – much of which is not visible to us.
Changing water flow, by concentrating it, or sending into places it has not been can have dramatic effects. With any road-building whether gravel or bitumin there is always the introduction of nutrients, and that can change the vegetation and hence the fauna in the locality. While some things increase in numbers by having more water on roadsides, others are either displaced by those increased numbers or because they require the drier conditions.
But the habitat impacts of human engineered power systems pale in comparison to the vast habitat losses coming our way from global warming. Beyond the direct and indirect impacts of wind farm development lies the risk that, as I wrote above at 9:56 AM, wind power does not reduce carbon emissions, and may increase carbon emissions. The biggest negative ecosystem impact may be that we spend our resources on a carbon abatement technology that doesn’t work, instead of one which does – nuclear power – and which has a habitat impact that is indeed a “non-issue”.
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I watched the “Life Under a Windmill” video on YouTube referenced by Jon Boone and am very suspicious of the noise claims being made. There are a slew of videos on YouTube taken in very close proximity to wind turbines that do not demonstrate the types of noise portrayed in the so-called documentary.
I don’t have any firsthand experience that close to a turbine so I have no way of knowing for sure but it seems unlikely that a device driven by wind (not driving the wind like an airplane propeller etc.) and one that is designed to be as efficient as possible, would be generating 80+ db at distances over 1000 ft away…..? Is the information in that video accurate?
I find it hard to believe that there is a conspiracy of people out there taking videos of turbines and editing the audio from the video to make them sound quieter than they actually are……?
Jason
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John Morgan
Thank you for your insightful post re habitat depletion.
I just wish that the purported “Environmentalist” and others who think like him, could actually appreciate what huge damage to the “environment” and therefore to the species inhabiting it, large scale renewable power could engender.
The anti-nuclear green movement seems to care more about banning nuclear power than stopping global warming.
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EL is making stuff up. I don’t suggest to use nuclear in load following, indeed I have explicitly suggested the opposite: grids with lots of hydro use hydro as peaking/load following, with the nuclear doing 24/7 delivery. This isn’t theoretical; Switzerland and Sweden have proven this completely. My other point was very simple: focusing on that 6.5 percent solution (transmission losses) is silly when there’s that 90% problem to deal with (get rid of fossil fuels). Alas, it turns out that ‘going local’ on power generation reduces the efficiency of the generators (whether steam/gas turbines or wind turbines) more than the reduced transmission losses give you back!!!
Environmentalist, the definition of capacity factor is not ‘efficiency’. It is availability. How much of the time, on average, is your generator making power? The usefulness of this concept becomes evident to all, when we turn it around: how much of the time is the energy NOT there. In Germany it turns out that their solar rooftop panels are not making power, on average, 89% of the time. Oops! Even in the Mojave desert a flat plate installation is not there 80% of the time and even a tracker which costs more is still not there 75% of the time. Capacity factor matters, especially for energy sources that are not dispatchable. Can’t turn on the sun at night, or make it shine harder in winter.
Its not the solar panels or wind turbines that are unreliable. Its that the sun and wind are highly variable and on average not there most of the time.
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For reference, Sweden:
Click to access SEELEC.pdf
Switzerland:
Click to access CHELEC.pdf
France:
Click to access FRELEC.pdf
All highly decarbonised electric systems.
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Cyril, i wrote an answer to you on the Fukushima threat, but there it is very much off topic, so let us move the discussion here:
—————–
“Compare to coal in the US at 15 deaths per TWh, extremely dangerous, even in a modern country. ”
i took electricty from wikipedia:
(1.991 trillion kilowatt-hours per year)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_the_United_States
so about 2 trillion or 2000 TWh (please correct all my math errors, i am tired)
that gives about 20000 for ten years, and in the last decade i find 700 death from mining in the USA. (and assume they were all for coal)
Click to access allstates.pdf
(All Mining Fatalities By State)
that gives about 0.035 death per TWh of coal electricity in the USA over the last decade. (again, please correct all my errors) this would at least be in the same ballpark as nuclear, according to your source. (which i think has it all wrong and seriously underestimates nuclear deaths by at least one order of magnitude. it was not just chernobyl!)
——————–
where are the errors in my calculation?
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Cyril said:
“I have explicitly suggested the opposite: grids with lots of hydro use hydro as peaking/load following, with the nuclear doing 24/7 delivery. This isn’t theoretical; Switzerland and Sweden have proven this completely.”
it is obvious that nuclear and water storage works well together. (actually everything works well with water storage..)
i think there are two problems with this:
1. countries that focus on nuclear fall behind in alterantive energy, which is the future market.
2. the electric market is free. night time nuclear power will compete with wind and solar peaks for storage in pump water. and then the cheapest price and flexibility will win the day. good luck!
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Hello Sod, the main thing is that a lot of people die due to lung cancer and other lung-related diseases. This is the main killer for all fossil fuels. Lots of particulate matter is the primary killer, so US plants which often have electrostatic or baghouse filters do much better, but it’s not perfect. For example the tiniest particulate matter, PM 2.5, is much less effectively captured by the filters, and it causes the most cancer.
Mining, construction, decommissioning etc. are not big contributors.
Even if the death rate is underestimated by a factor 10 it is still 0.7 deaths per TWh, comparable to PV (needs a lot of material and working on roofs is actually not very safe), but much safer than burning anything, even biomass and natural gas (again particulate matter is a big killer).
I think the main conclusion from the death per TWh data is: stop burning stuff for energy!
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“In Germany it turns out that their solar rooftop panels are not making power, on average, 89% of the time.”
supporters of nuclear energy often give the impression that nuclear is available 100% of the time. let us look at my favourite power plant in Germany:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%BCmmel_Nuclear_Power_Plant
since June 2007 Krümmel plant has been running for a little more than 2 weeks..
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so your link
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/lifetime-deaths-per-twh-from-energy.html
in the first table compares all effects of coal (including global lung cancer), about 1000000 deaths, with the kills that one nuclear accident caused by direct exposition to radiation (107)?
does this really make sense to you?
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Neil Howes, I agree storage will help with the reduced efficiency of fossil fuel plants backfilling wind fluctuations. What I don’t know is how much storage would be required, but my fear is that for high penetration wind, it will be very large.
It may be that instead of the wind contribution being completely negated by efficiency loss at a penetration of 2.1%, as in the no-storage Dutch grid, in Australia with our hydro we could go all the way to 5% wind before we start burning more carbon than we save. Or maybe 75%. I don’t know, but it is critical that we find out by empirical studies of existing grids.
My suspicion is that we would find the point of negative abatement to lie closer to the Dutch limit than to the ‘zero efficiency reduction’ limit, because our pumped and non-pumped hydro is already deployed to particular grid stabilization and load balancing roles. Balancing fluctuating wind is requiring an additional function that I assume will require additional capacity.
Even if we don’t move in to negative abatement territory at high wind penetration, we know the efficiency of the fossil fuel plant will nevertheless be reduced, and therefore the emission abatement ability of wind is degraded. Even if some emissions reduction is achieved, it is less than a GW for GW exchange of dirty for clean power. So the cost of emissions abatement with wind in $ per tonne CO2 avoided, already expensive, is inflated still further.
Again, I can’t put numbers on this, we need empirical data from actual grids. But we know the effect is real, it cuts in at remarkably low wind penetrations in the absence of storage, and it’s critical we find out what the true situation is with large scale wind deployments.
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Sod, the nuclear fleet average in Germany is typically around 80% capacity factor or so. Individual plant outages of two or three weeks are perfectly normal (refuelling and such) and sometimes you have prolonged outages for overhaul etc. which is why you don’t see 100% capacity factor. What matters though is the fleet capacity factor. The nice thing about nuclear plants is that you can take one off line for overhaul without suffering the rest to shut down. With wind, you get all of the turbines to ‘fail’ in terms of energy production at the same time when it’s not windy. See graph above on 1 month wind production in the main post.
Still 80% capacity factor is 7x more energy produced as 11% for the solar PV fleet in Germany.
The wind fleet in Germany is around 25% capacity factor. So the German nuclear fleet gets three times the production of wind. They also last 2-3x longer than wind turbines so you get 6 to 9 times more energy produced from a German nuclear kWe compared to a German wind kWe, on averaged fleet basis.
As for the deaths per TWh, the 107 deaths is the figure for one recent year; Chernobyl didn’t happen last year, Sod. The 15,000 is the total death rate over all years including Chernobyl.
The coal kill is 1 million per year. Estimates vary, you see between 100,000 to as high as several million coal kills per year, but all of them are massively larger EACH YEAR for coal than all commercial nuclear power deaths EVER.
Is this really so hard to understand?
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Here we have some discussion on the materials required for renewables compared to nuclear:
http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2925
Here is the peak and capacity adjusted tons of metal use per MW for different energy sources, from a Dutch friend of mine adapted to the Dutch (NL) wind/solar situation and also comparing Sahara solar.
http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/download/file.php?id=966&mode=view
Solar and wind are unproductive, diffuse, and don’t last as long as the nuclear plant so have very large metal requirements. Metals that have to be dug out of the ground, not exactly environmentally friendly.
Recycling of the e-waste from PV is not guaranteed and is reason for concern due to the large mass and volume of this e-waste if we try to power the planet with it. Solar panels are surprisingly toxic.
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Further discussion of the concept described above, “Lifetime Energy Generated” for different energy sources.
http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2619
And here we see the waste problem of coal quantified:
http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2608
That is a lot of nasty stuff which stays toxic forever.
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@John Morgan, 24April, 6.22pm.
I would agree that a grid having a small amount of wind, for a small geographic area( Denmark, Ireland) and all back-up from FF could degrade existing FF efficiency.
If however, FF back-up is only a very small portion of energy use (<5%) it really doesn't matter if it is producing 0.7 tCO2 or 0.4tCO2/MWh.
Australia has a mix of brown coal (1.2tCO2/MWh), black coal(1.0t Co2/MWh), in total 30GW capacity but accounting for 78% of generation, 15GW of gas-fired including about 7GW OCGT.
Any low CO2 replacement for all coal is going to have a very significant reduction in CO2 emissions.
If we have a scenario where 80% of av 27GW are generated from wind(0.33 capacity F; 66GW), 10% solar(0.2 capacity F;13.5GW) with 12h thermal storage, 5% hydro(0.3 capacity F; 4GW) and 5% natural gas(0.1 capacity F; 13GW).
Wind farm output would generally be 0.18 to 0.5 capacity( ie +/- 0.15 av of 0.33 capacity or a range of 10GW above or below 22GWav. Solar would provide all daytime peak demand(80GWh/day) above 22GW av from wind with about 2 days reserve and usually some surplus, but could be backed up 100% by using 3.3 GW NG.
So your question how much storage would be required to ensure 22GW of "base-load" demand is supplied by wind plus storage plus NG capacity?
Todays NG capacity of 15GW is more than enough to supply the 10GW wind deficit but would operate at a capacity factor of 0.3. Hydro could provide 40% of the deficit(4GW), so would need 6GW of pumped hydro storage to avoid using any NG (except for solar back-up).
To fully use the 10GW of excess wind during windy periods would need 10GW of pumped hydro capacity, but solar CST could divert some energy into storage, so 6GW of pumped hydro would be the minimum required to support 22GW av wind with minimal wind spilling and using minimal NG.Low and high wind events last 50-100 h, so overall storage capacity of 300-600 GWh of pumped hydro and 400GWh hydro would be required. In Australia reliable dams have a capacity to store 24,000GWh.
Peter Lang did a cost analysis of a 9GW pumped hydro scheme
http:/bravenewclimate.com/2010/04/05/pumped-hydro-system-cost/
connecting two existing reservoirs in Snowy mountains, that has a potential storage of 500GWh that would be more than adequate in fact with other existing schemes this could be down rated to 6GW capacity.
NG would still be needed in low solar periods, when wind output was also less than average, but even if there are 90 days of no solar per year,13GW NG would only operate at 0.07 capacity factor(90 days x80GWh =7200GWh; 0.9GW av)
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Neil, if you’re going to build 66 GWe of wind then you’re going to get over 50 GW a lot. So you need a lot more than 9 GWe of hydro as you need to pump water much faster OR you have to dump the wind output (which effectively reduces the capacity factor of the wind system, making it less cost effective).
You also lose 20% of your energy in the pumped hydro charge-discharge cycle.
Adding solar makes things worse since that is another intermittent energy source. They don’t actually meet the peak load very well, solar goes down when peak loads go up in the evening for example.
You would have to do a detailed analysis of this using real grid data combined with real solar and wind system output and then see how it works.
Most likely you will be disappointed.
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Neil Howes, I just read your link to the 9 GWe system, it is only for 3 hours of storage!
Here is the conclusion from Peter Lang:
“The Tantangara-Blowering pumped hydro scheme would be a high capital cost investment for just 3 hours of peak power generation per day.
This is the most economic of the four projects investigated.
Pumped hydro is often economically viable for providing peak power for a system comprising mostly fossil fuel and/or nuclear generation (France’s system is the ideal example). But pumped hydro is not well suited to intermittent, unscheduled generators.”
There you have it.
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Neil,
I don’t think the generation can be partitioned like this, that is, into one component of the FF output meeting demand, and a second separate, smaller, component as backup. The analysis of the Dutch system I linked to was measuring the reduced efficiency of the whole fossil fuel fleet (which dropped by 2.1% for 3.2% wind penetration, which wiped out the benefit of the 3.2% wind).
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John M:
thank you for doing the work and finding the right sources for checking Keith et al. I read that Hawkins study a while ago but missed the key detail in the Keith study about fixed gas turbine values.
Peter L, if I recall, separates out the gas backup from the hydro backup (in separate studies). His hydro backup studies were near reductio ad absurdams on the viability (or lack of) of renewables. The costs combining adequate storage and overbuild were…absurdly high. It was clear that such scenarios were non starters.
The gas/wind studies were at least plausible (for wind).
What, John, did you think of K and D’s cost assumptions? what confused me (I”m easily confused) was given the low price of wind and the low prices of the turbines, why they would need such a high carbon price to become competitive? I guess the answer in this narrow model is that the only alternative is gas, and all gas is assumed to be cheaper than any wind/gas combination until a carbon price of 140/ton is imposed.
Fat chance of that by the way. But I still don’t get the low price of wind–especially with astronomical carbon taxes on gas, which would go up further if they had factored in inefficient OCGT.
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The Decarolis and Keith also concluded that more of the inefficient single cycle gas turbines would be used in higher wind penetrations than in low wind penetrations (that have mostly combined cycle). It isn’t clear to me why this is the case, because the high carbon taxes (or fuel price if you will) make this lower efficiency really hurting. From the Decarolis and Keith work, the only explanation is that single cycle can respond faster (looking at their table of features of technological options) and therefore the more efficient combined cycle cannot be used that much at higher wind penetrations.
That does support the Dutch work conclusion.
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sod: you cherry pick a nuclear power plant in order to suggest that nuclear power in general is not reliable or to suggest that nuclear does not have a huge reliability advantage over wind.
This is not an ethical way to argue and thus does not carry forward the argument either way. It’s ass covering of the most blatant sort.
We all fall prey to defending our own asses by setting up straw men. But we should really try hard not to do this. if you want to argue that renewables are the answer, you should make the fairest arguments you can make for nuclear (not utopian ones, just fair). Picking on your favorite german npp or, to take another example, arguing that nuclear is just too expensive by looking at cost overruns in Finland are unethical forms of argument and waste a lot of time. Because responses must then engage in the tedious exercise of showing that big renewables builds (which hardly exist) are susceptible to large cost overruns also. (and then the whole thing begins to look like teenagers shouting “OH YEAH” at each other).
One of the reasons I wanted people to address the Keith argument is because it appears to challenge in significant ways the Lang arguments that many here had taken as serious criticisms of renewable energy solutions.
***
At this point, the no nuclear argument is sheer dogma: it depends upon outrageous cherry picking, dubious assumptions treated as obviously correct (about things like radiation dangers), denial of the facts about generation three and four. And just-so stories about renewables complementing one another as if weather were an invisible helping hand.
What is not dogma is to try and figure out how much renewable energy might work together with nuclear.
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EL,
Your rant about efficiency is just a red herring. The power companies can’t fix the inefficiencies of the past overnight much as they would like to.
To give a really simple example, in Florida we have steam plants running at 38% thermal efficiency co-located with combined cycle plants that achieve 62% on a good day. The power company would like to close the steam plants but that is at least a decade away because they can’t build modern plant fast enough to keep up with demand.
Ironically, one of the things that is impacting expansion plans in Florida is the Fukushima tsunami. Turbines and generators on order from Japan will be delivered years late or not at all owing to the need to deal with the power crisis there.
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Hmm, I just checked Decarolis and Keith again, and they assume gas turbine and combined cycle to have constant efficiency. So no allowance made for reduced efficiency from throttling more. They also assume that variable O&M is static which is clearly not correct as throttling more does increase maintenance and wears out components faster. They also seem to assume regulation/ancillary services per kWh cost does not rise with increasing wind penetration.
These are indeed questionable assumptions, evidently an oversimplification of things.
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Have you looked at a demand curve recently? 20% of electricity generation is baseload (and is shrinking in the mix because demand is stealing the show). Failing to address this issue, where are you going to find the 80% hydro for intermediate and peaking generation … and more importantly, do you have any interest in building new nuclear plants? Because it ain’t going to happen unless demand comes under better control (at least not in developed electricity markets). Certainly not as long as there’s affordable natural gas laying around (which is a good intermediate and peaking generation source, and can be built rather quickly). I do a lot of work in Canada, and I’ll tell you building large reservoirs to meet flexible demand is not always easy or practical, and the energy is not “always there” (or dispatchable) when you need it because of season, weather (drought), or even agreements with local resort owners, businesses, and First Nations (who require environmental conditions to be kept stable because livelihood is tied to resource). Strengthening the grid is a much more flexible, affordable, and environmentally friendly way to deal with these challenges.
Yes … Sweden makes an excellent case for my argument. Electricity demand in Sweden has been flat since 1986 (with a great many efforts on conservation and efficiency), rising costs of electricity too, wind and solar have been added (lots of biomass for district heating) and coal generation has decreased, nuclear and hydro have remained flat. France is a poor example, they run their nuclear plants as load-following plants (at around 60-65% capacity). This is wasteful and inefficient, and results in large excesses (13%) that they dump onto the European market at a low cost, while energy costs remain high for French consumers. They are now turning to solar and wind to help balance their energy system, and lower some of their carbon emissions. Switzerland has failed to keep rising consumption and demand in check, and as a consequence is looking to micro-hydro and biomass in the Alps and wind and solar in Jura region. There is a strong anti-nuclear element in Switzerland, they’ve narrowly dodged two votes on a phase out, have a 10 year moratorium on new nuclear, and recently provided overwhelming support for a Green Tax to support solar expansion. So much for nuclear and hydro balancing act in Switzerland.
Focusing on 6.5% of transmission losses is not silly, it’s efficient and it improves the performance of the entire system (making outages less unlikely) and all of our energy sources (renewables, nuclear, fossil fuels, hydro, or anything else). According to Berkeley Lab study, “Cost of Power Interruptions to Electricity Consumers in the US” (here also), we lose an estimated $80 billion/year in US to power outages. Since when did saving lots money, enhancing grid reliability (independent of source generation), and returning lots of energy to consumers become a bad idea?
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EL: “20% baseload”
Nonsense. Nighttime low in many countries is typically 50-70 percent of daytime peak.
Here are a few examples:
Here you can see how solar does not match peaking times at all:
Much of the variation in grid demand is diurnal – day and night – which can be filled up with electric/plugin vehicle charging at night. And it just so happens that nuclear has excess capacity at night, whereas wind is erratically available with variability far bigger than diurnal!! Needless to say the sun does not shine at night so is of little use when I come home from work and want to recharge my PHEV. Maybe I can charge on my boss’ cost during the day? Well alas that won’t work since solar is only there 11% of the time.
Of course natural gas is getting more popular as a fuel which distorts the baseload versus peaking market with natural gas’ flexibility. Oops, natural gas is a fossil fuel with a high death rate per TWh and coming often from unstable regions.
As you can see above from the IEA, France is doing fine with their 75% nuclear, and has only around 10% hydro or so, so your argument is nonsense.
“strenghtening the grid” if that is necessary it must be done and this is a SEPERATE issue from what tech we chose to get the supply side.
My grid’s reliability last year has been 100%. Beat that, EL.
“focusing on 6.5 percent of transmission losses is not silly”
It is by your pretention that we can solve big problems with that 6.5 percent. Meanwhile you completely ignore where the energy comes from. If we can save 80 billion in power outages (actually the US might, we here in the Netherlands won’t) then that makes sense REGARDLESS of the supply side.
You do not appear to have an argument and are nitpicking. Please stop doing that. We want to stop having wonderland debates and get to the dismal, hard, cold numbers and science on the fossil fuel problem we have and the renewables that don’t cut the mustard. The dismal science shows we need nuclear fast, with or without grid upgrades and efficiency.
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Responding to more questions:
DOE suggests an improvement of 1 – 2% can be gained from reduced line losses and voltage control. Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance considers the same, and provides a more detailed technical account. And this also contributes to enhanced reliability, system planning, better capital utilization, prevention of economic losses from outages, lowers costs for consumers (peak energy pricing), better utilization of renewable energy resources (less back-up, less carbon emissions), better utilization of baseload sources (with greater share of energy mix), and much more (it all adds up).
As I’ve said already … looking at it from one perspective (adding sources, and what kind) only looks at one side of the ledger. And comments in this thread are correct, if we do nothing with demand and shoring up transmission, we’ll have a difficult time getting past the 20% hurdle for renewables, and maintaining status quo on reliability and costs at the same time.
If you have a critique, please offer it. It’s not enough to say “you have little understanding” without indicating where I have made errors in my comment.
Sorry about that … that reference is to my “tax analogy” and not utility company practices. I thought it was a good comparison (but apparently too detailed and hard to follow). I was equating energy systems with government deficits, and suggesting we have to look at both sides of the ledger (spending and revenue; or managing energy supplies with demand). “Waste, fraud and abuse” is a rhetorical trope and typically indicates a weak and selective argument to manage costs and reduce spending (and is a distraction from much more significant elephants in the room: increasing revenues, rising health care costs, etc.). I was trying to suggest that focusing on intermittency of renewables as a “larger than life” problem is tantamount to looking at “waste, fraud, and abuse” as a primary method of managing deficits (when larger issues go unaddressed). Clearly, I need to simply this analogy or find another … sorry for the confusion.
You’re assuming power companies want to fix these inefficiencies? When peak energy pricing can be as high as 500 cents/kWh at some locations in the US, why would they want to change this. As long as their competitors are faced with the same, consumers are willing to pay these higher prices, transmission losses are relatively low, and no outages are taking place … it’s all smooth sailing for them (with lots of additional profits).
This is fine, but aren’t you making my argument for me! How else are we to view V2G but as a “smart” infrastructure improvement providing more “demand management” and “storage.” I’m confused what you are arguing at this point. I’m looking at comprehensive solutions, you appear to be nitpicking about individual sources (primarily “wind”). I don’t see how exaggerating the challenges of wind penetration to less than 20%, or failing to report on how wind is currently used to displace fossil fuel emissions, helps the matter any? The best argument I can provide to counter this is provided by the wind energy professional above (Daniel Kirk-Davidhoff) … who suggests day ahead forecasts are reliable and sufficient for planning around wind variability (and displacing lots of carbon in the process).
I’ll ask you to take note … I’m not in the 100% camp. I’m suggesting we’re fine up to 20% renewables, it’s money well invested in demand management, transmission, storage, and efficiency programs (Sweden and Japan take the lead on this). And I firmly believe these investments and enhancements create jobs, accelerate economic growth (it’s hard to beat the economic advantage of coal and the externalization of costs from pollution), and also create better conditions for nuclear power to expand in the next 30 to 50 years (in the niche where it performs best as a reliable source of baseload generation, and as an alternative to coal). But nuclear needs a bit of closer attention at the moment, some action on the waste issue, and a little bit of help from local, national, and international frameworks on carbon legislation and mitigation (pollution tax, cap and trade, clean energy portfolio standards, or the like).
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“sod: you cherry pick a nuclear power plant in order to suggest that nuclear power in general is not reliable or to suggest that nuclear does not have a huge reliability advantage over wind.”
no, that is not what i did. i am fighting against the claim that alternative power is not reliable at all, while nuclear is up 100% of the time. Krummel is down for 3 years now, after something that is claimed to be a small accident, not worth notice. (i disagree, with smoke in the control room we had a very serious situation).
and with one of 17 power plants out, we lost about 5% of production.
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Cyril:
“Nonsense. Nighttime low in many countries is typically 50-70 percent of daytime peak.”
these is demand following supply. France even has a special name for night time cheap power “Heures Creuses ” and it is about 2/3 of day price.
http://bleuciel.edf.com/abonnement-et-contrat/les-prix/les-prix-de-l-electricite/tarif-bleu-47798.html#acc52409
“Here you can see how solar does not match peaking times at all:”
that link is horrible. it tries to confuse people, by putting the 100% peak of solar at the same level as the top of the demand curve. this is a dirty trick, to make alternative energy look bad. of course you need a higher peak with alternative energy than top demand is. this will go into storage, if some is available.
is suspect that in the majority of those flat load curves, pump storage is filled at nighttime minimum demand, flattening the curve.
ps: in Germany today the peak was at 1:30 pm, and again above 12 GW, the same as our remaining nuclear power plants produce.
http://www.sma.de/en/news-information/pv-electricity-produced-in-germany.html
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Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu spoke last thursday at BNL, and I was lucky enough to hear
his talk as well as the question session. Some of the questions touched on were those I see in the very debates that are taking place here.
I found Chu to be a very polished and a very clever man, probably the best qualified person
that the US has had in that position in a very
long time – I can still remember the days of Hazel O’Leary. But he had some facts wrong. He claimed
that wind power penetration in Ireland was currently at 20%, when it seems that in fact it’s actually closer to 11%, after capacity factors are taken into account. And that has been achieved with the feed in tariff approach, which tops out under current law at 1450 MW generating capacity.
I’m trying to begin to collect some real
numbers on actual costs for solar, wind,
various storage options and so on but
I am having some trouble finding any.
I understand why private companies don’t like to advertise prices on their websites. But do any experts here know offhand, what’s the approximate, up-front, installed cost of a single 2.5 MW wind turbine such as the “Liberty Clipper,” or its equivalent, such as is described at the following link?
http://www.clipperwind.com/productline.html
This same company plans in the future to build 10 MW models, but these are to be built using high temperature superconductors, so I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the newer model.
I am a bit dubious of cost estimates for wind floating around, on the order of 6.5c/kWh with 1-2c additional “marginal” costs, which Chu seemed to think would even be possible for solar after a couple of price “half-lives” …
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Why are you confused, EL? Nuclear has no long term variation on the fleet level, unlike wind and solar, so benefits the most from smart grid and storage.
That’s the whole point – all the grid managment and storage stuff is easier (cheaper, more effective) with nuclear power compared to wind and solar.
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So why the all the resistance from pro-nuclear evangelists to grid improvements, demand management (through conservation and efficiency), and storage? As I’ve said about 4 times now already, it’s a win win scenario, and a very good way to spend limited energy dollars (and may be the single most cost effective way to quickly reduce carbon emissions among the largest emitters). It seems to me that we agree on this, as well as the importance of carbon reductions (based on your replies in this thread). So I’m left scratching my head over the hubbub, and why you disagree with me so fervently and at the same time provide arguments that appear to give further support to what I am saying. If you think nuclear is the “only” answer to rising global demand for energy … I think you will be in for a long wait (and a great deal of disappointment). Few regions are the same (nor do they want the same thing), nuclear waste and global security issues abound, and we have a great many challenges trying to wrest control over the energy system from vested interests and polluters. Frankly, I think the status quo likes it this way. The more we argue over small differences, the more we “self-marginalize” into opposing camps, the greater power we give to oil, gas, and coal to continue to meet public expectations (and delay a reckoning with peak and unconventional supplies). It’s called divide and conquer, and it’s as old as the invention of fire or the engineering of rocks into spears. The technical challenges to meeting carbon reduction goals with renewables are exceedingly small (and they will only get more affordable and broader in their application as time moves on). Nuclear is a freight train that churns out energy 24/7 and creates an excellent floor for large industrialized economies (and it is by no means free of emissions on front or back ends). And rising global electricity demand is only a problem if you don’t want to deal with excessive waste, efficiency and conservation. Any one of these alternatives alone is a loser, but together they make an interesting, convincing, and feasible package. I’m tired of the back and forth, and turning our back on common sense solutions (all the while throwing exploration, environmental, production, and tax advantages to coal, oil, and gas to develop unconventional reserves and continue their unfair advantage in the marketplace).
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Building on Cyril last comment above.
Reading the material that has been posted in links on this thread in support of non-dispatchable generation, I am struck by a recurring, underlying theme of accommodation. It is as if the supporters of this type of generation are demanding the same treatment that we extend to handicapped persons, by putting up ramps, and dedicated parking spaces. While accommodating humans that need this type of accommodation is (if one needs a purely selfish reason) justified in that one never knows when you might need it yourself, no such excuse exists for wind and solar in respect to the grid.
Make no mistake about it, we are talking about accommodation without any commensurate gain for doing so. The changes that need to be made to allow even a small percentage of this sort of generation are major, and they will not make the system better overall, in fact (while this is glossed over) it may make it weaker. The real question then becomes for what? At best the most technically competent of the supporting documents only expect the system to absorb 20% of this sort of power, hardly grounds for the sort of investment required.
This is the Wonderland aspect of this whole debate. It is not a nuclear vs. renewable issue, but a plea to make adjustments to allow someone’s favorite form of generation to run on the grid. I suspect this is nothing more that the need to justify the support certain groups have lavished on wind and solar for so long, has overridden commonsense. They are given hope by the machinations of natural gas, who have worked this out long ago, and know that they are the only ones that can provide a fig-leaf for wind and solar.
The bottom line is that non-dispatchable generation is a dead end. It cannot contribute anything significant to the need for more energy and the need to stop heating the planet. It’s time to wake-up and smell the coffee; places like Denmark tried their best and it wasn’t good enough. We have tried and we have failed, and now it is time
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“That’s the whole point – all the grid managment and storage stuff is easier (cheaper, more effective) with nuclear power compared to wind and solar.”
i disagree. in the past, this was true. the big companies (the only one who can run nuclear) could strike deals with energy intensive industry, selling them off-peak electricity at a slightly cheaper price. and there was a simple plan (electricity is cheaper at night) for common folks who wanted to save as well.
this would have been a very bad environment for wind or solar peaks. these tend to not happen at specific times, nor is the average supplier big enough to do big deals.
but smart grids and flexible prices will change all of this! wind and solar do NOT use fuel. they can simply be cut from the net, if prices turn negative, or give away electricity for free.
the link to irish wind energy given somewhere here recently showed, that wind alone provides 50% of electricity. on a spot market, they will beat all suppliers that have a fixed fuel cost.
a lot of demand will move into peak zones, for example my climate system can start cooling the house and heating the pool 2 hours earlier.
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“At best the most technically competent of the supporting documents only expect the system to absorb 20% of this sort of power, hardly grounds for the sort of investment required.”
i strongly disagree. the world would be a much better place, if we all had 20% wind/solar power. and the peaks they produce would speed up developments of storage that can use the surplus peak electricity.
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@ Environmentalist and sod: A question for you both.
What do you consider to be the most important objective for environmental action, and which should take priority? Action to shut down nuclear power generation, or action to counter AGW by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other measures?
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Gregory M, I just read K&DC for the energy model to check against Lang’s arguments. I don’t have a good grip on the cost analysis so I can’t offer any thoughts. Won’t have a chance today as I’m about to hit the road for an eight hour drive home after Easter.
(I appreciate your question was your sneaky pedagogue way of getting me to self educate on the economic arguments and make me a better person. Thank you for caring about my soul.)
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@Cyril R, 24April 9.44pm,
A 66GWe wind system located in one state does give a wide variation in output, close to zero and >50GW, but output over a much wider area the size of Australia ranges from 0.2 to 0.6 of installed capacity(see oz-energy link I provided 24April, 1.37pm)
htpp://www.oz-energy-analysis.org/analysis/BtCC_simulated_wind_farms.php
Output above 0.5 of capacity is very infrequent and could be spilled, just as hydro dams are not built to store all water from the highest rainfall years. Even optimized aggregated wind output from smaller regions such as Texas, only exceeds 60% of capacity for 1% of the time and 50% 2.5%of the time (Jonah Levine, MSc thesis Uni of Colorado, 2007; not sure who provided the link on BNC). Not all of this would be spilled because some of the time CST would have thermal storage capacity so more wind could be accepted(during daytime).
@Cyril R 24April 9.48pm
Peter Lang was proposing the Tantangara/Blowering pumped hydro scheme to provide peak power for nuclear, at flow rates of 1ML/sec(9GWe) or 3600ML/h with a head of 900m.Tantangara (the smaller reservoir)has 238,000ML active storage capacity so could provide >60 h operation(540GWh storage), but only 3-4 h would be needed for daily peak demand. As a reality check, nearby pumped hydro scheme Tumut3 has 27,000ML storage(1/9) and head of 150m(1/6), and stores 9GWh(1/60).
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The beauty of carbon pricing is that if done right then intermittent sources will find their correct level. There will be no distortions from subsidies and mandates. For Australia I think that means very little new build of renewables because new capacity and coal replacement will come from gas. However in places even moderate carbon taxes may not help gas let alone renewables. In Victoria for example brown coal is 60c a GJ or mmbtu while gas is $7. There the wind industry wants carbon tax to be set at $90 (not $20) per tCO2 to get a look in.
That is why I think carbon tax will run into an impasse after a year or so, say by year 2013. Then I suspect they will return to subsidies to get the wind build rolling again. Since the public will be paying more for same coal fired electricity (less minor demand reduction) a gaggle of wind and solar projects is needed for reassurance on the promised low carbon future.
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@John Morgan, 24 April, 9.49pm
What I was trying to say was if OCGT is only used for back-up ( ie when hydro and pumped hydro capacity is not sufficient, so would not need to back-up 100% of demand) at 0.1 capacity factor and accounts for 0.7 capacity factor.
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John Newlands, 25 April, 7.29am,
Think more about what you are saying; more natural gas capacity will be built(I agree), but its operating cost will be very high relative to coal (I agree) so NG power will only be used for peak power.
Wind power will be competing with coal fired 24h a day, but will have a $20/t CO2 advantage ($20-24/MWh), that’s about the off-peak rate. Coal will have to cover the loss at off-peak by getting high prices during peak demand, but excess wind and OCGT will keep these rates down( still high enough for OCGT to be profitable) except for periods of low wind output.
Result; coal capacity will be reduced until peak rates and off-peak rates rise, but that will stimulate more OCGT and wind capacity to be built.
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John Morgan, on 24 April 2011 at 2:12 PM — Well stated. I agree that siting issues need to be more fully addressed for every proposed wind farm.
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Neil the figure of $70 minimum carbon tax for increased wind build is in a link already given upthread
http://www.smh.com.au/business/renewable-energy-target-needs-some-finetuning-20110421-1dqfe.html
I note elsewhere the one company that says it will build new wind capacity under $20-$30 carbon tax will use Chinese made components. Your suggestion that wind has a role to play at low carbon tax may well be true. But is it 10%, 20% or 30% of all Mwh? Maybe Australia already has its economic wind capacity.
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John Newlands,
According to Infigens annual report their total revenue for wind in Australia is $80/MWh(including REC), so a carbon price of $70 is probably excessive for wind. As the article you linked to goes on to say, we may end up with a lot of wind but not much higher cost solar and geothermal.
Of course even a carbon price of $20/t CO2 should also favor nuclear, we should see electricity providers calling for permission to build nuclear, unless they feel its too high risk for shareholders.
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David Kahana, on 25 April 2011 at 3:42 AM — A new wind farm near here recently contracted with the distributing utility for a levelized 9.15 UScents/kWh. There are substantive reasons to expect the price to drop to around 7 UScents/kWh in the near future.
Here are some LCOEs for new construction I have been able to find or (quite accurately) estimate:
Solar PV: 23.4 @ CF=25% (estimated)
Solar thermal: 21.7 (Mohave desert with 4? hour thermal storage; without storage CF=25%) (contracted price)
Nuclear: 11.8 for Vogtle 3&4 Gen III+ Westinghouse AP-1000 @ CF=90% (est.)
Wind: 9.15 @ CF=30%+ (contracted price)
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Cyril R I have really enjoyed your posts, so full of real world evidence and data. On 24 April 2011 at 7:33 PM you said that Germany has a wind capacity factor of 25%. The link below shows only 17% for 2006, is there better information available?:
http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/the-capacity-factor-of-wind-power/
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A Simplified Cost Analysis of wind+NPP
Assume suitable wind power sites are available with CF=32%, the Columbia Basin planning figure. Postulate an NPP similar to the Areva EPR which can cycle 60% to 100% and do so fast enough that nothing else is required to further act as the balancing agent for wind. Assuming the NPP can have a CF as high as 95%, I used some O&M, fuel and spent fuel managment figures, etc., to arrive at an LCOE of 10.3 UScents/kWh if run flat out.
Now add some wind to this baseload NPP. Assume the LCOE for wind is 7.0 UScents/kWh and also note that up to 40% of the NPP namplate rating can be used by throttling back the NPP to the minimum allowable. That means the CF for the NPP lowers to 83% and when run that way its LCOE goes up to 11.8 UScents/kWh. However, the LCOE for the combination of wind and NPP more than makes up for that, being but 9.04 UScents/kWh, a saving of 1.26 cents/kWh over just running the NPP alone.
However, I’ve left out any additional transmission required to profit from the wind and other factors which might well lessen or remove a mere 1.26 UScents/kWh margin. Using wind is (mostly) just a diversion from the primary task of replacing fossil fuel units with NPPs; perhaps the engineering talent available is better devoted to that task, possibly even slightly lowering the cost of NPPs.
I note this situation actually contradicts the macroeconomic law of suplay and demand (to the extent I understand that). In macroeconomics the assumption is that increased demand is met by more costly supply creating a stable price. But here it seems (please check yourself) that increased incremental demand is met by lower cost supply, up to the limit of the supplying units, both wind and nuclear. This appears destablizing to me, so some form of regulation is required.
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And then there are the transmission corridor problems, not to mention the price…
Germany Explores Using Train Lines as a Power Grid
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,758698,00.html
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@David Benson, 25 April, 10.48am,
“…increasing incremental demand is met by lower cost supply”
this is the history of hydro power in small demand locations, once a large dam is built, supply exceeds local demand, so high power consuming industry is attracted (aluminium refining) with low prices, but overall costs go down, because the capital cost of dam is spread over more output.
Wind and nuclear have high capital costs, and low operating costs just like hydro. Presents a good opportunity for more pumped hydro to take advantage of the miss-match of demand and supply, surely more cost effective for nuclear to be running at max capacity rather than power down to 60% capacity( at least until all pumped hydro pumping capacity is used or storage is full).
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If find the PM’s stance on coal and LNG exports not only hypocritical but a sign that domestic carbon pricing may end up as a joke
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/pm-gillard-believes-carbon-tax-wont-cost-mine-jobs/story-e6frg6n6-1226044228259
Ideally a tax of say $50 a tonne of black thermal or coking coal and about half that on LNG should be levied. The importing country (not the private customer) gets a refund cheque paid into some green program account. This solves several problem cases
1) no point in exempting LNG train operators from domestic carbon tax
2) coal taxes too low in countries like India
3) less compensation needed for aluminium smelters as increasingly China has to pay some carbon tax as it imports more coal.
If would be helpful if the USA wasn’t increasing coal exports to China at a phenomenal growth rate. I seem to remember Obama promised to cut back on emissions maybe he forgot. I predict that if we do get full carbon tax by July 2012 that there will be many calls to carbon tax FF exports, After all we export 4X as much black coal as we consume locally and our own Federal resources minister wants the same thing for LNG.
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Neil Howes, on 25 April 2011 at 12:17 PM — Thanks. I earlier did a study of wind + pumped hydro versus nuclear, both to meet a constant demand. The most discouraging aspect was the very large pumped hydro requirement. New pumped hydro is rather expensive so little more will be constructed except perhaps in developing countries.
The Areva EPR’s ability to cycle is clearly intended to meet the variations in demand over the course of a day and even a year. It is probably more cost effective to use such a cyclable NPP at an average of less than 100% to meet that variation than to build more pumped hydro to do so.
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@Tom Bond, 25 April, 10.19am
If you look at footnote(b) you see that UK data is for average installed capacity, presumably US and Germany are using end of year capacity. This is a problem at least for US data because additional capacity of 40-50% has been added so most of those newly installed turbines dont contribute for a full year. The US value should be more like 0.33 capacity factor.
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@John Newlands 25April 12.36,
Each country is responsible for accounting for CO2 where it is generated, so in coal mining in Australia or LNG, the CO2 generated in production will be taxed, not the carbon content of coal or LNG exported. If you also tax coal at point of export and the importing country also adopts a carbon tax or reduces CO2 emissions by other means then there is double taxing. We could have a different system,say a cap and trade, but this was voted down by Greens and Liberals.
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Cyril pointed out:
“Adding solar makes things worse since that is another intermittent energy source. They don’t actually meet the peak load very well, solar goes down when peak loads go up in the evening for example.”
Indeed, for at least six months of the year, there is zero or little solar generation during the evening peak. Effectively, to use solar and wind, we will have to build 3 power generating systems: solar, wind, and storage/fossil backup where now we have one. No matter which way you look at it, 3 sets of generators cost a hell of a lot more than one.
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Chris O’Neill, on 25 April 2011 at 1:26 PM — The proper mix of forms of generation is not so readily determined. It is widely anticipated that wind power will be available at ~7 UScents/kWh. That makes it attractively low priced compared to other forms of generation or even storage. However, there are distinct limits on how much wind there can be and still have an electric grid which supplies reliable, on-demand power. In a prior post I worked out a preliminary estimate for wind+NPP. Turns out that wind only supplies about 13.5% of the power on an annualized basis.
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@David Benson, 25 April, 12.37pm,
Thank you for the excellent information and contributions. My thinking is that where pumped hydro costs are $500-2000/kW capacity and nuclear 3-4 times greater it would be more cost effective to build additional pumped hydro. France may be able to sell of lot of that surplus to other countries most of the time so the economics may be different. It may also be cheaper to spill high wind energy because wind capacity is about the same ($1500-2000/kW) as many pumped hydro projects,and high wind periods only account for a small part of overall production, and only a portion of this output would be spilled.
The cheapest storage option for US would be to get Canada to up-rate hydro capacity and transmission lines to US, to increase power swapping. Manitoba and Quebec have very large storage capacity and presently use hydro as base-load.
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@Chris O’Neill 25 April, 1.26pm,
Solar(CST) has one advantage, short term(6h) thermal storage has <1% loss, and is enough to ensure solar will be able to sell most output at summer peak demand with some flexibility. Larger storage( several days) may also be economic because of the low losses. In the sunbelt, wind peak demand is much less than summer peak so low winter output less of an issue providing wind, hydro and nuclear are part of the mix.
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Neil Howes, on 25 April 2011 at 1:36 PM — If people are willing to sacrifice the land needed for pumped hydro then it might make sense. There are several limiting factors beyond the capital costs of any pumped hydro facility, the primary one being how the pumped hydro is to be energized. Any detailed analysis has to include the particulars of a proposed pumped hydro station included its usage patterns and energizing sources. This makes it difficult to say much in the way of generalities except that for typical usage patterns energizing via wind would not produce sufficient availability to make the pumped hydro station economic; possibly a mixture of energizing via a combination of wind and nuclear could be worked out.
Our good neighborss to the north do not currently seem to be much interested in selling more power to the US, but I’m not current on any details. One of the serious problems becomes the cost of new transmission lines and the associated siting problems. [I previously posted a link to a Der Spiegel article suggesting just how serious that question has become in Germany.]
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Neil Howes, on 25 April 2011 at 1:51 PM — Molten salt thermal storage is well established and has only a 93% efficiency factor [which is, even so, very good].
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@Neil Howes, You are displaying the sort of pie-in-the-sky thinking that truly makes the ‘Wonderland” title of this thread apt.
That is not a cheap option by any means, as Denmark’s experience with Norway, and California’s experience with British Columbia prove.
There is no direct gain for any Canadian hydro producer to get involved with power swapping schemes. As a result, as the other two examples mentioned found, the hydro producer will buy power at a very discounted rate, and sell it back at a premium. Furthermore hydro is used in Quebec and B.C. both to provide peak as well as baseload, thus there is no advantage to them on that front ether.
This is another example of trying to bend the system to take wind, without a good reason to do so, other than wind for wind’s sake.
@David B. Benson, I don’t know where you get the idea that Canadian producers don’t want to sell more power South. Perhaps you could elaborate on this, or supply a reference.?
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Neil I agree that the persons/nations who actually ignite the coal or gas should incur the carbon debit. Thus if petrol is carbon taxed Australia does the taxing not Saudi Arabia or wherever the crude oil originated. However that principle doesn’t apply to drug dealing or selling alcohol to minors. The seller is presumed responsible. It seems unlikely the Chinese will apply serious domestic carbon taxes to their growing coal imports yet that CO2 comes back to us as climate change.
However if you read the comments in The Australian piece few seem worried by climate change, more the loss of local jobs in the metals industry for example. The issue seems likely to explode in the next 12 months. Though is hard to tell in the list of businesses one or two of the top ten Australian emitters are LNG exporters. They claim if the customers don’t pay carbon tax then gas burned to run the compressors here shouldn’t be taxed either. Easily solved … make everybody pay.
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@ EL, on 25 April 2011 at 5:49 AM:
404 words, full of anguished cries and opinion but no references, facts or analysis.
In a world where some place higher value on opinion than on rigour, is there any wonder why agreement is so often lacking?
Please, listen to the other contributors to this site and present analysis, at least the equivalent of that supporting the discussion regarding the efficiency losses which occur in conventional PP’s due to load variation when ramping up and down to match the variability of wind and, by extention and to a lesser extent, PV. I will leave Solar Thermal alone for the present, because thermal lag and possible storage will tend to result in less unfavourable outcomes.
To pick one issue. You claim not to be in the 100% camp, but to favour 20% wind.
How about re-working the Pair and DeGroot assumptions (http://www.clepair.net/windefficiency.html ) around that 20% figure?
Or, perhaps, to review Peter Lang’s work regarding wind as published on this site and referred to upthread?
I’m sure that you can understand that rebuttal of these analyses is essential to your world view, yet you have not tried to do so. How you can let these analyses stand unchallenged, yet maintain your opinion re 20% wind is simply not rational.
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[…] Daiichi Open and Update Thread #5Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanationEnergy debates in WonderlandFukushima Nuclear Accident – 15 March summary of situationHelicopters, tall stories and fantasy […]
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@DV82XL, 25April, 3.04pm,
I didn’t say cheap I said CHEAPEST, unless both parties make money they wouldn’t exchange power. Denmark gets low CO2 storage, Norway gets a better price by selling power when its needed. Its definitely not pie-in-the-sky to envisage more power exchange between US and Canada.The US and Canada already have a lot of power exchange because Canada’s peak demand is in winter and US in summer.
Hydro can be used as base-load but its a lot more valuable if used for peak demand, rather than using OCGT. You don’t seem to understand it is because BC, Manitoba and Quebec use hydro as base-load that they have a great opportunity, except in run-of-river, to save hydro for a more valuable uses.
Up-rating of turbine capacity is also being done in US so this isn’t pie-in-the-sky either.
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Hmm it appears 25% capacity factor for German wind turbines was too optimistic of me!
More like16%.
http://www.bwea.com/ref/capacityfactors.html
Anyway, thanks Tom, its good to see that at least some people appreciate this little thing called evidence ; )
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@Neil Howes:
We USians (I’m an expatriate Canadian actually) are
net importers of Canadian electricity to the tune of
51,108,502 MWh – 17,490,264 MW
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@ David Kahana:
Citation?
Did you mean to say that Canada-US transfers are an annual 51,108,502 MWh – 17,490,264 MWh, not MW as stated.
Even then, 17 – 51 thousand GWh is a large number, equivalent to 2 to 6 MW continous, 24/7/365. That calls for a lot of copper transmission line.
By comparison, in Australia where I come from, the largest generator is Macquarie Generation, with two black coal power stations, capacity 4.7GW and annual output 25 – 30 TWh, ie comparable in scale.
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@Neil Howes:
We USians (I’m an expatriate Canadian actually)
are net importers of Canadian electricity to the
tune of 51,108,502 MWh – 17,490,264 MWh =
33,618,238 MWh per year (2009). So yes, the
interties are important. The net US import from
Canada amounting to a bit less than 1% of US
consumption per year. And a considerable amount
is sent back to Canada.
(And let’s not even discuss how much oil the US
imports each year from Canada).
But these interties are still not large enough
to deal with US scale demand.
Continent scale planning for sources like wind and
solar would certainly be a good idea, at least in
my view, it seems that it may very well help
reduce the needs for storage.
But we are going to need serious upgrades of the
interties to handle sending excess wind, say, from
the US up to pumped storage hydro located around
James Bay/Hudson Bay.
And if such is to be done then there is a need to
look realistically at the cost of such storage,
and long distance transmission lines.
Canada is set up ideally for hydro: Quebec and
Manitoba come to mind. Large populations are
located near the southern border, while hydro
resources can be developed well to the north,
where nobody lives, to the extent that First
Nations agree to that and are duly
compensated. Transmission lines can be built
running due south.
Ontario, which has rather less hydro, has large
interties with the US; to NY and Michigan. And
Ontario, being in the mid-continental wind belt
now has a fair amount of faceplate wind capacity
installed (about 3.5 GW) which operates at a
pretty good capacity factor (on the order of
30-35% if I remember.
But Ontario also has a large fraction of Canada’s
CANDU reactors installed, amounting to maybe 40%
of the generating capacity for the province, and
it also has a very large coal plant, as well as a
lot of NG. So a 5% level of wind penetration is
easy to handle without adding any storage at all.
For me, it seems that US energy policy is
certainly not being centrally organized or
rationally planned in any way.
In the very long run, with US population that was
smaller, held constant, and thus at much lower
consumption level, it seems to me that it wouldn’t
matter much what source we chose. Solar and wind
and hydro alone might be made to work.
But things have gotten wildly out of control I
think. A bridge is needed to be made very rapidly
to a future where humanity has a chance to get its
impact on the environment back into some
reasonable balance, meaning that exponential
population growth has to be terminated. To build
such a bridge while maintaining industrial
civilisation, I think we’ll need to massively
expand nuclear power.
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@John Bennetts:
Yes: it’s a lot of power. Citation:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat6p3.html
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@David Kahana 25April, 6.16pm’,
Hello David (I lived in Canada for 23 years before returning to Australia).
“I think we will need massively expanded nuclear”
I totally agree! The US, Canada and Australia are all major CO2 emitting countries, and a massive expansion of nuclear would make a big impact on reducing CO2 emissions. The problems I see are (i) financial risks for private capital without very high government loan guarantees (ii) capacity constrains after a long period of little building (iii) the long lead time to plan and construct new reactors.
In the next 20 years the US is going to have trouble just replacing existing reactors as they are retired. This is not an argument not to pursue nuclear, but it is an argument to also continue to expand hydro capacity(up-rating), continue with the very rapid expansion of wind and solar for locations where it makes sense, and to try to phase out all coal-fired power and oil based land transport asap.
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Neil Howes, on 25 April 2011 at 1:51 PM said:
“@Chris O’Neill 25 April, 1.26pm,
Solar(CST) has one advantage, short term(6h) thermal storage has <1% loss, and is enough to ensure solar will be able to sell most output at summer peak demand with some flexibility. Larger storage( several days) may also be economic because of the low losses. In the sunbelt, wind peak demand is much less than summer peak so low winter output less of an issue providing wind, hydro and nuclear are part of the mix."
Not everywhere is lucky enough to be in the sunbelt and even if they are, they would still need to set up parallel generating systems of varying relative sizes. I think I can say with reasonable certainty that wind generation will not be used to power energy intensive industries like Aluminium smelting for a long, long time. In the case of the coal-burning Aluminium smelting industry in Australia, there are only two likely choices, (1) keep it going the way it is now with negligible reduction in carbon emissions or (2) close it down. If (1) is applied generally to Australian industry then Australia's emission reductions will be small. If (2) is applied generally then it will be a political and economic disaster.
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The depth of the ignorance that is being shown here over Canadian hydro, the North American electric power market, and the economics of both is profound.
To start off with, most exports of power from the US to Canada are in fact due to wheeling Canadian power through the US network back to Canadian markets.
Secondly, there is no advantage for Canadian hydro producers to accept US wind power, except to gouge US producers, as Norway does Denmark and as BC did to California. Furthermore, for the monies involved, developing more of Canada’s hydro potential in the James Bay/Hudson’s Bay drainage, and several northern flowing rivers in the North-West, and exporting the power directly, would be far less expensive than any scheme involving wind.
The wind supporters here are doing nothing except building dream castles on little more than wishful thinking.
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The Pair and DeGroot analysis would be fine, if they actually found data that showed cycling takes place at the levels that they project would result in diminishing returns on fuel consumption or carbon reductions. The data they do provide is for a 2% reduction in power plant efficiency (when the turning point is 2.5% as they detail). So wind, overall, seems to be contributing to lowering fuel consumption and emissions from other power plants providing reserve capacity (which is another way of saying they are displacing fossil fuels), even at the least efficient levels. While it’s something we need to definitely look at and improve (and better forecasting models, site planning, and storage requirements for higher penetrations should improve reserve capacity requirements), why would we need to rework their analysis? There are lots of studies looking at the optimal range of wind penetration given storage, reserve requirements, economics, dispersion of wind farms, load profiles, and other factors, and ultra low and ultra high penetration levels present the greatest challenges (not the 5-20% range that is the target for many countries).
Their paper includes a lot of “speculation” about the conspiracy of silence on the issue, but their paper readily admits they haven’t proven a thing. “Does an efficiency loss of this magnitude actually occur,” they ask, “We were unable to find data on this effect,” they answer. If they have the data, they should present it in a peer reviewed publication!
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@EL – In the end it is still a matter of coping with wind, rather than seeing any good hard evidence that it is contributing anything of weight to the energy picture.
Like much of the energy debate, support for, or criticisms of wind (and solar) involve the interpretation of statistics, and the fact is as much as they can be made to show anything, its on the edge. This is not good for these renewables, because to be worth the trouble, they should show large net gains, not marginal ones that depend on how you massage the numbers. If they where any good, they would be so good there would be no question.
As for your crack up thread that pronuclear supporters don’t care about efficiency, this in not true. What we do not care for is rationing and social engineering masquerading as efficiency increases, and that is what the overwhelming bulk of demand side management schemes are. As for transmission loses, these would largely be irrelevant, if more clean small and medium scale nuclear were brought on line.
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@DV82XL, 25 April 10.01pm,
Manitoba exports power through Minnesota to Chicago, not sure where you think it is “wheeling ” back to Canada? In any case, Canada is a net exporter, 30-40TWh/year, about double imports so definitely most exports are not returned to Canada as you suggest.
I don’t think you understand that up-rating hydro is very inexpensive ($70-100/kW) compared with building new hydro capacity or nuclear($7,000/kW) or pumped hydro capacity. A profitable storage option is not price “gouging”. Canada and US will probably build more hydro and also greatly increase capacity by up-rating existing hydro.
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@Neil Howes, – The fact that you are using Manitoba (a hydro lightweight) as an example rather than Quebec or BC, both of which export most of their production south, demonstrates how little you know about this subject. Nor, (if you could read for comprehension) did I write that the bulk of power exported from Canada goes back, only large fraction of power listed as exported from the US to Canada is in fact is sent back to Canadian markets, basically using American transmission, where Canadian lines can’t cope.
You also are demonstrating total ignorance of the politics involved, or the history of B.C. – CA power trading., and again the mechanics of the North American power market. And the fact that you put wheeling, a legitimate term in quotation marks, only serves to prove this.
As for uprating hydro, you haven’t a clue how this works, or how it would apply to your scheme to trade wind for water generation, but guaranteed the wind producer would get the wet end of the stick.
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DV82XL, on 25 April 2011 at 3:04 PM — Just a general impression. Is BC Hydro actually actively planning major dams?
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@David B. Benson – BC has a very active Green movement that seems to want to impose a total halt on more hydro development in that Provence. So while there are plans to develop more of the Peace River and some 29 smaller run-of-the-river projects, there is a lot of opposition to increasing hydro capacity, “… for export to service the needs of air-conditioners and swimming pools in California,” quoting the current Opposition energy critic John Horgan.
So plans yes, action perhaps, perhaps not.
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@ EL, on 26 April 2011 at 1:35 AM :
Providing a link to a listing of search results list of 2500 articles ranging from air safety to Greek Island wind/hydro pumped storage systems which start by assuming that the storages already exist is no way to address my request for actual studies to support a notional but unsupported argument put forward by E.
I read through the first dozen summaries of EL’s search results and, while they are interesting, perhaps one only was germaine to the topic, which is, broadly:
+ Decreasing efficiency of FF power plants becomes significant as wind penetration of a FF/wind grid increases.
+ These inefficiencies are unavoidable because of the stochastic nature of wind generation, even at fine scale, thus rendering scheduling impossible.
+ The quoted study investigated these affects and published findings that the increased carbon emissions due to decreased efficiency of the conventional FF PP’s was found to equal the carbon benefits from wind generation at penetrations as low as 2 or 2.5 percent.
+ The paper recommended that additional study be undertaken.
My review of the summaries of the first 12 papers indicates:
+ Only one appears to address the key point, which is that the carbon cost of decreasing efficiency of backup FF plant should be considered when assessing carbon savings due to wind at increasing penetration. This paper would cost $39.95. I have not ordered it.
+ One paper was about wind shear in air flight. Irrelevant.
+ At least three papers assume the availability of existing storage ponds which could be interconnected to provide pumped storage.
+ At least 5 papers discuss the need for pumped storage.
And so it goes.
So, when I asked EL to support his contention by reference to actual studies; or to undertake such a study on a system of his choice, I was indicating a means whereby his hypothesis could be tested.
That EL has not provided anything along these lines suggests to me that the point made in the Dutch study is valid and that wind penetrations in excess of 2% soon result in increased carbon emissions which outweigh the notional avoided CO2 due to the wind generation.
References presented on this thread thus far include:
+ DeCardis and Keith;
+ Peter Lang;
+ LePair and DeGroot;
+ Hawkins and the model for efficiency penalty.
These studies provide some support for the central hypothesis.
EL has provided nothing in response beyond bluster and unsybstantiated opinion.
I will soon post on this thread my thoughts regarding a mechanism whereby the costs of the semi-random up-and-down nature of wind generation can be determined in the marketplace and assigned where they belong, by being offset against wind power income. Since money is what this is all about, not efficiency, it will be money which will ultimately determine the outcome.
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Note to EL:
This site has posting rules.
Please do not post links to articles which you have not read and understood. Links to a list of search results do not comply.
In future, please target your links to specific articles and say what it is that the linked article brings of value to the discussion. My foregoing post demonstrates the futility of posting a link to a list of paywalled articles.
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Prof. Garnaut has said renewables subsidies should cease the day carbon tax begins. That’s not how others see it. In this interview with the Origin Energy CEO it is clearly assumed (half way down the transcript) both regimes will apply for some years. That means wind and commercial solar get three bites at the cherry
1) carbon tax to handicap coal and gas
2) a 20% quota, seemingly out of reach
3) a per Mwh subsidy, recently worth $33
Like I say we are adopting the Qatari-German model.
Qatar- flog irreplaceable hydrocarbon resources asap
Germany – pay huge amounts of money for small amounts of energy.
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DV82XL, on 26 April 2011 at 10:04 AM — From down here it appears the Greens are winning.
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@David B. Benson – B.C. has always been the Land of Fruits and Nuts, for Canada, but changing demographics there may give the old hippy class a shock as they start to flex their political muscles.
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I asked the following yesterday at 7.03 am:
@ Environmentalist and sod: A question for you both.
A fairly straightforward question, I would have thought. Why has there been no attempt to answer it?
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I’ve demonstrated (to my satisfaction at least) that with cyclable NPPs (and something for minor adjustments for changes in net loads) about 10% of the annual power can be generated by 32% wind and if no extra transmission has to be built, this saves ~1.2 UScents/kWh.
However, this requires extra capital expenditures for the wind generators; fully extra as the NPPs have to be built anyway, just operated slightly differently. If there is an ample supply of capital then the LCOE values show the (small) saving possible. If the supply of capital is constrained, what is the best course of action? In thinking about this, note that (despite claims and pretenses othrwise) the electric utilities must be regulated so the decision becomes one (in princple) for each entire societial unit.
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John Bennetts, on 26 April 2011 at 10:20 AM — BPA acts as balancing agent for wind power operators. For this regulatory service they are currently charged US$0.68 per MW per month. BPA finds that suffices to cover all costs associated with balancing the variable nature of wind power.
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Given that in the fullness of time all natural fossil fuels will either be completely depleted or phased out of use by legislative decree, then at some point in the future all metallurgical manufacturing, all chemical manufacturing and processing industries, all transport systems and everything else will have to be run off non-fossil fuel electrical and/or thermal power. Most of these processes will be more efficient if run around the clock, and will include the 90% or so of energy applications not currently powered from the electricity grid. This indicates that baseload applications will be a far larger component of the future power grid than at present, and the diurnal fluctuations in residential and commercial use will become at most a few percent of overall constant demand. Shouldn’t a small portion of nuclear plants dedicated to assisting legacy hydro with load balancing be sufficient?
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Every little bit counts in my book. If it reduces our dependence on non-renewable fuels, cuts down on carbon emissions, and delivers on costs … what argument is left to say it shouldn’t be added to the mix?
Private investors seem to like it too … and it’s the fastest growing sector in the energy market across the board. So it appears to be a winner on financing, quick deployment, and stimulating the economy too. Not bad for a technology that has “marginal” advantages and is “not worth the trouble.” And no, it’s not subsidies that are driving this, but a predictable (markets love certainty) and relatively quick return on investment.
Mellow out John (my name is “Ed” by the way) … you seem to have gotten the gist of the links. Most of the papers target a range above 20% where we can talk about the challenges of integrating wind, and what is required from a technical standpoint to make this happen. Most of the stuff below that is not worth worrying about, and is really no different than providing for regular every day variability (such as we find in managing peak demand cycles on a daily or seasonal basis, when power plants are taken off line for maintenance, drought years where hydro is a factor, other supply interruptions, etc.). Variability is not a foreign concept to grid operators (it’s actually a central characteristic of our energy system), and 24 hour forecasts for wind are pretty reliable (as has been indicated in the comments to this thread). I think we can make our grid infrastructure stronger, and even further minimize these challenges. And in the process, lower costs for consumers, and improve conditions for other clean energy resources as well (such as nuclear). I’m interested in a win win solution for the greatest number of people … few barriers to access, lower costs, more choices, greater sustainability, fewer environmental impacts … will you join me?
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Of course, one implication of my 11.40 am post is that prognostications based on the supposed decline of the importance of baseload power to the future grid are completely wrong, and that energy systems of the future will move in the opposite direction to that claimed by the ‘baseload is dead, smart-grid will solve all’ faction.
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@ EL:
The whole point of the post you quoted from is that there is very little evidence that any of those alleged benefits are in fact taking place.
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