We just need to fix the godamn grid.
True, the grid is fucked up because utilities would rather piece meal upgrades in order to save as much cash as possible for exec bonuses. A couple of years ago an ice storm knocked out power for a week. The only reason it took that long to fix is because the utility refused overtime, refused mutual aide, etc. They however paid execs bonuses for the bang up job of repair, they also lobbied the state to ok a multi year rate increase to pay for repairs. An increase that has already provided double the amount they spent. I’m lucky that I am on solar and not grid tied or I’d be stuck with part of the bill. So bull phucky that green screws up the grid. They have done it to themselves. And we have allowed political class to go right along will the fraud.
“I do expect … he will be fuel-neutral and not a champion for one resource over another” on the energy board, Murkowski said.
What on earth makes you think that, Lisa?
My next question would be how the FARK does the grid know the electricity on its lines was created by a generation unit that is powered by Solar or wind or coal or his momma’s farts?
A man from Texas who most likely thinks Jesus saddled up a dinosaur and rode it thinks our energy grid should solely be powered by dead dinosaurs in the ground.
“Renewables, when they come on and off, it screws up the whole the physics of the grid,”
Uh huh. Yep - solar “screws up the grid physics”. He must be some sorta’ science guy,
Being a senator from a state supported by oil revenues, ya think?
And of course renewables coming on and off line do complicate the grid. As do factories turning large blocks of electrically-operated machinery on or off. As do air conditioners and electric heaters. Oh, yeah, and as do greedy asswipes taking plants offline to make money by gaming energy auctions. But I see only one of these is of interest.
Well, some days we have 100% Wind here in Denmark and the average total was 43% Wind in 2017. At the same time we have a reputation for 99.9999% (or something like that) availability.
We are, btw, tied to the German grid, the Swedish Grid, The Norvegian Grid, and, I think, the UK grid now. It can be done.
Without some reasonable form of energy storage, there really isn’t any meaningful “fix[ing] the godamn grid” in terms of being able to handle a large fraction of production from wind, PV, or solar-thermal sources. This part of McNamee’s statement is unfortunately correct for the grid we have in the US and the technology currently available for large scale deployment
[H]ow do you keep the lights on? And it is with fossil fuels and nuclear.”
Baseload generation in the US is coal, nuclear, hydro, and natural gas. I’m all in favor of significantly more generation in the form of wind and solar, but I’m also well aware that it isn’t an easy engineering problem to get there while still providing the kind of capacity and availability that Americans expect.
Now this is coincidental.
A few weeks ago I had a gas meter repair. The service tech came out pretty promptly, diagnosed the leak and replaced the unit in pretty short order. We chatted for a bit, friendly person and was pretty informative. Somehow wind power came up. His view point was similar to this. Renewables were inconsistent and the wind turbines would wear out within twenty years. He felt his organization was wasting money and time on sustainables. I didn’t agree with this scenario by the way.
Right, and that’s why people have been trying every imaginable way to store energy at large scale for decades. Compressed air in old salt mines under the Finger Lakes. Pumping water up a dam every day and letting it turn turbines every night. Thousands of prototype battery chemistries, from nickel-cadmium to hydrogen-and-warm-thoughts. Shedfuls of boat batteries; Teslas in their garages.
At least the powers-that-be have figured this out enough that it’s getting support for R&D. So is R&D for more resilient grid control, to limit blackout areas and distribute supply and demand among power sources, customers, and storage. They’re finally even listening to the security experts’ warning to air-gap the control systems from the Internet.
So Mr. Trump appoints people who will blow up even these efforts toward survival.
Castigating the guy for stating what, from an engineering perspective, is basically true, seems unwise.
Wind and Solar, to pick the big two renewables, have nothing to do with providing power on demand; they are all about providing power when the weather and the daylight allows it.
Producing this power, say, from residential neighborhoods rooftop solar arrays, and then transporting it to, say, industrial parks, is also not what the grid we have today was designed for.
Now, if he’d stated a more nuanced opinion about solving these types of challenges, then I’d be a little more willing to believe he gets it instead of thinking he just wants energy production to stay fixed on the current US utility-centric model and to not perturb the poor utility companies with having to deal with these yucky little solar panels and windmills.
That’s fine. Is that a problem? That seems like a decent life cycle to me.
Perhaps, but we need to make sure that the worn-out installations are properly dealt with. Saw this on the Big Island of Hawai’i back in 2010:
The difference between those loads and the unevenness of renewable generation is that the former are predictable on time scales necessary to adjust baseload and peaker generation, while the latter is not (usually). If I recall correctly, coal-fired baseload can be adjusted at about 5% capacity per hour. Natural gas peakers can react on the order of minutes, but require 30 minutes to an hour of initial startup before they can begin generating.
PV generation can drop from 100% to 0% in ten seconds. You have to have a large amount of capacitance built into the grid to buffer that.
Wind has a longer lag time – closer to that of natural gas peakers – and in some places in the US the chosen solution is to idle a bunch of natural gas peakers 24 hours a day so they can react to make up for the variable output of the wind turbines. Not exactly what you might call an ideal solution.
[quote=“dave_mb, post:14, topic:81206”] and @justruss :
… the wind turbines would wear out within twenty years.
That’s fine. Is that a problem? That seems like a decent life cycle to me.
[/quote]
Depends on the upgrade cost. After twenty years, the manufacturers will probably have advanced in bearings, electric generator wiring, electronic controls, and materials tech for blades and arms. All this should work a little better. With economies of scale, costs might not rise as fast as efficiency, so putting new turbines on existing towers might be a good investment. If the next ones last twenty-five years by being built better, that life cycle would again pay off well.
Absolutely not a problem. That is the core, it is sustainable. When the gas and oil run out, we have to find a whole bunch of dinosaurs and plants, stomp them flat and wait a few million years. Which considering its Texas, sounds reasonable in hindsight.
Quick LCA comparison from NREL:
Think of the PC industry. By the tech’s view point, when the PC XTs and 286s wore out we would go back to the old mechanical calculators, paper ledgers and offices full of file clerks and shelving.