[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]
In short – costs and practicality.
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I often ask renewables enthusiasts to explain what we are supposed to do when the wind isn’t blowing if we can’t fall back on fossil fuels, says Andrew Montford @ Net Zero Watch.
The other day, I pressed James Murray, the editor of Business Green magazine, what forms of storage he thought we could use, and this is what he said:
Continued here.
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It can’t be solved with current battery technology. So what? We will be warm only when wind blows .. that’s when we need to be warm most .. what a beautiful synergy.
the people who propose all these dream world scenarios rarely (never?) run the numbers. In many if not most cases they are so dazzled by their vision that bringing the real world into the picture pops their bubble so they avoid it.
They especially duck the life-cycle cost issue. You can’t recycle the windmill blades or the solar panels thus causing disposal nightmares and very high cost just on the back end alone. Those numbers are hidden away when doing cost/profit numbers.
The dog in the manger is the grifters who see massive profits from something like wind and solar, regardless of their suitability for the issue. They form a quango with money and power hungry pols who need massive election campaign funds that (who’d a guessed it) they get from the windmill and solar farm folks (among others). The media is bought and paid for so they trumpet the ‘marvelous’ [fill in the blank with the latest expensive lunacy], and we wind up paying for it. It’s all a massive scam IMAO.
I don’t think this analysis is right. There’s no reason why storage cannot be continually managed as supply. Store instead of making constraint payments then supply when renewables falls below demand. The cost than has to be equal to or lower than the alternatives e.g. gas. The analysis is then the capital cost of storage (as the electricity is a net zero cost as we otherwise pay constraint payments) versus the capital cost plus fuel cost of the alternatives.
What we should model are the 2 systems as a whole. The pre-renewables (gas, coal, nuclear) versus this proposed complex hodge-podge that requires lots of balancing costs etc. Looking at components of the system is difficult and prone to unsubstantiated claims. Consumers have to pay the entire cost of the system (directly or indirectly) so I suggest Net Zero Watch models the system rather than bits of it.
This can be solved but it would mean stepping on the toes of several MPs and civil servants – ALL the wind and solar providers should quote the amount of electricity they will produce in six months. If they fall short it is up to them to find the missing quantity at no extra cost to the consumer. If they produce too much it again is up to them as what they do with it. There should be NO constraint payments, after all the wind and sun are free so why should the consumer pay for what is free to use?
Another thing that should be considered is the cost of removing the things at their end of life, including the tons of concrete an excess roadways – this should come out of an escrow account that is created before the construction begins.
I think with those requirements we would see a lot less of this net-zero stupidity.
Providing battery storage is supposed to work out cheaper than constraint payments.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.