How Many Trillions Of Dollars Have Been Spent On Renewables? -- November 28, 2018

I don't know.

From a social media discussion group:

The link inside this screen shot takes you to the very legitimate Financial Post. Worth archiving.

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New England

Updates

November 29, 2018: data points for ISO New England --

• winter peak / summer peak: around 30,000 MW
• solar / wind provides about 1,000 MW during the winter
• the sun has set when peak demand hits in the winter

Original Post 

It's hard to find nameplate capacity for wind/solar in ISO New England but it appears to be about 4,000 MW. It was about 3,800 MW at the end of 2017.

I generally see no more than 1,000 MW of electricity coming from wind/solar over at ISO New England. Its low today about 816 MW or 816/4,000 = 20%.

816/3800 = 21.5% which is about what others have told me to expect when it comes to wind/solar.

See this post.

EIA's Short Term Energy Outlook Is Posted -- March 6, 2018

Oil Markets:

• In February, the average Brent crude oil price dropped by $4 to $65 per barrel. EIA’s forecast expects prices to decline gradually, averaging $60 per barrel in the second half of this year. EIA expects annual average Brent crude oil prices to remain near $62 per barrel in both 2018 and 2019, which is lower than prices in recent weeks but is higher than the average in 2017 by less than $8 per barrel.
• EIA estimates that U.S. crude oil production averaged 10.3 million barrels per day in February, up by 230,000 from the January level, which included some well freeze-offs in the Permian and Bakken. This month, we are reporting that total U.S. crude oil production averaged 9.3 million barrels per day in 2017, ending the year with production at 9.9 million in December.
• EIA projects that U.S. crude oil production will average 10.7 million barrels per day in 2018, which would mark the highest annual average U.S. crude oil production level, surpassing the previous record of 9.6 million barrels per day set in 1970. [Another nail in Hubbert's coffin.]
• EIA forecasts that 2019 crude oil production will average 11.3 million barrels per day.”
• For all of 2018, the forecast expects production to continue hitting new monthly highs—barring any significant energy disruptions. By the end of 2018, the short-term outlook is forecasting a new record average of 10.7 million barrels per day in U.S. crude oil production, and we continue to expect production to average above 11 million barrels per day in 2019.

Natural Gas:

• Following record high gas inventory withdrawals in early 2018, the short-term outlook estimates that inventories for March 2018 will total 1,481 billion cubic feet, which represents a nearly 28% drop from March 2017. In fact, March 2015 was the last time inventories came close to that level.
• EIA expects U.S. natural gas production to reach new records in 2018. The forecast suggests that production will near 82 billion cubic feet per day in 2018 and, as a consequence, inventory levels will fully recover from this year’s low levels by next winter.

Electricity:

• The short-term outlook of utility-scale electricity generation remains relatively unchanged this month. EIA continues to expect natural gas’s share of utility-scale generation to increase from 32% in 2017 to 34% by 2019, and all indications suggest that it will continue to be the primary source for generation over the next 24 months [an incredibly easy forecast to make]
• EIA’s forecast for U.S. retail residential electricity prices will top 13 cents per kilowatthour in March, which marks the highest price since at least 1997 for the month of March. Last year, retail residential electricity prices didn’t pass 13 cents until May, and prices remained below that all of 2016 [this is what renewable energy is doing to the lower and middle class].

Coal:

• The March short-term outlook maintains EIA’s forecast for reduced U.S. coal production, coinciding with decreased demand for exports. EIA forecasts steam coal exports will drop by 38% in 2018 and by another 10% in 2019.

Renewables:

• EIA’s forecast expects solar capacity in the electric power sector to climb just above 42 gigawatts in 2019, nearly doubling the 2016 level. From 2017 to 2019, solar electricity generation in all sectors is also forecast to see a marked increase with generation forecast to increase from 211,000 megawatthours per day in 2017 to 294,000 megawatthours per day in 2019 [a 39% in nameplate capacity; actual production: trivial; cost: substantial]

FWIW: Filloon Updates Concho Petroleum In The Delaware Basin -- February 7, 2018

Link here at SeekingAlpha.

CBP: central basin platform

From the Filloon post:

The Delaware Basin is the epicenter of today's unconventional oil plays. Located in the west Permian, it has a thick payzone and multiple possible intervals to target. As a general rule, the Delaware is deeper than the Midland Basin. More importantly, it has seen less traffic than to the east. The opportunity for downspacing and de-risking is greater, and this increases reward (and risk). This is the reason why operators with core Bakken, Eagle Ford, Niobrara, and Midland leasehold have added acreage west of the CBP.

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Cleaning Out The In-Box

I wrote these notes back in 2015. Never posted them for some reason or other. I think I was planning to write a long commentary on the state of the Bakken back in 2015, but then got distracted and never got around to finishing it. Am posting these notes now simply for the archives.

The notes from 2015:

With regard to energy in general, oil and gas more specifically, and the Bakken very, very narrowly, it's quite incredible all the story lines that are developing. I follow a lot of these stories over at "The Big Stories." This is the big picture I see developing, going from the big energy story to the Bakken.

There are three centers of power when it comes to global energy: the Mideast, Russia, and the United States. 

The US is struggling with the realization that the US shale barrel is the swing producer. That, and the fact that Iran is likely to emerge as the singular super-power in the Mideast, has put Saudi Arabia into an existential crisis.

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Miscellaneous Notes

There are still a lot of stories about intermittent energy sources, wind and solar. Whether wind and solar has "legs" will depend on which political party takes the White House in 2016/2017. It is becoming more and more obvious that at the moment the only country really touting intermittent energy any more is the United States. The EU gives is a lot of lip service to it, but reality being what it is, Europe knows that intermittent energy is not all it's cracked up to be. I continue to post notes about intermittent energy for two reasons: a) it helps put the Bakken into perspective from an archival point of view; and, b) readers seem to be fascinated by the subject. Personally I have also learned a lot about energy by following the intermittent energy story. Prior to the blog, I did not understand "nameplate capacity" and, now, all of a sudden there's another "old" concept that is getting a lot of attention: "capacity factor" which is very closely related to "nameplate capacity" and may be synonyms. I recently posted a story from The Lead for the archives and now it turns out that Forbes has a long article on the very same subject: "The Clean Power Bill Will Collide With The Incredibly Weird Physics Of The Electric Grid."

Coal will drop off the American radar energy scope. But globally, its use will increase.

They Must Be Reading The Blog -- December 30, 2017 -- Global Warming Hits The Bakken -- Record Cold Weather Reported Across North Dakota

I really have to thank the reader who brought this to my attention. About two weeks ago a reader noted that nuclear energy, coal, and natural gas had maxed out in New England and the region was responding by increasing the amount of oil being used to generate electricity. It was then noted that renewable energy (mostly wind) was not up to the task. As energy demand increased during the day, renewable energy actually decreased -- it appears that wind turbines were either less efficient or coming off-line during the day when electricity was most needed.

Now, Don alerts me to this Washington Examiner story, "coal to the rescue as record cold grips the East."

Coal-fired power plants are king again as sub-zero temperatures sent demand for heating and electricity soaring on the East Coast Friday in the largest energy market in the nation.
Coal outpaced both natural gas and nuclear power plants in the PJM market, which extends from the Midwest to Washington, according to real-time updates provided by the grid operator PJM Interconnection.

Coal provided nearly 20,000 megawatts more electricity throughout the day Friday than its primary rival natural gas and over 10,000 megawatts more than nuclear power plants.

One megawatt of electricity can provide 750-1,200 homes with power, depending on how much demand there is on the system, according to experts.

The PJM breakdown looked like this: Coal at 45,842 MW; nuclear power at 35,514; and natural gas at 25,927. Renewables provided 3,086 MW. Coal, nuclear and natural gas are the three dominant sources of 24-hour power on the grid.

And renewable energy? In MW:

• coal: 45,842 (42%)
• nuclear: 35,514
• natural gas: 25,927
• renewables: 3,086 (2.8%)
• total: 110,369

It would be interesting to get the nameplate capacity / percentages for the energy mix. Something tells me the renewable folks would tell us that nameplate capacity for renewable energy was close to 25%. There's a huge difference between nameplate capacity and what renewables actually produce.

This is very, very early in the season. Cold weather like this generally does not appear until mid- to late-January and February. A lot of folks in the northeast are going to be spending their Trump tax savings on expensive spot electricity made more expensive by renewable energy initiatives.

By the way, this is interesting: were it not for coal, some localities may have been in deep trouble. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry has a good case for allowing coal utilities to claim a premium for maintaining "emergency" supplies of coal (previously reported).

Meanwhile, in North Dakota, record cold weather is being reported:

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This Should Give You A Charge

If you want to read some great comments to a very "strange" article, read this short article, and then read the comments.

PJM Provides Update On Efficiency Of Intermittent Energy -- May 24, 2017

From an earlier post:

Solar Energy: Nameplate Capacity Vs Achieved Renewable Energy Output 

The European solar energy experience:

• Germany: 78 GW / 10.4 GW (13.2%)
• Spain: 27.7 GW / 6.8 GW (24.4%)
• Italy: 27.1 GW / 4.4 GW (16.2%)
• UK: 16.7 GW / 4.0 GW (24.4%)
• France: 14.9 GW / 2.6 GW (17.3%
• Sweden: 5.5 GW / 1.2 GW (22%)
• Denmark: 5.4 GW / 1.4 GW (25.6%) 
• Rest of Europe: 39.5 GW / 7.9 GW (19.8%)

This is not news. It has been reported many times on the blog -- data sent to me be a regular reader -- that "achieved renewable energy output" vs nameplate capacity works out to about 25% at best.

Overall, the effective capacity factor in Europe for solar energy was 18%.

Does anyone know the similar number for natural gas? Answer: 87% 

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PJM

Note: an update to this PJM post is at this link, posted at 7:51 p.m. Central Time. 

The reader who sent me the link to the article linked below suggested:

a) the whole issue is a mess
b) the article is way more than any reasonable person with a life would want to know
c) the whole issue is a mess (oh, did I already say that?)

Whatever. Time to look up the definition of obfuscation.

From rtoinsider, some data points on the recent PJM auction to contract for electricity:

• wind: 13% capacity factor (CF)
• solar: 38% capacity factor (significantly exceeds results in Europe which suggests some fancy math)
• this was the first PJM auction that required year-round availability (N.B. wind and solar)
• prices have come down significantly, as much as 25% in most of the regional transmission organization (RTO) or PJM in this case
• last year: $100
• this year: $76.53
• ComEd (Illinois): $188.12 ($202.77 previously)
• Duke OH/KY: $130 this year
• MAAC: $86.04 ($100 last year) -- most of Pennsylvania
• EMAAC: $187.87 (less than $120 last year) -- EMAAC is New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland
• this is the first year in which all generation must be Capacity Performance (CP): must be available throughout the delivery year; faces stiff penalties for nonperformance (in other words, smart operators will have excess NG peakers to back-up wind (in summer) and solar (in winter)
• season demand response (DR) no longer allowed; PJM committed to 558 MW of demand reductions under price-responsive demand (PRD)
• electricity demand decreasing: PJM forecasts a 2.1% reduction in peak load
• "we have units that are at financial risk in the area that, if they retire, it could create a reliability issue" -- confidentiality restricted much more comment, but it sounds like they are talking about coal-fired plants
• PJM: for year 2020/21 has a 23.3% reserve margin; highest ever in the 14-year history of the auctioin (technically the BRA, Base Residual Auction); by regulation, requires a 16.6% reserve
• cost load: $7 billion in 2020/21 -- about the same as 2019/20
• new generation: 3,144 MW (UCAP); of that, about 2,824 MW was mostly natural gas combined cycle and combustion turbines (NG-CCCT) (think GE?)
• wind: 888 MW (6,828.5 MW nameplate capacity; 13% CF)
• solar: 125 MW (330 MW nameplate capacitiy: 38% CF)
• amount of intermittent resources offered as CP dropped by 3,400 MW from last year
• Exelon: third year in a row that TMI left the capacity auction empty handed; Three-Mile Island (TMI) now depends on Pennsylvania; TMI has not been profitable for five years

Disclaimer: I do this quickly; there will be typographical and factual errors. If this is important to you, go to the source. I understand about 2% of the entire article.

Wind: with a CF of 13%, I suppose that means that when you see 100 wind turbines, if everything was working as advertised by the wind farm developer, one would need only 13 turbines.

Random Update Of Russia's Northern Fleet In The Mediterranean; Reason #35 Why I Love To Blog -- October 27, 2016

Updates

Later, 1:53 p.m. Central Time: from a reader's comment --

If you zoom in and select "track" the Russian tug Nikolay Chiker is paired up with a Russian ship (unclassified, but has the appearance of a cargo ship or possible odd tanker) by the name of Osipov.

I have been watching them since last night when the Nikolay Chiker was steaming toward the Osipov which was in a static position. I initially thought that the Tug was steaming toward a north African port. The track today is in the same general area and appears to be drifting or static refueling or replenishment unlike American warships.

Early this morning the track almost appeared to be a working tug track like pushing other ships next to the Osipov.

Last night there were also two Spanish warships ahead of the Nikolay while it was steaming toward the Osipov. 

Original Post

Received signal one minute ago (approximately 11:05 a.m. Central Time), the tug escorting Russia's only aircraft carrier was headed south toward landfall, just miles off the coast of northern Morocco, just north of the port city of Al Hoceima, Morocco.

Al Hoceima has the second-largest port in the northern region of Morocco. Current, local time, in Al Hoceima, is 5:10 p.m., just about supper-time, I suppose.

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Reason #35 Why I Love To Blog

Updates

Later, 12:41 p.m. Central Time: you know, lost in all this clutter is the comment made by the reader -- "that area should have cheap electricity for decades to come." This area is often referred to as the "Rust Belt" or very near that area formerly known as the "Rust Belt." If folks don't screw this up, this could be the re-emergence of US industry in that area -- aluminum, steel, cars, trucks, rail cars, and yes, dare I say it, wind turbines and towers. Folks paying attention know that coal is expensive in Asia (particularly India) and it's unlikely energy is going to get much cheaper overseas, certainly when compared to the US.

Later, 12:12 p.m. Central Time: see first comment:

To put some of these numbers (MW) in perspective, standard Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) plants generate from 600 to 1,100 MW as a rule.

They are designed to go from cold start to 100% nameplate in about ten minutes time.

(The New England grid operator, ISO, has some great info on their website - ISO Express. One of the sections is the Daily Generation by Fuel Use.

Natgas ramps up and down throughout the day to keep the lights on for the folks in the Northeast.

In Pennsylvania, there are plans, or actual development of, 18 CCGT plants with a total generating capacity of more than 10,000 MW.

That area should have cheap electricity for decades to come.

And a quick follow-up from the same reader:

The company In energy is building a 1,480 MW plant now outside of Scranton. 

Cost, $500 million. 

A second, smaller plant, 500 MW, may be built nearby. 

Comment:

$500 million / 1,480 / MW (with 100% nameplate capacity - generation =$350,000 /MW.

Wind farms/solar farms will cost in excess of $1 million/MW nameplate capacity, which means that 480 MW wind/solar plans (in the original post) will also be about $500 million. For this renewable energy (not counting the cost of back-up natural gas energy), $500 million / 70 MW generated capacity = an astonishing $7 million / MW.

Original Post

 

Because of the blog, I've learned to pay a lot more attention to exactly what word journalists use in reporting stories.

I have to thank one of my readers for "beating my head over this" on many, many occasions.

Here's an example.

From PennEnergy today: three New England states choose six clean energy generators, an AP story.  The lede:

Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have selected six proposals to develop more clean energy for the New England market. The projects announced Tuesday include mostly wind and solar projects, which are expected to generate 460 megawatts of electricity collectively.

My hunch is that the "460 megawatts" is the nameplate capacity. We know that wind farms generate no more than 20% of their nameplate capacity (solar energy, a "meager" 10%).

It's hard to say from the article whether the reporter means that the nameplate capacity of these new "generators" is 480 megawatts, or if the reporter is suggesting that the nameplate capacity will be 2,400 MW. After all, the reported said these generators would "generate 480 MW collectively." At 20% that means the nameplate capacity would have to be 2,400 MW, and perhaps more because the article says the generator would be a mix of wind (20%) and solar (10%).

[If using both wind and solar, generation will be closer to 15% of capacity or 3,200 MW capacity.]

To put that into perspective, the Hoover Dam held the world record for power production between 1939 and 1949 with capacity of 705 MW of hydroelectricity. Grand Coulee Dam held a similar world record from 1949 to 1960 with a 2,280 MW capacity. So, if New England really has a plan for 2,400 MW of capacity (480 MW generated), I'm impressed. 

My hunch is that the reporter is talking about nameplate capacity, and is not telling us that equates to about 70 MW generation.

Note: this is not a discussion between the merits of wind/solar energy vs other forms of energy. It is a discussion of what consumers will actually be paying for when they sign on for these projects. They are not going to get 480 MW of electricity generation (if that's what the reporter meant).

Rate-payers need to start asking not what the cost / MW nameplate, but the cost / MW generated. 

Note: I often make simple arithmetic errors, and am prone to misreading or misinterpreting something. If this is important to you, go to the source. If this is not important to you, I assume you have not read the post anyway.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Years ago, your mom and your aunt lived overseas when "we were in" the USAF. We visited all the major cities in Europe. One of our favorite cities, of course, was Vienna. We spent a full week in Vienna around Christmas during our first year in Europe: your mom, Kiri, would have been about five years old; your Aunt Laura would have been about eleven months old.

Today while reading Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes, I came across this passage describing the Palais Ephrussi (the palatial home of the author's family several generations earlier) and the Ringstrasse in Vienna:

It is all so self-consciously grand, and yet a bit Cecil B. de Mille. I am the wrong audience for it. A young painter and architecture student, Adolf Hitler, had a proper visceral response to the Ringstrasse:

From morning until late at night I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings that held my primary interest. For hours I could stand in front of the Opera, for hours I could gaze at the Parliament; the whole Ringstrasse seemed to me like an enchantment out of The Thousand and One Nights."

Hitler would paint all the great buildings on the Ring, the Burgtheater, Hansen's Parliament, the two great buildings opposite the Palais Ephrussi, the university and the Votivkirche. Hitler appreciated how the space could be used for dramatic display. He understood all this ornament in a different way: it expressed "eternal values."

We would have walked right past the Palais Ephrussi (multiple times). Kiri would have been about seven years old, walking with us, while Laura would have been about three years old, able to walk, but mostly being pushed in a stroller.

Great, great memories.

Another Burr Under My Saddle -- August 8, 2015 -- Intermittent Energy, Nameplate Capacity, And The Capacity Factor

Updates

August 14, 2015: capacity factor appears to be all the rage right now; "greenies" tell us future wind farms will reach 65% capacity.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently released data showing that the capacity factor (CF) for wind power can reach 65 percent -- comparable to the CF of fossil-fuel-based generation.

While the headlines aren’t as sexy as Tesla’s "Ludicrous mode," the transformative implications for climate change dwarf Elon Musk’s latest accomplishment. Increasing a generator’s CF can increase its value in a variety of ways, including: reduced cost of energy, improved transmission-line utilization, and often, reducing stress on the grid by providing more power at times of peak demand. It will also likely reduce the amount of storage and natural gas needed to manage the grid under scenarios of high renewables penetration. Implicitly, NREL’s new report positions wind to become a dominant and possibly the primary source of electricity in the U.S.

Iowa will lead the way.  

Original Post

 

There will be nothing new in this post that you haven't already seen somewhere else on the blog. I'm doing this for my own benefit -- please skip this if  you came here looking for the Bakken.

A number of articles on "the unseen costs of intermittent energy" have been published in disparate media outlets over the past few weeks that seem a bit more than simply coincidental. I linked the various articles in various spots on the blog but now I'm going to try to put them in one spot for archival purposes.

I'll begin with this "cut and paste" from one of my posts:

Personally I have learned a lot about energy by following the intermittent energy story. Prior to the blog, I did not understand "nameplate capacity" and, now, all of a sudden there's another "old" concept that is getting a lot of attention: "capacity factor" which is very closely related to "nameplate capacity."They may be synonyms. I recently posted a story from The Lead for the archives and now it turns out that Forbes has a long article on the very same subject: "The Clean Power Bill Will Collide With The Incredibly Weird Physics Of The Electric Grid." Coincidence?

According to wiki:  Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity, or maximum effect, is the intended full-load sustained output of a facility such as a power plant,a chemical plant, fuel plant,metal refinery,mine,and many others. Nameplate capacity is the number registered with authorities for classifying the power output of a power station usually expressed in megawatts (MW).

The other day a reader sent me the link to an article from an Australian publication, The Lead (linked above) in which the wind energy apologist was writing about the "best wind farm" in Australia:
Hornsdale is touted as Australia's "best'' wind farm project due to its high capacity factor of almost 50 per cent when compared to other wind farms in Australia which operate between the high 30s or low 40s.

I did not recall seeing that term before, and it was not one of the wiki synonyms for "nameplate capacity." But now that I have had time to think about it, that makes sense. At its simplest, nameplate capacity and capacity factor are measured in different units. The former is often measured in MW while the latter is almost always a percentage.

Be that as it may, within hours of seeing "capacity factor" in that Australian publication, I saw it in a linked article from Forbes, sent to me by a reader. Very coincidental.

Here are some data points from the Forbes article:

The idiosyncratic physics of electricity will ultimately doom the aspirational goals of the new 1,560 page [Obama] Clean Power Plan, more than will an army of lobbyists, lawsuits and laborious studies. It is an inconvenient truth that electricity is profoundly different from every other energy source society uses; it is, in fact, weird.

In energy equivalent terms, the nation’s electric utilities deliver 5 oil supertankers every day. This feat is performed on a network where operational dynamics and disasters can happen at near lightspeed. And here is the critical singular fact: Over 99 percent of all electricity has to be generated at the same instant that it is consumed.  Try doing that with wheat, steel, or oil.

Thus the problem: The [Obama] Clean Power Plan (CPP), as by now everyone knows, sets a course to radically increase the use of wind and solar power everywhere in America. And, cost aside (which it never is in the real world), it should go without saying that neither wind nor solar are available all the time.

“Availability” is not a semantic nicety. It is a specific and critical technical feature of power plants.

In order for the grid to deliver power continuously and nearly instantaneously in the face of inevitable challenges (plant failures, or the highly cyclical nature of demand), operators must have access to unused capacity that is available to be called upon, any time.

While wind and solar have very low average availability compared to conventional power plants, what is more important is that they have zero availability for many hours at a time every day.

And similarly neither are available, even when operating, to increase output to follow normal daily and hourly demand surges.

The Capacity Factor

It bears noting that “availability” is distinct from another technical, non-semantic, feature of power plants, the “capacity factor” which is a measure of total energy delivery. Unsurprisingly, wind and solar also have low capacity factors compared to conventional power plants: over a year, a megawatt of wind, on average, can deliver less than one-third as much energy as a megawatt of gas turbine. If one rated automobiles this way, for example, capacity factor would measure how often, on average, you were actually able to use your car for all reasons, regardless of how big the car or its engine. Availability is the if, when and how long each day at any given time your car would actually start.

When it comes to cost of capital, capacity factor matters. Simplistically, you need to build three wind or solar megawatts of capacity to equal the energy produced by one megawatt of turbine capacity. (Obviously the exact ratio depends on how windy or sunny the locale.) That means it is just nonsensical to claim a solar or wind plant with a capital cost per “nameplate” megawatt equal to a conventional power plant has achieved the Holy Grail of “grid parity.” And even if you build extra wind and solar capacity, the extra capacity is worthless if it’s not available when needed.

It is availability that matters when it comes to the engineering, and derivatively economic challenge of keeping a grid continuously operating and stable (the latter no small feat). A stable continuous grid is utterly essential for modern society and the hallmark of modernity. Just ask anyone in India, or dozens of other countries plagued with episodic grids.

Storage Doesn't Work For Electricity

Elon Musk has given us a way to illustrate the challenge to store power at grid levels. The astoundingly big $5 billion Tesla battery factory under construction in Nevada, the so-called “gigafactory,” is slated to produce more than all of the world’s existing lithium battery factories combined. For battery cognoscenti, that represents a quantity of batteries each year that can store 30 billion watt-hours of electricity. A big number. But the United States consumes about 4,000,000 billion watt-hours a year. Thus the entire annual output of the gigafactory can store about five minutes worth of U.S. electric demand.

Consider one more example of the scale challenge for storing electricity. Cushing, OK, is home to one of the nation’s preeminent, and numerous, tank farms to store oil. In order to build a ‘tank’ farm to store kilowatt-hours equivalent to the energy stored at Cushing, we’d need a quantity of batteries equal to 40 years of production from 100 gigafactories. Electricity is hard to store.

Good, one burr under the saddle removed. I finally read that article. Putting Elon Musk's gigafactory into perspective was worth the read.

President Obama is pretty smart they say. The Economist is a fairly respected publication. Almost two years ago, The Economist had the European experience with intermittent energy figured out: how to lose half a trillion euros.

On June 16th, 2013,  something very peculiar happened in Germany’s electricity market. The wholesale price of electricity fell to minus €100 per megawatt hour (MWh). That is, generating companies were having to pay the managers of the grid to take their electricity. It was a bright, breezy Sunday. Demand was low. Between 2pm and 3pm, solar and wind generators produced 28.9 gigawatts (GW) of power, more than half the total. The grid at that time could not cope with more than 45GW without becoming unstable. At the peak, total generation was over 51GW; so prices went negative to encourage cutbacks and protect the grid from overloading.

The trouble is that power plants using nuclear fuel or brown coal are designed to run full blast and cannot easily reduce production, whereas the extra energy from solar and wind power is free. So the burden of adjustment fell on gas-fired and hard-coal power plants, whose output plummeted to only about 10% of capacity.

These events were a microcosm of the changes affecting all places where renewable sources of energy are becoming more important—Europe as a whole and Germany in particular. For established utilities, though, this is a disaster. Their gas plants are being shouldered aside by renewable-energy sources. They are losing money on electricity generation. They worry that the growth of solar and wind power is destabilising the grid, and may lead to blackouts or brownouts. And they point out that you cannot run a normal business, in which customers pay for services according to how much they consume, if prices go negative. In short, they argue, the growth of renewable energy is undermining established utilities and replacing them with something less reliable and much more expensive.

Germany has built a low-carbon energy business to the point where new solar power needs few subsidies; where wholesale energy prices are falling and threats to the reliability of the grid have not materialised. What’s the problem?

There are several. First, utilities have suffered vast losses in asset valuation. Their market capitalisation has fallen over €500 billion in five years. That is more than European bank shares lost in the same period. These losses matter in their own right. For pension funds and other investors, they represent lost capital and lower future earnings. For employees, they translate into lower wages and lost jobs. The losses—many of which predate the boom in renewable energy—have come on top of the huge sums Europeans have also spent on climate-change policies. Subsidies for renewable energy are running at €16 billion a year in Germany (and rising); the cumulative cost is around €60 billion. [A disconnect? See previous paragraph.]

Next, utilities have lost their investment role. Once they were steady, reliable and inflation-resistant, the US Treasuries of the equity markets. Pension funds need such assets to balance their long-term liabilities. But utilities no longer play this role, as evinced not just by collapsing share prices but by dividend policies. Until 2008 the yields of RWE and E.ON tracked German ten-year bonds. Since then, they have soared to around 10%, while government-bond yields have stayed flat. Renewables are not the only risky energy investment.

Most important, the decline in utilities’ fortunes raises disturbing questions about the future of Europe’s electricity system. To simplify: European countries are slowly piecing together a system in which there will be more low-carbon and intermittent energy sources; more energy suppliers; more modern power stations (replacing coal and nuclear plants); more and better storage; and more energy traded across borders. All this will be held together by “smart grids”, which tell consumers how much power they are using, shut off appliances when not needed and manage demand more efficiently.

And there it was! The Economist calling wind and solar energy what it is: intermittent energy.

Americans prefer reliable, continuous energy, not unreliable, intermittent energy. On top of that, this new unreliable, intermittent energy will be more expensive.

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The Suicide of Liberal Arts

A Note to the Granddaughters

One of the best gifts I received while in high school was an 8-week summer course (between my junior and senior years) in liberal arts at St Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. This op-ed piece in today's WSJ was of interest:

Liberal arts has not been killed by parental or student philistinism, or the cupidity of today’s educational institutions whose excessive costs have made the liberal arts into an unattainable luxury. In too many ways the liberal arts have died not by murder but by suicide.

To restore the liberal arts, those of us who teach should begin by thinking about students. Almost all of them have serious questions about major issues, and all of them are looking for answers. What is right? What is love? What do I owe others? What do others owe me? In too many places these are not questions for examination but issues for indoctrination. Instead of guiding young men and women by encouraging them to read history, biography, philosophy and literature, we’d rather debunk the past, deconstruct the authors and dethrone our finest minds and statesmen.

When properly conceived and taught, the liberal arts do not by themselves make us “better people” or (God knows) more “human.” They don’t exist to make us more “liberal,” at least in the contemporary political sense. But the liberal arts can do something no less wonderful: They can open our eyes.

They show us how to look at the world and the works of civilization in serious and important and even delightful ways. They hold out the possibility that we will know better the truth about many of the most important things. They are the vehicle that carries the amazing things that mankind has made—and the memory of the horrors that mankind has perpetrated—from one age to the next. They teach us how to marvel.

Natural Gas Fill Rate -- July 30, 2015; "Grid Alert" In Texas Because Wind Energy Not Reaching Nameplate Capacity

NG fill rate (dynamic link): the numbers are wrong, the fill rate adds up to 51, not 52. There are a couple of addition / subtraction errors in the "Producing / Salt / Nonsalt" part of the table - at least two simple arithmetic errors.

In the East Region, stocks were 60 Bcf below the 5-year average following net injections of 42 Bcf.

I assume a lot of natural gas is being used to replace coal, and that there is a lot of demand for air conditioning today.

Note the arithmetic errors in this very simple spreadsheet -- maintained by the same government that predicts dire consequences of global warming 100 years from now. (It's possible these numbers are rounded from raw data resulting in the errors.)

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Grid Alert In Texas

By the way, there's a "grid alert" in north Texas today. Folks are being asked to minimize use of electricity today; the grid is having trouble keeping up .... and part of the problem --- the wind is not blowing hard enough to for turbines to reach nameplate capacity. By the time the backup natural gas / coal power plants are ramped up, the "grid alert" will be over.

California Wind In A Heap Of Trouble For Anyone Paying Attention -- May 16, 2015

[A huge "thank you" to a reader for sending me this link; this is an incredible story.]

Regular readers know that I feel very strongly that wind farms have no redeeming features. None. Nada. Nil. Zilch.

Second, only through blogging did I learn what nameplate capacity means.

Finally (well, maybe not finally, but enough for now), long term readers know that I feel strongly that wind farms are a huge scam.

Now we get this report from Platts regarding wind energy in California:

Wholesale power sales from wind generators in California in the first quarter of this year fell an eye-opening 32.7% compared to sales in the first quarter of 2014.

Forty-eight wind farms in California sold 1.304 million MWh of wind power in the California Independent System Operator market in the first quarter of 2015, compared to 1.936 million MWh sold in Q1 2014, according to data filed with FERC and other government agencies and compiled by Platts.

The roughly 630,000 MWh sales decline came despite a 197-MW increase in available wind capacity during the year. Capacity grew from 4,275 MW to 4,472 MW by the first quarter of 2015.

The state’s wind generators thus operated at a capacity factor of just 13.5% in the first quarter of 2015, a significant drop from the 21% capacity factor at which they operated in the first quarter of 2014.

The FERC wholesale wind power sales data shows that 42 out of 44 wind farms in California that had sales in the first quarter of 2014 have seen their Q1 2015 sales decline. There were four facilities that had no sales in Q4 2014.

One of the biggest declines has come at Pattern Energy’s 265-MW Ocotillo wind farm in the Imperial Valley, in the state’s most southern region. Ocotillo, which sells power to San Diego Gas & Electric, saw its sales fall 45.5% in the first quarter of this year over the first quarter of last.

So, let's parse this:

• consultants usually provide the information their client wants to hear
• there has been no global warming for 19 years; that's agreed by all
• regardless of whatever global warming there might have been, it would not have been enough to affect the winds; any change in winds was due to "contemporary factors" such as the El Niño effect
• developers over-promise nameplate capacity; wind energy (and solar energy) never comes close to nameplate capacity

Bottom line: if there's a significant decrease in wind energy in California, there needs to be another explanation than global warming changing the wind patterns in California.

So, going back to the story linked above.

If wind energy is a scam (wind farms for tax breaks) what could possibly explain the significant decline in wind energy knowing that trying to explain it with global warming is beyond "ridiculous."

Think about it. See if you can come up with a reason why wind energy in California has dropped off so much.

Think.

You are absolutely correct. If the developers got their money out of the farms already through tax credits, etc., not much reason to worry about preventive maintenance. My hunch is that lack of preventive maintenance is causing the significant decrease in energy provided by the wind farms.

[After the original post, a reader sent this, confirming what was already surmised:

Studies of UK and Denmark wind farms suggest their actual economic lives appear to be 12-15 years due to wear and tear. One of the unanticipated problems that arose with larger turbines is premature cracking failure of the main axial bearing(s). These failures arise from two very difficult engineering conditions. First is uneven loading. Wind speeds increase with altitude so the three blades, which span great distances, are never evenly loaded. The bearing(s) wobble under the tremendous forces generated. Second, braking when wind speed exceeds 25mph suddenly loads reverse torque on the axial side where previously unloaded (and wobbling) individual bearings are in natural misalignment to their trace. If things go ‘well’, cracking can be caught before catastrophic failure. It is expensive to repair. The blades must be detached so the turbine can be dismounted and sent back to the factory. 

Developers and promoters of wind farms, of course, base their economic projections on 30-year wind turbine lives.]

The consultants are a whole lot smarter than I am but they have clients to serve, vested interests as it were, and to blame prevailing winds on global warming is simply preposterous.

But even worse, if it is due to global warming, and global warming is already affecting wind patterns, it means that wind farm developers need to re-do all those wind studies before building more wind farms.

On top of all this, it makes the story at this link even more troubling. Wind energy is not going to be make up the hydroelectric power shortage due to California's drought.

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Wind Turbine Life Spans

More on the subject of wind turbine life spans, and this was reported back in 2012:

Scotland's landscape could be blighted by the rotting remains of a failed regeneration of wind farms.

A study commissioned by the Renewable Energy Foundation has found that the economic life of onshore wind turbines could be far less than that predicted by the industry.

The “groundbreaking” research was carried out by academics at Edinburgh University and saw them look at years of wind farm performance data from the UK and Denmark.
The results appear to show that the output from windfarms — allowing for variations in wind speed and site characteristics — declines substantially as they get older.

By 10 years of age, the report found that the contribution of an average UK windfarm towards meeting electricity demand had declined by a third.

That reduction in performance leads the study team to believe that it will be uneconomic to operate windf arms for more than 12 to 15 years — at odds with industry predictions of a 20- to 25-year lifespan.

I think that's exactly what we will see in the US in 2020; I already saw it among the wind farms around Indio, California.

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Wind Farm Pricing

National Review is reporting:

Evidence from market data suggests that wind power producers will accept prices down to about negative $35 MWh before they shut down, since marginal operating costs are very low for wind power we can conclude that the subsidies are worth about $35 – $40 for each MWh of wind output. 

Subsidies do this sort of thing – distort the market and lead to waste – and of course to some degree distorting the market is just what is intended when policymakers offer a subsidy. Only usually it isn’t so easy to see the evidence of the waste created by the subsidies. Wind turbines that operate more hours require more maintenance, so these hours spent producing negative-value electric power do consume real resources. At the same time, the conventionally-fueled generation that is forced offline temporarily will also face additional “wear-and-tear” and require additional maintenance because of the effects of shutting down and then restarting the machines. This extra wear-and-tear and extra maintenance also represents wasteful use of resources due to PTC- and REC-subsidized power production. 

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Taxpayers Pay Wind Farms Not To Produce Electricity

Fox News is reporting:

Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest -- built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced -- are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the region's electricity grid says there's an oversupply of renewable power at certain times of the year.

The problem arose during the late spring and early summer last year. Rapid snow melt filled the Columbia River Basin. The water rushed through the 31 dams run by the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency based in Portland, Ore., allowing for peak hydropower generation. At the very same time, the wind howled, leading to maximum wind power production.

Demand could not keep up with supply, so BPA shut down the wind farms for nearly 200 hours over 38 days.

 The one place wind farms were probably most redundant: the Pacific Northwest where there was already an abundance of hydroelectric power.

Cost Of Renewable Energy; Name Plate Capacity Of Renewable Energy -- The European Experience -- January 14, 2015

Capital Cost and Production Effectiveness of Renewable Energy in Europe – the Data.

In case this link breaks, I've included the most important graphics from that page:

And, by country:

Promoting wind energy and solar energy with outlandish promises based on "nameplate capacity" seems a lot like selling snake oil back in the vaudeville era.

There are two huge takeaways from the linked site and the graphics.

First, the cost, and most of us have dwelled on the cost of renewable energy vs coal/natural gas.

Second, the nameplate capacity. I first learned about that concept several years ago when I did not know at all what it meant, and then a reader explained it to me. I don't think the average American knows that when renewable energy advocates talk about capacity (nameplate capacity) they are generally talking about "best" capacity under ideal conditions. It turns out that "never" happens (for anything manmade because conditions are never ideal -- even nameplate capacity of a coal plant is meaningless when coal miners go on strike) ... and now there are more and more stories that "oh, the wind is not blowing as much as we thought it would, or the sun is not shining as much as we thought it would" -- some stories posted at the blog.

So, it's great to see the nameplate capacity graph because in many ways it's worse than the cost. Folks budget for the cost and accept it when they agree to a project; but then when the project doesn't deliver as expected ... that's when things get a bit testy.

A big thank you to the reader who sent this this link.

By the way, consider the above data when looking at this recently released "study" from "Oceana":

Oceana’s report finds that offshore wind would produce twice the number of jobs and twice the amount of energy as offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean. The report, titled Offshore Energy by the Numbers, An Economic Analysis of Offshore Drilling and Wind Energy in the Atlantic, challenges recent claims by the oil and gas industry that opening the East Coast to offshore drilling will lead the United States to energy independence, generate millions of dollars in revenue for states and create thousands of jobs in the process. Oceana’s analysis instead finds that the benefits projected by the industry appear to be exaggerated due to the inclusion of oil and gas resources that are not economically recoverable, thereby inflating the potential benefits. Industry estimates also rely upon an assumption of a state revenue-sharing system that does not exist.

Considering no one really knows the extent of oil and gas reserves off-shore, and considering the European experience with renewable energy .... let's just say I'm happy I stumbled across The Coyote Blog's "fake but accurate" style of writing in today's journalism. 

Wind Turbines Generate Less Than 10% of Advertised Capacity (Not a Bakken Story)

You all know how I feel about wind power and solar power as being the answer to the energy needs of the United States.

We're starting to see some reporting exactly how efficient these two sources of power are. It's a bit tough to find the bottom line in this link, but it's there: the actual amount of energy produced by wind energy is less than 10% of its nameplate capacity.

Three years ago I did not know what "nameplate capacity" meant. This is one definition:

Nameplate capacity is the full-load continuous rating of a generator, prime mover or other electric power production equipment under specific conditions as designated by the manufacturer. Installed generator nameplate rating is usually indicated on a nameplate physically attached to the generator.

Basically, the nameplate capacity is the amount of electricity a generator is expected to provide.

To sell wind energy projects, sponsors had to maximize the nameplate capacity of their wind turbines. Common sense told me the numbers would be based on optimum conditions and would never reach their theoretical potential.

Well, the numbers are in and are much worse than even critics would have guessed, including me.

Wind power generators (wind turbines) are producing less than ten (10) percent of their nameplate capacity.

In some places, producing less than ten (10) percent of advertised would be considered false advertising or worse.

We get about ... 9.2% of the total installed capacity.  This is somewhat less than the 25-30% and beyond reported as the so-called “load factor” for wind power generation.

"Somewhat less" -- that's putting it mildly. I would say 9.2% is a significantly less than 25 - 30%.

Interestingly enough: during heavy windstorms, wind turbines are "feathered" -- disconnected from the generators to prevent damage to the equipment.

Here are some reasons given why wind turbines are turning out to be so inefficient:

• wind didn’t blow as much as planned
• there was too much wind too much of the time requiring the machines to be shutdown
• wind machines are not as efficient as thought
• electrical demand did not require using wind power machines–they used other generation machines and fuel
• a significant portion of the installed capacity is running but not connected to national grid
• the data being analyzed is wrong
• the analysis is wrong

Some opine that the numbers are even worse for solar energy. But the news is not all bad. Investors can make a lot of money off these scams.

For utility customers: wind energy will cost even more than expected. The folks in Boston who bought into the Cape Wind project are now finding that out. The state's attorney general is investigating.

Two things will help: increase the efficiency of the turbines themselves, and place them near government buildings where there is an excess of hot air blowing.

Updates

Update, November 2, 2010: The Pipestone, Minnesota, wind turbine factory is idled: No new orders. That says it all. Once this was one of the busiest wind turbine factories in the US but this sort of tells us where the wind energy is headed in this country. With regard to solar, solar energy is even more costly than wind and less able to supply meaningful energy answers for the US.