Category Archives: Electricity from Coal

Data Centers and Artificial Intelligence-Stop Energy Transition Part 3

Posted on October 3, 2024 | Leave a comment

ENERGY

The United States of America is built on energy. Primarily produced by fossil fuels.  The transportation area, cars, trucks, airplane, ships, etc. are propelled by gasoline, jet fuel, diesel oil, bunker fuel, propane, etc., all fossil fuels.  Transportation is 90% reliant on fossil fuels. About 60% of the Electricity is produced by fossil fuels.  Quoting Denny Ervin:   “Economies and standards of living hinge on having an adequate, economic, and reliable energy source—attributes that are non-negotiable for an optimal energy infrastructure. Our current trajectory risks creating inadequate, unaffordable, and unreliable energy supplies, which would devastate the U.S. economy and standard of living”.

Mr. Ervin has hit the nail on the head

Electricity Generation

The US generated 4.18Trillion Kilowatt hours in 2023.  A trillion Kilowatt-hour are called Petawatt hour.  That means that it is 4.18 followed by 15 zeros.  Because billing is usually done in kilo watts hours-,  it would be 4.18 Tera kilowatt-hours or as it is expressed in the  graph, 4.18 trillion kilowatt hours.   These vast numbers are here to stay.    Primer: Kilo is a thousand; Mega is a million; Giga is a billion; Tera is trillion and Peta is a quadrillion.

The primary source was thermals (natural gas, coal  and petroleum) at 60%, Nuclear added 18.6 %.   The renewables came in at 21.4 %.   Within that renewables list is Wind and solar and they are the rising sources.  They came sourced at 14.1%   They are non-dispatchable, meaning that their generation is a  wild card function of the weather.

Artificial Intelligence Creates Demand For Electricity

Power generation in 2023 was slightly lower than the 2022 generation.  Why? Due to higher price of electricity and use of power saving devices like LED bulbs.  But the demand is forecasted to increase soon and require a lot of additional generating sources, and transmission lines to carry the increase.   This increase is attributed to data center growth.  There are an estimated 2700 data centers in the US.  Data centers are the backbone of the digital world.  They host the internet from not only the US but a big share of the World’s internet.  It is in data centers where the Clouds store data for businesses and websites are housed. A large new power demand is forecasted for the Artificial Intelligence (AI).   DataCenterDynamics says that data center power consumption in the US is set to reach 35GW by the end of the decade, almost double its 2022 level.

Goldman Sachs posted on 13 May 2024, “AI is showing ‘very positive’ signs of eventually boosting GDP and productivity”.   That feeling seems to be universal.  The posting says: “Some of the academic literature and economic studies that have looked at the increase in productivity that we’ve seen following AI adoption, in a few specific cases, supports our view that large productivity gains are possible. The average increase in productivity is about 25%. Case studies of companies that have adopted AI imply similarly large efficiency gains. And so, you know, there’s a lot of reasons to be optimistic. It will just take a little bit more time to see these productivity gains realized.”

That is an incredible gain.  The nation must do what it takes to accomplish that goal. 

Techopedia predicts that the US gain the most:

Techopedia offers why the US will dominate.

“The US leads the way, reflecting its size, private and public investment in research and development, and the talent nurtured by its higher education system”.

Techopedia offers why the US will dominate.

There are impediments to AI success.

The major impediment is the Energy Transition from thermal sources to renewable sources. 

There are 3 major actors in this transition.  First is the Administration putting up big subsidies to make solar cells and wind turbines installations to assure Crony Capitalist will make money.   Second is the EPA that writes regulations that force the demise of reliable thermal sources, particularly coal based.  And lastly are the States that write laws, that are ill thought-out, declarations of what sources are allowed, what percentage and the time line.  See here and here. This triple bogey is not escaping notice.  The grid operators have been telling everyone that their systems are headed for collapse.   FERC has been telling the same story.  But the Governmental bodies believe themselves to know more about the grids than the grid operators. The companies that are planning to spend vast sums of money to bring AI online seem to be aware of this huge pothole in the road to delivery.  They need electricity that is reliable, and they need it now.  That can only come from thermal sources. The WSJ front page on October 1, 2024 posted “AI fever abates in stocks’ latest quarter.” The stock market sees that AI is not unfolding as was forecast.  You can bet that China is going to provide the power to their AI plans.

The Daily Caller posts: “‘Inevitable And Foreseeable’: Grid Operators Beg Court To Nix EPA Rules To Save Electricity System From Collapse”:

“The Biden-Harris administration says that its stringent power plant rules won’t harm long-term power reliability, but four grid operators stated the exact opposite in a legal brief filed Friday.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its aggressive emissions rules for America’s power plants in April, saying at the time that the regulations would “improve public health without disrupting the delivery of reliable electricity.” However, four major regional grid operators argued the exact opposite in an amicus brief filed in support of red states’ legal challenge against the rule, stating explicitly that the rules will jeopardize Americans’ ability to reliably secure sufficient amounts of power if they are enforced as is”

Specifically, the EPA’s rules will mandate existing coal plants to harness 90% of their emissions by 2032 if they want to stay open past 2039, and they will also require new natural gas-fired plants to do the same in order to stay open past 2039, according to the agency. The EPA is essentially requiring power plants to meet those emissions cuts using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, which the four grid operators contend is too expensive and unproven to be mandated on such a tight timeline.”  

The EPA is setting up rules that require the operators to use unproven systems (CCS). Coal plants in operation now provide low cost energy. They provide dispatchable electricity.  They have a distinct advantage in that they usually have several months of coal stored at their site.  Gas units normally do not have a storage that could be used if there is an interruption in the supply line. Nuclear sourced electricity has many months, perhaps as long as a year on plant fuel

The Energy Bad Boys posted:” PJM, MISO, SPP, and ERCOT Join the Legal Fight Against EPA’s Carbon Rules”. 

“The four— PJM, the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO), Southwest Power Pool (SPP), and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)— stretch from New Jersey to parts of New Mexico and serve more than 156 million Americans in their respective service territories.

“The rules on carbon dioxide emissions are not the only regulations threatening the viability of the existing thermal fleet.  Under the Biden-Harris administration, the EPA has written or updated regulations like the Ozone Transport Rule, the Coal Combustion and Residual Rule, and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, all of which are designed to place enough straws on the backs of reliable coal-fired power plants to compel their owners to shut them down”.

 

AI builders Must Have Reliable Energy Sources

Here are some appeals for reliability:

Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of Black Rock Investment Management Corporation said no to renewables. Fink spoke at the World Economic Forman that AI will be big and profitable.  He wants the suppliers for his operations to use only dispatchable energy sources because they are reliable sources of power 24/7. 

Dominion CEO Robert Blue said: “We’re going to continue to be a big builder of renewables. We’re building a big offshore wind farm. We’re building a lot of solar. We’re adding a lot of storage. … But we also recognize that we’re going to need some more natural gas in order to keep the lights on.”  In addition to developing more natural gas plants to balance power grids from expansions of intermittent renewables, rising demands are also delaying some retirement of coal plants.

Dominion wants to build a 1,000-megawatt natural gas plant in Chesterfield County, where a coal plant closed last year, stating that the addition is critically important for reliability.  Significant costs for these increased power demands — including transmission infrastructures — will be passed on to household and business consumers.

“Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon, three of the largest AI data center users, have previously criticized a proposal by utility company Georgia Power to expand natural gas use at the expense of hurting their renewable energy programs. The problem is that those centers require huge amounts of reliable electricity to operate, and no nearly adequate hydrocarbon replacement exists. As former Microsoft vice president Brian Janous observes, whereas “No data center wants to be tied to the need for new fossil resources, that’s the problem… You can’t throw this much [data-center] capacity at the system and not have some degree of fossil resources to support it.”

Amazon states that their data centers are powered by renewable energy.  This seems improbable as the industry knows that renewable energy is not dispatchable. They are using a ploy that is provided to make companies feel good about themselves while using fossil fuels.  Its called RECs.  The RECs provide certified proof that you’re using renewable energy from the grid without installing solar panels or other renewable energy systems at your home or business

 Amazon invests in renewable energy projects that generate electricity, which is then fed into the grid. They then purchase or are allocated an equivalent amount of energy from the grid for their use. This is often done through renewable energy certificates (RECs), which represent proof that 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity was generated from an eligible renewable energy resource.

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration, largely through the perversely titled “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), is providing massive and unsustainable economic incentives to move the electric generation market towards virtually exclusive reliance upon renewable energies (wind and solar in particular) plus batteries.  However, such forms of electric energy pose inherent problems; especially to the ultra-high electric energy “purity” requirements of AI/data centers. Data centers and AI generally require nine-nines reliability and quality metrics such as voltage, frequency, harmonics, etc.

Summary

The US electricity generation is forecast to have a large new demand to power data centers.

Major grid operators are going to court to cancel EPA rules.  They said this must be done or their girds will collapse. 

Data center owners/operators recognize that their systems must have dispatchable,  reliable electricity.  Renewables are not dispatchable.

Next part will examine the non dispatchable  wind and solar .

cbdakota.

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Posted in Electrical grid, Electricity, Electricity from Coal, fossil fuels, Government Regulations, government subsidies, Grid, Nuclear Energy, Personal Automobiles, Renewable Energy, solar cells, Windpower

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 WE MUST REVERSE ENERGY TRANSITION, NOT JUST STOP IT.

Posted on September 10, 2024 | Comments Off on  WE MUST REVERSE ENERGY TRANSITION, NOT JUST STOP IT.

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Posted in China, Climate Alarmism, CO2, Domestic Energy, Electrical grid, Electricity, Electricity from Coal, EPA, fossil fuels, Global Temperatures, Grid, IPCC, Renewable Energy, Renewable Fuel Standard, Storms/hurricanes

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The Grids Reliability Is Endangered By EPA “Climate Change” Regulations And State Ordinances.   

Posted on February 28, 2024 | 1 comment

There are a number of grids servicing the US. The  Pennsylvania, New Jersey Maryland grid (PJM) is well managed.  It is the largest grid in the US. It services 13 States and the District of Columbia.  It is the grid that provides my electricity and it has managed to avoid brownouts and blackouts.  The reason is that the ratio of fossil fuel (thermal) energy generation to wind and solar generation is 20 to 1.  If Nuclear is included the ratio is 26 to1. 

The chart shows the PJM Existing Installed Capacity.

The issue PJM is facing is how to make their way through the EPA and States forcing an energy transition. The following explains their fear of losing enough spare capacity to continue to make their Grid reliable:

“Maintaining an adequate level of generation resources, with the right operational and physical characteristics , is essential for PJM’s ability to serve electrical demand through the energy transition. Our research highlights four trends below that we believe, in combination, present increasing reliability risks during the transition, due to a potential timing mismatch between resource retirements, load growth and the pace of new generation entry under a possible “low new entry” scenario: · The growth rate of electricity demand is likely to continue to increase from electrification coupled with the proliferation of high-demand data centers in the region. · Thermal generators are retiring at a rapid pace due to government and private sector policies as well as economics. · Retirements are at risk of outpacing the construction of new resources, due to a combination of industry forces, including siting and supply chain, whose long-term impacts are not fully known. · PJM’s interconnection queue is composed primarily of intermittent and limited-duration resources. Given the operating characteristics of these resources, we need multiple megawatts of these resources to replace 1 MW of thermal generation.”  (My highlighting added).

According to PJM this is what it will look like if the State and Feds current plans are not adjusted.

Completely unworkable. Solar, the major electrical source, only available in the day. 

The “Storage” at 55,037 watts, is at present, nonexistent.  Even if it were charged by excess solar wattage, it, along with the other electrical generators, would not be enough to satisfy peak demands.      

PJM management wants everyone to note that the States, not PJM, have the responsibility to maintain resource adequacy on their electric systems.

The EPA has several regulations that will cause a loss of significant reliable capacity of coal based and Natural gas (Thermal Plants) plants. The following are from the PJM’s study:

EPA REGULATIONS

Effluent Limitation Guidelines: will force closing 3,400 MW thermal based capacity.

Coal Combusting Residuals: Will force closing 2,700 MW thermal-based capacity.

Good Neighbor Rule:   Will force closing 4,400 MW thermal-based capacity.

STATE ORDINACES

Forcing retirement of the following thermal based capacity.

Illinois:  5,800 MW thermal-based capacity.

New Jersey:  3,100 MW thermal-base capacity.

Virginia-North Carolina: 1,533 MW of thermal-based capacity.

Indiana: 1,318 MW of thermal-based capacity.

Maryland: 305 MW thermal-based capacity.

PJM has avoided system blackouts  because they maintain a 22% reserve but the 2030 projected reserve based upon their study will only be 3% . 

There two organizations that are commissioned to make the Grids reliable.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, is an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. 

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is a nonprofit corporation that ensures the reliability of the bulk power system in North America, including the continental United States and Canada.

FERC and NERC have launched a joint review of the performance of the bulk power system during recent winter storms that brought Arctic air across much of North America. The review will look at winter preparation activities and gather information to help guide future winter storm preparations and operations.  .The review will look at progress made since FERC and NERC completed joint inquiries into two recent winter storms, Uri in 2021 and Elliott in 2022.  The team plans to deliver the results of the review no later than June 2024.

FERC, in my readings, appears to know that renewables are not reliable.

It is obvious that the transition from thermal based electricity to renewable based electricity is not under control. The PJM grid may be the most reliable large grid in the nation. And if corrections are not made, it’s reserve will be only 3% in six years, and that will spell blackouts

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Batteries, Coal, Electrical grid, Electricity from Coal, EPA, fossil fuels

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Most of future Electrical Productiion will not be from Wind and Solar, So EVs will be powered by fossil fuels

Posted on September 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

 Economically developed Nations around the world are pushing the idea that the global temperature is rising unabated to a point where it will become an existential threat to mankind. The problem, they say, is carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the use of fossil fuels.  They think that CO2 emissions created by the use of gasoline, and diesel, along with natural gas and coal must be discontinued.  I think that these Nations are planning to subjugate you under the guise of saying they are just following “science”.

A part of their plan is to accomplish this by using electricity produced from renewable energy sources—Wind Turbines and Solar Cells— and make people buy electric vehicles (EV). This plan will not work.  But it will spend trillions of dollars before it is revealed as a failure.  Their plan will not be accomplished because wind and solar are not dispatchable.  Meaning, the Electric grids must provide, unfailingly, power 24/7.  This is accomplished by the use of fossil fuel power that can be ramped up and down to meet requirements. The renewables are not dispatchable because grid operators cannot ramp them up and down.  No wind, no sun, no renewable power. As they are today, EVs will continue to run on electricity made mostly by the combustion of fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, the government will try to force you into buying an electric vehicle (EV).

The EPA announced the new standards require a 49 mpg fleetwide average by 2026, a 33% increase over model year 2021 standards. The EPA said that these tough new tailpipe emission standards are designed to effectively force the auto industry to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars

The target cars are those powered by Internal Combustion Engines—  aka ICE.

And then they are enacting laws that no gasoline or diesel car can be manufactured and sold after some certain date.

California, always the leader in penalizing the people living in that state, has a  new law that it will be illegal to sell  new gasoline-powered cars after 2035.  Nothing from the Biden Administration yet but they are playing with a date to match California.

 Washington Free Beacon carries this story:

“All CARS ARE BAD” Pete Buttigieg’s Equity Advisers Want You To Stop Driiving

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is appointing a group of “leading experts” to advise him on “transportation equity,” including several who argue that cars cause climate change and promote racism and therefore should be phased out. 

And wouldn’t you know it, they make this issue, “racism”

So the Government is going to phase out all ICEs.   Let’s see how that will work.

Hedges and Company say” Need to know how many cars there are on Earth in 2023? Here is how many cars there are in the world, including trucks, broken down by world region?

1). Asia: 543 million vehicles on the road
2). Europe: 413 million vehicles (288 million in EU plus 125 million in non-EU countries)1
3). North America: 358 million vehicles
4). South America: 84 million vehicles
5). Middle East: 50 million vehicles
6). Africa: 26 million vehicles
7). Antarctica: about 50 vehicles

That totals up to about 1.5Billion.

Basically only the North American and EU are making rules to get rid of gasoline and diesel vehicles. North American and EU vehicles are less than half of the world’s vehicles.

My guess is that the developing nations will not ban ICE vehicles as they will not have much available electricity to power EVs.

How effective will that be?

What does the vehicle situation in the US look like? 

Statistica says:  In the first quarter of 2023, there were around 286 million vehicles operating on roads throughout the United States. 

From a Heartland posting we learn the following:

Historically, internal combustion engine (ICE) car sales in America are upwards of 55 million annually with about 15 million or 27 percent being new and 40 million or 73 percent being used car sales.

With a total of 50 to 55 million ICE vehicles being sold annually for new and used, it’s obvious that the auto industry and the economy has been benefiting and prospering in the used ICE car market.

The average life of an American vehicle is 13 years. For example, the California rule that no new ICE vehicle can be sold after 2035, would be mostly ineffective in that for years there will be grandfathered ICE vehicles on the road. Of course, California  might get really draconian and try to make ICEs illegal own and drive.

The next blog will examine the new and used EV market.

cbdakota

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Posted in Alternative Energy, CAFE Standards, Electric Vehicles, Electrical grid, Electricity from Coal, EPA, fossil fuels, Personal Automobiles, President Biden, Renewable Energy

China’s CO2 Emissions Are About Triple US Emissions

Posted on August 16, 2023 | 3 comments

First thing you should see is the following  chart showing CO2 emissions by nations and by continent.  It looks at major contributors.

The chart tells us that China is the primary source of CO2 emissions.  The chart also shows what the two other major industrialized contributors, the North American continent and the European Union.   The North American Continent is made up of Cananda, Mexico and America with the America being the biggest emitter.  

These numbers are a little dated as the US emissions continue to decrease and the Chinese and Indian emissions are increasing.

Asia, consisting of China, India, Japan, Korea, Australia, etc.  are already emitting twice as much as North America and Europe combined.  Leading the Asian nations are China and India.  They are not going to stop building coal based plants. Their rationale is that they need this to bring the living standards of their people up to our standards.  China and India’s populations are each more than 1 billion. They are on their way to more than triple the emissions difference.  Excluding Japan, Korea, and Australia , many of the other Asian nations are underway with plans to use fossil fuels to create wealth for their people.

China has said that in 2030, they will begin to reduce CO2 emissions.  I doubt that they will, because for years they have announced they were through building coal based power plants.  Rather they continually change their mind and announce they are building more of them.  They are the world’s largest manufacturer of solar cells. So, it is not that they do not have renewable energy access, but rather they are enlightened enough to know that solar and wind will never replace fossil fuels.

And what are we doing?  Why, we are spending trillions of dollars on wind and solar energy sources.   The idea of replacing fossil fuels is an illusion.  Certain factions are touting a future where wind and solar are the sole sources of energy. No North American or European nation have ever been able to supply their customers on a 24/7 basis and it is doubt full that they ever will.  For example, Germany, with wind and solar nameplate capacity in place, that exceeds the nation’s electrical demand, have been unable to run without their fossil fuels plants.

And now, a couple of quotes:  

“Even if the United States were to get rid of all fossil fuels, this would only make a difference of two-tenths of one degree Celsius in the year 2100, according to Heritage Foundation chief statistician Kevin Dayaratna.”

And a quote from President Biden’s Climate Tsar, John Kerry.

“The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what — that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world,” Kerry said in 2015.

So, why are we doing this?  

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, China, Electricity from Coal, fossil fuels, Global Temperatures, President Biden

Wind and Solar Can Not Save Europe, Now or Ever

Posted on December 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Wind and solar in Europe 2 December 2022

European countries have installed wind and solar systems to various degrees. The energy crisis that these countries are encountering is primarily due to a shortage of natural gas. If the Alarmists get their way, no one will be allowed to use natural gas.  How are we to manage without natural gas.  Certainly, the EU nations have thought this through as several EU nations have passed laws that will outlaw natural gas.   Or have they?

In Europe, and perhaps globally, Germany is leading the way to banish fossil fuels. The idea is to install wind and solar electricity generating facilities.  Germany has installed wind and solar facilities that have name plate capacity of 127.4 GWs. That much capacity exceeds their electrical demand by almost double.  So why do they care if the Russians have cut off natural gas?  Name plate capacity for wind and solar over states the actual performance by about 3-fold.  It’s worse than that really but they will be something for latter discussion. There is an app “The ELECTRICITY MAPs” that allows you to look at daily demand for electricity and what systems are creating the electricity.  Not just renewables, but nuclear, natural gas and coal production systems. 

I chose to look at the maps for a number of countries in the EU, on December 2, 2022, at 12 pm.  I assembled a chart that demonstrates the problem by focusing on the rated capacity of wind and solar and their actual performance.  The chart has the nation, the demand for electricity at that hour, the name plate capacity (NPC) combined for wind and solar generators and the actual production (column 4) by those generators.  The last column (5) is the percentage of the electricity demand being supplied by wind and solar.  Great Britain looks odd, but at the time this reading was made could have been windless and overcast.    Because the Alarmist tell us that wind and solar are the least expensive forms of power generation, you would think every country would be maxing out those units. Oh yes, they forgot to tell you that because they are dependent on the weather, they only function, on average, about a 1/3 of the time.

Column1Column2Column3Column4Column5
   EuropeDecember 2, 2022
 12pm
 ElectricityWind and SolarElectricity
        Demand         NPC   Production 
Nation           GW         GW            GW             %
Germany77.3127.417.824
Great Britain30.738.500
France69.432.73.85.5
Italy43.932.61.84.2
Netherlands17.222.25.230
 Belgium14.911.22.416
Poland25.7111.23.9
Denmark6.228.52.845
Slovakia6.16.100
Austria11.660.44
Romania7.884.40.56
Switzerland143.100
Czech Republic12.92.40.040.3
Hungary6.42.10.20.3
Bulgaria7.121.80.169
Spain****28.748.5724

Down at the bottom of the chart is Spain. I forgot Spain on 2 December. So, I looked it up, today the 4th of December. Spain also has put in more wind and solar capacity than the demand requirements. The app said 7 GW were being produced at 10am. 

The chart numbers, in many cases, are rounded off.

Wind and solar are not the answer.

cbdakota

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Posted in Electricity from Coal, fossil fuels, Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy, solar cells

Part 2: The Fragile Electric Grid

Posted on August 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

See the source image

This is part two of Robert Bryce’s testimony to the House Select Committee on The Climate Crisis.

Our electric grid is fragile.  Robert Bryce writes that the Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergence Response illustrates the declining reliability of our grid.  Bryce says:

“In 2002, there were 23 “major disturbances and unusual occurrences” on the domestic electric grid. Those outages were caused by things like ice storms, fires, vandalism, and severe weather. By 2016, the number of disturbances and unusual occurrences had increased six-fold to 141. In 2020, the number of events jumped to 383 – an increase of 270% in just four years.  Even more alarming: through the first two months of 2021, there have been 122 of these outages.”

Bryce says:

“Electrifying everything is the opposite of anti-fragile.  Attempting to halt the use of liquid motor fuels and replace them with electricity will make our transportation system more vulnerable to disruptions caused by extreme weather, saboteurs, equipment failure, accidents, or human error. Electrifying our transportation system will reduce societal resilience because it will put all our energy eggs in one basket. Electrifying transportation will reduce fuel diversity and concentrate our energy risks on a single grid, the electric grid, which will make it an even-more-appealing target for terrorists or bad actors.

Furthermore, and perhaps most important, attempting to electrify transportation makes little sense given the ongoing fragilization of our electric grid. The closures of our nuclear plants is reducing the reliability and resilience of the electric grid and making it more reliant on gasfired power plants and weather-dependent renewables.”

While skeptics have known for years that the alarmist’s forecasts of doom are not likely to be realized, the alarmists oddly want to shut down all nuke plants. Nuke plants that do not emit their enemy carbon dioxide (CO2).  Bryce notes Congress inaction regarding this issue when he says:

“Instead, Congress is standing idly by as our nuclear plants – our most reliable, safest, and most power-dense form of electricity production – are being shuttered. Nuclear plants are, as writer Emmet Penney recently put it, our “industrial cathedrals.” If policymakers want to decarbonize our transportation system while enhancing the resilience of our society, the best option would be to have a grid that is heavily reliant on nuclear energy.”

Bryce discusses recent issues that demonstrate the gird’s declining reliability in his report.  They can be reviewed by clicking here.

See part two about supply chains and mineral needs.

Pages: 1 2

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Posted in Alternative Energy, Chinese aggression, Electric Vehicles, Electrical grid, Electricity from Coal, Nuclear Energy, Personal Automobiles, Renewable Energy, solar cells, Windpower

Solar Cells Are Not Able to Supply Daily Power Demand Alone

Posted on November 7, 2020 | 1 comment

 

Our nation’s electricity is produced mainly by fossil fuels and nuclear energy.  The role played by renewables is relatively small, even though the public seems to believe it is greater.  This is probably because the media apparently wants the public to believe it is so.  The Chart 1 below is from the Energy Information Administration (eia), an arm of the Department of Energy:

                                                   CHART 1 

Wind and solar represent 9.1% of the sources of US electricity generation in 2019. 

The sources noted in the picture above feed their power output into systems called the grids.  These grids distribute the power to the users in their area. The grids do their utmost to be a source of uninterruptable electricity at a specific frequency.  This they do reliably. 

All of us have experienced a power loss at our home or business and you know how disruptive that is.  But most power losses we have experienced are almost always local disruptions, e.g.  wind, snow, lightning, power pole meets vehicle, transformer failure, etc. But not a grid failure.

The grids fine tunes their delivery of power, matching the increases and decreases of demand.  The grid operators dictate to the suppliers what is needed.  For example, the operators can use Nuclear and Coal based plants as a base load.  These two sources are predictable and steady suppliers but may not be able to quickly react to changes in demand.  The grid operator’s natural gas plants can adjust quickly to changes to prevent supply disruptions. Most businesses need electricity to be uninterrupted as downtime is costly.

Wind and solar are non-dispatchable because they are neither predictable nor steady suppliers of electricity. The wind driving the wind turbines can go from near gale force to calm very quickly.   Solar can do the same as cloud banks appear overhead.  The grid operator has no control over how much or how little the renewables are producing.  If renewables are supplying the grid, the operator must have backup capacity to prevent shutdown of the grid. By the way, grids are not capable of storage of electricity.

The following is from a posting by American Experiment titled “No State Imports More Electricity Than California” by Isaac Orr:

“The Chart 2 below is from Electricity Map, and it shows electricity generation by source on April 3, 2019 in California. The orange section represents solar, the blue hydroelectric, light blue, wind, green, nuclear, red natural gas, and the brown section is imported electricity.

                                                   Chart 2

As you can see, imports fall when it is sunny out, and increase again when the sun goes down. It just so happens that the sun was not shining when the demand for electricity in California was highest. California’s policies promoting renewables at the expense of dispatchable generation place it in an odd predicament, it must pay other states to take the excess electricity generated by renewables when their generation is high, and it must also pay other states for their power when renewable generation is low.”

From Chart 2, you can see solar cells negatives. 

 Solar cell production is not at its maximum at sunrise nor sunset.  It peaks around noon when the sun is directly overhead. The eia Chart 3 below shows typical electricity production in Los Angeles.   Using the gold curve, that assumes that the solar cell has tracking, at 3pm, the watts are about 550 Watts and at 7pm it is at zero.  At the peak demand midpoint, say 5 pm, it can only produce about 250 watts.  (This would be the output of a single solar cell.  However, it represents the rest of the solar cells.  The change in watts is equivalent to the percent reduction the entire solar cell farm would experience.)

                                             Chart 3

The energy production Chart3 would suggest that a solar cell is not a major contributor during peak demand.  That matches the illustrated Chart 2.

  • The greens imagine pairing solar cells and wind turbines producing energy for a grid.  In this case, regardless of the capacity of the solar cells, the wind must be able to produce all the power to satisfy the capacity rating of the location. Every day, after the sun sets, the wind turbines would have to match demand.  Solar cells can never support the daily capacity rating of the location. So why have them?

I am not a proponent of either wind turbines or solar cells.  Earlier in this posting I outlined the fact that they are not dispatchable.   Industry could not function with an unreliable energy supply.  Nor would the public accept it.  Brown outs and black outs are inevitable without a backup. 

Power Engineering posted “Study Says Renewable Power Still Reliant on Backup from Natural Gas” by Wayne Barber.   In this posting he covers a study by the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research that stated:

“We show that a 1 percent increase in the share of fast-reacting fossil generation capacity is associated with a 0.88% percent increase in renewable in the long run,” the NBER authors say in the report.

cbdakota

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Posted in Electricity, Electricity from Coal, fossil fuels, Renewable Energy, solar cells, Uncategorized, Windpower

Mayor’s, Governor’s, and Corporate Exe’s Green Virtue Signaling is Exposed.

Posted on October 25, 2020 | 2 comments

When President Trump walked away from the Paris Agreement in 2017, Democrats, principally, around the US, were enraged.  They decided they would show the world that even without the support of the Trump Administration they were “woke” and would do the job without him.  Mayors, Governors and Corporate Executives rallied one another and began setting carbon dioxide reductions goals. Most of these goals contained the CO2 amounts and timelines.   I am reasonably confident that most of this crowd does not understand the real-world consequences of their actions.  I think they were motivated by politics.

The Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank, surveyed the top 100 cites to see how they were doing. On 22 October 2020, E&E News posted their take on the Brookings Institute survey titled “U.S. cities struggling to meet lofty climate goals”.  They began by saying:

“Most major U.S. cities that have signed on to the climate fight with pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions are failing to meet their goals or haven’t even started to track local progress, according to a survey by the Brookings Institution.

The report, “Pledges and Progress,” looked for climate policy and actions in the nation’s 100 most populous cities, finding that two-thirds have made commitments to address citywide emissions.”

 The E&E News continues:

But the Brookings analysis found that actions taken by cities aren’t matching up with their pledges to address climate change.

Among the 100 largest cities, only 45 set specific targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions during the past decade and inventoried emissions levels within city boundaries as baselines for measuring progress.

Twenty-two more cities have made general pledges to address emissions. But the Brookings analysis found they haven’t set emissions targets or inventoried current emissions levels.

“Half the cities aren’t doing anything,” said David Victor, co-chair of the Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate.

Ok, you may be thinking that the corona virus is the reason.   E&E reports that Brookings does not think that is the major reason: 

“But roadblocks facing mayors in the climate campaign were obvious even before the coronavirus pushed the nation’s economy into a dramatic downturn.

The Brookings results point to the challenges faced by cities whose climate commitments diverge from policies at the state level. Another challenge for cities is the limits within which they operate. City governments can’t control everything that happens within their borders.

For example, when Pittsburgh inventoried greenhouse gas emissions in 2013, it estimated an annual citywide total of 4.8 million metric tons. Emissions from operations directly under City Hall control came to just 115,069 metric tons. The city government plans more reductions in part by buying refuse trucks that run on lower emission compressed natural gas. Its Parking Authority is teaming with Duquesne Light Co. to bring 16 new electric vehicle chargers to city parking lots.

These are marginal changes in a city and county with nearly 694,000 registered passenger vehicles. Most of them run on gasoline engines that pump out carbon emissions.”

The Paris Agreement is the Green’s framework for reducing CO2 and the timeline for reaching their goal of preventing the global temperature from ever rising more than 0.5C over the current global temperature,  I sure you have heard that the world is all in step with this goal, except for the US, of course. Well they are not.  First of all, the nation that leads in emissions of CO2 is China.  And by agreement with then President Obama, they do not need to start to reduce their emissions before 2030.  By then they will probably be emitting twice as much CO2 as the US.  Further, India, the number 3 CO2 emitter has no plans to stop increasing their emissions.

China has a political move going called the Belt and Road Initiative.  The less developed nations in south east Asia, for example want to improve their citizens lives by providing electricity.   The World Bank bans making loans to these countries as the Bank, taking guidance from the UN does not want them to put in coal plants.  But China is loaning them the money.  This raises China’s political standing in these nations.  More than 1,600 coal plants are scheduled to be built by Chinese corporations in over 62 countries and that will make China the world’s primary provider of high-efficiency, low-emission technology.

And quoting from a posting by the Global Warming Policy Forum, titled “New Coal War: China and Japan Compete For Hundreds Of New Coal Plants in Southeast Asia” we get this:

But Japan is not exactly twiddling its thumbs, either. Since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Tokyo has ramped up coal use and has raced ahead in clean coal technology development. Japan now boasts the world’s most efficient coal-fired plant, which uses less coal to produce more electricity. Seizing on this competitive advantage, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has tried to capitalize on these capabilities in a bid to increase Japan’s reach across Southeast Asia – and in China’s backyard. Through the Japan-led Asian Development Bank, Tokyo has pledged US$6.1 billion for projects throughout the Mekong as well as for various other projects from Vietnam to Myanmar, providing an alternative to China’s regional designs.

A coal plant can be made more efficient, but don’t kid yourself into thinking that this makes them close to the much lower CO2 emissions created by a natural gas-based facility.

And do not think the European Nations are still on board with the Paris Agreement.  The EU leadership in Brussels are deeply into this the Paris Agreement, but most of the Nations have not even met their meager 2020 commitments. Each year the required commitments become much greater, too.   And the nominal leader of the EU, German politicos are not getting much support from their industries. They see themselves becoming non-competitive with China and all these developing nations.  Their auto industry sees themselves even becoming non-competitive in the US market.

Former President Obama also committed to be the big sugar-daddy for the Paris Agreement fund to give money to the underdeveloped nations to hold down production of CO2  Each year the developed nations are to pay $100 billion to the fund.  This as I have noted is not a once and done fund, it is to be refunded each year.  So, assuming that the Trump administration are not playing nice with the Paris Agreement, those Mayors and Governors and Corporate Exes are going to have pay at least $5 billion every year.  And get this, China is not obligation to put money into this fund because they are said to be a developing nation.  Meaning China can draw money from the fund for their own use.

cbdakota

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Posted in Climate Alarmism, CO2, Coal, Electric Vehicles, Electricity, Electricity from Coal, Global Temperatures, Paris Agreement, President Trump, United Nations

Michael Shellenberger Exposes Global Warming Alarmists

Posted on September 8, 2020 | 1 comment

The man-made global warming eco-alarmists are composed of a cabal of scientists and bureaucrats that use scare tactics to frighten the public into supporting them.  Their objective is to destroy capitalism and replace it with Marxism.  This is fact, not opinion. Their leadership have repeatedly said that their movement is not about environmentalism. To accomplish their objective, for years they have been making predictions designed to frighten the general populace.  The literature is filled with predictions of the apocalypse that have never happened.  One of their most recent one is that the world is doomed in something like 12 years if we do not empower them to do the things they say need to be done.  To these eco-alarmists, the cost of their plans is not an issue.

Why am I highlighting Shellenberger as he is not the only one that has challenged them? First, Shellenberger is a certified environmentalist. He was Time Magazine’s “Hero of the Environment”. He has testified before Congress as an expert and he was invited to be an expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) next Assessment Report.  A summary of his background can be found by clicking here.

Secondly, despite what you may have read, skeptics are not the recipients of large sums of money.  The eco-alarmists are recipients almost all the money spent on global warming.  Anyone that does not toe the line, endangers the alarmist’s incomes.  There are few scientists that are willing to sacrifice their jobs by openly speaking out. Shellenberger insists that he believes in the man-made theory of global warming, but he cannot sit by and let the alarmist poison the scientific dialog. That is unacceptable.

I think that he represents many scientists that do not agree with the alarmists but are afraid to speak their mind.  Perhaps Shellenberger’s example will encourage others to follow his lead.   A Skeptic, on the other hand, might not be able to instill the needed courage.

I have purchased Shellenberger’s book. It is powerful.  I recommend it.  He has developed an outline of his book and the following are excerpts:

Continue reading →

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Posted in AGW, Al Gore, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, crop yields, Electricity, Electricity from Coal, End of the Earth, Environment, fossil fuels, Global Temperatures, Ice Melt, IPCC, Nuclear Energy, radical environmentalists, Renewable Energy, Sea Ice, Sea Level, Storms/hurricanes, warmer prediction fails