I just read an interesting piece on the widely influential VOX, by David Roberts, called “A beginner’s guide to the debate over 100% renewable energy.” It is worth a read, but I have some problems with it, and felt compelled to rant. No offense intended to David Roberts, but I run into certain malconstructed arguments so often that I feel compelled to promote a more careful thinking out of them, or at least, how they are presented. Roberts’ argument is not malconstructed, but the assumptions leading up to his key points include falsehoods.
I’m not going to explicitly disagree with the various elements of the solutions part of this article (the last parts). But the run-up to that discussion, in my opinion, reifies and supports a number of falsehoods, mainly the dramatic (and untrue) dichotomy between the perfect and wonderful large-plant mostly coal and petroleum sources of energy on one hand with alternatives fraught with All The Problems on the other. Since this VOX piece is a “beginner’s guide” I would hope we can stick a little more nuance into beginner’s thinking.
I choose to Fisk. Thusly:
“Doing that — using electricity to get around, heat our buildings, and run our factories — will increase demand for power. “
It decreases the demand for power, overall. Internal combustion engines are inefficient compared to electric, to such a degree that burning huge amounts of petroleum or coal in one place to ultimately power electric vehicles in a reasonable size region is more efficient than distributing burnable material to all those vehicles to run them. Electrification is inherently more efficient and lower maintenance.
“That means the electricity grid will have to get bigger,”
Our grid, in the US and generally, in the west, is fully embiggened. Globally, maybe. That depends on if a “big grid” is the best way to deliver power everywhere. It probably isn’t.
[The grid must become] “more sophisticated, more efficient, and more reliable — while it is decarbonizing. ”
This contrasts the improvement of the grid with decarbonizing as though they were opposites, but for most of the expected improvements of the grid, improvements of the grid and decarbonizing are the same actions. They are not in opposition to each other.
“On the other side are those who say that the primary goal should be zero carbon, not 100 percent renewables. They say that, in addition to wind, solar, and the rest of the technologies beloved by climate hawks, we’re also going to need a substantial amount of nuclear power and fossil fuel power with CCS.”
This is a false dichotomy in my opinion. There is uncertainty here, of course. But let’s try this. Let’s try decarbonizing 50% of our current power without nuclear. At that point we will know whether or not to invest trillions into an unpopular solution (and nuclear is unpopular). If we need to, we’ll do it. If we don’t, we won’t. Maybe something in between. But worrying about this now, and using uncertainty to argue one way or another, is a waste of conversational energy.
“(If you shrug and say, “it’s too early to know,” you’re correct, but you’re no fun to dispute with.)”
LOL. But no. Rather, I’m thinking that it is too early to know and, in contrast, you are hiding a pro-nuclear argument in a blanket of uncertainty! Maybe you are not, but this is what such arguments almost always look like. Beware the nuclear argument wearing sheep’s clothing. A greenish tinged sheep, yes, but still a sheep.
“The sun is not always shining; the wind is not always blowing.”
Another falsehood. Technically the sun is not always shining on us, true, but as sure as the Earth is spinning, the wind is always blowing. People who say this have never been to the Dakotas.
It does vary in intensity and by region. So does nuclear, by the way. Nuclear plants have to be shut down or slowed down regularly for refueling. When severe storms threaten, nuclear plants are often shut down, and that is not on a schedule. When any big power plant suffers a catastrophe there is a long term and catastrophic break in the grid, as compared to a cloudy day, or even, a broken windmill.
The sun is up during the day, and in may places and for many times, generally everywhere, the demand for power is greater during the day.
Overall, this is a falsehood because it attributes perfection to the traditional sources, especially to Nuclear, and great imperfection to the non-Carbon and non-Nuclear alternatives. That distinction is not nearly as clear and complete as generally stated.
“The fact that they are variable means that they are not dispatchable — the folks operating the power grid cannot turn them on and off as needed.”
Another falsehood. First, you can’t turn a major traditional power plant on or off as needed. Indeed, there are already major storage technologies and variation methodologies at work. There are high demand industries that are asked to increase or decrease their use, on the fly, to meet production variation on large grids. There are pumped storage systems. Etc. The fact is that there is variation and unpredictability in the current big-plant system, it is a problem, and it is a problem that has been quietly addressed. Quietly to the extent that people making comparisons between traditional big-plant electricity and clean energy systems often don’t even know about it.
“As VRE capacity increases, grid operators increasingly have to deal with large spikes in power (say, on a sunny, windy day), sometimes well above 100 percent of demand. “
Yes indeed, and this is the challenge being addressed as we speak. Enlarging grid balancing systems, increasing storage, developing tunable high energy industries, and so on. This is the challenge, it is being met as we speak.
“They also have to deal with large dips in VRE. It happens every day when the sun sets, but variations in VRE supply can also take place over weekly, monthly, seasonal, and even decadal time frames.”
Yes indeed, and this is the challenge being addressed as we speak. Enlarging grid balancing systems, increasing storage, developing tunable high energy industries, and so on. This is the challenge, it is being met as we speak.
“And finally, grid operators have to deal with rapid ramps, i.e., VRE going from producing almost no energy to producing a ton, or vice versa, over a short period of time. That requires rapid, flexible short-term resources that can ramp up or down in response.”
Yes indeed, and this is the challenge being addressed as we speak. Enlarging grid balancing systems, increasing storage, developing tunable high energy industries, and so on. This is the challenge, it is being met as we speak.
The article mentions the economic problems. I don’t see those as difficult to solve but they are important, but I’ve got no comments on that at the moment. Read the article.
“The last 10 to 20 percent of decarbonization is the hardest”
Absolutely. And, know what? The first 25% will be the easiest. Do that now, and we’ll know a LOT more about the next 25% and maybe it won’t seem so hard after all. Maybe a major technological solution will come along before we get to that last 10%, maybe society will change enough that people will simply agree to having occasional reductions in energy availability. But certainly, the greatest difficulty and uncertainty is linked to that last 10%.
Our goal should be to have that problem soon.
“A great deal can be accomplished just by substituting natural gas combined cycle power plants for coal plants.”
Yes, if by “a great deal” you mean the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Before extolling the virtues of methane, do check into it further. I once thought methane as a bridge was a good idea too, until I learned about what it involves, about leaking methane, etc. No, not really a good idea for the most part.
“Natural gas is cleaner than coal (by roughly half, depending on how you measure methane leakage), but it’s still a fossil fuel.”
My impression is that every time we learn something new about leakage, it is that the leakage is worse than we previously thought.
“If you build out a bunch of natural gas plants to get to 60 percent, then you’re stuck shutting them down to get past 60 percent.”
Well put.
Do read the article, but please, keep in mind that it is unfair (in the context of an argument) to attribute undue perfection to one option while emphasizing uncertain problems with the other. We need to forge ahead into that uncertainty and speed up this whole process. Everybody get to work on this please!
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You say “. . . will increase demand for power. “
I see your problem with this statement.
I think the author meant will increase the demand for electricity.
If a home is heated using natural gas, and is switched to heating using electricity – this creates a demand for more electricity.
When he means the grid must become bigger – the author means the grid will have to handle a lot more electricity than it is currently handling – if we use electricity only for all cars, heating, etc – that is not currently being handled by the grid and electricity now.
“If a home is heated using natural gas, and is switched to heating using electricity – this creates a demand for more electricity.”
If it’s switched to a heat pump, it could have more than 100% efficiency EASILY.
If it;s insulated, it may not need any gas heating AT ALL, no need to change it to electricity. If it’s not using gas (most of the USA doesn’t), then your “if” is once more moot.
Meanwhile, and this is one area that the hot air piece is bogus: the petrol used in the UK was converted to BtUs and that to watts to “work out” what the UK would need. Except that ICEs are less efficient, so the power use would be less when moving to electric cars.
“the author means the grid will have to handle a lot more electricity than it is currently handling”
Only under assumptions that we have to use more electricity.
A claim that remains unproven.
Also, how many electrons are leaked? Now how many gas pipelines have leaked, and how much is lost?
“I think the author meant will increase the demand for electricity.
If a home is heated using natural gas, and is switched to heating using electricity – this creates a demand for more electricity.”
I understood his point. I’m saying that switching to electricity reduces the total amount of power required, generally.
Please refer to the reason I wrote this post. I think the leadup to the solutions part of the original article has a number of things that lead to misunderstandings, and the statement about power will tend to do that.
A major reason why renewables get tagged with “storage” is because the energy is otherwise free, really free, and it would be a waste to remove it and dissipate it to a resistor. There’s no real saving by shutting a renewable power source OFF.
For fueled sources, they would save a shedload by shutting it down or ony running in the most efficient way, and instead do “storage” by a cold (or spinning) power plant in reserve. There’s no point for expensive gas and oil to generate power and convert it to some lossy storage, just shut it down or throttle way back and save on fuel costs.
EXACTLY THE SAME power plant generation held in reserve would work EXACTLY THE SAME with renewables.
“storage” is a shibboleth of nuke fluffers.
yes, – and quite relevant to the predicament, we in the UK find ourselves with our Brexit delusion
I have used the quote from Voltaire in a few online debates recently
“perfect is the enemy of the good”
a wonderful distillation of the Nirvana Fallacy otherwise known as the “perfect solution fallacy”
While Greg is correct about the inefficiency of thermal vs electric, electricity demand is expected to rise significantly over the coming decades of decarbonisation as new demand is created by shifting transport and heating, thermal manufacturing processes etc. from FFs to electricity.
Possibly to misunderstand the unavoidable necessity of adding more long distance transmission capacity to get large-scale W&S to distant centres of demand.
Which is why vast wind resources in far away places must be connected to distant customers by long-distance HVDC.
I wish. Mainly what is happening is that W&S *capacity* is beginning to scale, but utility-scale storage and grid evolution / interconnection and all the other stuff is at a fraction of the required level and shows no sign of moving very fast in the right direction. Possibly because it is expensive and difficult or still R&D as in the case of utility-scale battery technology.
I agree that large-scale investment in new gas-fired plant is a bad idea – but one quite likely to happen. The whole shale gas bonanza is a disaster, really.
(I’m fed up with arguing about nuclear because all you ever get is the anti-nuke brigade twisting it into a ‘nukes vs renewables’ pissing match when is is actually an argument about the unwisdom of throwing out a proven low-carbon technology right at the beginning of the decarbonisation process. There is a non-trivial possibility that renewables will not deliver the rapid, deep decarbonisation so urgently needed. Binning nuclear now is to bet the world on something that has never been attempted before as if it was a dead certainty. That is a troublingly cavalier attitude to risk.)
“as new demand is created by shifting transport and heating”
But to decarbonise the power grid DOES NOT require shifting transport and heating. Moreover, it can be negated by efficiencies and changing demand.
So your “proposal” is not “the” proposal. It is not a requirement to decarbonise the grid.
All you nuke fluffers get when you BS about nukes is so devastating to your desires that you have to complain about it being “anti-nuke” rather than pro-reality.
Wow
This is a pretty important muddle, so let’s sort it out.
The object of the exercise is to decarbonise total primary energy (TPE) – that’s everything humanity uses.
Electricity is just a *part* of TPE, but it is perhaps the easiest part to address.
Decarbonising transport and heating means moving both away from FFs and onto electricity, but only if electricity generation is already decarbonised.
“The object of the exercise is to decarbonise total primary energy”
Bullshit. the object of this exercise is to decarbonise the electricity grid. THAT is what you’re claiming that zebra’s proposal cannot do.
THAT is the object of the exercise.
If you wanted to whine and whinge on about removing fossil fueled heating or transport, then you should have not complained that zebra had no proposal on how to decarbonise the grid.
Somehow, even when you’re admitting you are wrong, it’s suddenly everyone else’s fault for taking the words for what they said and not working out what insane dribbling you were entertaining in your noggin to cry and whine about how nukes had to be part of everything.
“but only if electricity generation is already decarbonised.”
So decarbonising the grid DOES NOT require replacing total energy expenditure.
Yet still you complain that *EVERYONE ELSE* is wrong for not accepting that your proposal to decarbonise the grid by building out much more power production was necessary and no attempt to decarbonise the grid could be considered a “plan” unless it said how to get more power in the grid.
Because you just cannot accept you were talking bullshit, it has to be someone else’s fault.
Decarbonising the grid is part of decarbonising TPE.
Will somebody else please confirm this for Wow?
I’m so tired of his craziness.
“Decarbonising the grid is part of decarbonising TPE. ”
Yeah. This does not mean decarbomising TPE is required to decarbonise the grid, BBD. Your insanity dribbling comes out with stuff your lunacy will not comprehend.
It’s super ineffective!
Wow
Are you suggesting that we should *not* decarbonise transport and heating?
I’m telling you that decarbonising the grid does NOT require we decarbonise transport and heating.
Something you write out but your insanity brain will not comprehend when it does so.
So we just leave them as they are? Belching CO2?
Or what?
What do we *do*, wow?
“So we just leave them as they are? Belching CO2?”
Where do I say we leave them?
I’m telling you that decarbonising the grid doesn’t require replacing them.
Have you comprehended this fact yet? Or still in deep denial
“What do we *do*, wow?”
We decarbonise the grid.
Decarbonising transport and heating means electrifying them.
This increases the demand for electricity and the scale of the challenge of decarbonising the grid.
It’s all the same thing.
If California dropped its high speed rail line that it is building, could that pay for transmission lines to the solar and wind areas?
“Decarbonising transport and heating means electrifying them.”
Yup, your insanity is not able to comprehend what you’re saying, is it, BBD.
AGAIN, this does not mean that decarbonising the grid requires decarbonising transport.
They are NOT the same thing. That’s why they have different subjects to the word “decarbononise”. One has “the grid” as the thing to be decarbonised, the other has “transport” as the thing to be decarbonised.
Or do you insanely insist that your travel to work is done via electrical conduction of your body through the national grid????
This is hopeless.
Yes, but that’s your insanity speaking, again.
Decarbonising the grid will remove not one single internal combustion engine.
If it were the same thing, this would be 100% absolutely by definition impossible.
Since this is not the case (feel free to insist that decarbonising the grid would automatically replace every ICE with an electric engine if you want, but sans that you have accepted in words, but not in your head, that they’re not the same thing), they are not the same thing.
What is hopeless is you still want to insist they ARE the same thing, but won’t actually admit to yourself you are doing this.
Or move one inch from claims that only exist if they are the exact same thing, and that magic changes ICE to electric motors.
I can give you a plan right now to change your fossil fuel use for transport to 0% right now without a single watt added to the national grid, BBD.
BBD @10, Thanks.
For some the goal may be decarbonizing the grid, but as you point out electricity is only a part of the puzzle, and we should be concentrating on the whole system, not just one highly visible component. Now I would say if your goal is to score political brownie points by claiming “my grid is zero carbon”, and don’t care about the overall energy system, then switching application like heating and transport to electricity makes the grid transition tougher. But, its a step we need to make, and arguably it is more important to make serious early progress on electrification than it is to reach certain percentage of renewables on the grid early. The goal is afterall a rapid and sustainable decarbonization of the whole economic system.
A point was made that claimed the first 25% is the easy part. But that has been proven (so far) to be false. The technology of renewables is advancing rapidly, and we may easily find that the first ten percent was actually the hardest and most expensive part. Most likely going from 25-75% will turn out to be the least expensive part of the transition, -simply because the economy-of-scale and learning curves for renewables -and storage keep improving the economics.
Uhm, I can tell you how to decarbonise your travel to 0% CO2 without adding a single watt to the demand too.
Oh, by the way, “too” is yet another admission that they’re not the same thing, else it would be irrelevant to say “too”.
“A point was made that claimed the first 25% is the easy part. But that has been proven (so far) to be false. ”
Where? ‘cos I’m damn certain the problem has been denial and obstruction, not the tech. See Denmark….
“and don’t care about the overall energy system,”
Uh, the electricity system IS the overall energy system.
Remember: turning your ICE into an electric motor isn’t necessary.
>This is hopeless.
How many times do you have to realize this? Just be pessimistic to begin with, and you won’t feel the need to say it.
Hopeless is “mike”‘s specialty…
Wow, about it getting easier rather than faster:
True in some (many) places obstructionism has been a problem. But the optimization of the technology, which includes the optimization of the manufacturing techniques, and of entire industrial supply chains and the equipment needed to manufacture and install stuff covers a great deal of space. For both wind and solar the learning curve has been steep. Historically for solar panels, the cost of production has declined 21% for every doubling of net installed worldwide capacity. This means that the early stuff was very pricey. Germany’s big solar buildout occurred when the price of PV was several times higher than it is today. We will probably soon reach the point where overbuilding solar (which means you have too much capacity and must curtail some of it) will be economically feasible/optimal. The corresponding figure for wind is 14%. The first few off-shore wind farms were very expensive, but now the price has come way down. With renewables the more you’ve built, the easier it is to build the next increment.
BBD #23:
I feel your pain.
You are absolutely correct, that the goal is to decarbonize the grid and shift all total primary energy (TPE) to the grid.
So heating with natural gas and using gasoline for cars would be replaced by electricity from the grid – which is decarbonized.
That is the goal and I understand that.
I don’t think wow does and probably never will.
Omega Centauri
Overbuild of solar is pretty much mandatory unless you are close to the equator. The seasonal issue with solar at mid or higher latitudes can only be addressed by overbuild or alternative sources, which, looking ahead, would be wind.
So once you get out of the extratropical latitudes, it is necessary to overbuild the wind resource to compensate for seasonal diminution of the solar resource.
Water heaters is one thing, but electric vs gas stove is a considerable difference.
I just switched. It is very different, but an electric stove is fine. I thought it would be harder to switch than it was.
For the oven, doesn’t matter. The electric broiler is way better than the gas broiler, or at least, mine is better than the old one (which was itself modern and well functioning.)
For those who don’t know, Wow is a bit of a hothead.
Has a week timeout on co-blog http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2017/04/02/comments-of-the-week-155-from-pure-energy-to-earths-twin/
We got it from context.
Nope I’m out.
Ethan is only concerned about his best mate being safe, and doesn’t give a shit about the blog. I didn’t even know it was “a week” as soon as it was apparent he was being a twat and banned me I stopped even going.
“Overbuild of solar is pretty much mandatory”
And EVERY POSSIBLE POWER SOUCE is over built. Because the fucking things stop working at times.
Your idiocy is the blinkered and idiotic insistence that these problems exist only for renewables, becuse you’re a nuke fluffer who has no fucking clue what they’re talking about, only having the headlines from more authoritative nuke fluffers to go on.
“Wow, about it getting easier rather than faster:”
Go ahead if you want. I didn’t. I was talking about it being easier to do the first 25%.
“But the optimization of the technology, which includes the optimization of the manufacturing techniques,”
Uhm, whut? It’s pretty damn optimal right now.What is it? 65c per watt now?
” For both wind and solar the learning curve has been steep. ”
Nope.
Again, even if mangling this to be nearly acceptable you merely get to the fact that this is 100% identical to what every other industry has. Including coal power.
So this is yet another empty phrase.
It’s not a proof that the first 25% is hard not easy like greg says. It’s orthogonal.
“The first few off-shore wind farms were very expensive”
Still more profitable than coal power build would have been. And you’ll find it wasn’t covering 25% of our power generation either.
Excavation of coal is harder. Oil much harder. Has fuck all to do with how easy or hard it is to make 70% of our power production from it, though.
“How hard” is about how hard considered it has to be.
Remember the claims that renewble penetration would be OK up until they’re 20% of the mix, after that it becomes harder?
It wasn’t based on how hard it was to make production lines.
Was it.
“or alternative sources, which, looking ahead, would be wind. ”
So overbuild is not mandatory.
What about efficiencies? Is it impossible to change usage when rolling out solar???
Wow, you think $.65/watt panels are optimal, with the best utility scale farms coming in around a dollar per watt. But we will probably see $.25/watt panels in the near future, and that cost change can be revolutionary, especially if one is considering the possibility of significantly overbuilding.
Wind is similar, its not improving quite as fast as solar, but the newer turbines can get a better capacity factor (fraction of peak capability as a sustained average), and that improves both economics and grid integration issues. Don’t underestimate the power of incremental improvement, changes in cost effectiveness can make a huge difference.
Well, you have to overbuild something. It can be all solar, all wind or you can split it between the two, depending on the wind resource. But you have to overbuild to compensate for seasonality in solar unless you are close to the equator.
Nibbling round the edges of the problem isn’t the same as solving it. The potential for efficiencies is marginal compared to the winter drop in solar output, especially the further north you go.
“Wow, you think $.65/watt panels are optimal,”
Do I? I didn’t know that. How did you get that from this?
Or did you not see “optimisation of the technology”? Which would be really ironic since that was what YOU said. Ignoring your own words, hmm?
There’s only about 65c per watt that can be saved by making manufacture easier and cheaper.
“Well, you have to overbuild something.”
Why?
I mean, you have to overbuild power generation, yes, but you blather on about this like its some sort of unique property of purely solar or wind.
When it isn’t.
So, why do you have to overbuild?
Because either that’s bollocks or it’s no different from what we had to do for the current energy system.
Which is fuck all difference therefore ignorable.
“But you have to overbuild to compensate for seasonality in solar ”
No you don’t, you have to build enough solar to satisfy what you want.
Demand is seasonal too.
Nukes are also seasonal.
Building more of those is not mentioned as “overbuilding”. Hell, coal stations are seasonal, since they rely on the same cooling water methods.
Gas too is seasonal: it costs more in winter for the UK to buy it on the market.
Well, the problem is solar at increasing latitude. Short day length in winter knocks output on its head. This is a problem unique to solar as it affects all plant simultaneously and is predictable.
Which means overbuilding solar so that *winter* output is sufficient. Unfortunately, the required overbuild is substantial and there is a near-certainty of curtailment being necessary during summer peak output, which is the sort of thing investors don’t like to hear.
Yes, in the NH it is high in winter because of increased use of lighting and heating. Decarbonising heating will further increase winter demand.
I see everyone has run away to engage in the same repetitive debate one more time.
Wow, at some point in the past I have in fact included space conditioning and transportation in the competitive market paradigm, perhaps in passing so you missed it.
However, since the usual subjects have lost the battle with respect to the grid, they are trying to change the subject. I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked…
BBD, There has already been some solar curtailment in California the past couple of weeks. Sounds, bad, but I think the worst day only about 8% of the total solar energy had to be curtailed. Spring may be a more likely curtailment season than summer. The reason is output is almost as high, while hydropower is at or near peak, and air conditioning demand is low to zero. (Also is California water pumping is a huge consumer, but its a record wet year so that demand is also low). How much curtailment you can economically justify depends strongly upon the cost of adding incremental capacity, that’s why continuing the cost improvements of solar and wind is so important.
Also solar thermal with storage is going to become important. A recent bid by Solar Reserve for wait for it “baseline solar power” came in amazingly low. Of course the Atacama desert does have the worlds best solar resource, but its looking like solar thermal with enough storage to provide overnight power is only going to be about twice the cost of daytime PV solar power.
“Well, the problem is solar at increasing latitude.”
No, that’s not a problem. It’s not like continental drift needs to be taken into account over the scale of centuries, is it.
“Short day length in winter ”
Long day length in summer.
“Which means overbuilding solar so that *winter* output is sufficient.”
No it doesn’t, any more than it means overbuilding nuclear because in heatwaves it’s insufficient.
“Yes, in the NH it is high in winter because of increased use of lighting and heating. ”
Nope. We can insulate. And LED/CFL lights mean lighting is a non problem.
Moreover, it’s windier then.
“Decarbonising heating will further increase winter demand”
No it won’t.
Another issue is that solar is built to take advantage of high spot prices. It’s *profit efficient*. Not production efficient.
zebra
Could there be an indivisible relationship between the goal and the plan?
Wow, this is embarrassing. Go back and re-read the discussion you are commenting on.
Only in your head, BBD.
Because you won’t do anything but continue to bleat on and on about it, because you want to slap that dead horse until your arms fall off, because you can’t stop from demonising renewables to make nukes look like a sane option.
They aren’t.
“Wow, this is embarrassing. ”
What? you didn’t know about summer days being longer? Yeah, I guess that would be embarrasing to find the brain-fart that threw away that info was done in public.
“Go back and re-read the discussion you are commenting on.”
I did. It’s some nuke fluffer called “BBD” trying yet again to whine on and on about how renewables are terrible and expensive because they’re not nukes.
“Go back and re-read the discussion you are commenting on.”
And I would add that you need to read further than you quoted. you know, the entire frigging post you were commenting on.
Here’s a question for all the people yammering about overall energy utilization:
Assume that all commuters in the US had Chevy Volts. What modification of the grid would be required so that they could be charged from wind and solar say 90% of the time? (This would eliminate enormous amounts of CO2.)
Please respect Greg’s observation along the lines of “Nirvana Fallacy Is A Fallacy.”
zebra #57:
First, the grid would have to be supplied by the amount of electricity used by all these new electric vehicles.
Secondly, in order to ensure that the Volts were charged only with wind and solar, you would have to turn off the 66% of power supplied to the grid (at least in MInnesota) from coal and natural gas and turn off the 20% of power supplied to the grid from nuclear (oh I forgot to turn off the 6% from hydro).
That would only leave about 5% of the power the grid normally supplies, but that should take care of your hypo.
RickA,
I have no idea what you are talking about.
The grid would have to be supplied with the necessary amount generated by wind and solar, of course. But why would that mean “turning off” something else?
zebra #59:
When you plug in your Volt in your garage, in order to ensure you are using wind and solar you have to remove all non-wind and non-solar from the grid in your area.
In Minnesota, my grid is powered 66% by fossil fuel and 20% by nuclear – so we have to turn that 86% off.
Otherwise, your volt is getting 66% of its electricity from fossil fuel and 20% from nuclear.
That violates your hypo.
See # 7.
“When you plug in your Volt in your garage, in order to ensure you are using wind and solar you have to remove all non-wind and non-solar from the grid in your area.”
No you don’t. No more than to ensure you’re only using nuclear you have to remove non-nuke power from the grid in your area.
“– so we have to turn that 86% off.”
No you don’t, you have to turn that 14% into 100.
“See # 7.”
See? Saw. So?
RickA,
That is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, and demonstrates that you have no idea how electricity works. Much like BBD.
There are no “nuclear electrons” or “solar electrons”. Sounds like you may be an “electron racist”, now that I think about it.
If you would like to try to explain your hypothesis using correct electric circuit terminology, feel free. But it will be embarrassing for you.
zebra
You keep saying this, but never successfully explaining *why*.
Remember this:
The grid has to balance regionally. Supply must equal demand. Hold this thought.
If you have a large solar resource in the SW and a large wind resouce in the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota and Montana, it generates vastly more electricity than there is regional demand. It is supposed to do this because it is supposed to be powering the US – especially the high-demand regions of the East and West Coast.
So how do you get shitloads of electricity from A to B when B is a long way away?
You can’t just dump huge extra regional capacity into the regional grid as it exceeds regional demand and the grid breaks. Think about this. Regional balancing is set by regional demand and this prevents large-scale electricity export through the existing grid.
Unless long-distance transmission capacity is added to connect the scaling W&S resource to its biggest customers, who are far away, it will be increasingly unable to deliver electricity to the market. If that happens, the market can’t fund it.
“You keep saying this, but never successfully explaining *why*. ”
Maybe didn’t think it needed to be explained?
Do YOU think it needs to be explained why the electron from a coal fired power station or nuke power station are not different from the electrons from a solar power plant?
“Unless long-distance transmission capacity is added to connect”
Not needed, any more than it’s needed for any other power system since the transmission capacity is right there now. It would be more efficient to use HVDC to carry long distances, but it isn’t necessary. And HVDC is useful for ANY power generation system, one reason why France has it. Not a big producer of renewable solar and wind, if you remember.
“You can’t just dump huge extra regional capacity into the regional grid as it exceeds regional demand ”
Then don’t. Do like current generation does when it’s unusable and dump it to ground. Job done.
“and the grid breaks.”
I think you need to talk to an engineer who works on these things. Unless you’re using a private and special meaning for “break”, this doesn’t happen.
“If that happens, the market can’t fund it.”
It funds nuke power, coal power, gas power, hydro power and so on and so forth even though it cannot be transmitted vast distances to the best market to sell, and there are brown-outs and even black-outs occurring.
The market finds it possible to do it now. There’s no reason why this would change if we went full 100% renewable, worldwide.
PS you did the “dakotas, sw, blah blah blah” and I pointed out once already that it was bollocks. Don’t listen, do you.
BBD,
Now you are cutting and pasting your own nonsense. Doesn’t make it any less nonsense.
I posed a simple question:
We would all, I assume, like to remove that CO2 generated on the typical commute where the highways are like parking lots, and ICE are very inefficient and produce local pollution as well as CO2.
So, we give all these commuters something like the Volt, which can cover say 50 miles on a charge, but has its own onboard generator/motor to deal with range for other trips.
If you guys are such experts on how electricity works, tell me what changes would have to be made to the grid so the cars can mostly be charged by wind and solar.
If you think that means building HVDC lines from Austin to Boston, explain why. Not with vague generalities and handwaving though; be specific.
Wow,
One of the most frustrating thing about these discussions is that, as you say, we are doing all the things that I suggest right now. All the issues anyone wants to raise have established engineering solutions; the only difference is scale for various paramenters and making the rules universal.
But these people ignore that and want to bring up vaporware like Thorium and SMR, and projects that they can’t explain how to get built in the US like government-owned HVDC lines.
Childish fantasists, to be sure.
I was specific at #65.
I think the underlying assumption in your position is that the US can *always* meet local demand anywhere with local W&S. But this isn’t correct.
That’s why in order to achieve the goal of decarbonising the grid as a necessary component of decarbonising TPE, the plan requires major grid upgrades.
It’s difficult to see how localism can ever fund the necessary increase in long-distance transmission capacity, never mind overcome the morass of legal and technical inter-state issues that must be resolved. Hence the need for government intervention to make the plan work and so achieve the goal.
Specifically, you made the baseless claim it was needed. Not why it was needed.
“I think the underlying assumption in your position is that the US can *always* meet local demand anywhere with local W&S. But this isn’t correct. ”
It isn’t necessary. It doesn’t do so now 100%, yet it still works.
“the goal of decarbonising the grid as a necessary component of decarbonising TPE”
The conversation is decarbonising the grid. Not doing that means there’s no way to do the second. Do the first first.
“The plan requires major grid upgrades.”
No more than it needed major grid upgrades when A/C was widespread. Or refrigeration. Or lighting.
But there’s no need for “major grid upgrades” if there’s no extra energy use. It could be LOWER energy use.
Your whining is based on the assertion that it MUST be more power, when that’s the pointless insistence of some mythological insistence that today is what we must have to do.
We’re already changing what we’re using the grid for and what we’re using ON the grid.
Moreover, the massive use of electric cars gives a massive storage system “ready built”. Yet more reason why your complaints about wind and solar are meaningless burbling.
“It’s difficult to see how localism can ever fund the necessary increase in long-distance transmission capacity”
Then don’t insist it is necessary to increase long distance transmission capacity.
Job done.
You really do not want to think, do you.
” Hence the need for government intervention to make the plan work and so achieve the goal.”
So we’re back to “the plan”. No that is YOUR plan. Based on unecessary insistence that wehave to increase power use when we don’t, that we need storage when we don’t, that we have problems that are new when they already happen with any other source of power we’ve used.
All to cry FUD and alarmism about not using nuke power…
Zebra
Okay, how about this bridge attempt:
You summarised your position neatly on another thread, #30:
I fully agree that these are necessary conditions for an energy transition to happen but disagree that they are sufficient.
BBD,
Answer the question.
If you can’t do the simple math for a simple problem like that, you are simply a pretentious fool, and nobody cares about your “disagreement”.
Wow has, in his somewhat incoherent ranty way, pointed out your various failings on the basic physical facts. That should worry you.
If you can’t articulate the issues involved in charging an EV, what business have you advising us about the entire energy paradigm of the USA?
Why not set out your answer to this simple mathematical problem?
Then the thread would know what you are talking about.
And if I frame #71 as a question, what would be your answer?
I fully agree that these are necessary conditions for an energy transition to happen but disagree that they are sufficient.
Why am I mistaken?
Note that current mini-split hvac systems (ductless) have better performance in cold climates than ducted systems. (Partly because they have inverter compressors. Work is on going on build systems that have a cop of 2.5 at 0f. I.E. produce 2.5 times the heat as the electricity coming in. So assume an electric conversion efficiency of 50% (best gas turbine combined cycle plants run up to 60% now). And a assume a 90% gas furnace. So the heat pump puts out about 1.38 times the heat at 0 F of a northern gas furnace, for an equivalent use of gas. The units seem to beat out furnaces down to about -15f or so. Work is on going to produce better performance including by the government of Canada.
So it looks like today minisplit systems with some gas backup could work in the north country.
BBD, you have spent months dancing around and denying zebra’s position, it’s hardly surprising he wants to get closure on his position before chasing after another dog whistle from you.
Zebra, #71 was a different style, it was trying to find another way around, so at least attempting to break the circle. Accept that the conversation may be able to move on, but ask that first some closure on your statements and BBD’s denial of them even existing, be made. Otherwise there’s no point to following this new thread since if it doesn’t go BBD’s way it is patently clear that it will be merely shunted into the weeds and anything against what BBD believes to be the One True Way To Think is just plain nonexistent nonsense.
“I fully agree that these are necessary conditions for an energy transition to happen but disagree that they are sufficient. ”
Why? Wind is the cheapest production system, therefore it would win out in a free market. SPV is fairly cheap and can be rolled out down to the personal level, it’s just that there’s no point, since you can’t use it without your electricity suppliers’ consent.
And if externalities are added in, SPV is cheaper than coal.
So why would not making it a properly and genuinely open free market not work? It currently IS working, no new coal, coal closing down, massive buildout worldwide of new solar and wind.
Certainly SEEMS to be working, even with the interference of lobbied government propping up the fossil fuel industries.
So why do you claim it insufficient?
Building HVDC won’t build any solar or wind power. Nationalising the grid won’t build any solar or wind power.
If zebra has to say how to make solar and wind be built and all the fossil fuel power providers shut down, then you haven’t done this either, and it’s hypocrisy to whine about zebra not doing what you aren’t doing either.
“So it looks like today minisplit systems with some gas backup could work in the north country.”
And that is with houses that aren’t designed to be properly insulated. Improve the house building so it’s built to a quality not to a price point, and how much gas backup is needed?
Wow,
I appreciate your effort at 76, but you know BBD is not going to do any math or even admit that he can’t.
Now, even RickA, despite his issues with electron miscegenation, has acknowledged that something equivalent to a carbon tax would be necessary to get people to buy nuclear (his favorite) rather than natural gas generated electricity.
The only issue at hand is, as I said in my very first comment I believe, what the mix is. And you have covered most of the questions, as I said above.
You have even (reluctantly) acknowledged that there could be nuclear in there for some reason. I would even argue that there will never be the development of SMR or any other current nuclear vaporware unless there is a competitive market.
Anyway, I will not hold my breath waiting for technologically sound arguments from the usual suspects. I may make some other comment later with reference to Lyle’s heat pump information.
The problem with nukes isn’t “they’re nukes”, but “they’re too fucking dangerous in the hands of the people who will be running them”.
if someone gets a tech out that makes nukes safe enough for people to build and operate one under their own arse and where their children live, then it’s going to be safe indeed.
That isn’t the only way for them to be safe, but without any actual tech, it’s the use case scenario that will self evidently show it is safe.
Thorium has been done for 50-80 years, and still not managed to be a better solution. Pebble bed reactors are still unwanted because of the risks and costs.
And given we need to retire a lot of old generation, spending the time and money needed to build up nuke power when siting it for today’s climate is liable to be unusable for the climate when it’s still required to operate to be financially successful, is not merely foolish, it retards the only options we have left.
Willing denial and political lobbying have ensured that, to safeguard the short term profits, the long term result we have today is that nukes cannot afford to be part of the solution.
After we’ve broken the back of the problem? Maybe we’ll have time to look elsewhere (and better information on what needs to be changed in a mostly or entirely renewable power world, if indeed anything “needs” to be changed). But building a lot of nuke stations, unless they can be sited a long way from coasts and unusable as a terror threat, we have to wait until the climate and the political scene resulting from the changes settle down before we can look seriously again and rolling new nukes out, even if they’re practically safe in design by then.
Wow,
The market will decide.
Right now, they can’t even get a couple of pre-approved, very heavily subsidized, AP1000 they designed themselves, built without going bankrupt.
Maybe, with a more open market, someone may leapfrog the current kluge-heavy design paradigm. It will not happen overnight to be sure– more likely as the “needs” are identified, as you say.
The California Council on Science and Technology generated a report: “California’s Energy Future: The View to 2050”- See more at: http://ccst.us/publications/2011/2011energy.php#sthash.Dv3zHG1D.dpuf……. had this to say about the amount of electricity that would be needed to run the society:
…..”Aggressive new efficiency measures could reduce the demand for electricity by about a third, and for fuel by half. Incentives to electrify transportation and heat production would increase the requirement for electricity, but cut fuel demand by yet another third. Even with these measures, by 2050 California would need about twice as much electricity as we use today and still nearly 70 percent of the fuel consumed today…..:
…..”The total commitment necessary to achieve this accelerated pace will require strong societal and policy backing because there are less than 40 years to make a nearly total change-over to the required technology. Essentially, in this time period, every existing building will either be retrofit to higher efficiency standards or replaced.”
Mark, that is an interesting report but it is years old. Just sayin’.
More to the point, in addition to being dated, it uses the usual sleight-of-hand language to confuse and deceive.
Over half of US commutes are under 10 miles, and only 8% are over 35.
So, if all those California commuters were driving Chevy Volts, and they all had solar panels on their houses, it would essentially zero out that particular contribution of CO2 and pollution.
Instead of reporting this, that part of the system is folded in to “increased electricity demand”. But obviously, there is no “firming up” problem because the vehicles can sit plugged in something like 20 hours out of 24. The gasoline that doesn’t get burned is pure “profit” in the CO2 accounting.
If you need 24/7/365 electricity, buy it from the local nuclear plant, or the local “clean coal” plant. If there isn’t one, form a co-op with fellow industrial process businesses and build one for your own use.
It’s just that simple. Don’t expect taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Greg and Zebra,
It’s been a couple of years since I reread the CCST report as I read it after attending a CARB meeting discussing the proposed (at the time) 33%RES. I was a bit worried about what might happen to the PV system I put in place back in 2006. I am still not sure how the powers that be account for our system (6.12 kW). Sooner or later I will need to figure this out as I hate to think it might become a stranded asset.
Our rate structure had to be eliminated last year as we have run into some grid integration issues out here in CA as noted here:
1) https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=30692#tab1
2) https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/missing-money/
3) http://www.cleanenergylawreport.com/energy-regulatory/caiso-expects-it-may-need-to-curtail-up-to-8000-mw-this-spring-and-up-to-13000-mw-by-2024-which-could-test-curtailment-risk-allocation-provisions-in-renewable-ppas/?utm
I haven’t read the Jenkins-Thernstrom paper referenced below in detail. Their estimate of electrical power demand growth seems a tad high to me (those of us who live out in the country will be moving to biomass for our winter heating needs……I don’t know if their analysis notes this choice or not) :
1) http://innovationreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/EIRP-Deep-Decarb-Lit-Review-Jenkins-Thernstrom-March-2017.pdf
“…….The ninth study reviewed, Jacobson et al. (2014), considers a scenario where 100% of California end-use energy demand is met by electricity or hydrogen produced by electricity. In that case, electricity demand grows more than five-fold (+465%) by 2050…..”
Zebra
If you have a point, make it. Show the numbers. Otherwise, there is nothing to discuss.
Stop stalling or people might think you were bluffing.
Exactly the same paranoid mindset as the deniers who see climate change as a vast liberal conspiracy.
And that sounds rather familiar too. Interesting.
But unless that increased demand is met 100% by zero-carbon generation, all you have done is *move* the source of CO2 and particulate emissions from cars to an increase in FF capacity. It does very little to advance the decarbonisation process. It’s PR, and it’s sales for the EV companies, but that is it.
Right, back to your mistaken notions about how the grid works. Here is a SciAm article that explains what you need to know. You will notice that the subtitle refers to a ‘plan’.
Here are a few excerpts to give you the general flavour:
And:
And:
And so on. You will (finally) get the picture and (finally) realise why your conception of the US grid, and the notion that it balances across its entirety is simply wrong. In fact it is impossible to increase inputs in one region to meet demand in another. So your proposal is dependent on something that does not exist.
zebra:
BBD:
Sorry Wow, but “mad dogs and Englishmen” comes to mind. Maybe some member of the royal family will talk to him to prevent further embarrassment for your fair isle?
Zebra
Ignoring evidence is called ‘denialism’. When it is done as you have just done it here, it is called ‘shut-eyed denialism’.
* * *
Now, explain why what I said at #86 about moving CO2 around is incorrect. Snark is just noise. Behave like an adult and make your point. See, eg. #87.
The localism fallacy, again.
What happens in winter when SPV output is minimal and wind is having to fill the capacity gap left by solar? What happens regionally if you get two days of consecutive low windspeed? How soon before nobody comes to work? What happens when a heavily depleted regional EV fleet tries to recharge its batteries simultaneously?
Mark #85,
Do you have a point? If so, could you explain it, and how it relates to what I said about EV or industrial users?
It sounds from your references that what you need out there is exactly what I suggested– more Chevy Volts, to be charged during the periods when solar production is highest. Win-win.
But sooner or later, you’re gonna need a bigger grid.
“But sooner or later, you’re gonna need a bigger grid.”
Why?
“If you have a point, make it. Show the numbers. ”
When did you show numbers? Lotsa bullshit and lotsa demands off you, but you don’t deem it necessary to work to your own demanding requirements yourself.
Again, denier tactics.
“What happens in winter when SPV output is minimal and wind is having to fill the capacity gap left by solar? ”
Um, wind is filling the gap left by solar.
Duh.
“What happens regionally if you get two days of consecutive low windspeed?”
The power is replaced by solar. Duh.
“How soon before nobody comes to work?”
Never.
“What happens when a heavily depleted regional EV fleet tries to recharge its batteries simultaneously?”
They won’t be able to.Just like when every car wants to fill up with gas simultaneously. There’s only so much capacity to refill.
Quite why you ask these dumbass questions when they’re merely the current systems’ problems written as if they were unique to solar and wind can only be laid at the feed of your nuke fluffing idiocy, BBD.
“But unless that increased demand is met 100% by zero-carbon generation,…. It does very little to advance the decarbonisation process”
Wrong, dumbass.
If you meet 50% of the demand for powering transport you decarbonise 50% of the demand for transport.
Fucking idiot.
Over 48 hours of low regional windspeed? How? (Reading comp again, Wow).
But we are saved, thanks to all those spanking new HVDC lines which only big money and big politics are likely to get constructed.
The future’s going to be hard on the optimists who thought a panel on the roof and a battery in the garage was going to save the world, kill the monopolies and keep taxes low.
“Over 48 hours of low regional windspeed? ”
What 48 hours of low regional windspeed? There is none.
“thanks to all those spanking new HVDC lines”
They’re quite old, actually, they’ve been there for years.
“the optimists who thought a panel on the roof and a battery in the garage was going to save the world”
That is a null set of people, BBD. A fiction of your own smug stupidity.
And you need to work on your reading comprehension, dumbass:
That was all that was written. “two days of consecutive low windspeed? ” came after. And no such two days happened.
Hey, maybe you can show up those smug fossil fuel people here, BBD.
What do you do when you can’t get enough coal for two days to run your coal fired power stations?
Hmmm?
And lets stick it to the nuke people too: What do you do when a design flaw is found and the entire fleet has to be taken offline for emergency repairs?
Oh, if only those simpletons knew that having a “dispatchable” power supply was as simple as “we have to fuel it” to be secure and constant!
While waiting to see if Mark, who might offer some hard data on his solar installation, gets back, let’s further consider his references.
At this point, solar installations are not producing an excess physically during the midday period, although there are projections that this will eventually occur.
What does it mean? Well, production increase for that period will be outpacing the growth in demand. This would be good news in a market functioning as I have suggested.
In my market, electricity should go down in price during this period. Then, as demand increases towards evening, the price should increase The effect would be to encourage people to buy Chevy Volts and Tesla House Batteries.
If you have a house battery, you can store that cheap electricity. If you need less than you have stored, you can sell it back to other users at the higher price.
If lots and lots of houses have solar panels, and plug-in vehicles, and house batteries, guess what you have:
Yep… Grid. Level. Storage.
So, we eliminate the CO2 produced by ICE commuting. And, we eliminate the CO2 equivalent to what we have stored that would otherwise be burned in the evening.
This is a very big step. It requires nothing but existing hardware and software, and creates lots of local jobs. Win-win.
And, as I said earlier, any consumer for whom this doesn’t work is free to buy from a nuclear plant or “clean FF” plant or chip in to build their own if such is not available. Still a win-win.
Zebra,
Sorry for the delay in responding. Our plans yesterday had to be modified due to an unexpected trip to the vet and way to many hours icing my back.
Our PV system generates between 30 and 36 kWh a day during sunny spring, summer and early fall days. In the winter if we have a sunny day and all the snow and ice has melted off the panels we will generate between 15 and 24 kWh. This year has been a bit wet, make that a lot wet, in CA so our average output is lower than normal. When I designed the system I wanted it to generate enough power to meet 55% of our load over a calendar year. If you want any other details let me know.
One of the geeks, experts, at CASIO (the folks who run the grid in CA) indicated that CA could end up with a higher fuel burn rate (ie more co2 released) under a couple of scenarios as we move from <20% RES to the 33% RES. Lots of efforts have been initiated to mitigate the mismatch of supply with demand over the years. Some integration challenges have delayed the use of newer forms of energy storage. The state has a lot of pumped hydro storage capacity which will be very helpful this calendar year.
Alice (Energy Skeptic blog) discussed energy storage projects in CA last year:
http://energyskeptic.com/2016/how-is-californias-ab2514-experiment-with-utility-scale-battery-storage-coming-along/
The over generation challenge is tracked by CASIO these days on their web site. As expected April 9th was a bad day for the amount of power curtailed. http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html
A local public utility is implementing a plan to encourage their residential customers to purchase EV’s. They, SMUD, are offering two years of free electricity to customers who purchase an EV. The management of SMUD is likely trying to figure out how the recent announcement of the closure of the largest industrial customer (Aerojet) in their district is going to affect their operations. The can likely sell their soon to be excess capacity of hydropower to my service provider (PG&E).
So you’re just telling us what your current experience is, as a sort of example.
“indicated that CA could end up with a higher fuel burn rate (ie more co2 released) under a couple of scenarios as we move from <20% RES to the 33% RES"
Yeah, probably wrong there.
For example, pretending that outage from wind lulls or heavy cloud happen too quickly for efficient modern large scale power to be brought back online and being replaced by inefficient peaking plants.
'cept we have weather forecasts that are pretty damn accurate to three days or more for that sort of thing.
And probably yet again refusing to acknowledge that the calories from petrol burnt cannot be equated to the amount of kWh from electrical sources, along with heat pumps
being much more efficient.
And "forgetting" that LEDs are rolling out and reduce lighting, and better house design (or even for the USA not using that goddamned stupid tumble drier when the goddamned sun is out) would reduce the use for electrical heating.
And not forgetting that with the energy being sapped by SPV, you will have lower cooling costs in summer when it's all paneled up..
Likely the paper is just the same blowhard alarmism from nuke fluffers who want to prop their "low CO2" option up with a panic to decarbonise.
I would also point out to you that, though the overall output of SPV is lower in full cloud, the fact that it is diffuse when it gets through means that the power curve is a lot flatter.
And, lastly, when there's enough SPV to make it unworkable to expose the highest profits over the best match to load, some places will cant their panels to morningside to make use of higher production during morning peak, while others will choose the later period. Currently it just reduces the power produced at highest profitability times, so most places (not all) optimise to get the maximum value per kWh as opposed to making supply more consistent.
That, again, is one method by which zebra's free market approach *may* produce correct outputs: when it's all SPV and wind, prices will increase where supply is lacking and people will change their panel alignment to maximise power at those times.
Free markets are prone to corruption and incapable of fixing it, because there's no mechanism for a free market to avoid the benefits of monopolisation being taken advantage of, but since corruption of some sort is always going to be a problem when money and/or power is involved, you merely choose which forms of corruption you will have to work against and avoid, rather than some mythic option that is incorruptible.
Wow,
I thought you were going to maintain the terminology discipline you have exhibited in the past, but…
Your final paragraph uses “free market” when you should be saying “laissez faire capitalism”. Of course the regulator/government can be corrupt, but if it isn’t, anti-trust legislation will be enforced. And think about how difficult it would be to create collusion with hundreds of thousands of solar-installed houses, each an entrepreneurial enterprise.
Mark,
Thanks; I’m just trying to get people to see some practical numbers rather than broad generalizations that distort how we understand the issues.
So, I guess the main question I would still have is what were your zero-output time periods? Days, weeks?
Also, nice to hear that the synergy I keep touting is happening, with electricity suppliers pushing the EV.
“Your final paragraph uses “free market” when you should be saying “laissez faire capitalism”.”
There isn’t any difference, except the latter insists that complete anarchy is fine.
Free markets do not handle control of the free market, it’s not even in the paradigm. Government or some other collective needs to externally deal with free markets *to keep them free*, because the free market itself has no power to do so, at least scaled beyond the local commune level, that level at which communism works just as well as free markets, because there’s a very direct link between everyone, customer and supplier alike.
So in what the market can deal with, there’s no difference.
Laissez faire is only the negation of accepting this and “believing” without any evidence, and usually with the ret-con idea that the “reason” why the laissez faire anarchy has never worked is because it wasn’t “laissez faire” enough. When the problem is that laissez faire is just incapable of working.
Laissez faire is free markets, but a refusal to allow any control.
Free market either accepts there has to be supra-market control because the free market itself cannot handle many things (including externalities), or in its laissez faire clothing, insists that it somehow magically will be no problem if it’s left completely alone.
But the free market is still the free market in both views. And it still cannot deal with corruption, since there’s no way to correct it in a large market, since there’s no power in the free market to do so.
The collusion won’t be between the thousands of independents, it’ll be in the attempts of middle men to insert themselves. It’ll be in the biggest suppliers trying to take over the grid and own it (see AT&T or any cable company going into internet, or indeed ISPs going into cable…).
The hundreds of thousands of individuals selling their power won’t have the tools to make the educated choice because of corruption, and since the market won’t fix what it can’t see (remember, the scores of big players may see the problem, but they have the manpower and knowledge to avoid it, the common man won’t have either, but won’t even know it’s as big a problem as it is, since they only interact with a small section of the market), so government will still have to work to break down information barriers, break up cliques and prosecute both anti-trust and fraud.
laissez faire doctrine would insist that government should not do any of that, and that any that turns up is automatically insisted to be BECAUSE of government interference.
But they too operate the free market.
They just insist for dogmatic reasons of belief and unsupported faith that government should do nothing about it.
Of course some, most or maybe all of them know that it’s hogwash and merely want, like many libertarians, the power do be unrestricted themselves, not an uncoerced society free to act as they will.
And they, because they use the free market are why those who accept that no free market can deal with some things and that government must involve itself in weeding out and compelling freedom in the market to keep it free are tarred with the same brush.
My use of free market was 100% correct and accurate. Laissez faire is an add-on to control the free market, though in the nihilistic sense that there should be no control or compensation of corrupting influence.
This might be the moment for another of those periodic reminders not to confuse the domestic sector with the electricity market as a whole. Roughly speaking, domestic demand is ~30% of the total market, so it is important to keep things in perspective.
What happens in terms of domestic efficiency and storage and rooftop SPV is all good, of course, but it doesn’t by itself lead to the necessary pace and depth of decarbonisation required to avoid severe climate impacts.
The danger of blurring the distinction between the domestic sector and the market as a whole is complacency. One might begin to imagine that decarbonisation on the necessary scale is self-propelling and even a bit easy. This provides politicians now and in the future with a perfect opportunity to mouth platitudes and do nothing.
“Roughly speaking, domestic demand is ~30% of the total market,”
Remember when you were saying about all the heating and lighting and transport?
“but it doesn’t by itself lead to …”
Nobody other than you says otherwise. But your stuff about commuter drives is 100% solved (well 99% ish if you insist) with home solar.
“One might begin to imagine that decarbonisation on the necessary scale is self-propelling and even a bit easy”
You might. Sane people, not so much.
You pretend that there are these problems AS IF THEY WERE UNIQUE TO RENEWABLES.
They are not.
They are problems *we have today*.
What happened when both Didcot AND Sizewell went offline for a good several months?
I’ll tell you what didn’t happen: nobody then went shouting about how the current grid system was broken because of silly people thinking nukes and coal were the answer.
What DID happen is the industries who fucked up blamed renewables for it, because they thought that people weren’t buying replacement nuke and coal power for these events.
What we’re doing is making your alarmist claims and clamour properly aligned with reality, where these problems are already ones we have and ones we will have whatever solution we have, and whose answers are already there, without anyone crying about how hard it all would be to implement the current system.
“This provides politicians now and in the future with a perfect opportunity to mouth platitudes and do nothing.”
No, shouting about how things will be too hard if we change gives them an excuse.
Denial the problem exists gives them an excuse.
And corruption from market leaders gives them reason to find one.
Pretending that these problems are unique to wind and solar gives them excuses to fund big expensive projects that will have huge companies running it who will have plenty of non-voting directorship jobs for anyone with the “wisdom” to help them make more cash. All the while pointing to the “problems” with wind and solar, and eliding the fact that they exist for all methods just as validly, to excuse them waiting until “the more inclusive moderate position” of wasting money on white elephants for the pork produces something better.
The situation is dire enough with enough wasted time so far that we don’t have a choice, and as we build more and more renewables in different places we will find how much these problems exist, and the ways that will solve them, and the fall-back when all actions that the market will let you undertake are, because one-in-a-million chances MIGHT crop up, still possibly insufficient to the task.
You know, like a massive fire at Didcot.
Or Fukushima.
They happened, and nobody was going to build a 100% replacement to keep for all that time mothballed just in case it fucked up, but they did fuck up and stop.
What did we do?
We dealt with it, even if badly, because it just wasn’t feasible to plan for a backup for the remote chances, and even if it’s not the best solution, life will still go on, and we’ll manage the crisis as we have to manage every other one that turns up.
Your fearmongering merely gives yet more ammo to pause doing anything for those who would prefer to let someone else carry the can.
Also I take it that the existence of all this grid storage is invalid because it’s a homeowner car batteries, right?
Or does solving the energy problems mean energy problems are being solved, no matter which arbitrary boundaries it falls in? Most would agree to that, but you seem to want to demarcate off certain areas for “not confusion” because of some ephemeral worry that delay will result if we stop worrying about what will go wrong and start doing something then find out what arises.
>domestic demand is ~30% of the total market
The discussion is focused on the US, so now domestic demand is about 5% of the global market, and the US is about 15% of global.
No. Link and full quote please.
*What* ‘fearmongering’?
Pointing out that people confuse the domestic sector with the whole market isn’t ‘fearmongering’. Pointing out that improvements in efficiency, storage and personal generation in the domestic sector fall a very long way short of decarbonising the electricity market isn’t ‘fearmongering’.
You are *such* a troll.
“No.”
Ah, so you’re a moron, a dumbass, or a liar.
Well done.
“*What* ‘fearmongering’?”
Yeah, more moronic denial.
Ever wonder why some call you denier?
Oooh, ooh, I know, what will you do if I show you your words? Will you accept the charge and fuck off forever or will you weasel out after I’ve done work, hmmm?
Come on, give me some pay for the work done you want to be done to punish me for not obeying your exhortations and ridiculous rhetoric.
Wow,
“car batteries”
Tesla is selling house batteries and “grid” batteries specifically designed for time-of-day load shifting.
The larger ones sound like they would take care of much of the commercial load that is supposedly a “problem” in the evening. Walmart has vast amounts of surface area, on the roof and in the parking lots, that could be covered with solar panels, and to locate the battery assembly. And that’s another large chunk of CO2 that can be eliminated.
I was wondering if you had noticed a rather strange thing about how this conversation has gone:
I jumped in originally to chide you and BBD for having the same old nuclear v renewables debate, and offered my “let the market decide” approach.
But now I have, multiple times, said that nuclear was an option for industrial users with 24/7 process applications. Have you noticed that not one of the nuclear advocates has jumped in to applaud that?
Somehow, the great defenders of nuclear have stopped liking it so much when it is properly matched with a compatible load, perhaps located where there would be less controversy. Huh!
Almost makes one think that it really isn’t what you describe as nuke-fluffing, but delay-delay-delay. Just sayin’.
No, Greg doesn’t accept nuke fluffing, so they don’t do it because of that is just as supported.
That’s because Wow goes so absolutely batshit at the mention of the n-word that it is easier to discuss renewables-only approaches to decarbonisation.
And you are still locked in the domestic demand bubble and ignoring the marginal effect of domestic generation and storage on total market demand.
That’s wow, zebra. *He* has that argument with an imaginary version of me that exists only in his head. I have pointed this out to you before.
I know it is very difficult to have a conversation with a lunatic in the room roaring and flinging shit, but even so, I would hope you appreciate the difference between my position (use everything) and wow’s (rabidly anti-nuclear).
“That’s because Wow goes so absolutely batshit at the mention of the n-word”
Yeah, that’s yet more of your insanity talking, dumbass.
“That’s wow, zebra. *He* ”
“He”? Again, why do you say “he”?
“has that argument with an imaginary version of me ”
Nope, I’ve got the one with the real you. Your insanity, however, cannot visit the real world when it comes to nukes. You just cannot think at all when it comes to that. Your brain dribbles off for a hangover cure while you rabidly shout and scream about how bad it will be if we use renewables, yet ignore that your alarmism is the scenario we have to see every week with the current and previous energy systems.
Because, sans ability to argue logic, you have to scare the shit out of people who dare think that maybe it can be 100% renewables.
You just, for some insane reason, can’t handle the idea of a 100% renewable future.
“I know it is very difficult to have a conversation with a lunatic in the room roaring and flinging shit,”
Yes, we have to keep ducking the crap you fling.
Do you wish to be referred to as ‘she’ in future, Wow? I will, of course, do as you wish.
That is not an answer to the question.
You love avoiding answering, don’t you, dumbass?
Why did you say “He”?
“Do you wish to be referred to as ‘she’ in future”
Nothing to do with what I wish, only with what motivates you to assign a gender without evidence.
Wow
Because you are so aggressive.
Do you wish to be referred to as he or she in future?
So you presume male because they’re strong or not female because they’re meek?
Women are meek? Who told you that?
The reason I assumed that you are a bloke is because you act like one. And you know it, so stop pissing around.
Still not an answer, dumbass.
So you presume male because they’re strong or not female because they’re meek?
Or is it that you’re taking the first option? Because you gave that as your “reason”, but this needs checking to see if you weren’t just blowing smoke again. Or lying. You do that.
“because you act like one.”
So women aren’t agressive, then?
I know dean claimed it was ignorance of statistics by me, when he really meant social science, but women aren’t as aggressive is another point that signifies you are male.
Hey, don’t sell yourself short, “mike”, you’re ignorant about a lot of things.
Remember, you almost certainly have more than the average number of legs, and eyes and even fingers and toes!
The thing about questioning why people make the presumption about gender when there’s neither need nor evidence for it is that they so very rarely have any explanation for it, indicating at the very least that even they don’t look at their own thought processes (such as they are) and actively refrain from doing so.
I’ve used both evidence based assertions for the conclusion AND also used one of probably several “I have no evidence” claims for it, but nobody else ever seems to manage to even bring up an “I have no evidence” and an open and self-regarding assessment of what it meant by presuming the gender. It’s all been highly defensive and made as if there were some imperative to their assumption, rather than just plain assumption.
People tend to hold to the idea that they are rational and don’t question it anywhere near enough. Meanwhile make the assumption others are IRrational.
Much like the idea of free well. As one author put it, when they see someone else do something unexpected, they go “Frank is acting out of character”, and not “Frank is exercising his free will today!”. They assume themselves free will but want others to be automata and predictable.
Women have more legs than average.
So if you think it likely I have more than the average number of legs, then you will conclude I’m female?
The problem of your conversion to statistical likelyhood (completely at odds with your climate denial, by the way, which rather supports the contention that your stats ref is merely a facade behind which your misogyny hides) is that you propose “Is” from “likely”. Moreover, it’s just the same bullshit that early white assholes made the assumption that they were superior to blacks, by appealing to some statistical average that they didn’t even bother to check and brought “is” from “might be”. They looked at the average lifespan, saw they had a longer one and then assumed they were better.
They looked at the brain case size, then looked at ALL AFRICAN HUMANS, which are far FAR more varied than out-of-africa humans genetically, and concluded that they were dumber because their brain could not be as large on average.
They were abusing stats and not caring because they WANTED to believe their racism was scientifically sound rather than their own blind prejudice.
You have made no statistical analysis. Not of the amount of aggression from me, not of the amount of aggression the spectrum of men have, and compared it to the results for a population of women, not made any calculation as to the likelihood, then compared that to the number of women who you have encountered.
If it’s 5% possible and you’ve talked to more than 20 women, there’s one who is as “aggressive” as the one you proclaim me to be.
But remember too that this assertion “aggressive” is merely a paint job on what you don’t want to accept and wish to paint to conform to what you’d like to be there.
“No you’re talking bollocks” is refutation, not aggression, dumbasses.
>If it’s 5% possible and you’ve talked to more than 20 women, there’s one who is as “aggressive” as the one you proclaim me to be.
And 19 who are not…
>So if you think it likely I have more than the average number of legs, then you will conclude I’m female?
If there’s a big difference between men and women on that score, then sure. But of course there is no such difference, except maybe on the less than average side.
“If there’s a big difference between men and women on that score”
If you don’t know whether there is or not, you have no evidence to back your assertion, despite it being the only claim in support of your assertion you have given.
Since you do not know if the stats support you and asked that question, then you made your statement out of ignorance and bigotry, not evidence.
>If you don’t know whether there is or not, you have no evidence to back your assertion,
This is a correct statement, since ‘if A then B’ is only wrong when A is true and B is false.
>Since you do not know if the stats support you
Wrong.
“This is a correct statement”
What a lame-ass way of saying “Yeah, I was wrong”.
“>Since you do not know if the stats support you
Wrong.”
WRONG.
Even you said that it was a correct statement “you have no evidence to back your assertion”
Fucking idiot.
No, I said your full statement was correct, and gave the reason. Learn the rules of logic.
Getting back to the topic, a brief review:
In the competitive market paradigm, we have the opportunity to best match the energy source to the end use.
Electrification of personal (and probably much commercial) transportation; batteries charged with low-price intermittent renewables.
Stationary electricity (residential and commercial) provided by renewables with on-site time-of-day-shifting battery storage.
Industrial applications requiring 24/7 electricity supplied by dedicated nuclear generation, whether large-scale or localized.
Reduction of consumption through more efficient technology, and further storage in the form of thermal energy for space conditioning.
These are the likely outcomes once the costs of CO2 are internalized and anti-competitive structures are eliminated.
And again, remember Greg’s admonition– the Nirvana Fallacy is a Fallacy.
To Zebra (#106),
“So, I guess the main question I would still have is what were your zero-output time periods? Days, weeks?”
The worst output time block for our system was during a winter storm. We had zero output from the system for 4 days. It took 3 days for the snow and ice to melt off the panels. The variability in output for our PV system, for representative months matching the seasons, is noted below. In the winter our output can be 1, or 2, kWh/day for a few days in a row.
January
Average kWh/month= 483
Standard Deviation= 113
Coefficient of Variation=23.5%
% demand from PV=37%
Capacity Factor(avg)= 12.5
April
Average kWh/month= 867
Standard Deviation= 69
Coefficient of Variation= 8%
% demand from PV= 82%
Capacity Factor(avg)= 22.3
July
Average kWh/month= 1029
Standard Deviation= 47
Coefficient of Variation=4.5%
% demand from PV=70%
Capacity Factor(avg)= 26.5
October
Average kWh/month= 760
Standard Deviation= 35
Coefficient of Variation= 5%
% demand from PV=50%
Capacity Factor(avg)=18.6
Our system was installed in the days before internet conductivity for inverters. The meter from our service provider is Smart in that it collects usage (kWh) into different time bins that match up to our TOU rate schedule, but it does not have conductivity (internet) either. I have daily records in written format. I transfer the data to an electronic file that I summarizes into monthly data.
Sorry for the really long delay in answering your question………….. There is a lot of daily data, binned into 24 intervals, available at the CASIO web link noted in an earlier comment. I used that data base a few months ago to get a feel if the utility scale PV generators in the state have a smaller hour variability (over at least 30 days) than the CSP facilities feeding the CA grid. We have a lot more utility scale PV spread throughout the state then CSP facilities which may be why CSP’s Coefficient of variation for any particular hours generation was much larger than the variation in output from the PV generation sites.
” It took 3 days for the snow and ice to melt off the panels”
Last winter there were several streets and even entire (OK, small, but still the entire village) out of power completely for as long as that because of winter storms taking out the electric lines.
So having even a worldwide grid and massive nuke or coal or gas providing “dependable” power doesn’t solve that problem of a few days out of power when there’s been a storm.
Mark,
Thanks, great info. Getting 37% during January is a nice example of why Nirvana Fallacy is a Fallacy.
That;s 37% of max, though, not 37% of demand.
And as I said before, with the current mix there’s no financial incentive to work to even out supply because it’s more profitable at the moment to steal the old systems’ lunch and sell peak power at peak price times than to supply what’s wanted.
Wow,
??
He said “37% of demand”.
He sized it to produce what he’d used in the summer, it’s the second post he made (IIRC, but you can pop back and see it),so, to an extent, yes, it’s not “max”, but the “maximum he’d bought to supply”.
The point is somewhat along the lines of what you’d ended on, regarding the perfection fallacy.
We don’t have a perfect one now.
My addition was that we won’t see the problems in what we currently see, since the system is built in the ecosystem we currently have, and not in one where it’s carbon free.
It’s why your idea of an open (as opposed to free, given the political implications of that term) market might work. It is probably why nukes *won’t* work, since they’re not able to adapt, even as a project, because of the timelines and the sunk costs at the beginning, which is IMO why BBD is so set against it being declared unworkable: nukes work if they’re backed up by a non-profit paradigm and/or government edict.
But an open market will, potentially, be able to move to either fill an emergent gap or avoid an opening pitfall. Kinda sucks to be the one who fell in where nobody knew there was a problem, mind, but that’s a societal thing to discuss outside energy production paradigms.
But go back and look at the figures.
Winter, half the power usage, half the “capacity factor”, but still gives “demand from PV” as half the summer.
It’s “demand from PV” compared to nominal spec, not usage. Else one of those figures at least is out by a factor of two.
I would presume it’s from the wording of his supplier and a lack of either thinking it through or not considering it as potentially confusing that leaves the wording as it is.
Or, possibly, that there is no mention of the demand of power he has for each month, in which case he looks to be using as much in winter as summer, which for his location shows he’s wastefully profligate and he can fix most of his problems by not throwing money away in wasted power.
It’s a perfect example of why you are going to need a bigger grid.
And you are *still* muddling up the domestic sector with the total market. This is 37% of 30%, not 37% of 100%.
But go on wittering on about supposed Nirvana fallacies and pretending that there is no difference between necessary and sufficient.
See earlier post, BBD. Read it first before making such stupid claims. Because if you haven’t read them, the post you just did wasn’t stupid, just uninformed, but if you had read it, then that was definitely stupid.
We currently need a grid that supplies twice the power we use, because we only produce 50-ish percent of the capability. And renewables are cheaper, so even if you have to build more MW (which we don’t, at least it’s not provably necessary, merely a possible requirement), it will still be cheaper to build and run than other ideas.
“This is 37% of 30%,”
That is 37% of what was built up to provide. And with 12-year-old tech, in a process that is still improving efficiency at Moore’s Law rates.
Moreover, that’s 37% of a system built not to be a sole replacement, for a person who either got that figure wrong (see my previous post, remember) or is dumping a shitload of unnecessary power out, therefore could dump that 37% to 74% no problem.
Not forgetting that ice on his roof from a storm is equivalent to a downed line or fubar’d station transformer, both of which have seen streets and even whole areas without power for days.
Ask the USians in Tornado Ally what that feels like. Local generation there is done because it’s needed, not because they’re wanting to replace their power use.
“But go on wittering on about supposed Nirvana fallacies ”
You’re doing it right there, dumbass.
“Oh, it’s not perfect, so it’s really really BAAAAADDDD!!!!!”.
Wow, the fuckwit’s fuckwit.
Buddy, bloody dumbass.
Bullshit, Bollocks and Denial.
So. Germany. 85% power production from renwables. Near 20 years earlier than planned.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/11/229217/germany-sets-new-national-record-with-85-percent-of-its-electricity-sourced-from-renewables
Apparently that 20% figure that was bandied about, what, 2011? thereabouts anyway, for safe renewable penetration looks to have been a *tad* off.
And when its dark / winter? And low wind conditions?
Where does the energy come from then?
A total alternative reserve equal to the total national demand.
What might provide such a reserve? You are adamant that no backup is required, so presumably, unicorn farts.
These kinds of headlines are misleading and dangerous. They create an entirely false impression that there is some sort of meaningful energy transition actually underway.
Fake news for useful idiots.
BBD and Wow,
It appears that the German government would like to evaluate ways to improve the ability of their forecaster to match supply with demand:
RTE Day-ahead Load Forecasting Competition 2017:
http://blog.drhongtao.com/
….”In this context of increasing flexibility and market rule harmonisation at the European level, RTE wants to conduct a review of current forecasting methods and assess the performance of new dynamic and adaptive approaches brought by Data Science.
The first challenge will focus on the deterministic short-term forecast of national and 12 regional electricity demands, a second one will focus on a forecast with associated uncertainty.
RTE will launch its first international public challenge in Data Science mid-May, running till mid-July. The second challenge will take place during winter 2017-2018.”
I wonder if Dr. Hansen is following how RTE is doing. I’d like to know if he still feels the current approach to addressing things might be a bit off target:
http://energyskeptic.com/2013/james-hansen-says-belief-in-renewable-energy-same-as-believing-in-the-easter-bunny-or-tooth-fairy/
What about it?
Tell me, what % of energy was the renewable system currently built out supposed to handle?
Something under 40%.
Now, tell me, what happens when your nuke plant blows up?
What happens when your smokestack for the coal generator cracks and falls?
What happens when your transformer station is set aflame?
JAQing off really doesn’t do anything other than show desperation.
Oh, and Germany has night. And it has winter too.
So what happened was they managed just fine.
“These kinds of headlines are misleading and dangerous”
Nope. Unless you mean “leading away from the narrative I prefer” and “dangerous to my ideology”.
OK, so what does your text have to do with your link?
You DO know why appeal to authority is a fallacy, right? That anyone can be wrong and that saying “this person is an expert” is a shorthand for those who cannot work with the information that this expert had to hand to arrive at their conclusion that this issue HAS been looked at, but that if you can, you will and should always point to the data and information that led that expert to their conclusion, because it’s the validity of the data and its support or not for the conclusion that actually shows the conclusion is right or wrong.
Dr Wakefield is, or rather was, a real doctor.
His ability to discern the truth from the facts in evidence was 100% supported.
He lied and faked however.
Hence if your audience can handle the data, you show them the data. If they can’t, then your claim to mercury leading to autism based on Dr Wakefield’s career choice is an appeal to authority.
Of course, if he’d been right, the appeal would have been immaterial as to whether mercury causes autism. The appeal is, really, orthogonal to the claim’s veracity. It can only ever be used if you point to where that authority got THEIR data and information from. And then argument can ignore who said it, and move into what proves it.
Here’s what a blip in wind and solar looks like (this is the April 30 blip when German electricity generation peaked at 85% renewables between 1300 – 1500hrs.
And this is what a coal power blip looks like
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2014/oct/20/while-didcot-b-burned-renewable-energy-powered-on
And one power station is so big that the HVDC links need to be massively upgraded so that we can cope with its intermittency.
Strange how this is not a problem for the fluffers….
No, I meant what I said. Energy industry misinformation is dangerous whenever it is used to lull the public into believing that:
a/ GW isn’t really a problem
or:
b/ It’s all going to be okay because renewables
But it’s all energy industry misinformation and it’s all pernicious. Useful idiots on both sides dance to their respective pipers. All will end up in the river in due course.
Also is your complaint that they saved so much cost of unburnt fuel? Is not burning coal a problem?
“No, I meant what I said. ”
OK, so what you said was intentionally meaningless.
“b/ It’s all going to be okay because renewables”
Ah, that would be the same number of people who are leftists and proclaim we need a NWO to control the planet, as many deniers proclaim.
I.e. nobody.
“These kinds of headlines are misleading”
So what was misleading???? Be specific and back it up with reality, not your imaginings.
Classic useful idiocy from Carrington, who tries on a feeble false equivalence between a fire at a single power station and the national-scale variability in wind during anticyclonic conditions or solar during night / widespread cloud / winter. It’s just stupid. Yet it gets published, along with the crap by deniers in the right wing press. It’s all misinformation.
– It was the May Day holiday long weekend: industrial demand was unusually low.
– It was a blip – a day – when unusually windy and sunny weather coincided.
– Electricity is not total primary energy and it’s not okay to blur that distinction.
You don’t understand this stuff well enough to argue about it Wow.
Ah, classic denial form nuke fluffer. Can’t argue the case, argues the speaker.
So useful, that fluffer. Earns every penny he does!
“– It was the May Day holiday long weekend:”
So what is misleading? The headline said they got 85% from renewables. Whether it was May day or not. The headline didn’t say “On a heavy load day…”.
Remember, I asked for reality, not your imaginations.
“– It was a blip – a day ”
So what is misleading? They got 85%. The headline didn’t say “For a full year!”
I want reality, not what you imagined.
“– Electricity is not total primary energy ”
So where did the headline say all total primary energy? And how does running a solar panel produce Natural gas for burning????
I wanted reality, not your shibboleth imagingings.
What was misleading?
Is it not misleading to claim that 85% of demand is misleading?
Is it not misleading to complain that there are winters and nights when the discussion is about how much electricity was produced compare to the demand?
Is it not misleading to complain about things that were not claimed in the goddamned report itself???
Is it not misleading to harp on about intermittency when every source is intermittent?
Is it not misleading to complain about Carrington for being himself and ignoring that Didcot DID go titsup and produce NO POWER while the renewables continued going? The facts wouldn’t change if it were Coco the Clown or even Trumpanzee saying it.
Is it not misleading to claim it’s misleading when you have to pretend things not there to be misled about?
Is it not misleading to complain about misleading people when you’re busy doing just that?
So to protect against another didcot burning down, we have to build two. And admit to building two of everything in case that one thing burns down. And in case we can’t get coal, we have to plant enough trees that we can use charcoal from the trees permanently, else we would have potentially a lack of power from coal imports being blocked.
And to hold up against uranium being unavailable, we have to relocate the UK to some place with a lot of uranium resources we can mine for the next 10,000 years, because we might be blockaded from having nuclear fuel!
Indeed if we forested enough to supply our energy needs through charcoal
a) it’s carbon neutral
b) the mass of trees would draw down some of the carbon
Meaning it’s far better to do that than bother with nuclear energy, because we can be embargoed imports but we can’t be embargoed the trees growing on our land.
So we find our perfect BBD solution: Charcoal power!
The Carrington lie again, despite debunking just upthread. You aren’t even a useful idiot.
What lie? Are you saying Carrington doesn’t exist? Or that Didcot never was on fire????
WHAT debunking? Debunking WHAT? EVERY SOURCE IS INTERMITTENT.
You’re not even a dumbass. Dumbasses are looking at you all ;-^ and wondering what is wrong with your head.
Oooh! Oooh! I think I got it, you think that being a power station that produces power by burning stuff, that when it was on fire it was producing EVEN MORE POWAH!
Amirite?
Hey, when we run out of gas because Russia turns off the supply to Europe, what do you do, hmm?
What do you do when there’s a huge lull in the weather, it’s night time, we have no gas supply? Have you built up enough extra nuke power to cover all that loss? If not, then you have to include in the cost of nuke power the cost of supplying 100% of total primary power production entirely by nukes with over-build!
But what happens when you discover a design flaw in the station? You therefore need to build an entire second replication of that overbuilt programme with a completey different design in the
(fucking touch sensitive laptop mouse equivalent)… You therefore need to build an entire second replication of that overbuilt programme with a completely different design in the hope that the design flaw is not common to both designs! But what if it IS in both!?!?!?! OMG! We need four, completely new designs of enough nuke power to supply all primary production, else BBD will insist it is misleading!!!!
Of course, coal power will also need to be replicated 400% of maximum demand in three different designs in case we find that imports of uranium are blocked.
We wouldn’t want to be “misleading” BBD, would we!
Oh, and NOBODY say anything about whether anything we do to mitigate or counter AGW or CO2 levels because it would be misleading to imply that there is no problem because we’ve found a way to stop it. m’kay. That’s just misleading the poor retard.
Of course not. But it was you who brought up the misleading news splash about ‘85%’ blah. So, look at the mirror instead of berating me. Ditto on parroting Carrington’s nonsense. Neophyte / useful idiot errors both.
“But it was you who brought up the misleading news splash about ‘85%’ ”
But you haven’t actually found anything misleading about it. You’ve imagined what you want to whine about. You’re the one misleading people, dumbass.
“Ditto on parroting Carrington’s nonsense.”
Ah, so you DO claim that Didcot never burned down!
Welp, you’re a lying sack of dick-covers, then dumdum.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-35641766
Oooh, but maybe the BBC is ALSO misleading people!!!!!
THEY’RE ALL IN ON THE CONSPIRACY!!!!!111!!!!ONEONE!!1!!
INCLUDING the owners!
Oh, and so as not to mislead anyone, care to show us a month where there was zero wind across the entire UK, with 8 Octas of cloud cover?
You wouldn’t want to compare a local, temporary weather event changing a small area’s output slightly with a nationwide synoptic scale long term failure, would you?
Heck, I’ll let you off and allow you to pick another country. How about USA?
A good energy storage method is to use compressed air to run gas turbines.
Normally gas turbines use a substantial fraction of the power they produce to compress air to operate the turbine. The compressed air is heated by burning natural gas, then the hot air plus combustion products are expanded, and the net power (expansion power minus compression power) is used to generate electricity.
It is a relatively minor modification to run compressors with electricity and store that compressed air underground and then use that compressed air during periods of peak energy demand. This is a way to shift off-peak power to peak power. There are some losses, but the price differential between peak and off-peak are so large that it would be worth doing.
Those natural gas powered turbines can also be made carbon-free by sequestering the CO2 they produce.
This would be a lot cheaper and more effective than the “moving rocks uphill idea” (which is going to be too expensive).
Demand for impossible (and irrelevant) standard of proof.
We were talking about Germany, which is bigger than the UK, and the data are available. Here’s Sunday 15 Jan – Sunday 22 Jan this year.
Solar is at its seasonal low end, but Mon Tue Wed were very low so cloudy over most of Germany. A bit less cloud on Thurs, Fri, and a bit less on Sat, Sun but solar low all week.
Wind – very low, all week.
You can see coal and gas doing the heavy lifting, with pumped hydro for peaking. But the coal and gas have to go. According to you we aren’t allowed backup and we aren’t allowed HVDC interconnections.
So, what next?
“Demand for impossible ”
Yes, that, for any sane human intellect, would have been obvious as to why I asked. To point out that you demand impossible perfection or you’ll whinge like holy shit that some corner case is imperfect, therefore misleading to even discuss the overall process.
But I get it, you’re not a sane human.
Much like “dick” and his “CO2 sensitivity is only measured in doublings from 280ppm!!
“We were talking about Germany,”
YOU were not in 162
But I comprehend: NOOOOO! LOOK! SQUIRREL!!!!
All you have left with your arse in tatters.
“We were talking about Germany, which is bigger than the UK, and the data are available. ”
Ah, so misleading. Talking about data as if it proves the headline wrong when it shows the headline was correct and factually accurate.
So sad. So misleading of you dumdum.
None of that sad and pathetic bullshit disavows the FACT that Germany got 85% of its electrical power from renewables as reported here:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/11/229217/germany-sets-new-national-record-with-85-percent-of-its-electricity-sourced-from-renewables
Dang, that reality just won’t play ball with your insanity bubble,will it, bubbles.
No, the fact it was sized to cover a much smaller fraction of demand is, to you, a failure because it doesn’t cover a much higher than designed load for all time.
Tell us the last time any “conventional” power supply supplied more than twice the rated load for any time at all.
And explain why, if doing so with renewables for any time at all is a failure, why conventional power sources aren’t a worse failure?
Dai, we already have GW of backup. In other power stations and sources that are left untapped.
Why must they be scrapped or not used in a totally renewable future?
And if the use of non-renewable for the rare occasion where there’s insufficient supply to demand, why isn’t the cost of renewables added to the cost of conventional systems when the renewables are used to shore up “conventional” sources when they flatline?
Ignore the data. Avoid the question. Rant on.
” According to you we aren’t allowed backup ”
Oh dear, more hallucinatory babbling from the local dumbass.
According to you only renewables have problems, all other sources of power are perfect.
And before you whine and whinge and demand I show where you said that, look above at the quote of you I made, you ignorant fucknut.
Ignore the data, ignore the facts, ignore the reality, just keep complaining about imaginary problems and claims, dumbass.
Oh, and what’s this “we” bit, dumdum?
Weren’t WE talking about GERMANY????
We’re not germans.
Oh, dear, your squirrel is nailed to the tree for all to see as stuffed.
Rebuttal of “We’re talking about X” when you yourself will include Non-X in your talking points is no rebuttal but blatantly obvious distraction tactics.
Nope, you made that up.
Well, you were exactly as incompetent as I suspected, dumdum.
Shall we count what you made up, dumdum?
“the headline is misleading”
“Carrington is wrong about Didcot catching fire”
“according to [me] we aren’t allowed backup”
“WE were talking about GERMANY”
And others that really don’t need adding to the list. It’s long enough to prove the point.
You are a useless idiot.
Usain Bolt does not set new world record for the 100m, says BBD! “Misleading because he walked to the starting line” claims internet idiot!
Dumdum, if we take all your gloomongering as valid, so what?
If the UK is open to a remote risk of being becalmed by a nationwide lack of all wind power for weeks in midwinter, so what? Instead of content free and effectless whining, what then?
It’s not a remote risk – like Germany, it happens once or twice a year.
As for what then? that was what I asked you. Given your antipathy to backup and HVDC interconnectors.
So?
BBD, how much value do you think there is in having hybrid cars and electrics used as grid storage, to give back to the grid?
“It’s not a remote risk”
So what? If it happens every year, so what?
“As for what then? that was what I asked you.”
That’s what I’m asking YOU. So what?
We’ll cope is what I say. I’ve said it MANY times before. You never fucking listened, preferring to shout and scream at imaginary problems instead.
What do you say? If it happens, so what?
” Given your antipathy to backup and HVDC interconnectors. ”
Oh, another claim you made up, dumdum.
And completely ignorant of the question. So what? Are you saying we use the HVDC connection to Europe?
I’ve said that. Yet here you are, still complaining.
Dumdum, if we don’t have generation capacity to supply enough power, we won’t have sufficient power.
So I’ve answered it.
So what?
#60
“When you plug in your Volt in your garage, … ”
The sheer normality that Americans consider their wealth
with never ceases to surprise. I think thats part of the energy
issue.
A bloody house especially made for a bloody motorcar!!!
Thats some high level living right there.
Maybe if you all toned down the living like a millionaire thing a
bit.
Well, currently you have “your” car and you pay for “your petrol” so you don’t want “your stuff” used by someone else, therefore you put it in a locked room so people can’t use your car or take your petrol.
But if we have widespread EV charging and the cost of your commute charge is paid for by making your EV available when not driven for the grid power system, then it’s not “your electricity” you’re using, so no need to keep it locked away and only using “your” electricity.
And when they’re mostly self-driving cars, why would you have a car at all?
And if you need a longer range, you rent a car. Or take public transport.
#195
“But if we have widespread EV charging”
Mmmm yes. I was reading that India has
plans to push this in a very big way. And
quickly.
#105 MikeN
Buys you about 12 hours. So massively over-hyped and misrepresented as a hedge against more than brief periods of low W&S output when W&S are major components of the energy mix.
You spent an entire, very long thread backing up the idiot zebra against me on exactly this point.
So either you are a brazen liar (and you are, and we know it from past experience) or you are so utterly confused you don’t even know what you are arguing for and against. Or maybe a bit of both.
You get a national-scale blackout that lasts for several days.
“Buys you about 12 hours.”
So?
“You spent an entire, very long thread backing up the idiot zebra against me on exactly this point.”
And yet another claim you made up, dumdum.
“You get a national-scale blackout that lasts for several days.”
So?
All I’m hearing is you complaining.
Got anything else?
Have you saying we’ll have blackouts if we don’t generate enough electricity to meet demand.
OK.
So what?
Lying again. You will say anything at all. It’s sickening.
How can anyone be this stupid?
It’s a national catastrophe. Everything stops working. Industrial output ceases. Electrified transport cannot charge so nobody can travel anywhere except on foot. Backup generators run out of fuel. People die.
Talk is cheap.
You are a shameless liar. You *always* argue that there is no need for backup for renewables. And now, confronted with your own idiocy, you start lying, as you always do when cornered.
The electorate will NEVER forgive this. Bigger energy bills and disastrous national blackouts are political toxin. If you want to make absolutely sure that renewable are a dead end and we end up with gas and nuclear, that is the attitude to take.
“Lying again.”
Another claim you made up, dumdum.
“It’s a national catastrophe.”
OK, so a nation wide blackout is a catastrophe.
So what? All I see is you complaining still.
“Everything stops working. Industrial output ceases. ”
Well, you’ve not demonstrated that, but why bother so far. OK, when we have a nationwide blackout, everything stops working, and industrial output ceases.
So what?
“Talk is cheap. ”
And?
“You *always* argue that there is no need for backup for renewables”
Oh dear, we have yet another made up claim from you dumdum.
So we still have you telling us that if we don’t produce enough energy to meet demand, we will have blackouts and they are bad.
So?
“The electorate will NEVER forgive this. ”
And so what?
1. Power generation may be insufficient to demand
2. If that happens, we will have blackouts
3. Blackouts are bad
4. Electorates will never forgive that happening
Therefore?
BBD, I think the deal with the electric car storage, is that they shift production from peak to non peak. I always felt it was a religious zeal than any real value. It is one thing to promote electric cars, but I didn’t get why people are so excited about selling back to the grid.
“Mike”, why are you against selling electricity?
The idea is that they provide a storage mechanism for excess renewables generation (above demand) which can ‘later’ be fed back into the grid when renewables generation is lower than demand. The obvious application is solar. It all works fine until you get a week like 15 – 22 Jan 2017 in Germany when both wind and solar output is extremely low. Then you end up with a national fleet of EVs with flat batteries and no vehicle-to-grid reserve either.
You remove the policy space for renewables expansion. It’s dead in the water, overnight.
BBD,
Thanks for keeping the lights on.
It sounds like you have read a few of Carl Sagans works-
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/12/19/carl-sagans-two-warnings-for-humanity-in-his-very-last-interview-you-might-want-to-hear-this/
“when both wind and solar output is extremely low”
And demand low too.
“Then you end up with a national fleet of EVs with flat batteries and no vehicle-to-grid reserve either.”
But That never happened in Germany 15-22 Jan 2017. They didn’t have a national fleet of EVs with flat batteries and no vehicle to grid reserve. The carried on without a qualm.
So clearly your claim is not one of reality.
Again.
Nope, your standard rant is that there’s no need to back up renewables. You want me to produce a long list of quotes as I have done in the past when you lie like this?
Yes, Wow. Well done!
“You remove the policy space for renewables expansion.”
So your suggestion is that if there can be blackouts, we must abandon any use of that power source.
“It’s dead in the water, overnight.”
So that is your suggestion? We dump renewables overnight and scrap it all? Or just let it age and be removed?
“your standard rant is that there’s no need to back up renewables.”
And yet another made up claim from your dumdum.
“You want me to produce a long list of quotes”
Go ahead.
” as I have done in the past ”
Yet more made up claims from you, dumdum.
“when you lie like this?”
Goodness! Three made up claims in one sentence!
“Yes, Wow. Well done!”
OK, so what?
No, another of your standard mistakes that you keep repeating.
W&S typically flatline simultaneously in winter in N Europe – when demand is highest.
I recall correcting you on this several times in the past.
” And demand low too.
No,”
Yes.
“another of your standard mistakes that you keep repeating.”
And another claim from you you made up.
“W&S typically flatline simultaneously in winter in N Europe – when demand is highest.”
So you keep saying. Has nothing to do with 15-22nd Jan 2017 in Germany.
“I recall correcting you on this several times in the past.”
Well, yes, your hallucinatory recollections are well noted, dumdum.
But, so far we have your idea is that we drop renewables overnight.
Right. What next?
WHAT?!
You nutter. There’s no national EV fleet YET in Germany. No national VtG infrastructure YET in Germany.
Lunatic.
No, nutter. That’s what will happen if lunatics like you get your way and renewables are built out without adequate hedge against intermittency.
Enough of this madness. It’s Saturday afternoon FFS.
“There’s no national EV fleet YET in Germany. ”
So you admit your claim that there would be was based on fiction, dumdum. Yet somehow I’m the nutter?!??!?
OK, so you’ve imagined that the fleet that never existed is out of power at a time that actually happened. I remain unimpressed at the idea of a nonexistent fleet being out of power, since it was always out of power. And existence.
So, we have from you
1. Power generation may be insufficient to demand
2. If that happens, we will have blackouts
3. Blackouts are bad
4. Electorates will never forgive that happening
5. Blackouts will happen if there’s not enough storage.
Therefore?
“That’s what will happen if lunatics like you get your way”
No, I asked YOU: So what?
I didn’t ask you to answer FOR me.
“lunatic.”
And another empty and false claim from you dumdum.
Unless you were signing off…?
But, hey, maybe this works on dumdum here.
Lunatics like you are why nuke fluffing has gotten nowhere and all the arguments you and your ilk make against renewables is the maniac frothing of the eminently ignorable lunatic fringe and serves only to show how vacant and ignorant nuke fluffers like you are.
We have from you:
1. Power generation may be insufficient to demand
2. If that happens, we will have blackouts
3. Blackouts are bad
4. Electorates will never forgive that happening
5. Blackouts will happen if there’s not enough storage.
Which so far is all Captain Obvious stuff.
You’ve also tried to claim that people will run to nuke and gas power. Except
1) Power generation may be insufficient to supply the demand
2) They will have blackouts.
3) Blackouts are bad.
4) Electorate will never forgive this
5) Blackouts will happen if there’s not enough storage
So they will run to…? Coal? But if that is insufficient to demand…….
So they will run to…? And when that has blackouts, where next?
Yup, total insanity.
W&S output was *extremely* low all the week of 15 – 22nd Jan in Germany. This is a perfect example of W&S dropping out for days at a time during… N European winter. Just. Like. I. Said.
Wow, you have completely lost the plot. And I do mean completely.
Very large scale investment in HVDC grid interconnections and massive utility-scale storage (which may not even be possible given cost, technology and engineering constraints). No more rubbish about ; ‘cheap’ renewables or fantasy free market energy transitions painlessly wafted in by invisible hands. No more complacency. No more lies.
The challenges posed by the necessary energy transition are staggering, humbling and may not be surmountable. Tell the public the truth or store up the most ruinous, toxic political blowback you can imagine when all the puffery and rhetoric fall flat and the lights go out.
“Yup, total insanity. ”
So stop being nuts, then.
“W&S output was *extremely* low all the week of 15 – 22nd Jan in Germany. ”
Yes.
“This is a perfect example of W&S dropping out for days at a time during… N European winter. Just. Like. I. Said. ”
Nope, you said:
What W&S typically do and when demand is typically highest does NOT mean “No” to “and demand low”.
But you cannot comprehend logic, can you dumdum.
“Wow, you have completely lost the plot. And I do mean completely.”
Yes, because you keep bleating on in a neverending cascade of avoidance.
Try being coherent.
You’ll be followed then.
“Very large scale investment in HVDC grid interconnections and massive utility-scale storage ”
We already have that. So we’re done?
“which may not even be possible given cost, technology and engineering constraints”
Uh, we already have that. Seems to be no problem with historical costs, technology and engineering constraints.
“No more rubbish about ; ‘cheap’ renewables”
Renewables ARE cheap, though.
That’s a fact.
They’re cheaper than conventional. Coal is more expensive than either if you add the externalities of coal into the cost.
And both require very large investment in HVDC (it’s why we have it) and massive utility-scale storage (which is why we have that too).
“Tell the public the truth”
WHAT truth???? Not lied once.
Unlike you, with your massive lies of omission and avoidance.
“the lights go out.”
That’s never happened any other time the lights went out.
You DO know we have massive blackouts, right? Already.
“Thanks for keeping the lights on. ”
How? The lights may be “on” in there, but there’s nobody home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_Reserve_Service
VERY misleading of you to pretend that this doesn’t exist.
How about this elsewhere in the world?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_projects
Pretending that there needs to be this new stuff built up is just one of the many reasons why your insanity is laughably moronic, dumdum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_outages
Care to tell us all where people ran to when the lights went off, dumdum?
For your whining and whinging and constant complaining about others lying because they’re not agreeing with your insane dribblings you really should avoid fucking lying to people, you retard.
All it does is prime people to ignore your raving lunacy even if you happened on some wild and whacky coincidence be right.
And who knew (obviously not you, you trump of the electrical argument) that power would be expensive to build:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-UK-National-Grid-updates-plans-for-new-nuclear-plants-25101601.html
“Oh noes, building stuff is expensive!!!!!!”.
You retard.
Yet still we get back to this fact: Renewables penetrated stably far further into the actual generation characteristcs of a grid and far faster than the moronic herds of nuke fluffers like dumdum here thought.
Which is why THIS link:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/11/229217/germany-sets-new-national-record-with-85-percent-of-its-electricity-sourced-from-renewables
got the shitstorming baboon so riled up. His fave Nuke and Gas aren’t winning, so he has to drag every other option into the same boat, even if it doesn’t damn well go in there.
And we’re all still waiting on those quotes you were to supply, dumdum.
And, hey, if germany were so badly off for power, why the hell was there exports in Jan, dumdum?
Misleading to claim that Germany is in trouble with wind and solar when there’s exports going on. Misleading to whine and whinge and bitch and moan about wind and solar when the graph you supplied indicates that the renewables were doing fine producing power. Misleading to complain about wind and solar as if they were the only renewables.
But that’s how you fluff for the nuke industry, isn’t it, dumdum.
Lie about renewables to fit your agenda of denial of a reality you don’t wish to confront.
Like the one about W&S being low 15-22nd Jan in Germany:
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?year=2017&source=all-sources&week=3
Click off Oil, Coal, Uranium, Gas. About 35% of demand supplied by renewables.
And it’s not even designed to do that yet.
W&S daytime generation peaks were between ~5GW – 12GW that week. Weekday peak total was ~80GW.
So W&S was contributing between 6% and 15%, not 35%.
Aaand you’re still misleading, dumdum.
“So W&S was contributing between 6% and 15%, not 35%.”
Wrong.
Exports were 2-10GW. Take that off the 60-80GW average. Renewables produced 12-24GW.
So again you’re a lying toerag on a subject you desperately need renewables to be shit or your love for nuke and gas power will remain buried.
AAaaaaawww.
So, renwewables were producing about 35%. Not 6% not 15%.
Oh, you could put “about 30” if you like. Still a long way higher than your claim of no more than 15.
When?
Wind and solar, 15 – 22 Jan
Minimum W&S was 16/01 5.5GW at 12:00
Max W&S was 19/01 11.77 GW at 1:00
Your numbers: 12 – 24 GW
Data: 5.5 – 11.7GW
This is the problem.
” Renewables produced 12-24GW.
When?”
Jan 2017, dumbass, in Germany.
Too dumb to read?
This is the problem with you. You don’t know what you’re talking about, so you avoid talking about it.
So your problem is
a) Need HVDC.
– Already have HVDC
b) Need grid storage
– Already have grid storage
c) It will cost money
– Already costs money
d) Blackouts
– Already happen
e) No clue
– Can’t help. Sorry.
Tell us all what energy future doesn’t benefit from HVDC?
You got nothing, dumbass.
Tell us all what energy future doesn’t require grid storage?
You still got nothing, dumdum.
Tell us all what energy future won’t result in blackouts when buildout is insufficient?
Still complaining about what every option has.
Tell us what BETTER system would be made that makes ANY power grid system NOT have the above problems?
If you can’t, then your complaints are that
a) it costs money
Yeah, really don’t know why this is a problem if we go renewables.
?
German wind and solar, 15 – 22 Jan
Minimum W&S was 16/01 5.5GW at 12:00
Max W&S was 19/01 11.77 GW at 1:00
Your numbers: 12 – 24 GW
Data: 5.5 – 11.7GW
You are now flatly denying evidence. In public.
Still bullshitting, dumdum?
Renewables produced 12+GW. They produced around 30% of the power used in Germany for the month.
So you’re really set on misleading people.
Again.
But I get it, you know you’re talking big hairy bollocks and that your complaint basically boils down to “Power production costs money! WAAAAHH!” because you need nukes to get it all.
So you didn’t have any other alternative that didn’t have exactly the same problem of blackouts, cost, HVDC and storage.
Just as you’ve failed every single time before you’ve tried this lying bullshit raving lunacy.
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?year=2017&source=all-sources&week=3
Click off Oil, Coal, Uranium, Gas. About 35% of demand supplied by renewables.
And it’s not even designed to do that yet.
But to you, dumdum, doing better than expected by a long shot is a failure. Because you can’t handle renewables being any sort of success when nukes are failing so badly.
Aaaaw.
He’s throwing in other items into renewables while you are talking about wind and solar. He’s not doing it by accident as he calls you a liar for saying wind and solar are low in #235 and #237.
I went thru this with the upside-down Mann discussion where he posted incorrect code, and he made similar diversions.
Hey, dumdu, for soneone who got pissed off at “Dick” for saying “ECS *could* be less than 1.5C!” and “Oh, it’s misleading to say that renewables produced 85% because, um, I may make up something!”, you really REALLY don’t care about misleading or making up a fake and already unproven future claim, do you.
“It could be too costly to run HVDC lines!!!!” Well , German already has them. That’s how they net exported 50TWh last year. They also used non HVDC lines. Because, you know, AC lines still carry electricity. Some people understand this. You don’t.
And you mislead people with your claim that production = demand. But Germany exported a net of 4.5TWh in January. CLEARLY the production was higher than demand.
And your mathematical incompetence extends to simple arithmetic, too. When you claimed the fictional EV fleet of Germany would last 12 hours, you were completely making that shit up. I get, even if it had to supply 100% of the power and there were no interconnects (remember, they do have them dumbfuck), it lasts 2 days. Given that renewables managed about a third of demand, it would actually last about 3 days. And if they cut back a little, as everyone has to manage when the systems we currently have don’t produce (see Didcot burning down, something else you claimed to be “misleading” – leading people away from your nuke future more like!), then that could be extended four or more days. And if they imported, well, they could manage indefinitely.
No, you only care, as “Dick” did that your preferred fictional future be kept alive and will do so even when you’re proven wrong by mere wish and hope.
You lying duplicitious fuckwit.
Yes, “Mike”, and you make that shit up and proclaimed Mann was a fraud too. Except reality and evidence were against you.
Funny how you manage to keep doing the same thing and expect everyone to think that maybe this time you got it right.
“He’s throwing in other items into renewables”
Such as hydropower? Seasonal production (mostly stuff like river runoff generation)? Biomass? Pumped storage? Other, such as tidal (though I don’t see any “Other” in there, it’s so small)..
Weird. There’s me considering them to be renewables. Like they are. Seasons keep returning, no need to dig up another winter. Pumped storage is pumped storage. You know, stuff generated from whatever you use to generate the power at excess.
But I guess it’s better vision than dumdum has. He can’t even see that he’s lying to people about what renewables are doing. You just “see” me including stuff that is more than the two dumbass there insists in calling “renewables”.
Oh, and tell me if all the pumped storage were used up, and all the hydropower exhausted. Because if generation was more than sufficient for demand, there would be no need or desire to use up storage or hydropower, since they could be kept for emergency need if left alone, and therefore only excess water in the resevior would be used.
Meaning that there was spare capactiy there just among the renewables.
Rather misleading to pretend that somehow all generation was used up.
But dumdum, like yourself, don’t care for the convenient lies, the lies that help your pathetic cause.
Hey, here’s a fun maths fact, too.
If 85% of demand was met by renewables, then conventional power production only managed 15%!
Fuck me! You need to build out 6x as much conventional power to ensure you get 100% of demand with the current system!!!!!!
And look! 3rd Jan, Uranium manged only 7..5% of the power!!!
Man, you need to build out 13x as much nuclear! DAMN that shit is expensive! CLEARLY you nuke fluffers need to stop lying and deceiving the public or they’ll rise up in their millions and crucify you and burn down all nuclear power plants!!!!!!
If demand is a bit of an issue,
up the bloody price of energy. Its cheap as for yanks anyway.
Oh what should we do today? Oh lets go for a drive and have
a lovely picnic in the countryside.
Oh we couldnt do that! Petrols too expensive, said no american ever.
If mains power was dear, yas wouldnt watch shit TV.
Up the price. Reduce demand.
Stop pissing in the pool.
#246 MikeN
I know, because I know the numbers I presented, clearly marked and linked wind and solar are correct.
I know that Wow is utterly dishonest. My concern here is only to make sure that everybody else does to.
And nuke power only managed 7.3% of power early on 3rd Jan, dumdum.
Dayum, you need to build that out nearly 14-fold to make it work!!!! LOL!
And ni, dumdum, you dont get t complain about lying when you lied so very VERY often here.
Where are those quotes you said you’d get, hmm?
How about the mismatch between the over 3 days and the less than 12 hours you claimed the EV fleet would operate for?
Oh, and the lie about renewables only being 6%?
Not forgetting the lie about HVDC being nonexistent and likely impossible to be built.
No, dumdum, you don’t get to complain about lies. Even if there were any.
We’re talking about RENEWABLES here, dumdum.
And you lied.
Lied damn hard.
All to prop up your failing nuke fetish.
Just making sure people know how big a fat-faced dick-header moronic liar you are.
Not only are your numbers completely wrong, you can’t even do that kind of source deselection on the Fraunhofer data viewer.
You are literally making shit up as you go along. And your numbers are wrong.
Wow, if you want to make a point about renewables vs wind and solar you could have done so. Instead you took what you knew to be true and declared it a lie.
As VtG backup during low wind winter nights. I’m not lying – you don’t understand the topic.
Okay, you got me there. Minimum W&S was 5.5GW on 16/01.
You just made that up. So that would be you lying, not me. Or maybe you are just so clueless that you don’t know that existing HVDC interconnectors are a tiny fraction of what is required for a high renewables energy mix to actually work.
BBD, your complaint about infrastructure not being good enough to handle supply variation and the need for lines, is this a national issue or a local one?
For example, suppose San Diego had wind and solar arrays nearby, along with nuclear and coal and hydro and gas plants, and enough backup supply to handle darkness and low wind(simultaneously). Is there another issue they have to deal with on the grid?
“Wow, if you want to make a point about renewables vs wind and solar you could have done so.”
I did fuckwit.
germany-sets-new-national-record-with-85-percent-of-its-electricity-sourced-from-renewables
IF you wanted to read, you could have, but you, like dumdum dumbass here, did not like the results so did not, COULD not, read.
“BBD, your complaint about infrastructure not being good enough to handle supply variation and the need for lines, is this a national issue or a local one?”
It’s an ignorant one.
Because fuckwits like buddy dumdum here “think” that we don’t have HVDC, we don’t have the capability to send electricity hundreds of miles, that there is, currently, no backup generation or storage.
If it weren’t for the fact that the moron works for a nuke generation company, I’d say he was just uninformed.
“As VtG backup during low wind winter nights. I’m not lying”
Oh yes you are, moron.
How many cars in Germany?
Now, give them a 70kwh battery. Quite small for a EV today, never mind when they’re part of the future of an all electric fleet.
And they use up 60-80GW.
Anyone smart can do the maths easily.
Anyone dumb can do the mths with a small effort.
But to claim 12 hours is the result of the maths requires a liar with no compunction or care.
“Okay, you got me there.”
It’s about 30% if you do the maths, from an eyeball guess I made “a third” and rounded off.
“Oh you got me there”, but where do you change your tune? You don’t. Kinda meaningless.
“You just made that up. ”
Nope.Want the quote? ‘cos unlike you, I’ll provide it.
#226: which may not even be possible given cost, technology and engineering constraints
Where are the quotes of me saying that I’m against backup? Or refuse HVDC?
You’re a lying fuckwit just as deluded and corrupt as “Dick”.
“you don’t know that existing HVDC interconnectors are a tiny fraction”
YOU don’t know that.
AT ALL.
Just like your lie about the EV fleet lasting 12 hours you lying little toerag.
You and dick are absolutely the same sort of corrupt pile of moral garbage. You just choose different things to be corrupt over.
re: 260, you must remember on this he’s the same as you in your AGW denial.
He doesn’t do solutions, only complains about any other solution, it’s a rhetorical trick called “poisoning the well” and is a very stale and corrupt tactic to make people choose what you want to force them to choose without being overt.
Psy ops for the PR fluff boys of nukes. Buddy dumdum, here.
“Not only are your numbers completely wrong,”
For your ideology?
Because they’re right, dumdum.
Remember, Germany is exporting all the while, between 2 and 10GW.
Hey, dumdum, how about the pointlessness of nuke power? 7.3% in the early hours 3rd Jan, 2017 in Germany.
Piss poor, innit.
But you’ll NEVER hear nuke fluffers tell you how much it will REALLY cost you, they know that once you’ve sunk enough time and money in the scam to find out, they’ve already cashed in and run off, and in any case, you may just have to suck it at that point, since it’s now too late to do anything about it, and then they’ll just get to scam yet more cash.
Damn. Even I’m surprised that nukes only managed 7.3%.
Ah, you can’t read, Wow. Because you are an idiot.
You said that I said this:
But I didn’t. The cost, technology and engineering constraints were specific to massive utility-scale storage.
But you quoted out of context, dishonestly, to try to score a cheap point:
In Germany, they’re doing this thing called the Energiewende which involves phasing out nuclear.
Ever heard of it?
Idiot.
Oh, that doesn’t even begin to get you off the hook.
Your numbers are completely wrong and either you are too dishonest or too stupid to admit it.
Shall we go through it, day by day?
Reminds me of that time at Eli’s when we went through surface insolation, country by country, demonstrating that your numbers were completely wrong. Remember that?
“Ah, you can’t read”
Ah, but I can buddy dumdum.
What you said was
“You said that I said this:”
Yes.
And you did. Or you misled people into thinking so. Because since we already have HVDC, your comment should have been about how it needed to be increased, not how building it could be impossible.
Not my fault if your misleading comments misled.
This is the problem for you nuke fluffers, you mislead and then howl over the “injustice” when nobody believes your lies because you’ve misled people so very many times before.
“The cost, technology and engineering constraints were specific to massive utility-scale storage.”
Yes. Which is what I said you “thought”: that there WAS no HVDC or grid scale storage, but this was a lie.
“But you quoted out of context,”
No context said “expansion” or “increase in…”.
You’re pretending there’s a context that never existed, dumdum.
Yet more dishonesty from you.
Still waiting for the quotes you said you would slam me down with and “prove” me a liar.
“Oh, that doesn’t even begin to get you off the hook. ”
Not necessary. I’m not on the hook for lying and deceiving and misleading people, dumdum, you are. If I’m not on the hook, there’s no way to get me off the hook I’m not on. It’s a logical impossiblity. You may not like logic, though. It doesn’t really takes sides, and you need that partisanship.
“Your numbers are completely wrong”
And another claim you made up but can’t seem to get off from.
Nope. They’re right. I did the numbers (from eyecrometer) in 237.
And where are the quotes you promised in 212????
Oh, that’s right, you were lying.
LOL.
And nukes. Huh. barely over 7%. Totally unworkable. Dead and buried.
” Remember that?”
No, nobody does, because that’s another lie you’ve done, retardo.
Remember over at Eli’s when you claimed we’d still need 40% fossil fuels?
Of course you’ll mislead YOURSELF and justify this not being the case because you “merely” pointed to someone who said that when I and Bernard asked you what YOU thought the mix should be for the future.
Because like any good denier, you never come up with something yourself, only lame excuses why the answers you don’t want picked can’t be done.
“which involves phasing out nuclear.”
No wonder. It barely scraped 7% of demand in January, the most demandingest time of the year, generally, in Northern Europe.
A power source that can’t manage better than that is meaningless and should be thrown out as the unusable bondogle it is, unless you’re willing to put the stupendous time, effort, resources and cash into making that horrendously ineffective white elephant work as a viable power source.
But you nuke fluffers don’t EVER mention the TRUE cost of your industry, do you.
Not even 10%. How pathetic. Really, nuke is dead, and its loss will not be missed. NOBODY misses a power source that’s less than the net export of energy. Just shutting that pointless thing down won’t even put them below demand!
Interested parties can start here. There are hundreds more examples of your lies and stupidity at Eli’s. And hundreds more here – which unfortunate regulars may already be familiar with.
Pants on fire, Wow. It starts right here. at 11/9/15 2:12pm.
Lies, Wow. Lies.
Let’s skewer the lies before they go any further.
Going back to German electricty generation, 15 – 22 Jan
Let’s look at the approximate percentage of daily peak generation (demand) represented by W&S combined:
16/01
Peak GW total/time: 78.13 / 17:00
S: 0
W: 3.46
W&S as % of peak total generation: 4%
17/01
Peak GW total/time: 78.44 / 16:00
S: 0
W: 3.84
W&S as % of peak total generation: 5%
18/01
Peak GW total/time: 80.65 / 09:00
S: 2.94
W: 6.05
W&S as % of peak total generation: 11%
19/01
Peak GW total/time: 80.16 / 11:00
S: 8.39
W: 4.06
W&S as % of peak total generation: 15%
20/01
Peak GW total/time: 80.23 / 09:00
S: 5.4
W: 4.27
W&S as % of peak total generation: 12%
21/01
Peak GW total/time: 71.86 / 11:00
S: 9.93
W: 1.07
W&S as % of peak total generation: 15%
22/01
Peak GW total/time: 68.59 / 17:00
S: 0
W: 1.37
W&S as % of peak total generation: 2%
So W&S share of peak generation (demand) for that week was 2% – 15%.
“Interested parties can start here. ”
Oh,so when you complained about me lying and you said you’d get quotes, you were, in fact, lying when you accused
Oh dear. For anyone else, near enough, they’d have tried to avoid proving themselves a liar. Only dick is just as dumb as you and willing to do that.
Damn, you’re hellaciously dumb, buddy dumdum.
” It starts right here. at 11/9/15 2:12pm.”
Which really doesn’t support your claims. Dear o deary me.
“Let’s look at the approximate percentage of daily peak generation (demand)”
Aaaawwwww. And you YET AGAIN lie.
BEcause, this time, you are incompetent.
See the hollow circle labeled “Import”? Click on that.
You than then read the DEMAND, the SEPARATED EXPORT and therefore, with a tiny amount of maths, the GENERATION.
You’re so dumb! LOL!
“Peak GW total/time: 80”
Which isn’t DEMAND.
But, yeah, your complaints about the headline being misleading was not merely wrong, it was pure unadulterated projection.
Absolute lies.
From an absolute dumbass.
You’re not going to get a good box marking and you may lose your job at the plant, dumdum. They don’t like failures.
But, yeah, also less than 7% of power generated by nukes. As you say, it’s totally unworkable and should be berated for their lying misleading of the public that will only end in yet more catastrophe.
You know, when the dicks and mikes of the world complain that it’s all a scare tactic to get unearned cash, you’re the one they point to as proof, dumdum.
And though this doesn’t prove AGW is false, they’re not wrong that *you* push AGW as a scare tactic to push people to your scam.
Go back and add up renewables.
When renewables did 85% of power, all conventional and nuclear power generation COULD NOT MANAGE more than 15%. Because that’s all that’s left.
Dumdum’s “maths” and “logic” would therefore PROVE that conventional power does not work.
Kinda proves dumdum’s wrong, really.
PS if there WERE any interested parties, don’t click the link he gives here
“Interested parties can start here. ”
Because he hasn’t actually given any quote, nor even the link to any post that he’d quote. He wants you to be punished for not just taking the nutcase’s word on it by having to trawl through 700 posts, page by page, and THEN work out what the fuck he was thinking of, thereby doing all the work and, if you don’t get the answer he wants, he can claim you missed it or misread it or are just lying.
You see when dumdum gives a quote that he knows he can’t find, he wants to make sure you can’t be absolutely certain he’s talking out of his shit-eating piehole.
Brown coal, hard coal, gas look like a lot more than 15% here.
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?year=2017&source=all-sources&week=3
#275 Wow
You are getting horribly muddled. Total generation (demand) is the sum of domestic and export demand. That’s why I used it.
Just in case that isn’t clear enough for you Wow, meeting total aggregate demand is what this is all about.
So analysing the percentage contribution of W&S to total generation (demand) is the correct approach.
God knows, this is wasted on you.
“Brown coal, hard coal, gas look like a lot more than 15% here”
Looks a lot like 15% here, though, “mike”:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/11/229217/germany-sets-new-national-record-with-85-percent-of-its-electricity-sourced-from-renewables
But I can understand you not wanting to see it. It’s probably triggering you badly..
But, hey, at least you’re agreeing with the logic that proves conventional power stations are worthless!
“Just in case that isn’t clear enough for you Wow, meeting total aggregate demand”
Nope, it’s about the fact that you found the headline misleading for no reason other than you hated renewables in a good light. It’s about how you lie and mislead. It’s about how you make up scare stories to push people away from renewables and push AGW scare scenarios if they don’t go for nuclear. It’s about your lies and misrepresentations, it’s about your hypocrisy, it’s about the facts that you refuse to even see exist.
It’s about how you leap off and when you lose you insist that the entire conversation be moved where you haven’t been losing recently to distract from your utter failure of late, but you will also, and this gets back to the hypocrisy, gladly weave anything “off topic” yourself.
Such as your BSing about another date where renewables weren’t doing 85% of demand in a conversation about a time where renewables did cover 85% of demand.
It’s about how you want to move conversations but when you can’t win, want them “back” to one random place you decided you aren’t losing on.
It’s about you lying, dumdum.
” Total generation (demand) ”
Total generation is not demand.
Stop lying.
Wow, the problem here is exactly that W&S can swing from 85% to 2%. All well and good at 85% but WTF powers the nation when W&S are below 10%?
Indeed if total generation were equal to demand, then wind gets 100% of demand. So does solar.
Because at night total generation (demand) is zero watts for solar.
And when nukes are offline, total generation (demand) is zero watts .
And when didcot was on fire, its total generation (demand) is zero watts.
Your maths failures are part of your inability to tell the truth. Like “dick” you insist on not understanding maths because it doesn’t give you the answer you like.
And you’re ALL about the answer you like, no matter if you haven’t a clue about why that answer is so.
It’s why you fail so very VERY badly.
Of course it is. If you try to feed more electricity into the grid than is being taken from it by demand, you get line overvolts and breakers trip and that leads to more line overvolts and more breakers tripping and before you know it, you have a regional-scale blackout.
Generation (supply) MUST equal demand. Learn your basics before calling people liars.
Stop lying Wow.
No, what I dislike is misrepresentation. Specifically, all the puff pieces like this that imply – misleadingly – that we are well on the way to a successful energy transition when we fucking well are not.
“Wow, the problem here is ”
That you’re lying.
Renewables managed 30% or thereabouts for the very VERY cherry picked time you selected.
The problem you are having is that it varies from 30% to 85% and this good news for renewables and the planet is bad news for nuclear.
And the problem for nuclear is that you’re arguing it’s a valueless and overpriced white elephant, barely scraping past 7% of generation.
But only applying it to the situation you hate above all else: renewable power.
You’re shit scared of losing your job, and you are desperate to justify yourself as rational when the problem here is you’re irrational and lying.
The problem here is you’re misleading and have never once managed otherwise when it comes to nuclear or renewables.
“No, what I dislike is misrepresentation.”
Specifically when it’s not in favour of nuclear power, or done by other than yourself. You mislead and revel in it because you have no other way to defend your job.
And you try to project your lies onto others, even if that means you have to contort some fantasy into what MIGHT be misinterpreted from words not there.
There was ZERO thing misleading about the report that showed renewables managed 85% of demand.
It is 100% misleading to whine about HVDC and storage for renewables when nuclear requires more of those things.
It is misleading to claim demand is generation when it clearly is exporting. But I KNOW that if Germany were IMporting (and it did in 2016 for a few days in the year), you’d be pointing to the lack of generation and failure to meet demand.
And if I pointed out you said total generation WAS demand, you’d ignore that, as you do every time someone points out to you that your whines against renewables are invalid because they apply to all forms of power generation.
You don’t hate misrepresentation.
You LOVE misrepresenting things.
You just complain about misrepresentation like some closet homosexual fundie priest railing against the evils of homosexuality.
Shouting as loud as you can so people won’t notice the problem is a lot closer to home for you.
“Stop lying Wow.”
And another made up claim from you.
Go on, do the maths.
Number of cars in Germany?
Size of battery for an EV 70kwh.
How long will that last when renewables generated about 30% of the power demand, leaving something around 35GW of generation to supply.
Will it be 12 hours or less as you claim, or about three days as I do?
Which of us is lying?
Talk is cheap you pipsqueak, you mental midget, but can you do the maths?
No, they didn’t. Why don’t you just check the numbers properly? Like I did.
“when we fucking well are not.”
How the fuck do you know?
As far as you’re concerned, producing 85% of the power demand means it’s failed.
Because it’s done by renewables, and that, to you, is absolutely and irredeemably a bad thing. Because it’s not nukes doing it.
You don’t even care, though, do you.
You’ll bring out the excuses like “the generation of nuclear is not supposed to supply more than 10%!”, yet you will ignore and not even wonder what % renewables are meant to provide.
And then lie about them not providing power when they do. About a third. Even on the cherry picked worst day you could find.
And when I posted a link about didcot, which was a terrible day for conventional power production, you didn’t do as an *honest* person would and agree that this was a failure of the current system, but complained about the reporter who reported.
Talk about ad hom!
Wouldn’t matter if it was Dave Lee Travis saying it. Didcot burned down. Produced no power.
We don’t have, according to your standards, a working power system today.
Oh noes, fixing that isn’t free!!!!!
Nukes just fail utterly.
Sad day for you, but I don’t care. I only care about the wellbeing of honest people, not lying scumbags like you.
Um, a fundamental constraint on VtG is that it does not deplete all the grid-connected batteries. Or in the morning your car won’t get you to work. So VtG only takes a small fraction of each grid-connected battery. Someone as blisteringly smart as you will instantly realise that this means that any calculation base on total battery capacity per EV is going to be horribly wrong.
” Renewables managed 30% or thereabouts for the very VERY cherry picked time you selected.
No, they didn’t. ”
Yes they did.
“Why don’t you just check the numbers properly?”
I did.
You didn’t.
You lied. How do I know? Because the very simple maths was too simple for you not to get. And you were told precisely what you were lying about.
No, it fails when W&S are meeting only a modest percentage of demand and a lack of very large scale storage and sufficient very large wide-area HVDC transmission capacity result in a supply shortfall.
” Size of battery for an EV 70kwh.
Um, a fundamental constraint on VtG ”
Um, that isn’t maths.
That you go dallying off into irrelevant is why I know you know you’re lying.
“it does not deplete all the grid-connected batteries”
It won’t.
“So VtG only takes a small fraction of each grid-connected battery.”
Still false, and still not maths.
“any calculation base on total battery capacity per EV is ”
More than you did. You didn’t even do one, and still refuse to do so.
you DO know that it doesn’t have to be 70kwh, right?
you DO know that if there was a real problem, they’ll ignore the guidelines? YOU hould know that, since three summers running EdF had to get special dispensation to break the law or they would have had to shut off too much of their nuclear power production facilities and EdF would have been immediately bankrupt, requiring another government taxpayer bailout.
So they were allowed to take water from rivers that were too low and too warm, and break the law.
But, yeah, lawbreaking for the nuke industry: totally fine to you, you billious fartknocker. Because it’s your employment. But nobody else is allowed! Even if it’s absolutely safe.
“your car won’t get you to work.”
What? For three days it will. The fourth you may run out.
But it’s a truth that it;s not 12 hours and you, me and anyone still reading will know that it’s not 12 hours. And we will all know you know it too.
Which is why you’re 100% identical to the idiotic liar dick.
“No, it fails when W&S are meeting only a modest percentage of demand ”
Do you have ANY power production sytem that doesn’t fail if it only manages to meet a modest percentage of demand?
Where is this perpetual motion machine you have invented, retardo extramungo?
“No, it fails when W&S are meeting only a modest percentage of demand ”
So we’re inagreement, then, renewables are working and not failing.
I know we’re not, because your arguments only apply in the direction you want them to.
Because you are incapable of honesty when it comes to either treating renewables fairly or nuclear power honestly.
““your car won’t get you to work.”
What? For three days it will. The fourth you may run out.”
In fact you will last much much longer than that.
You asked me to provide an example of sustained low output from W&S. So I did. And now you accuse me of cherry-picking. There’s no pleasing some people.
And no, the W&S contribution wasn’t 30%. How could it be when at maximum W&S never exceeded 15% of peak generation?
Run the mouse along the horizontal axis and look at the output data in the pop up. Because I’m not using dishonest tricks to try and score rhetorical points, I used the combined daytime values for wind *and* solar to get the highest minimum and maximum values possible. These are:
Minimum: 16/01 12:00 5.5GW
Maximum: 19/01 11:30 11.77GW
Not ’12 – 24GW’. Those numbers are incorrect. So the 30% figure is incorrect.
Data link for wind and solar output.
“You asked me to provide an example of sustained low output from W&S.”
Aaand another made up claim from you, dumbass.
No. YOU wanted to mislead, and so you cherry picked the worst case then ignore most of the renewables and then lie about demand.
You just flat out lied.
Because you cannot stand renewables doing four times better than nuclear even in the cherry picked worst case, and were all butthurt and complaining about how it did 85% of demand because you didn’t like that news.
“And no, the W&S contribution wasn’t 30%”
Oh it was a lot higher than that.
And no, renewables were nowhere near as low as 15% at any time in the past year, not even when you cherry picked the lowest area, and even while complaining about me selecting uranium, which didn’t even manage 8% of demand.
“How could it be when at maximum W&S never exceeded 15% of peak generation?”
It exceeded that a hell of a lot more.
But even in the period you chose, the worst case for wind and solar, renewables managed 30%.
And that was even without exploiting all of it, since it wasn’t necessary: they were exporting 2-10GW all that time.
But you can’t help lying, can you dumdum?
Renewables managed three or four times what nuclear did. And they’ve mangaged 85%, which likely was mostly filled up with nuclear, but not entirely, which would make it something like 8x the level of production of nuclear power in germany.
How can you claim a method fails when it did up to 8 times better, and even at worst case 3 or 4 times better than nuclear did?
“Not ’12 – 24GW’. ”
Yes 12-24GW. and demand was around 40-70GW
CAN you do maths?
“Those numbers are incorrect. ”
Nope, your numbers are wrong and you even spell out that they’re wrong.
But you know this and this is why you are lying.