Add The Wall Street Journal To The People Who Can't Do Basic Arithmetic

Let’s face it, lots of people aren’t very good at math, even rather basic math. On the other hand, some people are quite good at it. If you aren’t very good at math, there are plenty of other things for you to do in life. My own field of law practice mostly does not require much skill at math, and there a plenty of math-challenged people who are nevertheless very good lawyers.

But some big societal decisions require a certain level of math competence. Some of these decisions can involve multi-hundreds of billions of dollars, or even multi-trillions of dollars. For example, consider the question of whether proposed electricity generation system X has the capability to deliver the amount of electricity a state or region needs, and at the times it is needed. Answering this question is just a matter of applied basic arithmetic. Given the dollars involved, you would think that when a question like this is being addressed, it would be time to call in some people who could do the arithmetic, or who at least would be willing to try.

Yet when the issue is replacing generation of electricity by fossil fuels with generation by “renewables,” it seems that the need to believe that the renewables will work and be cost effective is so powerful that all efforts to do the arithmetic get banished. I last considered this issue in a post last week titled “California’s Zero Carbon Plans: Can Anybody Here Do Basic Arithmetic?” The answer for the California government electricity planners was a resounding “NO.” Today, the Wall Street Journal joins the math-challenged club with a front page story headlined “Batteries Challenge Natural Gas As America’s No. 1 Power Source.” (probably behind pay wall)

The theme of the story is that “renewable” energy sources, such as solar, paired with batteries to balance periods of low production, are rapidly becoming so cheap that they are likely to “disrupt” natural gas plants that have only recently been constructed:

[T]he combination of batteries and renewable energy is threatening to upend billions of dollars in natural-gas investments, raising concerns about whether power plants built in the past 10 years—financed with the expectation that they would run for decades—will become “stranded assets,” facilities that retire before they pay for themselves. . . . But renewables have become increasingly cost-competitive without subsidies in recent years, spurring more companies to voluntarily cut carbon emissions by investing in wind and solar power at the expense of that generated from fossil fuels.

To bolster the theme, we are introduced to industry executives who are shifting their investment strategies away from natural gas to catch the new renewables-plus-batteries wave. For example:

Vistra Corp. owns 36 natural-gas power plants, one of America’s largest fleets. It doesn’t plan to buy or build any more. Instead, Vistra intends to invest more than $1 billion in solar farms and battery storage units in Texas and California as it tries to transform its business to survive in an electricity industry being reshaped by new technology. “I’m hellbent on not becoming the next Blockbuster Video, ” said Vistra Chief Executive Curt Morgan.

But how does one of these solar-plus-battery systems work? Or for that matter, how does a wind-plus-battery system work? Can anybody do the arithmetic here to demonstrate how much battery capacity (in both MW and MWH) it will take to balance out a given set of solar cells at some particular location so that no fossil fuel backup is needed? You will not find that in this article.

Here’s something that ought to be obvious: solar panels at any location in the northern hemisphere will produce less power in the winter than in the summer. The days are shorter, and the sun is lower in the sky and consequently weaker. Therefore, any system consisting solely of solar panels plus batteries, where the batteries are seeking to balance the system over the course of a year, will see the batteries drawn down continuously from September to March, and then recharged from March to September. Do batteries that can deal with such an annual cycle of seasons even exist? From the Journal piece:

And while batteries can provide stored power when other sources are down, most current batteries can deliver power only for several hours before needing to recharge. That makes them nearly useless during extended outages. . . . Most current storage batteries can discharge for four hours at most before needing to recharge.

OK, then, so if solar-plus-battery systems are about to displace natural gas plants, what’s the plan for winter? They won’t say. The fact is, the only possible plans are either fossil fuel backup or trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of batteries. But the author never mentions any of that. How much fossil fuel backup? That’s an arithmetic calculation that is not difficult to make. But the process of making the calculation forces you to actually propose the characteristics of your solar-plus-battery system, which then makes the costs obvious. How much excess capacity of solar panels and batteries do you plan to build to minimize the down periods? Do you need solar panel capacity of four times peak usage, or ten times? Do you need battery capacity of one week’s average usage (in GWH) or two weeks or a full month?

The simple fact is that wind/solar plus battery systems would not need any government subsidies if they were cost effective. The Biden Administration is proposing to hand out many, many tens of billions of dollars to subsidize building these systems. They are clearly not cost-effective, and not even close. But no one in a position to know will make the relatively simple calculations to let us know how much this is going to cost. Even the Wall Street Journal can’t seem to grasp the math involved. And President Biden? It’s embarrassing even to ask the question.

There is a health issue with solar panels nobody is talking about.
Cadmium Bloom.
You think asbestos is toxic? It only screws with the lungs.
Cadmium bloom screws with every organ in your body and is a KNOWN carcinogen.
Ask your local “expert” on solar panels about cadmium bloom.
You will get a blank stare.

Look how well it worked for solyndra!

From planning to ground breaking to facilities installation to manufacturing production to bankruptcy all in one year!

And it only cost a 1/2 a billion dollars!

That there’s some good governmenting

And what did the FBI do with the files they confiscated???

when the wind farm could not keep up with demand.

First off, wind is not a farm. Farms are generally self sustaining, and a wind mill only produces when there is wind. Otherwise it is a waste of money, time, and effort.

Secondly it was the grid that couldn’t keep up and rather than destroy the grid, it was shut down, until the utilities were able to regroup.

Thirdly I’m going to step out and blame federal agencies and their regulations attempting to require energy companies to comply with unsustainable so called renewable sources for power generation that cannot keep up with demand 24 seven 365. That is the real power grid, and anything contributing to that grid must pass the test of 24 7 365 or it cannot be a part of the grid.

Government regulators do not see it that way, but if we fail to see reality, we are doomed. For over ten years power generating companies have had to work around this stupidity coming out of DC, and they have pretty much reached the limit of work around.

This doesn’t even begin to address the need for commercial power. It’s difficult enough to generate simple power for homes.

Obvious answer:

Money. It’s very profitable. Look at Musk, who would otherwise have my support.

The emotional needs of the masses merely buttresses the support needed by the politicians pushing this BS.

It’s clearly working, in contrary to normal intelligence.

Hence my unique euphemism for the stupid masses, “normally intelligent.”

The article rightly points out the real limitation of intermittent power sources; ie, there is no storage technology capable of replacing baseline power generation backup. All the wind and solar put together will not lead to the retirement of one fossil fuel generating plant, given present technology. If solar power supplies ten % of power supply, all that means is that the coal, nuclear and natural gas generation can be dialed back by 10%. Maybe some day there will be the long promised technological breakthrough— storing heat in molten metal eg. But technology “under development” is no use when the lights go out.

I am doubtful about the claimed costs of “renewable” energy. When there are subsidies and credits for manufacturers and purchasers of this energy generation equipment, how do you know what the real cost is? When you need backup generation capacity for when it is cloudy or when the wind is not blowing, is the cost of the duplicate generating capacity included in cost estimates?

nothing is cheaper than a mix of solar, wind, and natural gas.

Coal is still the cheapest means of electrical power generation.

The fact that gigawatts of coal power generating plants have been closed before they were obsolete, is not my fault or necessarily the fault of those being driven to it by Government.

You can deny reality, but somewhere along the line reality bites. We the people have basically allowed coal to be driven out of business. Now ask yourself why?

In favor of gas, a much more price volatile fuel that requires pipelines? When pipelines are now out of favor.

Oh the web progressive idiots weave. I could go on for hours, when the PUC’s Public Utility Commissions nation wide should be making efforts to rid the USA of such thinking, that will literally destroy us as a productive nation, and open us up to conquest by others more attentive to reality.

All of this stuff that appears nonsensical is anything but. It is of the greatest importance from a National Security standpoint.

Anyone that believes Airplanes will be flying, ships will be sailing, and trains running on time without fossil fuels is in full denial of reality. There needs to be a penalty for such thinking that isn’t coming out of the hide of those who understand the reality.

I feel myself ready to engage full KING/TYRANT mode.

“Coal is still the cheapest means of electrical power generation.”

At the most basic buying raw coal is still cheaper. Last year you could get a million BTU from $1.90 of coal or $2.40 of natural gas.

But you only need to add in transportation costs for NG to come out ahead. Pipelines are much cheaper than trains.

On the price side, you can sell your power for more if you are running an NG plant with more efficient load following.

Like ENRON’s Ken Lay discovered, an “energy company” can make billions (for a short time) IF that “energy company” says the right things to politicians and the business-political press corpse about the press corpse’s latest feel-good trends and desires.

It was, after all, ENRON who “invented” the carbon trading schemes for manipulating energy futures markets of over 30 trillion annually. And those carbon trading schemes REQUIRE that carbon futures be threatened/mandated into scarcity to create the market!

I am surprised though that even in the power industry there are few if any (publicly available) spreadsheets or calculator-web-pages with even basic input criteria (latitude, elevation, local climate (daily clouds and rain, dust, pollen, humidity, annual storm and clear day and partially cloudy day frequency) vs daily power requirements.

So, amongst the Free republic regulars, who carries the power-global warming-industrial capacity ping list?

Nuclear energy technology has changed significantly. Compared to solar it should be a no-brainer. Natural gas and nuclear generate the lion's share of AZ's electricity now. I don't see that changing appreciably in the next 10 years. Right now natural gas generates 7 times the amount of renewables and nuclear 6 times the MWh. Making renewables a quarter of the electricity production in 10 years doesn't work mathematically.

With a net summer capacity of 3,937 megawatts, Arizona's Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is the largest nuclear power plant, the largest net generator of electricity, and the second-largest power plant by capacity of any kind in the nation.

Natural gas, nuclear power, and coal provided 88% of Arizona's utility-scale electricity net generation in 2020.

France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear energy. It is safe, reliable, and clean. The environmental Nazis reject nuclear period. It is the true test of whether someone is really interested in the environment or has a political agenda. Look at Merkel. Natural gas (Nordstream 2) and keeping coal are still acceptable. Reality is a bitch.

Merkel rejects bringing forward Germany’s exit from coal

Even in the most northern states power consumption is lower in the winter. AC is almost always electric, while most homes are heated by oil or natural gas.

So. with the fact that De Blasio is trying to ban all new natural gas hookups in NYC, and calling for the same state-wide, new pipelines are being fought and canceled, how’s that going to work in 10 years or so?

And with natural gas so much cleaner than fuel oil, how long will oil heating even be allowed?

“Why are we pushing an energy ‘’solution’’ that doesn’t work?’’.

Because of the simple beauty of the noise it makes.

Honestly, the Left’s insanity has not only infected them it’s starting to effect everything every where.

The whole country is becoming Looney Tune Central.

I fully agree nuclear is safe, reliable, and good for the environment. Closing existing plants is one of the dumbest things we could do. The challenge is it’s awfully expensive to build new ones.

For countries without abundant natural gas like, France and China, they can make sense, but the economics do not work in the US today.

That might change in future, but renewables and battery storage continue to get cheaper relative to nuclear.

Not sure where to start. I have no clue what the cost of NG transportation is by pipeline. I’m also sure it isn’t free.

Pipelines are sized, and at the moment out of favor. An example would be the NG pipeline serving where I live. The size of the line is smaller than needed for gas to be the primary source of energy. The size of the line is barely adequate to support the small turbine plant it serves much less the city it is in. Ironically a much larger Coal fired plant within the same City, also too small to serve the entire city, was shuttered a few years ago years before it was due for closure.

Speaking of primary sources, one source is dangerous two sources are better, but multiple sources would be the preferred ideal, and until a breakthrough that we are as yet unfamiliar with, Wood, Coal, NG, Oil, Hydro, and nuclear should be competing with one another for the right to exist as a primary source of energy or heat. All so called renewables should be gasping for air as they attempt to get the public interested in what is basically a scam without the tax incentives and subsidies they enjoy.

There are very valid reasons for Wind and Solar energy production, but very small scale. Not the be all and end all progressive folks want them to be as a means to eliminate fossil fuels altogether. To call what progressive’s do in the scheme of energy production, thinking, would be insanity on the part of realists.

An energy mix is important, but in 2021 the mix that works is Natural Gas + Solar + Wind. Here is the new installed capacity in 2020:

Even the most pro-coal and nuke governors look at the math and can't make the numbers add up for those sources. The other three are so much cheaper.

It's far from just tree-hugging blue states that are making these decisions:

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