By David Wojick
I have a new study, titled “Restricting Renewables as a National Need,” that provides a simple reason why net zero is not possible. It is simply not possible to provide enough stored energy to make renewables reliable.
Therefore, the rush to replace thermal power generation with renewable energy must be restrained. Congress, FERC and NERC must act to prevent disaster
Full study here: http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/WOJICKREPORT.pdf
Here is my Executive Summary:
Renewables cannot be reliably stored so their penetration must be limited and managed. North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) must develop Reliability Standards to ensure that reckless growth of renewable energy does not destabilize the grid.
Grid-scale storage at the scale needed to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar is incredibly expensive. Even assuming a great discount, the analysis shows that the cost of the battery storage needed is still close to $23 trillion of annual US GDP. The cost will likely be many times GDP. Obviously this is not economically possible. Although this is not possible, current government policies and utilities are driving massive grid penetration of renewable energy. This reckless drive must be properly restrained and managed, to preserve reliability. America’s grid reliability must be maintained.
National grid reliability is the responsibility of NERC, under the direction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). NERC develops and maintains Reliability Standards, approved by FERC. To limit the reckless development of renewables, NERC must now develop Standards that govern their entry into the grid.
We now know that battery storage for the entire US grid is incredibly expensive, thanks to a groundbreaking study by engineer Ken Gregory. Looking at a number of recent years, he analyzed, on an hour-by-hour basis, the electricity produced by fossil fuels. He then calculated what it would take in storage to generate the same energy using wind and solar energy. He did this by scaling up actual wind and solar power production during those years.
Based on his work, which covers only 48 states, our working estimate of the required storage capacity is a staggering 250 million MWh. America today has less than 20,000 MWh of grid-scale battery storage, almost nothing. Grid-scale batteries today cost around $700,000 a MWh. For 250 million MWh, we get a total astronomical cost of $175 trillion just to replace today’s fossil fuel-generated electricity needs with wind and solar. Even the extremely low cost estimates that some are suggesting place the cost around total US GDP. Worse still, if we had the electric cars that the Biden Administration is calling for, these huge numbers could easily double.
None of these impossibilities are being considered in today’s reliability assessments. Not by countries, utilities, NERC or FERC. Instead, fossil fuel power plants around the country are being replaced by wind and solar power without the necessary storage. The reason is obvious, namely that the amount of storage required is extremely expensive.
As a result, the US power grid has become increasingly unreliable. The power grid is getting sicker. The obvious solution is for NERC to issue a Reliability Standard to limit the growth of renewables. So far, NERC has simply ignored this loss of reliability. NERC needs to be redirected by FERC or Congress. In fact, FERC is developing an order for NERC on the topic of renewable energy and reliability. But that command doesn’t solve the storage problem at all. It only looks at things like temporary power outages.
Congress and the FERC must act to restore the reliability of the American power grid.
End Summary.
Given this impossibility, the interesting question is how and when will it manifest itself if nothing is done to limit renewables? There are some unhappy possibilities. Severe power outages are one, but terrible price spikes are another, see the case in Europe. Given the fundamental economic role of energy, a deep recession is even possible.
It is possible that the power companies modeled the wreck during this transition, but they are making too much money to admit it. Congress should ask them about it. See my previous research: “The Dominion VCEA Compliance Plan is Extremely Unreliable” at:
Energy engineers must know that net zero is simply not possible.
Author
David Wojick
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For the origin see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html
For more than 100 previous articles for CFACT see
http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/
Available for confidential research and consultation.
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