As we speak my long-awaited power storage paper was formally printed on the web site of the International Warming Coverage Basis. Here’s a hyperlink. The paper is 22 pages lengthy within the kind wherein they’ve printed it plus one other few pages for an Govt Abstract and desk of contents. They’ve given it the title “The Power Storage Conundrum.”
A lot of the factors made within the paper have been made beforehand on this weblog in a single kind or one other. Nonetheless, there’s a good quantity of extra element within the paper that has by no means appeared right here. I’ll present one instance of that right now, and extra of similar in coming days.
The primary level of the paper is that {an electrical} grid powered largely by intermittent turbines like wind and solar requires full backup from some supply; and if that supply is to be saved power, the quantities of storage required are actually staggering. Once you do the straightforward arithmetic to calculate the storage necessities and the probably prices, it turns into apparent that your entire undertaking is totally impractical and unaffordable. The activists and politicians pushing us towards this new power system of wind/photo voltaic/storage are both being deliberately misleading or completely incompetent.
For those who comply with the information on this topic at a common stage, you may discover this conclusion stunning. In any case, there are frequent bulletins that this or that jurisdiction has entered a contract to buy some seemingly great amount of batteries for grid-level storage. The Report cites information from consultancy Wooden Mackenzie as to introduced plans or contracts for storage acquisition in all main European nations, and cites different studies as to introduced plans from California and New York within the U.S. The title of the April 2022 Wooden Mackenzie paper on Europe definitely gives the look that these individuals have the scenario beneath management and know what they’re doing: “Europe’s Grid-scale Power Storage Capability Will Develop 20-fold by 2031.” Spectacular!
However that is a kind of topics on which it’s important to take a look at the precise numbers to guage whether or not the plans make any sense. On this scenario, it is advisable evaluate the quantity of power storage that may be required for full backup of an almost-entirely wind/photo voltaic grid (with fossil fuels excluded), to the precise amount of grid-scale power storage being acquired.
Take into account the case of Germany, the nation that has gone the farthest of any on the earth down the highway to “power transition.” My Report presents two totally different calculations of the power storage requirement for Germany in a world of a wind/photo voltaic grid and no fossil fuels allowed (each of which calculations have been beforehand lined on this weblog). One of many calculations, by a man named Roger Andrews, got here to a requirement of roughly 25,000 GWh; and the opposite, by two authors named Ruhnau and Qvist, got here to a better determine of 56,000 GWh. The 2 use comparable however not an identical methodology, and considerably totally different assumptions. Clearly there’s a massive vary of uncertainty as to the precise requirement; however the two calculations cited give an affordable vary for the scope of the issue.
To provide you an thought of simply how a lot power storage 25,000 (or 56,000) GWh is, here’s a rendering (additionally from my Report) of a grid-scale battery storage facility beneath development in Queensland, Australia by Vena Power. The ability within the rendering is meant to supply 150 MWh of storage.
Keep in mind that 150 MWh is simply 0.15 of one GWh. In different phrases, it could take about 167,000 of those services to supply 25,000 GWh of storage, and about 373,000 of them to get to the 56,000 GWh within the bigger estimate.
And in opposition to these projections of a storage requirement within the vary of tens of hundreds of GWh, what are Germany’s plans as introduced on this “20-fold enlargement” by 2031? From my Report:
Within the case of Germany, Wooden Mackenzie states that the deliberate power storage capability for 2031, following the 20-fold enlargement, is 8.81GWh.
Fairly than tens of hundreds of GWh, it’s single digits. How does that stack up in share phrases in opposition to the projected necessities?:
In different phrases, the quantity of power storage that Germany is planning for 2031 is between 0.016% and 0.036% of what it truly would wish. This doesn’t qualify as a critical effort to supply a system which may work.
The story is identical within the different jurisdictions lined within the Report. And keep in mind, these are the jurisdictions that think about themselves the leaders and the vanguard within the transition to renewable power. For instance, New York, with an estimated storage requirement for a mainly-renewables grid of 10,000-15,000 GWh, is claimed by commerce journal Utility Dive to be “forging forward” with plans to obtain some 6 GW of grid storage (presumably translating into about 24 GWh). That will come to round 0.2% of what’s wanted. Until, after all, New York concurrently “forges forward” with its plans to triple the demand on the grid by electrifying all vehicles and residential heating; in that case the 24 GWh could be again right down to lower than 0.1% of the storage requirement.
California? The Report cites one other article from Utility Dive stating that the California Public Utilities Fee has ordered the state’s energy suppliers to collectively procure by 2026 some 10.5 GW (or 42.0 GWh) of lithium-ion batteries for grid-scale storage:
The extra 10.5 GW of lithium-ion storage capability, translating to at most about 42 GWh, would take California all the way in which to about 0.17% of the power storage it could want to completely again up a wind/photo voltaic technology system.
Nonetheless dangerous you may assume this example is, it’s worse. Am I the one one that has ever made these easy calculations? I definitely have by no means seen them wherever else.
I’d be very completely satisfied to be proved unsuitable about any and all of this. All I say is that the proponents of this miraculous fantasy power future owe it to the remainder of us to construct a working demonstration undertaking earlier than forcing us all to undertake their utopian scheme at ruinous price, solely to search out out that it gained’t work and might’t work.
Right here’s what tells you all it is advisable know: not solely is there no working demonstration undertaking wherever on the earth of the wind/photo voltaic/storage power system, however there’s none beneath development and none even proposed. As a substitute, the proponents’ thought is that your whole state or nation is to be the guinea pig for his or her desires.
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