I see by the news headlines that there were sudden, massive but mercifully brief power outages in Southern France this last week. Accident or deliberate sabotage; of course there is a radical group claiming responsibility. Doing the work that the Green-worshiping governing bodies won’t do, or at least can’t be caught openly doing, yet. All to protect the Erf, although I suspect that the Erf can very readily protect itself in the long run, as long as careless bureaucrats, cost-cutting industries and so-called “green” technologies aren’t pouring poisonous substances out onto it in wholesale lots. I recall reading some years ago an energy-consumption proposal by an especially Erf-maddened theoretician, apparently a man of a particularly savagely Spartan bent who outlined a plan of his own devising: that only one in a hundred households could enjoy a then-current early 21st-Century lifestyle, with electric-powered appliances, lights, computers, HVAC and all. The other 99 households would be permitted a single low-watt light bulb and nothing else. The way that I read it at the time, this particular theorist was utterly serious about replicating a two-tier society of privilege; a few nobles living in comfort, and everyone else in conditions of medieval squalor, by woodfire and candlelight. I seriously wonder if this Erf theoretician was any relation to Al Gore and the other save-the-Erf-by-grinding-down-everyone-else World Economic Forum coterie; a life in the lap of luxury and convenience, while everyone else grubs for a miserable, serf-like existence.
It’s all about “renewables” when it comes to energy, as the Green Erf-worshippers insist. Wind and solar, even if such currently-available technologies have demonstrated being a sometime thing of late, especially in the northern hemispheres. The recent country-wide power outage in Spain and Portugal – just as the massive power outages in Texas during Snowmagedden 2021 — are a harbinger, a hint of disasters to come if governments, like Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain and the rest of the renewable-deluded protect-the-Erf insist on following through with renewables on a national scale. Because the one element that a modern industrial nation depends on is readily available power. Early on, our nation’s embryo manufacturing base (as well as others) depended on hydro power, followed by coal and oil-powered steam, then nuclear as soon as technological advances made it possible. The manufacturing capacity of the western world made it possible for those nations to rule the world, or at least those parts of it which mattered to them. More importantly to those who had the good fortune to live in that world, it enabled them to enjoy relatively healthy lives in considerable comfort, rather than a considerably shorter one ridden by drudgery, disease and odds against survival.
Usable windmills and solar panels are also a sometime and small-scale thing, and I honestly don’t believe they will ever improve beyond small, limited domestic use. I am convinced that as governments become insanely devoted to inflicting the chimera of renewables on us all, many of us will turn to small-scale individual systems: solar panels with associated batteries, and private household generators. A YouTube channel that I follow is for a young English-Portuguese couple, renewing a ruinous stone farmstead in back-country Portugal; farming in a small way, making a small-scale and fashionably sustainable off-the-grid rural life for themselves. They noted for their viewers on a recent installment that the Iberian-wide power outage did not discommode them much at all. They have set up solar panels and batteries to power those elements of a 21st century living which they favor – like a television set, internet access, cellphones and batteries for power tools.
Some of the other YouTube off-the-grid homesteaders on my fan-list have similar set-ups. Not all are European, by the way – a good lot are American, and sometimes living way out on the fringes. They aren’t alone in setting up their own private methods of powering their houses, either. To judge by the sound of small generators in my neighborhood during a half-day long power outage last year – many of us are looking at an uncertain future as far as the main electrical grids are concerned.
What do you think? Comment as you wish, and while the lights remain on…
In his proposal, how did the 1 out of 100 get selected?
Haven’t read it in detail yet, but this is a serious analysis of solar economics and how it varies with scale:
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/can-we-afford-large-scale-solar-pv
Can’t recall – I think it was a theoretical exercise – but it was horrifying to me. Almost as horrifying as that British commercial/video about cutting back energy use a few years ago. Something about 1 in 10 in energy consumption, and various characters pushing a button when various people expressed doubt about it … and blowing the doubters into graphic bloody shreds.
“https://www.construction-physics.com/p/can-we-afford-large-scale-solar-pv”
I would not classify that analysis as “serious”. The author makes a lot of wishful assumptions, such as about low cost (and — implicitly — utterly safe) very large scale battery storage, and about the willingness of natural gas producers to drill wells which will be shut in much of the time when the sun is shining — where is the economic incentive for that gas producer?
The article totally ducks moral questions, such as the justification for wealthy Californians depending on exotic minerals mined by near-slave African children. The article also ducks serious national security issues, such as having to depend on China for the continuing supply of solar panels and batteries. (It is called “renewable” power because those items wear out quite quickly and have to be “renewed” at the going price).
The simple smell test — if solar power is so wonderful, why do we have to subsidize it and mandate it today?
“the willingness of natural gas producers to drill wells which will be shut in much of the time when the sun is shining”…gas doesn’t generally flow directly from the well to a single point of demand, it enters a system which serves multiple users (home heating & cooking, industrial uses, plastics and chemical manufacturing, etc) and with a certain amount of storage in the system.
I had to check the date on that article because I think it could have been written any time over the past 15 years, projecting reduced PV cell and storage costs,
Frances at Manhattan Contrarian has been all over studies based on these assumptions
Yet it was useful if only because it addressed the issue that solar can never be a viable net-zero solution, whether it can be a viable solution at any percentage, let alone the 70-80% the author cites is questionable
Two specific issues:
First is as one commenter pointed out, Potter uses the best-case scenario for solar which is California. Other places where there is a more inverse relationship between solar efficiency and level of energy demand perhaps not so much
The other is Potter’s use of accounting, the cost of generating solar is much more than that of PV cells though to his credit he does include storage. Solar is not very energy dense and places higher costs elsewhere – land use, disposal, and the regulatory requirements associated therein – than say nuclear or hydrocarbon
You can tell that the author of David’s article is full of beans, to put it nicely. You can tell because he only mentions KWH once in the entire article.
First, for every KW of demand, you need between 14 and 18 KWH of battery to make up for all the hours in a day that the PV is not producing power. Which means you need enough PV to recharge that capacity, at least 2 more KW. So using his, very optimistic numbers, each KW of demand is $3,300 for PV and $6,650 for batteries and that just gets you through one sunny day. Of course to handle bad weather or simply clouds, you need a KW of spinning reserve dispatchable on short notice.
“Green Energy” has never been anything but a scam, completely dependent on being a small, parasitic, leach on the conventional grid. The economics fall completely apart once you try to design a grid based on it.
Gas wells don’t just sit there. The gas must be separated from the produced water, heavier hydrocarbons, other gasses and piped to the nearest pipeline for conveyance to point of use. All of the above must be maintained. Some wells can survive being shut in, some can’t, it depends on the details of the formation. .
“he only mentions KWH once in the entire article”….he uses KWH for the analysis of a single household, MWH for grid-scale operations.
The analysis isn’t based only on extrapolated future costs, he also analyzes based on current costs. See the ‘cost of meeeting 100% electricity demand’ chart, which shows cost per kwh vs % of electricity supplies via solar…the purple line at the top is based on current costs.
I’m not sure it’s reasonable to compare his model-based analysis of costs with the average US gas turbine LCOE, because his model is based on the CASIO profile rather than the overall US profile. I suspect based on the chart that if the % solar were taken back from 21% to 0% (ie, all gas-fired generation), you’d get more like 6 cents per kwh rather that the 7.5 cents represented by the dashed line.
The PV capital costs do include labor costs of installation and various other things, see the ‘source’ link and the graph of costs. Given the cost elements other than the modules themselves, the seems unlikely that US costs will fall much beyond say $900/kw, regardless of how cheap the modules get.
Hmmmm…. Your theoretician sounds a lot like Amory Lovins. I heard him say just that dreck on the UT campus in 1978(I think).
Joe Wooten…The author is a structural engineer, not an academic or activist.
“I’m not sure it’s reasonable to compare his model-based analysis of costs with the average US gas turbine”
It’s not a model, it’s a fantasy.
1MW demand requires 24 MWH per day, 365 days a year. Cost of bare PV panel in China /= connected cost of demand rated capacity anywhere. Demand rated capacity is what keeps the lights on, when the sun is not shining, not production for a few minutes at max insolation.
The “Green Energy” shell game has always depended on collecting steep subsidized rates when the sun shines and the wind blows while letting the patsies (rate payers) pick up the tab for actually keeping the lights on the rest of the time. And don’t you dare look behind the curtain and inquire how much carbon along with much more noxious elements like arsenic, antimony and cadmium go into these things which over their life often never produce as much energy as it took to produce them.
The people of Spain will continue to learn the hard way along with the rest of Europe just what an unreliable grid costs.
“Demand rated capacity is what keeps the lights on, when the sun is not shining, not production for a few minutes at max insolation”
The analysis includes the capital and operating cost of gas-fired (CCGT) turbines to ensure peak demand is met over the modeling period of a year.
“The analysis includes the capital and operating cost of gas-fired (CCGT) turbines to ensure peak demand is met over the modeling period of a year.”
That brings us back to the cost of the gas supply to run those gas turbines when needed. It is one thing to develop gas fields & build pipelines to supply a continuous need. When that need becomes intermittent (filling in those blanks when the sun don’t shine and dark clouds fill the sky), then those same capital costs have to be written off against much smaller sales volumes. Or, to put that differently, the cost of gas rises — potentially dramatically.
Current subsidized solar panels are parasites on an existing power supply system. Thought experiment — suppose we had to build an electric power supply from the ground up for a currently electric-free Third World country. The Usual Suspects would demand that this electric supply be 100% so-called “renewable” (imported from China). But the builders would have to construct a parallel 100% supply system using reliable power sources like fossils or nuclear in order to supply the needed 24/7 power. What impact would that duplication of generating facilities have on power costs? And someone might notice that they could save costs by eliminating the so-called “renewables” and building only the reliable power system.
Today, we have the benefit of reliable power supplies that have already been built. But eventually those power stations wear out — much slower than so-called “renewables” wear out, but they wear out all the same. Then customers who demand 24/7 reliable power are going to have to pay the costs of replacing the reliable power sources … in addition to paying for the regular purchase of replacement solar panels from China.
Is the cost of dismantling and disposing of the ‘renewables’ included in the calculations? Currently, Plant Vogtle in Georgia will have its final disposition paid for by the time the plant is due for removal from service and final disposition. The current customers of GA Power have been paying this cost for several years now included in the base rates of their service.
As I understand, the wind turbine blades have a fixed life, and have no components that are suitable for recycling. That implies the blades will cost to be disposed of, with no recoverable value. Is this a considered expense?
It seems the claim is often made that ‘battery capacity is improving’ and future improvements will make actual battery backup for the power grid an actual thing. I find it hard to believe when the current amount of battery backup will only power seconds of demand, or more if you limit those who can access the backup.
I do not think most who propose battery backup for the temperamental sources of wind and solar have actually considered the volume of resources needed nor the time and cost it would take to provide reasonable backup. There is math involved that apparently is easy to gloss over as ‘in the details, readily solved by future advances’. Thomas Edison supposedly proposed to supply Henry Ford with batteries suitable to power Ford’s automobiles. Thing is, Edison always promised they would be just a few years more until he revealed he could not produce such a battery to Henry. The proponents always say ‘it will be a few years until battery technology advances enough for complete backup’, while in truth the total cost is astronomic. Building battery factories to supply such a demand should have started years ago, and will likely take a few centuries if built using Tesla’s largest and best factories as the base model.
We do not have enough dollars to purchase the raw material for the factories nor enough material to produce the batteries that would be produced in the non–existent factories. Smoke and mirrors might make better energy producing plants than the glossy pamphlets that make solar and wind possible.
The main thing that I realized was that until our various governments get over their enchantment with uneconomic and unstable renewables and stop pursuing them at the expense of reliable options (which are the tried and true ones) – us ordinary citizens are stuck with sorting out micro-solutions for our own households — and we had better get onto utilizing such things, toot-sweet. Home generators. Usable solar panels powering our own households, with sufficient battery storage. Windmills. Storing drinking water, and chargable lights. Wood-burning stoves. Passive solar warming.
It’s an aspect of the low-trust society that we may be morphing into – when we can’t even trust public utilities any more.
The essential thing is that this started with an academic fraud of studying the basic questions without a real grounding in engineering and in economics.
Since the 19th century, academia has been a little bit high on how well fields like mechanics have worked out.
So there has been a strain in academia sure that prescriptive behavioralism can do what they think mechanics did prescriptively. (Actually, they misunderstand applied mechanics, because they are not mechanists, and because academic mechanists very often make it sound like communing with pure mathematics. Applied mechanics is a wildly different frame of mind from almost anything seen in academia.)
This strain is now murderously angry at the public, for not behaving as they have wished the public to behave, and has been for decades.
The environmental analysis (99 in 100 will do this) follows from being remarkably stupid, or from being so murderous that one becomes stupid from hatred.
Quite a lot of research is basically fraudulent, and also being done by apparently very bad people.