Four Nuclear Myths

[kristopher]

From Amory Lovin's open access article:

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed
journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic: that

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little
or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more
than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to
protect the climate.

For specificity, this review of these four notions focuses on the nuclear chapter of Stewart
Brand’s 2009 book Whole Earth Discipline, which encapsulates similar views widely expressed
and cross-cited by organizations and individuals advocating expansion of nuclear power. It’s
therefore timely to subject them to closer scrutiny than they have received in most public media.

This review relies chiefly on five papers, which I gave Brand over the past few years but on
which he has been unwilling to engage in substantive discussion. They document6 why
expanding nuclear power is uneconomic, is unnecessary, is not undergoing the claimed
renaissance in the global marketplace (because it fails the basic test of cost-effectiveness ever
more robustly), and, most importantly, will reduce and retard climate protection. That’s
because—the empirical cost and installation data show—new nuclear power is so costly and
slow that, based on empirical U.S. market data, it will save about 2–20 times less carbon per
dollar, and about 20–40 times less carbon per year, than investing instead in the market
winners—efficient use of electricity and what The Economist calls “micropower,”...


The “baseload” myth

Brand rejects the most important and successful renewable sources of electricity for one key
reason stated on p. 80 and p. 101. On p. 80, he quotes novelist and author Gwyneth Cravens’s
definition of “baseload” power as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock,
rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of
customers.”21 (Thus it describes a pattern of aggregated customer demand.) Two sentences
later, he asserts: “So far comes from only three sources: fossil fuels, hydro, and
nuclear.” Two paragraphs later, he explains this dramatic leap from a description of demand to a
restriction of supply: “Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they
are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive
energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain
supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants.”

That widely heard claim is fallacious. The manifest need for some amount of steady, reliable
power is met by generating plants collectively, not individually. That is, reliability is a statistic-
al attribute of all the plants on the grid combined. If steady 24/7 operation or operation at any
desired moment were instead a required capability of each individual power plant, then the grid
couldn’t meet modern needs, because no kind of power plant is perfectly reliable. For example,
in the U.S. during 2003–07, coal capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time (4.2%
without warning); nuclear, 10.6% (2.5%); gas-fired, 11.8% (2.8%). Worldwide through 2008,
nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.26 This inherent
intermittency of nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants requires many different plants to back
each other up through the grid. This has been utility operators’ strategy for reliable supply
throughout the industry’s history. Every utility operator knows that power plants provide energy
to the grid, which serves load. The simplistic mental model of one plant serving one load is valid
only on a very small desert island. The standard remedy for failed plants is other interconnected
plants that are working—not “some sort of massive energy storage devised.”

Modern solar and wind power are more technically reliable than coal and nuclear plants; their
technical failure rates are typically around 1–2%. However, they are also variable resources
because their output depends on local weather, forecastable days in advance with fair accuracy
and an hour ahead with impressive precision. But their inherent variability can be managed by
proper resource choice, siting, and operation. Weather affects different renewable resources
differently; for example, storms are good for small hydro and often for windpower, while flat
calm weather is bad for them but good for solar power. Weather is also different in different
places: across a few hundred miles, windpower is scarcely correlated, so weather risks can be
diversified. A Stanford study found that properly interconnecting at least ten windfarms can
enable an average of one-third of their output to provide firm baseload power. Similarly, within
each of the three power pools from Texas to the Canadian border, combining uncorrelated
windfarm sites can reduce required wind capacity by more than half for the same firm output,
thereby yielding fewer needed turbines, far fewer zero-output hours, and easier integration.

A broader assessment of reliability tends not to favor nuclear power. Of all 132 U.S. nuclear
plants built—just over half of the 253 originally ordered—21% were permanently and
prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems. Another 27% have completely failed for a
year or more at least once. The surviving U.S. nuclear plants have lately averaged ~90% of their
full-load full-time potential—a major improvement31 for which the industry deserves much
credit—but they are still not fully dependable. Even reliably-running nuclear plants must shut
down, on average, for ~39 days every ~17 months for refueling and maintenance. Unexpected
failures occur too, shutting down upwards of a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks to
months. Solar cells and windpower don’t fail so ungracefully.

Power plants can fail for reasons other than mechanical breakdown, and those reasons can affect
many plants at once. As France and Japan have learned to their cost, heavily nuclear-dependent
regions are particularly at risk because drought, earthquake, a serious safety problem, or a
terrorist incident could close many plants simultaneously. And nuclear power plants have a
unique further disadvantage: for neutron-physics reasons, they can’t quickly restart after an
emergency shutdown, such as occurs automatically in a grid power failure...

From Amory Lovins
Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

Journal or Magazine Article, 2009

Available for download: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths

Some nuclear-power advocates claim that wind and solar power can’t provide much if any reliable power because they’re not “baseload,” that they use too much land, that all energy options including new nuclear build are needed to combat climate change, and that nuclear power’s economics don’t matter because climate change will force governments to dictate energy choices and pay for whatever is necessary. None of these claims can withstand analytic scrutiny.

[joshcryer]

1. You've posted this many times.

[kristopher]

2. it is worth posting many more times...

[joshcryer]

4. Well, clouding the debate is your forte, Taos Eddy.

[kristopher]

9. Do you understand what stalking is?

[joshcryer]

12. Thanks.

Now I won't feel wrong in the future possibly reporting a known internet disruptor who doesn't want to be part of a community.

[Dead_Parrot]

10. True, but some jokes never get old.

"Hypercars will be widely available in about five years" is another one to get 'em rolling in the aisles.

[greenman3610]

3. apparently it needs to be posted, because some people still don't get it.

[joshcryer]

5. I've been hammered with disinformation by the OP for months now.

I'm afraid you haven't researched this enough. The vast majority of environmentalists on this forum are pro or ambivalent about nuclear power.

[kristopher]

7. Actually pronuclear people tend to be in the "More Coal, Drill Here Drill Now" camp

Associated Press/Stanford University Poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media. Nov. 17-29, 2009. N=1,005 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1.

"In general, would you favor or oppose building more nuclear power plants at this time?"
Favor 49 Oppose 48 Unsure 3

***********************************************************************

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Oct. 16-18, 2009. N=1,038 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

“To address the country’s energy needs, would you support or oppose action by the federal government to ?” (Half Sample)

"Increase coal mining"
Support 52, Oppose 45, Unsure 3

"Build more nuclear power plants"
Support 52, Oppose 46, Unsure 2

"Develop more solar and wind power"
Support 91, Oppose 8, Unsure 1

"Increase oil and gas drilling"
Support 64, Oppose 33, Unsure 3

"Develop electric car technology"
Support 82, Oppose 17, Unsure 2

"Require more energy conservation by businesses and industries"
Support 78, Oppose 20, Unsure 2

"Require more energy conservation by consumers like yourself"
Support 73, Oppose 25, Unsure 3

"Require car manufacturers to improve the fuel-efficiency of vehicles sold in this country"
Support 85, Oppose 14, Unsure 1

Asked of those who support building more nuclear power plants:
"Would you favor or oppose building a nuclear power plant within 50 miles of your home?"
Favor 66, Oppose 33

[joshcryer]

11. The environmentalist liberals on this forum are not properly represented in that poll.

[joshcryer]

17. And it's insulting that you'd malign them by implying that they're RWers.

[Nederland]

6. This is not a peered reviewed paper

The peer reviewed literature, apart from a very small handful of crackpots, says that the inability of wind and solar to provide baseload power is a serious problem.

Lovin's is delusional for thinking otherwise.

[kristopher]

8. Really? Perhaps you could provide some of those papers?

[Nederland]

13. Glad to

The following papers that all agree that in order for wind to function as baseload power, you need to have a way of storing the energy it produces.

http://www.sage.wisc.edu/pubs/articles/F-L/Holloway/Denholm_es049946p.pdf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2W-4K4WN1R-2&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1192647266&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4c682a2e9f9fd130cc4815394e56b982

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122625997/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V4S-4GY870M-1&_user=10&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1192653730&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0615d9bc1b84bce3dc3461f3b46b2807


Now I will ask you to provide a peer review paper that claims that wind can be used as baseload power without storage.

[kristopher]

14. I'd suggest you read the Lovins paper, as usual you are arguing a strawman

None of those papers challenge the premise of Lovins argument - that the requirement for "baseload" is a myth - in fact they support his contention that wind and solar CAN provide dependable power. What the papers all deal with is the question of whether we can achieve dispatchable power with the use of renewables. There is a basis for your confusion that isn't your fault since "baseload" has several distinct meanings. In this case you are conflating running 24/7 with the characteristic of dispatchability.

BTW I'm very familiar with all the papers you posted (except for perhaps the third - it wouldn't load) so I didn't require any time to read them.

What you need to show is a study that asks the right question - the one that Lovins has asked - "is there any reason renewable energy sources cannot provide reliable electric service?"

The answer is no and there is no analysis that says differently.

So again I say - read the paper.

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed
journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic: that

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little
or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more
than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to
protect the climate.

For specificity, this review of these four notions focuses on the nuclear chapter of Stewart
Brand’s 2009 book Whole Earth Discipline, which encapsulates similar views widely expressed
and cross-cited by organizations and individuals advocating expansion of nuclear power. It’s
therefore timely to subject them to closer scrutiny than they have received in most public media.

This review relies chiefly on five papers, which I gave Brand over the past few years but on
which he has been unwilling to engage in substantive discussion. They document6 why
expanding nuclear power is uneconomic, is unnecessary, is not undergoing the claimed
renaissance in the global marketplace (because it fails the basic test of cost-effectiveness ever
more robustly), and, most importantly, will reduce and retard climate protection. That’s
because—the empirical cost and installation data show—new nuclear power is so costly and
slow that, based on empirical U.S. market data, it will save about 2–20 times less carbon per
dollar, and about 20–40 times less carbon per year, than investing instead in the market
winners—efficient use of electricity and what The Economist calls “micropower,”...


The “baseload” myth

Brand rejects the most important and successful renewable sources of electricity for one key
reason stated on p. 80 and p. 101. On p. 80, he quotes novelist and author Gwyneth Cravens’s
definition of “baseload” power as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock,
rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of
customers.”21 (Thus it describes a pattern of aggregated customer demand.) Two sentences
later, he asserts: “So far comes from only three sources: fossil fuels, hydro, and
nuclear.” Two paragraphs later, he explains this dramatic leap from a description of demand to a
restriction of supply: “Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they
are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive
energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain
supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants.”

That widely heard claim is fallacious. The manifest need for some amount of steady, reliable
power is met by generating plants collectively, not individually. That is, reliability is a statistic-
al attribute of all the plants on the grid combined. If steady 24/7 operation or operation at any
desired moment were instead a required capability of each individual power plant, then the grid
couldn’t meet modern needs, because no kind of power plant is perfectly reliable. For example,
in the U.S. during 2003–07, coal capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time (4.2%
without warning); nuclear, 10.6% (2.5%); gas-fired, 11.8% (2.8%). Worldwide through 2008,
nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.26 This inherent
intermittency of nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants requires many different plants to back
each other up through the grid. This has been utility operators’ strategy for reliable supply
throughout the industry’s history. Every utility operator knows that power plants provide energy
to the grid, which serves load. The simplistic mental model of one plant serving one load is valid
only on a very small desert island. The standard remedy for failed plants is other interconnected
plants that are working—not “some sort of massive energy storage devised.”

Modern solar and wind power are more technically reliable than coal and nuclear plants; their
technical failure rates are typically around 1–2%. However, they are also variable resources
because their output depends on local weather, forecastable days in advance with fair accuracy
and an hour ahead with impressive precision. But their inherent variability can be managed by
proper resource choice, siting, and operation. Weather affects different renewable resources
differently; for example, storms are good for small hydro and often for windpower, while flat
calm weather is bad for them but good for solar power. Weather is also different in different
places: across a few hundred miles, windpower is scarcely correlated, so weather risks can be
diversified. A Stanford study found that properly interconnecting at least ten windfarms can
enable an average of one-third of their output to provide firm baseload power. Similarly, within
each of the three power pools from Texas to the Canadian border, combining uncorrelated
windfarm sites can reduce required wind capacity by more than half for the same firm output,
thereby yielding fewer needed turbines, far fewer zero-output hours, and easier integration.

A broader assessment of reliability tends not to favor nuclear power. Of all 132 U.S. nuclear
plants built—just over half of the 253 originally ordered—21% were permanently and
prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems. Another 27% have completely failed for a
year or more at least once. The surviving U.S. nuclear plants have lately averaged ~90% of their
full-load full-time potential—a major improvement31 for which the industry deserves much
credit—but they are still not fully dependable. Even reliably-running nuclear plants must shut
down, on average, for ~39 days every ~17 months for refueling and maintenance. Unexpected
failures occur too, shutting down upwards of a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks to
months. Solar cells and windpower don’t fail so ungracefully.

Power plants can fail for reasons other than mechanical breakdown, and those reasons can affect
many plants at once. As France and Japan have learned to their cost, heavily nuclear-dependent
regions are particularly at risk because drought, earthquake, a serious safety problem, or a
terrorist incident could close many plants simultaneously. And nuclear power plants have a
unique further disadvantage: for neutron-physics reasons, they can’t quickly restart after an
emergency shutdown, such as occurs automatically in a grid power failure...

From Amory Lovins
Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

Journal or Magazine Article, 2009

Available for download: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths

Some nuclear-power advocates claim that wind and solar power can’t provide much if any reliable power because they’re not “baseload,” that they use too much land, that all energy options including new nuclear build are needed to combat climate change, and that nuclear power’s economics don’t matter because climate change will force governments to dictate energy choices and pay for whatever is necessary. None of these claims can withstand analytic scrutiny.

[Nederland]

15. Yes they do challenge Lovin's argument

This is what Lovin's says regarding Brand:

“(Brand claims that) wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they
are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive
energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain
supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants.”

That widely heard claim is fallacious.

This is why Lovin's article is not peer reviewed and would never pass peer review--his idea that wind power does not require storage to provide baseload power is pure hogwash that is completely unsupported in peer reviewed literature. Yes, lots of peer reviewed papers talk about how renewable power can meet all our power needs--but they all accept the fact that storage of some type would be required. Lovin's is simply an idiot for claiming otherwise.

BTW, I'm still waiting for you to provide a link to a peer review paper that says wind can provide baseload power without storage.

[kristopher]

26. Actually this is what Lovins' says

You are again arguing a strawman, is it deliberate or do you still fail to understand? Since you elect to not actually address the description of the issue as posed by Lovins, it is clearly the former.

Here is what Lovins wrote in his words in context. As I wrote in my last post, you have a muddled understanding of what "baseload" is and therefore your attempt to refute Lovins comes off as totally uninformed.

The “baseload” myth

Brand rejects the most important and successful renewable sources of electricity for one key
reason stated on p. 80 and p. 101. On p. 80, he quotes novelist and author Gwyneth Cravens’s
definition of “baseload” power as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock,
rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of
customers.”21 (Thus it describes a pattern of aggregated customer demand.) Two sentences
later, he asserts: “So far comes from only three sources: fossil fuels, hydro, and
nuclear.” Two paragraphs later, he explains this dramatic leap from a description of demand to a
restriction of supply: “Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they
are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive
energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain
supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants.”

Your appeals to "peer review" in this case are beyond foolish. It is like saying that the textbook of a professor of economics is not a valid source of information since it hasn't been published in a journal.

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed
journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic: that

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little
or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more
than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to
protect the climate.

For specificity, this review of these four notions focuses on the nuclear chapter of Stewart
Brand’s 2009 book Whole Earth Discipline, which encapsulates similar views widely expressed
and cross-cited by organizations and individuals advocating expansion of nuclear power. It’s
therefore timely to subject them to closer scrutiny than they have received in most public media.

This review relies chiefly on five papers, which I gave Brand over the past few years but on
which he has been unwilling to engage in substantive discussion. They document6 why
expanding nuclear power is uneconomic, is unnecessary, is not undergoing the claimed
renaissance in the global marketplace (because it fails the basic test of cost-effectiveness ever
more robustly), and, most importantly, will reduce and retard climate protection. That’s
because—the empirical cost and installation data show—new nuclear power is so costly and
slow that, based on empirical U.S. market data, it will save about 2–20 times less carbon per
dollar, and about 20–40 times less carbon per year, than investing instead in the market
winners—efficient use of electricity and what The Economist calls “micropower,”...


The “baseload” myth

Brand rejects the most important and successful renewable sources of electricity for one key
reason stated on p. 80 and p. 101. On p. 80, he quotes novelist and author Gwyneth Cravens’s
definition of “baseload” power as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock,
rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of
customers.”21 (Thus it describes a pattern of aggregated customer demand.) Two sentences
later, he asserts: “So far comes from only three sources: fossil fuels, hydro, and
nuclear.” Two paragraphs later, he explains this dramatic leap from a description of demand to a
restriction of supply: “Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they
are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive
energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain
supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants.”

That widely heard claim is fallacious. The manifest need for some amount of steady, reliable
power is met by generating plants collectively, not individually. That is, reliability is a statistic-
al attribute of all the plants on the grid combined. If steady 24/7 operation or operation at any
desired moment were instead a required capability of each individual power plant, then the grid
couldn’t meet modern needs, because no kind of power plant is perfectly reliable. For example,
in the U.S. during 2003–07, coal capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time (4.2%
without warning); nuclear, 10.6% (2.5%); gas-fired, 11.8% (2.8%). Worldwide through 2008,
nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.26 This inherent
intermittency of nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants requires many different plants to back
each other up through the grid. This has been utility operators’ strategy for reliable supply
throughout the industry’s history. Every utility operator knows that power plants provide energy
to the grid, which serves load. The simplistic mental model of one plant serving one load is valid
only on a very small desert island. The standard remedy for failed plants is other interconnected
plants that are working—not “some sort of massive energy storage devised.”

Modern solar and wind power are more technically reliable than coal and nuclear plants; their
technical failure rates are typically around 1–2%. However, they are also variable resources
because their output depends on local weather, forecastable days in advance with fair accuracy
and an hour ahead with impressive precision. But their inherent variability can be managed by
proper resource choice, siting, and operation. Weather affects different renewable resources
differently; for example, storms are good for small hydro and often for windpower, while flat
calm weather is bad for them but good for solar power. Weather is also different in different
places: across a few hundred miles, windpower is scarcely correlated, so weather risks can be
diversified. A Stanford study found that properly interconnecting at least ten windfarms can
enable an average of one-third of their output to provide firm baseload power. Similarly, within
each of the three power pools from Texas to the Canadian border, combining uncorrelated
windfarm sites can reduce required wind capacity by more than half for the same firm output,
thereby yielding fewer needed turbines, far fewer zero-output hours, and easier integration.

A broader assessment of reliability tends not to favor nuclear power. Of all 132 U.S. nuclear
plants built—just over half of the 253 originally ordered—21% were permanently and
prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems. Another 27% have completely failed for a
year or more at least once. The surviving U.S. nuclear plants have lately averaged ~90% of their
full-load full-time potential—a major improvement31 for which the industry deserves much
credit—but they are still not fully dependable. Even reliably-running nuclear plants must shut
down, on average, for ~39 days every ~17 months for refueling and maintenance. Unexpected
failures occur too, shutting down upwards of a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks to
months. Solar cells and windpower don’t fail so ungracefully.

Power plants can fail for reasons other than mechanical breakdown, and those reasons can affect
many plants at once. As France and Japan have learned to their cost, heavily nuclear-dependent
regions are particularly at risk because drought, earthquake, a serious safety problem, or a
terrorist incident could close many plants simultaneously. And nuclear power plants have a
unique further disadvantage: for neutron-physics reasons, they can’t quickly restart after an
emergency shutdown, such as occurs automatically in a grid power failure...

From Amory Lovins
Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

Journal or Magazine Article, 2009

Available for download: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths

Some nuclear-power advocates claim that wind and solar power can’t provide much if any reliable power because they’re not “baseload,” that they use too much land, that all energy options including new nuclear build are needed to combat climate change, and that nuclear power’s economics don’t matter because climate change will force governments to dictate energy choices and pay for whatever is necessary. None of these claims can withstand analytic scrutiny.

[Nederland]

30. You are simply wrong

You just won't admit it. Even your hero Jacobson admits that if you take a bunch of wind farms and interconnect them together you can only get reliability that matches a single, non-interconnected coal plant--i.e., an uptime of 87.5%:

“Firm capacity” is the fraction of installed wind capacity that is online at the same probability as that of a coal-fired power plant. On average, coal plants are free from unscheduled or scheduled maintenance for 79%–92% of the year, averaging 87.5% in the United States from 2000 to 2004 (Giebel 2000; North American Electric Reliability Council 2005). Figure 3 shows that, while the guaranteed power generated by a single wind farm for 92% of the hours of the year was 0 kW, the power guaranteed by 7 and 19 interconnected farms was 60 and 171 kW, giving firm capacities of 0.04 and 0.11, respectively. Furthermore, 19 interconnected wind
farms guaranteed 222 kW of power (firm capacity of 0.15) for 87.5% of the year, the same percent of the year that an average coal plant in the United States guarantees power. Last, 19 farms guaranteed 312 kW of power for 79% of the year, 4 times the guaranteed power generated by one farm for 79% of the year.

So you take all you wonderful wind farms and interconnect them together and you still don't have a way of producing power 12.5% of the time. That translates into 45.6 days per year of unscheduled outages--a completely unacceptable percentage.

[kristopher]

32. ROFLMAO

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239780#239857

[Nederland]

37. I see

You've run out of counter arguments so all you've got left is to post link to your other pitifully failed attempts to show how wind grid can get above 87.5% reliability without storing energy.

[kristopher]

41. See bold

You wrote: "While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year. Most importantly, all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages. In comparison, a single nuclear plant can guarantee you power 92% of the time, with almost 0% unscheduled outages. If you link 19 of them together you will have guaranteed power 99.9% of the time. That degree of reliability is simply something that wind will never be able to provide on its own without storage."

"While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year.

Here you say "baseload power" is a goal not being met by getting "get guaranteed power 79% of the year."
This refers to baseload as a form of generation that runs 24/7.
No generating source meets that definition.
In fact, the 79% is the same as coal, which you obviously accept as baseload.
Therefore your appeal to this as a failure of renewables is obviously self-contradictory.

Then you claim the issue is whether the downtime is scheduled or not, "all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages."
Just how do you define an "unscheduled outage" and how have you confirmed that the 21% instance you refer to as "unscheduled outages" are in fact not anticipated in a manner that is easily dealt with as part of a renewable grid?
You seem to be claiming that 18 months advance notice is required when grid balancing is required, which is an assertion that would be beyond stupid if that is what you are saying.

In fact as we seen in another of the anti-renewable energy threads started by nnads, rapid fluctuations in supply and demand are a routine part of managing a grid.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239713#239722
WHY THE TEXAS RELIABILITY EVENT ON FEBRUARY 26, 2008 RAISES NO CONCERNS ABOUT MUCH HIGHER WIND PENETRATION

On February 26, 2008, a drop in frequency on Texas’s transmission grid caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to put in place an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan. The event was reported in some media outlets as having been caused by a sudden drop in output from wind projects. In fact, as the information below makes clear, other factors had a greater impact in this particular incident. Over the 40-minute period preceding the start of load curtailment, wind generation declined by 80 MW relative to its schedule, non-wind generation decreased by 350 MW relative to its schedule, and load rapidly increased to a level that was 1,185 MW more than forecast.
More generally, disturbances of this type routinely involve conventional power plants.

By making the claims that you have you are clearly identifying yourself as a person who is totally uninformed on this topic and who is only engaging in an attempt to disseminate Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about renewables.
You have no interest in actually understanding the topic and have deliberately falsified and muddled the specific characteristics of energy that are under discussion.

Now let's take another bit of normal nuclear dishonesty you are trying to get away with - the use of a single renewable energy resource to argue that the higher intermittency rates of renewables means they cannot provide reliable power.
The truth is that if I wanted to argue that delivering reliable power to users is impossible I could pick ANY single source of generation and demonstrate conclusively that the source cannot do the job; coal can't do it, nuclear can't do it, oil can't do it, nat gas can't do it.
The false part of that claim would be the fact that we don't EXPECT any single source of generation to power a reliable grid - distributed or otherwise. So when you use wind in this fashion you are, again, deliberately making a false argument.

The need for 24/7 generation is a myth that no generating source meets, including coal and nuclear.
The need for long term advanced planning to meet fluctuations in the demand-response of the grid is a myth as is demonstrated by the ongoing normal day-to-day management of the grid.

[Nederland]

44. Responded to in Post #43 (nt)

[Statistical]

46. It is even worse.

Furthermore, 19 interconnected wind farms guaranteed 222 kW of power (firm capacity of 0.15) for 87.5% of the year

So connect 19 winfarms together and you have 0 or less than 15% capacity output for 12.5% of the time. This requires either storage OR spinning reserves to pickup the slack. That would be bad enough but the 87.5% of the time you are only guaranteed 15% capacity. Output will vary sometimes 15%, sometimes 20%, sometimes 25% but only the 15% can be counted as capacity in terms of replacing existing capacity.

This means that it will take a phenomenal amount of wind power for that "firm" capacity factor only 15% to provide a substantial portion of grid power.

Say you need 10,000 MW of baseline energy. You go ahead and accept that storage or peaking plants will be needed to make up the 12.5% of outages. For wind to replace baseline power you would need 66,000 MW of wind (1/0.15).

If you have 66,000 MW of wind you will be guaranteed at least 10,000MW of energy 87.5% of the time. So it is a double hit in terms of efficiency. First you need to massively (6x) overbuild the grid to be guaranteed anything more than 15% of peak capacity. Second you still need spinning reserves to accommodate the 12.5% of the time output drops below the 0.15 firm capacity.

[Name removed]

50. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[joshcryer]

101. You must also consider that AGW leads to less wind variablity.

And when the wind does blow it's very gusty, which can break wind turbines. Then there's the fact that you need tens of thousands of transmission lines to put all of this together. Killing tens of millions of birds in the process.

[diane in sf]

117. You're lying about the birds--more are killed by cats and windows--the new turbines are

avoidable

[greenman3610]

16. that would be here, courtesy Stanford U civil engineering

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf

"Wind is the world’s fastest growing electric energy source. Because it is intermittent, though, wind is not
used to supply baseload electric power today. Interconnecting wind farms through the transmission grid is
a simple and effective way of reducing deliverable wind power swings caused by wind intermittency. As
more farms are interconnected in an array, wind speed correlation among sites decreases and so does the
probability that all sites experience the same wind regime at the same time. The array consequently behaves
more and more similarly to a single farm with steady wind speed and thus steady deliverable wind power.
In this study, benefits of interconnecting wind farms were evaluated for 19 sites, located in the midwestern
United States, with annual average wind speeds at 80 m above ground, the hub height of modern wind
turbines, greater than 6.9 m s
1 (class 3 or greater). It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum
of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric
power. Equally significant, interconnecting multiple wind farms to a common point and then connecting
that point to a far-away city can allow the long-distance portion of transmission capacity to be reduced, for
example, by 20% with only a 1.6% loss of energy. Although most parameters, such as intermittency,
improved less than linearly as the number of interconnected sites increased, no saturation of the benefits
was found. Thus, the benefits of interconnection continue to increase with more and more interconnected
sites."


storage is already here in some areas.
Look up "pumped storage" power plants. They exist, and are scaled the size of the Hoover Dam.
Examples in Michigan, Virginia, and California.

You can also look up "CAES", compressed air energy storage, another off the shelf
technology that is already being applied to wind and other renewables.

[Nederland]

19. Not sure I get your point

Are you saying that in order to provide a significant portion of our electric needs wind power needs to have some storage method, or are you agreeing with Lovin's that storage is unnecessary?

I'm saying that Lovin's is wrong.

The really relevant portion of the Jacobsen paper is this one:

"Firm capacity” is the fraction of installed wind capacity that is online at the same probability as that of a coal-fired power plant. On average, coal plants are free from unscheduled or scheduled maintenance for 79%–92% of the year, averaging 87.5% in the United States from 2000 to 2004 (Giebel 2000; North American Electric Reliability Council 2005). Figure 3 shows that, while the guaranteed power generated by a single wind farm for 92% of the hours of the year was 0 kW, the power guaranteed by 7 and 19 interconnected farms was 60 and 171 kW, giving firm capacities of 0.04 and 0.11, respectively. Furthermore, 19 interconnected wind farms guaranteed 222 kW of power (firm capacity of 0.15) for 87.5% of the year, the same percent of the year that an average coal plant in the United States guarantees power. Last, 19 farms guaranteed 312 kW of power for 79% of the year, 4 times the guaranteed power generated by one farm for 79% of the year.

While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year. Most importantly, all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages. In comparison, a single nuclear plant can guarantee you power 92% of the time, with almost 0% unscheduled outages. If you link 19 of them together you will have guaranteed power 99.9% of the time. That degree of reliability is simply something that wind will never be able to provide on its own without storage.

[kristopher]

29. You deliberately define baseload falsely - no generating source meets your definition

You wrote: "While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year. Most importantly, all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages. In comparison, a single nuclear plant can guarantee you power 92% of the time, with almost 0% unscheduled outages. If you link 19 of them together you will have guaranteed power 99.9% of the time. That degree of reliability is simply something that wind will never be able to provide on its own without storage."

"While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year.

Here you say "baseload power" is a goal not being met by getting "get guaranteed power 79% of the year."
This refers to baseload as a form of generation that runs 24/7.
No generating source meets that definition.
In fact, the 79% is the same as coal, which you obviously accept as baseload.
Therefore your appeal to this as a failure of renewables is obviously self-contradictory.

Then you claim the issue is whether the downtime is scheduled or not, "all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages."
Just how do you define an "unscheduled outage" and how have you confirmed that the 21% instance you refer to as "unscheduled outages" are in fact not anticipated in a manner that is easily dealt with as part of a renewable grid?
You seem to be claiming that 18 months advance notice is required when grid balancing is required, which is an assertion that would be beyond stupid if that is what you are saying.

In fact as we seen in another of the anti-renewable energy threads started by nnads, rapid fluctuations in supply and demand are a routine part of managing a grid.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239713#239722
WHY THE TEXAS RELIABILITY EVENT ON FEBRUARY 26, 2008 RAISES NO CONCERNS ABOUT MUCH HIGHER WIND PENETRATION

On February 26, 2008, a drop in frequency on Texas’s transmission grid caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to put in place an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan. The event was reported in some media outlets as having been caused by a sudden drop in output from wind projects. In fact, as the information below makes clear, other factors had a greater impact in this particular incident. Over the 40-minute period preceding the start of load curtailment, wind generation declined by 80 MW relative to its schedule, non-wind generation decreased by 350 MW relative to its schedule, and load rapidly increased to a level that was 1,185 MW more than forecast.
More generally, disturbances of this type routinely involve conventional power plants.

By making the claims that you have you are clearly identifying yourself as a person who is totally uninformed on this topic and who is only engaging in an attempt to disseminate Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about renewables.
You have no interest in actually understanding the topic and have deliberately falsified and muddled the specific characteristics of energy that are under discussion.

Now let's take another bit of normal nuclear dishonesty you are trying to get away with - the use of a single renewable energy resource to argue that the higher intermittency rates of renewables means they cannot provide reliable power.
The truth is that if I wanted to argue that delivering reliable power to users is impossible I could pick ANY single source of generation and demonstrate conclusively that the source cannot do the job; coal can't do it, nuclear can't do it, oil can't do it, nat gas can't do it.
The false part of that claim would be the fact that we don't EXPECT any single source of generation to power a reliable grid - distributed or otherwise. So when you use wind in this fashion you are, again, deliberately making a false argument.

The need for 24/7 generation is a myth that no generating source meets, including coal and nuclear.
The need for long term advanced planning to meet fluctuations in the demand-response of the grid is a myth as is demonstrated by the ongoing normal day-to-day management of the grid.

[Nederland]

33. You are clueless

And your ignorance of base load and how the grid operates is revealled in every post. Reliability in the electric grid is acheived by interconnecting various power sources. According to Jacobson's own paper, a single coal plant can guarantee power 87.5% of the time while a single wind farm can guarantee power only 8% of the time. When you interconnect multiple coal plants together you get guaranteed power 99%+ of the time, but when you interconnect multiple wind farms together you can only reach 87.5%. Adding additional wind farms gives dimishing returns.

[kristopher]

35. D- for effort, F for content...

You wrote: "While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year. Most importantly, all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages. In comparison, a single nuclear plant can guarantee you power 92% of the time, with almost 0% unscheduled outages. If you link 19 of them together you will have guaranteed power 99.9% of the time. That degree of reliability is simply something that wind will never be able to provide on its own without storage."

"While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year.

Here you say "baseload power" is a goal not being met by getting "get guaranteed power 79% of the year."
This refers to baseload as a form of generation that runs 24/7.
No generating source meets that definition.
In fact, the 79% is the same as coal, which you obviously accept as baseload.
Therefore your appeal to this as a failure of renewables is obviously self-contradictory.

Then you claim the issue is whether the downtime is scheduled or not, "all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages."
Just how do you define an "unscheduled outage" and how have you confirmed that the 21% instance you refer to as "unscheduled outages" are in fact not anticipated in a manner that is easily dealt with as part of a renewable grid?
You seem to be claiming that 18 months advance notice is required when grid balancing is required, which is an assertion that would be beyond stupid if that is what you are saying.

In fact as we seen in another of the anti-renewable energy threads started by nnads, rapid fluctuations in supply and demand are a routine part of managing a grid.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239713#239722
WHY THE TEXAS RELIABILITY EVENT ON FEBRUARY 26, 2008 RAISES NO CONCERNS ABOUT MUCH HIGHER WIND PENETRATION

On February 26, 2008, a drop in frequency on Texas’s transmission grid caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to put in place an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan. The event was reported in some media outlets as having been caused by a sudden drop in output from wind projects. In fact, as the information below makes clear, other factors had a greater impact in this particular incident. Over the 40-minute period preceding the start of load curtailment, wind generation declined by 80 MW relative to its schedule, non-wind generation decreased by 350 MW relative to its schedule, and load rapidly increased to a level that was 1,185 MW more than forecast.
More generally, disturbances of this type routinely involve conventional power plants.

By making the claims that you have you are clearly identifying yourself as a person who is totally uninformed on this topic and who is only engaging in an attempt to disseminate Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about renewables.
You have no interest in actually understanding the topic and have deliberately falsified and muddled the specific characteristics of energy that are under discussion.

Now let's take another bit of normal nuclear dishonesty you are trying to get away with - the use of a single renewable energy resource to argue that the higher intermittency rates of renewables means they cannot provide reliable power.
The truth is that if I wanted to argue that delivering reliable power to users is impossible I could pick ANY single source of generation and demonstrate conclusively that the source cannot do the job; coal can't do it, nuclear can't do it, oil can't do it, nat gas can't do it.
The false part of that claim would be the fact that we don't EXPECT any single source of generation to power a reliable grid - distributed or otherwise. So when you use wind in this fashion you are, again, deliberately making a false argument.

The need for 24/7 generation is a myth that no generating source meets, including coal and nuclear.
The need for long term advanced planning to meet fluctuations in the demand-response of the grid is a myth as is demonstrated by the ongoing normal day-to-day management of the grid.

[Nederland]

38. Clueless

Only an extremely ignorant person would think that by interconnecting a source that can guaranteed power power only 8% of the time can possibly be equivalent to interconnecting a source that can guaranteed power 87.5% of the time.

Still waiting for your explanantion of how you can get above 87.5% without storage...

[kristopher]

40. Suggest you read the post you respond to, you sound very foolish when you don't.

See bold:

You wrote: "While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year. Most importantly, all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages. In comparison, a single nuclear plant can guarantee you power 92% of the time, with almost 0% unscheduled outages. If you link 19 of them together you will have guaranteed power 99.9% of the time. That degree of reliability is simply something that wind will never be able to provide on its own without storage."

"While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year.

Here you say "baseload power" is a goal not being met by getting "get guaranteed power 79% of the year."
This refers to baseload as a form of generation that runs 24/7.
No generating source meets that definition.
In fact, the 79% is the same as coal, which you obviously accept as baseload.
Therefore your appeal to this as a failure of renewables is obviously self-contradictory.

Then you claim the issue is whether the downtime is scheduled or not, "all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages."
Just how do you define an "unscheduled outage" and how have you confirmed that the 21% instance you refer to as "unscheduled outages" are in fact not anticipated in a manner that is easily dealt with as part of a renewable grid?
You seem to be claiming that 18 months advance notice is required when grid balancing is required, which is an assertion that would be beyond stupid if that is what you are saying.

In fact as we seen in another of the anti-renewable energy threads started by nnads, rapid fluctuations in supply and demand are a routine part of managing a grid.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239713#239722
WHY THE TEXAS RELIABILITY EVENT ON FEBRUARY 26, 2008 RAISES NO CONCERNS ABOUT MUCH HIGHER WIND PENETRATION

On February 26, 2008, a drop in frequency on Texas’s transmission grid caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to put in place an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan. The event was reported in some media outlets as having been caused by a sudden drop in output from wind projects. In fact, as the information below makes clear, other factors had a greater impact in this particular incident. Over the 40-minute period preceding the start of load curtailment, wind generation declined by 80 MW relative to its schedule, non-wind generation decreased by 350 MW relative to its schedule, and load rapidly increased to a level that was 1,185 MW more than forecast.
More generally, disturbances of this type routinely involve conventional power plants.

By making the claims that you have you are clearly identifying yourself as a person who is totally uninformed on this topic and who is only engaging in an attempt to disseminate Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about renewables.
You have no interest in actually understanding the topic and have deliberately falsified and muddled the specific characteristics of energy that are under discussion.

Now let's take another bit of normal nuclear dishonesty you are trying to get away with - the use of a single renewable energy resource to argue that the higher intermittency rates of renewables means they cannot provide reliable power.
The truth is that if I wanted to argue that delivering reliable power to users is impossible I could pick ANY single source of generation and demonstrate conclusively that the source cannot do the job; coal can't do it, nuclear can't do it, oil can't do it, nat gas can't do it.
The false part of that claim would be the fact that we don't EXPECT any single source of generation to power a reliable grid - distributed or otherwise. So when you use wind in this fashion you are, again, deliberately making a false argument.

The need for 24/7 generation is a myth that no generating source meets, including coal and nuclear.
The need for long term advanced planning to meet fluctuations in the demand-response of the grid is a myth as is demonstrated by the ongoing normal day-to-day management of the grid.

[Nederland]

45. Responded to in Post #43 (nt)

[Statistical]

47. Exactly.

The idea isn't that it is IMPOSSIBLE to build a wind only grid. Sure you can do it however the amount of spinning reserves and amount of overcapacity requires make it punitively expensive.

When people tout low cost of wind that is marginal cost. Wind supplies some power to grid and gets paid for it. However as amount of wind grows to a meaningful % that variability starts to affect the entire system. Wind plants will need to either contract for spinning reserves, provide their own spinning reserves, or store power in order to provide relatively consistent power. That all adds to cost.

While coal and nuclear have similar costs their higher reliability/uptime means the amount of reserve is substantially reduced.

[kristopher]

51. You are looking in the wrong end of the telescope...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=239780&mesg_id=239881

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. China could meet its energy needs by wind alone - Study suggests wind ecologically, economically pra

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/china-energy-needs-wind/

China could meet its energy needs by wind alone

Study suggests wind ecologically, economically practical

By Michael Patrick Rutter

SEAS Communications

Thursday, September 10, 2009

A team of environmental scientists from Harvard and Tsinghua University has demonstrated the enormous potential for wind-generated electricity in China. Using extensive meteorological data and incorporating the Chinese government’s energy-bidding and financial restrictions for delivering wind power, the researchers estimate that wind alone has the potential to meet the country’s electricity demands projected for 2030.

The switch from coal and other fossil fuels to greener wind-based energy could also mitigate CO2 emissions, thereby reducing pollution. The report appeared as a cover story in the Sept. 11 issue of Science.

...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5946/1378

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. Supplying Baseload Power and Reducing Transmission Requirements by Interconnecting Wind Farms

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jam.pdf

VOLUME 46 | JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY | NOVEMBER 2007

Supplying Baseload Power and Reducing Transmission Requirements by Interconnecting Wind Farms

CRISTINA L. ARCHER and MARK Z. JACOBSON

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California
(Manuscript received 6 July 2006, in final form 6 February 2007)

ABSTRACT

Wind is the world’s fastest growing electric energy source. Because it is intermittent, though, wind is not used to supply baseload electric power today. Interconnecting wind farms through the transmission grid is a simple and effective way of reducing deliverable wind power swings caused by wind intermittency. As more farms are interconnected in an array, wind speed correlation among sites decreases and so does the probability that all sites experience the same wind regime at the same time. The array consequently behaves more and more similarly to a single farm with steady wind speed and thus steady deliverable wind power. In this study, benefits of interconnecting wind farms were evaluated for 19 sites, located in the midwestern United States, with annual average wind speeds at 80 m above ground, the hub height of modern wind turbines, greater than 6.9 m s^-1 (class 3 or greater). It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power. Equally significant, interconnecting multiple wind farms to a common point and then connecting that point to a far-away city can allow the long-distance portion of transmission capacity to be reduced, for example, by 20% with only a 1.6% loss of energy. Although most parameters, such as intermittency, improved less than linearly as the number of interconnected sites increased, no saturation of the benefits was found. Thus, the benefits of interconnection continue to increase with more and more interconnected sites.

...

[Nederland]

23. This paper does not support your argument

In this paper Jacobson concedes that even if you link 19 wind farms together, you can only get 87.5% uptime. You cannot run a grid that goes down unpredictably 12.5% of the time.

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. Which makes wind just as reliable for "base load" as coal

...

“Firm capacity” is the fraction of installed wind capacity that is online at the same probability as that of a coal-fired power plant. On average, coal plants are free from unscheduled or scheduled maintenance for 79%–92% of the year, averaging 87.5% in the United States from 2000 to 2004 (Giebel 2000; North American Electric Reliability Council 2005). Figure 3 shows that, while the guaranteed power generated by a single wind farm for 92% of the hours of the year was 0 kW, the power guaranteed by 7 and 19 interconnected farms was 60 and 171 kW, giving firm capacities of 0.04 and 0.11, respectively. Furthermore, 19 interconnected wind farms guaranteed 222 kW of power (firm capacity of 0.15) for 87.5% of the year, the same percent of the year that an average coal plant in the United States guarantees power. Last, 19 farms guaranteed 312 kW of power for 79% of the year, 4 times the guaranteed power generated by one farm for 79% of the year.

...

Now, your objection of course is that the coal plant's outages are more predictable.

Spain is dealing with this quite handily:
http://www.technologyreview.com/microsites/spain/wind/p6.aspx

...

Forecasting the Future

Because wind provides power only intermittently, grid operators working to maximize efficiency need to know how much energy will be available at any given time. Under Spanish regulations, wind-farm operators sell their power to the grid and must predict how much wind they will be contributing; the operators pay penalties for inaccurate prediction. (In other national markets, operators are not penalized for these errors.)

The apparent burden this requirement places upon companies has turned into an opportunity. Spanish companies have taken the lead in microsite prediction—forecasting what will happen at a specific turbine, given the meteorological conditions. In fact, 90 percent of Spanish wind farms use prediction services from one Madrid-based company, Meteológica. The small firm has the largest market share of wind forecasting in the world.

“There was a highly competitive environment, because companies needed to be able to forecast as accurately as possible,” says Manuel Blanco of Meteológica. “In Spain this has made us very successful; we developed a simple system that is able to very accurately forecast the generation of wind farms.”

...

Wind power was a natural business evolution. “In 2002 we developed a system that was able to forecast the output of the plant in kilowatt-hours, not just predict the wind speed,” says Blanco. The company began working with four wind farms that year and now manages forecasting for more than 600, predicting outcomes for about 15,000 megawatts of power.

...

[Statistical]

27. Spain is the largest importer of electrical power in the world.

I wouldn't really use Spain as an example of electrical efficiency. Spain has the dubious distinction as the worlds largest electrical importer. This is both in nominal terms and on a per capita basis.

Since shutting down its nuclear reactors Spain has been on a big wind push and now generated 14% of electricity by wind. However due to lack of nuclear generation it now imports 20% of it's electrical power from France. Power that is produced by nuclear energy.

[FBaggins]

73. Crickets chirping.

Can't respond... pretend it didn't happen... repeat error tomorrow.

[OKIsItJustMe]

80. I actually have a life off of the net

So, anyway, let me get this straight. Since Spain imports energy, they cannot predict wind generation?

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6204ND20100301

Spain needs electric cars, links for wind boom

Daniel Fineren
LONDON
Mon Mar 1, 2010 3:23pm EST

(Reuters) - Spain needs electric cars and a lot more power links with France to better deal with big swings in wind output and spread the benefits of its clean energy boom across Europe, the head of Spanish grid operator Red Electrica said on Monday.

Spain's 18,700 megawatts of installed wind turbines have supplied more than half of its demand at times this winter, forcing Red Electrica to stop some turbines to keep system stability because a dearth of grid connections prevented the green energy from reaching the rest of Europe.

"The bottleneck is the French network but it's really about being connected to the whole European system," Red Electrica president Luis Atienza told Reuters in an interview.

"The bigger the system the more stable it is and the greater the capacity to compensate for the variability of any of its component parts."

...

[FBaggins]

84. Sorry... not you in particular

Just the lack of a good response in general.

So, anyway, let me get this straight. Since Spain imports energy, they cannot predict wind generation?

I wouldn't say that... I'd say that they may be able to predict it... they just can't do anything about it. Their ability to predict wind generation hasn't given them the ability to reliably produce the power they need.

[OKIsItJustMe]

85. The ability to predict wind

means the ability to compensate for gains/losses in generation.

That may mean (for example) spinning up natural gas turbines to compensate for a predicted loss.

[FBaggins]

87. I understand that.

But you have to HAVE the natgas generator in order for that to work (and the associated costs)... but the point here was that in the case of Spain, this isn't what happens. They buy the power from other countries... which is really the same thing. You need the excess generating capacity to compensate for the fact that you can't rely on the wind 24/7.

You can build three plants in different environments and connect them together... then you have a FAR more reliable supply (though still nothing close to traditional baseline generation). BUT it's only "reliable" for that fraction of the capacity. You're thus spending far more than you think you are for a given unit.

[OKIsItJustMe]

88. However, this is true of any power supply (not just wind)

How do you compensate for a nuclear or coal plant which must be taken off-line for maintenance? (You need excess capacity.)

How do you deal with fluctuating demand? You need excess generating capacity that can be brought on-line as needed. Or you need a way to store energy.

Personally, I feel that hydrogen makes a good energy storage medium for leveling off intermittent power from wind.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/46719.pdf

Lifecycle Cost Analysis of Hydrogen Versus Other Technologies for Electrical Energy Storage

...

[FBaggins]

89. There's a massive difference.

You compensate for having a coal/nuke/gas plant offline by having two or three excess plants out of dozens... because they aren't offline often enough to need more. You compensate for solar/wind generation by having two or three extra facilities for every single plant.

IOW... to reliably produce a peak load of 10GW with natural gas, you might have 11 or 12GW worth of generating capacity... and it can all be reasonably "local". You can't reliably produce 10GW with wind/solar unless you have many times that amount of peak capacity... and it has to be spread over a far larger geographic area.

Personally, I feel that hydrogen makes a good energy storage medium for leveling off intermittent power from wind.

I'm a big fan of a number of storage options for wind/solar. They can help boost the proportion of our generating capacity that can come from these sources... but they can only "level off" in the short term. None of these options saves a solar plant from a week or more of cloudy weather... or a wind farm from days of light (or too strong) winds... or too-cold weather.

[OKIsItJustMe]

90. Re: they can only "level off" in the short term

I guess we'd need to define "short term" and why you think these limits exist.

For example, a concentrating thermal solar plant may be built with a 6 hour storage capability. Is that because it cannot be built with a larger one? No. The DoE says that's the most profitable storage capacity, given the qualities of today's grid.

If you're using hydrogen to store power, store more hydrogen.

However, all of this talk about renewables not being suited for base load power is really a bit of a red herring at this point. It will be several years before we have a high enough percentage of our generating capacity represented by wind or solar for intermittency to be a real concern.

http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/tiki-index.php?page=Intermittency&highlight=intermittent

The Intermittency Report

An Assessment of the Evidence on the costs and impacts of intermittent generation on the British electricity network.

UKERC's report represents a definitive picture of the costs and impacts of intermittent energy supplied by renewable sources, such as wind. Some commentators have suggested that renewable energy is made much more costly, or is drastically limited by intermittency. The report finds that these views are out of step with the vast majority of international expert analysis and that intermittency need not present a significant obstacle to the development of renewable sources.

(PDF) http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/Downloads/PDF/06/0604Intermittency/0604IntermittencyReport.pdf">Main Report
...

[OKIsItJustMe]

93. Did anyone else hear crickets chirping?

Or is it just me?

[FBaggins]

94. Lol... good one.

But there's a difference between missing a midnight posting that merely debates a point or two, and dodging a "game over" kind of post that points out how ridiculous it is to use an example as a success story when that very example shows exactly the opposite.

The countries that have moved most heavily toward wind power haven't gotten rid of fossil generators... and those that have tried have merely shown that the effort leaves them at the mercy of those who haven't... or the lights go out.

I guess we'd need to define "short term" and why you think these limits exist

Short term is anything from minutes to a few days.

For example, a concentrating thermal solar plant may be built with a 6 hour storage capability.

I'm a fan of the idea, but it's important to note that the emphasis here should be on "MAY" - since the very first commercial example is under construction.

Is that because it cannot be built with a larger one? No.

I wouldn't say "no" - that may very well be the limit. You have to keep in mind that the "storage" is created from excess production during peak hours. You can only "store" the excess that can be produced and you can only point so many mirrors at the tower before there is little gain.

Keep in mind that even with the storage they're creating, they only expect to be able to make it through the night after a sunny summer day. At other times of year (or on cloudy days) they don't expect to be able to produce enough to have excess to store.

But even if it ISN'T the limit, you're still only able to store excess generation. Back to that in a second.

If you're using hydrogen to store power, store more hydrogen.

Ok... we're back. Same problems. You still need 3 MW of generation to ensure 1 MW of steady power. (it may be higher - I'm just guessing). Some of that excess capacity is to balance out minute-by-minute fluctuations across the grid, and some is used to store energy for overnight use (etc).

Don't get me wrong... it HELPS (and I'm all for it), but it doesn't SOLVE the problem.

Put simply - there are times when the sun doesn't shine for many days at a time and there isn't much wind. Getting to overnight (or multi-hour) storage helps a great deal. It means that some fossil generation can be idled and not need to start up on minutes notice... but it still has to be there.

However, all of this talk about renewables not being suited for base load power is really a bit of a red herring at this point. It will be several years before we have a high enough percentage of our generating capacity represented by wind or solar for intermittency to be a real concern.

That's certainly true... but not how things work in the real world. You need to have multi-decade plans for the future. You can't just build and figure it all out later.

[OKIsItJustMe]

95. Why only 6 hours? Because the goal at this point is "dispatchability" not "base load"

This document is actually several years old now, but the same principles still hold:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/ba/pba/pdfs/solar_tower.pdf

...

System Benefits -Energy Storage

The availability of an inexpensive and efficient energy storage system may give power towers a competitive advantage. Table 2 provides a comparison of the predicted cost, performance, and lifetime of solar-energy storage technologies for hypothetical 200 MW plants |5,6|.

...

Thermal-energy storage in the power tower allows electricity to be dispatched to the grid when demand for power is the highest, thus increasing the monetary value of the electricity. Much like hydro plants, power towers with salt storage are considered to be a dispatchable rather than an intermittent renewable energy power plant. For example, Southern California Edison company gives a power plant a capacity payment if it is able to meet their dispatchability requirement: an 80% capacity factor from noon to 6 PM, Monday through Friday, from June through September. Detailed studies |7| have indicated that a solar-only plant with 4 hours of thermal storage can meet this dispatchability requirement and thus qualify for a full capacity payment. While the future deregulated market place may recognize this value differently, energy delivered during peak periods will certainly be more valuable.

Besides making the power dispatchable, thermal storage also gives the power-plant designer freedom to develop power plants with a wide range of capacity factors to meet the needs of the utility grid. By varying the size of the solar field, solar receiver, and size of the thermal storage, plants can be designed with annual capacity factors ranging between 20 and 65% (see Figure 6).

Economic studies have shown that levelized energy costs are reduced by adding more storage up to a limit of about 13 hours (~65% capacity factor) |8|. While it is true that storage increases the cost of the plant, it is also true that plants with higher capacity factors have better economic utilization of the turbine, and other balance of plant equipment. Since salt storage is inexpensive, reductions in LEC due to increased utilization of the turbine more than compensates for the increased cost due to the addition of storage.

...

Here's a more recent document. Now, rather than talking about a range of 4-13 hours of storage, they're "focusing" in on 6.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39291.pdf

...

6.3 The Time of Delivery Value of CSP Energy

This section discusses the value provided by thermal storage integrated with the proxy parabolic trough CSP plant. Conceptually, thermal storage allows the plant to store energy generated during lower power demand periods and deliver this energy during high-demand hours (see Figure 6-1). Thermal storage, along with an enlarged solar field, also allows the CSP plant to operate at a higher annual capacity factor, about 40 percent with 6 hours of storage versus 28 percent for no storage. This gives the plant the ability to generate higher revenues to off-set the additional cost of the storage system. The levelized costs in Table 6-2 reveal this, as the trough plant with 6 hours of storage and without storage have roughly the same cost of energy ($157/MWh vs. $154/MWh).



Renewable energy generators generally fall into two categories: firm and as-available. As-available resources are resources such as wind or CSP without storage that are not controlled by the generator, while firm resources can control when they generate. PG&E lists four energy “products” allowed to bid into their 2005 renewable RFO: as-available, baseload, peaking, and dispatchable. Peaking resources must have at least a 95 percent capacity factor during the peak summer hours, while baseload resources have 24x7 profiles. Dispatchable resources must be available on a day-ahead schedule.

The trend in the renewable energy industry is toward a single all-in energy payment, with no separate capacity payments. In the past, firm resources would receive capacity payments as well as energy payments. The lack of capacity payments makes it more difficult to assign a dollar value to a firm resource versus an as available resource, especially if both of those resources have similar time of delivery (TOD) profiles. The MPR methodology for assigning value to energy is based on the generator’s TOD profile, with multipliers for various time periods. For example, a plant that ran only during peak hours would have an MPR price of $110/MWh, based on SCE’s TOD factor of 1.425 applied to the 2007 MPR ($77.24/MWh)

The MPR prices for a CSP plant with 6 hours of storage and a CSP plant without storage were determined by applying the TOD multipliers to Excelergy’s production profile. Surprisingly, both CSP plants have approximately the same MPR energy value of about $87/MWh. Examination of the generation profile data show that, while the plant with storage generates more higher-value energy during peak hours, it also generates more lesser-value energy during non-peak hours. Although there is no separate capacity credit that can be assigned to the CSP plant with storage, it clearly has more value to the utility than an “as available” CSP plant without storage, despite their similar MPR prices. The plant with storage qualifies as a firm “peaking” resource under PG&E’s rules, generating firm power during peak summer hours. PG&E explicitly states a preference for peaking resources in its 2005 RFO, as it rates peaking resources as a “high” need and as-available as a “low.” Future MPR methodologies may return to including assigning explicit capacity value, which allow solar thermal with storage to receive a more explicit capacity credit.

...

I cannot locate it at the moment, but I saw a nice "surface plot" from a DoE analysis, where it showed maximum financial benefits for 6 hours of storage, given today's grid. A quick http://www.google.com/search?q=%22molten+salt%22+%226+hours%22+storage++site%3Aenergy.gov">Google search will show you that this is the model the DoE is using at this time. By comparison, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station">Andasol 2 in Spain has a storage capacity of about 7.5 hours. i.e. slightly longer than 6 hours, but not dramatically longer. In short, a larger storage capacity makes the plant more expensive (larger tanks, more salt &c) which isn't justified by increased income.

The fact of the matter is, right now, there's plenty of "base load" power available. Solar thermal is not trying to replace that yet. However, even with a relatively small amount of storage, the experimental "Solar Two":
http://www.energy.ca.gov/pier/portfolio/Content/Completed97to06/Completedprior05plusEISG05/Solar%20Two.htm

...

Between July 1 and July 7, 1998, the plant demonstrated a key advantage of the molten salt central receiver by delivering 24 hour a day continuous solar-electric power to the grid (153 hours). The project has therefore demonstrated full dispatch capability.

...

[OKIsItJustMe]

96. Storage sweet spot

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=solar&id=20356

...

The amount of storage included in a plant--expressed as the number of hours that it can keep the turbine running full tilt--will vary according to capital costs and the needs of a given utility. "There is an optimal point that could be three hours of storage or six hours of storage, where the cents per kilowatt- hour is the lowest," says Fred Morse, senior advisor for U.S. operations with Abengoa Solar. Morse says that the company's 280-megawatt plant in Arizona, set to begin operation by 2011, will have six hours of storage, while other recent projects promise seven to eight.

...

[Statistical]

97. Yeah 24 hour storage isn't necessary.

Power demand fluctuates constantly and drops to 40% or less of peak overnight (midnight to 6am).

Having a buffer of 6 hours (even 3 hours) dramatically changes the dispatchability and thus the capacity credit for variable sources of power.

Have you seen any studies on capacity credit (amount of existing capacity that can be taken offline) of a variable comparing a power source with and without storage?

[OKIsItJustMe]

98. Yes, I have...

It will take me some time to locate it however...

[FBaggins]

104. Unless you want to pretend (as kristopher) that it can replace ALL current generation

with fossil/nuclear-free generation. THEN 24-hr storage is not only necessary, it's woefully insufficient.

Or even if you're planning on permanently replacing a significant portion of such generation capacity (with "significant" being "roughly any amount beyond the excess of peak capacity minus anticipated peak demand")

[kristopher]

106. Don't attribute things to me I didn't say.

[FBaggins]

108. If that ever happens... you be sure to let me know.

But let us not pretend that this isn't EXACTLY your position.

You have spammed dozens of times a piece claiming that we can entirely shift to wind/hydro/solar/etc generation within 20-30 years.

[kristopher]

109. Now you have it right.

Your first post was about wind only.

We need a full portfolio of renewable technologies AND strong moves on the energy efficiency front.

[FBaggins]

110. I was right then too (you should get used to it)

Your first post was about wind only.

Really? So when I say "fossil/nuclear-free generation" all you think of is "wind" ?

[kristopher]

112. No, when you say "it" in reply to a post about wind I think of wind

You wrote, "Unless you want to pretend (as kristopher) that it can replace ALL current generation with fossil/nuclear-free generation. THEN 24-hr storage is not only necessary, it's woefully insufficient.

Or even if you're planning on permanently replacing a significant portion of such generation capacity (with "significant" being "roughly any amount beyond the excess of peak capacity minus anticipated peak demand")

[FBaggins]

114. Wrong yet again.

But that's hardly a surprise, now is it? :-)

The post "it" replied to was about solar... but you didn't have to guess at the context, since I quite clearly stated your position.

[FBaggins]

105. I'm not sure where we're disagreeing here.

I agree that short periods of storage dramatically change the usability of wind/solar.

But the context of the discussion is kristopher's ongoing claim that wind/solar can entirely replace coal/gas/nuclear (within a couple decades no less)

[Statistical]

111. Kris posistion is extreme and laughable.

Currently variable power source require no storage mechanism. Their small output and the vast size of the grid means current requirements for peaking power become their "virtual storage".

In renewable power rises to something like 20%-40% of the grid that becomes woefully inadequate. We *could* do that but the amount fo spinning reserve we would need would make such a setup stupid and wasteful so energy storage becomes necessary. The key difference is that energy storage is designed to provide for dispatchability not for baseload.

If (and it will never happen) we went to 100% variable sources of power then you are right 24+ hour storage becomes necessary (and likely a 20% overbuild of the grid also).

My point was simply that not everyone falls into the laughable camp that Kris promotes. I think we should have 40%+ renewables and that is do-able but requires storage. Still the storage would be for dispathability not continual output.

I think that the following is not only do-able but is optimal
40% nuclear
40% renewable
20% high efficiency natural gas (and or hypothetically fuel cells)

[kristopher]

113. That is false. You've been challenged to support it and you cannot.

[FBaggins]

115. You're largely fine except paragraph three.

100% generation from non-fossil non-nuclear (which would include some non-variable like hydro/wave) wouldn't require a 20% overbuild.

It would be much closer to 100% (+) overbuild. Very possibly more than twice that much if you include the fact that much "storage" is really another generator.

24+ hour storage just doesn't get you there. Go with a few days of rain and you're entirely replacing your solar generation from massive segments of the country. Colder cloudy days tend to be windier, but it is by no means a rare occurance to have little wind for a few days at a time while also being overcast. This isn't one or two extra coal plants covering for unexpected outages of a dozen others in the area, it's one part of the country supplying not only their own power needs, but 70%+ of the needs for tens of millions of consumers somewhere else.

IOW... 40% nuclear, 40% renewable, 50% high efficiency gas - with the expectation that half of those gas plants would be idle most of the time, but had to be staffed/maintained to be ready on several hours notice.

[diane in sf]

118. 40% nuke power is extreme and laughable, way too expensive and toxic

[OKIsItJustMe]

83. Sun, wind and wave-powered: Europe unites to build renewable energy 'supergrid'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/03/european-unites-renewable-energy-supergrid

Sun, wind and wave-powered: Europe unites to build renewable energy 'supergrid'

North Sea countries plan vast clean energy project
€30bn scheme could offer weather-proof supply

Alok Jha
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 January 2010 22.30 GMT

It would connect turbines off the wind-lashed north coast of Scotland with Germany's vast arrays of solar panels, and join the power of waves crashing on to the Belgian and Danish coasts with the hydro-electric dams nestled in Norway's fjords: Europe's first electricity grid dedicated to renewable power will become a political reality this month, as nine countries formally draw up plans to link their clean energy projects around the North Sea.

The network, made up of thousands of kilometres of highly efficient undersea cables that could cost up to €30bn (£26.5bn), would solve one of the biggest criticisms faced by renewable power – that unpredictable weather means it is unreliable.

With a renewables supergrid, electricity can be supplied across the continent from wherever the wind is blowing, the sun is shining or the waves are crashing.

Connected to Norway's many hydro-electric power stations, it could act as a giant 30GW battery for Europe's clean energy, storing electricity when demand is low and be a major step towards a continent-wide supergrid that could link into the vast potential of solar power farms in North Africa.

...

http://www.friendsofthesupergrid.eu/news-view.aspx?newsID=15

Ten industry leaders form new organisation to advance Offshore Supergrid

Monday, March 08, 2010

Leaders from ten global companies gathered in London today to announce publicly the formation of the "Friends of the Supergrid" (FOSG) which has been set up to progress policy towards the construction of a pan-European Offshore Supergrid. Through the combination of their respective areas of expertise, the FOSG members have unique insight into the policies needed to create the Supergrid and have the capability to deliver it in practice.

The FOSG is the only representative body that combines companies in sectors that will deliver the High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) infrastructure and related technology, together with companies that will develop, install, own and operate that infrastructure. It brings together the organisations that will design the physical equipment, with those who will build the structures at sea.

The founding members include 3E, AREVA T&D, DEME Blue Energy, Elia, Hochtief Construction AG, Mainstream Renewable Power, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Prysmian Cables & Systems, Siemens and Visser & Smit Marine Contracting.

Speaking at the launch on behalf of the members, Mainstream Renewable Power's Chief Executive Dr Eddie O'Connor said," The UK government has recently shown its commitment to large-scale offshore wind by announcing the development of up to 50GW by 2020. We now need to integrate this huge resource into Europe to enable the open trade of electricity between Member States. The Friends of the Supergrid is uniquely placed to influence policy-makers towards creating the Supergrid and ultimately changing how we generate, transmit and consume electricity for generations to come."

In December last year, nine EU Member States, including the UK and Germany, signed a political declaration for the "North Seas Countries Offshore Grid Initiative". Last month Norway signed the declaration, whose aim is to develop policy to advance offshore interconnection in Europe. The FOSG is solely able to present "cradle to grave" interconnection solutions to the policy-makers and others looking to develop energy policy across Europe through to 2050.

FOSG will be run by an Executive and directed by the Board of members. Membership will be kept to a maximum of 20 companies and aims to have both an industrial and geographic cross-section, with its base in Brussels.

The concept of the Supergrid was first launched a decade ago and it is defined as "an electricity transmission system, mainly based on direct current, designed to facilitate large-scale sustainable power generation in remote areas for transmission to centres of consumption, one of whose fundamental attributes will be the enhancement of the market in electricity".

The Supergrid will open markets, strengthen security of supply and create another global opportunity for European companies to export sustainable energy technology. The technology underpinning the Supergrid will give competitive advantage to the companies involved with its specification and design. This type of integrated AC/DC grid will be a template for what will be needed in other global markets including the US and China.

[Nederland]

28. No it does not

It makes an set of 19 interconnected wind farms as reliable as a single coal plant. If you take 19 coal plants and interconnect them, you have reliability that wind cannot match. If you read Jacobson's article you'll also see that the problem cannot be solved by interconnecting even more wind farms:

Second, it appears that marginal benefits decrease with an increase in the number of farms. In other words, even though all nonlinear parameters improved as the number of farms went up, the incremental benefit of adding new stations kept decreasing. This is consistent with both common sense and Kahn (1979). Figure 4 shows that wind speed and wind power standard deviations decreased less than linearly with an increasing number of sites. Note, however, that no saturation of the benefits was found, or, in other words, an improvement was obtained, even if small, for every addition to the array size.

[kristopher]

31. You're going down for the third time...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239780#239857

[Nederland]

34. I think not

Nobody on this thread has explained how you can get above 87.5% guaranteed power using wind. Think Americans will live with a grid that is down 45+ days a year? You don't even understand the issue here, do you?

[kristopher]

36. D- for effort, F for content...

You wrote: "While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year. Most importantly, all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages. In comparison, a single nuclear plant can guarantee you power 92% of the time, with almost 0% unscheduled outages. If you link 19 of them together you will have guaranteed power 99.9% of the time. That degree of reliability is simply something that wind will never be able to provide on its own without storage."

"While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year.

Here you say "baseload power" is a goal not being met by getting "get guaranteed power 79% of the year."
This refers to baseload as a form of generation that runs 24/7.
No generating source meets that definition.
In fact, the 79% is the same as coal, which you obviously accept as baseload.
Therefore your appeal to this as a failure of renewables is obviously self-contradictory.

Then you claim the issue is whether the downtime is scheduled or not, "all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages."
Just how do you define an "unscheduled outage" and how have you confirmed that the 21% instance you refer to as "unscheduled outages" are in fact not anticipated in a manner that is easily dealt with as part of a renewable grid?
You seem to be claiming that 18 months advance notice is required when grid balancing is required, which is an assertion that would be beyond stupid if that is what you are saying.

In fact as we seen in another of the anti-renewable energy threads started by nnads, rapid fluctuations in supply and demand are a routine part of managing a grid.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239713#239722
WHY THE TEXAS RELIABILITY EVENT ON FEBRUARY 26, 2008 RAISES NO CONCERNS ABOUT MUCH HIGHER WIND PENETRATION

On February 26, 2008, a drop in frequency on Texas’s transmission grid caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to put in place an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan. The event was reported in some media outlets as having been caused by a sudden drop in output from wind projects. In fact, as the information below makes clear, other factors had a greater impact in this particular incident. Over the 40-minute period preceding the start of load curtailment, wind generation declined by 80 MW relative to its schedule, non-wind generation decreased by 350 MW relative to its schedule, and load rapidly increased to a level that was 1,185 MW more than forecast.
More generally, disturbances of this type routinely involve conventional power plants.

By making the claims that you have you are clearly identifying yourself as a person who is totally uninformed on this topic and who is only engaging in an attempt to disseminate Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about renewables.
You have no interest in actually understanding the topic and have deliberately falsified and muddled the specific characteristics of energy that are under discussion.

Now let's take another bit of normal nuclear dishonesty you are trying to get away with - the use of a single renewable energy resource to argue that the higher intermittency rates of renewables means they cannot provide reliable power.
The truth is that if I wanted to argue that delivering reliable power to users is impossible I could pick ANY single source of generation and demonstrate conclusively that the source cannot do the job; coal can't do it, nuclear can't do it, oil can't do it, nat gas can't do it.
The false part of that claim would be the fact that we don't EXPECT any single source of generation to power a reliable grid - distributed or otherwise. So when you use wind in this fashion you are, again, deliberately making a false argument.

The need for 24/7 generation is a myth that no generating source meets, including coal and nuclear.
The need for long term advanced planning to meet fluctuations in the demand-response of the grid is a myth as is demonstrated by the ongoing normal day-to-day management of the grid.

[Nederland]

39. Clueless

Only an extremely ignorant person would think that by interconnecting a source that can guaranteed power power only 8% of the time can possibly be equivalent to interconnecting a source that can guaranteed power 87.5% of the time.

Still waiting for your explanantion of how you can get above 87.5% without storage...

[kristopher]

42. See bold - and the original discussion

You wrote: "While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year. Most importantly, all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages. In comparison, a single nuclear plant can guarantee you power 92% of the time, with almost 0% unscheduled outages. If you link 19 of them together you will have guaranteed power 99.9% of the time. That degree of reliability is simply something that wind will never be able to provide on its own without storage."

"While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year.

Here you say "baseload power" is a goal not being met by getting "get guaranteed power 79% of the year."
This refers to baseload as a form of generation that runs 24/7.
No generating source meets that definition.
In fact, the 79% is the same as coal, which you obviously accept as baseload.
Therefore your appeal to this as a failure of renewables is obviously self-contradictory.

Then you claim the issue is whether the downtime is scheduled or not, "all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages."
Just how do you define an "unscheduled outage" and how have you confirmed that the 21% instance you refer to as "unscheduled outages" are in fact not anticipated in a manner that is easily dealt with as part of a renewable grid?
You seem to be claiming that 18 months advance notice is required when grid balancing is required, which is an assertion that would be beyond stupid if that is what you are saying.

In fact as we seen in another of the anti-renewable energy threads started by nnads, rapid fluctuations in supply and demand are a routine part of managing a grid.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239713#239722
WHY THE TEXAS RELIABILITY EVENT ON FEBRUARY 26, 2008 RAISES NO CONCERNS ABOUT MUCH HIGHER WIND PENETRATION

On February 26, 2008, a drop in frequency on Texas’s transmission grid caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to put in place an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan. The event was reported in some media outlets as having been caused by a sudden drop in output from wind projects. In fact, as the information below makes clear, other factors had a greater impact in this particular incident. Over the 40-minute period preceding the start of load curtailment, wind generation declined by 80 MW relative to its schedule, non-wind generation decreased by 350 MW relative to its schedule, and load rapidly increased to a level that was 1,185 MW more than forecast.
More generally, disturbances of this type routinely involve conventional power plants.

By making the claims that you have you are clearly identifying yourself as a person who is totally uninformed on this topic and who is only engaging in an attempt to disseminate Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about renewables.
You have no interest in actually understanding the topic and have deliberately falsified and muddled the specific characteristics of energy that are under discussion.

Now let's take another bit of normal nuclear dishonesty you are trying to get away with - the use of a single renewable energy resource to argue that the higher intermittency rates of renewables means they cannot provide reliable power.
The truth is that if I wanted to argue that delivering reliable power to users is impossible I could pick ANY single source of generation and demonstrate conclusively that the source cannot do the job; coal can't do it, nuclear can't do it, oil can't do it, nat gas can't do it.
The false part of that claim would be the fact that we don't EXPECT any single source of generation to power a reliable grid - distributed or otherwise. So when you use wind in this fashion you are, again, deliberately making a false argument.

The need for 24/7 generation is a myth that no generating source meets, including coal and nuclear.
The need for long term advanced planning to meet fluctuations in the demand-response of the grid is a myth as is demonstrated by the ongoing normal day-to-day management of the grid.

[Nederland]

43. Response

Now let's take another bit of normal nuclear dishonesty you are trying to get away with - the use of a single renewable energy resource to argue that the higher intermittency rates of renewables means they cannot provide reliable power. The truth is that if I wanted to argue that delivering reliable power to users is impossible I could pick ANY single source of generation and demonstrate conclusively that the source cannot do the job; coal can't do it, nuclear can't do it, oil can't do it, nat gas can't do it. The false part of that claim would be the fact that we don't EXPECT any single source of generation to power a reliable grid-distributed or otherwise. So when you use wind in this fashion you are, again, deliberately making a false argument.

Yes, you cannot delivering reliable power to users with a single source of generation. That is why you create a grid of interconnected power sources. A single wind farm gives you a reliability of 8%, which can be increased to 87.5% by interconnecting many of them into a grid. In contrast, a single nuclear or fossil fuel plant gives you a reliability of 80%-90%, which can be increased to 99%+ by interconnecting many of them into a grid. Is it really so hard to understand why 99%+ is better than 87.5%?

[kristopher]

48. It isn't "better", it is different.

You are trying to argue that a specific narrow set of generating characteristics over-ride all other considerations. You have selected your narrow list of characteristics not base on end user needs, but based on characteristics that your preferred technology has which is different than that of competing technologies.

Let's turn the problem on its head and suggest that we will construct a grid of 100% nuclear that has been perfected to deliver 100% "reliability" (you are STILL screwing up the use of that word by substituting generator run time with electricity delivered to consumer). In order to meet peak demand, the average load factor of the fleet would probably decline to less than 50%.

How valuable is the ability of an extremely expensive plant to maintain 100% reliability when they are, in fact, delivering electricity only 50% of the time? They are so large that the turbines must continue to turn, so fuel consumption continues 24/7 but that electricity can't be used at 2AM so the system is put in a standby mode.

You red herring is similar when you demand that wind prove itself to be able to run the grid, and your dishonesty has reached the level of being truly repugnant since the point has repeatedly been clarified for you that what Lovins and this thread is discussing is a RENEWABLE GRID.

IT IS A CLEAR AND UNEQUIVOCAL CENTRAL POINT OF LOVINS' REASONING - THE GRID IS THE REASON THE CLAIMS MADE BY BRAND AND HIS NUCLEAR FOLLOWERS LIKE YOU ARE FALSE.

You wrote: "While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year. Most importantly, all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages. In comparison, a single nuclear plant can guarantee you power 92% of the time, with almost 0% unscheduled outages. If you link 19 of them together you will have guaranteed power 99.9% of the time. That degree of reliability is simply something that wind will never be able to provide on its own without storage."

"While at first blush this may seem to support the idea that wind can provide base load power, a careful reading indicates this is not the case. What Jacobsen is confessing here is that even if you connect 19 wind farms together, you will only get guaranteed power 79% of the year.

Here you say "baseload power" is a goal not being met by getting "get guaranteed power 79% of the year."
This refers to baseload as a form of generation that runs 24/7.
No generating source meets that definition.
In fact, the 79% is the same as coal, which you obviously accept as baseload.
Therefore your appeal to this as a failure of renewables is obviously self-contradictory.

Then you claim the issue is whether the downtime is scheduled or not, "all of instances where you are getting no power (the 21% figure) are unscheduled outages."
Just how do you define an "unscheduled outage" and how have you confirmed that the 21% instance you refer to as "unscheduled outages" are in fact not anticipated in a manner that is easily dealt with as part of a renewable grid?
You seem to be claiming that 18 months advance notice is required when grid balancing is required, which is an assertion that would be beyond stupid if that is what you are saying.

In fact as we seen in another of the anti-renewable energy threads started by nnads, rapid fluctuations in supply and demand are a routine part of managing a grid.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x239713#239722
WHY THE TEXAS RELIABILITY EVENT ON FEBRUARY 26, 2008 RAISES NO CONCERNS ABOUT MUCH HIGHER WIND PENETRATION

On February 26, 2008, a drop in frequency on Texas’s transmission grid caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to put in place an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan. The event was reported in some media outlets as having been caused by a sudden drop in output from wind projects. In fact, as the information below makes clear, other factors had a greater impact in this particular incident. Over the 40-minute period preceding the start of load curtailment, wind generation declined by 80 MW relative to its schedule, non-wind generation decreased by 350 MW relative to its schedule, and load rapidly increased to a level that was 1,185 MW more than forecast.
More generally, disturbances of this type routinely involve conventional power plants.

By making the claims that you have you are clearly identifying yourself as a person who is totally uninformed on this topic and who is only engaging in an attempt to disseminate Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about renewables.
You have no interest in actually understanding the topic and have deliberately falsified and muddled the specific characteristics of energy that are under discussion.

Now let's take another bit of normal nuclear dishonesty you are trying to get away with - the use of a single renewable energy resource to argue that the higher intermittency rates of renewables means they cannot provide reliable power.
The truth is that if I wanted to argue that delivering reliable power to users is impossible I could pick ANY single source of generation and demonstrate conclusively that the source cannot do the job; coal can't do it, nuclear can't do it, oil can't do it, nat gas can't do it.
The false part of that claim would be the fact that we don't EXPECT any single source of generation to power a reliable grid - distributed or otherwise. So when you use wind in this fashion you are, again, deliberately making a false argument.

The need for 24/7 generation is a myth that no generating source meets, including coal and nuclear.
The need for long term advanced planning to meet fluctuations in the demand-response of the grid is a myth as is demonstrated by the ongoing normal day-to-day management of the grid.

[Nederland]

54. You are right, they are different

The current grid provides electricity almost 100% of the time, whereas a wind grid would be down 45 days a year.

Let's turn the problem on its head and suggest that we will construct a grid of 100% nuclear that has been perfected to deliver 100% "reliability" (you are STILL screwing up the use of that word by substituting generator run time with electricity delivered to consumer). In order to meet peak demand, the average load factor of the fleet would probably decline to less than 50%.

How valuable is the ability of an extremely expensive plant to maintain 100% reliability when they are, in fact, delivering electricity only 50% of the time? They are so large that the turbines must continue to turn, so fuel consumption continues 24/7 but that electricity can't be used at 2AM so the system is put in a standby mode.

This is an acurate description, which is why I would say that a 100% nuclear grid would be a mistake. Nuclear should be used to provide baseload power, because that is what it is good at. Peaking power should be provided by renewables coupled with some sort of storage or backup power as Jacobson suggests in his newest paper.

[Statistical]

57. He just loves strawmen.

A while back he pointed out the low capacity factor of nuclear in France as a reason why nuclear sucks.

He never realized that since France has 80% nuclear energy obviously overnight (when power demand drops 50% or more) reactors either need to reduce output or idle. This reduces efficiency of the plants. Not efficiency in terms of energy per unit of fuel but rather lifetime energy per plant.

This is a major reason why it would be foolish for nuclear to provide 80% of generation in the United States. Given that overnight capacity in US is roughly 40% of peak we could easily achieve a 40% nuclear energy share. Completely displace coal, increase natural gas to provide 100% of peaking power.

Solar would fit in perfect because its output almost perfectly correlates with demand during sumertime. Wind could store energy overnight.

Of course this all of the above approach where you have nuclear providing 40% of power as baseload, renewables providing another 40% (using some storage) and peaking plants providing 20% to keep supply & demand syncrhonized makes too much sense.

A wind only grid can be done but it would be prohibitively wasteful when a combined aproach is far more effective.

[kristopher]

67. Achieving 40% with nuclear is slower, more expensive, dirtier, and less safe than renewables

Especially important when we are concerned with paying our energy bills, a livable environment and avoided CO2 emissions.

[Statistical]

72. So you claim but MIT, DOE, and numerous public non-profit utilities disagree with you. n/t

[kristopher]

78. Their conclusions are influenced by conflict of interest.

After studying 30 original cost studies of new nuclear power, Shrader-Frechette concludes that there is clear evidence in the data that suggests a conflict of interest at work in the range of estimates on new nuclear costs. Speaking of the discrepency, she writes, if "trimmed costs are included, nuclear-generated electricity can be shown roughly 6 times more expensive than most studies claim." -Climate Change, Nuclear Economics, and Conflicts of Interest
Kristin Shrader-Frechett

Both the MIT study and DOE nuclear estimates are implicated in the conflict of interest group.

[FBaggins]

86. So says the doctor of Philospohy and biomed?

Does she say somewhere what that conflict of interest might be?

Is MIT up for a big Nuke construction contract?

[kristopher]

58. Now you are back to your starting point which is still wrong...

We've demonstrated that capacity factor and baseload are both characteristics of a power system.

We have demonstrated that a high capacity factor in a single plant (which you want to call baseload) is not an essential part of a power system.

That disproves your assertion that Lovins' is wrong since Lovins' assertion is that the only reliability issue centers around the power flowing to the user.

Our dialog has delivered us to the point where you have agreed.

Now you wish to ignore that and go back to your unfounded presumption that the reliability of a single plant is an essential element of the ability to deliver power to the end user reliability - a point that you have not only been unable to support, but that has been shown to be wrong.

Since the ONLY claim to value from nuclear power is its supposedly high capacity factor (lifetime average of our nuclear fleet is actually only 71%CF) there is simply no basis for your insistence that nuclear power capacity should be expanded.

The role you seek for nuclear can be accomplished safer, will less cost, and with far less economic and environmental risks by renewable sources of power.

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Statistical]

59. Even if your 71% was valid (which it isn't) it still vastly exceed that of wind power.

First of all capacity factor is not same thing as capacity credit.

Roughly half of the outage time for nuclear reactors are planned fueling outages. These are planned months/years in advance and they are synchronized between reactors to reduce overlap. Planned outages require less backup reserves to accommodate because a single backup reserve can provide backup power for multiple planned outages.

Since the majority of capacity reduction for nuclear power is PLANNED the overall effect on system is much less.



For entire NRC region 1 power delivered never dropped below 80%.

Compared to your paper which boasts 87.5% availability @ 15% peak capacity nuclear power delivered 100% availability at 80% peak power.


Furthermore the amount of projected unplanned outages is very small so amount of spinning reserves is even less. There is no need to spin up all backup reserves for an outage. Nuclear reactors leave the grid very rarely so enough reserves for one or two reactors is sufficient to provide backup for all reactors. If a reactor goes down then more reserves can be spun up.

[kristopher]

66. That graph is a total fabrication

From the idiot blogger that created the trash you are citing: "I've added a gray line for the total US electricity consumption for each month (arbitrarily normalized)"

The graph overlays entire US demand on JUST nuclear power generation. The scale at the left applies only to the blue line, not the gray. Since nuclear power only generates less than 20% of our power, that scale tells us nothing that you claim it tells us.

Nothing.

The graph is a lie.

You conclusions and claims are false.

[Nederland]

61. Disagree

We have demonstrated that a high capacity factor in a single plant (which you want to call baseload) is not an essential part of a power system.

We have demonstrated no such thing. In fact, we have demonstrated exactly the opposite. Having fairly high capacity factor (70%+) sources of power is essential to creating a grid the gets into the 99%+ range. You simply cannot get into the 99%+ range by interconnecting a bunch of sources that individually have capacity factors in the teens.

[kristopher]

68. YOU cited 4 articles contradicting that statement.

[Nederland]

70. No I didn't

No, I sited four sources that agree that inorder to compensate for the intermittent nature of certain renewables you have to have some form of energy storage that masks the fluctuations and makes the source look more like a high capacity source of power.

[Statistical]

55. No 99% IS better than 87.5%.

It is better because it reduces the amount of spinning & backup reserves (which add cost and CO2 emissions) that are necessary to keep supply & demand synchronized.

While no individual plant is 100% reliable (and never will be and never needs to be) having higher overall availability (ability to produce power when power is demanded) means the grid requires less measures to provide "support".

At every instance the grid must always match supply with demand. Failure to do so will result in frequency drift. If frequency drifts too far the grid will have to isolate and cause blackouts to protect grid & consumers from damage.

The grid compensate for demand variability in one of four methods:
A) spinning reserves.
b) backup/cold reserves
c) storage
d) over capacity. The grid is intentionally built over capacity because it is virtually impossible that all plants will be available at the same time. By providing overcapacity then the require power is available more often reducing the amount of time a,b,c are needed.

So yes availability does matter. Lower availability means that at any particular instance the gap between demand and supply can be greater and "something" needs to plug the whole. This means more overcapacity, more storage, more backup reserves, and more hot/spinning reserves to "compensate" for the lower availability of wind.

[Statistical]

53. Pure stawman. Nobody is claiming that except you so you have something to knock down.

The higher single unit reliability and availability means that when COMBINED WITH MULTIPLE units creates a reliable grid.
The small amount of variability can be taken up by spinning reserves.

So it is a strawman to say a single reactor isn't 100% reliable thus it is USELESS for baseload.

A single reactor is MUCH more reliable than a single wind farm thus the cost (in terms of amount of overcapacity built into grid and amount of spinning reserves required) to regulate that power is much lower.

http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/

Here is a 30 day chart of wind energy delivered in Germany (20 GW peak capacity)


Same power from NRC region 1 (25 GW peak capacity)


So sure if you built a grid of only wind or only nuclear with no storage BOTH will require some spinning reserves. However the spinning reserves required for nuclear is a tiny fraction of what wind requires.

The is a cost associated with variability. While wind is small that variability has very little cost however as it grows it becomes more and more difficult for the grid to accomidate without storage.

Here is nuclear on a larger timeframe (25 GW peak capacity)


Notice that most of the time the system provides 95% of peak capacity or greater. There is only one point in entire year where delivered power drops below 80% of peak. Thus a grid consisting of mostly nuclear with a small amount of spinning reserves and 20% backup reserves could operate without any interrupt in the grid.

That can't be said of wind. The same amount of wind will require either
a) storage
b) massive amount of spinning reserves and backup reserves.

[kristopher]

64. Let's count the errors in your post

1) "The higher single unit reliability and availability means that when COMBINED WITH MULTIPLE units creates a reliable grid."

The higher single unit reliability and availability are not the essential elements that make combining multiple units into a reliable grid possible. In fact, they contribute to a less reliable grid, since any single outage has the potential for far greater impact on the whole than would be the case with many smaller distributed generating sources, even if those sources individually have a lower level of "single unit reliability".

2) "So it is a strawman to say a single reactor isn't 100% reliable thus it is USELESS for baseload."

The assertion is that "baseload" as a concept related to single plant reliability is itself false. You are the one making a strawman when by changing that assertion to one that conflates single plant reliability (generation) with the ability of the larger grid to deliver electricity to the end user.

3) "A single reactor is MUCH more reliable than a single wind farm thus the cost (in terms of amount of overcapacity built into grid and amount of spinning reserves required) to regulate that power is much lower."

The implicit claim in that sentence is that nuclear power is less expensive than wind because of regulation costs. However since regulation costs are only a few thousandths of a cent per kilowatt, and since electricity generated by NEW nuclear power is estimated to be between 3X-10X the price of wind power, that argument is pretty damned dumb.

Finally we get to the graphs. They are irrelevant for the most part since they do not address anything we are discussing. They do not show (as is claimed) a valid comparison of generation/demand. It is nothing more than another bit of trash put together by yet another moron trying to support the claims of the Nuclear Energy Institute. For example here is the text that accompanies the final graph which you claim shows how nuclear can follow load:
"I've added a gray line for the total US electricity consumption for each month (arbitrarily normalized)"

Now, the graph is titled Nuclear Electricity in NRC Region 1 so we can assume the scale applies to the nuclear power slope. But then the demand for the ENTIRE US is overlaid on that with the same scale. Since we know that nuclear is only providing 20% of our power, how can the scale of the graph tell us ANYTHING related to the discussion?

The answer it, it can't.

Whenever you guys trot out yet another idiot blogger making a hamhanded attempt to spread nuclear industry propaganda, it is is a disaster for you. But since careful analysis is ever worse for your position than the obvious propaganda, I can (in an intellectual if not ethical way) understand your intent to deceive.

[OKIsItJustMe]

81. You imply I have not read the paper.

I have read the paper. I believe you misrepresent it.

... Although most parameters, such as intermittency, improved less than linearly as the number of interconnected sites increased, no saturation of the benefits was found. Thus, the benefits of interconnection continue to increase with more and more interconnected sites.

...

However, as I believe you know, I do not advocate using wind as a sole source of electricity. Instead, I advocate a mix of sources, most notably, wind and solar, which tend to compliment each other. (On cloudy days, the wind blows strong, on still days, the sun shines brightly.)

[OKIsItJustMe]

25. FWIW: A pre-print paper

http://www.stanford.edu/~lozej/Mason_Archer_CAES_Energy_2010_watermark.pdf

Analysis of wind base load electricity generation in the U.S.

James E. Mason^* and Cristina L. Archer¹
Article Submitted to Energy for Review
9 February 2010

...

Abstract

This study explores two means of transforming wind electricity supply into base load capacity. The first method is to balance and firm variable wind electricity supply with electricity from natural gas combined-cycle (NGCC) power plants. The second method is to balance and firm variable wind electricity supply with electricity from compressed air energy storage combustion turbine (CAES CT) power plants. The findings indicate that the combination of wind and NGCC power plants is the lowest cost means of transforming wind electricity into firm base load capacity power supply. However, with a combination of a $30/tonne carbon dioxide emissions tax and a natural gas cost in excess of $11/GJ, the combination of wind and CAES CT power plants becomes economically viable in terms of cost of electricity supplied to the local grid.

...

[Nederland]

49. Interesting find

It appears that Jacobson has conceded that wind cannot be used as baseload power without either a backup power source like NG or some form of energy storage. The quote:

However, wind power plants are assigned only marginal capacity credit since wind power is defined as a supplemental supply of electricity due to the variable nature of the wind speed. Studies indicate that the effective load carrying capacity (ELCC) of wind power plants ranges from 5% to 30% <2>. This means that wind power plants by themselves are not able to replace conventional base load capacity power plants. In other words, wind plants are primarily an energy source that reduces the operation time and fuel consumption of fossil fuel power plants and are assigned only marginal load capacity credit.

If wind plants are to be assigned full load capacity credit, then they must be a reliable supply of a pre-determined quantity of electricity on demand. In essence, the only way wind plants can be assigned full capacity credit is through the combination of wind plants with a reliable source of backup power. This study aims at finding the best means to balance and firm variable wind electricity supply so that it can be assigned full base load capacity credit.

Two methods to transform variable wind power capacity into firm, base load capacity are considered and compared via an economic analysis in this study: 1) combining wind power plants (wind farms) with supporting natural gas combined-cycle (NGCC) power plants; and 2)combining wind power plants with supporting compressed air energy storage combustion turbine (CAES CT) power plants.

Now if we can only get Kristopher to understand this...

[kristopher]

52. You continue to conflate "wind" with "renewable grid"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=239780&mesg_id=239881

[Nederland]

60. Give it up Kristopher

Your hero Jacobson has conceded the point, time for you to do so as well.

[kristopher]

65. Claiming a victory you haven't won is pretty pathetic.

You arguments have been completely demolished and you know it.

[FBaggins]

74. If you really believed that...

...you might not ever post again.

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. Putting theory into practice - Grasslands Renewable Energy’s Wind Spirit Project

http://www.gre-llc.com/wind-spirit-project/faq/

...

Where will the renewable energy come from?

The Wind Sprit Project would collect power from various renewable energy resources including principally wind but also solar, and geothermal. The wind energy would come from geographically diverse locations throughout the Northern Plains, including Montana, North Dakota, Alberta and Saskatchewan. This energy would be collected via 230KV AC and some DC transmission lines and when combined with energy storage, would provide a reliable 1,000 megawatt stream of renewable energy.

...

How will the Wind Sprit Project be able to overcome wind’s variability?

Studies have shown that when you combine wind energy from geographically diverse wind farms, the total output is much more constant than from any one site. The more wind farms, from more diverse locations that are linked together, the more reliable the energy output. Upon completion, the Wind Spirit Project would provide a 1,000 megawatts of steady output of electricity by gathering energy from geographically diverse wind farms and other renewable generators and partnering it to large-scale energy storage and management systems. Our energy storage solutions will helps smooth the output of wind production, making it a much more reliable source of energy.

How do you store wind power?

Grasslands will rely on proven and innovative storage solutions to use excess wind when it’s not needed and release the energy when the wind isn’t blowing. Grasslands is exploring the use of closed-loop Pumped Storage Hydro that allows the storage of electrical power as potential energy by load-leveling between a dual reservoir system. The sites being explored are off waterways to avoid conflicts with fish and wildlife habitat. Using significantly less water than traditional hydropower, pumped storage creates other benefits such as improved regulation and operation of the supply grid and a reduction in gaseous emissions.

Grasslands is also investigating promising battery technologies as well as compressed-air energy storage (CAES). Similar to Pumped Hydro Storage, CAES stores electrical energy for future use through a process of compressing air into geological features underground. Grasslands’ portfolio of energy storage and management in conjunction with northern plains wind energy development will provide a firm reliable source of renewable energy. Battery technology is advancing rapidly and performance and costs are constantly improving for grid-scale energy storage applications.

...

[Greyhound]

18. As someone that just dropped in, I see that the arguments opposing your article consist of

an appeal to popularity and a straw-man.

[FBaggins]

56. Do you consider youself well read on the subject?

n/t

[Nederland]

62. Unfortunately he does...

[FBaggins]

63. So... would you say that his repetitive spamming ....

...of just a handful of articles from a tiny number of questionable "experts", is because the vast majority of the published science disagrees with him?

Or is it just lack of creativity on his part?

[Nederland]

69. He doesn't listen

Any paper, peer reviewed or not, can contain factual errors or logical inconsistencies. The problem with Kristopher is that even when you carefully explain what you think the problem with a particular source of his is, he doesn't respond to your points, he just cuts and pastes the same thing over and over again. Now I'll admit that sometimes I can be a little thick and it will take me three or four posts to get what someone else is trying to say. However, I think most people around here will tell you that Kristopher is especially oblivious to a logical argument that contradicts his preconceived notions of reality.

[Statistical]

71. Usually he simply is ignorant and then when faced with new facts refuses to believe them.

This is the same guy who believed a nuclear reactor containment structure couldn't absorb any more energy than an everyday air compressor. His mind latched onto the fact that both could handle 200 psi before bursting. He had no idea that energy required to raise pressure increases by the volume you know that highschool physics equation pV=nRT. A containment structure is mostly empty space and thus the volume a magnitude larger than an air compressor. They are intentionally built larger than the space physically needed because the more air the contain the stronger they are against overpressure (steam explosion). Thus the amount of energy required to raise pressure from atm to 200 psi inside a nuclear reactor is an absolutely tremendous amount of energy, a tiny air compressor not so much.

He also in the past had no idea one of the papers he often quotes used gas diffusion for enrichment. This was done to make nuclear enrichment look cost prohibitive from energy point of view. He had no idea that centrifuges are roughly 500% more efficient than gas diffusion and as a result gas diffusion has been obsolete since 1960s. Using gas difussion in a paper on nuclear energy would be like using a circa 1900 steam engine to show that high speed rail is not competitive.

He also thought impact testing on containment structure was a "scam" because they didn't test large slow jumbo jet and instead measured force of impact of a small high velocity (Mach 1.2) fighter jet. Once again he was ignorant of the fact that kinetic energy is 1/2mv^2. Thus a containment designs to withstand a small fast object and withstand a large slow object. Of course you would think the fact that outer layer of containment is called a "missile shield" would clue him into what designers though the threat would be (designed to survive Soviet missile strikes).

If you hang out here long enough you will notice one these "kris-isms" every couple weeks. It all boils down to no independent critical thinking. He copies & pastes, copies & pastes, copies & pastes. Never tries to learn anything to understand what he is copying and pasting.

[kristopher]

77. Ad hominem attack with falsehoods

"This is the same guy who believed a nuclear reactor containment structure couldn't absorb any more energy than an everyday air compressor."

You try to create the impression that containment structures are indestructible. What I pointed out was that their rating against failure due to internal pressure was the same or less than the air compressor in my garage - 200psi. The comments of nuclear supporters NEVER mention the ratings and instead focus on the thickness of the concrete (usually exaggerated by a factor of 2X-3X).

The specific discussion was conducted around the time the terrorist was found to have been working at several nuclear power plants in the US and was at least in part related to the issue of how safe the reactors are against terrorist attacks.

Like others, I had accepted the fraudulent use by the Nuclear Industry of the test running a jet into the containment structure. They used to video to make a claim that the video did not support. Your reference to a secret report notwithstanding, there is no credible public evidence that containment structures are proof against terrorism - airborne or otherwise.

Too bad for you that you have to falsify so many things. You wouldn't have to do that if you had facts and truth on your side, you know.

[Dead_Parrot]

75. I think we should hook Kris up to the grid, & solve all our problems

He's like the energizer bunny.

[joshcryer]

102. I'd like to see how he'd cope without copy+paste functionality.

[harun]

76. Fail.

[Liberation Angel]

79. Great post, but the pro-industry lobby here at DU will deny its validity

Even the unrec/rec function gets screwy with these kind of good posts and data.

Keep up the good work.

Nukes are killers and Nuremburg type trials should be held for prosecuting industry heads who KNOW of the harm to our populations and KEEP polluting the planet and global atmosphere with carcinogenic and mutagenic radionuclides.

[joshcryer]

82. The three most prolific topic posters here are pro-nuclear.

They are by no means "nuclear lobbyists" and such claims are unsupported slander.

Nuclear is a CO2 free source of energy comparable to Coal-CCS, though possibly better than hydro if some of the issues with it are worked out.

[truebrit71]

91. "some of the issues" I love it! Like the whole 'glow in the dark if it all goes wrong' issue?

Fuck that. and Fuck nukes.

[joshcryer]

99. Nah, costs and time to start producing power are the two biggest factors.

I've learned that enhanced regulations allow costs to be reduced significantly in the United States (costs are already lower overseas than the disinformation you'll get on this forum). We have to wait and see if that happens.

But time to build is still very bad. It's not "20 years" as misleading and ignorant papers attempt to portray, but it is still a decade or so (the first nuclear power plants aren't slated to go online for at least another 8 years, that's being optimistic).

If those two things turn out to work as is envisioned, nuclear power will be built. If carbon is taxed (as we should be doing), then nuclear power will become one of the primary providers of energy in the country.

[Statistical]

116. First reactors will be up a lot sooner than 8 years.

Watts Bar Number 2 - 2013
Vogtle Number 3 - 2016
Vogtle Number 4 - 2017
North Anna Number 3 - 2018

[Liberation Angel]

92. Paid or unpaid "lobbying" means supporting a cause or policy

how in hell is it slander if it is true? It is not.

The pronukers here are lobbying the folks here to support the legislation and policies they want.

I am lobbying AGAINST nukes (unpaid) BECAUSE I and my family were diagnosed as having radiation related diorders caused by exposure from a nuclear facility in our community. I have seen the consequences of this deadly technology: it is slow and insidious and painful death for millions of us who have been exposed and the industry KNOWS it is iilling people.

In any event I never called anyone in particular out.

And if something is true it is NOT slander.

Those who are vocal in their support on whatever side of an issue are lobbying for or against something and they should have the courage to admit that.

And I will BERT that some of those lobbying for nukes here are paid to do it.

But I cannot prove that.

I assume it and you cannot rpove I am wrong.

You can tell a tree by the kind of fruits it bears.

Poisonous and deadly fruit comes from poisonous and deadly trees.

[joshcryer]

100. It's slander because it's a veiled attempt to call pro-nuclear people "right wingers."

I can give you direct quotes from the biggest disruptor on this forum making the case.

[kristopher]

103. Nuclear power has been the darling of the right wing for 50 years.

That is simply a fact.

Popular support is founded in a set of values that place a higher priority on energy security than on environmental values.
That is a fact.

That set of values is what underpins the willingness to build more coal plants and "drill baby drill".
That too is a fact.

Nuclear energy is no more environmentally friendly than coalccs is.

IF you don't like those facts, I don't know what to tell you except that you have to deal with reality.

Note the polling below demonstrates this schism between those who prioritize energy security and those who prioritize the environment. Those who prioritize energy security always answer with an "all of the above" pattern where all energy options are approved of. Thus renewables get not only the environmental vote, but ALSO the energy security vote. However the reverse does not apply; those who place a high priority on the environment reject coal and nuclear and to a lesser degree petroleum. The slight difference between coal/nuclear and petroleum is the difference between the immediate awareness of energy need that develops from pumping gas into a car each week and the black box quality of electricity where people very, very often think no further than the fuse box in their house.

Associated Press/Stanford University Poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media. Nov. 17-29, 2009. N=1,005 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1.

"In general, would you favor or oppose building more nuclear power plants at this time?"
Favor 49 Oppose 48 Unsure 3

***********************************************************************

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Oct. 16-18, 2009. N=1,038 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

“To address the country’s energy needs, would you support or oppose action by the federal government to ?” (Half Sample)

"Increase coal mining"
Support 52, Oppose 45, Unsure 3

"Build more nuclear power plants"
Support 52, Oppose 46, Unsure 2

"Increase oil and gas drilling"
Support 64, Oppose 33, Unsure 3

"Develop more solar and wind power"
Support 91, Oppose 8, Unsure 1



"Develop electric car technology"
Support 82, Oppose 17, Unsure 2

"Require more energy conservation by businesses and industries"
Support 78, Oppose 20, Unsure 2

"Require more energy conservation by consumers like yourself"
Support 73, Oppose 25, Unsure 3

"Require car manufacturers to improve the fuel-efficiency of vehicles sold in this country"
Support 85, Oppose 14, Unsure 1

Asked of those who support building more nuclear power plants:
"Would you favor or oppose building a nuclear power plant within 50 miles of your home?"
Favor 66, Oppose 33

[FBaggins]

107. That's just flat nonsense!

It's rarely "veiled" when we're talking about said poster. :)

[diane in sf]

119. Yes and all three of them lie like rugs