Via Mark Krebs — January 11, 2023
“My main argument: Any planned transition to an all-electric renewable energy monoculture is likely to fail, at least in the US. That is mainly because peak winter heating needs can exceed peak summer cooling requirements by 400 to 500 percent in cold climates, and because the minerals required by the equipment are severely limited. important.”
On August 27, 1997, the Cato Institute published “Renewable energy: Not cheap, not ‘green’,” written by Robert L. Bradley Jr. (A 58-page PDF of the study is available here and 25order commemorative rating here.) Bradley’s section focuses on the many serious ecological trade-offs of politically favored renewable energy, as well as the high cost/low value associated with dilute, unrelated sourcing customary. This post extends that thinking to a total decarbonization/electrification government program.
Rare earth minerals, which depend on a forced transition to “clean energy,” are severely limited by many of the same factors as fossil fuels. The supply of these minerals is dominated by regimes intent on cultivating and exploiting our growing reliance on them. As these raw materials are mined and China’s strategic dominance increases, prices will have a premium impact on consumers. Finding and developing supply chain alternatives will also increase the energy costs required to secure and process these rare earth minerals. This will reduce the apparent environmental benefits from “green energy”.
One source of rare earth minerals and other strategic materials that is rapidly gaining interest is seabed mining. However, this could lead to a worse cure than the disease thought to be caused by anthropogenic global warming (AGW). If so, then the claimed “greenhouse gas” (GHG) reductions achievable through a forced “switch” to “clean (renewable) energy” would be at least a substantial reduction. compared to the fossil fuels they aim to replace.
The purpose of this two-part post is to review some of the physical realities involved in procuring raw materials for a centrally planned “clean” energy transition. In short, the outlook is poor. It’s best to “bet the farm” on it going according to plan. However, before we “get into the matter” of these issues, let’s briefly review the economics and physics that are challenging this transition to so-called “energy”. clean quantity”.
Peak heating demand
My main argument: Any planned transition to an all-electric renewable energy monoculture is likely to fail, at least in the US. That’s mainly because peak heating needs in winter can exceed peak summer cooling requirements by 400 to 500 percent in cold climates, and because the minerals required by the equipment are severely limited. important.
Regional weather differences are shown in pictures by National Environmental Information Center maps of Heating and Cooling Days. But power supply systems must be sized to accommodate worst-case weather scenarios that don’t show up in average. A good example of such worst-case scenarios is “polar vortex” events.
To get a baseline assessment of these issues (but not necessarily the worst case scenario), consider a home with:
- a thermostat is set to maintain 80 degrees. F in the summer with a worst-case summer peak temperature of 110 degrees. f.
As a result, the temperature difference between inside and outside is 80 degrees F. in winter and 30 degrees. F in the summer. Dividing the temperature difference of 80 (winter) by 30 (summer) yields a ratio of 2.6 (2.6 times more energy to heat than to cool). The increase in the ratio of winter heating loads to summer is the need for utility planning to have sufficient safety limits, system redundancy, etc.
Most winter heating requirements in the United States are served by direct use of fossil fuels (primarily natural gas) in furnaces and boilers. The Biden administration has targeted these dark horses as part of an overall “transition” to a fully renewable future.
Consider further the complexities of servicing two to three times the load with intermittent renewables which are unreliable without some kind of redundancy. How much, how long, what kind?
Some Story
To ensure contractual availability, renewable energy may need to be backed up, by generating fossil fuels and/or batteries. With a ratio of 1 kW of spare energy from fossil fuels to kW of renewable energy, capacity increases 2 to 3 times to 4 to 6 times. And this doesn’t take into account the additional power generation requirements needed to simultaneously shift the plan from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to electric, which could increase current electricity demand by at least 100%.
Some claim replacing the current US fleet with electric vehicles will require 2 to 3 times the generation. Also note that batteries for EVs will likely compete with stationary batteries for solar and wind backup. Such factors will increase the battery cost.
Large-scale but geographically dispersed renewable energy production will require equally large investments in electricity transmission and distribution systems. In addition, such increasingly distributed and discontinuous renewable systems will become exponentially more difficult to manage, especially as traditional, attenuation-driven power systems. (For more on the intricacies of adding renewables to the grid, see FERC orders reliability standards, registration required for wind, solar, storage for grid protection.)
As for deciding what type of backup, the cheapest form of maneuverable fossil fuel backup for renewables is usually natural gas-fired turbines, combined with boilers. The heat recovery steam powers steam turbines (also known as “combined-cycle”, NGCC for short). This is about 66% efficiency in the latest applications. For comparison, natural gas-powered residential incinerators can be between 80 and 95 percent efficient.
However, hindering combined cycle backup systems is that electric utilities can be among the first natural gas supplies to be cut during emergencies due to extreme cold, simply because the average consumer gets cut in the end. This problem could be remedied if power companies paid to reserve pipeline capacity or if consumers stopped using natural gas directly. The latter appears to be the direction the Biden Administration’s electrification policies are headed. However, some argue that the Administration is also working towards phasing out gas generation. If so, high-performance NGCCs will have no place at all.
On the contrary, we can only make up, for the collateral damage in the fight against carbon with hundreds of people dying here and there, sometimes frozen by polar vortex events (as they did). doing in Texas since the February 2021 Winter Storm Uri).
Battery to the rescue?
If battery backup is the only type of system allowed (as environmentalists like to dictate), consider that:
- Wind drought can last a week or more.
- Sunlight on photovoltaic systems can be blocked by snow and ice as long as something is needed to remove them.
- Volcanic eruptions and wildfires can and do limit incoming solar radiation for longer periods of time.
How much time a battery backup system takes for worst-case scenarios is equally debatable. Some people maintain a week is enough, while some argue planning for renewable generation downtime for 3 weeks or more. Professor Michaux’s (introduced shortly) was one of those who debated for 3 weeks or more.
If the worst period is a week, that’s 168 hours. Most battery storage systems are only rated for 4 hours of full load output before they need to be recharged. Thus, just passing a week of renewable generation downtime with 4-hour rated battery modules shows a demand for 42 kW of batteries per kW of renewable energy (168/4), at the smallest.
These calculations make a BIG assumption: They assume that wind and/or solar generation has enough time of excess capacity to keep the battery system fully charged when you need it. All forms of power generation have a “power factor”. Wind and solar power factor is in the range of 25% (or less). Given that there are 8,760 hours in a year, you can only count on 2,190 hours (or less) of actual generation. What if they don’t have enough time to create and store their own backup batteries (e.g. recurrent wind drought)? You guessed it! You still run the risk of running out of power.
The battery backup system is also subject to extreme cold and extreme heat. Just read the manual that came with your cordless drill to verify this. So how to maintain the right temperature? Heat?
If enough technological breakthroughs happen to solve these battery physics problems, there are still major problems with securing the raw materials needed for this transition. The least of which is that China has monopolized most of these strategic materials. This is at least in part due to overfishing regulation in the US, which China is mining. But even China could have problems supplying these strategic materials in the long run, especially if the costs of the environmental impact are localized (e.g. carbon import taxes).
Part II Tomorrow
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Mark Krebs, a mechanical engineer and energy policy consultant, has been involved in program evaluation and energy efficiency design for more than thirty years. He has served as an expert witness in dozens of State energy efficiency proceedings, is an advisor to the DOE, and has filed numerous Federal energy efficiency filings. More posts on his MasterResource can be found on natural gas versus electricity and the federal policy “Deep Carbonization” here. Mark’s first post was in Public Utilities Every two weeks, titled “It’s a War Out There: A Gas Man Questions Electric Efficiency” (December 1996). Recently retired from Spire Inc., Krebs founded an energy policy consulting firm (Gas Analysis & Advocacy Services) with other veteran energy analysts.
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