Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[billvon]

Their price is 5% cheaper than my current supplier (who supply 10% RE electricity and 0% RE gas) and still cheaper than the cheapest price I found on comparison sites for non-green suppliers.

When I bought my first home about 15 years ago I put in a small solar system (1.6kW) that I slowly expanded over time to 3kW as I found good deals on solar. The small system would have paid for itself in 10 years; the expanded system actually paid for itself slightly faster due to how cheaply I could find the panels.

We moved out of that house before the 10 years were up, and started renting it out. We found we could get a little more in rent because the house had solar, and people saw that as a way to reduce their electric bills (which they were paying for.) Which was nice.

The next house we bought came with a 10kW solar power system that the previous owners had put in - so no additional cost to us. It covered 100% of our use for the first 4 years. Then we got first one EV, then two - and now we are paying about $50 a month for power. Another expansion should cover that additional use.

A few years ago I started building a battery system that charged via solar, then discharged during peak-charge times (7-9pm.) It's been running for about a year now. It generates a small amount of energy, but has a big effect on cost since it offsets energy use during the most expensive use times. (We are on an experimental RTP plan.)

So definitely win-win for us.

 

[Punx0r]

Good effort, Bill. This is the first home I've owned rather than rented, and I will probably end up with at least some PV at some point, even if it's just supplementing the hot water tank. A home installation does take time/money/effort though and not everyone is up to that, but there's really no reason not to use a greener grid supplier then it literally takes a few minutes and mouse clicks to switch over and is approximately cost-neutral.

When I was looking for the link above in the "Ice sheet losses in Greenland..." thread I couldn't help notice that what TheBeastie and Hillhater are now posting in this thread they have already posted repeatedly in that thread. TheBeastie posted that photo of the "high tide" line carved into the rock three times in just the later half the thread...

 

[TheBeastie]

There are a lot of energy retailers in Australia who sell 100% renewable energy as well and its barely any more expensive than normal electricity, :? but they have been exposed as fakes.
The paywall on TheAustralian is ridiculous now, probably have more luck loading it up via Facebook, but you can glean the article from the intro.

20,000 GetUp! members have switched from ‘dirty’ retailers to a company that has no idea about the source of its power.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/getup-pockets-2-million-with-a-dirty-deal-on-power-prices/news-story/5a76065bddfae60107b7c0a113a73392
https://www.facebook.com/theaustralian/posts/10150965336089978
Powershop, wholly owned by New Zealand firm Meridian ­Energy, buys electricity from the national power grid in the same way as its “dirty” competitors. The bulk of Powershop’s electricity, often all of it, is sourced from coal-fired power stations because renewable energy from wind or hydro power can only service just over 15 per cent of the market at full cap­acity, and downtime is common.

Urging members to dump their energy company, GetUp! guarantees Powershop is “ranked the greenest energy retailer” and “Australia’s only carbon-neutral provider”. Critics of GetUp!, including Green Left Weekly, claim the activist group has perpetrated a myth, confusing consumers wooed to Powershop because most of the renewable energy from an alleged “100 per cent renewable power generator” is on-sold to other retailers as well. The $2m GetUp! earned from Powershop is on top of donations since its inception in 2005.

It makes sense that its scammy because if there is no wind etc in Australia and 50% of Australians are buying renewable-energy only then its quite literally impossible to feed it to everyone.

Same with England, only 3% wind and it been like that all day today. Even though England is probably in the best location in the world for good wind. 0.642GW / 23.6GW of demand, how does that tiny amount of power stretch to most certainly a larger than 3% customer base who paid for %100 renewable energy.


The lust for money via pimping Green Energy and also using Climage Change for political power gains are the two core ingredients that feed renewable energy rollouts.
Al Gore set up an investment fund in green energy tech before he released his Inconvenient Truth movie.
Former vice president Al Gore teamed up with a former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management to create Generation Investment Management
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/al-gores-generation-investment-firm-moves-office-to-san-francisco-2017-10?r=US&IR=T
He knew the power of politics and he knew that the fear of climate change in the hands of politics and the media bandwagon could drive it further than anything else, especially after seeing how much the mainstream media was addicted to the y2k bug, until y2k came and went.
It doesn't matter after all these years that its impossible to see the sea water change after all these years as its naturally moved up over the 1000s of years, all that matters is that the most advanced measuring devices can possibly see a change upwards, even if its tiny and takes another 1000 years before its a problem.

In other news, a pretty good article here on why wind and solar drives up the cost of electricity and it isn't any coincidence that the countries with the largest deployments of wind and solar have the most expensive electricity prices in the world, South Australia, Denmark, Germany, Italy.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/04/25/yes-solar-and-wind-really-do-increase-electricity-prices-and-for-inherently-physical-reasons/#557984b317e8

South Australia has had some problems with electricity in the last few days. Something went down and spot prices went up to $14,200 a MWh, they started using diesel as backup generation. All that money spent on green-energy seems to be draining the whole state dry and its just getting too hard for them to manage. While most countries cheat/have fallbacks like Hydro/Nuclear/Coal, SA's biggest fallback aside from its own gas generators is importing another state's electricity.


It doesn't matter how big of an emergency there is in SA, their 100MW SA battery never ever discharges beyond 30MW.
Maybe Hillhater said this, I remember he posted a lot of stuff on the big Tesla battery so I may of missed this detail,
But one thing I recently discovered and has answered a lot of questions I been thinking about with the big SA Tesla battery and that is why never ever do we see discharges above 30MW?
The other 70MW is reserved for emergencies only. This rule was set in place once the battery went officially live. https://reneweconomy.com.au/explainer-what-the-tesla-big-battery-can-and-cannot-do-42387/
around 70MW of capacity is contracted to the South Australian government to provide grid stability and system security. It will likely mostly provide frequency and ancillary services (FCAS) when needed (such as a major system fault, generator trip or transmission failure).

But SA have had multiple emergencies and they never elect to go beyond 30MW.

I know the real reason and that is due to the fact that if this battery was frequently used at its highest capacity at 100MW then the total lifecycles of around 500-1000 would be used up in a few years and it would be embarrassing news headlines to see the big SA battery being replaced or being re-rated at just being a 30MW battery.
As this discharge chart shows for the new 20700 lithium cells when you discharge twice as hard you lose its total cycles lifetime at an alarming rate.


This is something we did all discuss when the SA Tesla battery was announced was how exactly is the Tesla SA battery going to be used in the grid where its size and ability is insignificant to what even a single 600MW coal electricity-turbine can do. As in how can it discharge at 100MW frequently if its true installed capacity is 130MWh and not be dead in a few years like a regular electric ebike battery.

The answer is that this battery is really only 30MW and the 100MW will never ever be used. Even if spot electricity prices in South Australia got to $1 million dollars a MWh the Tesla battery won't be requested for 100MW, the 100MW discharge ability is more of an in theory capability that while very much doable is far too life-shortening to ever be done more than a handful of times for inital testing etc.

If we were using conventional energy metrics before renewables started to greatly deform their meanings and value ,what "installed capacity" meant etc I would say the big Tesla SA battery would of been called just a 30MW battery, but because of all the chest-beating and the eagerness to show off they told the public its a 100MW battery for the headlines.

 

[Chalo]

Beastie, you've already discredited yourself. There's no use in spending effort posting further.

 

[Punx0r]

There are a lot of energy retailers in Australia who sell 100% renewable energy as well and its barely any more expensive than normal electricity, :? but they have been exposed as fakes.
...
Same with England, only 3% wind and it been like that all day today. Even though England is probably in the best location in the world for good wind. 0.642GW / 23.6GW of demand, how does that tiny amount of power stretch to most certainly a larger than 3% customer base who paid for %100 renewable energy.

All EU member states are required to have an independent government regulator to certify the origin of every MWh generated in the country in order to provide transparency to consumers over the Fuel Mix used by their energy supplier. In the UK this regulator is OFGEM.

In the UK there are ~27 million households and ~20% of electricity is generated from renewable sources. The supplier I plan to switch to currently has 100,000 customers. I don't know how many 100% RE customers there are in total, but it would seem there's more than enough supply.

 

[Ianhill]

UK might be ideally situated for wind but the ground level winds that these turbines harvest carry very little of the jet streams energy, For example the jet stream always travels at over 100mph and can exceed 200mph quite often, It can dip down to as low as 8km above sea level and rise into the tens of thousands of feet, we get a fraction of that power at sea level on an extremely blustery day and on the tallest mountains the wind energy increases as we go upwards on land closer to the jet.

It's for this reason we are developing kite systems that can harvest energy even on days with still ground level wind, there's no tall structure to maintain its all done from the ground with basic electronics and hydraulic skills the rest is a programme test sequence so they are easier to maintain, cheaper to run, and take up less ground area for the potential energy harvested compared to traditional windmill type designs that have been around for millenia.

The reason UK don't run the turbines flat out is the whole sale cost they just shut them down when the price they get is too cheap and in the night I watch them run for a few hours to help electric mountain and then they shut down to reset their heads the 2 and half turns max ready for morning peak, It's not always like this grid demand and wholesale price per megawatt etc changes but they not running them into the ground for pence the owners are using them strategically to increase their profit margins.

The kite system will be about in UK no doubt and it will knock spots of a ground or sea based blade there's no competition it's just the investment and government backing need's to be in place to let our engineers show what the grid can do not the investors calling all the shots with no real clue of looking at the location and truly getting the best out of technology with minimal impact it's all about does that work has it been tyred I don't want to be the first to adopt it's just nutty as a vegans turd.

 

[Hillhater]

You do not know, ...you only have a "Theory" that CO2 is a "cause".....

Nope. We have proof. Scientific, repeatable proof. To wit:

1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Increasing concentrations of CO2 increase heat retained. This can be proven in a high school physics lab.

But a High school physics lab is not a whole planet system, with all its many other factors and influences.
What you have is still only an unproven theory, extrapolated from an unrepresentitive lab experiment .

..

..2) We are increasing the concentrations of CO2 in our own atmosphere. Again, provable via simple chemistry and math; tons of coal/oil burned compared to the volume of the atmosphere...

CO2 is certainly increasing, but the cause of that increase is not "proven" , only theorised , and under much debate in the free thinking community.
Im sure you dont need reminding that use of fossil fuels only contributes <4% of all CO2 emmissions.

.

....3) Temperatures are increasing according to the predictions based on increases in greenhouse gases...

Or..is it the CO2 is increasing as a result of the temperature increasing ?..IE the "CO2" lagging behind the temperature change.......which was established from the historical ice core analysis .

whilst the data fron the historical evidence shows the oposite..

.....No, they don't.

? you do not accept the CO2 lags the temp change as evidenced in the ice core data, let alone analysis of observed data records ?

 

[billvon]

But a High school physics lab is not a whole planet system, with all its many other factors and influences.

You are exactly correct. The high school physics lab just proves that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

Fortunately we have other ways to test the theory. Theory says that with CO2 blocking re-radiation, the lower atmosphere will get warmer and the upper atmosphere will get colder. So we launched satellites to determine whether the additional CO2 was actually blocking re-radiation.

Turns out it was. From Science, the premier periodical for peer-reviewed science:
===============
Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere
J. Laštovička1, R. A. Akmaev2, G. Beig3, J. Bremer4, J. T. Emmert5

Science 24 Nov 2006:
Vol. 314, Issue 5803, pp. 1253-1254
You are currently viewing the summary.

Summary
The upper atmosphere is cooling and contracting as a result of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. These changes are likely to affect the orbital lifetimes of satellites.
===============

So we had a theory - and we proved it.

CO2 is certainly increasing, but the cause of that increase is not "proven" , only theorised

Nope.

Let's say you have a tank that contains 10 gallons of water. It is fed by a 1 gallon per minute source and drained by a 1 gallon per minute drain. So it stays at 10 gallons. You add 10 gallons to it. Afterwards the tank contains 20 gallons of water.

The cause of the tank's increase in volume of water is not "theorized." It is due to you adding water to it. That's not even science. That's basic math.

Now, if you were a tank denier, you could claim all sorts of things. You could claim the tank really doesn't have more water in it, and that this the SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED! when it comes to measuring volume. You could claim that someone lied about the new measurement. You could claim that there's no such thing as volume. You could claim that before the water hit the tank, a wormhole opened and sucked all the water in, and a second hole opened just below it and dumped exactly ten gallons of water from Alpha Centauri into it - so you could claim it wasn't your fault that there's more water in the tank, even though you added it.

And everyone would (rightly) laugh at you.

and under much debate in the free thinking community.

It is under debate by right wing ideolouges and people who are profiting from the fossil fuel industry. People who have their opinions dictated to them, in other words.

The free thinking community came to the realization that the gigatons of CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere is raising the CO2 concentration.

Im sure you dont need reminding that use of fossil fuels only contributes <4% of all CO2 emmissions.

The atmosphere exchanges about 750 gigatons of CO2 a year. Before 1850 it remained in balance; animals, fires, volcanic activity etc released CO2, plants and chemical processes absorbed it.

Then we came along. Today we are emitting 36 gigatons of CO2 a year. Of that, about half is handled by the existing carbon cycle. The remainder sticks around and results in steadily rising CO2 levels.

Want more proof? When economic downturns result in less increase in carbon burning, CO2 levels stop rising so fast.

Or..is it the CO2 is increasing as a result of the temperature increasing ?

Historically that has been true. This is because, contrary to Saturday morning cartoons, dinosaurs did not drive cars. There was no massive release of CO2 on the scale we are doing it now.

This time, we are the source of the CO2 that has started the warming.

 

[jonescg]

Im sure you dont need reminding that use of fossil fuels only contributes <4% of all CO2 emmissions.

I had to read and re-read this. I presume you're referring to the total planetary CO2 production?

As a global system, respiration produces most of the CO2, and photosynthesis absorbs almost all of this CO2. Net result, pretty much zero net emissions in natural systems. Volcanoes produce some small quantities of CO2 from time to time, as does the melting of permafrost.

So in terms of emissions over and above the equilibrium CO2 levels, almost all of it has come from the combustion of fossilised carbon. And the numbers we've been pumping into the atmosphere for the past 150 years are staggering. Even more staggering is the fact that green plants have been unable to absorb it fast enough - otherwise we would have seen the levels plateau.

 

[Hillhater]

Jonescg, One of the big problems is, that none of these figures can be measured or accurately estimated.
Fossil fuel emmissions are probably the closest, but even that is only estimated from data gathered of FF mineing, drilling , and consumer usage reporting.
Natural emmissions and absorbtion are 99% estimates with very limited sample measurements used to estimate a global figure.
And, those limited sample measurements also show that natural emmissions can vary hugely from year to year depending on temperature, rainfall, etc.
Do you think that those could be accurate to within +- 5% ? On either emmissions or adsorbtion ?..
Hence my point about the relative scale of estimated FFuel emmissions at 4% ...
.its impossible to comprehend how anyone can be so certain that the 4% FF contribution is the sole cause of increasing CO2 levels.

 

[jonescg]

So the rapid increase in CO2 concentration co-occurring with the industrial revolution is purely coincidental?

 

[sendler2112]

Beastie, you've already discredited yourself. There's no use in spending effort posting further.

I found great use in his last, well documented post. Higher penetrations of gridscale rebuildable electrical generation lead to higher electrical consumer pricing in any areas where it is trying to displace an existing, well established carbon grid. Wait 30 years until we try (in vain) to replace all carbon fuel for farming, heating, industrial, ect with converted rebuildable electricity to see how expensive everything gets. Solar and wind plus storage is not dense enough to replace the vast scale of cheap carbon energy that the world economy needs to pay the bills.

 

[sendler2112]

Yesterday. Coldest April on record.
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Solar PV capacity factors for farms where I live are in the low single digit % for 5 months now.

 

[Hillhater]

So the rapid increase in CO2 concentration co-occurring with the industrial revolution is purely coincidental?

And coincidental with the increase in global temperature also
..which has been shown to preceed the increase in CO2 !

 

[sendler2112]

Positive feedback from natural CO2 and CH4 emissions, in addition to this one time human CO2 release, have yet to peak as they did in the past as they follow rising temps up through thawing permafrost. The worst greenhouse gas warming effects are yet to come. Fortunately, for the next 50 years the Sun is going through a minimum.

 

[jimw1960]

So the rapid increase in CO2 concentration co-occurring with the industrial revolution is purely coincidental?

And coincidental with the increase in global temperature also
..which has been shown to preceed the increase in CO2 !

CO2 lags temperature when the temperature change is being caused by orbital forcing or long-term changes in solar output. Then the increased CO2 becomes a positive feedback, which further increases temperature, amplifying the temperature increase. This time, the temperature was already warm and CO2 had already increased before we started dumping over 30 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year, raising atmospheric concentrations 40% further (and increasing), and adding an additional 1C to the global average temperature. As atmospheric CO2 continues to increase, it will continue to get warmer, ice sheets and glaciers will melt and sea levels will rise at faster rates, the air will hold more moisture and produce heavier rainfalls, and so on. But then again, I've explained that to you before and you choose to remain willfully ignorant.

 

[Chalo]

Beastie, you've already discredited yourself. There's no use in spending effort posting further.

I found great use in his last, well documented post. Higher penetrations of gridscale rebuildable electrical generation lead to higher electrical consumer pricing in any areas where it is trying to displace an existing, well established carbon grid.

If so, that's only because fossil fuels have huge unaccounted externalized costs that everybody must deal with, but none of the producers pay for. Put these costs on the producers' balance sheets, and pretty much everybody will realize we can't afford fossil fuel energy.

Asthma
Cancer
Acid rain
Desertification
Hurricanes

These are just a few of the costs of fossil energy that the people who profit by it don't pay for. But they are part of the cost, and no honest cost analysis will omit them.

 

[Hillhater]

.....CO2 lags temperature when the temperature change is being caused by orbital forcing or long-term changes in solar output. Then the increased CO2 becomes a positive feedback, which further increases temperature, amplifying the temperature increase. ...

But how do you explain the temperature reducing, whilst CO2 levels remaining high (even increasing) as evidenced on the ice core data ?
IE , that 800 year lag between temp and CO2 change applies to both rising and falling temperature.

.......This time, the temperature was already warm and CO2 had already increased before we started dumping over 30 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year, raising atmospheric concentrations 40% further ...

Yes, and as i said before 30 bn tons is less than 4% of the total CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere each year , ....we think...if only we actually knew to some level of accuracy what those totals are, instead of estimates !
That 30bn tons is well within the likely error of the total estimates, let alone the variability of natural emissions.
BUT..why do you accept that all historic records indicate increases in CO2 were the result of temperatures increasing, but "this time" CO2 is the cause , rather than the result ?

...., I've explained that to you before and you choose to remain willfully ignorant.

I chose to remain unconvinced by the theory you are apparently totally committed to .

 

[jimw1960]

Seriously, hillhater? Do you just make this stuff up or cut and paste from the denier sites? Because nothing you just wrote is even close to the truth. I explained all this to you before in great detail but you choose ignorance. I'm done explaining things to you.

 

[billvon]

BUT..why do you accept that all historic records indicate increases in CO2 were the result of temperatures increasing, but "this time" CO2 is the cause , rather than the result ?

Because dinosaurs didn't drive SUV's.

 

[sendler2112]

You can't get mad at people for being skeptical when denier sites keep showing this image.
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[jimw1960]

You can't get mad at people for being skeptical when denier sites keep showing this image.
.

Yes I can get mad so long as those denier sites show that graphic without also showing a plot of what solar activity was doing during that time.

 

[jimw1960]

Seriously my denier friends, it all boils down to this: Show me your model. If you believe it's possible to emit over 30 billion tons of fossil CO2 each year without raising global temperatures, then show me a plausible physics-based model that explains how that is possible. To date, nobody has been able to do that without defying the laws of physics. Conversely, I can show you dozens of peer reviewed and validated models that predict warming will occur.

 

[Dauntless]

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/05/africa/congo-cobalt-dirty-energy-intl/

 

[billvon]

Seriously my denier friends, it all boils down to this: Show me your model. If you believe it's possible to emit over 30 billion tons of fossil CO2 each year without raising global temperatures, then show me a plausible physics-based model that explains how that is possible.

Further, I'd suggest that if deniers want to be taken seriously, stop changing the denial every week or so.

During the "pause" the denial was "the climate's not changing!"
Afterwards it was "no one is denying the climate is changing, but we're not to blame!"

Here in this thread I have seen a new denial which is kind of cool - "OK we are emitting lots of CO2 but it's not contributing to CO2 in the atmosphere!"

Hard to take anyone seriously when their claims change week by week depending on what they just saw on FOX News (or Breitbart, or WattsUpWithThat.)