There is obviously some level of anthropogenic contribution to climate. But to go from there to a climate catastrophe is nowhere near being proven.
Given that climate does change, the green left seems to assume that the climate and the carbon dioxide level in the 1850s is the ideal. Why? If you ask that question you are shouted down.
As my post shows, increasing carbon dioxide level has a beneficiary effect on plant growth. I don’t think that’s in dispute. It’s a common practice by farmers to increase the carbon dioxide level in their greenhouses to foster plant growth. The post has a well-done graphical illustration of the effect.
Reality does intrude as in the skyrocketing cost of gasoline in the US with Biden’s inauguration. And Europe’s and the US leftist greens forcing them to subsidize the Russian war effort in Ukraine to the tune of billions of dollars per week. And in the total inadequacy of back up energy technology for all solar and wind electric power grid generation. So we will see develops
Based on a bold assumption that we need 30 days of storage. It’s the worst-case based on the previous paragraph’s claim that “24 -30 days of storage” is needed. I couldn’t follow that explanation, and it probably doesn’t make sense for every place in California. It’s never cloudy for more than maybe 5 days in a row where I live.
And he’s trying to calculate the present value of an investment that would take many years. I don’t know who these “guest bloggers” are or what their credentials are, but I’d take this with a bucket of salt. Rooftop solar already makes financial sense in many areas, including CA. Home battery storage is expensive, but probably not far from par with current energy costs if ammortized over its lifespan. Energy costs are going up, solar and battery tech is getting better and cheaper. It almost makes sense for me to get solar+battery now and be completely independent of the grid.
I do forsee a time where having a house battery is as ordinary as a furnace and hot water tank. I’d think that, as far as reliability, it would almost make more sense as an investment than the constant bandaids being applied to the electrical grid to keep it reliable. Not everyone can use solar (ignoring the merits, solar simply isnt an option for many), but an in-home battery would still allow the power to go out for as long as a couple days without much adverse effect.
The main point of the article is that the “green” power grid system proponents in states like California and New York do not address the actual requirements for backup.
To estimate the back up requirements , the authors give numbers for the amount of time that the back up system has to provide power.
It is a problem that the article does not specify how they estimate these times.
I do not think the solar power system only needs to provide backup on days that are totally cloudy. I have lived on the California coastal strip in both southern and northern California. It is very common in both regions to have overcast coming off the ocean in the morning that gradually “burns off” during the day. The solar system is producing energy at a much reduced level during the overcast time so, depending on the power delivered by the solar panels during the sunny time, they may not be able to recharge the energy storage during the time that the sun is fully shining.
It would be interesting to know what model for solar power availability is used by the companies who sell solar battery backup systems to homeowners like you.
An important issue is what is the ultimate backup if the home battery is depleted. If the home solar power system assumes that the grid is the ultimate backup, then the utility needs to charge the home owner a sufficient amount to cover the expenses for building, maintaining and running the fossil fuel backup power system.
This is accounted for when you install the panels. There’s a database that tells you the average solar production for your home address. You can even do more precise calculations with the roof direction and pitch. Last I checked I’m allowed to install enough panels to cover my own average use, but not much more than that.
Yes it would. I haven’t looked into it yet. I figured I could do my own calculations and install whatever I want, really.
Yes, there’s a minimum “infrastructure” charge for being connected to the grid even if you don’t use any of their electrons.
You know I mostly agree with you on this subject. But you’ve reached a point where you are just adding layer after layer of “required” backups to keep justifying the ongoing need for fossile fuel power generation, now adding an “ultimate” backup need in order to keep traditional power generation in the mix. You point out it might be cloudy so solar requires a backup system, but that’s no different than a tree falling on a transformer and killing power for a couple days - and that is something I’ve actually experienced, including the lack of any backup.
You have solar energy. You have a battery as a backup for when the solar isnt enough. That is the system, and provides more backup to powering an individual home than what most people have in their homes today. You may not be comfortable relying on such a system, and I may not be comfortable with such a system, but you are showing a clear preconceived bias with what you keep arguing is “necessary”.
I think we are envisioning different use cases. You seem to be thinking of a backup to the current fossil fuel powered grid. I am thinking of trying to be totally independent of the grid. Or depending on a grid that’s powered by wind and solar only.
In most places in America, the current power grid is highly reliable. But as we introduce intermittent green technologies like solar and wind, the grid is becoming destabilized.
Here in California we have a problem with hot summer evenings. As the sun sets, solar energy production stops but it’s still hot so people are running their air conditioners. The utility companies are trying to build huge batteries to provide the power but as far as I know they are not on line. They are also trying to get large users to stop using power but I don’t think they have been successful. The fossil fuel power plants on the grid try to step up to try to provide the power but there is not sufficient power available so we at times have brownouts and blackouts.
This is a different but related problem to the situation in Europe where there are long periods of time, like a month, that are cloudy and the wind is not blowing.
we also saw the situation in Texas where an unusually cold spell destabilized the green energy grid.
my bottom line is that we have to proceed cautiously and utilize engineering techniques to keep the grid reliable. The article I quoted shows that states like New York and California are charging off to the Green nirvana without actually doing the hard calculations and designing backup systems to ensure reliability.
Clearly, to design your back up system, you need to know the probability distribution of the solar production. Or, at a minimum, some measure of the spread from the average value like the standard deviation. The distribution is also going to depend on the season.
It is too bad that you are irrationally afraid of nuclear power because this is where it shines: providing ultra reliable baseload power to back up intermittent sources.
Not at all. A battery that charges when the sun is out (and there’s excess production, be it locally or via the grid), and supplements when the solar doesn’t keep up.
I agree that the current tech/capabilities as a self-supporting system aren’t ready for primetime. But you keep talking about a “green” system needing backups, when it’s more just a need to slow the transition to those systems until the technology has improved.
Maybe if you experienced something like the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima, you would have the same fear and wouldn’t think it irrational. Heck, you might even be entirely against it. I just don’t want it upwind from where I live.
In case you didn’t know, when purchasing in California you get a required disclosure about any nuclear plants within 50 miles of the property. How do you decide what’s rational and what isn’t?
It’s more a need to balance PV installations with battery installations. There’s no need to wait for the tech to improve, cause we’d be waiting forever and get nothing done. It’s already good enough and can compete with other sources.
You’ve described a problem and the fact that solutions are being worked on. I’m sure the CA utilities will soon address the problem and learn from past mistakes, i.e., better balance batteries with PV.
I do not expect to convince you but here is some discussion of these.
Three Mile Island
In 1979 at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in USA a cooling malfunction caused part of the core to melt in the #2 reactor. The TMI-2 reactor was destroyed.
Some radioactive gas was released a couple of days after the accident, but not enough to cause any dose above background levels to local residents.
In the case of Fukushima, although 40 to 50 people experienced physical injury or radiation burns at the nuclear facility, the number of direct deaths from the incident are quoted to be zero. In 2018, the Japanese government reported that one worker has since died from lung cancer as a result of exposure from the event.
However, mortality from radiation exposure was not the only threat to human health: the official death toll was 573 people – who died as a result of evacuation procedures and stress-induced factors. This figure ranges between 1,000-1,600 deaths from evacuation (the evacuation of populations affected by the earthquake and tsunami at the time can make sole attribution to the nuclear disaster challenging). Stress-induced deaths affected mostly older people; more than 90 percent of mortality occurred in individuals over the age of 66.
Chernobyl
The Chernobyl reactor design is nothing like that of modern nuclear power .plants.
we should wait until we have a good solution before charging off to totally replace our current system. Near where I live the city of Menlo Park has decreed that all new construction cannot use gas powered appliances. That leaves only electric appliances. Other cities are considering similar measures. So they will be adding even more strain on the grid.
This article shows major problems with the green project
Regardless of what Amazon and Ford do, Rivian has a lot of work to do. Rivian produced 2,553 vehicles in Q1 and delivered 1,227 of them. If the company intends to hit its goal of 25,000 vehicles produced in 2022, it will really have to ramp up as the year progresses.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe isn’t exactly signaling that this won’t be a problem. In an interview last week with the Wall Street Journal from the Rivian factory floor, Scaringe said, “The world’s [battery] cell production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years … Meaning, 90% to 95% of the supply chain does not exist.”
Ford and its crosstown rival GM (GM) have both said they have acquired enough battery materials and semiconductor chips to meet their initial goals of EV production over the next couple of years. Based on what Scaringe said last week, it seems Rivian is foreshadowing future issues it sees with acquiring battery materials like lithium.
Speaking of supply chain problems, what exists is controlled by the red Chinese and they can turn off supply whenever they want to.
For the past 20 years, China has been buying up valuable resources around the world to supply its vast manufacturing industry. More critically still, even where it does not own the mines outright, it has secured deals that mean nearly 80 per cent of the planet’s supply of these crucial raw minerals is sent to China for cleaning up and processing into usable metals. From the Chinese refineries, the metals not needed by China’s own plants are then shipped off to factories in Europe, America and elsewhere.
This means that, theoretically at least, in the most important minerals for the future green economy — nickel, cobalt, graphite, lithium and so-called rare earth metals — China could effectively turn on, and turn off, the world’s supply at will.
New York City idiocy on full display in latest humiliation
Do not attempt to reach this level of stupidity unless you live in New York City, of just maybe also in California.
There was just one problem: Almost all of New York City’s electricity comes from natural gas. That means electrifying buildings will increase emissions rather than reduce them,
It takes twice as many fossil fuels to power an electric stove as a gas one, Mills said, because energy gets lost in the conversion process. So without a relatively green grid, fewer gas stoves means more gas burned overall and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
To make up for the lost electricity, the Big Apple turned on several gas-powered plants, pushing fossil fuels’ share of the city’s grid above 90 percent. The shift increased emissions by 7 million metric tons, an analysis from Nuclear New York found. With new buildings forced to rely on electric heat, that carbon footprint will get even larger.
Well, you could. Your “news” source seems fishy. How can anyone know that whatever is written there is real? There’s no attribution and it doesn’t appear to be lifted from another, known news source.
