XPost: sci.energy, alt.politics.democrats, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics, alt.global-warming   
   From: solar.fraud@democrats.org   
      
   Many governments in the Western world have committed to “net zero”   
   emissions of carbon in the near future. The US and UK both say they will   
   deliver by 2050. It's widely believed that wind and solar power can   
   achieve this. This belief has led the US and British governments, among   
   others, to promote and heavily subsidise wind and solar.   
      
   These plans have a single, fatal flaw: they are reliant on the pipe-dream   
   that there is some affordable way to store surplus electricity at scale.   
      
   In the real world a wind farm’s output often drops below 10 per cent of   
   its rated “capacity” for days at a time. Solar power disappears completely   
   every night and drops by 50 per cent or more during cloudy days.   
   “Capacity” being a largely meaningless figure for a wind or solar plant,   
   about 3000 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar capacity is needed to replace   
   a 1000 MW conventional power station in terms of energy over time: and in   
   fact, as we shall see, the conventional power station or something very   
   like it will still be needed frequently once the wind and solar are   
   online.   
      
   The governments of countries with a considerable amount of wind and solar   
   generation have developed an expectation that they can simply continue to   
   build more until net zero is achieved. The reality is that many of them   
   have kept the lights on only by using existing fossil fired stations as   
   backup for periods of low wind and sun. This brings with it a new   
   operating regime where stations that were designed to operate continuously   
   have to follow unpredictable fluctuations in wind and solar power. As a   
   result operating and maintenance costs have increased and many stations   
   have had to be shut down.   
      
   In fact it's already common to see efficient combined-cycle gas turbines   
   replaced by open-cycle ones because they can be throttled up and down   
   easily to back up the rapidly changing output of wind and solar farms. But   
   open-cycle gas turbines burn about twice as much gas as combined cycle gas   
   turbines. Switching to high-emissions machinery as part of an effort to   
   reduce emissions is, frankly, madness!   
      
   Certain countries are helped because their power systems are supported by   
   major inter-connectors to adjacent regions that have surplus power   
   available. The increasingly troubled French nuclear fleet, which formerly   
   had plenty of spare energy on tap, for a long time helped to make   
   renewables plans look practical across Western Europe.   
      
   But this situation is not sustainable in the long term. Under net-zero   
   plans, all nations will need to generate many times more electricity than   
   they now can, as the large majority of our energy use today is delivered   
   by burning fossil fuels directly. Neighbouring regions will be unable to   
   provide the backup power needed; emissions from open cycle gas turbines   
   (or new coal powerplants, as in the case of Germany at the moment) will   
   become unacceptable; more existing base load stations will be forced to   
   shut down by surges in renewables; more and more wind and solar power will   
   have to be expensively dumped when the sun is shining and the wind is   
   blowing.   
      
   Power prices will soar, making more or less everything more expensive, and   
   there will be frequent blackouts.   
      
   None of this is difficult to work out. Building even more renewables   
   capacity will not help: even ten or 100 times the nominally-necessary   
   “capacity” could never do the job on a cold, windless evening.   
      
   Only one thing can save the day for the renewables plan. Reasonable cost,   
   large scale energy storage, sufficient to keep the lights on for several   
   days at a minimum, would solve the problem.   
      
   What are the options?   
      
   First we need to consider the scale of the issue. Relatively simple   
   calculations show that that California would need over 200 megawatt-hours   
   (MWh) of storage per installed MW of wind and solar power. Germany could   
   probably manage with 150 MWh per MW. Perhaps this could be provided in the   
   form of batteries?   
      
   The current cost of battery storage is about US$600,000 per MWh. For every   
   MW of wind or solar power in California, $120 million would need to be   
   spent on storage. In Germany it would be $90 million. Wind farms cost   
   about $1.5 million per MW so the cost of battery storage would be   
   astronomical: 80 times greater than the cost of the wind farm! A major   
   additional constraint would be that such quantities of batteries are   
   simply not available. Not enough lithium and cobalt and other rare   
   minerals are being mined at the moment. If prices get high enough supply   
   will expand, but prices are already ridiculously, unfeasibly high.   
      
   Some countries are gambling on hydro pumped storage. Here the idea is to   
   use electricity to pump water uphill into a high reservoir using surplus   
   renewables on sunny, windy days: then let it flow back down through   
   generating turbines as in a normal hydropower plant when it’s dark and   
   windless.   
      
   Many pumped systems have been built in China, Japan and United States but   
   they have storage sufficient for only 6 to 10 hours operation. This is   
   tiny compared with the several days storage that is needed to back up wind   
   and solar power through routine sunless calm periods. Much larger lakes at   
   the top and bottom of the scheme are needed. There are very few locations   
   where two large lakes can be formed with one located 400-700 m above the   
   other and separated by less than 5-10 km horizontally. Such a location   
   must also have an adequate supply of make-up water to cope with   
   evaporation losses from the two lakes. Another problem is that at least 25   
   per cent of the energy is lost while pumping and then generating.   
      
   Hydro pumped storage will seldom be a feasible option. It cannot solve the   
   problem on a national scale even in countries like the USA which have a   
   lot of mountains.   
      
   Carbon capture and storage (CCS) for fossil fuel stations is also touted   
   as way of avoiding the problems of wind and solar power. But this is not a   
   technology, just a case of wishful thinking. In spite of many years of   
   work and enormous amounts of money spent, nobody has yet devised a   
   technology that can provide large scale, low cost CCS. Even if capture   
   worked and didn't consume most or all the energy generated, storing the   
   carbon dioxide is a huge problem because three tonnes of carbon dioxide   
   are produced for every tonne of coal burned.   
      
   Hydrogen is another technology which is often suggested for energy   
   storage: but its problems are legion. At the moment hydrogen is made using   
   natural gas (so-called “blue” hydrogen). This, however, will have to stop   
   in a net-zero world as the process emits large amounts of carbon: you   
   might as well just burn the natural gas. Proper emissions-free “green”   
   hydrogen is made from water using huge amounts of electrical energy, 60   
   per cent of which is lost in the process. Storing and handling the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)