Posted on 12/15/2023 5:29:42 AM PST by MtnClimber
It’s the question that must always be front and center in your mind when you read anything generated by advocates of energy transition as a supposed solution to “climate change”: Is this just rank incompetence, or is it intentional fraud? (The third possibility — reasonable, good faith advocacy — can generally be ruled out in the first few nanoseconds.). As between the options that the advocate is completely incompetent or an intentional fraudster, I suppose it would be better to be merely incompetent. However, often the misdirection is so blatant that it borders on impossible to believe that the author could be so stupid as to actually believe what he or she is saying.
So let’s apply this inquiry to a piece that has come to my attention in the past few days.
From euronews.green we have a piece from November 12 with the headline “Powered by wind and water: The Canary Island proving it is possible to run on renewables.” The byline is Lauren Crosby Mendicott. Ms. Mendicott announces the exciting news that one of Spain’s Canary Islands, El Hierro, has recently reported that it ran its electricity system entirely on wind and water power for 28 consecutive days. Excerpt:
The smallest of the Canary Islands has achieved a record of only using wind and water power for 28 consecutive days. . . . [T]he 1.1 million-year-old volcanic island is on route to being 100 per cent energy self-sufficient through clean, renewable sources. Its 10,000 inhabitants and local government are equally committed to the sustainability of the island.
Wow, that’s great! But OK Lauren, tell us more. If the system ran on just wind and water power for 28 days, what happened on days 29, 30, 31 and thereafter? Can we expect that with just a few tweaks the system can get to running 365 days a year on its wind/water system without fossil fuel backup? Or is it in fact nowhere close to that goal? Unfortunately you will not find any information on those subjects in Ms. Mendicott’s piece.
As readers here know, I have been somewhat focused on the El Hierro project for several years, because it is the closest thing in the world to an attempt to build a demonstration project to show that wind power combined with energy storage can create a fully-functioning electricity grid without fossil fuel backup. I have had numerous pieces over the years dealing with the results of the El Hierro project, most recently this one on September 30, 2023. My conclusion from the data available at that time:
The Gorona del Viento project (wind turbines and a pumped storage reservoir) on El Hierro Island off Spain fails worse and worse every year.
The El Hierro system has wind turbines and energy storage from a pumped hydro system with nameplate capacity seemingly well in excess of peak electricity usage on the island. So theoretically they should have no problem getting all of their electricity from the wind/storage system — right? And yet, when you look at their annual data, somehow they only seem to average about 50% of annual electricity from the wind/storage system. Sometimes it gets to 70% or so for a few months, but then at other times it drops back to as little as around 30%. When I visited the Gorona del Viento website back in September, I found data for what it claimed as hours of operation on “100% renewable” generation for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 — and nothing thereafter. For some reason, they had stopped reporting these data after 2020. The numbers were 2300 hours in 2018, 1905 in 2019, and 1293 in 2020 — a rather precipitous ongoing decline. Given that there are 8760 hours in a non-leap year (24 x 365 — likely beyond Ms. Mendicott’s math skills) these numbers represent shockingly small percentages of the annual operation of the system, declining from 26.3% in 2018 to only 14.7% in 2020 (a leap year with 8784 hours).
Going back to the Gorona del Viento web site today, I find the same figure of 1293 hours of “100% renewable” generation for 2020, and no subsequent data. Maybe those data are lurking somewhere in the Spanish-language portions of the site where I can’t find them. But somehow I think that if they had some great news to report on that subject, it would be front and center.
El Hierro is blessed with a rare near-perfect site for a pumped-storage hydro facility, with a volcano rising nearly straight up from the sea and a big crater on the top to store the water. Here is a picture of the shoreline, with the mountain rising nearly perpendicular out of the water:
And yet, despite having such a rare near-perfect site for a large pumped hydro storage facility, the El Hierro system does not have nearly the energy storage needed to provide full-time electricity from the wind/storage system. It would need to multiply its storage capacity by at least an order of magnitude to come close to 100% electricity from this system. Meanwhile, most of its electricity comes from a backup diesel generator — a fact nowhere mentioned in Ms. Mendicott’s piece.
So, is the piece mere incompetence, or intentional fraud? Several factors would seem to give strong support to the inference of intentional fraud — failure to mention the diesel backup at all; failure to mention the number of hours in each recent year where the diesel backup had to be called into activity to keep the lights on, and whether that number of hours was trending up or down; failure even to consider how much energy storage would be needed to enable the system to operate full time without the diesel backup, and whether there are any plans to provide that amount of storage or at what cost. Is it possible that someone could write a piece on this subject without even being aware of these issues? You be the judge!
Math is white supremacy and, therefore, RACIST.
BOTH.
Planned.
The question is are we being driven by evil or stupidity? IMO, stupidity wins hands down.
Actually, the reason is gross ignorance reaching a consensus level.
Generally, the left is gullible for the simple reason it is taken as a whole just plain ignorant. The poorly educated Chicken Little is believed.
Incompetence is intentional fraud. No difference.
Manhattan Contrarian ping
Ms Medlicott’s bio lists her main journalistic interests as human rights, social justice, human trafficking and modern slavery.
Is the title a trick question?
Two islands. Good for them. Now do Pennsylvania.
I am not the sharpest tool in the shed but the recent passed actions of the left points in only one direction. It is a conspiracy and is intent on destruction of everything that this once free and Godly nation stood for. Only a complete idiot would believe otherwise. Is it possible to reverse? Is it a foretaste of the endtimes as presented in scripture and therefore ordained by a loving God? Or is it the signal that God is ready to make judgement on man for belief or unbelief in His Son and Savior? I am poised to go rather than stay but I will be obedient in my commitment to serve him as best I am able no matter where and what He desires of me. I have been blessed all my life! Thanks be to my Perfect Father in heaven. Thy will be done, not mine.
I am not the sharpest tool in the shed but the recent passed actions of the left points in only one direction. It is a conspiracy and is intent on destruction of everything that this once free and Godly nation stood for. Only a complete idiot would believe otherwise. Is it possible to reverse? Is it a foretaste of the endtimes as presented in scripture and therefore ordained by a loving God? Or is it the signal that God is ready to make judgement on man for belief or unbelief in His Son and Savior? I am poised to go rather than stay but I will be obedient in my commitment to serve him as best I am able no matter where and what He desires of me. I have been blessed all my life! Thanks be to my Perfect Father in heaven. Thy will be done, not mine.
I mention this because Oxygen is nearly as reactive. Its chemical power is confirmed every time a match is lit. How did such a reactive element become 21% of our atmosphere? Plants . Because of the persistence of plants releasing oxygen into the air , we now take for granted the very air we breath . Huge deposits of iron oxide from the distant past reveal the long term effect of plants releasing oxygen. They simply pumped out enough so that the things that could react were saturated.
Those same plants take in the CO2 animals breath out and any other source of CO2. Plants have become so efficient at it that only .06% of the air is CO2. Earth is between two planets with CO2 as the dominate gas and yet it here on Earth it is relatively rare!
Obviously Mankind has added more CO2 but is it a problem plants can't handle? NASA did studies and found the world is a greener place because of all this extra CO2! Plants obviously are not quick to use it but their persistence always wins in the end . If they weren't you would not be breathing oxygen right now.
Canada’s green fund is being used a Slush fund for the people that run it
“A large pumped hydro storage facility”?
I’ve wondered about this before.
Amazon sells water turbines.
How much energy does it take to run an air conditioner on a hot summer night?
Can these water turbines provide enough energy?
What would be the physical size of a water tank to power a house through the night?
How many square feet of solar panels would I need to refill the water tank from a second water tank?
As someone who installed decentralized solar and battery storage (solar for me, not making the grid dependent on solar), I asked all of those questions for my situation. And I can tell you that for the lifestyle my wife and I have it'd be infeasible to be 100% energy independent (go off-grid). At best the goal can be to minimize how much power you pull from the grid (in our case 19% of our power we needed the past 365 days had to be pulled from the grid, the other 81% of our power was made in-house). At this point I've run into the law of diminishing returns -- trying to be more energy independent would cost me more money than it saves me.
And even with all of that, I still need a dependable grid. Not just for me (the 19% of the power I buy, mostly in the winter), but for all of the products and services I depend on (i.e. grocery store, hospital, gas station to pump the gas we buy for what little we drive the ICE pickup, etc.). The idea that we could be completely off fossil fuels is nothing but commie fantasy.
As far as water for energy storage goes, I don't like it. Both for myself and for grid storage. That adds too many mechanics to the equation to require maintenance. If my goal was to make my home off-grid even in the winter, I'd spend less money and have less maintenance just adding to my solar array (and charge controller capacity) to get more goody from the sun on dim lit winter days (enough to store in the batteries to get through the night), than it would cost me to add water storage to store energy from the warm half of the year to hold until the winter half. As it is now, I like the fact that in my entire solar system the only moving parts are the fans in my inverter/charge controllers. That would change if I added a water pump and water turbines. However I'd be open to implementing water turbines if I had a regularly flowing creek or pond drainage with enough flow and head -- might as well utilize what's already flowing on your property.
But even with all of that, you have to be in an optimum situation for it to work (i.e. I live in Alabama where we get lots of sun, and most of our power consumption is running the A/C in the summer which is when we get even more sun, and I have an unshaded place to put solar panels pointing south, and I plan to be in the same place for at least 10 years to accrue enough energy savings to be worth the costs, and my appliances were old enough to warrant replacing them with energy efficient once as I converted my two natural gas appliances to electric, etc.). No one should do solar unless they first assess their situation and needs to see if it's right for them.
Thanks Tell It Right.
I live in Los Angeles on a 1 acre lot with small trees.
I’d like to build horse stalls with the solar on top.
I don’t want batteries until they get the fire situation under control.
I could power my house by day with solar, but the night time is still hot in the summer.
Los Angeles is 28 cents per kilowatt hour
Alabama is 11.4 cents per kilowatt hour
My wife is nearing retirement and I love my neighborhood.
I’m looking for ways to cut our expenses.
These are treehuggers. No need to choose. Most likely both.
For example, in Alabama I paid an actual 16.1¢/kWh. That's because there's the standard rate 12.4384¢/kWh had a fuel rate rider added to it per kWh (to offset the power utility's fuel costs when Brandon makes natural gas costs go up after Obama made the power company shut down a coal plant and switch over to making power with "clean burning" natural gas, but I digress). Then there's a 4% state tax on top of that. End result is in the past couple of months, for each extra kWh I pulled from the grid I added 16.1¢.
Here's the catch: the power statement doesn't state the fuel charge. All we have stated is the total kWh pulled that month and the total charge, the 4% tax, and the total amount with tax. I have to derive on my own how much the actual per kWh rate is by first subtracting the flat monthly fees (which are stated on the utility's web site) plus 4% tax on those. Any dollar amount left I count as usage charge. Divide that by kWh pulled from the grid and I get the real per kWh rate. I advise you to go through the same steps to get a true cost per kWh so you can see if it's worth going solar. It may be more than 28¢/kWh.
As far as battery fire risk goes, I simply added to my homeowner's insurance payout (including the rebuild of the garage where the batteries are). Frankly, I was embarrassed that I didn't address increase cost of my home (and how much it'd take to replace it) over the years until I added onto it with solar (which would make rebuilding the home cost more). And I was frank with my insurance man that I was adding solar and batteries (batteries to the garage). My insurance premiums went up for the increased replacement value (most of which is just increased value of the home over the past 17 years, but some was for replacement cost of solar equipment too), but there's no rider to add to my insurance premium for solar/battery fire hazard.
Another word of advice is don't bank on selling power to the grid. If you wind up selling power to the grid to make a little money, fine (in fact I've been doing that for a couple of months). But always be willing to switch it off if regulations change to make it unfavorable (i.e. a high monthly fee to participate in the power buyback program but little money paid to you in return). That means you have to have inverter(s) with the feature to turn off the grid sell. It also means that your math for your system paying for itself can't be dependent on selling power to the grid (aww shucks, I thought it'd pay for itself in 8 years now it'll be 15 years, I wish I hadn't done solar). In other words, make decisions today so that you're always the one with the final say of exactly how you'll interact with the grid -- don't let the bureaucrats be the one in control.
Bonus points if you have inverters like mine that have a separate circuit going to the grid from the one that goes to your electrical panels. This means when the grid goes down, my inverters won't put power to the grid (and be a danger to linemen working on downed power lines) but my inverters will still power my home. Without that feature, when the grid goes down your inverters have to shut off power to your electrical panels automatically -- you won't have power to your home even if you have plenty of solar and/or battery storage.
Another thing to look at is how sunny your weather is when you need power the most. Here in north/central Alabama (near Birmingham), in the winter when it's really cold (cold to us, not to my relatives up north) it's almost always sunny. In other words, most of the time I need lots of power for heating the home I have it made free for me. The rainy/drizzly winter days in which I don't get free solar tend to be mild temperature days (bummer I pull from the grid on those days, but at least it's not much). The same for the hot days and nights in the summer (rainy days are days I don't have to run the A/C a lot because the temp is mild -- but the hot days are sunny and I have plenty of free power). This weather pattern is part of the math that makes my solar system win on the averages.
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