On the Threshold of Renewable Energy Chaos

Really? Which part of my post. The part where I said other providers install heaters, the part where I said there were multiple failure points in the grid and that the collapse was not just down to wind turbines, the part where I said wind turbines are useful but only one component of a green grid. Or the part where I noted that it was a freak whether event that initiated the shutdown/collapse and that for most of the operating life Texas's wind turbines had performed within specification. Because the article your quoting is only relevant during a prolonged icing event. And now that the problem has been identified there are tech fixes which can be used in new turbines to combat it if required. IN other words grid operators can allow for the effect and plan accordingly. So nothing I said changes.

 

"30 hour long icing event" -- well within the Texas experience.

 

Forget “implicit” subsidies: Fossil fuels subsidize the whole world: feeding people and forests for free
The latest academic voodoo doll tossed at Fossil Fuels is a study claiming that the industry gets $65 billion in “implicit” subsidies in the US.

The authors of the latest paper assume the broken climate models work, and then guesstimate what the cost of all that theoretical warming would be with economic models that aren’t much better. It’s a paywalled paper, but they don’t appear to account for all the net benefits of coal, oil and gas which include, keeping people alive and fertilizing forests and fields around the world for free. These aren’t guesstimates from the future but known good and great gifts from the last century or two.


Greening the Earth. Zaichun Zhu, (2016)

Send them the bill: the fossil fuel companies are subsidizing taxpayers . . .

 

Did you even read my previous post? So yes the science shows prolonged icing events reduce significantly reduce power output from wind-turbines. Well fix it!

Option A: As you upgrade or install new units have computer controlled heating elements fitted along along the blade edges. Problem solved.

Option B: Don't install heating elements. Then plan ahead allowing for the fact future severe cold snaps will reduce wind turbine output by installing alternate back sources and more batteries to cover the anticipated gap.

Option C: Do both at once.

Now there, was that so hard?

 

Sorry, but you're arguing against a point no one is making.

 

Really?
(Your post No. 123) 'The evidence that wind energy cannot reliably meet even the most fundamental need to keep us warm during harsh winter weather continues to accumulate.'

 

Yes, and . . . ?
You have described countermeasures which, in fact, make my point.
Thank you.

 

The 'Green Energy' That Might Be Ruining the Planet

Michael Grunwald, Politico

NORTHAMPTON, N.C. — Here’s a multibillion-dollar question that could help determine the fate of the global climate: If a tree falls in a forest—and then it’s driven to a mill, where it’s chopped and chipped and compressed into wood pellets, which are then driven to a port and shipped across the ocean to be burned for electricity in European power plants—does it warm the planet?

Most scientists and environmentalists say yes: By definition, clear-cutting trees and combusting their carbon emits greenhouse gases that heat up the earth. But policymakers in the U.S. Congress and governments around the world have declared that no, burning wood for power isn’t a climate threat—it’s actually a green climate solution. In Europe, “biomass power,” as it’s technically called, is now counted and subsidized as zero-emissions renewable energy. As a result, European utilities now import tons of wood from U.S. forests every year—and Europe’s supposedly eco-friendly economy now generates more energy from burning wood than from wind and solar combined. . . .

 

So does this mean you now agree that I was arguing against a point you were making or not? Because your all over the place with your logic here.

Secondly. Definition; 'coutermeasure ' - an action taken to counteract a danger or threat. Since you acknowledge the strategies I outlined would 'counter' the problem you identified (which is an important one BTW) you are admitting that the the problem can be, by default solved.

In addition your initial contention is flawed because no-one would seriously argue that wind power by itself could or should meet all of Texas's electricity demand. Instead it is merely one component of the States electricity system, one that can and does make a useful contribution. However it is not and never will be the only component.

 

Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, among others, claims the future is 100% renewable. A weakness in wind power has been found; mitigations are proposed. We'll see what happens next. The Texas wind power failure was the opening of a failure cascade.

 

There's a 'carbon ledger' calculation that can be done for any manufactured product which itemizes the (best estimate) amount of CO2 released in every step of the production chain from initial sourcing through to end use/consumption.

Depending on the final amount of CO2 released it is possible that a specific product might be CO2 neutral in one location but CO2 'positive' in another. In the case of wood pellets they might well turn out to be CO2 neutral (or nearly so) if up produced and consumed locally vs being exported across continents before being burned as fuel. So it depends. More study required, could be a great idea, might not be.

 

". . . In documentaries, lawsuits and the teenage activist Greta Thunberg’s spirited Twitter feed, critics of the industry have suggested an alternative climate strategy: Let trees grow and absorb carbon, then don’t burn them. Deforestation is a major driver of climate change, and the United Nations climate panel has warned that the world needs to end it worldwide to meet the ambitious Paris emissions targets for 2050.

In February, more than 500 scientists and economists wrote to President Joe Biden and other leaders to warn that converting wood into power is a carbon disaster, a forest destroyer and an absurdly inefficient way to generate energy. Supplying just 2 percent more global energy from biomass, they estimated, would require doubling total global wood harvests. The letter made it clear that any governments that encourage biomass electricity will be ravaging biodiverse forests and damaging humanity’s chances to avert the worst climate catastrophes. “Trees are more valuable alive than dead,” the letter said. . . . "

 

He might be right but it doesn't means wind power is the panacea for all problems. A ' Green' grid includes any possible combo CO2 neutral technologies. Solar, geothermal, hydro, tidal, fission, fusion etc. If I had a guess I would say wind power will steadily decline as a contributor as solar and other contenders become cheaper and more efficient. Not saying it will entirely disappear but 30 or 40 years from now, wind power might well be just a niche player in the market - consigned to those areas where wind is most reliable.

 

IMHO: A century from now the principal baseload power source will remain fossil fuel, unless nuclear is somehow resurrected.

 

A century is a veeeeeeeeeeery long time in AI years. The sun pours more energy onto the earth's surface in three days than people have obtained from all other sources since our species emerged. Solar is getting cheaper, and that is a monotonic process. Fossil fuel resources are being depleted, and that is also a monotonic process. My prediction: within 50 years, solar will be so cheap that fossil fuels will be relegated to niche uses like aviation and high-latitude heating.

 

Wont be enough 'fossil fuel' around to meet demand even if green house gasses weren't a problem. You might be able to switch transport to manufactured carbon based fuels using technique where CO2 is 'scrubbed' out of the air and converted via various energy intensive catalytic processes into fuels but the electricity power required would be enormous if this were done on a global scale and would still come from 'green grids'. In fact its probably the medium term future for and sea air travel. But near future battery tech is going to give you 800K plus ranges for land travel easily & huge battery farms that can store surplus power off the grid. Enough to cover a couple of days of base of rationed base load at least days output if needed.

Plans are also underway already for continent spanning cable systems to carry electricity from solar farms in desert areas with long periods of sunshine to other regions with more intermittent weather conditions. Long term? Fusion (if it works out) would mean world wide cheap power for any nation that could afford to build the plants, eventually that would be all of them.

 

“Discoveries, like resources, may well be infinite: the more we discover, the more we are able to discover.”
― Julian L. Simon

“Our supplies of natural resources are not limited in any economic sense. Nor does past experience give reason to expect natural resources to become more scarce. Rather, if history is any guide, natural resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and will constitute a smaller proportion of our expenses in future years.”
― Julian L. Simon

 

This is incorrect. There is a finite amount of carbon based fuel stored in the Earth's crust. We can manufacture fuels similar to oil and natural gas if we chose from readily available components but we cant 'mine' natural stocks indefinitely because the processes that lead to their production occur on geological time scales. Whereas extraction is currently occurring on human time scales, on a scale that far exceeds the natural replacement rate.

For the rest here is a link to a very interesting video on the Texas blackout.



Running time is about 17 minutes but you can watch from about the 5 minute mark if you want to avoid 'background' on how the Texas energy market is organized and the weather event itself. The speaker is an engineer and pointedly is not interested in the politics of the situation, just doing a step by step analysis of what went wrong, when it went wrong and why it went wrong. The part most relevant to this discussion is at about the 7 minute mark. Key point - it wasn't 'just' the wind turbines fault. They were certainly a part of the problem yes, but not even the biggest part. In fact that honor goes to .... natural gas! And for a surprisingly simple reason.

So in summery there was systemic failures effecting all types of power systems not just the 'green' alternatives.

 

Are you familiar with Julian Simon's wager with Paul Ehrlich? Hint: Simon won.
As for your video, it merely makes my point.

“This is my long-run forecast in brief:

The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards.

I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.”
― Julian Simon

 

Not really going to speculate on 100 year forecasts for human development. Futurists get it wrong as often as not just trying to 'predict' the status quo 10 years in advance! (Wheres my flying car etc.)

The key takeaway from the video was that the recent Texas blackout was NOT caused by the failure of 'green energy'. In fact carbon based (gas powered) electricity plant failures contributed more to the crash of the grid than solar or wind did. Which is not claiming BTW that wind power was therefore superior to gas in this particular instance.

The takeaway is that its incorrect to selectivity criticize one component of a complex system (in this case wind power) because it failed during a freak event when the facts show that all the other main components of the system failed as well. Even more so when (as was the case in Texas) wind power wasn't even the largest overall contributor to the 'fail' .

 

Nice evasion. The wind power failure was the first failure, and the one that stressed the coal and gas plants.

 

No. The gas powered plants weren't 'stressed' they failed and for the simplest of reasons - the gas pipes froze. Review the video. The grid would have held even in the absence of wind power as long as other systems, particularly gas were available to step into the breach and take up the extra load. In the end though it didn't matter because ALL the input units failed for one reason or another, wind, solar, gas, coal and nuclear everything failed at one point or other during the storm for different technical reasons. In the case of the coal and nuclear plants the issues were with ancillary systems, not the main powers sources but that makes no difference. In the end down is still down.

And the failure of the gas grid made a bigger contribution to the blackout than wind did simply because it normally provides a bigger % of the States electricity. Also fact. So again cherry picking wind power and claiming 'it was to blame' is a simple fallacy. There was a cascade of failures and no one part of the power system gets to the mantle of 'winner'.

 

"Wind was operating almost as well as expected"... A Texas-sized Energy Lie

While there were severe problems with thermal generating sources from February 15-18, wind was basically a no-show from February 9-18.


EIA Hourly Grid Monitor
And this puts the lie to these fact checker claims:

• Fact check: Renewable energy is not to blame for the Texas energy crisis
• No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas’ power outages
• No, Wind Farms Aren’t the Main Cause of the Texas Blackouts

The truth…

• Renewable energy is why Texas has less natural gas and coal capacity than it would have had otherwise.
• Frozen wind turbines are why coal-fired power plants were operating at >90% of capacity from February 9-14 and natural gas power plants were operating at 70% to more than 80% of capacity from February 11-14.
• Wind farms aren’t the main cause of the Texas blackouts because most of them had already been knocked offline by freezing temperatures and ice…

 

“Explosive” German Government Audit Report: ‘Energiewende’ Has Become “A Danger For All Of Germany”
By P Gosselin on 31. March 2021

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Hey Hans, how’s that Energiewende working out for ya?



Germany’s Energiewende faces bleak future if government does wake up to harsh realities, new Audit Report finds. Image: P. Gosselin.

A new German government audit report warns that the Energiewende is exploding costwise, and that there is a real danger of electricity shortfalls…”a danger for all of Germany”

Daniel Wetzel at German national daily Die Welt reports on the latest German Federal Court of Auditors’ warning: “If things continue like this, Germany as a business location is in danger. The costs are out of control – and there is a growing threat of an electricity shortfall.”. . . .

 

And heres another chart showing the timing and scale of outages across the entire Texas Grid for the duration of the storm.

And the winner is...... Gas . By a wide margin. Gas condensate freezes easily if pressurized - result blocked pipes. Don't beleive it? Ask a qualified engineer with experience working on the Texas Grid.

So facts, not political spin. Natural gas outages spiked early and were far higher that wind based outages which came in as number two!. And all therein colour.

P.S. Sorry for the delay I was away for a little while.Should have done this sooner.

Cheers