On the Threshold of Renewable Energy Chaos

Discussion in 'Environment & Conservation' started by Jack Hays, Jan 19, 2021.

  1. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Nice cherry picking. As I've posted several times, the wind power collapse came earlier, and was the reason gas surged as a power source before it, too, went out of action. Thanks for the confirmation.
     
  2. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Not cherry picking. Fact. Gas pipes froze, jammed or ruptured, end of story. The gas generators didn't fail because of a spike in demand as wind generators went off line, they failed because they couldn't be supplied with gas! If water pipes can freeze (and burst) all across the State during the storm why is it so hard for you to understand the same concept can effect to natural gas pipes and valves etc? Pressurized natural gas mixed with water vapor will freeze if the temperature falls low enough for long enough and the ground beneath pipes will freeze and expand causing ruptures.

    These are well understood natural processes and known risks in the industry.They happened this time and they happened in 2011 - the last time Texas got caught in a cold snap like this one. And Texas had far fewer wind turbines then as a % of its power mix then!

    Finally its bad mathematics and faulty analysis to cherry pick freak events when modelling complex systems. Using a small number of results (in this case one!) as the baseline for measuring overall long term efficiency any system always gives you skewed results. What matters is how well each component performs on average over extended periods of time. Proponents of this kind of argument are literally using Chernobyl as the baseline for measuring the efficiency of atomic power! And what you are doing is the same. Measuring your cars fuel efficacy when it is as heavily loaded as possible and traveling up a steep incline! Do that and off course you are going to get worse results than if you chose to average out performance over time under normal conditions.
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2021
  3. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    More special pleading, and arguing against points I'm not making.
    Wind failed first, then gas.
     
  4. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Not special pleading - logic and facts (unless that is actually how you do measure your cars fuel efficiency).

    And its irrelevant which part of the system failed first. It's not a race, nor does it matter that 'wind failed first' as you put it. Because wind going down wasn't the cause of gas's failure. The failure points had the same route cause (the storm) but the overall the failure points were separate. With wind, the blades iced up and/or motors froze because they hadn't been supplied with readily available tech (heaters) which would have greatly reduced outages. Gas failed due to blockages and breaks in the transport system and increased demand for additional domestic gas heating. All normally not a problem. Under freak conditions when faults can't be repaired - big problem.

    So even if by some miracle most of the wind grid was still up under the prevailing weather conditions gas's contribution to the grid would still have declined significantly i.e. the failures were not directly related.
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2021
  5. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    "Wind was operating almost as well as expected"... A Texas-sized Energy Lie
    • 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…
     
  6. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Point 1) Wind power didn't force its way onto the Texas power system at gun point. The decision to implement was based on cost/effectiveness decisions made by the providers under the supervision and approval of the Texas grid authority (gas is an expensive form of power - more so than coal, less so than nuclear.) The key flaw with wind power in Texas was the decision, again based on cost issues not to install heating units normally used by other providers in harsher climates. In hindsight this was a flaw. The question is, given how rare weather events like this are in Texas will they now change their minds and retrofit or install new turbines with heaters over time as old ones get replaced?

    Point 2) Your cherry picking again. You've chosen an arbitrary date range (Feb 11 to 14) that suits your argument and then completely ignored what happened just one day later on Feb 15 when gas powered output tanked!

    Point 3) Which was my point all along (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). As I have noted before this was a freak weather event that knocked out all types of providers at different times during the emergency to different degrees - especially gas. In fact even if none of the generating capacity had gone off line there would still have been major outages due to mass power line and transformer failures.
     
  7. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    My post makes the chronology clear.
     
  8. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    T Boone Pickens is the major reason why TX had wind power.

    He an oilman truly fell in love with wind power.

    Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. (May 22, 1928 – September 11, 2019) was an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chaired the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s. As of November 2016, Pickens had a net worth of $500 million.[1]

    What is interesting is that though he fell in love with wind power, economics favoring natural gas over wind prevailed so he cancelled his mega wind power projects. But he stirred the imagination of TX so for that reason I think he gets a lot of credit.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Boone_Pickens#Wind_power
     
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  9. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Interesting, he probably saw it as cheap. Which it is now that its been scaled up and cost per unit has dropped. These days gas is expensive to because demand has gone through the roof (it burns cleaner of course but its also 40% less carbon intensive than coal) and can be 'spun up" very quickly to meet demand spikes then shut down just as quickly - which coal cant do. As always $$$ talk.
     
  10. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Yes it does, in exactly the same way a chronology of Pearl Harbor arbitrarily ending December 6th would show everything as being 'perfectly clear.' Face it, you ended your chronology the day before the gas power system fell over. How is that not pertinent?
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2021
  11. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    I don't know how I could have been more clear (or you more inaccurate):

    • 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…
     
  12. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Green energy “an existential threat to German economy” declares Supreme Auditors
    [​IMG]
    Emden, Germany by Gritte



    The supreme auditors of Germany warned about the costs of Green energy a few years ago, but now they are paying attention to energy security too, and with sudden alarm they’ve announced that Green energy poses “an existential threat” to Germany. . . .

    It’s something dumb bloggers have been saying for years. But this is good news that German bureaucratic numerical masters are on to it.
     
  13. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    So if you acknowledge they weren't the main cause (which is really the only reason I joined the thread in the first place - seeing as the 'Texas fail' was a more complex issue than just 'wind power'). Whats the issue with wind contributing to a grid provided you account for its (known) limitations/failure points when designing that grid and the associated wind turbines?

    You can get to zero or next to zero carbonized electricity using a mix of solar, wind, hydro, micro nuclear and battery tech without the need for much in the way of carbon based fuels (save maybe some off-peak/emergency backup gas turbines). All quite doable - except of course for freak events as per Texas.

    As far as transport goes? That's harder but still doable given recent advances in with carbon neutral bio-fuels for shipping and long distance haulage.So zero carbon. From an engineering standpoint then zero carbon (or almost zero) is perfectly doable without everything in a heap.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2021
  14. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    No, you cannot.

    "On Monday, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a scathing critique of Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson’s analysis, which claims a full transition of all sectors of the U.S. energy system to wind, water, and solar power by 2050 is “technically and economically feasible with little downside.”. . . "

    Landmark 100 Percent Renewable Energy Study Flawed, Say ...
    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com › plugged-in › land...



    Jun 23, 2017 — Thus, they conclude, Jacobson's findings on the cost-effectiveness and ... Looking past the methodological minutia of Jacobson's work and the PNAS rebuttal, I think there ... Mark Z. Jacobson (@mzjacobson) April 14, 2017.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2021
  15. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Its one report and interesting but I also included nuclear in the mix as well as a limited amount of gas as back up. Fusion would change everything but that's to far down the track to worry about now. No one 'zero emission' system is king. I await counter reports criticizing the report you mention and will start looking them up. Just not ones from anyone associated with Jacobson who would have a wheelbarrow to push.
     
  16. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    The political abandonment of nuclear power was the great wrong turn.
     
  17. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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  18. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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  19. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Politics of the situation aside, conventional nuclear power is expensive on a per megawatt basis. More expensive than coal which is more expensive in than than either wind or solar. Both coal and nuclear suffer from the BIG shortcoming that they are capital intensive projects which cost billions of dollars up front to build and consequently have a long pay pack period for investors.

    That's why the big interest in nuclear (in the West at least) is focused on a new range of 'micro' power plants that can be assembled in factories, shipped to any desired location by road or rail, dropped on the ground and plugged into the grid. From recollection most produce in 10 to 50 MW of power (which is tiny by convention standards) but obviously you can add as many units units as as you need. The big issue is regulatory approval - they are not field tested yet.

    All of the above is the exact opposite of soar and wind which is basically plug in and play form day 1. Add in maintenance costs and the per megawatt cost of the two 'green' alternatives is significantly cheaper than coal or nuclear. Power companies and their shareholders like (and when I say like I mean really like) cheap!

    Big advances in the efficiency of solar cells have played a key roll as well. 30 years ago 8-10% was a good figure. New cells are going into production now that can hit 40% under ideal conditions - so you get 4-5 times the output on the same surface area!. Wind's cost decline comes more from trial and error engineering advances plus impressions in material science etc. Either way improvements in both are easy for power companies to click into the grid as they come along. Whereas if you build a big coal or nuclear plant your basically stuck with the same performance specs you started with for 50 years or so. Finally nuclear plants are big complex projects that have a history of coming in over budget.Again a disadvantage. The micro plants may change of of this - if they come on-line.

    .
     
  20. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    If there were more political support nuclear would be less expensive. Wind and solar are unsuitable for baseload power.
     
  21. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Politicians like success and surety. The industry has to produce a product that arrives on time, on budget, is cost effective compared to other types of power and with as close to zero safety issues as it can get. These new designs might do the trick. The current standard designs however, based on past experience are a hard sell on price alone. As for base load? Green energy producers will argue battery, pumped water and flywheel storage etc as the counter to the 'solar switches off at night' argument.

    Time will tell if they are right. So far there's enough conventional base load generators still in the system to cope. But heaps of coal fired plants are nearing the end of their useful lives and are not being replaced (for cost reasons). Hence the interest in big batteries and other storage solutions. We'll see.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2021
  22. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    China and India rejecting renewables for coal-fired futures
    operate coal mines and coal-fired power plants from Indonesia to China for some of the largest coal-fired ... fuel) instead of coal to counter smog, it's still pumping money at home and abroad into coal-fired generation

    ". . . Over half (5,884) of the world’s coal power plants (10,210) are in China and India whose populations of mostly poor peoples is roughly 2.7 billion. Together they are in the process of building 634 new ones. They are putting their money and backs into their most abundant source of energy – coal. . . . "
     
  23. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Wrong example. All three countries are struggling to build modern grids quickly enough to meet demand - after starting off low every base lines compared to their western counterparts. In China its industrial demand for electricity and the need to bring reliable power to rural areas in the western provinces. All of those provinces want their share of the economic pie being enjoyed by the rest of China. In the case of Indonesia and India its an mix of growing populations and poor grid infrastructure to start with.

    None of those countries can meet anticipated demand over the next couple of decades just using green power or nuclear. So they're throwing everything into the mix in an effort to keep up. China, the largest contributor to grid growth is still trying to limit the % contribution of coal though.

    In the west though? Our grids are mature (as theirs will be to one day). We have the option of taking choices based on the (known) rate at which coal fired plants are aging. Its realtivily easy in that situation and plan 5,10, 20 years in advance for the anticipated reduction in base load when power plant X finally goes off line. The countries you named are playing catch-up, we're not.
     
  24. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    They are not playing catch-up. They are playing get-ahead. Taking advantage of western delusion and myopia.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2021
  25. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Africa to double coal fired power by 2030
    In the next ten years, Australia will close a couple of coal plants, while Africa will build 1250.

    Africa is going to double its energy and almost all the increase is coming from fossil fuels. This is hard to explain, given that renewables are “free” and Africa is poor. But at the end of the decade unreliable renewables will still make less than 10% of the energy in Africa.

    Thanks to the GWPF:

    Fossil fuels to dominate Africa’s energy mix this decade – report
    Power Engineering International

    A new study into Africa’s energy generation landscape uses a state-of-the-art machine-learning technique to analyse the pipeline of more than 2,500 planned power plants and their chances of successful commission.

    [​IMG]
    African power generation, 2030, graph.

    The study predicts that in 2030, fossil fuels will account for two-thirds of all generated electricity across Africa. While an additional 18% of generation is set to come from hydro-energy projects. These have their own challenges, such as being vulnerable to an increasing number of droughts caused by climate change.

    This is only the start. Most countries in Africa are not even in the race yet:

    South Africa alone is forecast to add almost 40% of Africa’s total predicted new solar capacity by 2030.

    Five years ago TonyfromOz looked at Niger — a nation of 17 million people and estimated that the entire country used about as much electricity as Dubbo, Australia, a town with about 40,000 residents.

    Keep reading →
     

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