From Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate, etc
by Planning Engineer
There seems to be a belief that increasing the level of wind and solar projects will make it easier to move forward with these resources. Nothing could be better than the truth.
Increasing wind and solar penetration is like a Sisyphean quest, except it’s worse. The challenge can be better understood as pushing a giant rock that gets heavier and heavier, up a steeper and steeper hill while the ground below is more slippery and unstable. Problems associated with increased penetration affect any potential gains that could be achieved through economies of scale.
Bulk electrical systems have traditionally been robust and very robust. In general, there are no significant problems associated with adding small system elements (a small amount of wind and solar) against the system, rather than supporting it. The system has limited solar and wind capacity and can be used to replace expensive fuel-based power generation. But at higher levels of penetration, this ability is significantly reduced and economics can be reduced and even reversed. Here are a few reasons why increasing penetration of renewables will lead to rapidly rising costs as well as rapidly declining reliability.
1) Wind and solar are not willing to provide the necessary services in terms of reliability. Conventional generators have characteristics that support the stability and operation of the grid. They have inertial mass and spin in sync with the waveforms that power the system while easily providing voltage and frequency support. As wind and solar make up a larger proportion of the productive resource base, we see an erosion of these desirable features. Some argue that electronic simulation can serve to compensate for the loss of these properties, but it is more expensive and results worse. Previous articles that went into detail on this topic include: https://judithcurry.com/2015/05/07/transmission-planning-wind-and-solar/ https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/06/renewables-and-grid-reliability/
2) Wind and solar are discontinuous resources and their availability/output is often inadequate or does not support system needs. While there is hope for battery technology, current goals remain modest. Other resources must compensate for wind and solar disruptions. The greater the ratio of wind and sun, the greater the challenge and cost of backing up. Previous articles on this topic include:
3) The success of solar and wind installations is very location specific. You can pull up maps showing the suitability and suitability of different locations for both wind and solar. Other land-use considerations make the sites more or less suitable for wind and solar power. Current efforts to increase wind and solar power take advantage of the most optimal locations. The rest of the pages are less optimized. As penetration rises above current levels, the relevance of potential locations will decrease. The post below written by Rud Istavan provides some discussion of positioning issues.
4) Wind and sun depend on material which must be exploited and their capabilities may be limited. Increased production of solar and wind is likely to increase costs and create supply problems. European wind power has been witnessing a scramble for scarce materials.
5) As wind and solar power increase penetration, it will become increasingly challenging for other resources to subsidize their expansion. It is one thing to subsidize a small component of the generation mix, another to fully subsidize major components.
6) It takes a lot of energy to build wind and solar facilities. Their operation and support consumes a lot of energy. It is doubtful that such facilities can support themselves, service the load, and provide enough power to build alternative facilities of the same type. Also, if trams are thrown in, the problem is magnified even more. The “green” plan to phase out gas-using appliances and the additional loss from increased battery deployment won’t help either. There is a group of concerns that focus on all the energy and resources consumed by wind and solar resources. This is called the energy density or power density problem. Here are a few links (here, here, here and here) discuss concerns of this kind. These concerns are outside my area of experience. I hope that readers can add references in the comments.
7) Wind and solar make the study, control and operation of power system more complicated and uncertain. These resources are intermittent and harder to predict for operators. To maintain stability, good modeling is required. Detailed models are run involving complex differential equations. Planners can force builders of large power plants to provide fairly good data on plant impacts. Getting good data for distributed projects with lots of small elements that can change within a project and after installation is much more of a challenge. Finally, system operators and planners have years of experience with large cameras, not so much as wind and solar power.
8) Widespread deployment of wind and solar power will require the energy to be transmitted over long distances (or you will need an impractical and incredible amount of battery backup.) Wind energy inclusion. from lowland areas to population centers including long transmission lines. Green advocates argue that the imbalance between loads and output from solar and wind sources can be remedied by using resources from a larger geographical area. This requires greater demand for long power lines and robust grids. Wind and solar power generate DC electricity that must be converted, with the help of the grid, into AC electricity. Edison and Tesla had a war many years ago over AC and DC power. Tesla won because to transmit electricity over long distances you need an alternating current system. As noted in item 1, solar and wind power do not provide enough factors such as inertia and vars for such a system to remain stable. (Side note-A high voltage DC line can transmit power long distances with lower loss. However, to use high voltage DC line, a strong AC receiving system is required. The system must be robust so that the power can be converted from DC to AC. High voltage DC lines will not be the savior for a solar and wind powered system.) In where high levels of wind and solar penetration require a robust grid, their greater presence reduces the grid’s capacity.
Here is a list of formidable challenges. How can they be fixed? Not because of the scale advantage from increased wind and solar output. First of all, it is hard to imagine that any economies of scale would enable these resources to overcome the formidable challenges described above. Second, there does not appear to be a significant improvement in economies of scale. My interest in the topic shows that efforts to find economies of scale have failed. Building more and more smaller units may not yield economies of scale due to increased material costs. Larger wind and solar facilities incur a type of cost that smaller facilities do not see. Instead, wind and solar proponents argue that smaller local projects offer more benefits than can be gained from larger facilities.
Can nuclear power be part of a lower carbon future? Most certainly. None of the above concerns apply to nuclear power. We can see cheaper costs from standardized nuclear facilities and streamlined regulations. Hydrogen also works well with electrical systems. Unfortunately, there are no significant or no potential locations for hydroelectricity expansion. (Pump storage of note is an option to store energy, but does not generate additional net energy).
It is too early to envision a 100% renewable future with a significant contribution from current wind and solar capabilities. It is not a good strategy to support current “green” technologies and retire and ban the conventional generation in the hope that miracles will happen when we need it. Perhaps with the widespread deployment of nuclear power, carbon capture and other technologies, we can approach a zero-carbon grid. At best, current wind and solar technologies would play only a small role in such a scheme.
This is the first post in a series about Penetration problem
Part 1 Wind and Sun: The more you do, the harder it gets
Part 2 Will the Inflation Reduction Act cause power outages?
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