Solar combined with wind power: a way to get rid of fossil fuels?

Scott Luft — However, Siegmar Gabriel is simply wrong.

What is correct is that wind power raises the cost of electricity on a grid (largely) composed of NPPs. The situation for solar is more complex and I’ve yet to produce a completely satisfying analysis.

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Jani-Petri, thanks for the article, and especially Michael Goggin, thanks for the comment. EL, I appreciate the links to the studies you’ve provided.

Michael, would you care to comment further on one puzzling fact I’ve been trying to find an explanation for – namely, the emission intensity of Navarre, Spain? This region of about 600 000 people gets over 70% of their electricity from wind power, AND the region houses about half of Spanish solar generating capacity. As you say, it is a remarkable achievement. However, contrary to your claims that such an achievement “would cut electric sector fossil fuel use and the associated harmful emissions of pollutants like carbon dioxide, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, etc. by a factor of three or more,” the actual emissions don’t show the slightest inclination to agree with your theory here.

In fact, since the start of Navarre’s renewables energy program in the 1990s, its emissions have risen an astounding 81,9%. causing the region (and Spain) to miss its Kyoto targets by a factor of seven. While one could argue that the emissions increases would be even higher without wind power, there seems to be little evidence for it, as the increases parallel the Spanish average almost exactly. According to my source, Faulin et al. (2009), although increased motor vehicle traffic plays a role as well, much of the emission increases are due to natural gas plants required to support this wind deployment,

This is what many of BNC’s readers seem to worry about: that renewables lock us in to inefficient and hence emission intensive backup use of fossil fuels. When we need 80% reductions, 80% increases are definitely not wanted. To modify your analogy a bit, renewables seem to be bicycles you might use to get to work – but given that you need to get to work, you want to have your chaffeur to ride alongside you in your car, just in case. Certainly, as long as you’re riding the bike, your car needs to transport a bit less weight and therefore it uses a bit less energy. But the moment your bike breaks down…

One can, of course, argue that Navarre isn’t a representative case study. I disagree, given it’s a sizable if smallish region with real industries and connected to a broader grid in a manner envisioned to Central European countries with higher wind penetration. Furthermore, the experience parallels that of Denmark, whose emission reductions have been, frankly, pathetic (and according to my sources, are more due to improvements in building efficiencies and the replacement of older coal plants by modern CHP plants). In short, while your theory is attractive, empirical evidence seems to contradict it.

Of course, I may be wrong. I would be delighted if someone could point out the errors here.

The article by Faulin et al. can be found here: http://www.econ.unavarra.es/~arizkun/Webs/hojaper/PubRec/Energy%20Policy%20in%20Renewables%20and%20its%20Economic%20and%20Environmental%20Consequences.pdf

A graph of emission increases I made, based on the article, can be found here (unfortunately, only in Finnish):

Key: Espanja = Spain, Maailma = the world. Red horizontal line: 2010 Kyoto goals for Spain.

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Cyril R @ 9:32: That link to the German PV production is fantastic! Just for grins I took a look at high summer and high winter. If you look at the week including December 21 you can readily understand why solar will require virtually 100% peak capacity backup. As for wind, if any of those days coincided with little or no wind over large areas (which of course is a definite probability), then nothing more need be said about the need for full baseload backup. I wonder if there’s a similar site for wind production? Or better yet, for both together.

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Also notice that Uvdiv provides references to grid load data from Vattenfall (in Germany) for the same month, so is good for comparison:

Looks like a baseload grid to me. Now compare that to the wind and nuclear output:

http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2010/03/uptime-downtime_07.html

What’s the best match for this type of demand, fairly constant baseload grid? Wind, or nuclear?

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(Deleted inflammatory remark) No one offers a plan for 100% wind and solar because they realize it’s not possible. This is exactly what we here at BNC worry about – that we won’t be able to power countries with wind and solar and will in stead get a largely fossil powered grid with solar and wind for good measure (or greenwashing, to be more accurate). Meanwhile plans are being pushed for 20% wind and/or solar, while no one talks about the more important 80%. Most countries have plans for 10-20% wind and solar, while they deliberately push off any discussion beyond that, saying the technology will improve, blah blah. Meanwhile CO2 emissions keep going up, not down. The problem is getting bigger while everyone is getting more complacent with their fancy solar panels and wind turbines.

It is a stark contrast that I continue to be flabbergasted about.

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Janne Korhonen wrote:

Michael, would you care to comment further on one puzzling fact I’ve been trying to find an explanation for – namely, the emission intensity of Navarre, Spain? This region of about 600 000 people gets over 70% of their electricity from wind power … since the start of Navarre’s renewables energy program in the 1990s, its emissions have risen an astounding 81,9%

A major reason for this is the astounding economic development opportunities wind and renewable energy development have brought to the region. Unemployment was reduced from 12.8% in 1994 to 5% in 2007 (here). An earlier study from Faulin speaks to these many jobs and economic windfalls (a central feature of Navarre’s energy strategy). Annual GDP growth has been in excess of 5%, and along with it large increases in energy consumption. Faulin notes in his studies the gains of renewable energy in reducing fossil fuel use and emissions (when measured against growth rates in other regions). Rising primary energy use, as you note, is also a significant factor. This appears to be a success story, rather than a dismal tale. Although someone really should tell the Spanish about the benefits of conservation and efficiency, especially when matched with renewable energy development as a major feature of their industrial and economic policy. “The situation in Navarre is characterized by a high consumption of energy per unit of the GDP in comparison with the rest of Spain” (p. 1791).

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Karl-Friedrich Lenz, EL, thank you for your comments. This issue has genuinely puzzled me before. Re-reading the article, I note that I made a mistake in figures: the correct wind power penetration seems to be around 51%: the total electricity generation from renewable sources was about 70% in 2006, with wind accounting for 74% of that (e.g. pp. 50-51). My apologies, but I don’t think this has any significant impact to my conclusions.

I probably should have rephrased my comment a little bit, as Faulin’s study only says that a major leap in emissions beginning in 2004 was associated with greatly increased natural gas use in electricity generation. Elsewhere (p. 39), they do note that

As a conclusion, it can be said that an important increase in the renewable energies use has been associated to a greater increase of the use of non-renewable energies, making Navarre a region in a difficult situation according to the sustainability standards. The positive effects of the development of renewables have been the structural changes performed to substitute final energies sources. Nonetheless, those changes have been compensated by the increase of final energy consumption and during the subperiod 2003-2006 those positive transformation effects have disappeared.

The primary “take-away” of Faulin’s study to me seems to be that even aggressive renewable electricity programs are not very efficient in reducing emissions, unless energy use can also be kept constant. Furthermore, a 70% renewable energy penetration in electricity network seems to do little, by itself, to curb carbon emissions.

Obviously, the share of renewable energy from total energy use is still quite low. But this is precisely what worries me: we’ve been told, again by Michael Goggin above, that 70% renewables penetration would go a long way towards reducing our emissions (and that it might be achievable by 2050 or so in central and northern Europe) – but in the one region that has done precisely this, the reductions have been nowhere near what is needed. As Faulin et al. note in the abstract,

…the implementation of renewable energy in Navarre has involved some effects of lower increase of the pollutant gases emissions, but not in the expected quantity. Furthermore, the renewable energies have not been revealed as substitutive energies to the traditional and non-sustainable ones, albeit they have increased the awareness of doing so in the nearby future.

(emphasis mine)

It’s great that the renewables program has brought new prosperity to the region. It’s also great that they have increased the “awareness” of replacing unsustainable energy sources, although I’m a bit wary of such weasel words. Nevertheless, the program hasn’t managed even to keep the emissions in check, much less reduce them.

I’m in this game to reduce harmful emissions, and while I’d like to do so while simultaneously increasing prosperity, emission reductions are to me the more important goal. The renewable revolution in Navarre hasn’t substituted for dirtier energy, it has simply added to it. If the logic proposed by EL is sound, I probably should be strongly opposing renewables deployment, as it seems to increase the total economic activity and unsustainable growth rate while doing very little for the environment. Certainly, the “bang for the buck” seems to be rather small.

I’m happy to be proven wrong in the future, but as it stands, the contrast to the French experience is stark. Somehow, they managed to accommodate rising energy use with greatly lowered CO2 emissions, although of course the increase in energy use was not as radical.

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EL:

France has one of the worst records on conservation, efficiency, or energy use per capita, and nuclear has a great deal to do it it.

In other words, nuclear is so good that its massive roll-out has dropped the per capita emissions of a wealthy OECD nation below Chinese levels, even when coupled with massively inefficient energy sector and increase in final energy use. Is that what you say?

I’d say France is among the only real success stories around, as I would imagine that when tighter conservation and efficiency measures are eventually introduced, the French emissions will be lower still. As far as I’m aware, their emissions are on a downward sloping trend. (Unless they make an U-turn about nuclear.) Sweden, our dear neighbor, is another good example: they’re apparently quite energy efficient, and when coupled with over 90% electricity coming from nuclear and hydro, they manage with even lower per capita emissions than do the French, and, again, beat the Chinese quite handily.

Which is far more than any country relying on renewables and efficiency can say, so far. Regarding Navarre, I only say that with a few more successes like that, we will be done for.

Otherwise, I’m in full agreement. We must also give attention to consumption, conservation, transmission, delivery, efficiency, and phaseout of fossil fuels in transportation, among other things. That much is self-evident. However, given the empirical evidence, I fail to see renewables playing a major role in the effort.

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EL, I wasn’t using China as any success measure. Simply pointing to the fact that at least two rich-world countries with quite high per capita incomes and associated consumption patterns have actually managed to stay below current Chinese per capita emission levels. Sadly, the trend in China is rising – while the trend in France and Sweden is falling. Despite the increasing electricity demands!

One can also compare and contrast France and Sweden to Germany and Denmark, both of which see their emissions stay quite stubbornly at about 50% higher than their neighbors. To me, it seems that France and Sweden are that much closer to the goal of zero-carbon society than Germany and Denmark.

I agree that conservation and efficiency are very, very important. But I’m confused a bit here: you quote the French figures of increasing energy consumption, while their per capita CO2 emissions are below developing country levels and going down even further. Doesn’t that disprove your claim, in part? It looks like that electricity consumption, at least, can rise, while emissions can still go down?

Were every country as CO2 free as France, we basically wouldn’t have the climate problem we now have. At least, it wouldn’t be as pressing!

I too hope that the humankind sees the error of its ways and we get somehow out from the growth paradigm (although historical examples make me somewhat concerned about long-term social dynamics in zero-growth societies). However, I also think we need to do more than hope. In particular, we need to lower our CO2 emissions, as much as we can. And from the evidence, it seems to me that the only countries that have actually succeeded in significantly lowering per capita CO2 emissions are those which have significant hydro and/or nuclear power. If renewables can help, that’s great, but I wouldn’t bet the farm based on the evidence so far.

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Unless counterexamples can be provided the following statements appear to be true
1) no part of the world has retired fossil fuel generation because of wind and solar
2) parts of the world that show economic growth have increased energy consumption
3) of the increased energy supply associated with economic growth less than half has come from wind and solar.

The corollary is that nobody has achieved balanced economic growth via efficiency, wind and solar alone. That includes the 0% growth case. Even to get to a steady state economy from here based purely on wind and solar will require massive inputs from other energy sources. If carbon is a problem that leaves few options.

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To answer the questions about Navarre’s and Spain’s experience with wind and other renewables reducing emissions, I pulled the relevant data for Spain from the US EIA, available here: http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=6&pid=29&aid=12 Looking at data for Navarre alone wouldn’t be useful since the Spanish power system is operated as an integrated whole (i.e., looking at Navarre alone would miss whether renewable electricity produced in Navarre is offsetting fossil generation elsewhere in Spain), and from a climate change perspective it doesn’t matter where in Spain the CO2 emissions were emitted.

The data for Spain shows a remarkable success story of wind and solar energy drastically cutting Spain’s fossil fuel use and emissions. In 2005, Spain emitted 150.5 million metric tons of CO2 from the consumption of coal and natural gas, based on data tracking the amount of coal and natural gas consumed in the country. Electricity production from wind steadily grew from 20.1 billion kwh in 2005 to 34.8 billion kwh in 2009. Hydroelectric output also increased as a result of 2005 being a poor water year, going from 17.7 billion kwh in 2005 to 26.0 billion kwh in 2009. Total electricity generation in Spain was flat over this time period, with 272.1 billion kwh produced in 2005 and 275.1 billion kwh produced in 2009. So wind grew from providing 7.4% of the country’s electricity in 2005 to 12.6% in 2009, while hydroelectric increased from 6.5% to 9.5%. Solar also helped out by growing from almost zero output in 2005 to 5.8 billion kwh in 2009. As a result of the increase in the output from these renewables, Spain’s coal and natural gas CO2 emissions fell from 150.5 million metric tons in 2005 to 117.1 million metric tons in 2009, a decline of 22% over just four years.

Spain became a net exporter of electricity over that time period, going from exporting 1.3 billion kwh in 2005 to 8.1 billion kwh in 2009, so one can’t argue that an increased reliance on imports allowed Spain to keep its emissions low. The coal and natural gas emissions data do include emissions from coal and natural gas used for other purposes, such as home heating and industry, so it is true that these data are not perfect indicators of what has happened in the electric sector. Since the use of fossil fuels for home heating is likely to have increased over this time period while industrial use of these fuels has likely decreased, those outside factors are likely to roughly cancel each other out. If anyone has purely electric sector data it would be helpful to have it, although it is extremely unlikely that changes in non-electric use of these fuels would be drastic enough to account for all of the observed decline in CO2 emissions.

If one wants to remove the impact variability in hydroelectric output may have on the results, one can use 2006 as the base year, since 2006 and 2009 had nearly identical hydroelectric output. With 2006 as the base year, wind output increased from 22.1 billion kwh to 34.8 billion kwh, growing from 7.9% of electricity generation to 12.6% of electricity generation. CO2 emissions fell from 144.6 million metric tons in 2006 to 117.1 million metric tons in 2009, a decline of 19%. Please analyze the data on your own and tell me if you can draw any other conclusion than that wind and solar energy have allowed Spain to drastically reduce its use of fossil fuels and its CO2 emissions.

Michael Goggin,
American Wind Energy Association

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(The comment to which you refer has been deleted.)
@all

While Cyril R. gives some reasons (I don’t agree with) about why there are no plans based on solar and wind only, he doesn’t seem to dispute the fact that there are none. That confirms my point that the above post is not relevant for real life scenarios and rather only theoretical speculation.

Again, in real life renewable energy is massively dominated by the largest low carbon source, hydro (reference given above).

I would also like to hear opinions on whether the plan by Lynas and Goodwin I mentioned would work. If so, that would seem to contradict the basic idea of the post above that a system mainly based on solar and wind can’t possibly add up.

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@Michael Goggin: It is nice to be optimistic, but I am a bit sceptical of how you inteprete the figures.

“As a result of the increase in the output from these renewables, Spain’s coal and natural gas CO2 emissions fell from 150.5 million metric tons in 2005 to 117.1 million metric tons in 2009, a decline of 22% over just four years.”

So your claim is that 28.8 billion kWh of extra renewables production lowered emissions by 33.4 million tons. I.e. that each kWh of wind, hydro, or solar avoids 1160 g of CO2. This figure does not correspond to the CO2 intensity of spanish electricity production. From https://demanda.ree.es/demandaEng.html I can check the figures currently. 02.12.2011 at 0740am emissions rate was 264 g/kWh. Yesterday at around 2100 when consumption was higher the rate was about 320 g/kWh. So you are assigning to renewables in Spain far higher emissions reductions than appear reasonable. Maybe you could clarify how that more than 1kg/kwh emission avoidance appears?

Assuming that nothing special has happened outside the electricity sector in the past few years in Spain is also rather risky. Spain had a housing boom which ended in a bust just during the period you quote.
Making a quick search (http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/24464/2/MPRA_paper_24464.pdf) I find that Spain was producing 54mtons of concrete before the bust and (http://www.oficemen.com/noticia.asp?id_rep=768) just around 27 mtons at 2009.If 0.9 tons of CO2 is emitted for each ton of concrete (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete#Carbon_dioxide_emissions_and_climate_change) this reduction in concrete production could account for more than 20 mtons of CO2. I do not know what fraction of spanish concrete is imported etc. but ignoring the financial crises and housing busts while doing these estimates makes numbers appear better than they probably are.

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Karl, it is indeed entirely theoretical to talk about powering countries with nothing but wind and solar, because this isn’t practically feasible. We can’t even make the battery to make this work at this scale:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8237

The battery that we need is about 12-15 tonnes of lead per capita. That’s about ten medium sized cars per person!!! And that’s just for the lead, not the entire battery, which would weigh in at at least 30 tonnes per capita.

This is simply insane, and even then one week of energy storage isn’t enough, if you have two weeks of low wind speeds in winter the entire nation shuts down. This isn’t anywhere as reliable as today’s electric grids.

Yet this issue is very much relevant and not theoretical in the sense that we need to cut CO2 emissions to a tenth today’s levels at a time when they are growing (economic growth around the world).

Sadly, wind and solar are being used as an excuse of complacency – namely, to not have to build as many nuclear plants as we can.

Like David Mackay said, we need a plan that adds up. A plan for 20% wind, 10% solar and 70% mostly fossil backup isn’t acceptable. It is a dangerous delusion, a fossil fuel lock in.

I therefore contend, that it is very much relevant to discuss close to 100% solutions, at the very least for that portion which is ‘easy’ to do, such as electric commuter car travel, heat pump heating, etc.

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@Cyril: My thoughts exactly. I am not aware of any national scenario which adds up to kind of GHG reductions we need. There is plenty of talk and percentages thrown around without any meaningful policy framework to back those numbers up. Of course nobody who understands energy production/consumption even a bit sees 100% sun or solar scenarios doable, but those are very much the reasons many people use to justify anti-nuclear opinions while still clinging to an idea that they are serious about climate change. If we need to have about 100% backup for wind and solar, what adds up? Hydro doesn’t do it, biomass doesn’t do it and is ecologically crazy (human appropriation of primary production is the biggest driver of extenctions already), wave power for sure doesn’t do it (and even if it did how would you change the output power to smooth out wind or solar output?), geothermal gradient is too weak in most places. In theory you might mine for heat if you are ready to drill several kilometers into the rocks, but even if feasible would you run such a powerplant to smooth variation in windpower production? If so, why?

The point is that public THINKS there is this all renewable energy systems around the corner that do add up. Public is unfortunately mostly ignorant and this ignorance has serious political and environmental consequences. As far as I can see, the only way solar and wind power based solutions can work is if they are small pieces of massive energy infrastructure based on fossil fuels or nuclear power. And if the nuclear taboo is lifted, soon someone asks that given nuclear why would we need solar and wind at all, except perhaps in some off-grid applications? I suspect that this one reason for anti-nuclear opinions. Many people have become so ideologically committed to wind and solar, that they need the nuclear taboo.

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EL,

you don’t know what you’re talking about. EDF is not the most indebted firm in France. Here’s the proof: FranceTelecom is more indebted.
http://francetelecom.com/fr_FR/finance/financement/info-dette/
And as I told you, EDf’s debt is recent cf
http://finance.edf.com/espace-obligataire/notations/ratios-de-solvabilite-41174.html
The cash flow / debt has nose dived in last five years.

As for the P/E ratio, it’s about 10 for the whole Paris market. You might have heard of some crisis of the euro. The political context in France does not help also. But you should know that the share price plummets when there is talk of lowering nuclear’s share of production.

As for survival without state backing, a lot of utilities have a high debt/cash flow ratio, because they work on long term contracts. You might also be aware of something named the European Commission which stricly curtails what help a state can give to state owned firms in the name of competition.

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So we all agree that having 100% wind and solar systems destabilizing our grid will not happen in the real world any time soon.

Again, then why bother analyzing the stability of the grid in such a system?

Actually, I wish we had that problem everywhere already. If the Maldives plan by Lynas and Goodall referenced above were already completed, we might see that the biomass capacity is not sufficient in some situations and they need to use their diesel generators some of the time, which are kept under the plan.

But that would still be a vast improvement over the starting point, which was generating everything from diesel.

If you think there is some grid stability problem with “unreliables” at 100% solar and wind, when exactly does that kick in? Or the other way around, how much low carbon generation with “unreliables” are you prepared to allow? How many solar panels and wind turbines may the Maldives install before meeting with your opposition? Or is that opposition unconditional, “unreliables” are to be rejected at any level of penetration?

On a related note, you might be amused finding out what is the number one result if you search on Google with the term “unreliables”.
MODERATOR
BNC Comments policy requires links/refs to support your contentions. Please provide them in future.

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@Karl: For me what few hundred thousand people in Maldives do is not important. They are scattered into many islands and the kind of solutions they would need are very different from those elsewhere. For all I care, they could continue burning diesel until some affordable zero carbon source comes available and spend the money so saved on health care, social security, protecting their environment etc. What Maledives does has more of a symbolic value. If they want to set an example, they should do something that actually removes all their emissions and does it in such a way that other countries can do it as well (i.e. that it scales from 300000 people to 7000000000). If they were to just cut they emissions 50% and then stop, they set a bad example. Whether they end up being 1m below waterline or 50cm is beside the point. They drown either way.

When does my opposition to unreliables start? It starts from the first mW that is installed for ideological reasons with tax payer support without reasoned discussion. The same applies to all other sources of energy including nuclear. If all options are on the table (not true in most places) and we make sensible cost comparisons, environmental impact assesments etc. etc. and wind or solar comes on top, that is fine. But this is not how it is done today. Why on earth unreasoned decision making should be tolerated? Unreason might have its place in matters of love, but not on matters of energy production.

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Some more information about coal, here’s a great reference:

http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/

Looks like we’re already around 8 billion tonnes of coal use globally, its worse than I thought.

Brown coal is the dirtiest type of coal. The biggest brown coal user is, drumroll please… Germany!

Germany is also the number 7 coal consumer in the world, and the 6th biggest coal importer.

Germany gets 44% of its electricity from coal.

Pretty depressing results, after spending >100 billion euros in guaranteed subsidies, favorable grid regulations (must buy), various tax breaks and low interest loans, and all sorts of efficiency and recycling efforts, they use just as much fossil fuel as they did 20 years ago (when they started seriously with wind and solar).

That’s a great case study on the question, “solar and wind power combined – a way to get off of fossil fuels?”.

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One of the problems with the “unreliables” label is that people using it may be either meaning only solar and wind (like the post above in the last paragraph) or all renewable generation methods (like the post above in the first paragraphs). That obviously confuses the discussion compared to using the normal terms of “renewable” and “intermittent”.

I note that for the time being there is no answer to the question when exactly the problem of grid stability derived from installing solar and wind is supposed to kick in.

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Karl you are nitpicking because solar and wind *ARE* unreliable. You can’t build a grid on it. The climate scientists say we need to cut CO2 emissions 80% below 1990. That’s more like 95% lower when you consider the actual economic growth over the next several decades.

You cannot do just one thing. Build lots of solar and wind, it means two things:

1. you lock yourself into burning fossil most of the time to ‘back up’ (the energy understatement of the decade) wind and solar.
2. you give ideologically driven energy policy such as the one in Germany, an excuse to not build as many nuclear powerplants as we can to really make a difference.

Like El, Karl is trying to win some battles, his blog posts are almost heading towards ‘lawyer science’ where you lose sight of the forest because you look at one tree, but we all have to wake up and realize we’re losing the war. Fossil fuel use is going up, fast. Not down. 8 billion tonnes of coal used worldwide this year, we’re heading rapidly to 9 billion tonnes per year. Solar and wind can’t do much against this rise of coal. They’re simply not reliable and productive and dispatchable. Coal is. In order to beat coal, you need to provide an alternative that is cheaper, more reliable, more productive, more energy dense, and more practical. Only nuclear fits the bill on all fronts, and only if we stop deluding ourselves and take a hard serious look at the numbers. Real numbers, like when is the power needed, when does this energy source X deliver, how do we make it to match so that we can truely stop using fossil fuels.

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@Karl: Somehow your insistence that one should shut up about the problems of scalability since in small amounts wind and solar cause small problems, reminds me of a guy who drops from the roof. Half way down someone asks him, are you OK? The guy responds cheerfully “So far so good!”. It’s not the fall that kills you… it’s the sudden stop at the end.

To repeat the point made many times before by many people here, the problem is the lock in of fossil fuel use by the sources like wind and solar. Since storage cannot be done at sufficient scale nor at reasonable costs it won’t be done for anything but PR purposes. Under such circumstances wind and solar are mainly green packaging for fossil fuels. Some might say that what a nice green packaging that is and be happy since it makes people smile. Others might prefer to open up the package to show the people the poo inside so that they would focus on the issues that make them better off for for good.

Also, what it the point quoting polling figures as an argument for doing something? Public often supports silly things out if ignorance.
I have been reading Steven Pinkers: The Better Angels of Our Nature (I recommend it) and there I found a nice term “pluralistic ignorance”. It can be a stable equilibrium in a game theoretical sense and is probably part of the reason why societies made out of supposedly sane people can do stupid and occasionally even terrible things. In such a trap skeptics keep their mouths shut since they fear ostracization (or sometimes worse) while some others enforce the party line/conventional wisdom in order to demonstrate their own virtue and reliability. There are ways to escape this trap, but I think your way is not one them.

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Cyril R. wrote:

EL, Gene, yes, that’s what I said. The capacity credit of wind is very low. It also isn’t fixed, it drops as more wind turbines are built. It drops to zero at some point. Which shows how useless wind really is if you don’t have swathes of fossil fuel to burn.

This is incorrect as well. Your assist means having fossil fuel capacity tied into the grid, not burning fossil fuels? With retirement of old plants, it will actually be a fairly easy thing to have this legacy capacity around, adding such a modest small cost (10% or less of the wholesale cost) of renewables.

Let’s take a conservative (real world) view of where we are heading with current technology. Say wind is contributing 30% of our power output, solar 15%, carbon free baseload another 20%, legacy hydro chips in 10%, and we have a collection of very flexible storage options to 10% of peak demand (NaS storage, flywheels, CAES … all currently available). This appears to be where we are heading today with private sector and ratepayers chipping in the investment capital, modest regulatory or policy support, very low direct subsidy support from the taxpayer, very little adding to the national debt, near grid parity with fossil fuels and coal, and a great deal of benefit to the bottom line of developers (with ROIs in 10-20 year range).

Assumptions: all our generators are operating at high capacity values because there is efficiency and conservation in the mix, and the load has been smoothed by nighttime charging of EV batteries. Whatever is left over will be fossil fuels (or some alternative mix of flexible generation), used largely for balancing (ramping reserves, load following, supplemental reserves, etc.). Anybody want to do the math … that’s 25% (and that’s with current technology, low emissions from gas, cost effective, and there is a great deal of research indicating we can do better). You’ll note there’s no coal anywhere in the system.

Maybe 25% from natural gas is not good enough for anybody (which would have the emissions equivalent of 8% production from coal). Let’s start building some over capacity in wind and solar, and see what happens. Do you think we don’t have overcapacity in nuclear, coal, and natural gas plants already? Do you think we wouldn’t need overcapacity if we had 50% contribution from nuclear? We’re going to need it one way or another, so we might as well look at how it changes the picture.

I’ve already referenced two models above that look at over-building of wind and solar: Heide, et. al 2011, and Zubi 2011. For Heide, overbuilding has a large impact on storage requirements for a fully reliable and well managed grid. Heide proposes a model for the whole of Europe (at 3240 TWh/year), 100% renewables, and looks at how excess generation would impact storage requirements. Excess generation to 50% reduces storage capacity requirements from 510 TWh (at 265 GWe capacity) down to 160 TWh (and 200 GW capacity). The study concludes that at 50% excess production, “storage lakes in Norway, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland” currently hold the required amount of stored energy for a 100% renewables grid (at 150 TWh), although capacity is somewhat low at 55 GW. Zubi 2011, on the other hand, is concerned with costs. Overcapacity in this example lowers the costs of energy because curtailment is used more often for balancing than flexible resources. In short, powering up flexible fossil fuel generators is one approach for dealing with load balancing, others include curtailment, “energy storage, demand control measures, interconnection of renewable energy resources with a supergrid, etc.” (p. 8076). All of which have been mentioned above. Lock-in is not the only game in town, researchers appear to be quite adept and skilled when looking at other options (all within the context of reasonable costs, currently available technology, and the highest standards for grid operability).

There are many studies that suggest the same. Solomon has been doing very detailed studies on the Israeli grid (here and here), and looking at overcapacity (to 20%), current storage technologies (a mix of fast responding buffering storage and slow responding bulk storage), and very high penetrations of solar (to 60-90% of total electricity production). An economic analysis will be forthcoming.

To speak as clearly and plainly as possible. It seems odd to me that we have to argue and debate about these matters (when they are fairly conventional, easily quantified, and well established approaches to capacity planning and grid operations and management). In fact, I would argue we have a great deal of consensus about these operational standards, and how hard it is for any generation source to take up a dominant share of the resource mix (nuclear included). For anything above baseload, many of the same issues of flexible generation, buffering reserves, load following, regulation reserves, etc., also start to show up for nuclear. We don’t have to worry about it at the current low levels, with fossil fuels in the mix, or where grids help to distribute the load (in a manner very similar to excess generation described above). We’ve been doing these kinds of things for 50 or more years, why does anybody think we are going to stop doing them more effectively in the future and with more efficient, cost effective, and less polluting technologies at our disposal? If your arguments sound out of date, they probably are! Renewables aren’t green packaging, as Jani suggests above, they are a “viable power source for the global economy” (as the IEA describes it today).

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Thanks Andy, far more useful numbers than wild quotes of percentages without megawatts. Clearly the wind and solar route means dumping loads of solar and wind when both are available, and still burning lots of gas in the winter when there’s still no sun.

I think many readers of BNC are living in sunny countries such as Australia and the US Southwest. They’re mostly not familiar with northern European climate in winter.

Regarding the IEA stating that solar is a ‘serious energy source’ as EL puts it. I do not see any reason for optimism. Here’s the most recent World Energy Outlook from the IEA, where global natural gas use increases 63% in the next couple of decades. Natural gas imports more than double. Coal and oil also increase, and total fossil fuel consumption increases 26%. Fossil fuels provide 76% of global primary energy demand in 2035. All wind, solar, wave, geothermal together is stuck at a feeble 4% of global primary energy. So much for solar having become a “serious energy source”. Fossil fuels are increasingly more serious than anything else.

Click to access WEO2011_GoldenAgeofGasReport.pdf

In a timeframe we need to be halving fossil fuel use, we’ll increase it by at least one quarter. This is not good. Not good at all.

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Andy Dawson wrote:

The fact that you can’t even spot that your proposal doesn’t add to 100% hardly inspires confidence, by the way…..

Please redo your calculations for the percentages I have provided, since it looks like your result may be interesting. You’re going to have to read my post much closer, the missing 25% comes from peak flexible generation such as natural gas.

Andy Dawson wrote:

You may have noticed that CCS projects are dropping like flies.

The pilot project in Yorkshire, UK just opened it’s doors 5 days ago (at some 50 times the scale of previous projects).

Andy Dawson wrote:

I’m not aware of battery systems being demonstrated above the single-figures MWh range

We have a whole thread on that over here, and it appears you haven’t kept up with current commercial deployment. Here’s a sample of deployments of the NGK batteries to some 200 MW (1,200 MWh). Hitachi factory installation is rated 8 MW (57.6 MWh), Rokkasho wind farm has 34 MW (245 MWh) battery operating since April 2008.

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Barry Brook wrote:

You are currently not thinking critically on this problem. It is no good saying ‘I don’t agree’ and ‘that is no problem… and won’t be… in the future’. You must back up your opinions with numbers and real-world. That is what matters on BNC. That is what people like Cyril R and John Bennetts do, which is why they have my respect.

I feel the same way about nuclear proponents who write uncritically about the promise of nuclear (which also includes significant fossil fuel lock-in). Do we have any “real world” examples or “numbers” to look at, and not just opinions? Yes. France overproduces and exports 14% of it’s energy, hydro is 10%, it also imports 15% of it’s domestic consumption from coal and natural gas (12% as a gross measure if you don’t count exports), so I don’t see where these performance measures are all that different than the renewables (with over production and fossil fuel scenarios) listed above. Efficiency and conservation programs are very poor (the worst in EU), because state owned utilities must promote consumption as a primary tool for return on investment (over a 50 year period or longer). And we don’t really know the full cost of the program, which includes large subsidies for finance capital, R&D, reprocessing, and waste disposal (shared with the taxpayer). So yes, let’s have this debate, but let’s keep it to the facts. On the numbers, it appears to be no better than a credible renewables portfolio (to 45% of generation from wind and solar, 10% from hydro), and have a great deal of private capital and free market equity in the mix (rather than central government planning), quick investment turnarounds (with ROIs in 10 to 20 year range), scalability for large industrial markets, developing economies, and off grid deployments, and far fewer of the long term waste, reprocessing, peak fuel, social disapproval, and national security headaches of a high nuclear option.

To speak honestly about this, we seem to be going around in circles and circles on these things, and on matters that for most people are already decided and have a high degree of consensus around them (as I have tried pointing out in the scientific literature). The IEA has joined the consensus, and while opposition to conventional thinking is a very good thing, one should at a bare minimum understand why they have done so (before coming up with a response that they have overlooked something in current technologies, market trends, or integration issues).

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It’s not hard to look at the graphs I provided and see many if not most low wind periods are more than one day. By logical extension you need more than a day of energy storage IF you want to stop using a lot of fossil fuels. EL doesn’t care about using swathes of fossil fuel to back up the unreliables, but many here do, including me.

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EL, “so I don’t see where these performance measures are all that different than the renewables”

This is what Barry meant by looking at reality, EL. Germany is the renewable way, which doesn’t work, you end up using just as much fossil fuel in 30 years of trying. France is the nuclear way, where even EL admits you only use 10% fossil in the grid, in only 20 years. As opposed to Germany that uses over 60% fossil after spending far more per capita trying to power its country on wind and solar. France has a 80% nuclear, 10% hydro, 10% fossil grid.

Click to access DEELEC.pdf

Click to access FRELEC.pdf

For sure it takes a long time to build a nuclear powerplant. Building a few solar panels is much faster. Yet it takes forever to build ENOUGH solar panels. You also need at least a week of energy storage to get to the same level of reliability and grid-fossil-free-servicing as a nuclear powerplant fleet.

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Andy Dawson wrote:

We most certainly see extended (multi-day) periods of near zero wind energy production in the UK – we’ve had a 5-10 day period of production of <5% of nominal capacity in the last three winters, for example.

So are you saying they aren’t using capacity reserves in the UK to match electricity generation to demand?

As I have documented in energy storage thread (and referenced in the peer reviewed studies above and elsewhere), storage to 10% of installed capacity and with 8-12 hour discharge is entirely sufficient in every study I have seen to achieve very high penetrations of renewables (certainly to a low 45% of energy output as I have suggested above). This number is much higher in studies where over capacity in renewables, demand control, geographic smoothing, storage at proposed level, and other grid management methodologies are discussed (here and here). You should be able to do the math at this point. Let’s do a costing for a hybrid storage system for the entire US grid (1/3 pumped hydro, 1/3 CAES, and 1/3 NaS): at 100 GWe capacity and 800 – 1200 GW/h energy storage. Build time is 40 years to 2050 (only looking at current costs).

Pumped hydro storage cost: $75/kWh ($20 – $30 billion for total)
NaS storage costs: $300/kWh ($80 – $120 billion for total)
CAES storage costs: $5/kWh ($1.3 – $2 billion for total)

With these very conservative and current cost estimates (for a grid that is very flexible and secure at 45% renewables, and likely much higher) total storage costs would be in range of $101 – $152 billion over 40 years (or $328 – $495/person over 40 years, or $8.2 – $12/person per year). This is not a very big number (considering the scale of our energy consumption in the US and robust grid). The US currently spends an estimated $100 billion/year in Afghanistan alone (enough for entire build-out). Savings from power outages, where storage costs offset business losses from power interruptions (especially in less than 5 minute range), would exceed costs by a factor of 1:21 – 1:32. Storage also “has value” in ancillary markets, so these costs pay for themselves. And this picture keeps getting more and more attractive as costs of renewable energy generation and storage costs continue to decline, and trend towards grid parity with coal and fossil fuels. Sustainables have already surpassed nuclear in share of domestic production in the US, and I don’t know what is confusing to people here about these costs and trend lines?

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this study of course includes ethynol and, the biggest hunk which is not rising significantly, hydro. Remove hydro from the mix, most of which existed before the first nuclear plant ever went on line, and your numbers don’t look so good.

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Gregory Meyerson wrote:

Do you favor CCS over nuclear?

I have no preference how we get baseload into the system … I only have concern for credible and real world approaches to cost effective carbon mitigation on a global scale (OECD, developing countries, off grid) without waiting 50 to 100 years for results. I also favor real world credit market financing and private sector business development, which seems key to any scalable solution (anywhere on the planet). I also believe energy efficiency and conservation need to become primary concerns in energy delivery, I also favor sustainable energy technologies that don’t lock people in to non-renewable fuel imports and over-exposure to marginal price volatility and risk. If nuclear meets these objectives, I’m all for it.

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“So are you saying they aren’t using capacity reserves in the UK to match electricity generation to demand?”

well, as wind only contributes about 2% of production, it’s hardly as yet a major issue – but yes, we vary production on fossil fuel plants to match demand – constituting about 80% of total production.

Which means we’ve lots of plants available – but, of course were they run intermittently, their economics would look very different – and probably infeasible. And, of course, puts out a LOT of carbon.

” storage to 10% of installed capacity and with 8-12 hour discharge is entirely sufficient in every study I have seen to achieve very high penetrations of renewables”

Which rather depends on starting assumptions – and as a rule, ignoring cost. And it simply assumes that fossil will step in for any extended period of unavailability. Which, since the whole point is to reduce CO2 output, at feasible cost…..

“Let’s do a costing for a hybrid storage system for the entire US grid (1/3 pumped hydro, 1/3 CAES, and 1/3 NaS): at 100 GWe capacity and 800 – 1200 GW/h energy storage. Build time is 40 years to 2050 (only looking at current costs).”

for a start, the US grid is rather larger than 100GW – indeed, nuclear capacity alone is of that order, and with a population between 5 and 6 times that of the UK, and higher per capita energy use, assuming something 2 1/2 times UK average demand, and about 60% higher than UK peak load is a tad unrealistic. In fact, 2008 US electricity production was 4,369 TWh (IEA figures), which I make as just under 500GW average output. That 100GW reserve covers just 20% of output – which, since you’re apparently proposing 45% of production from intermittent renewables means the great majority of the variation in that is actually covered by fossil fuel.

But accepting that, I’m unsure as to where those numbers can come from – new build PS hydro costs between £1bn and £1.5bn/GW, and even accepting US costs are lower, they’re not lower to a £:$ equivalence – so – so $50Bn will be closer to the mark for 30GW.

And, of course, it slightly begs the question of where exactly you’re about to put an extra 33GW of dams – given the environmental pressure is to dismantle the ones you’ve got. Recall, PS is harder to place than conventional hydro – you need large lakes at both top and bottom of the dam.

Even at $200/Kwh for NaS, that 400GWh of storage comes in at a heady $80bn; and the lowest price I can find for CAES is around $1500/Kw, so another $50Bn or so. So, $200Bn – and no, over 40 years, allowing for something as low as a 7% cost of capital, that’s nearer to $800 billion (always a good bet to assume you can get free capital). Add something as low as another 7% O&M (low, if anything, given the life limitations of systems like NAS), and you’re getting into the region of $1.3 trillion.

For enough storage to keep you going for 8-12 hours, covering perhaps ½ to 1/3rd of US demand – with 55% coming from non-renewables, by your own admission.

Add efficiency losses, and the cost of the renewable generation itself, and pretty soon you’re talking serious money. Remember, you’ve still got to allow for massive redundancy in the renewable plant – it’s not just a matter of $n/MW of nameplate capacity, it’s about cost adjusted so it’s $n/Mw of average output.

“Savings from power outages, where storage costs offset business losses from power interruptions (especially in less than 5 minute range), would exceed costs by a factor of 1:21 – 1:32.”

I can’t talk for the US, but here, we see net transmission and generation reliability (in terms of failure to supply) at about the 99.9997% level. What failures we see are at local distribution level – which would be entirely unaffected by what you propose. There simply aren’t enough minutes lost to give the sort of benefit argued, by a couple of orders of magnitude. Perhaps the US needs to sort basic grid reliability, which can be done a lot more cheaply that this sort of money.

And again, think on it this way. To get 800-1200GWh of storage, costs even on your estimates between $100 and $150Bn – excluding the cost of generators to supply it (so, of course, the actual cost to supply is the SUM of the two). For that same sort of money and assuming series build gets me 30-45GW of actual generation, Not just short term back-up for generation.
MODERATOR
Andy – as per BNC Comments Policy please back-up your contentions with refs/links – preferably peer reviewed.

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Here are some estimates for costs of various storage technologies by engineers:

Click to access Doty-90377-Storage-ASME-ES10.pdf

In particular, pumped hydro for just overnight rechanging is quite expensive. Worse, the USA has almost run out of places to put (more of) these. One can always build underground pumped hydro, but look to the cost.

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Andy Dawson wrote:

for a start, the US grid is rather larger than 100GW – indeed, nuclear capacity alone is of that order

You are correct. US generating capacity is 10 times larger than this (at some 1,010 GWe), which is why I selected 10% of this (or 100GW) as the relevant energy storage amount.

Andy Dawson wrote:

I’m unsure as to where those numbers can come from

They come from the reference I cited in my post: “Energy Storage Systems Cost Update: A Study for the DOE Energy Storage Systems Program” (Sandia Report, April 2011).

Andy Dawson wrote:

And, of course, it slightly begs the question of where exactly you’re about to put an extra 33GW of dams

The US already has 17.24 GWe of pumped hydro storage. We’d need an extra 15.8 by 2050. Using the Ludington pumped storage plant in Michigan as model, we’d need additional storage with a reservoir size of approximately 10.9 sq miles (or 28.56 sq km). If it can be built in Michigan (highest elevation 1,979 ft or 603 m), it can be built in many locations.

Andy Dawson wrote:

the lowest price I can find for CAES is around $1500/Kw, so another $50Bn

You’re confusing capital construction costs and energy storage costs (per unit of discharge capacity). These are two entirely different numbers.

Andy Dawson wrote:

For enough storage to keep you going for 8-12 hours, covering perhaps ½ to 1/3rd of US demand – with 55% coming from non-renewables, by your own admission.

This is not how energy storage is used by developers or grid managers. All your generation sources keep you going for 24 hours (to the extent they are needed to match the load), energy storage is used for frequency regulation, off-peak capture, load leveling (or peak shaving), black start activation, T&D support, micro-grid formation, industrial or commercial building uses, residential, and much more. Replacing all the power on a grid is not among the intended, practical, or cost-effective applications for ESS.

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peterc wrote:

EL –

thanks for the references you provide on pumped storage. The power output figures look impressive, but give no indication of how long they can keep that power up.

There are many ways to make these calculations, and assumptions matter a great deal on the kind of results you will get. For simplicity purposes, I have set discharge time frame to 8 to 12 hours (regardless of technology). This is a tad long for NaS, which currently has a energy storage capacity of 8 hours (in current commercial models). So you might need a little more in terms of capacity to get to 12 hours (or reasonable technical improvements, which are likely forthcoming). This largely adds to costs, and not technical feasibility. For land and geographic dimensions on PHS, I used the pumped hydro storage plant in Ludington as a base case (which has “more than 8 hour” capacity). I fully admit these are expensive options, we’d like storage costs to be around $100/kWh for widespread market penetration of bulk storage support, a hybrid approach gets us close to this ($126/kWh based on Sandia cost estimates), and we can do better. Energy costs are rising too (particularly with grid congestion and peak energy pricing), and the attractiveness of energy storage with energy arbitrage is closely linked to this.

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