Energy Policy

The Biden Administration has set a goal of achieving Net Zero US annual CO2 emissions by 2050. To accomplish this goal, the Administration has decreed that all coal-fired electric generation would cease by 2030; and, that all natural gas fueled electric generation would cease by 2035. The Administration has also decreed that all new vehicles sold in the US after 2035 would be electric vehicles. There is also an effort underway to end the use of natural gas for applications other than electric generation, including virtually all residential, commercial and industrial end uses. Incentives have been put in place for EVs and electric appliances and equipment, as well as for wind and solar generation and electricity storage.

Achieving the Administration’s goals would result in a US energy economy based solely on electricity, generated by a mixture of renewable generation sources including hydro, biomass, geothermal, wind, solar and possibly some nuclear generation.

However, the US Energy Information Administration, an agency of the US Department of Energy, in its Annual energy Outlook 2022 (AEO  2022) projects a very different US energy future, as shown in the graphs below.

EIA projects that US electricity generation will increase by approximately 32% through 2050, or approximately 1% per year. Natural gas electricity generation would increase to approximately 1,800 billion kilowatthours, or by approximately 20%. Coal generation would decrease to approximately 530 billion kilowatt hours. Renewable generation would increase to approximately 2,400 billion kilowatthours, or nearly 500%.

Virtually all the growth in renewable generation would consist of wind and solar. Wind generation would increase from approximately 344 to approximately 750 billion kilowatthours, though its share of generation would decrease from 43% of renewable generation to approximately 31%. Solar generation would increase from approximately 450 billion kilowatthours to approximately 1,200 billion kilowatthours and its share of renewable generation would increase to approximately 51%. EIA projects virtually no growth for geothermal, hydroelectric and biomass generation.

These EIA projections are fundamentally inconsistent with the Administration’s goals of Net Zero CO2 emissions and an all-electric energy economy by 2050. Coal generation decreases, but not to zero. Natural gas generation increases, rather than decreasing to zero. The projected 1% per year growth in US electricity production is consistent with historical electricity demand growth, driven by increasing population and GDP, but not with a major transition to an all-electric energy economy.

EIA’s projections regarding natural gas show an approximate 20% increase in consumption in the Reference case, and approximately 50% in the High Supply case, as shown in the graphs below.

The EIA projections do not contemplate the effects of the Administration’s push for all-electric everything, which would require expansion of electricity generation from the projected 5,400 billion kilowatthours in 2050 to approximately 17,000 billion kilowatthours. Growth of this magnitude would require not only increases in generation, but also massive increases in and expansion of transmission infrastructure and major upgrades to existing distribution infrastructure to accommodate the increases in individual customer demand and consumption.

From: Climate Etc.

By: Michael J. Kelly

Date: March 4, 2023

Feasibility for achieving a net zero economy for the U.S. by 2050

I imagine that I have been appointed the first CEO of a new agency set up by the Federal Government of the United States of America with the explicit goal of actually delivering a Net Zero CO2 Emissions Economy by 2050. My first task is to scope the project and to estimate the assets required to succeed. This is the result of that exercise, and includes a discussion of some consequences that flow from the scale and timescale for meeting the target.

Executive summary

The cost to 2050 will comfortably exceed $12T (trillion) for electrification projects and $35T for improving the energy efficiency of buildings, a work-force comparable in size to the health sector will be required for 30 years, including a doubling of the present number of electrical engineers, and the bill of specialist materials is of a size that for the USA alone is several times the global annual production of many key minerals. On the manpower front one will have to rely on the domestic workforce, as everywhere else in the world is working towards the same target. If they were not so working, the value of the USA-specific target is moot. The scale of this project suggests that a war footing and a command economy will be essential, as major cuts to other favoured forms of expenditure, such as health, education and defence, will be needed. Without a detailed roadmap, as exemplified by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors that drove the electronics revolution after 1980, the target is simply unattainable. (continue reading)

Feasibility for achieving a net zero economy for the U.S. by 2050

The past two years have provided unpleasant lessons for several electric utilities and their customers. The challenge remains for those utilities and the utility industry to learn from those lessons and take actions to prevent their recurrence. Because of the nature of the electric utility industry, these lessons must also be learned by state and federal utility regulators who largely control the utilities' actions.

California utilities are dealing with aggressive state efforts to transition the state utility grid from fossil and nuclear generation to wind and solar generation with energy storage. However, the state has pushed for rapid shutdown of natural gas and nuclear generators before storage was available to replace the output of those generators during periods when wind and/or solar generator output was reduced. The result has been insufficient conventional capacity to replace the output of wind and solar generators, particularly during periods of peak demand.

Texas utilities experienced a very cold period in early 2022. The cold caused freezing of water in gas lines supplying gas turbine generators, freezing of coal piles at coal generating stations and icing on the blades of a significant portion of the state’s wind generation capacity. The combination of these effects resulted in a significant grid failure which took several days to resolve. The issues with the gas and coal plants are relatively easily resolvable with improved maintenance and insulation, but preventing icing of the wind turbine blades would require a major refitting with blades which could be heated.

The US Southeast experienced extremely cold weather on Christmas Eve, 2022. Duke Power in North Carolina was forced to institute rolling blackouts to keep the grid from failure. The shortage of generating capacity was the result of control failures at two natural gas plants and one coal plant, aggravated by the fact that the coldest period occurred in the very early morning, before sunrise, so no solar generator output was available. Again, the issues at the fossil fuel plants are relatively easily resolvable. However, dealing with the solar issue would require significant storage. Duke’s problem was exacerbated by the failure of neighboring utilities to provide power for which Duke had contracted, since those utilities were also affected by the extreme cold.

TVA also experienced problems during that very cold period with both coal and natural gas generators. TVA experienced demand approximately 35% higher than on a typical winter day, its highest demand ever. This forced rolling blackouts by some of the utilities TVA serves at wholesale. Again, the issues with the fossil fuel plants are relatively easily resolvable with improved maintenance and insulation.

Each of these situations highlights the necessity for high level maintenance of utility infrastructure, particularly during periods of expected peak demand. The California, Texas and North Carolina experiences also highlight the importance of backup generation during periods of low/no wind and solar generation availability. As intermittent renewable generation capacity increases, it will be necessary to develop new contract arrangements to assure that natural gas is available in sufficient quantities for the natural gas generators.

From: Master Resource

By: Bill Schneider

Date: March 1, 2023

Reliable vs. Intermittent Generation: A Primer

Part 1     ---     Part 2

“Why should a thermal plant spend money in a government-rigged market that threatens a reasonable profit? Why should the plant even remain in the market under these conditions?”

“For IVREs it’s a no-risk deal, with markets guaranteed and taxpayers country-wide adding profits. But what about the need for reliable power?”

This two-part post (Part II here) is a follow-up to Robert Bradley’s recent IER article, “Wind, Solar, and the Great Texas Blackout: Guilty as Charged.” His article discussed how regulatory shifts and subsidies favoring Intermittently Variable Renewable Energy (IVRE) producers resulted in prematurely lost capacity, a lack of new capacity, and upgrade issues with remaining (surviving) traditional capacity. These three factors–“the why behind the why”–explain the perfect storm that began with (or was revealed by) Storm Uri.

Part I below describes how the market was originally meant to work–but has not worked given the governmentally redesigned power market, beginning with generation. The change was caused by:

Investment monies lured away from developing baseload capacity by government subsidies and special tax incentives, and
Operating opportunities lured away by “first-use” mandates. First-use mandates are especially pernicious as grid operators must purchase from IVREs whenever they are producing, leaving the reliable generators idle. (continue reading)

Reliable vs. Intermittent Generation: A Primer

Part 1     ---     Part 2

From: Climate Etc.

By: Russell Schussler and Roger Caiazza

Date: February 9, 2023

Net Zero or Good Enough?

This good enough plan may get you to net zero before the more ambitious ones.  It is likely to have less carbon emissions than the more aggressive plans over time.  It certainly will be more reliable and affordable.

Electric generation plans need to be well crafted and carefully considered. Because of concerns around  climate change many politicians have become galvanized to hastily enact legislation to target  net-zero anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  The authors argue that the more seriously you take climate change, the more important it becomes that you have a good plan for electric generation in the near and midterm planning arena.  Taking foolish actions in the near to mid-range time periods will not help with CO2 reductions or climate change and may be far worse than doing nothing.  Maybe we all could compromise and find a less grand strategy that has more likely benefits with far fewer threats to reliability, affordability, and overall environmental impacts.

The authors have both been writing about the proposed net-zero transition by 2050 for years.  Schussler (aka the Planning Engineer) has been writing about the challenges of “green energy” since 2014 at the Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog.  Caiazza has focused on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York blog since 2017.  Since the original proposal for New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) in 2019, he has written over 280 articles about that plan to transition to net zero by 2050. (continue reading)

Net Zero or Good Enough?

The US electric utility industry has historically sought to achieve “four nines” (99.99%) reliability of service. One key to achieving very high system reliability has been maintaining an approximate 20% capacity reserve margin compared to peak system demand, which typically allowed peak demand to be met even in the event of failure of the utility’s largest single generator.

Achieving this goal is being complicated by the addition of intermittent renewable, non-dispatchable wind and solar generation capacity. Federal and state incentives and the lack of a requirement for dispatchability make the output of these generation sources the lowest cost alternative when available. Federal and state regulation require that their output be used when available. Their output displaces the output of conventional generation when it is available, but cannot replace conventional generation because it is not dispatchable and is subject to rapid and unpredictable fluctuations in output which must be supplemented by the conventional generators or, if available, by storage.

Periodic power outages resulting from severe weather, accidental damage to power poles and lines, and equipment failure have been normal events. However, as intermittent, non-dispatchable renewable generation proliferates, offsetting progressively greater portions of conventional generation output and increasing the cost per unit of the remaining output, conventional generators are being idled or even shutdown to control operating expense.

Conventional generators maintained at hot idle can be brought into service relatively rapidly in the event of a rapid decline in wind or solar output. However, natural gas combined-cycle generators which have been shut down require several hours to be returned to service and coal plants require several days. The utility might not retain the ability to respond to rapid and unpredictable reductions in wind and solar output as rapidly as the renewable output declines, resulting in the potential for grid failure.

The utility response to such situations is brownouts or rotating blackouts. The geographic extent and duration of these responses is a function of the magnitude and duration of the generation shortfall and/or of the demand spike and the time required for the utility to bring additional conventional generating capacity online.

This issue can be further aggravated by the permanent shutdown of conventional capacity due to age and condition, or to unacceptable operating economics resulting from market conditions or contractual provisions, or to government mandates. It becomes critical when the utility no longer has sufficient dispatchable capacity to replace the intermittent renewable capacity at the demand peak with the coincident failure of the utility’s largest capacity generator.

This situation prevailed over much of the US upper Midwest and East coast during winter storm Elliott, resulting in the implementation of rolling blackouts by numerous utilities in the regions. These rolling blackouts were certainly inconvenient, but were also dangerous due to the very cold temperatures and high winds, which combined to produce sub-zero windchill factors over much of the affected regions.

Hopefully, rolling blackouts will not become the “new normal” for electric utility service as the transition to renewable generation proceeds.

The US currently has approximately 1,250GW of electric generating capacity. Approximately 200GW of that capacity is coal generating capacity, of which approximately 50GW is scheduled to be retired through 2029. The remaining approximately 150GW is currently scheduled to be retired between 2030 and 2048. However, the Biden Administration has “committed” to ending coal generation in the US by 2030, which could force closure of approximately 150GW of dispatchable generating capacity before the end of its useful life.

US peak electricity demand is approximately 725GW, or approximately 60% of total generating capacity. However, approximately 200GW of the total generating capacity is comprised of wind and solar generation, which is not dispatchable, has a capacity factor of approximately 30% and requires 100% backup to assure adequate capacity on peak. Current coal generating capacity is essentially equal to the 100% backup required by the current wind and solar generation. However, all of that coal generating capacity would be out of service by 2030 if the Administration is to meet its “commitment”.

Replacing current coal generating capacity with wind and solar by 2030 would require installation of approximately 650GW of wind and solar nameplate generating capacity, plus the storage capacity necessary to backup that generation during periods of low/no wind and/or solar availability. However, storage capable of providing backup for more than 4 hours is not currently available and might not be available by 2030.

The retirement of 200GW of coal generation and the commissioning of 650GW of wind and solar generation would result in a grid with total nameplate generating capacity of approximately 1,700GW (1,250 – 200 + 650), of which only 50% would be dispatchable, essentially matching the capacity of the wind and solar generation requiring backup in the absence of appropriate electricity storage. That would leave no capacity margin on peak compared to the typical 20% capacity margin currently maintained by the electric utility industry. This situation could easily lead to increased grid instability and the likelihood of rolling blackouts to prevent grid collapse.

The early retirement of approximately 150GW of coal generating facilities creates another issue for the plant owners, most of which are electric utilities. Assuming typical electric utility 40-year straight line depreciation of assets, average original plant cost of $1 billion per GW and average 10-year premature retirement, generating assets with a remaining book value of approximately $35-40 billion would be stranded. It is uncertain how the federal government, which is forcing the premature retirements, and the various state utility commissions would deal with the financial impact of these stranded assets on the plant owners.

Beyond 2030, the availability of adequate long-duration electricity storage capacity becomes critical. Wind and solar generation continue to increase while the Administration “commitment” forces closure of approximately 550GW of dispatchable natural gas generation capacity over the following 5 years, leaving only approximately 250GW of nuclear, hydro, geothermal and biomass generation as dispatchable backup. Clearly, the Administration “commitment” can not result in a reliable grid without massive, long-duration storage.

The above scenario assumes no load growth over the period, though population growth and the Administration push for “all-electric everything” would certainly cause load growth.

From: Master Resource

By: Mark Krebs

Date: January 12, 2023

“Rare Earths,” Electrification Mandates, and Energy Security (Part II)

“What we have is one-way bureaucratic command-and-control making poor decisions with funding derived from captive consumers and one-sided radical agendas. Accordingly, the environmental zealots demonize fossil fuels, while maintaining that only wind and solar are ‘green’ enough to ‘save the planet.’ This itself is greenwashing.”

Like Rob Bradley’s “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’” (see Part I), my colleague Tom Tanton wrote a major piece about the over-regulation of the rare-earth extraction industry in the U.S.: “Dig it!  If you want more information on the importance of rare earths within the U.S economy, this would be a good place to start.

The long-term feasibility of this transition to renewables simply assumes sufficient raw materials exist for it at all. Professor Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) has studied these issues, probably more extensively than anyone else and thinks not. Professor Simon Michaux took on these issues via the following ground-breaking work:

It’s Time to Wake Up – The Currently Known Global Mineral Reserves Will Not Be Sufficient to Supply Enough Metals to Manufacture the Planned Non-fossil Fuel Industrial Systems

The upshot of Professor Michaux’s work is that “we need a new plan” as there are not enough raw materials to sustain this transition nor can recycling or reprocessing mining waste make up for the shortfall.  Since the success of free market economies is predicated upon informed citizens, I urge you to visit Professor Michaux’s website or, at a minimum, view the following YouTube: (continue reading)

“Rare Earths,” Electrification Mandates, and Energy Security (Part II)

They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.

The Merry Minuet, Sheldon Harnick

Mother Nature has been providing the earth with numerous types of severe weather and climate events over the millennia. Heat waves, cold waves, droughts, heavy rains, tropical cyclones and tornadoes are all part of weather history. Ice ages and warm and cool periods during interglacials accompanied by rising and falling sea levels are part of climate history. These weather and climate events have occurred almost exclusively without human influence.

However, since the inception of the industrial revolution, humans have been emitting “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to the atmosphere. The addition of these anthropogenic GHGs is believed to have contributed to a warming of the global climate, though it is not possible to measure the relative contributions of anthropogenic emissions and natural climate variability to this warming.

There exists an alarmist faction which insists that most or all of the recent warming has been anthropogenic, that it poses an existential threat to life on earth and that the burning of fossil fuels must be halted rapidly to avoid climageddon. This faction also asserts that this anthropogenic warming is increasing the frequency, severity and duration of severe weather events. Both the threat assessments and the attribution assertions are based on unvalidated and unverified climate models.

Virtually all of the nations of the globe have agreed to take steps to reduce GHG emissions, though the specific steps and their timing varies greatly among the nations. The developed nations, which have been accused of responsibility for the recent warming, have focused on achieving net zero GHG emissions by 2050. Their programs have included closing coal and natural gas electric generating stations, incentivizing renewable electric generation, limiting or eliminating oil and gas exploration and production, banning new natural gas end uses and requiring production of electric vehicles. Some have even suggested closure of farms to reduce GHG emissions, threatening food supply, while others are restarting coal plants to deal with a perceived energy crisis.

Developing nations, while giving lip service to emissions reductions, remain focused on economic development, including expansion of electric service based on coal and natural gas generation. Nations in Asia, including China, India, Indonesia and South Korea are in the process of constructing more than 175 GW of new coal generating capacity. Numerous nations in Africa are expanding coal and natural gas production for both local consumption and sale. Several nations have expressed a willingness to consider pursuing lower emissions trajectories if the developed nations fund the programs.

Assuming a general agreement to reduce global annual CO2 and other GHG emissions, the contrast between massive coal-fired generation increases in the developing nations and plans to close farms in the developed nations is awe-inspiring. The experience of Sri Lankan agricultural failure after its ban on the use of synthetic fertilizers to limit nitrous oxide emissions should cause national governments to carefully evaluate steps to reduce agricultural GHG emissions.

From: Master Resource

By: Mark Krebs

Date: January 11, 2023

“Rare Earths,” Electrification Mandates, and Energy Security (Part I)

“My major argument: any planned transition to an all-electric renewable energy monoculture is likely to fail, at least in America. That is mainly because peak winter heating requirements can greatly exceed peak summer cooling requirements by as much as 400 to 500 percent in cold climates and because the required minerals are severely limited.”

On August 27, 1997, the Cato Institute published “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’,” written by Robert L. Bradley Jr. (A 58-page PDF of the study is available here and a 25th anniversary review here.)  Bradley’s piece focused on the many stark ecological tradeoffs of politically favored renewables, as well as the high cost/low value associated of dilute, intermittent sourcing. This post extends that thinking to the deep decarbonization/all-electrification government program.

Rare earth minerals, on which the forced transition to “clean energy” depends, are critically constrained by many of the same factors as fossil fuels. Supplies of these minerals are dominated by regimes with intent to cultivate and exploit our growing dependency on them. As these raw materials are extracted and the strategic dominance of China increases, prices will have a premium that will impact consumers. Finding and developing supply chain alternatives will also bring increased energy expenditures necessary to secure and process these rare earth minerals. This will decrease ostensible environmental benefits from “green energy.” (continue reading)

“Rare Earths,” Electrification Mandates, and Energy Security (Part I)

Electric grids have demonstrated the ability to adapt to some fraction of intermittent renewable generation, as long as there is sufficient dispatchable generation available to meet contemporaneous grid demand when the intermittent renewables are not producing power or are producing power at less than rated capacity. The dispatchable generating capacity is currently predominantly fossil fueled, since existing nuclear generating capacity is largely base loaded.

However, as grid demand grows as the result of population growth and a move to “all-electric everything” and the quantity of intermittent renewable generation increases, there will be a growing need for additional dispatchable generating capacity. However, the parallel pressure to close both coal and natural gas generating facilities will lead to decreased, rather than increased, dispatchable fossil-fueled generation capacity in both absolute and percentage terms. This would lead to reduced grid reliability and resiliency, and probably to managed blackouts to avoid grid collapse.

The current industry paradigm is for the utility industry to accept connection to unsmoothed and non-dispatchable intermittent renewable generation and to accept all power produced by those generators on a priority basis. That paradigm is sustainable as long as dispatchable generation capacity exceeds intermittent renewable generating capacity. However, current federal climate change efforts to promote intermittent renewables and force closure of dispatchable fossil-fueled generation presage the end to that paradigm.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is currently raising concerns about grid reliability and resilience. NERC should work with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners to assure that the transition to a grid based on intermittent renewable generators continues to provide economical, reliable power. Two essential aspects of such a transition are dispatchable generation and economic dispatch.

The federal and state regulators should encourage and support a utility requirement that all new intermittent renewable generation sources connected to their grids include sufficient storage to render them dispatchable and sufficient excess generating capacity to recharge storage after use. The storage necessary to meet this requirement would depend on the maximum number of consecutive hours or days during which the generators were unable to operate because of low solar insolation or inadequate or excessive wind conditions and the frequency of such occurrences. The generators could be required to be dispatchable 85% of the year, which is the common dispatchability percentage for coal generating stations.

The resulting dispatchable renewable generators would be capable of replacing conventional coal and natural gas generators, rather than merely displacing the output of conventional generation when the intermittent generators were operating. Their ownership and operating costs would be directly comparable to the ownership and operating costs of conventional generators, particularly if current federal and state incentives were terminated. A return to economic dispatch would maximize power supplied by the lowest cost generators, eliminating the current preferences for renewable generation and minimizing wholesale power costs.

The storage required to render intermittent renewable generators dispatchable is currently very expensive and is not capable of delivering stored power for the expected duration of renewable generation unavailability. This is a critical impediment.

"The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots."    Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

It currently appears that the Administration’s vision of the future US electric grid, supplied predominantly by intermittent renewables and supported by electricity storage, is a master fantasy designed by politicians for execution by geniuses with the unique talent of Rumpelstiltskin. There appears to be no plan to assure that the required number of geniuses will be available timely.

Wind and solar generation operate intermittently, and their output fluctuates continuously when they are operating. The grid is currently required to accept this intermittent, fluctuating output on a priority basis and to smooth the output and dispatch alternative sources of generation when the intermittent generator output declines or ceases as the result of time of day or weather conditions. This requirement imposes predictable but uncontrollable costs on the grid and on the conventional generation capacity which supplies the grid during periods of low/no intermittent generation.

As the grid expands in line with the Administration’s “all-electric everything” goal and the capacity of fossil-fueled conventional generation declines as the result of federal mandates and the unfavorable economics of reduced operating hours, there will be a growing need for increased electricity storage capacity and for “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources”(DEFR). Unfortunately, the long-duration storage which would be required to support the grid through multi-day renewable energy “droughts” is not currently available and the DEFR remain undefined.

One approach to long-duration storage is pumped hydroelectric facilities. These facilities require paired reservoirs separated by significant elevation differences. There are approximately 23 GW of pumped storage capacity  in the US. This compares with a total US generating capacity of approximately 1,200 GW, of which approximately 140 GW is wind and 65 GW is solar renewable generating capacity. The move to “all-electric everything” over the next 28 years would require a rough tripling of US generating capacity, to approximately 3,600 GW, assuming no demand growth.

The conventional generating capacity which would be replaced by renewable generation plus storage consists of coal (~85% availability), Natural gas (~90% availability) and Nuclear (~95% availability). The renewable generation would consist of wind (~35% capacity factor times ~85% availability) and solar (~25% capacity factor times ~ 90% availability). Therefore, the rating plate capacity of the renewable generation required would be approximately four times the rating plate capacity of conventional generation capacity to serve the same grid demand, or approximately 14,000 GW.

The storage capacity required to support renewable generators during periods when they are not available to generate is the capacity of the generator times the maximum number of consecutive hours over which the renewable generation might be unavailable. The current US electricity storage capacity of 23 GW would be capable of replacing only one third of the current solar generating capacity. Assuming that storage capacity is all 8-hour storage (8 hr * 23 GW = 184 GWh), that storage capacity is the equivalent of replacing current US solar generating capacity for approximately 3 hours.

The ”all-electric everything” grid would require approximately 70 times current US renewable generating capacity and approximately 5,000 times current US electricity storage capacity.

By: Oxford Union

Wind and solar generation are intermittent forms of renewable generation. Wind generation functions only when wind velocity is above a minimum threshold and below a maximum threshold. Solar functions only during the daytime, and then only when the sun shines. This wind velocity intermittency is reasonably predictable over the short term. The nighttime unavailability of solar is totally predictable and the sunshine intermittency is reasonably predictable over the short term.
However, these are not the only intermittency issues with wind and solar. There are also second-by-second volatility events which affect the output of wind and solar generators. The graphs below are taken from papers authored by Thunder Said Energy.
The graph below displays the short-term volatility of wind output from a 25 MW wind facility over a one-month period. During this month there were an average of 75 short-term volatility events per day during which power output dropped by more than 10% and as much as 100% for at least 1 second and fewer than 100,000 seconds (~28 hours). While every day and every month are unique, this monthly record displays a type of wind variability which is rarely discussed. This volatile wind facility output is fed to an electric grid which must match supply and demand for 60 cycles every second.

The next graph shows the variation of wind power output from the 25 MW wind facility over the course of a single day, during which maximum output was approximately 6.5 MW, or approximately 25% of rating plate capacity, and the average output was 2.3 MW, or approximately 10% of rating plate capacity.

The next graph shows the output of the 25 MW wind facility over a period of a single day during which maximum output was approximately 2.3 MW and the average output was 0.1 MW.

The graph below displays the short-term volatility of solar output over a period of 1 year. During this year there were an average of 96 volatility events per day during which power output dropped by more than 10% and as much as 95% for at least 1 second and fewer than approximately 13,000 seconds (~3.6 hours).

The final graph shows the variation in solar insolation on a single day. This is the type of intermittency which is generally discussed regarding solar energy. The times of day when measurable insolation becomes available and ceases to be available would change with latitude and with the seasons, as would the maximum daily insolation.

Currently, it is the responsibility of the grid operator to compensate for the volatility of wind and solar generation output. Typically, the grid operator is dealing with input to the grid from numerous wind facilities and/or solar fields, each of which is experiencing volatility to some degree. The volatility might be either synchronous or asynchronous at any given time. Smoothing this volatility imposes costs on the grid which result in increased electricity prices.
To level the playing field for the various sources of electric generation, the volatility of wind and solar output should be smoothed prior to output delivery to the grid. Smoothing could be accomplished with capacitors or batteries, or a combination of both. This will become increasingly important as the fraction of intermittent generation on the grid increases and the availability of dispatchable conventional generation to compensate for wind and solar volatility decreases. Of course, the maximum output of the wind and solar generation facilities would be reduced somewhat by the need to recharge capacitors or storage used to smooth the output volatility.

From: Manhattan Contrarian

By: Francis Menton

Date: December 13, 2022

Policy Implications Of The Energy Storage Conundrum

It occurs to me that before moving on from my obsession with energy storage and and its manifest limitations, I should address the policy implications of this situation.  I apologize if these implications may seem terribly obvious to regular readers, or for that matter to people who have just thought about these issues for, say, five minutes.  Unfortunately, our powers-that-be don’t seem to have those five minutes to figure out the obvious, so we’ll just have to bash them over the head with it.

Here are the three most obvious policy implications that nobody in power seems to have figured out:

(1) More and more wind turbines and solar panels are essentially useless because they can never fully supply an electrical grid or provide energy security without full dispatchable backup.

Here in the U.S. the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022 provides some hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies and tax credits to build more wind turbines and solar panels.  Simultaneously, the Biden Administration, directed by a series of Executive Orders from the President, proceeds with an all-of-government effort to suppress the dispatchable backup known as fossil fuels.  Does somebody think this can actually work?  It can’t.  

And then there’s the December 6 press release from the UN’s International Energy Agency, touting how renewable energy sources (wind and solar) are being “turbocharged” to provide countries with “energy security.”  The headline is: “Renewable power’s growth is being turbocharged as countries seek to strengthen energy security.”   Excerpt: (continue reading)

Policy Implications Of The Energy Storage Conundrum