Irina, as my daughter would say “savage” - but you wield your scalpel deftly. And I loved the “orgy of blah” - as the French say this is propaganda machine is an “usine à gaz” on a grand scale. Your P.P.S. was sober context to the future reality that’s likely coming in terms of a reckoning.
Your articles keep us all well-informed and grounded. Thank you. 🙏🏼
“Flexible” means variable which means unpredictable. Flexible sources can’t be turned off and on to meet demand. Inflexible fossil sources can be scheduled based on demand.
Thank you, Irina. And you are not writing too much about the propaganda of the transition, as that is its raison d'etre. Btw, the NYT used to lie glowingly of the miracles of Stalin's collective state, as well. They won a Pulitzer for it. Still haven't given it back.
The endless blather from the green energy folks is quite tiring even if entertaining. I believe they have a lot of time since they don’t work, at least not at an industrial company, and are supported by the government. One would think that endless supply of government graft would come to an end, and perhaps that is starting. You just can’t have a discussion with these anti fossil fuel people as they can’t handle the facts! When you try to point out the idiocy in their position their heads explode. The basic concept that we can just eliminate oil and gas and coal is truly so absurd only surpassed by the total lack of acceptance that most every thing we touch in our daily lives is at least in part derived from fossil fuels. Then the discussion about climate change really is beyond the green movement believers capacity as they’ve drunk too much of the kool aid that CO2 is the cause. When you ask them about photosynthesis and the role of CO2 they just go bat shit stupified crazy and melt down. One good thing if the greenies push us back to cave man style life is that none of them will survive long as cave men didn’t have government handouts.
As a paid up subscriber to the WSJ, and someone who generally feels the money is well spent, I was rather disappointed (understatement to avoid foul language) with the article you referenced here. My reading of that newspaper is highly concentrated while eating breakfast, and I just hate spoiling my favorite meal of the day with green propaganda shoved in my face.
Apparently this may continue, as I see similar this morning. I’m looking at a piece regarding a so called “much-debated climate-damage fund” (yes, the title uses two hyphens) for poor countries currently under discussion at COP28. Here’s one small gem, of many, from the author:
- The fund is the first under the U.N. that will pay for loss and damage, which occurs when rising seas, drought or effects of climate change are so destructive that communities can no longer adapt. -
Clearly any catastrophe will fall under that umbrella, and I’m sure the World Bank will do a fabulous job administering the fund appropriately.
I would like to comment further on your subprime reference at the end, but I’ve already gone past my allotted character limit. Keep up the good fight of exposing the nonsense.
"The fund is the first under the U.N. that will pay for loss and damage, which occurs when rising seas, drought or effects of climate change are so destructive that communities can no longer adapt." At 0.3" per year sea rise, and about the same in temp rise, it seems to me that everyone would have plenty of time to 'adapt'.
I’m constantly talking about the concept of wealth transfer, and all I ever get are blank stares. The easiest current example is the $7500 EV tax credit. A government that’s soon to pass $34 trillion in debt, somehow thinks it’s a great thing to take in less tax revenue than it should so that people can buy a $50,000 Tesla for $42,500. What a steaming pile of you know what.
That's fairly minor compared to the subsidies to solar homes, including net metering. But what we are talking about here is the transfer of $trillions (yes, I said $trillions with a T) from Western Middle Class to Developing Nations, using Climate Change as another lame excuse to do so.
UK average daily demand is 39GW. There is 38GW installed wind capacity, so here we have oodles of almost free ‘green’ electricity. Problem solved, job done. Hurrah!
So cheap has our electricity become, last year the Govt introduced price caps on rates, and gave every household £400 to compensate for their 50% lower electricity bills.
Today this abundant wind power is supplying 9.5% of our electricity. It’s cold here, around 3C during the day -1C at night and the wind - well the wind isn’t blowing much.
Evidently this is usual when temperatures drop - surprise!
So the National Grid has activated its “Demand Flexibility Service” (the service being, not supplying enough electricity), so domestic and business consumers have been invited to sign up with this ‘innovative scheme’ or scam. You need a ‘smart meter’ installed to transmit electricity use every 30 minutes.
You will be bribed £3 per kWh (domestic), £3 000 per MWh (business) for every hour of electricity you reduce consumption during ‘events’ where demand is high. So either don’t use appliances or run them during the off-peak night time. Just a thought.... if enough people switch from daytime to off-peak night time, won’t night time become peak time? The money to fund this will come from the Green Fairy so it won’t cost those people in the scam anything.
For a proper understanding of Net Zero and the clowns running it, watch a few reels of The Keystone Cops. For younger readers: The Keystone Cops (or Kops) are fictional, humorously incompetent policemen featured in silent film slapstick comedies produced by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Film Company between 1912 and 1917.
Goodness - "In terms of what it means for our electricity system, if we can reduce electricity demand by rewarding participating customers to turn down when we need them to, it means we might not have to bring on expensive and polluting fossil fuel generators."
Polluting fossil fuel generators (gas) are running all the time, currently supply 57% of UK demand, and continually running on stand-by for when the wind drops.
What they mean is the one surviving coal generator. 50%+ of demand came from coal until 2015 when the last were shut down and all but one demolished, and replaced by wind.
The survivor was due to be blown up too but last Winter it had to be fired up to save the UK from grid collapse. It is expensive because since it only gets fired up now and then, the cost of keeping it, maintaining it then firing it up is huge. Its output then is very expensive to cover costs and yield a profit. The formula for pricing wholesale electricity was devised when we had coal, nuke and gas.
What happens is prices for all sources are priced according to the most expensive over a given period of input. Since there wasn’t much between wholesale prices of those three and there was no intermittency, it worked OK, but now with wind in the mix, coal gone and one old nuke plant, pricing is usually dominated by gas. Which is why that ‘cheap’ wind power is not cheap, it is linked to gas, and that is before we factor in the cost of the subsidies wind gets. (The clever coves in Govt are puzzling how to de-link price of wind from price of gas. Apparently the problem is the same on the Continent.)
So when old king coal comes on line, electricity wholesale prices reach planetary orbit.
What they also don’t say is that the Grid has contracts with hundreds of establishments - supermarkets, factories, hospitals, etc - that have emergency (diesel) generators. When ‘margins’ get tight, the Grid control calls them and asks them to fire up their gennies and join the Grid. Lots of luverly CO2 there and huge cost.
The UK electricity supply - which used to be superb - is now a dog’s breakfast. We have to pay more for less - all by design, all because of Govt policies over the last 30 years. Good innit?
The UK did zip. They replaced coal with eco-raping biomass, which even the EIA puts at 35% higher emissions than conventional coal (not counting the land use effects) at 3X the cost.
So if the UK had not done ANY biomass, wind or solar along with their associated OCGT, but instead had gone for ultra-supercritical coal, CCGT & nuclear, they would have lower emissions, a much more reliable grid, at a much lower cost. And the final step would be to simply start replacing gas & coal with nuclear which could be done at a modest cost over a longer time horizon. And with economical reactors like Moltex SSR, VVER-1100 and the APR-1400 not the rip-off EPR-1700. They would be FAR better off than today, in every way.
You’d think that before investing trillions in windmills it might have been prudent to figure out when the wind blows and compare that to when people need power.
I did laugh when I read ‘prudent’. A good part of the problem is politicians don’t have any physics and don’t understand electricity. So the nitwits see, for example, that a wind installation has a capacity of, say, 500MW and some clueless civil servant will tell them it’s enough to supply a small town. But MW is the unit of energy not consumption, so they don’t compute that small town would only get electricity intermittently for at most 30% of the time. When advised of the fact ‘capacity’ of wind is not what it actually supplies, the simpletons then say build more wind installations. They just cannot understand, how ever many there are, output will still be 30%, still intermittent.
It’s not just they don’t understand, they don’t want to. Anything which shows up the impossibility of Net Zero they don’t want to know. And despite the fact it is clearly obvious the Grid can hardly supply current demand and so we must use less, we are being urged to switch to BEV and heat pumps and use more. Use less... repeat... use more.
You and I both. The frustrating thing is, there is just no way to make these clowns listen and change. All the political parties are the same. India has just announced at the climate change jamboree it cannot survive without coal. So both they and China will be belching out increasing quantities of CO2 making any reduction the UK or Europe makes, meaningless.
“Public sector power companies are constructing about 27 GW of thermal plants — almost all coal — but this is insufficient, according to Singh. The country needs "at least 80 GW" of new capacity to meet future demand, he said.
India generated 149.66 TWh of electricity in September, of which 108.70 TWh, or 73%, was coal-fired, data from Central Electricity Authority showed. The coal-fired figure was up 17% year on year.
S&P Global Commodity Insights forecasts the share of coal-fired generation in India’s power mix will rise to 77% by 2025 before falling to 71% in 2030 and 52% by 2050.”
If anyone seriously believes India’s coal use will fall to 52% by 2050 they are not paying attention. With what will they replace it?
Note: India is building MORE, UK, USA, Europe is just replacing existing with LESS.
That is so, but who is going to invest in a gas plant - or upgrading it - that is there only to back-up intermittent wind & solar and will never yield enough revenue in its lifetime to cover costs and return on investment, and also is scheduled for the axe once enough windmills have been built? We can see what’s coming. Nationalisation of gas power generation, so the taxpayer will be the ‘investor’ and suffer the loss.
That's what happens when your politicians are just bought and paid for toadies of the Financial Robber Barons of Geneva, London and Wall St. They are marched out like hogs up for auction.
“problem is politicians don’t have any physics and don’t understand electricity. So the nitwits see, for example, that a wind installation has a capacity of, say, 500MW and some clueless civil servant will tell them it’s enough to supply a small town”
Garbage they have any number of advisors, I’d say too many, I’d also remind you, you don’t need a diploma to be able to make decisions, it’s pertinent what The Wizard of Oz said to Scarecrow:
“Where I come from we have university seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers, and when they come out they think great thoughts, and with no more brains than you have, but they do have one thing you haven’t a diploma. Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Universitartus Committiartum E Pluribus Unum, I hereby confer upon you the honorary degree of ThD. (Doctor of Thinkology).😊
But if we had great thinkers in control with any Thinkology we ( humanity) wouldn’t be sitting on a branch of Gaia’s ecological and biosphere tree and cutting off the very branch that supports us. We are in overshoot of the many Gaia life support systems, what’s enabled us to continue the overshoot is FINITE Flammable Fossils (FFF’s) to quote:
“To our ancestors, the benefits of carbon energy would’ve appeared indistinguishable from magic. But instead of appreciating this giant one-time windfall, we developed stories that our newfound wealth and progress had emerged purely from human ingenuity. We had become energy blind” — Nate Hagens - “Energy Blind - The Great Simplification”.
When the energy from FFF’s diminishes, or become difficult if not impossible to access; which a child borne today is almost certain to witness, we’ll most likely return to a 1970’s lifestyle before eventually settling into an 17th century one.
Daddy when your generation were supposed to be transitioning to rebuildables, sorry daddy renewables, you say it didn’t work because people wouldn’t give up on increasing their lifestyles, and so continued increasing consumption of FINITE Flammable Fossils. You’ve told me not to waste energy, switch the lights off, only cook when we need to, rap up to keep warm, and justify why I need driving somewhere because energy is so expensive and hard to get, yet you and mummy daddy consumed energy like there was no tomorrow ignoring that it was FINITE, and so now my future looks bleak. Why daddy did you have me knowing that I’d be faced with “The Great Simplification”.
I’m really sorry Pet it all seemed so good at the time, they told us Renewables coupled with Conventional and Small Modular Reactors using Fission, and Hi tech Fusion would be so cheap with little radioactive toxic waste, but it never materialised except for the waste, I’m so, so, sorry Pet😞🤔
It is the shape-of-things-to-come. A rational, pragmatic person would say, the grid should be the servant of consumers, providing electricity when consumers want it. The new paradigm, consumers must be made the servants of natural cycles, like our ancestors thousands of years ago. How quaint.
Thank you for summarizing what they are doing -scratch that- what they are saying. It seems like the entire world leadership has reached stage five of the seven stages of dementia: moderately severe, cognitive decline. Reality slips past them in favor of their delusional existence. Okay if they are only making decisions just for themselves but tragic that they make decisions for us. Tragic!
No the REAL World leaders are Malthusians and they are doing exactly what they've been planning for 50yr or so. The pretend World Leaders are just puppets.
Ask any 2 year old child in any developed nation where electricity comes from, and they will gleefully run to the nearest wall and flip the light switch to “on.” Parents and child alike blissfully ignorant of how or where the electricity actually came from, clap enthusiastically. The North American transmission and distributions grids MUST operate at Unity, this is achieved by maintaining voltage/amperage at 60 Hertz. Not 59.5 or 60.5. Intermittent resources such as solar and wind, are a destabilizing power source, unless used in very small and localized fashion. Think some form of distributed generation for one’s home or small business. Moo Power for the five dairy farms in northern Vermont currently using small wind, small solar and anaerobic biomass (cow manure to power, look it up) otherwise utility scale renewables are disruptive, inefficient and expensive. Don’t think so? Okay keep building these resources out at the expense of base load gas fired or nuclear generation and see how long your distribution grid lasts. Conservative estimates are that in just the 6 New England States, the cost is in the billions (no one knows how much) and will take decades under current management of the regulated utilities to implement new conductor capable of handling the renewable grid. That cost will be approved by the public service regulators and legislators and passed on to the rate payer. They will be double taxed, meaning they will be paying taxes and increases in power rates. Having been responsible for the construction of utility scale wind and biomass to power plants in another life, without the massive subsidies provided by the Federal government through Production Tax Credits (PTC’s), Investment Tax Credits (ITC’s) and tax equity (a tax shield for the likes of the State Street Bank and Goldman Sachs of the investment world) the wind and solar and other renewables are dead in the water waiting for the three torpedos to hit amid ships. Everyone is on deck now, watching the torpedos aimed and headed straight for them, but General Quarters and a command for hard starboard rudder and flank speed are not forth coming. Can wind and solar and other renewable power generation work? Sure in very small bits, on a localized and distributed generation basis. Can base load turbines be made to “follow” load? Call GE and or Siemens and ask, they will say “yes” with the caveat that there is limit to the capability. Thomas Alvin Edison intentionally made understanding of the electrical generation and transmission/distribution grid very arcane. However like the Wizard of Oz one need only do a little home work on their to see that the dudes behind the curtain are charlatans who have been stealing the rate payers and tax payers money for over 100 years. The new grift of “climate” has arrived just in time to save their bacon, the grift was over, and now it’s a new game of three card Monty at the other end of the Boston Common. Come one come all. Test your powers of perception, just yank on that one armed bandits handle one more time. No luck. Oh well enjoy your time in the dark and cold, the WEF is designing an award and decoration for you to place brazenly on the left front of your olive drab Chairman Mao jacket.
I did the electric interconnection for the first Moo Power (😂😂😂) installation in California. Unfortunately that required several site visits. That is a highly unpleasant way to wast money. Great comment! Excellent understanding. Thanks.
If you know anything whatsoever about the grid, everything you said it the absolute truth. The economic and engineering limit for wind is about 15%, and solar is a mere 5%. Batteries improve things, slightly, but not enough to matter.
Beyond those limits the costs escalate out of control, and the grid destabilizes rapidly.
The reason is almost all grids are 120% set up - they are able to generate 120% of peak demand. The extra 20% accounts for cold snaps, or a power plant tripping off. You can replace that extra 20% with wind and solar - you run certain risks, but it is still a manageable solution. Beyond that you have a situation where wind and solar is backing up wind and solar.
Energy is about asset and capital management. You don't want your fixed asset prices to climb too high - you have to pay for powerplants you don't use. A natural gas power plant that isn't running costs 2/3 what a natural gas power plant that is running all out. This is why peaker power costs more than baseload - the only difference is you simply spread-out fixed costs over more units of energy with baseload - the plants can cost exactly the same.
Wind and solar turn everything on the grid into peaker power plants. Everything is cycling on and off maintain grid stability - this hugely increases costs. EVERYONE in the industry knows this, as well as the regulatory agencies.
An excellent description of what is happening. And why the electricity prices in Europe plotted against the level of Wind + Solar grid penetration are linearly correlated, indicating the REAL cost of wind & solar is 6X that of conventional electricity sources:
Ken Gregory, P.Eng, graph Euro/kwh by country 2019: Conclusion: European Wind Plus Solar Cost 6 Times Other Electrical Sources
I don’t find your comment to be “Garbled” in any fashion whatsoever. It makes sense to me, but.....As a person with financial expertise, but no training in physics, chemistry, engineering, etc., I read this and ask myself how would a pro-renewable, wind & solar will solve all the world’s problems person respond to what you just wrote? I really want to know. What’s the counterpoint? What would they say you have wrong?
The analogy I use you have two cars. Red and green.
The red car is reliable - always starts. Which is good, because you have a job and need to work to make the monthly car payments. The green car cost half the price of the red car, but only starts 40% of the time.
Which do you pick?
Now, a smart person would suck it up and buy the red car, and a dumb guy would by the green car, thinking he'll be able to bum a ride from a friend when the car doesn't start. A complete moron would buy 2, 3 or 4 green cars, hoping that at least one would start each morning.
When people say "intertie" they mean hitching a ride with a friend, and when they say "batteries" or suggest overcapacity they are saying buy 2 or more green cars.
Only in a world gone mad could a government sell the idea keeping the electrical grid stable by cutting electricity to customers meets the standard of reason. The entire justification for the electrical grid is to meet customer demand. It is time the customers started asking just what kind of monster have they granted control of their lives to.
Get used to it. This is our future, sad as that may be. Needless to say, the people orchestrating this insanity will definitely not be doing without any electricity or fuel shortages, even for their 100gal/hr yachts.
Excellent as always. We have been subjected to a fountain of bullshit as COP 28 approaches.
The new half woke CEO at WSJ has ruined the online version of the paper and is clearly moving left. My subscription is hanging by a thread. Why doesn’t anyone notice that the places that have embraced renewables have the highest electric rates, without exception. So very cheap that we can hardly afford them
The economics of EVs don’t work very well when you are paying 66 cents per kWh as the are in San Diego. Depending on assumptions that’s about $5 gasoline equivalent. So you pay a huge premium for the car, the promised fuel cost savings disappear as more renewables are added to the grid, the chargers are broken, the grid might not be available to charge, and the depreciation stunning. What a deal.
The attendance at COP 28 will be 70,000. Double last year. If this trend continues the attendance at COP 35 will be over 2 billion people.
I can only imagine the interconnection issues, especially in California, as we say here in New England, “God love you!” Having been responsible for the TSRs for the Path 15 line, (WAPA were co-owners) from Los Banos substation to Gates substation, we participated in the California ISO 1/4erly reliability meetings. Getting anything done out there was problematic. That said, for the five dairy farms in northern Vermont the move to island off from grid, and still pull and push electrons, as well as clean up the dairy cow stalls efficiently was the difference between generationally owned farms staying alive and viable and selling the real estate to the developers in Burlington. The point here, seemingly mutually understood, despite some of the nonsense around it, small distributed generation can be damn handy, and if you’re the dairy farmer and your costs are understood, and even if more expensive, you can run a business, verses going cap in hand every couple of years to your banker or the state or the feds.
The incentives are going to become overwhelming for electricity customers to defect from the grid. That's why the authorities are going to go full Fascist to prevent that from happening. Like denying access to gas. And making large fuel storage illegal on your property. And blockading Methanol fuel which they've been doing for a long tim.
I would appreciate it if you could keep it civil, thank you. I'm not in the habit of censoring comments but I won't tolerate vulgarity.
At this point my hope is that the people shoving this energy madness down our throats become renewable fuel for thermal generation.
I can relate to this sentiment.
Irina, as my daughter would say “savage” - but you wield your scalpel deftly. And I loved the “orgy of blah” - as the French say this is propaganda machine is an “usine à gaz” on a grand scale. Your P.P.S. was sober context to the future reality that’s likely coming in terms of a reckoning.
Your articles keep us all well-informed and grounded. Thank you. 🙏🏼
Thank you, Alastair. I like "savage", too. At some point, we all run out of delicacy.
“Flexible” means variable which means unpredictable. Flexible sources can’t be turned off and on to meet demand. Inflexible fossil sources can be scheduled based on demand.
Thank you, Irina. And you are not writing too much about the propaganda of the transition, as that is its raison d'etre. Btw, the NYT used to lie glowingly of the miracles of Stalin's collective state, as well. They won a Pulitzer for it. Still haven't given it back.
The endless blather from the green energy folks is quite tiring even if entertaining. I believe they have a lot of time since they don’t work, at least not at an industrial company, and are supported by the government. One would think that endless supply of government graft would come to an end, and perhaps that is starting. You just can’t have a discussion with these anti fossil fuel people as they can’t handle the facts! When you try to point out the idiocy in their position their heads explode. The basic concept that we can just eliminate oil and gas and coal is truly so absurd only surpassed by the total lack of acceptance that most every thing we touch in our daily lives is at least in part derived from fossil fuels. Then the discussion about climate change really is beyond the green movement believers capacity as they’ve drunk too much of the kool aid that CO2 is the cause. When you ask them about photosynthesis and the role of CO2 they just go bat shit stupified crazy and melt down. One good thing if the greenies push us back to cave man style life is that none of them will survive long as cave men didn’t have government handouts.
Correction: anti-fossil, anti-nuclear and anti-conventional hydro. In other words anti-(any practical energy sources).
I stand corrected!
They're touchy because deep down they're aware they have no good arguments.
The NYT used to be “The Gray Lady.” She is now the “Pink Whore.”
As a paid up subscriber to the WSJ, and someone who generally feels the money is well spent, I was rather disappointed (understatement to avoid foul language) with the article you referenced here. My reading of that newspaper is highly concentrated while eating breakfast, and I just hate spoiling my favorite meal of the day with green propaganda shoved in my face.
Apparently this may continue, as I see similar this morning. I’m looking at a piece regarding a so called “much-debated climate-damage fund” (yes, the title uses two hyphens) for poor countries currently under discussion at COP28. Here’s one small gem, of many, from the author:
- The fund is the first under the U.N. that will pay for loss and damage, which occurs when rising seas, drought or effects of climate change are so destructive that communities can no longer adapt. -
Clearly any catastrophe will fall under that umbrella, and I’m sure the World Bank will do a fabulous job administering the fund appropriately.
I would like to comment further on your subprime reference at the end, but I’ve already gone past my allotted character limit. Keep up the good fight of exposing the nonsense.
"The fund is the first under the U.N. that will pay for loss and damage, which occurs when rising seas, drought or effects of climate change are so destructive that communities can no longer adapt." At 0.3" per year sea rise, and about the same in temp rise, it seems to me that everyone would have plenty of time to 'adapt'.
Well done.
Another wealth transfer scam designed to impoverish the Western Middle Class which our uber-wealthy Overlords despise.
I’m constantly talking about the concept of wealth transfer, and all I ever get are blank stares. The easiest current example is the $7500 EV tax credit. A government that’s soon to pass $34 trillion in debt, somehow thinks it’s a great thing to take in less tax revenue than it should so that people can buy a $50,000 Tesla for $42,500. What a steaming pile of you know what.
That's fairly minor compared to the subsidies to solar homes, including net metering. But what we are talking about here is the transfer of $trillions (yes, I said $trillions with a T) from Western Middle Class to Developing Nations, using Climate Change as another lame excuse to do so.
Thank you, Douglas. In fairness, the WSJ does have a lot of good content, including this story that came out at around the same time as the dithyramb cited above: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/why-no-one-wants-to-pay-for-the-green-transition-aed6ba74?mod=hp_lead_pos2
There's hope.
UK average daily demand is 39GW. There is 38GW installed wind capacity, so here we have oodles of almost free ‘green’ electricity. Problem solved, job done. Hurrah!
So cheap has our electricity become, last year the Govt introduced price caps on rates, and gave every household £400 to compensate for their 50% lower electricity bills.
Today this abundant wind power is supplying 9.5% of our electricity. It’s cold here, around 3C during the day -1C at night and the wind - well the wind isn’t blowing much.
Evidently this is usual when temperatures drop - surprise!
So the National Grid has activated its “Demand Flexibility Service” (the service being, not supplying enough electricity), so domestic and business consumers have been invited to sign up with this ‘innovative scheme’ or scam. You need a ‘smart meter’ installed to transmit electricity use every 30 minutes.
You will be bribed £3 per kWh (domestic), £3 000 per MWh (business) for every hour of electricity you reduce consumption during ‘events’ where demand is high. So either don’t use appliances or run them during the off-peak night time. Just a thought.... if enough people switch from daytime to off-peak night time, won’t night time become peak time? The money to fund this will come from the Green Fairy so it won’t cost those people in the scam anything.
For a proper understanding of Net Zero and the clowns running it, watch a few reels of The Keystone Cops. For younger readers: The Keystone Cops (or Kops) are fictional, humorously incompetent policemen featured in silent film slapstick comedies produced by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Film Company between 1912 and 1917.
John.....It's actually hard to believe what you've written here isn't parody. Demand Flexibility Service? What on earth......
I kid thee not: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/industry-information/balancing-services/demand-flexibility-service-dfs
Goodness - "In terms of what it means for our electricity system, if we can reduce electricity demand by rewarding participating customers to turn down when we need them to, it means we might not have to bring on expensive and polluting fossil fuel generators."
Polluting fossil fuel generators (gas) are running all the time, currently supply 57% of UK demand, and continually running on stand-by for when the wind drops.
What they mean is the one surviving coal generator. 50%+ of demand came from coal until 2015 when the last were shut down and all but one demolished, and replaced by wind.
The survivor was due to be blown up too but last Winter it had to be fired up to save the UK from grid collapse. It is expensive because since it only gets fired up now and then, the cost of keeping it, maintaining it then firing it up is huge. Its output then is very expensive to cover costs and yield a profit. The formula for pricing wholesale electricity was devised when we had coal, nuke and gas.
What happens is prices for all sources are priced according to the most expensive over a given period of input. Since there wasn’t much between wholesale prices of those three and there was no intermittency, it worked OK, but now with wind in the mix, coal gone and one old nuke plant, pricing is usually dominated by gas. Which is why that ‘cheap’ wind power is not cheap, it is linked to gas, and that is before we factor in the cost of the subsidies wind gets. (The clever coves in Govt are puzzling how to de-link price of wind from price of gas. Apparently the problem is the same on the Continent.)
So when old king coal comes on line, electricity wholesale prices reach planetary orbit.
What they also don’t say is that the Grid has contracts with hundreds of establishments - supermarkets, factories, hospitals, etc - that have emergency (diesel) generators. When ‘margins’ get tight, the Grid control calls them and asks them to fire up their gennies and join the Grid. Lots of luverly CO2 there and huge cost.
The UK electricity supply - which used to be superb - is now a dog’s breakfast. We have to pay more for less - all by design, all because of Govt policies over the last 30 years. Good innit?
The UK did zip. They replaced coal with eco-raping biomass, which even the EIA puts at 35% higher emissions than conventional coal (not counting the land use effects) at 3X the cost.
So if the UK had not done ANY biomass, wind or solar along with their associated OCGT, but instead had gone for ultra-supercritical coal, CCGT & nuclear, they would have lower emissions, a much more reliable grid, at a much lower cost. And the final step would be to simply start replacing gas & coal with nuclear which could be done at a modest cost over a longer time horizon. And with economical reactors like Moltex SSR, VVER-1100 and the APR-1400 not the rip-off EPR-1700. They would be FAR better off than today, in every way.
Flexible means when you need it you can’t have it...as Californians know from experience.
You’d think that before investing trillions in windmills it might have been prudent to figure out when the wind blows and compare that to when people need power.
I did laugh when I read ‘prudent’. A good part of the problem is politicians don’t have any physics and don’t understand electricity. So the nitwits see, for example, that a wind installation has a capacity of, say, 500MW and some clueless civil servant will tell them it’s enough to supply a small town. But MW is the unit of energy not consumption, so they don’t compute that small town would only get electricity intermittently for at most 30% of the time. When advised of the fact ‘capacity’ of wind is not what it actually supplies, the simpletons then say build more wind installations. They just cannot understand, how ever many there are, output will still be 30%, still intermittent.
It’s not just they don’t understand, they don’t want to. Anything which shows up the impossibility of Net Zero they don’t want to know. And despite the fact it is clearly obvious the Grid can hardly supply current demand and so we must use less, we are being urged to switch to BEV and heat pumps and use more. Use less... repeat... use more.
They don't want to understand. Had they done the most basic analysis of wind patterns and electric demand they would not have built one wind machine.
It drives me nuts when I read the new 300 MW solar plant will replace the 500MW coal plant and supply electricity to 300,000 homes. Where to start?
You and I both. The frustrating thing is, there is just no way to make these clowns listen and change. All the political parties are the same. India has just announced at the climate change jamboree it cannot survive without coal. So both they and China will be belching out increasing quantities of CO2 making any reduction the UK or Europe makes, meaningless.
“Public sector power companies are constructing about 27 GW of thermal plants — almost all coal — but this is insufficient, according to Singh. The country needs "at least 80 GW" of new capacity to meet future demand, he said.
India generated 149.66 TWh of electricity in September, of which 108.70 TWh, or 73%, was coal-fired, data from Central Electricity Authority showed. The coal-fired figure was up 17% year on year.
S&P Global Commodity Insights forecasts the share of coal-fired generation in India’s power mix will rise to 77% by 2025 before falling to 71% in 2030 and 52% by 2050.”
If anyone seriously believes India’s coal use will fall to 52% by 2050 they are not paying attention. With what will they replace it?
Note: India is building MORE, UK, USA, Europe is just replacing existing with LESS.
You are right - why would you build a coal plant and only have it run for less than 20 or so years - no one is going to invest in that!
Now, wind and solar - they won't last that long!
That is so, but who is going to invest in a gas plant - or upgrading it - that is there only to back-up intermittent wind & solar and will never yield enough revenue in its lifetime to cover costs and return on investment, and also is scheduled for the axe once enough windmills have been built? We can see what’s coming. Nationalisation of gas power generation, so the taxpayer will be the ‘investor’ and suffer the loss.
That's what happens when your politicians are just bought and paid for toadies of the Financial Robber Barons of Geneva, London and Wall St. They are marched out like hogs up for auction.
“problem is politicians don’t have any physics and don’t understand electricity. So the nitwits see, for example, that a wind installation has a capacity of, say, 500MW and some clueless civil servant will tell them it’s enough to supply a small town”
Garbage they have any number of advisors, I’d say too many, I’d also remind you, you don’t need a diploma to be able to make decisions, it’s pertinent what The Wizard of Oz said to Scarecrow:
“Where I come from we have university seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers, and when they come out they think great thoughts, and with no more brains than you have, but they do have one thing you haven’t a diploma. Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Universitartus Committiartum E Pluribus Unum, I hereby confer upon you the honorary degree of ThD. (Doctor of Thinkology).😊
But if we had great thinkers in control with any Thinkology we ( humanity) wouldn’t be sitting on a branch of Gaia’s ecological and biosphere tree and cutting off the very branch that supports us. We are in overshoot of the many Gaia life support systems, what’s enabled us to continue the overshoot is FINITE Flammable Fossils (FFF’s) to quote:
“To our ancestors, the benefits of carbon energy would’ve appeared indistinguishable from magic. But instead of appreciating this giant one-time windfall, we developed stories that our newfound wealth and progress had emerged purely from human ingenuity. We had become energy blind” — Nate Hagens - “Energy Blind - The Great Simplification”.
When the energy from FFF’s diminishes, or become difficult if not impossible to access; which a child borne today is almost certain to witness, we’ll most likely return to a 1970’s lifestyle before eventually settling into an 17th century one.
Daddy when your generation were supposed to be transitioning to rebuildables, sorry daddy renewables, you say it didn’t work because people wouldn’t give up on increasing their lifestyles, and so continued increasing consumption of FINITE Flammable Fossils. You’ve told me not to waste energy, switch the lights off, only cook when we need to, rap up to keep warm, and justify why I need driving somewhere because energy is so expensive and hard to get, yet you and mummy daddy consumed energy like there was no tomorrow ignoring that it was FINITE, and so now my future looks bleak. Why daddy did you have me knowing that I’d be faced with “The Great Simplification”.
I’m really sorry Pet it all seemed so good at the time, they told us Renewables coupled with Conventional and Small Modular Reactors using Fission, and Hi tech Fusion would be so cheap with little radioactive toxic waste, but it never materialised except for the waste, I’m so, so, sorry Pet😞🤔
It is the shape-of-things-to-come. A rational, pragmatic person would say, the grid should be the servant of consumers, providing electricity when consumers want it. The new paradigm, consumers must be made the servants of natural cycles, like our ancestors thousands of years ago. How quaint.
And the servants of those who control the grid, providing electricity when they decide... which is the goal.
Thank you for summarizing what they are doing -scratch that- what they are saying. It seems like the entire world leadership has reached stage five of the seven stages of dementia: moderately severe, cognitive decline. Reality slips past them in favor of their delusional existence. Okay if they are only making decisions just for themselves but tragic that they make decisions for us. Tragic!
No the REAL World leaders are Malthusians and they are doing exactly what they've been planning for 50yr or so. The pretend World Leaders are just puppets.
I agree that the REAL world leaders are Malthusians.
Ask any 2 year old child in any developed nation where electricity comes from, and they will gleefully run to the nearest wall and flip the light switch to “on.” Parents and child alike blissfully ignorant of how or where the electricity actually came from, clap enthusiastically. The North American transmission and distributions grids MUST operate at Unity, this is achieved by maintaining voltage/amperage at 60 Hertz. Not 59.5 or 60.5. Intermittent resources such as solar and wind, are a destabilizing power source, unless used in very small and localized fashion. Think some form of distributed generation for one’s home or small business. Moo Power for the five dairy farms in northern Vermont currently using small wind, small solar and anaerobic biomass (cow manure to power, look it up) otherwise utility scale renewables are disruptive, inefficient and expensive. Don’t think so? Okay keep building these resources out at the expense of base load gas fired or nuclear generation and see how long your distribution grid lasts. Conservative estimates are that in just the 6 New England States, the cost is in the billions (no one knows how much) and will take decades under current management of the regulated utilities to implement new conductor capable of handling the renewable grid. That cost will be approved by the public service regulators and legislators and passed on to the rate payer. They will be double taxed, meaning they will be paying taxes and increases in power rates. Having been responsible for the construction of utility scale wind and biomass to power plants in another life, without the massive subsidies provided by the Federal government through Production Tax Credits (PTC’s), Investment Tax Credits (ITC’s) and tax equity (a tax shield for the likes of the State Street Bank and Goldman Sachs of the investment world) the wind and solar and other renewables are dead in the water waiting for the three torpedos to hit amid ships. Everyone is on deck now, watching the torpedos aimed and headed straight for them, but General Quarters and a command for hard starboard rudder and flank speed are not forth coming. Can wind and solar and other renewable power generation work? Sure in very small bits, on a localized and distributed generation basis. Can base load turbines be made to “follow” load? Call GE and or Siemens and ask, they will say “yes” with the caveat that there is limit to the capability. Thomas Alvin Edison intentionally made understanding of the electrical generation and transmission/distribution grid very arcane. However like the Wizard of Oz one need only do a little home work on their to see that the dudes behind the curtain are charlatans who have been stealing the rate payers and tax payers money for over 100 years. The new grift of “climate” has arrived just in time to save their bacon, the grift was over, and now it’s a new game of three card Monty at the other end of the Boston Common. Come one come all. Test your powers of perception, just yank on that one armed bandits handle one more time. No luck. Oh well enjoy your time in the dark and cold, the WEF is designing an award and decoration for you to place brazenly on the left front of your olive drab Chairman Mao jacket.
I did the electric interconnection for the first Moo Power (😂😂😂) installation in California. Unfortunately that required several site visits. That is a highly unpleasant way to wast money. Great comment! Excellent understanding. Thanks.
If you know anything whatsoever about the grid, everything you said it the absolute truth. The economic and engineering limit for wind is about 15%, and solar is a mere 5%. Batteries improve things, slightly, but not enough to matter.
Beyond those limits the costs escalate out of control, and the grid destabilizes rapidly.
The reason is almost all grids are 120% set up - they are able to generate 120% of peak demand. The extra 20% accounts for cold snaps, or a power plant tripping off. You can replace that extra 20% with wind and solar - you run certain risks, but it is still a manageable solution. Beyond that you have a situation where wind and solar is backing up wind and solar.
Energy is about asset and capital management. You don't want your fixed asset prices to climb too high - you have to pay for powerplants you don't use. A natural gas power plant that isn't running costs 2/3 what a natural gas power plant that is running all out. This is why peaker power costs more than baseload - the only difference is you simply spread-out fixed costs over more units of energy with baseload - the plants can cost exactly the same.
Wind and solar turn everything on the grid into peaker power plants. Everything is cycling on and off maintain grid stability - this hugely increases costs. EVERYONE in the industry knows this, as well as the regulatory agencies.
An excellent description of what is happening. And why the electricity prices in Europe plotted against the level of Wind + Solar grid penetration are linearly correlated, indicating the REAL cost of wind & solar is 6X that of conventional electricity sources:
Ken Gregory, P.Eng, graph Euro/kwh by country 2019: Conclusion: European Wind Plus Solar Cost 6 Times Other Electrical Sources
friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=2550
I don’t find your comment to be “Garbled” in any fashion whatsoever. It makes sense to me, but.....As a person with financial expertise, but no training in physics, chemistry, engineering, etc., I read this and ask myself how would a pro-renewable, wind & solar will solve all the world’s problems person respond to what you just wrote? I really want to know. What’s the counterpoint? What would they say you have wrong?
Having attended many public meetings, and explained exactly what I said to the general public, here are the reactions:
1) HUH?
2) You just don't like wind and solar because it steals profits from the utility.
3) But wind and solar are cheaper, see it says right here in this study sponsored by Greenpeace and the wind power company.
4) Why don't you just buy the wind and solar farms outright, then you don't have to make payments!
5) Can't we get a federal grant to make this all cheaper?
6) Interties! I don't know what that means, but it sounds good.
7) Let's completely deconstruct the grid and reconstruct it in a way so what you are saying is no longer true. Then we'll save money!
The analogy I use you have two cars. Red and green.
The red car is reliable - always starts. Which is good, because you have a job and need to work to make the monthly car payments. The green car cost half the price of the red car, but only starts 40% of the time.
Which do you pick?
Now, a smart person would suck it up and buy the red car, and a dumb guy would by the green car, thinking he'll be able to bum a ride from a friend when the car doesn't start. A complete moron would buy 2, 3 or 4 green cars, hoping that at least one would start each morning.
When people say "intertie" they mean hitching a ride with a friend, and when they say "batteries" or suggest overcapacity they are saying buy 2 or more green cars.
Aha! Thanks much for these responses.
Fabulous, lengthy paragraph. And boy did you finish with a flourish...olive drab!! Classic
This is my mic. This is me dropping it. You should copyright this phrase. Another FANTASTIC article. Thanks
Thank you!
Only in a world gone mad could a government sell the idea keeping the electrical grid stable by cutting electricity to customers meets the standard of reason. The entire justification for the electrical grid is to meet customer demand. It is time the customers started asking just what kind of monster have they granted control of their lives to.
Get used to it. This is our future, sad as that may be. Needless to say, the people orchestrating this insanity will definitely not be doing without any electricity or fuel shortages, even for their 100gal/hr yachts.
Excellent as always. We have been subjected to a fountain of bullshit as COP 28 approaches.
The new half woke CEO at WSJ has ruined the online version of the paper and is clearly moving left. My subscription is hanging by a thread. Why doesn’t anyone notice that the places that have embraced renewables have the highest electric rates, without exception. So very cheap that we can hardly afford them
The economics of EVs don’t work very well when you are paying 66 cents per kWh as the are in San Diego. Depending on assumptions that’s about $5 gasoline equivalent. So you pay a huge premium for the car, the promised fuel cost savings disappear as more renewables are added to the grid, the chargers are broken, the grid might not be available to charge, and the depreciation stunning. What a deal.
The attendance at COP 28 will be 70,000. Double last year. If this trend continues the attendance at COP 35 will be over 2 billion people.
I can only imagine the interconnection issues, especially in California, as we say here in New England, “God love you!” Having been responsible for the TSRs for the Path 15 line, (WAPA were co-owners) from Los Banos substation to Gates substation, we participated in the California ISO 1/4erly reliability meetings. Getting anything done out there was problematic. That said, for the five dairy farms in northern Vermont the move to island off from grid, and still pull and push electrons, as well as clean up the dairy cow stalls efficiently was the difference between generationally owned farms staying alive and viable and selling the real estate to the developers in Burlington. The point here, seemingly mutually understood, despite some of the nonsense around it, small distributed generation can be damn handy, and if you’re the dairy farmer and your costs are understood, and even if more expensive, you can run a business, verses going cap in hand every couple of years to your banker or the state or the feds.
The incentives are going to become overwhelming for electricity customers to defect from the grid. That's why the authorities are going to go full Fascist to prevent that from happening. Like denying access to gas. And making large fuel storage illegal on your property. And blockading Methanol fuel which they've been doing for a long tim.
I’m not as flexible as I used to be. I sure wish I had more flexibility, but probably not the same kind they are referring to...