Great Analysis. You have captured some significant factors regarding the nameplate capacity of Wind, Solar and Storage needed to displace hydrocarbons.
One thing you might want to consider, is the effect of diminishing returns on adding Wind & Solar Capacity. Contrary to popular opinion. storage does not soak up all the curtailed energy. Curtailment remains a major issue regardless of how much storage you install.
This diminishing returns meme applies to all forms of economic acticivity. The first canals in Britain made a fortune, the last ones lost a fortune. The first light in your house is fantastic, the second very useful the twentieth makes very little difference. Early cell phone users often ran up bills of $2,000/ month now they can get twice as much use from a phone for $60/month
All systems have unused capacity i.e. curtailment. In the US CC gas plants run at 57% CF .e if the manufacturers claim 95% availability, then CC gas plants are curtailed 38% of the time, coal 45% etc. However storage makes much more economic sense with wind and solar than it does with gas or coal, because the marginal cost of recharging the storage from wiind or solar is about $5-10/MWh rather than $30-50/MWh, so even now there is less curtalment of wind and solar than there is of coal and gas
Diminishing returns applies especially to 'renewables' generation. You get less benefit from each additional Wind-farm or Solar installation because the extra *capacity* inevitably leads to more curtailment. You cannot usefully generate more electricity than that which satisfies Demand each minute of every day.
You again display a lack of understanding between 'curtailment' of randomly-variable 'renewable' generation, and 'control' of dispatchable generation. All the while preference is mandated to 'renewable' sources of generation, the dispatchable sources are *controlled* to fill the gaps. This is the result of policy.
Electrical energy storage only makes sense now that the electrical energy production system has been distorted by the mandatory inclusion of intermittent 'renewable' generation. Immense cheap (doesn't yet exist) electrical energy storage now needs to be added to fix the broken system.
1. No you are again displaying your lack of understanding of power system engineering.
In the Australian grid and Texas there is no preference for renewables, you bid into the market and the lowest price stack wins. In other markets coal, gas and nuclear plants are propped up by capacity payments. Even In Australia where there are no capacity markets outside WA, renewables are often curtailed to keep minimum coal and gas capacity on line, so the preferences are in fact for fossil fuels and nuclear
Way back in 2006 Australian gas plants averaged 16% CF. i.e. they were running at about 18-20% of their unrestrained output, even with a 98% renewable grid it is difficult to show that curtailment of wind and solar will be more than 15-20%
2. So, if storage only makes sense now why were all those pumped hydro plants like Dinorwig etc built in the fifties through the seventies. Those pumped hydro plants still store more energy than all the grid batteries in the world.
Coal plants in Australia have a short run marginal cost of $35-80/MWh. Now that battery costs have fallen so low, if they add a battery and can sell peak power for $130-300/MWh twice a day for 3-4 hours that is over $100,000/y extra margin they can earn per MW of battery capacity, over 20% ROI and it is way cheaper for the customer than OCGT at an average of $340/MWh and it reduces maintenance costs and emissioons per MWh for the coal plant.
3. Even in California your analysis is wrong. Gas usage last year was down 23% because wind solar and batteries displaced much of the gas peaking and even though hydro was reduced overall, the surplus of solar during the day allowed evening and mornng supply from hydro to be increased while using less water overall
I deliberately mostly avoid going into the money side of things, although I doubt much of the 'green tech' would survive without mandates and subsidies.
My main aim is to run a broad-brush analysis on the technical energy balance side and see how big / immense are the numbers that result.
For grid inertia support I've seen e.g. Ireland installing v large rotating masses electromagnetically linked to the grid. I believe Australia is going / has also gone that route.
They are called synchronous condensers and do provide some amount of local grid stability but you end up paying for something that you’re not using, like insurance.it’s there in case. Large 1000 MW generators like DCPP provide power and stability for large area grids.
No-one wants to power California or anywhere else with solar and batteries, California has hydro and wind and food and agricultural waste and geothermal. The vast majority of its backup for wind and solar will be from existing hydro.
The inertia and fault current problem is already solved with grid forming invertesr on batteries and solar farms and synthetic inertia on wind farms as well as a few synchronous converters and hydro turbines, many of which can be run dry to provide additional inertia if required
What? California is using natural gas as the primary source when the sun goes down, there is nowhere near enough hydro to backup the grid. Where are you getting your numbers from?
Try CAISO or the EIA.
Grid forming inverters do not provide nearly the same amount of grid inertia as a generator at DCPP. You make it sound like batteries are not part of the plan, but they really are.
California definitely wants to power their grid on solar, wind and batteries.
No-one, Peter? You might want to have a word with Proj. Jacobson who features in my latest post [link] and who has made much of his recent career about powering CA with Solar.
Jacobsen always talks about wind water and solar. He does say that solar and batteries are now powering California for 1-5 hours on the majority of days. All that means is that hydro can be saved for nighttime and less wind is required in the evenings
This is yet another of your amazing straw man arguments. Eischer or Heath Robinson would be proud of your efforts. Just as you completely misrepresented the Australian East Coast situation you are now doing the same for California.
Because it is amazingly wrong. California has wind and hydro and geothermal which combined generate more energy than solar and yet you leave these out of your analysis
Great Analysis. You have captured some significant factors regarding the nameplate capacity of Wind, Solar and Storage needed to displace hydrocarbons.
One thing you might want to consider, is the effect of diminishing returns on adding Wind & Solar Capacity. Contrary to popular opinion. storage does not soak up all the curtailed energy. Curtailment remains a major issue regardless of how much storage you install.
https://wrjohn1.substack.com/p/wind-solar-and-the-effect-of-diminishing
Thank you Bill.
Indeed, I wrote a whole post on it: https://chrisbond.substack.com/p/intermittency-aka-diminishing-returns
This diminishing returns meme applies to all forms of economic acticivity. The first canals in Britain made a fortune, the last ones lost a fortune. The first light in your house is fantastic, the second very useful the twentieth makes very little difference. Early cell phone users often ran up bills of $2,000/ month now they can get twice as much use from a phone for $60/month
All systems have unused capacity i.e. curtailment. In the US CC gas plants run at 57% CF .e if the manufacturers claim 95% availability, then CC gas plants are curtailed 38% of the time, coal 45% etc. However storage makes much more economic sense with wind and solar than it does with gas or coal, because the marginal cost of recharging the storage from wiind or solar is about $5-10/MWh rather than $30-50/MWh, so even now there is less curtalment of wind and solar than there is of coal and gas
Hello Peter,
Diminishing returns applies especially to 'renewables' generation. You get less benefit from each additional Wind-farm or Solar installation because the extra *capacity* inevitably leads to more curtailment. You cannot usefully generate more electricity than that which satisfies Demand each minute of every day.
You again display a lack of understanding between 'curtailment' of randomly-variable 'renewable' generation, and 'control' of dispatchable generation. All the while preference is mandated to 'renewable' sources of generation, the dispatchable sources are *controlled* to fill the gaps. This is the result of policy.
Electrical energy storage only makes sense now that the electrical energy production system has been distorted by the mandatory inclusion of intermittent 'renewable' generation. Immense cheap (doesn't yet exist) electrical energy storage now needs to be added to fix the broken system.
1. No you are again displaying your lack of understanding of power system engineering.
In the Australian grid and Texas there is no preference for renewables, you bid into the market and the lowest price stack wins. In other markets coal, gas and nuclear plants are propped up by capacity payments. Even In Australia where there are no capacity markets outside WA, renewables are often curtailed to keep minimum coal and gas capacity on line, so the preferences are in fact for fossil fuels and nuclear
Way back in 2006 Australian gas plants averaged 16% CF. i.e. they were running at about 18-20% of their unrestrained output, even with a 98% renewable grid it is difficult to show that curtailment of wind and solar will be more than 15-20%
2. So, if storage only makes sense now why were all those pumped hydro plants like Dinorwig etc built in the fifties through the seventies. Those pumped hydro plants still store more energy than all the grid batteries in the world.
Coal plants in Australia have a short run marginal cost of $35-80/MWh. Now that battery costs have fallen so low, if they add a battery and can sell peak power for $130-300/MWh twice a day for 3-4 hours that is over $100,000/y extra margin they can earn per MW of battery capacity, over 20% ROI and it is way cheaper for the customer than OCGT at an average of $340/MWh and it reduces maintenance costs and emissioons per MWh for the coal plant.
3. Even in California your analysis is wrong. Gas usage last year was down 23% because wind solar and batteries displaced much of the gas peaking and even though hydro was reduced overall, the surplus of solar during the day allowed evening and mornng supply from hydro to be increased while using less water overall
Again you are just completely out of your depth
I don’t think it’s possible to power CAISO with only solar and BESS.
It would cost several trillion dollars to install and then trillions have to be spent every year to replace a portion of the system as it ages.
It’s economic insanity.
And this ignores the technical challenges of synchronous grid inertia and grid stability without large rotating machines to ride out a fault.
Thank you Kenneth.
I deliberately mostly avoid going into the money side of things, although I doubt much of the 'green tech' would survive without mandates and subsidies.
My main aim is to run a broad-brush analysis on the technical energy balance side and see how big / immense are the numbers that result.
For grid inertia support I've seen e.g. Ireland installing v large rotating masses electromagnetically linked to the grid. I believe Australia is going / has also gone that route.
They are called synchronous condensers and do provide some amount of local grid stability but you end up paying for something that you’re not using, like insurance.it’s there in case. Large 1000 MW generators like DCPP provide power and stability for large area grids.
No-one wants to power California or anywhere else with solar and batteries, California has hydro and wind and food and agricultural waste and geothermal. The vast majority of its backup for wind and solar will be from existing hydro.
The inertia and fault current problem is already solved with grid forming invertesr on batteries and solar farms and synthetic inertia on wind farms as well as a few synchronous converters and hydro turbines, many of which can be run dry to provide additional inertia if required
What? California is using natural gas as the primary source when the sun goes down, there is nowhere near enough hydro to backup the grid. Where are you getting your numbers from?
Try CAISO or the EIA.
Grid forming inverters do not provide nearly the same amount of grid inertia as a generator at DCPP. You make it sound like batteries are not part of the plan, but they really are.
California definitely wants to power their grid on solar, wind and batteries.
No-one, Peter? You might want to have a word with Proj. Jacobson who features in my latest post [link] and who has made much of his recent career about powering CA with Solar.
https://chrisbond.substack.com/p/california-zit-pics
Rubbish,
Jacobsen always talks about wind water and solar. He does say that solar and batteries are now powering California for 1-5 hours on the majority of days. All that means is that hydro can be saved for nighttime and less wind is required in the evenings
This is yet another of your amazing straw man arguments. Eischer or Heath Robinson would be proud of your efforts. Just as you completely misrepresented the Australian East Coast situation you are now doing the same for California.
Peter Farley says my post is "amazing".
Because it is amazingly wrong. California has wind and hydro and geothermal which combined generate more energy than solar and yet you leave these out of your analysis