Me neither, although some things seem straightforward, such as a nat gas plant being easier to connect to the grid than a dispersed collection of wind farms.
DB2
There are engineerinng solutions to all of these issues and they are constantly being eliminated. For example, batteries are excellent method of increasing grid stability and balancing. You are blowing lots of smoke but there is no fire.
Would you care to address the question of costs?
DB2
There is no power plant in the world that can not be stopped from generationg electricity. Nuclear plants are no exception - They are easily shutdown or tripped and then they only need lots of cooling water to keep them cool. Shutdowns for refueling/maintenace happen about once a year, while reactor trips can occur at any time. Hydro can bypass turbines. wind and solar are curtailled often wasting precious cheap electricity.
I see it as a problem for engineers to solve and solve it they will. I see wind and solar, specially solar, as inevitable having Crossed the Chasm. While it might make good press I see it as a nothing burger. Same as the death toll of FSD. Remember the fear of flying? More people are killed by cars than by airplanes.
The Captain
While I had been flying since age seven a series of deaths and accidents aroung age 15 or so induced in me a panic level fear of flying,. A greater fear was confiding in others my fear. While returning to school in Canada I got as far as NYC by cruise ship but had to fly to Toronto. In my hotel room I could not sleep on the eve of the flight. The plane was a Vickers Viscount turboprop, my first turboprop flight.
Once the plane took off the panic disappeared. If it was going to crash there was not a darn thing I could do about so why worry? It was nice flight. For later trips I took the train.
The panic was not cured. My sailing partner wanted to enter the Star Class hemispherical championship in Buenos Aires around 1968 or 69. I told him to take our boat, Playmate, but that I was not going. He insisted on knowing why so I had to tell him about my fear of flying. He then refused to go by himself. Some time later he told me he had made an appointment for me with Dr. Vega, a psychologist. Long story short, I was cured.
Later I took a vacation to visit my old school and flew on just about every model of jet plane of the era. On the flight home, approaching the Caracas airport (CCS), the plane flew into a thick bank of clouds flying directly toward the very same mountain where one of the accidents that caused my panic happened. I though to myself, âThis is it. So much for counselling and whatnot.â Minutes later the plane came out of the clouds and made a perfect landing. On the approach run I said to myself, âDenny, you do talk a lot of nonsense!â
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Anybody remember reading this last week here on METAR?
âYears-long waiting times and potentially project-killing grid-upgrade costs are preventing hundreds of gigawattsâ worth of clean energy projects from being connected to U.S. power grids.â
I suppose they will. However, the question the thread is addressing is, at what cost?
DB2
Why is that difficult? Just run a bus along the row of turbines and bring the bus(es) to a collection point for connection to the grid.
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It may or may not be difficult (see last weeks post about the multi-year backlog on transmission lines) but a nat gas plant can be located near a city with one (relatively short) transmission line. Because wind is a diffuse energy source the wind farms must be farther away and more dispersed requiring more lines. Not to mention offshore windâŚ
DB2
Yeah, but the bus connection along the row of turbines is not really competing with the transmission lines. Sure, there might be a longer feed from the bus connection point to the rest of the grid, but this is hardly high technology.
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Yes we saw it, but the delays are mostly due to regulations - not costs.
I found a more recent paper (2020) by Heptonstall and Gross. They review the costs for integrated variable energy sources into the grid. Their categories are 1) costs from balancing intermittent/variable production, 2) costs from ensuring there is enough generation capacity for peak demand and 3) grid/profile costs (a mix of factors related to geography and the generation unit size).
Their average costs (converted to current dollars) for 25-35% penetration read from their Figure 5)
$/MWh Balancing 4.0 Capacity 10.6 Profile 23.9
This totals to $38.5/MWh. The OECD numbers for wind and solar grid-level costs averaged $18.4/MWh. Adjusting for inflation since 2012 that would be $24.3/MWh.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00695-4
DB2
True, although they do add to the cost.
DB2
Natural gas CC plants would have similar total cost of about $39/MWh.
Natural gas peakers and nuclear plants would have costs of about $100/MWh or more.
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I thought you were arguing last year no one would want solar or wind at all? Something like never going to happen. Could take decades etcâŚ
Now you are arguing the cost to the electric company of it happening. You might want to be the first to take note of what you write.
Not that I recall. Do you have a link?
The cost is to the users of the electricity. And yes, the higher the costs the slower the adoption of a new technology.
DB2
Do you have a source for these numbers?
DB2
Not necessarily high technology but an additional cost. Overall, the OECD table shows that grid connection costs are 5-10x higher for wind and solar.
I forgot that I had already adjusted the OECD numbers downward. Their original 2012 total grid costs (adjusted for inflation) was $31.4/MWh. This is lower than the more recent paper but in the same ballpark.
DB2
That is not true. It is often repeated. A thumb must always be on the scale.
But people buy expensive things. There is no stopping them.
Donât be silly. Of course costs are important. For example, look at the aviation field. Carbon dioxide emissions result from burning jet fuel. Now there is such a thing as SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) which jaagu has posted about. Why wasnât it used on your flight to Ireland? Because it is too expensive.
DB2
The tickets were over $1000 a piece. We were used to spending $700 or less.
I guess you can argue people do not fly. It might make sense to anyone who does not fly.
You have wings on your side of the monitor? LOL