Renewable Energy Outlook

The last time I checked, the power companies can't print money, so the cost goes to the consumer. It takes much more energy to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere than was produced when it was generated, which someone will have to pay for. If the government prints more money to pay for it, prices will rise and the consumer will pay for it anyway.

Somehow, I suspect that one day our current standard of living will be a distant memory.

The new green society....

..."Developing capabilities for deploying BECCS at a large scale principally entails driving down the cost of CCS technology, building out CO2 transport infrastructure and storage operations, and resolv­ing persistent uncertainties related to net climate benefits and ancillary effects."...

Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)...

..."BECCS can take many forms—in several different sectors with several different biomass feedstocks. The net climate benefits and ancillary effects of these forms vary widely. Some forms of BECCS could be detrimental for food security and natural ecosystems. Some forms provide emissions reduction but not carbon removal. Some forms may not provide climate benefits at all, given direct and indirect land use change and other accounting issues."...

..."There is no obvious way to bound the technical potential of DACS. Its economic potential is cur­rently limited by high costs and intensive require­ments for low-carbon energy inputs. "...

DAC or direct air capture of CO₂

So the plan is, 'no plan'...?

No,, the plan is to throw money at the problem until it goes away, or we all go broke....So you're willing to kill us all, in order to save us all? Why does that sound so familiar...

https://www.wri.org/publication/tech-carbon-removal-usa

SNL had a bit done by Chevy Chase during the Carter administration when interest rates hit 21% called "Inflation is your friend". It explained that soon you too would be able to buy a $300 suit and smoke a $50 cigar.

In fact, if Biden/Harris/Soros/Bloomberg administration manages to generate 400% inflation, then it will only take 1/4 the time to pay off the existing national debt.

The opportunities are endless. Germany in the '20s/'30s and Czechoslovakia during the '90s managed to print enough paper to generate 1000% inflation per week or better.

My personal favorite, though, is the platinum coin approach. Congress has allowed the mint to press special coins in platinum of whatever value desired. I would say start minting trillion dollar coins to pay the debt. Getting change could be a problem though.....

Reagan nailed it on the head with his alimentary canal quote.

Midterms will probably be a pretty good indicator of how the people feel about this and other issues. It will be a good time for primary challenges to unseat incumbents who don't represent the electorate.

1500 wind turbines planned for off the coast of New England states...

..."Billions of dollars will be invested in the next several years — at sea and on land — to erect hundreds of wind turbines miles from the coast in order to bring New Jersey 7,500 megawatts of renewable energy. That's enough to power half of the state's 1.5 million homes.

Eight other states along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have embarked on similar endeavors, preparing for the arrival of a new era in American energy."...

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/national-international/changing-climate/offshore-wind-turbines-renewable-energy-atlantic-ocean-new-jersey-united-states-climate-change/2723432/

...."

Governor Murphy Signs Executive Order to Increase Offshore Wind Goal to 7,500 Megawatts by 2035

11/19/2019

Executive Order More than Doubles New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Goal, Promotes Renewable Energy Generation with Potential to Create Thousands of Jobs

JERSEY CITY – Governor Phil Murphy, alongside First Lady Tammy Murphy and former Vice President Al Gore at the Liberty Science Center, today signed Executive Order No. 92, raising New Jersey’s offshore wind goal from 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind-generated electricity by 2030 to 7,500 megawatts by 2035."...

Wait, now is this installed capacity? or based on industry standard of actual output of 35% of installed capacity...I guess an Executive order means nobody gets a vote....that doesn't sound right on something this big...

..."“As our federal government abdicates its responsibility to confront the climate crisis, our transition to a clean energy future is being led by states like New Jersey, and by leaders like my friend Governor Phil Murphy,” said Vice President Al Gore. “Today’s announcement couldn’t be more timely and more needed, as climate-related extreme weather events continue to wreak havoc on our communities. With this executive order, Governor Murphy is unleashing the unprecedented economic and job creating opportunities of clean, wind energy.”"...

What climate-related extreme weather events?

https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/news/562019/20191119b.shtml

By the time the people see the hikes in their electric bills, it will be too late.

..."The company also helped him get an $11,720 rebate for the heating system, and a $1,250 rebate for an electric hot water heater, both through his electric utility, Con Edison....

His total bill was about $20,000, much more than he was expecting. By comparison, he said, a new propane furnace would have cost him about $4,000."...

Wow, 32k for a heat pump and water heater? I might start up business again...

https://grist.org/buildings/he-wanted-to-get-his-home-off-fossil-fuels-there-was-just-one-problem/

Nope still goin' strong...

Here in Texas, we're just thrilled with renewable energy!

After the winter storm in mid-February that knocked out power to most of our state, caused billions of dollars in damage, and killed about 80 people, we're ready for more! NOT!!!!

Power was off at my house for the better part of 3 days. Couldn't run the water well to prevent pipes from freezing, 50° inside the house. Thank goodness we had a gas fireplace, gas stove, and gas grill in our enclosed outdoor kitchen/pool pump house! We have a hot tub that had 300 gallons of hot water that we could use for sponge baths and a 15,000 gallon swimming pool if things got really bad.

Renewable energy is a hoax, just like the world is going to end in 10 years.

Stop repeating the myth of renewables being responsible for the Texas crisis, most of the lost energy was gas fired generation.

If the wind turbines hadn't failed they wouldn't have needed to start the backup gas fired generators....The gas turbines can have dewatering units installed, they can be fixed...You can't have 25% of your generation capacity fail during a demand peak and not have problems with maintaining frequency...

Load shedding would have easily covered that loss, the huge amount of gas power loss was the problem. This was a freak event, Texas is clearly not protected from such cold conditions and after this event, I would expect it to be able to cope with this in the future.

It is a bit like the UK rail system failing in big snow events, they don't happen often enough for good systems to be in place.

I think part of the problem was that they did not have cooperative agreements in place with neighboring utilities so that they could import power when needed. (Or export power when the other guys need it.)

Load shedding in a timely fashion would have prevented it from happening...unfortunately that wasn't the case...they waited too long and the generators started tripping on low frequency which had a cascading effect....all of the excuses seem to be conveniently geared toward increasing revenues (ie: we need more money to make the grid more resilient), rather than we screwed up...and now we fault global warming...What is obvious is that 25% of the grid generation is unreliable by design, and that fact is completely dismissed as irrelevant...These types of occurrences I think will become more and more prevalent at peak demand periods (when we need it the most), as more and more of the grid becomes unreliable....What happens when we are at 50% and above intermittent power generation?

..."ERCOT has said about 48.6% of generation—52.3 GW out of Texas grid’s 107.5 GW total installed capacity—was forced out at the highest point due to the impacts of various extreme weather conditions. The list names at least 312 units at 219 power plants that lost capacity for varying durations as the extreme cold event gripped the state between Sunday, Feb. 14, and Friday, Feb. 19. Of the 1,796 outage/derate incidents listed, the bulk (783) were from natural gas generation and wind (767) generation, according to POWER’s analysis of the list."...

..."As the night wore on, more generation tripped or derated in central Texas. These include a 194-MW derate by NRG Energy’s 836-MW coal-fired Limestone plant, as well as several combined cycle gas facilities, including Panda Temple Power II, Hays Energy, and several CPS Energy facilities.

By 1:23 a.m. on Monday morning, 35.3 GW was already offline. At 1:25 a.m., ERCOT made the dire call to initiate rolling blackouts. But over the next roughly 15 minutes, another 1.4 GW was forced offline, followed quickly by the loss of 248 MW, and then another 329 MW. Shortly after 1:40 a.m., as ERCOT ordered an additional 1 GW of load shed, another 606 MW was lost, and then 688 MW, and then 511 MW. At 1:50 a.m., ERCOT fielded precipitous frequency drop below 59.4 Hz, which lasted a harrowing four minutes. It quickly ordered an additional 3 GW of load shed, bringing the total to 5 GW. By the end of the event, ERCOT would be forced to shed 20 GW of load."...

https://public.tableau.com/profile/sonal.patel#!/vizhome/ERCOTANALYSIS/ERCOTOutageTimelineByGenerationLossStart2

https://www.powermag.com/ercot-lists-generators-forced-offline-during-texas-extreme-cold-event/?oly_enc_id=1249D9862912F8V

Looks like a cascading management failure.

One thing that seems to be overlooked is that the solar grid connected systems on the market need to have a base load supply with which to synchronise. Imagine the chaos if all the solar rooftop systems ran at their own frequency and tried to couple up together. What wonderful circulating currents would flow in the system and you would hear the inverters popping like champagne corks.

Someone will come up with a viable system of wireless connecter inverters to synchronise with each other but at what frequency. Just watch the synchronous motors run, oh what fun!

Besides for most of the last week the sky has been overcast so no real solar energy being generated so who picks up the load?

No, not at all. The problem is that we're rushing headlong into a search for solutions to problems that really don't exist, and coming up with ridiculous 'solutions' that sound good to the media and government regulators. In the past, this has given us toilets that don't flush and curly-Q light bulbs.

REAL engineers define problems before trying to solve them. We're NOT running out of fossil fuels, pollution from burning them has been reduced dramatically, CO2 is NOT a pollutant. Very few people are talking about the staggering cost and huge amount of waste associated with so-called 'green energy' sources.

And, to start another battle, we never landed on the moon.

The space race was about politics, not advancing mankind. The technical achievements happened to be a by-product of the Cold War.

I agree.

The Energy Race is also about politics and it will also result in advancing technology and technical achievements but you have to be in it to win it.

If it makes cents, you will win.

I guess "its only money" to politicians; the question is Whose?

I guess you've never seen a Trump rally....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1UEX5piTXo

We watched the January 6th version.

And we watched overwhelmingly peaceful protests in Seattle and Portland all summer long.

I notice the amount of energy from nuclear decreases a bit. I don't think that will work in real life, even if it does in their projection. I think our goal should be to eliminate combustion processes. I read a newsletter from SGGI (Science Council for Global Initiatives) today; In it Tom Blees mentions a projection that nuclear will be able to produce electricity for around 2 cents per KWH. Tom is a dreamer in my opinion (but we need dreamers to expand our limits,) but he mentions the possibility of pulling the carbon out of processes such as the manufacture of cement and using it in such things as steelmaking. Getting carbon from CO2 is energy-intensive, but nuclear generators likely will not be running at full capacity for much of the time, so energy would be available from them. We need to keep all of these ideas on the table, and I think the increase in nuclear energy generation has to be one of them.

The road from what's possible to what's practical is lined with compromises...

"

• Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with about 50 reactors under construction.
• Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region, though there are major plans for new units in Russia.
• Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading.
• Plant lifetime extension programmes are maintaining capacity, particularly in the USA.

Today there are about 440 nuclear power reactors operating in 32 countries plus Taiwan, with a combined capacity of about 400 GWe. In 2019 these provided 2657 TWh, over 10% of the world's electricity.

About 50 power reactors are currently being constructed in 16 countries (see Table below), notably China, India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

Each year, the OECD's International Energy Agency (IEA) sets out the present situation as well as reference and other – particularly carbon reduction – scenarios in its World Energy Outlook (WEO) report. In the 2020 edition (WEO 2020), the IEA's 'Stated Policies Scenario' sees installed nuclear capacity growth of over 15% from 2019 to 2040 (reaching about 480 GWe). The scenario envisages a total generating capacity of 13,418 GWe by 2040, with the increase concentrated heavily in Asia, and in particular India and China. In this scenario, nuclear's contribution to global power generation is about 8.5% in 2040.

The IEA's Stated Policies Scenario (formerly named 'New Policies Scenario') is based on a review of policy announcements and plans, reflecting the way governments see their energy sectors evolving over the coming decades. The IEA estimates in WEO 2020 that the cumulative impact of the stated policies would result in growth in global carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector through to 2040.

The IEA has produced energy transition scenarios since 2009, beginning with the '450 Scenario', which was consistent with the narrow aim of keeping CO2 concentrations below 450 ppm (parts per million) – the level associated with a 50% likelihood of keeping the average global temperature rise below 2 °C. In 2017, the IEA introduced the 'Sustainable Development Scenario' (SDS), which "portrays an energy future which emphasises co-benefits of the measures needed to simultaneously deliver energy access, clean air and climate goals." In WEO 2020, the SDS projects nuclear capacity to increase to 599 GWe by 2040."...

So we need a minimum of 50% increase in nuclear energy production through 2040....

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx

https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/multimedia/videos/nuclear-power-the-road-to-a-carbon-free-future

Just look at this backward country called Australia, not one nuclear power plant generating to the grid because of the ideological vacuum of the green voters and a mindless mantra on radiation verses solar and wind which needs solar radiation to drive the wind currents.

We have already seen one states power grid crash when a storm caused havoc and they had to rely on base load from another states coal fired power to get back going but oh no it wasn't the 50% reliance on sun energy that caused the problems.

At least other countries have a nuclear industry.

because of the ideological vacuum of the green voters and a mindless mantra on radiation verses solar and wind

I have 2 books by the same author that I suggest they read. I think the best is Radiation and Reason-The Impact of Science on a Culture of Fear, by Wade Allison. The second is Nuclear is for Life-A Cultural Revolution also by Wade Allison.

Wade is a college professor and knows how to present a topic by taking the time to present all the sub-topics leading to understanding.

Some would say Australia is forward looking.

Australia does have a nuclear power plant in Sydney, but it is a tinser.

How many blackouts are even due to the type of generator?

Nuclear power is just as susceptible to bad management and also affected by extreme weather events.

..."Keeping the position of key energy supplier to the Old Continent comes at a price. And it looks like it’s a price Russia is ready to pay it. Moscow is silently investing in the production of hydrogen, potentially aiming to make it flow through its new NordStream 2 pipeline. While the future of the controversial project still fuels debates and uncertainties, Russia decided to adapt to its neighbor's needs for cleaner energy sources, and in particular for hydrogen, which the European Commission put at the forefront of its recovery agenda.

A dialog between Berlin and Moscow is currently underway to produce green hydrogen on a large scale. That information was revealed during a conference held at the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce on February 16th. But as surprising as it may appear, this narrative is not new. Firstly mentioned in 2018, the hydrogen option for Nord Stream 2 was then put on the table by Uniper who, in March 2020, envisioned the ability of the pipeline to transport up to 80% hydrogen.

"One of the key arguments against NordStream 2 is that adding natural gas contradicts the decarbonization objectives of Europe. Here, Russia's counter-argument is that NordStream 2 also has a hydrogen potential, and can fulfill those decarbonization objectives", according to Luca Franza, a researcher on EU-Russia gas relations.

The choice of hydrogen investment by Russia can be interpreted as a tactic to make the project more appealing and to change Western countries’ stance on Nord Stream 2 sanctions. But beyond the geopolitical aspect, it raises several questions on its actual feasibility. "...

Continued...

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-The-Worlds-Most-Controversial-Pipeline-About-To-Pivot-To-Hydrogen.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/06/18/russias-nord-stream-ii-pipeline-is-ukraines-worst-nightmare/?sh=e19d12b35242

Hydrogen Energy Roadmap....

https://www.fch.europa.eu/sites/default/files/Hydrogen%20Roadmap%20Europe_Report.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37M7ffjro3I

For every gigawatt of wind capacity that's installed, you need a gigawatt of gas generation added for backup, you're paying for twice the capacity that you actually need...that means you're paying twice for your electricity....or will be...

"Those with a consumption of 6,000 kWh/year saw bills rise from 542 British pounds in 2007, to 837 British pounds in 2019, including value added tax. "

https://www.statista.com/statistics/496661/average-annual-electricity-bill-uk/

In the US average price per kwh has increased about $.01 over the same period...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183700/us-average-retail-electricity-price-since-1990/

..."The normalized load factor for UK onshore wind farms declines from a peak of about 24% at age 1 to 15% at age 10 and 11% at age 15."

...."meeting the UK Government’s targets for wind generation will require a much higher level of wind capacity – and, thus, capital investment – than current projections imply. Third, the structure of contracts offered to wind generators under the proposed reform of the electricity market should be modified since few wind farms will operate for more than 12–15 years."...

...and, oh yeah, wind turbines need to be replaced ever so often....

https://stopthesethings.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/windfarm-peformance-uk-hughes-19-12-12.pdf

..."The majority of the blade material will eventually end up as waste, and in order to accommodate this level of composite waste, the only option is recycling. As of 2020, most end-of-use blades are temporarily stored or sent to landfills rather than recycled.^[60] Typically, glass-fibre-reinforced-polymers (GFRPs) compose of around 70% of the laminate material in the blade. GFRPs hinder incineration and are not combustible.^[61] Therefore, conventional recycling methods need to be modified."...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design

Average age of US power plant fleet flat for 4th-straight year in 2018

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/gfjqeFt8GTPYNK4WX57z9g2

Just once I'd like to see somebody obsessing over the cost of housing, the way they obsess over global warming and CO₂ levels....and I'm not talking about designing cardboard boxes or stylish tents for people to live in...the government seems to be allowing the cost of real estate to go up to increase property tax revenues....residential real estate prices should be frozen and only allowed to increase according to the cpi...and the same with property taxes...

<......"a lack of pioneering spirit"...>.

For every gigawatt of wind capacity that's installed, you need a gigawatt of gas generation added for backup, you're paying for twice the capacity that you actually need...that means you're paying twice for your electricity....or will be...

Unfortunately, many people don't realize that! Also they probably don't realize what happens to "installed capacity" when the capacity factor is applied.

And equipment sitting by idle is losing money. But that's of no concern to someone who isn't paying the bills.

<insert googly-eyed image here>

"There is always someone in this world who can make something a little worse and sell it a little cheaper, and those who consider price only are this person's lawful prey." _{- John Ruskin.}