Resistors Are Cheaper Than Batteries
Sometimes there are odd thoughts that surge through Eli's brain. Recently he was reading about a concentrated solar power plant the first phase of which had opened in Morocco. Noor 1 will generate 160 Megwatt. When completed, the four phase project will generate almost 500 megawatts, of course, when the sun shines, which it pretty much does all day in Ourazazate.
What is particularly interesting about this plant is that the design can source power for three hours after the sun sets, because the working fluid (an oil mixture) can be used to store thermal energy in a reservoir, and the temperature in the reservoir is high enough to drive steam turbines for up to three hours after sunset. Moreover, substituting salts which change their phase as they cool can provide even more energy, or the same energy for a longer time.
The characteristic of solar and wind is that when you have sun and wind you have more power than you need. When you don't you have nothing. The general idea is at least for small installations like houses, to bridge with batteries.
A long time ago, on sci.environment Eli, the Weasel, MT and others engaged with John McCarthy of LISP. McCarthy was a cornucopian, and if you carefully went through his thoughts, they all came down to the price of energy being zero.
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Couple super-efficient insulation, the heat storage of phase change salts, resistors to convert waste electricity generated by wind and solar to heat and then use photothermal generators to convert the heat back to electricity when needed. Of course, you could always use the heat directly to warm the house or cook the carrots. The best (e.g. lab) thermoelectric materials can have efficiencies of 10-20% and nanopatterning can improve the transfer efficiency. Just an idea.
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89 comments:
Efficiency of generating electricity with steam is something like 40% max. So it is more efficient to store wind/solar electricity in batteries than to store it as heat to then only get 40% back.
Ghoti
I used to have a serious furnace in my lab. It had a hot zone about the size of a Foster's can, surrounded by foot of gradiated porosity zirconia brick. and once up to its working temperature of 2,000+ C, it took 36 hours to cool down, or 4 kw to stay there indefinitely . Put that much insulation around ten tonnes of petcoke or graphite, and let it bask in a solar furnace all day , and your could boil a ton of water an hour till the sun came up.
The hard part is transferring the heat without setting fire to the carbon.
It sounds very inefficient to me. If you store at T1, with heat sink for generator at T2, then you only, with perfect efficiency elsewhere, recover fraction (T1-T2)/T1. ie if you store 1000 J electricity at 400 K, regenerate with a heat sink at 300K, you get back 250J. The inefficiencies thaat Ken mentions come out of that 250.
1. The price of an installed wind or solar generator is certainly NOT zero. O&M (operation and maintenance) are not free, nor is debt service, nor is maintenance on transmission lines (because solar and wind are typically built in remote areas), nor is depreciation (because solar and wind generators don't last forever), nor is backup from dispatchable powerplants (typically natural gas).
2. There are a bazillion ways to store energy, and most of them are lousy. Storing energy as heat is one of them; it's incredibly inefficient. Batteries get typically 80% efficiency round-trip, and you would be very hard pressed to find anything comparable except pumped hydro (which is geographically limited). Also, electrical resistance heating is a hugely inefficient way to convert electricity into heat; it's far, far more efficient to use a heat pump.
Ken, the point Eli is making is that you have no limit on generation when the wind or sun is shining, therefore you don't CARE that you're storing it inefficiently.
When the cost of generating is zero, choosing a 40% efficient vs 80% efficient costs you 50% of nothing.
Which is still nothing.
KAP, it's close to nothing, compared to the cost of buying fuel for other techniques. Batteries need maintenance too. Resistive elements less so...
Your points are valid, but they're "common knowledge" and therefore brought up SO AS NOT TO THINK outside the norm.
"It costs to build up a larger station! It has wear on it!"
And it does no matter what you use to back up generation or ease fluctuations.
As does that mechanism for backing up and easing fluctuations.
Your proclamation really just signals you have decided, and don't want to revisit it with a different paradigm in mind.
KAP, also see your post ending. If it would be more efficient to use heat pumps, then use heat pumps. However your post drips the idea that we shouldn't do that, because we shouldn't store it as heat.
Which is OPPOSITE to what it ought to be saying. It OUGHT to be saying "Hey, use heat pumps to remove the heat and generate power, it will be more efficient!".
BP
Ken, the point Eli is making is that you have no limit on generation when the wind or sun is shining, therefore you don't CARE that you're storing it inefficiently.
For solar the limit is set by the area and efficiency of the array and the bell curve of average daylight irradiance including seasonal variation. For wind, it's area and efficiency of array and average windspeed. Efficiency of storage (choice of storage medium)is a vital and integral part of any functional renewables installation.
"For solar the limit is set by the area and efficiency of the array"
What limit?
Need more power? Just let time pass.
Power comes to you.
"Efficiency of storage (choice of storage medium)is a vital"
No it isn't.
Oh, and when you quote
"when the wind or sun is shining"
please consider reading it first.
> Batteries get typically 80% efficiency round-trip, and you would be very hard pressed to find anything comparable except pumped hydro
Generator/motor + winch + something heavy should do the trick right.
This little train system gets 80% return efficiency at 60% the capital cost of pumped hydro (not sure where the 2nd figure comes from)
http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/ares-performance
Need more power? Just let time pass.
Power comes to you.
And is depleted from batteries by usage demand. Try actually attempting to understand the system you are describing.
"Efficiency of storage (choice of storage medium)is a vital"
No it isn't.
You haven't got a clue what you are talking about. I may have mentioned this before.
Oh, and when you quote
"when the wind or sun is shining"
please consider reading it first.
I did. What you wrote is incorrect, as I explained above.
"I did. What you wrote is incorrect, as I explained above. "
You misspelt "insisted out of thin air".
"You haven't got a clue what you are talking about"
So you keep insisting.
Doesn't make it true.
"And is depleted from batteries by usage demand"
And is refreshed by the sun.
Tell me, does coal refresh itself and feed back into the boiler in your house?
Every time I see or have to read a BP post I go ...
OMFG! Humanity is s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o DOOMED!
And is refreshed by the sun.
Imagine an SPV array with utility-scale battery storage.
1/ During daylight, the electricity generated by the array is mostly fed to the grid with some used to charge the batteries. This can be but is not always surplus to realtime grid demand.
2/. At night, the batteries supply electricity to the grid and become depleted.
3/. Next morning, the recharge process begins. Repeat.
So, the following statement is incorrect:
Ken, the point Eli is making is that you have no limit on generation when the wind or sun is shining, therefore you don't CARE that you're storing it inefficiently.
But it *is* correct to say that:
Efficiency of storage (choice of storage medium) is a vital and integral part of any functional renewables installation.
BP wrote lots of stuff about storage, demonstrating that he knows little about engineering. The cost of any energy system includes capital cost of the entire system, which is usually borrowed and paid back over time thru some financial dealings. The cost of storage per unit of delivered energy as a subset of the overall cost depends on the efficiency of the processes involved and lower efficiency translates into higher capital cost, other things being equal.
Electricity is especially difficult to store and a system based on conversion of high quality electricity to lower quality thermal energy back to high quality electricity tends to be very inefficient. If the system stores high temperature thermal energy before the conversion to electricity, using molten salts, etc, the overall efficiency is greater and the cost per delivered energy would be reduced.
These concepts have been kicked around for more than 40 years that I'm aware of since writing a short piece discussing central receiver solar back in 1974 after the Arab/OPEC Oil Embargo. When I built my solar heated house, I used concrete for storage, adding 350 feet of PEX tubing to the slab floor with foam insulation below. With that approach, efficiency is quite high, as all the energy which enters the concrete us used to heat the house above. I still need backup, using a propane heater and/or a wood stove for cloudy or cold days.
BTW, absent the system of fossil fueled electric generation, nuclear power would require storage, as nukes tend to be built as large generating units which are intended to operate as base load supply, i.e., designed to run at a constant output 24/7. They are so large with long thermal time constants, thus do not follow the hourly and daily ups and downs of demand on the grid.
"absent the system of fossil fueled electric generation, nuclear power would require storage"
Yup.
"OMFG! Humanity is s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o DOOMED!
Thank you for that "Serge". No doubt you felt that was INTENSELY necessary to say. Because, reasons.
"BP wrote lots of stuff about storage"
Where? Not on this thread. Do tell why you manufacture this reality to substitute for the one in front of your eyes.
"demonstrating that he knows little about engineering."
Of course, proclamation is how EVERYTHING can be proved!
Meanwhile E Swanson has written a lot of stuff about writing but has demonstrated only that he doesn't know the English language.
But, hey, maybe you won't stick to mere proclamation.
"The cost of any energy system includes capital cost of the entire system"
Ah, I see.
And did you not know that PROFIT is the difference between REVENUE and EXPENSES?
You see, I need to tell you this because someone who needs to be told this has no clue how economics or capital investment works.
Clearly demonstrating that you have no idea of investment or policy!
"Electricity is especially difficult to store"
May I point you back above the line to what was written by Eli.
Here's a one-word tip for you.
HEAT.
You're welcome.
"a system based on conversion of high quality electricity to lower quality thermal energy back to high quality electricity tends to be very inefficient."
Since you seem incapable at reading before posting, I will quote for you this piece:
The characteristic of solar and wind is that when you have sun and wind you have more power than you need.
Please consider some sort of corrective eyewear before posting again.
Here's something for you to realise.
If you shopped around for EVERYTHING you could save a significant amount of your housekeeping expenses.
But most people do not wish to spend the time and effort to investigate every single option. Trading simplicity for expense.
Because not-simple goes wrong on occasion, and that means the simpler option is often the best one engineering-wise because failure is worse than losing a tiny bit of running cost.
It is truly weird.
I disagree with Eli, but I DO agree that the idea he has is an excellent one. NOT for being right, but because it could find new answers. It REMOVES IDEOLOGICAL BLINKERS. It DISCARDS the "everyone knows" that means that NOBODY BLOODY LOOKS. Because "everyone knows" you need batteries, NOBODY is looking at why.
Just, like you, finding ways to prove the assertion right. Not looking at it differently to see if some basic axioms are wrong.
And a lot like buddy dum dum, who is so blinded by his love affair for nuclear technologic-utopia that anything detracting from it is adamantly and inerrantly wrong to consider.
With the same results: looking for confirmation, not whether the axioms are necessary.
Eli's idea is "Ignore maximising ROI, what can we do to make this work better".
If you have to spend a trillion on developing new batteries, and will wait 20 years to get that rolled out, then what do you do in the meantime? Burn coal?
Or do you have a look without the "Well, we need batteries" axiom and see what happens when you look at the problem anew?
"absent the system of fossil fueled electric generation, nuclear power would require storage"
Coal requires storage too:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/12/wind-is-not-driving-the-uk-towards-power-blackouts
Or do you have a look without the "Well, we need batteries" axiom and see what happens when you look at the problem anew?
You still can't compensate for slew and intermittency in solar arrays.
Your religious convictions about renewables aren't a substitute for actually understanding the technology, its applications and limitations.
Being noisily, offensively wrong on the Internet achieves nothing. Actually, it's worse than that because there are people here who could help you learn, but all you do is piss in their faces.
Oh, and since you are hanging on Eli's words, they require modification to be correct:
"The characteristic of solar and wind is that when you have sun and wind you sometimes have more power than you need and sometimes less."
If you're looking for a cheap, inefficient way to store excess PV and Wind electricity, may I suggest electrolysis of water into H and O? Then use the H as pretty much any other fuel (to turn turbines, for example). The round trip efficiency, while not great, would be better than your thermoelectric model.
Entirely separately, I'd like to comment on the discussion of financing (i.e. borrowing) costs. It's short and I said it at https://plus.google.com/101549220035390601626/posts/EdrktogiZqh
In addition to all the other trollish HEAT thrown up by BP, there's this killer:
Coal requires storage too:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/12/wind-is-not-driving-the-uk-towards-power-blackouts
Coal, by definition, is energy already stored. The point of the article is that the UK grid lacks sufficient reserve generating capacity (or, backup) to deal with unusual outages. Of course, if the wind generators had been working at the time, there would have been less (or perhaps no) need for generation from the coal (or natural gas) powered reserve capacity.
"In addition to all the other trollish HEAT thrown up by BP"
Ah, so when I point out your complaint about how hard electricity is to store then point out the ATL is talking about toring heat, that's "trollish".
I guess it's better for your ego than "Embarrassing".
Less accurate, though.
"The point of the article is that the UK grid lacks sufficient reserve generating capacity (or, backup) to deal with unusual outages."
The point is that "reliable" coal isn't.
But it doesn't stop renewables being blamed when not.
Seriously, look at the bloody URL. What does it say, hmm? And the opening paragraph? Read it? Does it say "Oh, we don't have enough reserve!".
In fact it claims the opposite. There WERE reserves, but they are intermittent and occasionally very expensive. Backup generation. For "reliable" nuclear and coal and gas.
So when you talk of "the point of the article", either use the ACTUAL point of the article, or be honest enough to say "the point YOU take from the article".
To Buddy Dum Dum:
" Oh, and since you are hanging on Eli's words,"
Uh, the ATL is usually considered the topic of the damn discussion. Seriously, when you get reamed for being an idiot, stop trying to prove you can be even dumber in a vain attempt to "get back" at me.
It never ends well for you.
And also consider using all the words before claiming what I am hanging on.
Because not doing so only shows up how shallow your intellect and needy your ego-boosting is.
"You still can't compensate for slew and intermittency in solar arrays."
I don't have to. They are already taken care of. See ATL. For the first time, apparently.
"Being noisily, offensively wrong on the Internet achieves nothing"
Then why do you do it, buddy dumdum?
" If you're looking for a cheap, inefficient way to store excess PV and Wind electricity, may I suggest electrolysis of water into H and O?"
That's what one proposal for 100% renewables for the UK uses.
But only those not blinding themselves by holding to axiomatic "truths" without ever once wondering if they are actually all that true would consider thinking of it.
It's a bit like a redneck fundie evangelical wondering if the ayrab might actually be a decent human being who they USA have treated badly. It's just not possible to get past all that indoctrination from youth. Especially the "USA! USA! USA !!!! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!".
Really blindsides people who would know better, but they were not protected from propaganda as a child and have no way of seeing the problem now they are adult.
It's obvious that the BP thing still doesn't understand the way power grids work. Not an engineer it is, for sure.
Oh, yes, what's that oblique reference to "the ATL"??? (I lived for some 40 years in "ATL", though I'm rather certain that's not what you intend)...
To Buddy Dum Dum:
My screen name is BBD. Please stop being a dick and use it, just as I use yours or its non-offensive abbreviation.
I don't have to. They are already taken care of. See ATL. For the first time, apparently.
Just wrong, as per.
You need to read up on how all this works.
Since there's been an outbreak of nonsense about the Guardian story, let's have a closer look at the facts that it gets right - and wrong:
This saga showed not that wind is driving the UK towards blackouts, but that reliance on a small number of large generators - coal, gas or nuclear - carries the risk of inadequate margin if more than one of these big plants fails at the same time. Wind, being composed of lots of smaller generators, cannot by definition all fail unexpectedly together, so could be argued to be more resilient, not less.
This is pretty much the opposite of the conclusion reached by the Tory commentariat, which hates wind turbines spoiling views in the Shires and takes any opportunity to criticise renewables and oppose climate change action. Let’s at least hope that the government listens to National Grid’s version of the story, not the misinformation peddled by Ridley, Moore and Hitchens.
First key thing for non-UK readers: Ridley, Moore and Hitchens are indeed serially wrong idiots and can safely be ignored on energy / climate.
Second key thing: the supply shortfall in the UK is being driven by the closure of obsolete FF and nuclear plant and the simultaneous failure to add new capacity to the grid. It's not about wind and it's not - as the Guardian misrepresents - about the inherent unreliability of conventional plant.
It is about the failure of successive UK governments to implement coherent energy policy. As a result, the UK now has rather too little spare capacity for comfort and the situation will get worse in coming years.
Since grid failures are unpredictable and wind is subject to national-scale variability it cannot ever be used as reserve capacity. This is an example of 'equal-and-opposite' rubbish supplied by the Guardian to 'balance' the crap from right-wing commentators.
Bullshit plus bullshit equals more bullshit. The public would be better served by the media if it made some slight but perceptible effort to get the story straight instead of peddling ideological garbage.
"let's have a closer look at the facts that it gets right - and wrong:"
Ah, but you won't, will you, Buddy.
Because you're ideologically blinkered, and it's no more valid to expect you to be able to look at the facts, all the facts, and accept their consequences than it is to expect a hardcore denier to do that with the climate science facts.
Instead you will pick and choose what are facts and assert that they are, and that despite being preconceptions they are not.
"Second key thing: the supply shortfall in the UK is being driven by the closure of obsolete FF and nuclear plant "
You see, THIS is a conclusion.
Nothing stopped more renewables being built except the same edicts and bullheaded obstinacy that insists that the fault of the failure is renewables.
Therefore it is NOT due to closing obsolete FF and nuclear. It's due to not building any replacement power. Such as the ongoing campaign to forbid solar and wind but will joyously rush through fracking and give a RIDICULOUSLY OVERPRICED and UNDERTHOUGHT multi-government binding contract for nuclear power that we won't get for 15 years at least, by which time sea level rise and climate change may have made the already precarious Hinkley Point untenable for nuclear power for the same reasons that Fukishima turned out to be a bad place to build one.
"Since grid failures are unpredictable and wind is subject to national-scale variability"
And coal is. And nuclear.
You see, THIS is your ideological blinkers in full effect here. Despite it being a problem of ALL generation, only renewables are pointed out as having them.
And then you will chop and change your targeted renewable to suit whichever argument against all renewables you wish to present. Such as "in the winter" will only be presented as how solar isn't usable, therefore renewables are untenable. And here you go on about regional scale high pressure zones covering huge areas of landmass, about as frequent a problem as a serious blowout at a nuclear power plant, using "wind" as your placeholder to mean "all renewables".
It's windier in winter.
And high pressure areas leave cloudless skies.
What's your replacement when Sellafield is regularly inundated and Hunkley Point smashed by storm waves? Build more nukes?
But here you are "SQUIRREL!"ing away from the fact that this subject is about how to think differently with renewables, and the fact is you cannot.
You're blind. And willingly so. As much as any denier.
"It's obvious that the BP thing still doesn't understand the way power grids work."
It's obvious that you still don't understand that proclamation doesn't work as a proof.
This is proof you're a moron without a clue, or a care to get one.
It's ALSO obvious that you really don't know why you bring it up. You just think it works. Somehow.
"Oh, yes, what's that oblique reference to "the ATL"???"
Oh dear. I guess you don't know what "above the line means". Your idiocy isn't my problem, darling. Educate yourself or complain about how dumb you are, as you please.
"My screen name is BBD. Please stop being a dick and use it,"
Yes, and it stands for Buddy Dumdum. Hey, I'm not being a dick, I'm being dismissive and insulting. Look up the words. Find a grown up to help.
"Bullshit plus bullshit equals more bullshit"
Yup, every post from you indicates the truth of this.
"The public would be better served by the media if it made some slight but perceptible effort to get the story straight instead of peddling ideological garbage. "
This is 100% true. However, I you're going to continue to peddle your ideological garbage and continue to pretend that it's "the one true sane discourse" on the planet.
Because you're as deluded as the most rabid Tony Watts fan.
If you run your power grid off coal entirely, when you generate more than demand you are losing coal and not selling the result, meaning you are wasting coal.
You can shut down some coal stations, but that reduces the efficiency since it needs time to cool down and time to warm up again, during which it won't be running at the planned efficiency.
If you run your power grid off solar entirely, when you generate more than demand, you are NOT WASTING ANYTHING. Those photons would have hit the solar panel whether you use the electron released from it or not.
Production over and above requirements is 100% free electricity. 0% cost. Wasting 60% of it IS NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER. Because it cost NOTHING.
Accountant-thinking is endemic amongst far FAR too many people.
"Oh, if I saved 80%, I could get more money from selling the stored electric!"
then becomes
"I LOST MONEY! I lost a thousand pounds for that electricity I sold for a thousand pounds! Oh, if ONLY I had saved it at 80% efficiency instead! I LOST A THOUSAND POUNDS!!!!!!"
No.
You MADE a thousand.
Nothing stopped more renewables being built
Which bit of this do you not understand:
Since grid failures are unpredictable and wind is subject to national-scale variability it cannot ever be used as reserve capacity.
?
You need to make an *effort* to understand the way that energy infrastructure works. Read more, post less.
* * *
Despite it being a problem of ALL generation, only renewables are pointed out as having them.
Despite multiple explanations, you have never grasped this. Only renewables are subject to simultaneous regional / national scale outage. For solar, this is called 'night'. For wind, 'anticyclone'.
With conventional plant, you might get one, two or even three plants going down in the same 24-hour period, but never the entire national fleet.
So you need a relatively small amount of reserve capacity to back up conventional plant at a national/regional scale compared to that necessary to back up renewables on the same scale.
Please *try* to understand what is being explained. It is not conceptually challenging.
* * *
Yes, and it stands for Buddy Dumdum. Hey, I'm not being a dick
Yes, you are.
Since wind and solar can be predicted days in advance, it CAN be used as reserve capacity
And YET AGAIN you thundering moron, look above the bloody line.
But, no, renewables CANNOT BE CONSIDERED because it takes away money from nuclear power programs, and YOU WILL NOT ALLOW THAT to happen.
And YET AGAIN you thundering moron, look above the bloody line.
Sigh.
Here's what I wrote above:
Since grid failures are unpredictable and wind is subject to national-scale variability it cannot ever be used as reserve capacity.
Maybe too subtle for you? Shall we try all caps?
Grid failures are UNPREDICTABLE.
Therefore the (moot) predictability of wind and solar is IRRELEVANT.
Before you start calling other people thundering morons etc. you might want to consider your own, painfully evident, intellectual shortcomings.
What is this, sci.environment and sci.energy.hydrogen all over again?
These arguments have been well tred. Trod.
Entropy, grasshopper.
Resistance is useless.
You will all be assimilated.
The BP thing yet again spreads trollish single sentence paragraphs across several screens, demonstrating once more his lack of understanding of the need for reserve capacity in a power grid. It can't stay on message long enough to deliver a coherent rebuttal to BDD's comments.
For example, a nuke needs to be re-fueled every so often and during the time it's off line, some of the reserve must be brought online to meet the demand. The same is true for any other maintenance performed on other portions of system. Then, there's the "fat tails" problem of unexpected events, which may have low probability, but which result in a major outage.
It would be great if renewables like wind and solar PV could replace all the coal and nukes in a grid. However there are "fat tail" events out there as well. Yesterday's snowfall in Kansas and Colorado with the storm now moving into the Great Lakes region will temporarily kill local PV and when that happens during a winter period followed by high pressure without wind, what would be available to supply the grid? Do you want to crank up some old coal fired generation? Or maybe some mothballed combined cycle plants powered by natural gas? Your choices are limited, at present, and thus moving forward toward to a zero carbon renewable utopia is still a pipe dream, sad to say.
Because nuclear is unresponsive, it cannot everbe used for reserve generation
"Grid failures are UNPREDICTABLE.
Therefore the (moot) predictability of wind and solar is IRRELEVANT."
No it doesn't. Because a grid failure fails EVERYTHING on the grid. YET AGAIN demonstrating your bigotry and idolatry of nuclear, because a fault that would be EVEN WORSE with nuclear is somehow a reason why renewables are not usable.
" And YET AGAIN you thundering moron, look above the bloody line."
Sigh.
Here's what I wrote above
What does what you wrote above do about what the bloody ATL subject of the damn thread is? YOU ARE DELIBERATELY TROLLING.
READ THE DAMN ATL comment, you thundering elephantine retard.
" The BP thing yet again spreads trollish single sentence paragraphs across several screens, "
Ah, that's right, it's what defines a troll: short paragraphs. You'd be calling Wordsworth a troll, too, wouldn't you you retard?
But I suppose at least you're now *trying* to posit something as evidence for your claims. I suppose I should be grateful for small improvements, wherever they come from, eh?
"It would be great if renewables like wind and solar PV could replace all the coal and nukes in a grid."
Then rejoice! THEY CAN.
"Then, there's the "fat tails" problem of unexpected events, which may have low probability, but which result in a major outage"
And since a wind turbine is out taking .001% of the grid with it, this is really not a problem with wind. Similarly for solar.
Big problems for nukes and efficient coal.
Funny how these problems aren't laid at the floor of the right sources and instead attributed to some sort of "evidence" that the renewables are somehow unable to manage because of failures more evident elsewhere...
BTW, notice Buddy Dumdum used a one sentence paragraph. What a troll, eh? Oh, what's that? No? Well I guess even you recognise that your "tell" is really a load of tosh.
"Since grid failures are unpredictable and wind is subject to national-scale variability it cannot ever be used as reserve capacity.
?
You need to make an *effort* to understand the way that energy infrastructure works. Read more, post less. "
I do. VASTLY better than you.
I understand your proclamation you believe with your whole heart to be true. It's a load of codswallop, though.
"Yes, and it stands for Buddy Dumdum. Hey, I'm not being a dick
Yes, you are."
No, I'm not.
A dick would cut off everything relevant to the answer and pretend that it's only "I'm not being a dick".
Wouldn't they, you dick.
I do. VASTLY better than you.
:-)
No it doesn't. Because a grid failure fails EVERYTHING on the grid. YET AGAIN demonstrating your bigotry and idolatry of nuclear
I intended 'grid failure' to mean 'a failure of something on the grid'. Not a total shutdown of the grid. I had assumed that this was obvious from the context. My mistake. Using the intended meaning, what I wrote stands.
"I intended 'grid failure' to mean 'a failure of something on the grid'."
OK, so what? Do you mean "the renewable power generator"?
The failure of a wind turbine mechanism doesn't mean that wind power is not predictable, since there are so many of them that their actions can be counted to generate toward the mean by the law of large numbers.
And is therefore predictable.
Unlike a score of nuclear power stations, which don't allow statistical treatments to result in reliable estimates.
Remember, nuclear power stations are "something on the grid".
"I had assumed that this was obvious from the context."
The context being WHAT? That you were saying that the predictability of the weather for days in advance was "irrelevant" and "moot". Since the failure of only "something on the grid" would be IRRELEVANT to the utility of the weather prediction, the context CERTAINLY COULD NOT be "something on the grid".
Your mistake is to think that I'm as gullible as yourself to an argument you want so desperately to be true.
Your mistake is right at the core of yourself: your blind bigoted ideological stance for nuclear power uber alles.
Which has you insisting, in a thread that was about how to utilise overgenerated energy from renewable sources, that somehow renewables can't be backup, and nuclear has none of these problems.
And which has you really believing that you know more than me because I don't come to the same conclusion as you do. That's a Monckton-level of self delusion.
Not pithy enough.
"Unlike a score of nuclear power stations, which don't allow statistical treatments to result in reliable estimates."
"I do. VASTLY better than you." (wrt energy infrastructure knowledge)
I say we elect BP as the USA's "Black Knight" energy tsard (the "s" is silent).
OMFG! USA is s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o DOOMED!
The failure of a wind turbine mechanism doesn't mean that wind power is not predictable, since there are so many of them that their actions can be counted to generate toward the mean by the law of large numbers.
And is therefore predictable.
I said that FAILURES OF PLANT are unpredictable. Several times, because you didn't seem able to grasp it at first. Amazingly, you still can't.
Furthermore, the claim is still *wrong*. We keep telling you that sustained regional / national lulls in windspeed happen from time to time. The myth of 'always wind somewhere' is... a myth.
Here, buddy dumdum, are your "several times" to someone who isn't inside that insane little demon-haunted noggin of yours:
"Grid failures are unpredictable"
"No, SOMETHING on the grid can fail unpredictably"
"No, THE PLANT can fail unpredictably"
And we haven't even gotten to what the heck that means with regards to how renewables can NEVER be used as backup.
And THAT is still NOWHERE NEAR why that means renewables can't be used.
And THAT is still MILES AWAY from what the hell that has to do with using resistive or phase change materials to store overgenerated electricity from renewable generators to allow generation for hours after the sun sets or reduce and possibly remove short-scale fluctuations from the generators.
Because you, buddy dumdum, DO NOT WANT renewables. They are an anathema to you. ONLY nukes are allowed. Build more of them, ignore the actual technology we can use right now. Because that's not going to be a huge profit centre for big business. Whereas nukes are a cash cow that will give for 40 years to private industry, and ONLY to the big players.
Here, buddy dumdum, are your "several times"
I can't help it if you are too stupid and insane to understand the issues. And I *have* tried - very hard - to explain them to you.
Perhaps if you posted less rubbish, the conversation would be easier to follow.
And we haven't even gotten to what the heck that means with regards to how renewables can NEVER be used as backup.
Yes, we have. That was dealt with some time back. The problem is that you are apparently incapable of understanding the explanation.
"" Here, buddy dumdum, are your "several times""
I can't help it if you are too stupid and insane to understand the issues."
Non sequitur. Know what it means?
Either you're too dumbass or you're too trolling to understand that you changed what you said three times. Not said one thing several times. And that doesn't change whether I'm "too stupid and insane to understand the issues", unless that "issue" is why the hell you're so batshit crazy that you don't know what you're saying even when you say it.
""And we haven't even gotten to what the heck that means with regards to how renewables can NEVER be used as backup."
Yes, we have."
No we haven't.
"And I *have* tried - very hard - to explain them to you. "
No you haven't.
Sorry, whining about how I'm too dumb to understand does not constitute any form of "trying to explain".
"We keep telling you that sustained regional / national lulls in windspeed happen from time to time."
And I keep telling you that nuclear power stations break down or blow up from time to time.
And I keep telling you "We don't only have wind power as the sole renewable power".
None of that gets through your bigotry and ideological religious fervour, though.
'And I keep telling you that nuclear power stations break down or blow up from time to time.'
90% load factor, USA and Korea. Lower in France, but availability probably similar. ' Availability ' in Japan likewise, it just needs the consensus to turn the reactors back on.
"We don't only have wind power as the sole renewable power". It might as well be in the UK - solar is zero most of the time, and especially so when you need it. Tidal would be another part time worker,and ' biomass ' makes more CO2 than coal, short term. Long term will be a bit late, and there are limits to how many trees you can feed into the hoppers. If you dig below the ecofreak headlines of ' wind or whatever made more power than x on such a date ' and look at minima instead, solar is often completely absent, wind very often below 10% nameplate for a whole continent, nuclear is always there. Alternatives? Geothermal and hydro ( limited ), nuclear, and fossils.
" 'And I keep telling you that nuclear power stations break down or blow up from time to time.'
90% load factor,"
OK, John, what EXACTLY does "load factor" have to do with nukes blowing up and breaking down? Does a high load factor make the system unbreakable? If so, how does it manage to stop mechanical failures of the physical objects occurring?
And do you know how the USA gets their 90% load factor?
a) Discount from the load factor expected loss from outages and lack of production during heatwaves (when the cooling water cannot cool so the system is unable to operate at full efficiency).
b) Discount downtime for maintenance
c) Only run very old and extremely well understood (since they have failed every which way possible and they worked out how to patch that out) systems. When they use newer designs, their load factor drops to the normal 60-70%.
But like I said, John, has bugger all to do with them blowing up or failing, because load factor indicates that there remains 10% of the time after all the EXPECTED *unavailability* and underproduction where it doesn't work.
""We don't only have wind power as the sole renewable power". It might as well be in the UK"
We don't only have wind power as the sole renewable power in the UK. We have wind.
The only way you can finagle a "it might as well be" is the government insisting that renewables cannot be used (because Without Hot Air is blowing smoke up your ass and making you believe it cannot be renewables, and that suits their ideology just fine) and pushing massively expensive and horrendously risky nuclear and the moronic fracking because these benefit big operators much more than little ones. And big operators have lots of non-voting director posts for ex ministers to drop in to when their gig at the government is up. Little businesses already have all the executives they need and can't afford a full time salary for a part time job of no work.
"solar is zero most of the time, and especially so when you need it."
Nope, ABSOLUTE BULLCRAP.
Stop talking out your rear end because the stuff coming out aint words.
See the link I gave above about how coal and nuclear were at zero when we needed it. Or the over a year Sizewell B was out. Or in the heatwave when AC was a big demand in France, the water was too hot to use for cooling and they had to shut down their nuke plants and buy the solar output from Germany at a premium.
We don't only have solar as the sole renewable power.
This yet again demonstrates the ideological blinkers and idiocy of the nuke fluffer brigade, as I said clearly earlier, they chop their argument as if "renewables" were only one, but which one changes based on what "argument" they want to use to "prove" renewables are unusable.
"nuclear is always there"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/IT-Sizewell_B_outage_duration_uncertain-1304107.html
http://www.onr.org.uk/intervention-records/2013/sizewell-b-18.htm
http://www.onr.org.uk/intervention-records/2013/sizewell-b-18.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/1sizwell b outagesizwell b outage2/france.nuclear
http://www.rense.com/general40/reactors.htm
http://energytransition.de/2015/08/european-power-sector-heat-wave/
Don't know what happened to cutnpaste on the first one...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/12/france.nuclear
BP
Perhaps it's time you defended your argument in depth. Let's outline a plausible scenario:
It's winter in the UK, energy demand is high, solar is at about one ninth its summer maximum capacity and a three day stretch of anticyclonic conditions is just beginning. Windspeeds drop and UK wind falls off to ~10% capacity.
Multiple generating plant failures take down a significant fraction of UK capacity.
How do we use renewables as backup in this scenario?
This just in the news:
On eve of Paris climate summit, Britain pulls the plug on renewables
Now we see why the BP troll is being so defensive.
Don't forget, BP, the ATL story is about storage. Solar and wind renewables simply can not provide the present luxury of 24/7 supply on demand without adding major amounts of storage to the system. Adding storage ups the total system cost to levels far above that enjoyed by users of the present grid structure. Of course, one can postulate a smart grid with demand management and mandate higher prices to the consumer, but who's going to make that happen?
Surely wind and sun farms must be considerably overbuilt, so that on low to average generation days they supply more than enough juice. Which means on above average days, they would be producing in huge excess, would they not?
The question would then be do we see more above average days than we see many days in a row with extremely low or zero output? One would think that if we site these farms intelligently, the number of extremely high output days would vastly outnumber stretches of zero output.
If this is so, then would not the critical feature of any storage technology be not necessarily its absolute efficiency, but its overall capacity? If uphill water reservoirs are used, the reservoir size must be overbuilt. Hydrogen production, if used, has the benefit of being an unfillable reservoir, so to speak. It can be piped or carried off as needed. Batteries, on the other hand, only have x amount of capacity, and no more. That they are especially efficient is not much of an asset when excess juice is in such abundance.
Gingerbaker, given that solar is half the price of nuclear, and still dropping fast (whilst Nuclear is only going up), and wind is half the cost of that, so what if you have to "overbuild"?
You have to overbuild nuclear and coal too, since they get something like 60-70% of nameplate, whilst Wind and Solar are around 30-40% nameplate.
Given the variation of both solar and wind accord closer to the demand curves of human usage, you need less nameplate overcapacity to cover the load requirements, since you don't have to build for peak and be left with overgeneration at nadir, because that generator still produces the same amount.
"If this is so, then would not the critical feature of any storage technology be not necessarily its absolute efficiency, but its overall capacity?"
That's some of what Eli is saying here. But "overall capacity for build-out cost". See the title "Resistors are cheaper than batteries".
"Perhaps it's time you defended your argument in depth. Let's outline a plausible scenario:"
Perhaps you did your defence in depth,instead of using "defence by insistence".
And your other scenarios have been patently silly fantasies constructed precisely to generate the "allowed" answer. Did you do any better this time?
"solar is at about one ninth its summer maximum capacity and a three day stretch of anticyclonic conditions is just beginning..."
No apparently not.
Here's one for you to defend. Based on real life actuality.
Russia supplies gas to the UK and in a spat decides to cut the supplies to the UK. Meanwhile Didcot power station (coal) goes offline for two months whilst Sizewell B has been off now for 8 months.
How do we use coal and nuclear generation as backup in this scenario!?!
" This just in the news:
On eve of Paris climate summit, Britain pulls the plug on renewables
Now we see why the BP troll is being so defensive."
Of course. Because I come from the far future and live backward in time, so months and months ago, I was saying the exact same thing on this site because from your point of view, this would happen in the future, but it was my past...
Of course, if you don't believe I'm some pan-dimensional superbeing able to exist outside time and space, how would the UK politicians being stupid and greedy idiots bought and paid for be "why [I'm] so defensive"???
Are you and buddy dumdum here being so defensive because of the news (IN YOUR ACTUAL PAST!) of Germany cancelling nuclear power stations and the Fukishima catastrophe (both as a technical accident and as an indication of how incompetent private industry are at running nuclear power stations, no matter how "safe" they are if run *correctly*)?
Are you two so defensive because nuclear power is so damn expensive and renewables both more accepted by the public, more accepted by those willing to invest without government guarantee and underwriting, and getting cheaper and cheaper every day?
"Don't forget, BP, the ATL story is about storage."
I haven't swan. You and buddy dumdum here have completely ignored it to go on your ideological knee-jerk rant about how renewables are inefficient and unworkable.
See the "arguments" you've made above.
"Solar and wind renewables simply can not provide the present luxury of 24/7 supply on demand without adding major amounts of storage to the system."
Yes it can.
Not with what is currently built.
Nuclear can't provide the present luxury of 24/7 supply on demand without adding major amounts of storage to the system. They build Dinworig and the HVDC line to the continent to stop massive blackouts from going nuclear. They have to nearly double the storage and increase the HVDC to more than double, thinking of more than triple the capacity, to cover the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant.
Just because nuclear has to have massive infrastructure build-out and backup and storage, it can't be used, right? If something needs huge backup, storage and infrastructure upgrades, it's not feasible to use it.
That, after all, is your and buddy's "argument" why renewables can't do it.
That wasn't a defence of any kind, let alone in depth, BP.
Please play the game in good faith and answer the question.
OK, dumdum, you moronic little toerag, I'll answer yours and then you answer mine.
We use Germany's wind, Spain's solar and Norway's hydro. We use stored energy in synthfuel produced when we weren't underproducing.
Moreover, "one ninth" of half of the power infrastructure we build two twice average capacity means we can cover the shortfall from the rest of the year.
Remember, if we're supposedly one ninth of the power in winter of the average, then in spring and autumn, we're at average and summer twice average. From which you base your "one ninth" fictional scenario, so it's actually two ninths of average annual rate. And being half of the output of the system (we build both solar and wind), that's four-ninths of generation average in a shortfall.
Oh noes! Slightly less than half the average use!!!!!
Given much of Europe are 50-100% efficient than us, even when they have a worse climate, we can halve our required output and still, like those other EU countries, have 24/7 on-demand power and a first world lifestyle.
And that anticyclone occurs less often than a serious accident at a UK nuclear power station, or a fire at a coal power station in the UK.
So now your turn: how do you use nuclear as backup.
We use Germany's wind, Spain's solar and Norway's hydro.
What do they use? On what basis do you assume that there is sufficent export capacity available from any of these countries exactly when it is required in the UK?
We use stored energy in synthfuel produced when we weren't underproducing.
Got any numbers for that?
* * *
And your other scenarios have been patently silly fantasies constructed precisely to generate the "allowed" answer. Did you do any better this time?
SPV
At European latitudes, the average intensity of sunshine varies significantly with the time of year: the average intensity on a horizontal surface in London or Edinburgh is nine times smaller in winter than in summer (figure 1b). (MacKay 2013).
Wind
Anticyclones tutorial
Areas of sinking air which result in high pressure are called anticyclones (the opposite to an anticyclone is the cyclone or depression, which is covered next).
High pressure systems have small pressure gradients (ie the air pressure doesn't change rapidly). This means that the winds are gentle. As the air sinks, it warms up, leading to warm and dry weather.
Anticyclones are much larger than depressions and produce periods of settled and calm weather lasting many days or weeks. Anticyclones often block the path of depressions, either slowing down the bad weather, or forcing it round the outside of the high pressure system. They are then called 'Blocking Highs'.
[Source].
So now your turn: how do you use nuclear as backup.
By building it and turning it on.
OK, dumdum, you moronic little toerag
Why do you do this? Give it a rest, please.
That wasn't a defence of any kind, let alone in depth, Buddy DumDum.
Please play the game in good faith and answer the question.
A picture is worth a thousand words. At this point.
That wasn't a defence of any kind, let alone in depth, Buddy DumDum.
Please play the game in good faith and answer the question.
Or are you too much of a retard to manage that simple task?
BP troll, I used to be one of those "far future" people back when I installed the first "modern" wind generator system in California in 1973 before the Arab/OPEC Oil Embargo. I went back to Silicone U and worked with a group of 40 others to write what became a "do-it-yourself" book on renewable energy. I then became SU's resident expert on wind energy systems, only to leave after my faculty adviser presented a seminar touting the great reliability of nukes. Turns out I had been working to put the Nuclear Safeguard Initiative on the ballot. We didn't get it done until 1976, then lost after a court changed the rules and the industry spent lots of money to oppose the Initiative. I didn't start studying AGW until a few years later.
Meanwhile, back to the future, aka, the real world of PV interruptus:
http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2015/11/20/sioux-falls-snow-weather-forecast-south-dakota/76094970/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/snow-piles-up-beyond-expected-amounts-in-wisconsin-illinois/
So, Troll thing, what have YOU actually done, besides blow smoke???
"Blogger E. Swanson said...
BP troll,"
Swannee, "Not accepting your bullshit utopia" does NOT define "troll". Look it up, retard.
You can't prove me wrong by calling me troll.
You can't prove me wrong by proclaiming it.
You haven't even attempted to prove me wrong by any valid method of argument AT ALL.
ONCE.
Indeed it is DEFINITELY Buddy DumDum who is trolling. Look at his last "informative" (as far as he "intends") post.
He's claiming brazenly he's clowning around.
But HE'S not a troll, because HE agrees with YOU that renewables are crap and nuclear is the only option and anyone who disagrees knows NOTHING. Because you say so.
ALL of it 100% and utterly in every way wrong.
And what's with this "road to damascus" conversion to nuclear fluffer a la Patrick Moore BS?
STILL proves nothing other than you looked at crap early attempts and then got disillusioned.
And got a job that pays better than that hippy crap.
"Meanwhile, back to the future, aka, the real world of PV interruptus:"
Which also happens to be the real world of Nuclear Interruptus and Coal Interruptis and Gas Interruptus and Oil Interruptus.
Your point being WHAT?
That unless it's nuclear, any interruption means it can't be valid? WHY NOT NUCLEAR?
It isn't even a thing you observe being asked. Because you have no answer that you know won't be merely "Because it is!".
Back in the real world, they are building 3.2GW of backup storage because of Hinkley point, and are increasing the HVDC link to France and opening up to Denmark another HVDC link because when our nuclear is SOL we will be able to get power from other countries. And we have to be able to sell the overproduction abroad otherwise the financial case for the nuke station won't get past the board. Of course, if there's no shortfall, as France knows all too well, they will have to "sell" it dirt cheap, but by then it's too late to not build it. And they'll demand the government of the UK buy the electricity back WHETHER NEEDED OR NOT at a price far higher than the average electricity wholesale price.
Mind you, EdF will have a few non-voting director jobs going for their new UK offices that they can afford to have because they're gouging a customer with no choice. The UK taxpayer.
Of course, you don't care about *UK* taxpayers, do you, Swan. Fudge those mother hubbards. YOU need your big projects to be profitable so your 401k does well. Your retirement relies on it.
And what is it other than complete and utter smoke to tell everyone that there's a lot of snow in winter????
Do you find yourself incapable of finding your own butthole with both hands, a flashlight and a team of sherpas with full GPS gear and rescue helicopter, because so much has been pulled from it it has retreated beyond the event horizon?
Wow, the BP troll does it again. It posts 22 "paragraphs" of mindless drivel, proving that he has zero ability to understand what I wrote. And, for icing on the cake, he completely fails to reply to what I wrote. Again, troll:
So, Troll thing, what have YOU actually done, besides blow smoke???
As the old saying goes: "Put up or shut up".
Obviously, to answer that request, the BP troll would need to identify itself, which the coward will likely refuse to do.
Or are you too much of a retard to manage that simple task?
I have shown you that the scenario on which the *unanswered* question was based was entirely plausible. You have not acknowledged this nor have you now answered the question.
This, of course, is because you can't. So instead, you embark on another tangent of offensive bullshit and evasion.
E. Swanson is quite right to describe you as a troll. You are not acting in good faith.
Answer the question or admit that (as usual) you are wrong.
"Wow, the BP troll"
Too dumb to read, hmm? I even use short phrases to help.
Calling me a troll is neither proof nor argument.
Complaining about short paragraphs is MORE than merely irrelevant.
Learn English.
" "Or are you too much of a retard to manage that simple task?"
I have shown you that the scenario"
Apparently, YES is the answer, you ARE too much of a retard to manage that simple task.
AGAIN it is no such thing as a defence, let alone in depth.
DO IT RIGHT.
AGAIN it is no such thing as a defence, let alone in depth.
DO IT RIGHT.
I did, and at your request, I showed it. You are just being evasive. Now answer the question.
"" AGAIN it is no such thing as a defence, let alone in depth.
DO IT RIGHT."
I did,"
You did not.
"A picture paints a thousand words" does not.
"E Swanson is right, BP is a troll" does not.
"I have shown you the scenario" does not.
"What do they use?" does not.
"Turn on a nuclear generator" does not. It takes 15-20 years to build one.
You did not.
Now do it RIGHT, retard.
"I did, and at your request, I showed it."
You showed nothing. You SAID nothing. You ignored the question and instead wanted to keep arguing my answer was "wrong" because you didn't like it, because it shows renewables can be used as backup.
Germany has renewables. And, due to this monstrous and fictitious blocking high, they have even more wind than normal.
If you don't know how the winds are generated, ask a grown up to show you a good primary school level book to start you on your way.
"(MacKay 2013)."
Not that piece of crap again?
Got anything ACCURATE?
"(MacKay 2013)."
Not that piece of crap again?
Got anything ACCURATE?
Got the slightest shred of evidence that there are errors in that study BP?
Thought not. I backed up what I said with a reference. You have nothing but denialism.
In Europe, in winter, solar power becomes a minimal component of the energy mix. Germany and Spain will be reliant predominantly on wind (and conventional plant). Since neither country has or plans a wind fleet sufficiently large to meet its entire national demand, it is a reasonable assumption that domestic consumption will account for all available wind capacity. There is unlikely to be a large export surplus.
This is why I keep questioning your airy certainty that there will always be a sufficiently large energy export surplus available whenever the UK needs it. I can see clear reasons why this might *not* be the case and none why it should be the case.
You have not addressed this at all, preferring instead to retreat behind your usual screen of offensive bullshit. And we both know why you have been obliged to do that - and every further evasion on you part confirms it.
"Got the slightest shred of evidence that there are errors in that study BP? "
Yes, and you've been given it before. Given you don't even know how to calculate his results except by pointing to his calculation and going "Well, he's a PROFESSOR!" (so is Hans Joachim Lüdeke), you should really listen to others rather than stick your fingers in your ears and have an almighty paddy that you're not being allowed to be right.
"Thought not. I backed up what I said with a reference. "
Just like deniers point to a paper in E&E as a reference.
"You have nothing but denialism. "
It's ALWAYS projection with you deniers, isn't it?
"In Europe, in winter, solar power becomes a minimal component of the energy mix"
And wind becomes a large component of the energy mix.
"There is unlikely to be a large export surplus."
There is unlikely to be the scenario you described. But if it DOES happen, Germany is more likely to have a surplus.
"This is why I keep questioning your airy certainty that there will always be a sufficiently large energy export surplus available whenever the UK needs it. "
But not your airy certainty that we have a spare nuclear power station lying idle about the place..?
However, "I keep questioning" is only the refuge of a moron when their question has been answered. Twice now.
"You have not addressed this at all"
Yes I did.
Meanwhile, rather than defend nuclear in depth, you decide to scream like a three year old wanting bikkit to hide the ABSOLUTE FACT that you're hot on demanding detailed and exhaustive and 100% certain solutions but absolutely crap at giving any.
Why?
Because you're an idiot troll who refuses to acknowledge their lack of competency and complete lack of any objectivity due to your ideological blinkers and aforementioned stupidity.
"preferring instead to retreat behind your usual screen of offensive bullshit."
It's ALWAYS projection with you deniers.
"And we both know why you have been obliged to do that - and every further evasion on you part confirms it."
We both know that's a load of bull. And why you said it. And every further insistence on that BS merely cements your knowledge that you have no leg to stand on, so decide to meta-argue because you have no actual points to provide.
Yes, and you've been given it before.
No, this is a self-serving lie. You were in fact wrong.
Science denial doubled down into blatant dishonesty... whatever next?
Certainly not an answer to the question.
Just like deniers point to a paper in E&E as a reference.
M13 was published in the Royal Society Phil Trans A which is one of the oldest and most respected scientific journals in existence.
"" Yes, and you've been given it before."
No, this is a self-serving lie. You were in fact wrong. "
I was not, in actual fact. Denial of reality does not make your denial truth. And it does not make it never had happen.
"Science denial doubled down into blatant dishonesty... whatever next?"
It's ALWAYS projection with you retarded deniers, innit.
"M13 was published in..."
Doesn't matter. It is still complete garbage. The *point*, which you deliberately, and with the "panache" that the most idiotic of deniers always displays when "not getting it", was that going "Oh, but it's published" doesn't mean squat if that's all you have to go on.
And that IS all you have to go on.
When questioned about how to work out his calculations yourself, you go all uber-dumbass and say "I don't know, but those are the figures HE got, and HE'S a professor!!!!
Mackay's work is a hatchet job of nil value.
But you LOOOOVE the conclusions. Makes you feel all "sane" when you just hug the stuff to your chest and squeeze it full of your love for what you always wanted to be true in the first place.
100% denier.
I was not, in actual fact.
Yes, you were, and lying like this is contemptible.
Doesn't matter. It [MacKay 13]is still complete garbage.
Says a clown on the internet. This is just pathetic, BP.
* * *
Above, I wrote:
In Europe, in winter, solar power becomes a minimal component of the energy mix. Germany and Spain will be reliant predominantly on wind (and conventional plant). Since neither country has or plans a wind fleet sufficiently large to meet its entire national demand, it is a reasonable assumption that domestic consumption will account for all available wind capacity. There is unlikely to be a large export surplus.
This is why I keep questioning your airy certainty that there will always be a sufficiently large energy export surplus available whenever the UK needs it. I can see clear reasons why this might *not* be the case and none why it should be the case.
Your 'response' was this:
There is unlikely to be the scenario you described. But if it DOES happen, Germany is more likely to have a surplus.
Which combines a repeated falsehood about the likelihood of the scenario with a repeat of your original argument from assertion which does not address what I pointed out above.
In other words, it's yet another empty bucket. You are wasting my time.
" I was not, in actual fact.
Yes, you were, and lying like this is contemptible."
The only contemptible person here is you, Buddy Dumdum, with your continued bullshitting.
Having failed UTTERLY to live up to your own "standard" that you petulantly insist like a screaming three year old that others must live to, you're now just dragging this down into the trollish slagging off that you've fallen back on time and time again before when you have never manged to browbeat people into accepting your ridiculous claims.
"Which combines a repeated falsehood about the likelihood of the scenario"
And again with the pronoun game. And the bollocks.
" with a repeat of your original argument from assertion"
That's been your entire "argument" all along, dipstick.
" which does not address what I pointed out above."
Yes it does.
Unlike your refusal to say where you think we can build an entire new nuclear power station for when we get a failure in one of the others. You have just latched onto the insane idea that you can keep BSing about how I've already answered your question so that you can ignore the complete lack of anything resembling forebrain activity when you *preted* to answer mine.
"In other words, it's yet another empty bucket."
What on EARTH are you babbling on about like a braindead crack addict now????
" You are wasting my time. "
YOU ARE A WASTE OF TIME.
Completely empty of everything other than hate and lies.
But it's ALWAYS projection with you denier scum.
What on EARTH are you babbling on about like a braindead crack addict now????
The content-free rubbish you wrote instead of answering the original question, which, of course, you cannot do.
Which brings us to more (and more concrete) evidence demonstrating that you are mistaken about the ability of renewables to act as reserve. This story is about backup generating capacity in the UK and it is happening right now. Irritatingly the news article is in the Sunday Times, which is paywalled, but here's the public bit:
BRITAIN’S green energy barons are getting huge taxpayer subsidies to install diesel generators — exactly the kind of polluting energy source their wind and solar farms are meant to replace.
Wind and solar power firms are being encouraged to install the generators, which pour out CO2, a greenhouse gas, and toxic nitrogen dioxide, on their sites in order to provide standby generating capacity and prevent the lights going out during periods of peak demand.
The giant Roundponds solar farm, near Melksham, Wiltshire, is among the first green generators to take advantage. The directors of Hive Energy, which owns it, have won permission to put diesel generators near the solar panels — despite local objections.
Similarly, First Renewable has won permission for a diesel farm next to its wind turbines and solar panels at Kettering Energy Park in
Northamptonshire.
Now, here's a bit more, from the print version:
Diesel generators are typically built into shipping containers, each producing 2 - 3 megawatts (MW) of power [...] The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) is offering consumer-funded subsidies to firms that install such "short-term operating reserve" because Britain has invested so little in large new power stations that there is a risk of winter power cuts.
[...]
About 1,000 such diesel units were installed in the past 18 months, with a similar number being planned, making diesel farms among the fastest-growing energy sectors.
Now, this is really piss-poor, obviously. So we have to ask how can this possibly happen if renewables are capable of providing backup?
The answer is, of course, that it would not have happened if renewables could be used as reserve capacity. It is in fact proof that they cannot. The reason for this, as has been explained many, many times, is because renewables aren't dispatchable (but diesel generators are). This is how the grid works in the real world, as opposed to the fantasy land inhabited by those who believe that renewables can do absolutely everything, no problem.
"The answer is, of course, that it would not have happened if renewables could be used as reserve capacity"
How the hell would you know?
It would be just as viable to claim it would not have happened if nuclear could be used as reserve capacity. After all, why didn't they just turn on a nuclear reactor, hmm?
Because you have FAITH (tm) that it MUST be that way.
Because you're a gullible bigoted moron without a damn clue.
From
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/12/wind-is-not-driving-the-uk-towards-power-blackouts
...with the grid’s help pieced together the following sequence of events. During Wednesday morning last week, the National Grid experienced what it told us were “multiple failures” of coal and gas-fired power stations. Though the grid won’t reveal which plants were affected, other sources report that there were at least three major power plants out of action, including the Fiddlers Ferry coal plant in Cheshire .
Which would not have happened if coal and nuclear could have been used as reserve capacity.
Right!
Also, talk about histrionics!
"Wind and solar power firms are being encouraged to install the generators, which pour out CO2"
Yeah, right.
Just like generators do. Which they do WHEN RUNNING. However, sitting idle, they have a surprisingly low CO2 output. Much less than your armchair idiot like Buddy Dumdum here when sitting idle.
THIS is what happens when you roll out renewables:
http://energytransition.de/2015/01/fossil-fuel-power-at-35-year-low-in-germany/
Which is rather different from he hysterical screaming of doom and gloom from nuke fluffers like buddy here. Because whilst we don't have widespread and full use of renewables, there's still the option of FUD *claiming* catastrophe if we were to use renewables.
Note too how nuclear drops at pretty much the same rate as renewables rise. But it's only recently that fossil fuel use dropped. Because unlike nuke, renewables more closely match the load demand curves, therefore it generates when it's needed and generates less at the times it's not needed.
Electrical engineers call this "impedence matching". It makes the same power dissipation cicuit do more work. And it's doing the same thing here.
But I guess Buddy Dumdum here doesn't want fossil fuels reduced.
He doesn't see (because he doesn't want it to happen) any future without most of the power generation being from fossil fuels.
The reasons for this are obvious. And buddy's only tactic for denial is to whine about how he's being misquoted and maligned.
How the hell would you know?
By reasoning from inference. If it were possible, then it would have been done. But it was not done, therefore... See? Not hard.
I thought you'd desperately blank the implications of diesel farms and dash off on a tangent.
Too much reality and all that.
" How the hell would you know?
By reasoning from inference."
Well, nobody else is allowed to do that, so why do you let yourself do it? When anyone else does it you squeal "LIAR! I NEVER SAID THAT!!!!". Inference free zone you are. When it's inferring something you don't want known.
But let me reinterpret that for you: you guess so. And so you DON'T know.
And it is no surprise that you blanked everything that was wrong with your assertion. After all, while you can attack, you can pretend there's nothing to defend.
Typical denier.
http://www.nucleartourist.com/systems/diesel1.htm
Every nuclear power plant has emergency power supplies, which are often diesel-driven. These generators provide power only when needed to special safety electrical distribution panels. These panels in turn supply power to those emergency pumps, valves, fans, etc. that may be required to operate in the event of the postulated catastrophic event - a simultaneous total loss of outside power and a major break in the reactor coolant system.
Emergency equipment is redundant with totally separate emergency electrical power supplies. The premise in nuclear power is that emergency equipment must be single failure-proof. This should guarantee that at least one channel (or "train") of emergency equipment will function. In a few cases, a plant may have 3 redundant trains of equipment for some emergency systems.
Now, this is really piss-poor, obviously. So we have to ask how can this possibly happen if nuclear is capable of providing backup?
And it is no surprise that you blanked everything that was wrong with your assertion.
There was nothing wrong with what I have said above, which is why you have been reduced to posting reams of irrelevant, abusive tripe.
Like I said, it's no surprise you've blanked everythung that was wrong with your assertion.
And it's odd: post short statements, it's "proof" I'm a troll, therefore wrong, post long statements (still, shorter than ones you supply), and I'm posting "reams and reams", therefore wrong.
This is how you spot the desperate idealogue in denial: ANYTHING, even contradictory evidence, is used as "proof" in their eyes of how wrong everyone else is.
Even when it's the exact same thing as they did, it's ALWAYS wrong for anyone else if it comes to the "wrong" conclusion.
Dear Eli
How much longer?
It depends on whether you take action and end it.
EVERY argument you've made has, when used against you, NEVER ONCE worked. And you brazenly insist it would and should never work as an argument.
But ONLY against you.
When YOU use it, NOT being gulled by the stupidity and lack of substance is "proof" that you're right and anyone saying different is unwilling to listen or even acknowledge the "real evidence".
The only end will be when you stop doing BS and start doing substance. Substance that, if used just as well supported as yours, but indicating that nuclear is unsuitable, will make you think "Oh, I have it wrong after all!".
Whining to the blog owner because you can't get your way by shouting and slagging me off isn't going to do anything other than cement your personae as a bratty three year old screaming at their betters.
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