Those who promised us “Net Zero” have no clue about the energy storage problem – Are you worried about it?
Reposted from MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN/ Francis Menton
If you’re even a semi-regular reader of this blog, you’ll know about the energy storage problem inherent in efforts to remove dispersed fossil fuels from power generation systems and replace them with wind. and the sun. As discussed here many times, apart from nuclear power, the problem of storage is the There are important issues that need to be addressed if “pure net” generation is to come, let alone a “non-pure” economy based on all electrified energy use. For some of my previous posts on the subject in just the last few months, check out this, this and this.
The problems in trying to provide enough storage to fully back up a solar and wind power system without using fossil fuels are so great and so costly that you might think that all Everyone pushing the “non-pure” agenda will focus entirely on these issues. And given that the issues are pretty obvious, you’d think such people would be on the right track with feasibility studies, cost studies, and demonstration projects to make their case for how it can be complete their plan. Notably, that is not the case at all. Instead, if you read about the plans and proposals in different quarters of “net zero” over a number of short-term years, you will quickly realize that the people promoting this program have no clue. . There are no clues.
Today, I’ll be looking at discussions about the hosting situation in three jurisdictions with ambitious “net zero” plans: California, Australia, and New York. The first is a very brief summary of the problem. It is clear (or certainly should be) that wind and solar generators have significant periods when they produce nothing (e.g. quiet nights) and other times when they produce much less. compared to user needs. Take out a spreadsheet to do some calculations based on real historical models of wind and solar energy use and generation, and you’ll find that to have a wind generating system /solar complete and get through a year without major problems you will need to rebuild about three times (based on rated capacity) of your wind/solar system, plus store something for about 24 – 30 days of average use. For these purposes, “usage” at any given time is measured in gigawatt hours, but usage over some time periods is measured in gigawatt hours, Not gigawatts. California average electricity use for 2020 is about 31 GW; Australia is about 26 GW ; and New York is about 18 GW.
To calculate the amount of memory you need in gigawatt hours, multiply the average usage in GW by 30 days and 24 hours per day. So California will need about 22,302 GWH of storage, Australia about 18,720 GWH and New York about 12,960 GWH. That provides current demand levels. For the “everything electrified” case, triple all of these numbers: 66,906 GWH for California, 56,160 GWH for Australia, and 38,880 GWH for New York. Price at current costs for a Tesla type lithium-ion polisher (~$150/KWH) and you’ll get around $10 trillion for California, $8.4 trillion for Australia, and $5.8 trillion for New York. These numbers are in the range of three times total annual GDP for each of these jurisdictions, before you factor in the cost of over-building three times the generation system to account for charging when the sun is out. lighting and wind blowing. Tesla-style batteries also won’t be able to charge continuously for months as is necessary for this system, but at this point, that seems like a minor quibble.
With that, let’s take a look at some of the recent discussions about moving towards “net zero” in each of the following jurisdictions:
California. On March 14, PV Magazine (I think it stands for “Photo Voltaic”) featured a piece by Christian Roselund titled “California’s solar market is now a battery market.” The gist is that California’s solar developers have now grasped the need to pair batteries with their projects and therefore new projects in the future as well as solar battery projects. . Here is a sample cheer:
No US state is leading the energy transition like California. . . . As a result, California has become a pioneer for a wide range of clean energy technologies. . . . California is on the cusp of no longer being a solar market where batteries are replenished – instead, it is becoming a battery market that is (sometimes) inclusive of solar.
So how much battery capacity will new projects be added?:
According to the Clean Electric Association of America, California had only 256MW of utility-scale batteries before 2020, but has reached 2.1GW by the end of 2021 – an eightfold increase. . . . The 256 storage plus solar projects represent 72GW of solar and 64GW of batteries that make up the majority of projects combined in the CAISO queue. . . . California will need all the energy storage it can use; A recent analysis shows that the state needs 37GW of batteries over the next 20 years, as well as 53.2GW of utility-scale solar.
All are GW, GW, GW. But guys, how about the quantity GWH that California will need? You won’t find any mention of that unit in this section. Unfortunately, if the 64 GW of batteries you’re planning to buy only have an hour’s worth of power, you’ll need to multiply your purchase by a factor of one thousand. If they have a power reserve of about four hours (typical of what you can buy today), then multiply your purchase by a factor of 250.
Could they really be too far from the real problem? I’m afraid the answer is yes.
Australia. In Australia, it seems they have people who have realized that they need to measure storage requirements for wind/solar backup in GWH rather than GW. Here’s a snippet from March 25 from Energy Storage News, headline “Australia has passed 1GWh of battery storage deployments annually in 2021.” That is a huge progress. But one GWH?
Read the article and once again all cheer for the great progress being made:
[F]or Victoria, it was a record-breaking year, while NSW recorded strong installs and the 7,377 installs were in line with figures in recent years. . . . Victoria has a 48 per cent market share of today’s commercial operating capacity and grid size, with South Australia next largest with 24 per cent, Queensland over 14 per cent and NSW with 9%. Last year, Victoria’s big battery came online, with a capacity of 300MW/450MWh, making a big contribution to the state’s total.
And how much is in the pipe?:
There is around 1,000MWh of grid-scale energy storage currently under construction, but the development pipeline of the projects is a whopping 57GWh.
“A Massive Volume” 57 GWH. Really? Has anyone told them they will need an extra 56,160 GWH to fulfill their “net zero” fantasies? Like California, they’re about 1000 apart. Here’s a picture from the article on what a Tesla-style battery installation for a capacity of just 150 MWH looks like. That’s less than 1/6 of a GWH.
Looks like they’ll need 400,000 +/- of these installs. And by the way, these Tesla-style batteries aren’t capable of storing energy without draining for months. Good luck trying to find anyone dealing with these issues.
New York. In crazy New York, we have a statute passed in 2019 that calls for cutting statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 60% of 1990 levels by 2030. Because electricity is a third less. final energy consumption, which necessarily means that all electricity generation from fossil fuels will be gone in 8 years.
How to do that? A conglomeration of boards of directors and advisory bodies produced piles of reports, aggregating thousands of pages. No one can keep up. Otherwise, it’s clear that there’s basically no battery built in.
A lone guy named Roger Caiazza, whose blog is New York’s Pragmatic Environmentalist, is the only critical thinker I know who tries to read most of this stuff. On March 25, Caiazza made a post titled “What the experts are saying now.” That post was also selected at Watts Up with that here.
This is Caiazza’s great discovery. Instead of suggesting a giant battery-making system, New York’s “experts” thought they had a better idea: “DEFR”. It stands for “Modifiable Free Resources”. And what exactly is that? As far as Caiazza could determine, it was something that hadn’t been invented yet. Caiazza links to This March 24 report from the Independent Systems Operator of New York, titled “Outlook Resource and System Updates.” Flip through 17 pages of cryptic nonsense and you’ll come to this on page 18:
DEFR builds allowed starting in 2030
Adjusted input assumption:
– First year allowed for enhanced DEFR works up to 2030
• Note:
- – Significant uncertainty regarding the cost/availability of DEFR technologies, as well as the regulatory definition of “zero-emissions” compliant technologies.
- – Assumptions not based on estimates of actual timelines for first potential DEFR additions
- Observe:
- – DEFR capabilities are built earlier in the model horizon,although equivalent capacity is built in 2040
- – Reduced fossil fuel capacity (i.e. mostly earlier retirement and less new construction) is offset by the earlier addition of DEFR capacity
Yes, we are completely dependent on so-called “DEFR” technology, which has not yet been invented and “significant uncertainties” exist. Could this get even more absurd?
I guess if you worked at ISO and opened your mouth saying “this can’t work” you would be fired immediately.
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