By Jo Nova
The amount of storage America needs for a grid run on erratic wind and solar power is so galactically vast the numbers don’t matter. Because every which way they are calculated, every estimate, the highest one, the lowest one, it doesn’t make any difference. They are all unaffordable.
And they’re not just unaffordable in the sense that it hurts. They’re unaffordable in the sense that there is no economy left.
Basically America would need 12,500 times as many batteries as it has now. At current prices this would cost about $175 trillion dollars, which is eight times the entire GDP of the United States.
Some researchers predict costs will fall, but even at fantasy low ball estimates that are one tenth of current prices, the cost of those batteries is still nearly $20 trillion.
Astronomical battery cost looms over “renewables”
David Wojick, CFACT
We now know that the battery storage for the entire American grid is impossibly expensive, thanks to a breakthru study by engineer Ken Gregory. Looking at several recent years he analyzed, on an hour by hour basis, the electricity produced with fossil fuels. He then calculated what it would have taken in the way of storage to produce the same energy using wind and solar power. He did this by scaling up those year’s actual wind and solar production.
Based on his work, which only covered 48 states, our round working estimate of the required storage for the whole country is an amazing 250 million MWh. America today has less than 20 thousand MWh of grid scale battery storage, which is next to nothing.
Grid scale batteries today cost around $700,000 a MWh. For 250 million MWh we get an astronomical total cost of $175 trillion dollars just to replace today’s fossil fuel generated electricity needs with wind and solar.
Let’s start with the reality. The EIA has collected annual utility data on the cost of grid scale battery arrays. A recent report is “Battery Storage in the United States: An Update on Market Trends — August 2021”.
From 2013 to 2018 the average reported cost was around $1,500,000 per MWh. The range was pretty large, from under $500,000 to around $3,000,000 per MWh.
Wojick compares a whole range of estimates on the past and likely future cost of batteries which vary from $70,000 per megawatt hour up to $1.5 million. As he says:
If wind and solar developers were required to include the batteries needed to make their projects reliable, none would ever be built.
It’s the cost of the system that matters, not the cost of a half hour of electrons at midday.
There is a reason fans of solar and wind power never quote the cost of a 24 hour reliable supply.
h/t To Alan Moran, more coming soon.
Photo: Karolina Grabowska
Legislation needs to be introduced that stops all unreliable power from connecting to the grid.
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The only thing that lets unreliables connect to the grid IS legislation.
REMOVE that legislation, and wind and solar go ‘poof’ in flash of market realities….
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Thanks Jo. The transition is impossible. How will this impossibility manifest itself? That is the question. Oz may be the answer.
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“thanks to a breakthru study by engineer Ken Gregory.”.
Thanks indeed to Ken Gregory, but it is intriguing that an issue so big can be so dependent on an individual.
This reminds me that it was David Evans who blew the whistle for the world, what, 18 years ago?
I have a feeling that a lot of wheels will turn in 2023. It doesn’t help that one of those wheels could be nuclear war.
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Ken simply looked at hour by hour storage requirements, instead of the grotesque annual averages normally used.
An elegant and painstaking piece of work. Engineering at its best.
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And to think it’s all predicated on a harmless gas, .04% of the atmosphere.
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That is how the green game is played.
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And never let anyone forget that batteries need replacement every 10 years or so.
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Jo – these calculations have been done for years and the answer is always the same. A cost so vast its incomprehensible. But the complete idiots keep on rush forward, disregarding it.
In my engineering world if the numbers don’t stack up the project does not get the green light. Oh, we may do a very small demonstration project if we have new technology , but never commit an economy to something that does not work and where there is no payback.
But us engineers are never asked for our opinion. Only activists and politicians get a say here – because they say what people apparently want to hear.
Well I will say what they NEED to hear – Renewables and Net Zero are a complete fantasy land. We have nuclear working and ready to go – why is it not an option? If its not then one has to strongly suspect that other more sinister motives are afoot.
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but never commit an economy to something that does not work and where there is no payback.”
Yet they are doing just that.. They also committed a global population to an experimental leaky vaccine that does not work and is very harmful. (The same people)
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The silence of the power engineers. One wonders why?
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Are they silent or just ignored?
When did you see an engineer on the MSM explaining the costs/materials/space required/etc?
Never – just the talking heads (with several nodding heads behind to show that ‘all’ agree) spouting feel good reasons but with no real-world solutions as to how to achieve their energy nirvana
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David this doesn’t explain this “why”, but it is araound and about it.
I was born to farming and loved it. This put me in the world of small business capitalism.
I had a friend from school days who came from the coal fields. A world where capitalism was a dirty word. He became a lawyer and worked in the State Department of Industrial Relations.
He was a wonderful man, a wondeful friend, but we disagreed strongly on matters political. The Golden Staph took him too soon at age 51.
He used to bring his family up to our farm for holidays. One time I was trying to explain to him the visible inefficiencies in public services, citing the case of Telecom (then a QANGO) laying an underground cable through our farm.
“What would you know about laying telephone cables?” he asked. Seriously!
Then I realised that in his world everybody had his own patch, and everybody protected his own patch by never dipping a toe into somebody else’s patch.
I only knew that if I hired two D7s, five vehicles and fifteen men to do what one D7, six men and three vehicles could have done in the same time my farm would not have stayed long in business.
I think in many cases people just want to preserve what they have got.
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Or, in plain terms, engineers that rock the boat, aren’t engineers much longer.
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Back in the late 1990s early 2000s I lived in Bathurst NSW and knew a couple of power station engineers and one plant operator. They described to me that the emphasis then was very clearly on being able to supply at all times without any blackouts to all users.
Nowadays that is being quietly pushed aside as any spare capacity in the system is removed so politicians of all stripes can have photo opportunities as coal plants are shuttered and removed. The supposed renewables capacity that replaces it is a complete joke, as all know here. Intermittent, unreliable and will have to be replaced in 10-20 years whereas the coal stations can go on for over 50 years easily. And it has to be backed up by something, which has to be maintained and paid for.
I suspect that many of the younger power engineers have swallowed hook line and sinker the siren song of renewables, and have not had life experience of large blackouts (like I and others have) and the huge disruption they represent. They will get some very big lessons in that area, if they will learn from them, in the next year or two. Or better yet, travel to PNG and see how all industrial plants have their own generators which kick in regularly due to grid issues. But here we have no such investment, yet, but its coming, if people want to remain in business…
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I read recently of the boss of a large chemical plant in Cumbria who is looking seriously at the possibilty of installing a small nuclear reactor to power the plant. I think he was in discussions with Rolls Royce. Cumbria, which has Sellafield within its boundaries, is a good place to explore the nuclear option.
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We have friends in South Africa who are currently suffering under power rationing due to the loss of generation capacity (this in a country that has endless coal reserves such that they built a very large plant to extract oil from coal (I worked on the foundations for the 20 factories that comprise SASOL 2)) We are not talking about short shutdowns – but day long outages – so fridges and air-conditioning dont work! If you want to see the end game of coal power that is it!
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See ‘ Peter Ridd’.
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David,
In Australia, the power engineers have not been silent. They have been discussing the problems being caused by renewables on the grid since 2016, when grid engineers in South Australia warned of the potential for state-wide blackouts, due to increasing instability in the grid, if the politicians proceeded with their plan to shut down the last coal fired generator in the state.
The other problem is that our power engineers are working hard to keep the grid alive, despite the ongoing instability. In a typical problem solving manner, they keep suggesting technical solutions that might help alleviate the instability. Our first big battery was installed in South Australia within a year of the 2016 state-wide system black event. Subsequently, they added four large synchronous condensers, and are now looking to add “grid-firming” inverters.
However, as AEMO points out, these solutions are only useful in improving “system strength”, which AEMO defines as the ability of the grid to maintain system voltage:
https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/planning_and_forecasting/operability/2022/2022-system-strength-report.pdf?la=en
The assumption by most power engineers is that instability is a technical problem, that can be resolved with the right technical solution. Unfortunately, AEMO has no technical solutions for improving “system inertia”, which is the ability of the grid to maintain system frequency:
https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/planning_and_forecasting/operability/2022/2022-inertia-report.pdf?la=en
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“We have nuclear working and ready to go – why is it not an option?”
Because they don’t want a viable option to their pretend problem.
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Good morning Jo,
Great expose, as usual.
As you probably know, Francis Menton at Manhattan Contrarian, has been “banging on” about this (& much else, much like your good self) for years.
The one chilling point that he makes over & over, why is it that no-one calls these green fantasizers to task about the fact that no-where in the world have they yet built a “test town” of 50 000 – or even 5 000 people, that is run exclusively on solar/wind/storage?!?
Though I’m conservative, Bill Clinton’s “catch-phrase/moniker” (some less charitable may spell it differently!) from his first presidential run is most days still ringing in my ears: “It’s the ECONOMY, STUPID!”
Perhaps the modern-day green/socialist gets up every morning & says to themselves “Let’s go & kill the economy, stupid”!!
This country had over 100 green local/state/federal politicians plotting our demise (& that was before the teal-green wave last May).
Unless & until Aussies (& other OECD. serfs) start to wake up from their “wet-dream” of thinking these “warm ‘n’ fuzzy” “oxygen theives” are good, we will keep continuing down this path of economic “mass suicide”.
We also need the US. Congress to; start acting hard against Majorkas & the Wall-Street Net-Zero scam, & other countries to start rejecting the “Parisite” agreement.
It’s taken 34 years plus for the Green Scam to get to this critical mass, I guess its going to take at least another few to start to turn this “Titanic” around.
Warm regards, reformed warmist of Logan
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The elites will finf another scam like Hydrogen ehen they discover that giant batteries are nogo.
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All the ado about the recent NIF laser fusion “breakeven”. What they don’t talk about is the tremendous expense of the facility, equipment and staffing nor that the ” breakeven” was laser power applied v energy realized. No mention that it likely takes 100 times as much energy to power the inefficient laser amplifiers and all of the associated equipment. Nor that it takes hours to cool everything down before another shot but to supply every day power it would need to operate at 10 Hz
Pi in the psi
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The H scam is well underway. The offshore wind press is full of hydrogen, as it were.
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For example: https://www.offshore-energy.biz/italian-company-proposes-to-build-900-mw-floating-wind-farm-with-green-hydrogen-link/
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Very vague on details, perhaps deliberate? How will they get the deionised/distilled water to make the hydrogen from? (Sea water will NOT do). Will require 9 tons of water to make 1 ton of hydrogen.
900MW is “capacity” so actual output be the wind turbines will be 335 and 370MW (based on ACTUAL averages in the North Sea) and likely to be less in the Mediterrainian. Coupled with a maximum efficiency of hydrogen generation of 69% (theoretical).
On the other hand I expect (as I’m sure the entrepreneurs do) that they will get lots of money from gullible politicians.
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Hi Phillip
” I guess its going to take at least another few to start to turn this “Titanic” around.”
Or an iceberg.
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The iceberg just might be blackouts.
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Apart from electrochemical battery storage, there is also the possibility of pumped hydro.
The following article looks at the impossibility of powering the United States on solar and wind unreliables plus pumped hydro storage.
The numbers are just staggering.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
But ultimately it is not an engineering issue. Because, at least the leaders of the anti-energy lobby have no interest in making unreliables work. Their objective is to destroy Western Society with particular focus on destroying the foremost Western country, the United States. Tragically, they are achieving their objective.
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Western society? I see very little, if any actual destruction at this point. Western society is not that weak.
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Yes, we grow stronger as we eliminate micro-aggressions.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2022/12/20/why-the-marine-corps-may-nix-gender-identifiers-for-drill-instructors/
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Oh, and it also helps to provide regular government mandated for profit chemical support for our immune systems.
After all, science is settled and it is time for us to takeover where nature has failed to provide evolutionary equity.
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Victor Davis Hanson had something to say about his country and its strengths today in PJ Media. I’d say weakening was well in progress – if you can refute any of his points, you are doing well. For me, I have noticed a similar pattern of dilution of civilisation.
https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/2023/01/05/did-someone-or-something-seize-control-of-the-united-states-n1658786
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PS. Another hat tip to Francis Menton.
The 4 Canaries in the Coalmine (other than us), to keep an eye on over the coming 6/12/18 months are: Germany, U.K., N.Y., & California.
Warm regards …
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They also never add the cost of stabilising the grid from all those unreliable sources.
not to mention the cost of replacing the batteries after a life of either sub optimal charging or massively more batteries to cope with optimal charging and discharging.
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There’s an easy solution … just ration the electricity to the masses for 2 hours a day spread across the day…
(While the elites and their enablers get nuclear power for their gated communities…)
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A similar solution has already been instigated in South Africa. Rolling blackouts for 6 – 8 hours a day presently, forecast to worsen to 12 – 14 hours a day, except ‘essential services’ of course. Another ‘canary’ to watch.
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Indeed, Muzza. Well said.
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I did a bit of work in the Phillipines last century and rolling “Brown outs” were the accepted norm in Manilla. Now while the electricity supply was poorly managed, the rolling brown outs were quite well organised. Every suburb new exactly when their turn at reduced supply would be initiated and every large manufacturing plant within the designated areas would fire up their generator backup at the specified times. This enabled production to continue and any surplus was put back into the grid to assist the local areas. Fully accepted by both the citizenry and business as just another cost impost, fully accepted by government because the populace didn’t really revolt, it was “just normal” I guess this is an easy system to implement if no one cares about HUGE diesel generators thumping away in heavilly populated areas and making a living was more important than the noise, exhaust pollution was not a problem as you couldn’t see across the road anyway.
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Lomborg and his team quoted the NZ govt estimate of 5 trillion $ to reach net zero and this for just 0.1% of global co2 emissions.
So Aussies’ cost would be 11 times (1.1%) or 55 trillion and the USA ( 13.8% ) about 12.5 times that number or over 600 trillion $.
Perhaps that cost is far too high but that estimate was just what the independent commissioned report found for the NZ govt.
But how long would the transition take and what about a country’s safety and defence during the transition?
The entire TOXIC mess is a joke and is impossible on every level. So when do they WAKE UP?
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Here’s NZ’s energy mix and their high use of Hydro and Geothermal are much higher than most countries and therefore that 5 trillion $ cost may not compare well for the USA and Australia. See no 1. at the link. AGAIN, THINK about it.
https://www.energymix.co.nz/our-consumption/new-zealands-consumption/
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Jabcinda is prepared to shut down NZ agriculture to “save the planet”.
Herr Klaus Schwab is so proud of his student.
https://www.younggloballeaders.org/community?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Ardern&x=19&y=21&status=&class_year=§or=®ion=#results
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CSIRO in there annual gen reports are still claiming it would cost australia just $0.5t, a tenth of what NZ costed, lmao.
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The head of the NZ Climate Change Commission (yes, another triple-C) is not only legally blind, his name is Rod Carr.
They’re urinating on us while telling us they’re putting out the fire.
BTW an ‘atmospheric river’ is persisting down on NZ from Tonga, which looks like continuing on through next week, thanks to the blocking high parked to our east… And the girl child shall be called
La Niña– Climate Anxiety Crisis.110
What went wrong with you Kiwis? You went too soft.
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All the good ones came over here!
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When Robert (piggy) Muldoon was asked about the exodus of NZers to Australia he replied :”They increase the IQ of both our countries”.
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Pumped storage was mentioned by David M. #5.
I’m from a region where this has existed; Lat/Long follow:
41.830841, -79.010113
Read about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Pumped_Storage_Generating_Station
Reading, you will encounter the word “Kinzua”.
This is pronounced Kin-Zoo – – No “a” please.
Construction began on the dam when I was a senior in high school.
We visited while the reservoir was filling, and they were creating the hole for the pumped water.
~~PS to Jo
As promised in 2022, I have ordered chocolates.
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Thanks John.
I believe that is called a “turkey’s nest” dam.
Pumped hydro is certainly legitimate under certain circumstances such as for providing peak power and it enables a smaller power station to be built than woukd otherwise be necessary.
I find the following two quoted statements in that article interesting. Obviously it’s being used for electricity price arbitrage.
That will be the purpose of the Snowy Hydro 2 project in Australia as well, an insanely expensive and over-budget project with no legitimate purpose if we had a free market in power with no unreliables
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So David, that storage scheme is still a net consumer of electricity?
And would Snowy hydro 2 be any different and what about the periods of bad drought? IOW these schemes are not reliable at all and at a huge cost to the consumer?
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Neville, pumped storage is fine when used to provide peak power as has always been done, including in the original Snowy Scheme.
All electricity storage, electrochemical or gravitational is not 100% efficient and is a net consumer of power.
The ostensible purpose of SH2 is solely to make useless unreliables work but it can’t possibly provide enough power plus it will end up being used for electricity price arbitrage just like the other electrochemical battery projects in Australia.
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There was quite a long set of articles on Energy Matters some years ago on the Spanish pumped storage scheme in the Canaries.
Basically they installed wind turbines and tried to eliminate diesel usage on the island. Storage was provided by pumping water up into an extinct volcano crater. It wound up as a failure.
https://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-fourth-quarter-2018-performance-update/
It was a failure too in The Falklands (on the secondary island). Some benefit from wind (resulting on a reduction in diesel usage of 30%) was obtained by CONTROLLING the wind turbines (changing the blade angles) so there was a steadier supply and the diesel generators could be run at optimum efficiency. Very smart Electrical Engineer there (except an Everton supporter).
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Love that image of the limp wind sock.
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In a world where there is sufficient battery storage to make wind/solar reliable, there is no price arbitrage. In the middle of the day, demand for charging batteries will be high and so price will not be low (as it currently is). In the evening all the batteries will be available to supply electricity, so the price will be low (when it is currently high). There would be no buy low in the middle of the day, and sell high in the evening in a world where there are sufficient batteries to run a solar/wind grid. Consequently, even if we could afford the batteries, and we could supply the resources, the batteries will not be built because they will not be profitable (which is the first rule of sustainability). Batteries currently make money from frequency control services (not from arbitrage), which is only required as solar and wind have short term fluctuations (as well as long term ones).
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Apart from frequency control, batteries such as Thornsdale (SA) do indeed profit from arbitrage.
https://arena.gov.au/assets/2019/02/hornsdale-power-reserve.pdf
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I believe Jo posted an article here recently about the large amount of money Thornsdale (or another battery?) makes from arbitrage.
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That is a glossy marketing brochure from 4 years ago.
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“Last calendar year FCAS revenues accounted for more than 96% for Hornsdale Power Reserve (c.f. 83% in CY19).” It is hard to find more recent data. And so, yes FCAS are the way these things make money. Not by buying low and selling high, as most people believe.
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In a fantasy world with enough batteries the cost recovery and profit would come from elevated basic supply cost. The absence of arbitrage wouldnt stop it, thats just todays game.
Arrangements would need to be made to maintain the myth of cheap “renewables”
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Allow me a pointless touch of history. I helped build the Kinzua pumped storage, as a young and relatively crazy engineer. It has, as I recall in old age, a 900′ vertical shaft, 36′ in diameter. When done some higher up decided the shaft had to be inspected. For what I do not know, except existence which was easily observed. So I was volunteered to get into the cage which was then lowered down the shaft, to prove it was there. On return I noticed there w no safety line, just a simple hook to my cage. In any case it was thrilling.
But for a long time the upper reservoir would not hold water because the mountain rock was deeply fractured. We wondered if 900′ of pressure would blow off the mountainside, but so far not.
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Also it is pronounced Kin-zu-a . Our 100 mile pool flooded the Seneca burial grounds, violating an ancient treaty in order to protect Pittsburgh, which had seen flooding to the second story downtown. Downtown Pgh is in an 800′ canyon.
It took the Supreme Court to violate the treaty but we built the sucker over their bones. Buffy Saint Marie mentioned this in two great songs. For those too young to know she was one of the greatest folk singers of the 1960s, making her one of the greatest of all time. https://www.google.com/search?q=buffy+st+marie&rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS801US801&oq=buffy+st+marie&aqs=chrome..69i57.8721j0j7&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
Little wheel spin and spin. Big wheel turn around and around. And so it goes today.
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PkDJdokmNgM
A song for our time.
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Add your straw to the camel’s load. Pray like hell when the world explode.
Teach your children who to hate.
Big wheel turn around.
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also
“everybody knows but no body tells”
Genuinely talented artist
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Thanks for the story.
I think I met you at Jake’s Rocks.
https://pabucketlist.com/exploring-jakes-rocks-overlook-in-warren-county/
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As I have said before, give people a choice what sort of power they want.
Smart electricity meters could do this.
Let people choose power from either real power stations, coal, gas, nuclear or traditional hydro (not Snowy Hydro 2 in Australia); or let the Green/Left types choose unreliables.
All at free market prices of course.
The way it would work is that you have two power pools. One reliable, one unreliables. Individual smart meters report consumption to a central controller and once the pool of that type of power is exhausted, the consumer is cut off. Alternatively there is a stepped price function so as the pool of available power diminishes, the prices escalates in accordance with market principles.
Let the Left put their money where their loud mouths are.
At no point should unreliables or real power stations be able to back up the other.
For example, under conditions of no wind or sun, once the batteries go flat then the consumer’s home goes dark.
It shouldn’t be a problem for Leftoids because they keep telling us that 1) conventional power is unreliable and 2) solar and wind are the cheapest of all types of power and reliable.
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I like this idea, but can it be done without building an entire parallel distribution grid?
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Sorry fellas, but the brainwashing has been so complete over the last 50 years that the only way they will wake up is when the whole system has collapsed and they are burning the furniture to boil water. Sad to say this country, and the western world, is phuked.
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How long do these batteries last 10 years? So every 10 years or so another 175 Trillion will need to be spent, or am I missing something?
Then there’s the cost of disposal (burial).
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And can we produce enough raw materials at the required pace.
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Battery costs are certainly high, but are actually reducing.
( we can now buy domestic lithium storage battery packs for less than $350 /kWh ! )
…..however, what is rerely considered is the cost of the AC/DC inverters needed to enable them to work with a conventional grid or domestic systems. The cost of those can almost double the real cost of a working battery.
And for most people, especially for a grid utility system, the costs of installation and operation will be equally eye watering !
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Not sure they are reducing. The cost of Lithium Carbonate tripled in 12 months, rising from US$20,000/tonne to US$70,000/tonne by Sept 2022, and climbed to US$77,900/t in the final weeks of 2022. And New York battery storage costs rose 20% back in April 2022.
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In a link in a recent WUWT article, I note that Tesla’s Megapack battery prices have increased over 24% from 2021 to 2022:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2022-03-21_15-28-46.png?itok=lxTa2SlF
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As with many products, the cost of materials, is not a major proportion of the selling price.
And Tesla have a market edge with a brand that generates demand way beyond their supply capacity, so they can command a “market” price , especially in the Utility sector.
But for us , a domestic installation is becoming a realistic cost situation
10kWh pack for under $5000 Au ?
https://www.ebay.com.au/str/greenbanksolaraustralia?_trksid=p2047675.m3561.l2563
That was not possible until very recent.
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Good article and this also demonstrates why Europe is now scrambling to reopen coal plants and mines, because they need cheap reliable energy to save themselves from their own RE dream. In terms of the future costs of batteries, what we see today are rising input costs as demand for lithium and other RA metals rise due to crazy government EV and RE policy and this is just the beginning of those escalating input costs. It’s also not possible to mine these materials at the rate needed to transition to the fantasy RE utopian world, nor keep up with the 10 year replacement program. And the unimaginable toxic waste volumes produced can’t be quantified. Ultimately, the RE dream will die as reality bites, but it will take out many people along the way and at great cost to society and the planet.
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Again, here Lomborg quotes the UN Climate Panel when he tells us that the average person will be much wealthier by the 2070s. Here ‘s the quote and the link.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/bjorn-lomborg-joe-bidens-us2-trillion-climate-plan-could-fix-it/KSJ5P3LEHLJQ6EOT7S256SZPGM/
“But climate panic doesn’t help either”.
“Biden, like many politicians across the rich world, frequently claims that climate change is an “existential threat” to human existence. However, this is contrary to the central findings of the UN Climate Panel. It estimates that by the 2070s, global warming will overall have a negative impact equivalent to a reduction in incomes of between 0.2 and 2 per cent. By then, the UN expects the average person will be 363 per cent as rich as today. The negative impact from climate change means we will instead be 356 per cent as rich as today. That is a problem, but not the end of the world”.
AGAIN, when will the liars and con merchants be exposed and made to pay for their BS and fraud over the last 32 years?
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Here’s the GDP per capita for the world since 1820 to 2018.
Note Nth America and Australia and NZ the highest according to this OWI Data chart.
Gosh I wouldn’t mind surviving on 3.5 times that income in the 2070s.
And when will the UK get their proper reparations for inventing the Industrial Revolution?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020
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Excellent graph.
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OK, so this is about the UK, but it’s relevant here. Spiked’s article Our empty PM commenting on Rishi Sunak:
“What’s more, both parties appear to be wedded to the same old elite groupthink, even as the disastrous consequences of that groupthink become clearer by the day. For one thing, you would have thought that a leader interested in building a more prosperous economy, out of the mire of this awful energy crisis, would have something to say about cheap and reliable energy. Instead, we got some murmurings from Sunak about how innovation will smooth our path to Net Zero. Similarly, Starmer’s ‘big idea’ from his party-conference speech last year is a nationally owned renewables firm.”.
Replace ‘Sunak’ and ‘Starmer’ with major party leaders of virtually any other western country, and much the same applies.
You can’t build a prosperous economy using money, you have to use energy. Economies run on energy, money is just how you keep the score.
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I have a great idea. It has taken 150 million years to create free peat, lignite, black coal and oil and gas. And they are evil with old carbon atoms.
So why not make our own fresh new oil from CO2 and H2O? And like the US sourced wood pellets from old growth forests which are used for 14% of UK power, we can use fresh oil to store wind power and solar power.
Oil storage is just so dense and cheap. Consider that a 100kwhr Tesla battery weighs 600kg, so 0.16 kwhr per kg.
A petrol car uses energy which is 8.9kwhr per litre! A litre of petrol being 0.755kg this is 6.7kwhr per kg.
So oil storage is 1/50th of the weight of battery storage!
—-
Which goes to explain how 60kg/80litres of petrol will take a car for up to 1000km when ten times that weight of batteries will not take a Tesla half that distance.
And while there are 50% losses (Carnot cycle) in converting petrol to energy, you can at least have the heater on with free hot water from the radiator or the airconditioner for the trip, not freeze or boil. Energy to burn. And refill in a few minutes. And the car would be 540kg lighter, half a ton!
————
So why not use all this ‘free’ energy to make our own oil? Brilliant. Why sequester when we can pull CO2 out of the air and beat nature at its own game?
All we need are millions of windmills and billions of solar panels. Then you will have nett zero petrol, like nett zero wood chips. And no need for everyone to get very heavy short range electric cars.
Use oil to store energy.
210
Indeed.
Use the “free” energy of wind and solar to extract CO2 from the air plus electrolyse water to make H2 then react to make the hydrocarbon fuel of your choice.
Naturally, a huge amount of energy is required to reduce CO2 to C, the opposite of oxidizing C to yield energy. But the wind is free….
Main reactions for CO2 + H2 are:
1) CO + H2O
2) CH4 + H2O
3) CH3OH + H20
BTW, it was the National Socialists that taught the modern day socialists that the wind was free.
http://en.friends-against-wind.org/realities/how-renewables-and-the-global-warming-industry-are-literally-hitler
70
I wonder what the energy conversion ratio is, ie, energy in vs % out.
10
TdeF:
I have an alternate idea. Convert brown coal into HYDROGEN and other gases. While the politicians are drooling over The Magic Dragon Hydrogen use them to make diesel fuel. (Standard technology Fischer-Tropf). Indeed we have a pilot plant in Gippsland making hydrogen to export (how?) to Japan.
Far cheaper than the vast scheme to use solar to make hydrogen, convert it to ammonia for shipping to the World. As I mentioned recently I’ve been reading about The South Sea bubble which was a fraud based on a nonsense but along with that there were over 100 other scams which lacked even any creditability at all. Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) latter satirised them with a scheme for storing summer sunshine in cucumbers.
110
It’s all parody. Brown coal with the water squeezed out has the same calorific value as black coal. The fantasy is that we must bury the element carbon and throw away the energy in the CH bonds. There is absolutely no science fact in this hatred of prehistoric carbon atoms or any valid logic in nett zero. But the fact is that energy production is never debated by real scientists, it is dictated by the UN and lickspittle politicians and business executives. And in the Post Modern world, the truth is of no consequence. It’s a TickTok, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Wikipedia world. Consensus science. We are even told this is real science.
I just loved the idea that the best way to store wind and solar was as new oil. Johnathan Swift would have approved. More irony than a foundry.
130
There are parallels from 300 years ago to current policies.
First there was the Mississippi boom in France which inspired the South Sea scheme, which got underway as the French system started to collapse. Based on the economic ideas of John Law who came to be in charge of the moribund French economy and who believed in unlimited credit. His shares rocketed up helped by a flood of banknotes although his company has genuine profit making parts (Tobacco monopoly, Indian trade, tax farming) as well as his proposal to settle Lousisiana (and Arkansaw).
One bit cought my eye, he abolished over 100 internal tariffs, charges and regulations, along with numerous positions in the “public service”. Food became cheaper, transport easier and quicker and the economy boomed. It seems no-one needed An Inspector of Tongues (cattle) nor numerous officials (charging fees) at various Canton boundaries.
80
My namesake was the accountant under Louis XIV and his son a famous playwright, expatriate Irishmen and religious refugees.
However Law’s problem was the total lack of liquidity in his schemes, exactly like current crypto currencies. The values of notes and shares skyrocketed and then collapsed as they were based on pure speculation and unjustified optimism and a runaway market (sound familiar?). Our current banking systems have mandated liquidity but it was not a concept then. So Law’s breakthrough idea of an economy run only on intrinsically worthless paper promises did not work. It was another 300 years before gold could be removed from the US dollar.
What really brought France undone in 1789 was the money Louis XVI spent on supporting the American revolution (1775-1783), a debt which was never repaid. And the climate in France changed, cold and dry and the crops failed, widespread starvation. What people today would call Climate Change long before anyone blamed every single weather event on CO2 and fossil fuels.
50
The debt absolutely was repaid … the French supported the American Revolution, and then the Americans supported the French Revolution in return.
Sometimes it can be a good idea to fine print on these deals, especially when karma is involved.
30
The situation is even worse than these numbers indicate because the contemplated system is a perpetuity. We will have the ongoing costs of its maintenance and replacement in perpetuity. These costs probably exceed national savings. Thus, even if by hook or crook we manage to build this fantasy system, it becomes an albatross weighing us down financially forever.
110
The Green solution is more albatrosses.
90
It’s like putting up more sail when there’s no wind.
100
Mining the materials to manufacture these batteries, disposal, and other environmental problems such as space required, is a great a problem as the high prices. It is all too stupid to even contemplate.
100
Nett Zero is too stupid to contemplate. Humans might weigh 80kg but they output 3ton of CO2 per year or about 250tons in a lifetime, so humans like every living thing as not nett zero. And since 1900 the human population has increased x8 but CO2 has only increased by 50% in 250 years. Nothing about man made CO2 increase makes sense, apart from being provably a lie by direct measurement.
If CO2 is not man made, if increased CO2 is just the vapour pressure of slightly warmer surface water, the whole story is the biggest scam in human history, run by the power hungry UN/EU/China.
One thing is certain. No one is asking questions in parliament. No one is allowed question man made Climate Change aka Global Warming aka extreme weather events.
230
“the biggest scam in human history, run by the power hungry UN/EU/China.”
Well, who will come out best? The BRICS? China and India run on coal, Russia exports gas and oil, Brazil runs on hydro and is building gas plants as fast as they can..
It may be that we’re just living in the wrong country, the world will still go ahead but the West won’t.
40
You are assuming that “they” need batteries that will cover the needs of the **current** population of the USA.
According to the Georgia Guidestones, the “Elites” believe that a “sustainable” Earth population is around 500 million, which is 16 times less than today.
Assuming that each continent is “allowed” to have a diminishment of the same ratio as all other continents, the amount of batteries for the USA is also then diminished by 16x.
So America will only need about 1 trillion in batteries … and behold … the latest congress spending bill had 1 trillion for “Green Energy” (which “they” said was “sufficient”, which means “they” know that the population of the USA will diminish to that planned on the Georgia Guidestones).
92
This was all solved in Douglas Adams’ HitchHikers Guide to the Universe with SHIP B.
They included telephone sanitizers. Unfortunately all the remaining elites died from a terrible disease caught from telephones.
150
They might discover that it’s difficult to collect enough federal revenue while simultaneously killing off the tax donkeys.
I doubt this has been well planned … bits of it no doubt have been outlined in advance but there never has been a working vision of how the heck socialism is gonna work … because it doesn’t work.
60
“If wind and solar developers were required to include the batteries needed to make their projects reliable, none would ever be built.”
Well, not completely true. In Korea, any solar project over 1MW is required to have batteries. This was implemented to give the Korean battery industry some projects to show that their stuff works. As a positive side effect, the electricity from these ‘large’ solar projects is not as fluctuating as in other countries. Indeed more reliable.
40
At what cost??
40
Daily Insolation varies in South west USA from about 8kWh/m² to 3kWh/m² between summer and winter. So the simple all-renewable answer is diurnal battery storage with about 3x excess in PV installation – size it for winter power production. Electricity from grid scale pv is this area currently costs about $0.03/kWh, so over-building by 3x would at worst increase that to $0.09/kWh, though more realistically you could use the summer excess to make hydrogen and provide energy storage for some portion of winter deficit or multi-day solar shortfalls, or synthetic fuel and fertilizer production.
Wholesale electricity prices in USA are generally about 0.03-0.04/kWh, Europe more like $0.05-0.06, both are only a small fraction of retail domestic prices that are typically a factor of 3-5x higher – would have little impact on electricity cost to consumers.
In short it is not unaffordable, though a little more expensive than current.
18
Foyle:
Add in the cost of desalination (9 tons of water for 1 ton of hydrogen) from excess??? water in the SW deserts. Also allow for the efficiency of hydrogen production (62%), storage of hydrogen and inefficiency of converting hydrogen back into electricity.
80
That comment is the perfect blend of basic true facts, scientific jargon, gobbledegook and fantasy world economics. Just enough to make it sound plausible to the greater majority of the population. It’s the sort of content that is probably in the briefing papers for our Minister of Energy, Chris Bowen.
131
The mention of wholesale prices, not the actual costs to users, is also a giveaway.
50
AGAIN using the OWI Data chart we find that the GDP per capita for the world was $5952 in 1970 and by 2018 it had increased to $15212.
That’s about 2.6 times in about 48 years, so the UN estimate by 2070s is entirely feasible.
BTW we shouldn’t forget that the global population in 1970 was just 3.7 billion and about 7.6 billion in 2018.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020
51
The King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project (KIREIP) provides a glimpse of what’s achievable in renewable energy.
And as at 12.19pm, wind 379kW, solar 55kW, diesel 808kW, battery (239)kW – 1.5 MWh capacity, 2.45 MW of wind generation and 470 kW of solar PV were installed.
70
Alas Robber by 12.34 pm Diesel 60% +, Wind 19% and Solar 1%, battery ZERO.
110
Mid summer, midday 70% diesel power.
150
It should be illegal to quote the power output of solar or wind plant on the basis of its nameplate.
It shouldn’t even be legal to quote the output based upon capacity factor i.e nameplate x CF because that is still not what is deliverable.
It should be rated on the same basis as a proper power station and that is what it can continuously deliver. And the only way solar and wind plant can deliver continuously is if backed by its own battery.
Of course, such an honest rating would make solar and wind infeasibly expensive, even by the low standards of its proponents.
201
Lithium-ion battery pack prices, which were above US$,200 per kilowatt-hour in 2010, have fallen 89% in real terms to US$132/kWh in 2021. https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-fall-to-an-average-of-132-kwh-but-rising-commodity-prices-start-to-bite/
51% of the total cost in the cathode, which is usually a lithium compound. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/
Lithium supply has been on an exponential growth trajectory but lead times are slow (6-15 years). Australia has the largest market share: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-25-years-of-lithium-production-by-country/
There are several options for the next generation of battery cells, solid-state electrolytes seem to be the most promising option.
019
At any conceivable realistic price, even one tenth of the present cost as pointed out in the article, they are infeasibly expensive.
And there is no problem of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming in any case.
220
Simon there’s no climate emergency or crisis or existential threat, just look up the data.
AGAIN why is the climate so safe today and why did the Industrial Rev lead to an incredible change for everyone today?
Deaths from extreme weather events have dropped by 95% over the last 100 years and yet the population has increased by over 6 billion people at the same time.
The entire delusional fairy tale is just more BS and fraud and we need to build more BASE-LOAD power stns ASAP and ignore their UNRELIABLE, TOXIC S & W disasters forever.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
170
Here’s the OWI Data deaths from all natural disasters including Earthquakes etc and you’ll note the very low numbers today as the global population has boomed.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/natural-disasters
90
Simon, where are people in Developing Countries going to get power from when not even Western countries can afford the required battery backup to make unreliables work?
160
Problem is, it is still really really expensive.
60
Still a total and absolute WASTE OF MONEY.
Coal and gas are far cheaper, far more reliable, and cause far less environmental damage.
Batteries are only needed to cater for the erratic inconsistency of wind and solar.
And the storage needed to do that, under any circumstances, is horrendously expensive, and totally unwarranted.
50
Now PF, why didn’t you use the 2022 BNEF report.. that shows lithium battery prices rising to $151/kwh 😉
https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/
60
Oh, and what fuel do they use for all this new lithium mining ? 😉
50
The “lower” battery prices are for Chinese batteries Simon. For batteries such used by Tesla, the prices have substantially increased.
80
What are the overwhelming advantages of Lithium-based batteries for stationary storage applications? Weight and volume shouldn’t have much of an effect.
Is it:
discharge/charge rates?
ability to handle deep cycling?
discharge cycles?
Charge leakage rate?
Availability?
Marketing?
Something else?
30
Simon, Batteries will never be the solution no matter how “cheap” you think they might get.
The Hornsdale power reserve in South Australia was the world’s largest battery when it was installed in 2017 – Elon Musk was pleased. But this “huge” power reserve only provides the city of Adelaide about 8 minutes of backup (194 MWh at 150 MW). Adelaide is a city of 1.4 million.
So think about larger cities and the need for hours not minutes of backup – hence why others have pointed out there isn’t enough lithium in the earths crust.
Smaller batteries for homes are too expensive. Even if the costs could be reduced to $2,000 per average home that is too high and they won’t guarantee power 24 x 7 anyway.
We know schools and universities have brainwashed out young to think batteries are the solution. This doesn’t change reality.
20
Plus, all the human costs of things like child mine labour and destruction of health for them, and the environmental costs. Of course the cost of zero, actually negative, economic growth cannot be calculated. Even now the opprotunity costs of this madness are adding up every day.
130
Also, unreliables are too expensive and too useless for developing countries and yet the UN and World Bank won’t fund proper power stations for these countries.
Unreliables only survive in developed countries because there is still enough proper coal, gas, nuclear and real hydro to back them up. Developing countries have no such backup.
I guess it’s part of the Left’s depopulation strategy to keep Developing Countries undeveloped due to lack of electricity so they keep a high level of sickness and disease to keep the population down.
140
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/105573/is-cobalt-the-electric-car-s-dirty-secret
40
Conveniently your cost data ceases in 2021. Costs have risen since then. We should use latest data instead of that which supposedly supports ones view.
See below
https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/
The cost of battery storage that will be absolutely essential if the mass delusion of Net Zero continues, and even with the figures here they are still, as Jo points out, off the charts.
But the real delusion is why are we even pushing for an astronomically expensive storage method that will require mind blowing amounts of material to be dug up and processed. Where is the climate emergency that the lunatics keep on predicting but never comes? If a tipster gave me a run of duds at the races I would cease having anything to do with him or her, but for the Climate possessed any numnber of dud predictions does not matter – they still believe…
120
Actual economically mineable deposits have to be explored for, found (maybe) and assessed before they can be mined. If they exist in sufficient quantity.
General ignorance of geoscience is absolutely astounding. And it remains completely static.
90
Think this was meant as a reply to Simon in 27. And you are correct – lithium prices rose substantially in 2021, and its price is still going up.
60
Is there even enough lithium and cobalt in the world to make all the batteries?
I doubt it.
140
Or salt? There’s been a lot of hype about sodium ion batteries recently
31
No. Recent videos have clearly shown this would be impossible.
50
They never factor in the price of batteries when they tell you how cheap a solar farm is, which makes it a complete joke.
Reminds me of the guy who wanted to build an off-grid house without batteries to save costs. I don’t think it was possible.
70
A proper off-grid scheme was recently costed in The Australian as more than $80k, more likely over $100k. Robber commented here in April 2019 about a small off-grid system that would supply 40 kWh, peak output 6kW, average output 1.7kW, on a good day, for around $40k.
62
Reliability is the other main issue with present generation battery technology. You only get a few thousand charge cycles and the battery slowly goes down in capacity until it’s unusable.
They also catch fire now and then as demonstrated in both Australia and the USA.
As a consequence you can expect those costs to be a lot higher once replacements are factored in. Very difficult to explain to the current generation of rather disinterested management. Would be nice to know what they are really thinking about because it sure ain’t science and engineering.
70
The true surreptitious intended ‘transition’ has been staggeringly successful.
Millions, if not billions, have already been staggered.
And it only took few with billions to do it.
These staggered are currently called conspiracy theorists by those lacking the intellectual and intestinal fortitude to believe their own eyes and ears.
Our first mistake was the sanitizing of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. (Replaced by Drag Queen Story Hour at your public Library?)
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/16764/why-were-the-grimm-fairy-tales-sanitized
Can we even say fairy tales anymore?
Certainly not fairy tails.
Except at Drag Queen Story Hour.
50
The point is NOT to have a reliable electric system. Here’s my recent take on the subject in a City Journal article: https://www.city-journal.org/climate-activists-push-electrification-and-degrowth
80
Well said Jonathan.
And in the most Orwellian sense possible, “electrification” really means “de-electrification.
It looks like Paul Erlich, the Club of Rome and their successors such as the UN and WEF, including agents* the WEF have embedded in Western Countries, have won.
*WEF Forum of Young Global Leaders.
https://www.younggloballeaders.org/
20
This is no surprise to any moderately informed person. But sadly, very few people are even moderately informed on how much power is required to firm intermittent wind and solar. This includes global markets, superannuation funds and traders. The names Blackrock and Vanguard are complicit.
Ask any young person how we can run the country on renewables and they will say simply use batteries. But there is nothing “simple” about it let alone possible on the enormous scale required.
Gigawatt hours is the key metric. Living in Australia I regularly check the NEM Widget before sunrise – link below. If 80% of Australians did this 80% of Australians would be less naive.
Also kudos to TonyfromOz. Reading Tony’s comments on Jo’s site years ago made it very clear.
https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/reneweconomy/
40
Shouldn’t all climate alarmists be wearing masks to absorb the CO2 they are exhaling? They could then recycle it to beer or soft drink manufacturers.
50
I am not going to drink that beer.
00
As has been pointed out numerous times, if experiments with unreliables on Flinders Island and King Island in Bass Strait, both with a population of 2000 or less, show that wind and solar cannot be sustained without batteries or a proper diesel generator, what hope is there for the mainland?
70
Plenty of hope. Just listen to Chris Bowen who knows all about this stuff. A mere 22,000 solar panels a day and 40 wind turbines a month and bob’s you’re uncle. He did mention a bit about batteries but in today’s world where even Friedenberg mentioned the financial game has changed and debt no longer matters much, anything is possible when dollars no longer matter. That is the concept seen around the West now. Just look at Biden’ USA with $32T debt plus another $1.7 added.
Just shows really how dangerous traditional media has become as a vital part of the governance system. Forget research and challenging your profit sources and extreme leftist governments we now get. Science doesn’t matter. Economies don’t matter. Demands to trust the verified untrustable. Propagandised graduates, stripped of logical thought, or expression of it. Medieval demands to believe witchcraft.
Power and profits at the people’s expense rule the day for governments and big business. You will not drain this cesspool with logical argument. You will be cancelled instead.
10
Simon and other anti- science bloggers should watch Mark Mills demolish their so called S & W energy and it only takes a few minutes of their time.
In fact all energy sources have limits and of course the very dilute TOXIC S & W lunacy is a disaster.
Unless we want to see more slave and child labour used to source and manufacture these very dirty types of energy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqppRC37OgI
30
I think there is a hidden agenda being run by the World Enslavement Forum. While the virtue signaling useful idiots parrot the green nonsense the WEF wants economic collapse to occur.
20
Aloha! Maybe I overlooked it but is there a link to the Ken Gregory breakthru study on US battery storage? I would like to see where and how Ken Gregory gets his cost numbers from. Was there a link to the study?
00
These are the figures the government, the masses, and CSIRO promote:
“a CSIRO study, the regulator said wind and solar generate power at less than $90 per megawatt-hour, even when the cost of transmission lines and backup storage was factored in.”
“A new black or brown coal-fired power plant was more expensive, costing at least $90 a megawatt-hour, and up to $140, it said. When carbon capture and storage was included, to neutralise a plant’s carbon emissions, the generation cost ranges up to $300 a megawatt-hour.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/falling-cost-of-renewables-creates-coal-test-for-federal-government-20210701-p585xq.html
00
Aloha! I have a link about that same CSIRO study that does not include cost of transmission lines. Is the Sydney Morning Herald credible? It seems not as the Herald had no link to the CSIRO study either. Here is the quote from the study.
These two leading Australian scientific research groups have found that the cost of new wind and solar power sources – even with hours of storage – are unquestionably lower than the cost of new coal generation.
When I see the word “unquestionably” an automatic red flag flies into the atmosphere! Reimagine a science study that uses such words! That is the opposite of real science.
Here is the link: https://evergen.energy/csiro-and-aemo-study-finds-renewables-cheaper-than-coal/
In order to be credible there needs to be links to any study so we can all inspect the study. Links to media sites that provide no links is just another “disinformation” campaign.
Also here is a link from the CSIRO stating that hydro coal seam fracking has little to no impact on air or earth. NOte: THIS IS REAL STUDY LINK NOT A GE SAID SHE SAID LINK!!!
REAL STUDY LINK: https://gisera.csiro.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Water-12-Milestone-7-final-report.pdf
Still waiting for the “engineer Ken Gregory breakthrough study” link! Does it exist?
00
If politicians really cared about energy costs (which they largely don’t of course), they would have required all generators to produce continuous reliable power within a defined range. So, yes, the wind and PV glory boys would have had to have contracted with coal (or nuclear) generators and/or raced off to K-mart for a train load of batteries.
00