I do want to point out the natural gas price swings in New England are much higher because of a multi-decade fight against gas transmission lines into the area. New England is woefully short on gas transmission capacity.
What is the point of describing increasing weather related damage to our grid infrastructure? New England states’ push to increase reliance on electricity while promoting weather-dependent unreliable ‘green’ electricity sources is insanely counterproductive and wastefully expensive. The vast gas reserves in PA should be used to power gas generating plants here while building out more nuclear for long-term lower cost reliable low-carbon electricity. But NY has banned any new gas pipelines transiting their boundaries preventing New England from accessing the lowest cost source of reliable electric generation. Why are our politicians not actively trying to reverse New York’s stranglehold on our region’s legitimate needs? We currently depend on vastly more costly LNG supplied by tanker ships from Caribbean ports.
it is remarkable to me that the political leadership believes this is the way to go. at some point, I would estimate they will no longer be the political leadership, but the question is will it be too late to save the region from the virtually certain problems they are creating?
doomberg likes to say that in the battle between physics and platitudes, physics is undefeated. otoh, platitudes and pie in the sky seem remarkably attractive for short term politics.
Many of htese local politicians have some kind of relationship with WEF. I have to wonder if they're getting some form of direct payment or perhaps campaign support or some such.
Undoubtedly true, and in fact documented. The lock-step obedience to patently absurd policies is very reminiscent of the Covid economic & social destruction ones. Not just payments but also threats, as those who voiced opposition to the Covid policies were subjected.
The top 10-25% of earners/wealthy can probably take this in their stride, however the majority of the population cannot. This is very divisive and will lead to social unrest.
There are a couple of other possibilities. First, one could change the model of ownership. The grid could become a colossal public utility owned by the Federal government and paid for through taxes which would hide its costs from the ratepayers in taxes, modern monetary theory perhaps, and inflation.
I suppose its possible to ration electrical power to what is affordable. A person pays about $1,250 per kWhr using a "AAA" alkaline battery. We don't talk about affordability of this power source because we use it sparingly, only as needed.
There are terrible disadvantages to these views of electrical energy, but when has government considered anything like disadvantages to the general public in any policy they adopt?
Republicans and moderate Democrats should run on a platform of "we will do net zero, but will immediately halt if bills increase by $100 per year, and spend no additional money without a plebiscite"
Radically change the debating ground from net zero vs nothing to "why is the other guy criticizing my pledge to not increase your bills without your approval?"
Issac and Mitch, you know I always admire your analytical skills but this seems a little low to me. There is so much to think about and some of the stuff you need to get close to 100% doesn’t exist (NY’s DEFR or long term storage) it is hard to do accurate costing. Anywhere above the 45th parallel solar is pretty useless. You’d need so many excess panels to charge batteries that it becomes untenable. If you think like a grid operator, that you need to meet demand every minute of every day it changes your assumptions. Three snowy windless days can cause trouble.
my other thought are on the NE grid. The are at about 14% wind and solar now. Getting to 30% is relatively cheap and easy then the grid runs out of capacity and every new generation source interconnection requires massive upgrades that nobody wants to pay for and take forever to build. California has been stuck at 30-35% since 2018. No viable solution in sight that doesn’t involve billions and take decades. I get a good laugh out of carbon free by 2035.
Hi Lee, great to hear from you. We used VERY generous assumptions for import capacity from hydro Quebec and other tie lines and allowed New Hampshire to build more gas plants that saved a lot of new wind and solar capacity from needing to be built.
Energy Bad Boys, this is all very useful to contemplate. Thanks for your continuing efforts.
I have looked at this problem in a couple of ways for my neck-of-the-woods, the balancing area called PACE. Average demand in PACE is in the neighborhood of 8-9 GW and a lot of it is coal and natural gas supplied thermal plants. Solar and wind are growing quickly, and if a person is to believe integrated resource plans (IRPs) all thermal resources will be gone by 2037.
I looked just at the year from November 1, 2022 to October 31, 2023 as an example. I scaled solar and wind up according to their current ratio of nameplate rating to meet yearly demand, and then investigated how much storage one would need to avoid running out of power with a 20% reserve. It turns out to be 250 hours of average system demand.
There is no way to provide this with pumped hydro because there aren't the topographical opportunities, the water, and the public are unlikely to put up with damming so many rivers. In fact, folks in the region are trying to rid us of hydro.
That leaves battery storage as the only option and using Tesla mega pack sorts of prices the requisite cost runs to near $900 B-for billion. I can probably trade one capital asset for another in hopes of optimizing the cost, but one needs to guarantee reliability too. There is undoubtedly a lot of uncertainty in these estimates, but it all points to unacceptable costs.
People are broadly unaware of the amount of storage required, the tremendous overbuild required, and the scale of capital investment needed to accomplish this -- never mind the lack of other resources to do it. The numbers are huge and people have trouble grasping them.
Thank you and well done EBBs. Here in the UK the electorate is still being promised cheaper bills through expanding use of wind and solar. The worst of it is that it appears the policymakers may actually believe it. The old and prudent advice is that if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. For policymakers, the solution is bigger shovels.
It's not just that it will cost more [anyone will pay more for quality, etc..], but that it also does not work!!! The technology has not fully evolved and will not deliver as advertised. Will it ever??
Mitch Rolling teamed up with Jonathan Lesser to look at the same issue on the opposite coast, the Pacific Northwest. You can see their resulting report for the Discovery Institute in Seattle at the URL "reasonable.energy". Oregon and Washington have already enacted laws prohibiting CO2 emitting resources by around 2040 and Oregon also prohibits nuclear energy. As you would expect, the costs are enormous, as in New England.
Another great article. Seems incredibly irresponsible at minimum, but more importantly it seems incredibly dangerous for society to try and go green and net zero. The policy makers must live in a Teflon bubble since they are still employed.
A technical comment/question: I see this a lot - Batteries included in generation and described in terms of GW. Batteries store energy, they do not generate it. They certainly must be included in the total system cost. Seems batteries should be described in terms of energy stored (MWh etc.) and not power. Would appreciate anyone adding insights, helping to understand this better.
Yes batteries need to be rated in terms of their power output as well as their energy storage. The above analysis is just looking at the capacity end of the problem. You also have to address the energy end, which especially includes wind, solar, hydro & batteries. Also gas can be a problem in winter in regions due to its high use for building heat. And of course wind, solar & hydro being seasonal as well as intermittent. And all 3 peak in the Spring typically when energy demand is minimum.
So a much more complex & difficult analysis is needed to evaluate the costs of integrating all that solar/wind/battery storage. And that will require even higher costs than those mentioned.
I do want to point out the natural gas price swings in New England are much higher because of a multi-decade fight against gas transmission lines into the area. New England is woefully short on gas transmission capacity.
What is the point of describing increasing weather related damage to our grid infrastructure? New England states’ push to increase reliance on electricity while promoting weather-dependent unreliable ‘green’ electricity sources is insanely counterproductive and wastefully expensive. The vast gas reserves in PA should be used to power gas generating plants here while building out more nuclear for long-term lower cost reliable low-carbon electricity. But NY has banned any new gas pipelines transiting their boundaries preventing New England from accessing the lowest cost source of reliable electric generation. Why are our politicians not actively trying to reverse New York’s stranglehold on our region’s legitimate needs? We currently depend on vastly more costly LNG supplied by tanker ships from Caribbean ports.
it is remarkable to me that the political leadership believes this is the way to go. at some point, I would estimate they will no longer be the political leadership, but the question is will it be too late to save the region from the virtually certain problems they are creating?
doomberg likes to say that in the battle between physics and platitudes, physics is undefeated. otoh, platitudes and pie in the sky seem remarkably attractive for short term politics.
Many of htese local politicians have some kind of relationship with WEF. I have to wonder if they're getting some form of direct payment or perhaps campaign support or some such.
Undoubtedly true, and in fact documented. The lock-step obedience to patently absurd policies is very reminiscent of the Covid economic & social destruction ones. Not just payments but also threats, as those who voiced opposition to the Covid policies were subjected.
The top 10-25% of earners/wealthy can probably take this in their stride, however the majority of the population cannot. This is very divisive and will lead to social unrest.
either that, or a massive outmigration from the states
There are a couple of other possibilities. First, one could change the model of ownership. The grid could become a colossal public utility owned by the Federal government and paid for through taxes which would hide its costs from the ratepayers in taxes, modern monetary theory perhaps, and inflation.
I suppose its possible to ration electrical power to what is affordable. A person pays about $1,250 per kWhr using a "AAA" alkaline battery. We don't talk about affordability of this power source because we use it sparingly, only as needed.
There are terrible disadvantages to these views of electrical energy, but when has government considered anything like disadvantages to the general public in any policy they adopt?
Republicans and moderate Democrats should run on a platform of "we will do net zero, but will immediately halt if bills increase by $100 per year, and spend no additional money without a plebiscite"
Radically change the debating ground from net zero vs nothing to "why is the other guy criticizing my pledge to not increase your bills without your approval?"
Issac and Mitch, you know I always admire your analytical skills but this seems a little low to me. There is so much to think about and some of the stuff you need to get close to 100% doesn’t exist (NY’s DEFR or long term storage) it is hard to do accurate costing. Anywhere above the 45th parallel solar is pretty useless. You’d need so many excess panels to charge batteries that it becomes untenable. If you think like a grid operator, that you need to meet demand every minute of every day it changes your assumptions. Three snowy windless days can cause trouble.
my other thought are on the NE grid. The are at about 14% wind and solar now. Getting to 30% is relatively cheap and easy then the grid runs out of capacity and every new generation source interconnection requires massive upgrades that nobody wants to pay for and take forever to build. California has been stuck at 30-35% since 2018. No viable solution in sight that doesn’t involve billions and take decades. I get a good laugh out of carbon free by 2035.
Hi Lee, great to hear from you. We used VERY generous assumptions for import capacity from hydro Quebec and other tie lines and allowed New Hampshire to build more gas plants that saved a lot of new wind and solar capacity from needing to be built.
So
Fantasy
It’s is apt
Energy Bad Boys, this is all very useful to contemplate. Thanks for your continuing efforts.
I have looked at this problem in a couple of ways for my neck-of-the-woods, the balancing area called PACE. Average demand in PACE is in the neighborhood of 8-9 GW and a lot of it is coal and natural gas supplied thermal plants. Solar and wind are growing quickly, and if a person is to believe integrated resource plans (IRPs) all thermal resources will be gone by 2037.
I looked just at the year from November 1, 2022 to October 31, 2023 as an example. I scaled solar and wind up according to their current ratio of nameplate rating to meet yearly demand, and then investigated how much storage one would need to avoid running out of power with a 20% reserve. It turns out to be 250 hours of average system demand.
There is no way to provide this with pumped hydro because there aren't the topographical opportunities, the water, and the public are unlikely to put up with damming so many rivers. In fact, folks in the region are trying to rid us of hydro.
That leaves battery storage as the only option and using Tesla mega pack sorts of prices the requisite cost runs to near $900 B-for billion. I can probably trade one capital asset for another in hopes of optimizing the cost, but one needs to guarantee reliability too. There is undoubtedly a lot of uncertainty in these estimates, but it all points to unacceptable costs.
People are broadly unaware of the amount of storage required, the tremendous overbuild required, and the scale of capital investment needed to accomplish this -- never mind the lack of other resources to do it. The numbers are huge and people have trouble grasping them.
Thank you and well done EBBs. Here in the UK the electorate is still being promised cheaper bills through expanding use of wind and solar. The worst of it is that it appears the policymakers may actually believe it. The old and prudent advice is that if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. For policymakers, the solution is bigger shovels.
It's not just that it will cost more [anyone will pay more for quality, etc..], but that it also does not work!!! The technology has not fully evolved and will not deliver as advertised. Will it ever??
Great article, and thanks for the link to my article towards the bottom!
Mitch Rolling teamed up with Jonathan Lesser to look at the same issue on the opposite coast, the Pacific Northwest. You can see their resulting report for the Discovery Institute in Seattle at the URL "reasonable.energy". Oregon and Washington have already enacted laws prohibiting CO2 emitting resources by around 2040 and Oregon also prohibits nuclear energy. As you would expect, the costs are enormous, as in New England.
Another great article. Seems incredibly irresponsible at minimum, but more importantly it seems incredibly dangerous for society to try and go green and net zero. The policy makers must live in a Teflon bubble since they are still employed.
That is the point: increase costs that go into 'green' company pockets by using government force. A$$holes.
New England trying hard to be like Old England
They will eventually freeze 🥶 to net zero population. Someone must be an adult and tell them the good news: global warming is a scam Man!
A technical comment/question: I see this a lot - Batteries included in generation and described in terms of GW. Batteries store energy, they do not generate it. They certainly must be included in the total system cost. Seems batteries should be described in terms of energy stored (MWh etc.) and not power. Would appreciate anyone adding insights, helping to understand this better.
Hi Fred, all of our battery capacity assumptions assumed four hours of storage. We put the number in GW to show their maximum potential output
Yes batteries need to be rated in terms of their power output as well as their energy storage. The above analysis is just looking at the capacity end of the problem. You also have to address the energy end, which especially includes wind, solar, hydro & batteries. Also gas can be a problem in winter in regions due to its high use for building heat. And of course wind, solar & hydro being seasonal as well as intermittent. And all 3 peak in the Spring typically when energy demand is minimum.
So a much more complex & difficult analysis is needed to evaluate the costs of integrating all that solar/wind/battery storage. And that will require even higher costs than those mentioned.
Can someone please do this study just for California?