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NorrisM at 04:59 AM on 17 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
michael sweet @ 49 and nigelj
I actually just came back on this site to reread the Arcus article on Xcel Energy before I post a question to Hartley on the Curry website (in between having to do some real work) so this helps as well.
However, for a fascinating discussion of the problems of nuclear power in the US related to cost overruns, I highly recommend that you and Nigelj read the comments of Beta Blocker on the blog following the Hartley article. He has 35 years experience in building nuclear power in the US and describes what has gone wrong with the projects in Georgia and South Carolina (I think I have the right states). Another blogger on that site, Peter Lang, suggests that new nuclear power could be installed for 10% of the costs of the projected $25 Billion one of them will cost to complete if government regulations were to be reduced. Beta Blocker blows this guy completely out of the water. I am not sure where Beta Blocker is on whether nuclear power makes any sense now. I would have to go back and reread his comments. But anyone who has the slightest interest in nuclear power should read what Beta Blocker has to say. For this reason alone, I am glad that Curry posted the Hartley article (you will see I am not using the term "paper"). I think the bloggers use the term "essay".
Unfortunately much of the blog on Hartley goes off onto a discussion of nuclear power. I want to get Hartley's views but I am also going to see if Beta Blocker will comment on the Abbott papers.
Moderator Response:[DB] Mr Lang had a history here of unsupported assertions and sloganeering, when he chose to participate here. The Burden of Proof was onerous for him in this, a moderated forum.
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william5331 at 04:18 AM on 17 January 2018Study finds that global warming exacerbates refugee crises
It must be difficult to separate the influence of climate change from the influence of the destabilization of Eastern countries by incessant wars, more often than not caused by America. For instance, how do you evaluate the situation in Yemin with regard to refugees. America is fighting a proxi war there, using the Saudis. It is a very hot dry region but how has the exodus of refugees changed since the beginning of that war. The war in Iraq led to the formation of ISIS as the Americans in their wisdom forbade anyone who had been a baathist from participating in the government. Since even to be a dog catcher, you had to belong to the party, this eliminated anyone of tallent and sent them into the arms of radicalism. How do you separate climate change refugees from war refugees. Incidentally, the so called Conservation Agriculture (see Montgomery, Growing a Revolution) would go a long way to mitigating the effects of greater floods and stronger droughts as it stores water in the soil when it is available for use during the dry.
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michael sweet at 22:03 PM on 16 January 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #2
Norrism
I am interested in yyour opiion as a lawyer.
My understandinng is that if Exxon lies to their customers and the general public they are allowed to say whatever they want because of freedom of speech.
If they lie to their stockholders about how AGW affects their market value that is fraud and they can be legally punished.
It seems to me that the basic rule is you can lie to fool customers and hurt the public but you cannot lie to investors about their money.
What do you think?
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michael sweet at 21:57 PM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Norrism,
I read a little more of the Hartley paper. He chooses a wind only model for renewable energy. Then he finds that an enormous amount of storage is needed. This is a deliberate choice to maximize the amount of storage, and cost needed for renewable energy. I have referred you to at least 8 renewable models. Show me one that uses wind only with no solar power. Honest people search for the lowest cost solution, not the highest cost one. Since Texas has great solar resources the only reason not to use solar is to make renewable energy more expensive.
Wind and solar complement each other. There tends to be more wind at night and more solar during the day. Solar is also more consistent in the summer while wind is better in the winter. By using only wind Hartley requires much more storage to supply all energy. If he used a model of half wind and half solar he would dramaticaly reduce storage and the cost of renewable energy.
This is a deliberare choice I am surprised that you doubt Jacobson's detailed model where he counts all the generators needed in every state while you accept a contrived model like Hartley which details nothing. Hartley has ignored all the research on renewable energy to make his predetermined conclusion.
Hartely knows that his model is absurd, that is why he does not submit it for peer review. His blog was written for deniers to use on the web, no serious person would consider it. It is written in a scientific style to fool the uninformed. It speaks volumes that Curry posted it on her site. She has no excuse for posting such contrived garbage.
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NorrisM at 16:14 PM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
michael sweet @ 38
I have to agree that the Hartley article puts up a straw man in the form of pumped storage but he clearly acknowledges what he is doing. In the first part of the article Hartley notes that he decided to use pumped storage costs as a measurement of storage costs because it was the only viable one given the much higher costs of battery storage. See bottom page 11. He later acknowledges that there are a "limited number of sites ... suitable for storage" at page 17.
I think why he provided the estimate in note 18 on page 23 that a carbon tax of $10/tonne is equal to a tax on natural gas of $0.53/MMBTU is to make the point that natural gas is cheaper even with, say, a $30 Carbon tax which would only equate to $1.59/MMBTU. Pumped storage does not really come into his model unless the assumption is made that you completely exclude natural gas from consideration.
But if the Xcel Energy quotes are correct which shows wind alone at around $0.018/kWh, then his Table 4 is incorrect in that wind does not even come into the picture in combination with natural gas in Table 4 even when natural gas prices are assumed to be 4.5 times the present price.
I think I might contribute a comment on the Curry website asking this question as to why some mix of wind and natural gas is not considered given the quotes for wind alone referenced in the Xcel Energy article by Christopher Arcus.
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NorrisM at 15:12 PM on 16 January 2018Electric Cars are the Missing Link to a Zero Carbon Energy Grid
Bob Loblaw @ 37
Thanks. I have saved the instructions for next time so hopefully no pictures required. :)
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Riduna at 14:26 PM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Nigelj
"Reserves of lithium are probably larger than we realise" . . . . . Yes, and the largest deposits appear to be in Australia!
That said, it is fair to note that aluminium is far from a scarce product and what little has leaked out indicates that it could offer far higher storage than lithium. Research in this area is being kept very hush-hush, as are other alternatives such as zinc-air or flow batteries.
It seems likely that within a decade most households will have access to batteries which enable them to be 24/7 self-sufficient in electricity generated by roof-mounted solar panels. Grid scale generators would then be meeting the needs of the business and public sectors and heavy industries/transport, with continuity of supply provided by pumped hydro and battery storage.
Where do you think the future lies?
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ubrew12 at 14:04 PM on 16 January 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #2
Exxon has been yelling "No Fire!" in a crowded theater (with no exits) that is, in fact, on fire. Therefore, I claim the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater that is not, in fact, on fire.
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John Hartz at 13:55 PM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Suggested supplemental reading...
German power sector: coal and nuclear down, renewables up in 2017 by Graig Morris, Energy Transition-The Global Energiewende, Jan 11, 2018
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John Hartz at 13:53 PM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Riduna:
Lots of scanning and speed reading.
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Riduna at 13:47 PM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
michael sweet
This article from ANU scholars may be of interest. It refers to 22,000 mostly coastal sites suitable for development of pumped hydro. At present only 7 sites have been surveyed in detail and, so far, only 3 (Spencer Gulf, South Australia, Snowy 2, New South Wales and at Kidston, Queensland ) approved for and being developed.
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wili at 13:31 PM on 16 January 2018Study finds that global warming exacerbates refugee crises
See for example: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa00e
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wili at 13:03 PM on 16 January 2018Study finds that global warming exacerbates refugee crises
Good points, nigel, especially about night time temperatures, and we all know that GW effects those most strongly. I also wonder if in some places the humidity levels are also exacerbating the problems with mere livability.
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Bob Loblaw at 12:52 PM on 16 January 2018Electric Cars are the Missing Link to a Zero Carbon Energy Grid
NorrisM:
You need to linkify the link within the comment box before submitting. Otherwise it is just more text.
Type in some text (either the link itself, or text you want displayed in place of the link). Select it with the mouse. Click on the "Insert" tab above the comment box. In the new set of pictures that appears as menu choices, click on the one that looks like a chain link or infinity symbol. A dialog box opens up. Put the link/URL into the text box labelled Link URL. Click on "insert".
If you haven't already selected some text before opening the link dialog box, it will have two text boxes to fill. One for the text you want displayed, one for the actual link. You will need to put something in both boxes. Then "insert".
If this doesn't make it clear, I will try to create some pictures.
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Riduna at 12:01 PM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
John!
How do you find these things?
Nice to see Queensland still leads the way with number of installations (parochial gloat!) though domestic battery uptake has been a bit slow. Many consumers are waiting for an improvement on the Tesla II offering and I don’t think they will have much longer to wait
Total capacity of domestic rooftop installations in Australia now exceeds 6 GW.
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nigelj at 11:10 AM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Riduna @39
I agree advances in batteries will inevitably improve the technology, and reduce prices. Two known prototypes are solid state lithium batteries and aluminium batteries. This will make electric cars a very attractive option indeed, and greatly help solve the climate problem. I just saw a Tesla model X parked down the road, an amazing looking machine.
But a warning: I'm a born sceptic or everything. The tesla battery in Australia is 100 mw, and is reputed to have cost $50 million. That is seriously expensive storage, that would need to drop considerably to be applicable as general bulk storage. Right now it works cheaper than starting up gas plant for small power outages, but becomes uneconomic for large outages of more than one hour.
Both lithium and aluminium are also limited resources. Some estimates have us running out at current rates of use well before the end of this century. Numbers I have seen suggest there is plenty for hundreds of millions of electric cars, and one estimate was one billion electric cars.
However use of lithium or aluminium as bulk power station storage would be another thing, that would use very large quantities of lithium. The following picture gives an idea of the size of the tesla australian battery instillation. It's huge.
I think pumped hydro would have to be cheaper than batteries, where the geography suits this approach and land is available. The various technologies that convert electricty to gas etc would probably be cheaper ,and use more abundant resources.
But of course its all speculation. Reserves of lithium are probably larger than we realise, and experiments show it can be mined from sea water.
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NorrisM at 09:36 AM on 16 January 2018Electric Cars are the Missing Link to a Zero Carbon Energy Grid
John Hartz
Copy and paste did not work for a url. Can you again direct me to where the instructions are to provide a link? Thanks.
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NorrisM at 09:33 AM on 16 January 2018Electric Cars are the Missing Link to a Zero Carbon Energy Grid
This is an interesting article on the scarcity of cobalt for batteries for electric vehicles.
Moderator Response:[DB] Hyperlinked URL.
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John Hartz at 09:31 AM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Good news from Down Under...
Powering up: rooftop solar installations jump by half to hit record 1GW in 2017 by Peter Hannam, Envoironment, Sydney Morning Herald, Jan 16, 2018
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michael sweet at 09:07 AM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Riduna,
I am interested in the sites you mention near sea level. Are they pumped storage or tidal energy? I know the tides around Darwin can be very large. If you have a link to an article I would like to read it. There are parts of Australia that have very few people so coastal areas can be used for projects that cannot be done elsewhere.
15 years ago no-one thought that batteries would be as good as they are today. Hopefully this will be an area where scientists discover remarkable new technology. I think electricity to gas (either hydrogen or methane) looks very promising.
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Riduna at 08:36 AM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
michael sweet
Thank you for your contributions. I should have made it clear that my comments are influenced by the current position in Australia where over 20,000 coastal sites have been identified as suitable for pumped hydro. Although many of these sites could be threatened by rising sea levels, ad-interim they offer the best way of ensuring continuity of electricity supply during periods when renewable sources are unable to generate.
However, I remain confident that battery technology will make significant advances over the next decade and that those developments will result in greater capacity and lower cost of battery storage. This is likely to make battery storage a major source of back-up for renewable generators in the 2020’s.
A problem is that advances in battery technology are, for commercial reasons, seldom publicised. For winners in the race to produce the cheapest, highest capacity, most durable battery, the prizes are immense, hence the pressure to be first offering a great advance. I would certainly expect such an offering to be commercialised by 2025 but would not be in the least surprised if it appeared in 2020.
Whatever the time-scale, there can be little doubt that advances in battery storage will prove key to reduced use of fossil fuels for both electricity generation in displacing use of fossil fuels for all forms of transport.
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nigelj at 07:34 AM on 16 January 2018Study finds that global warming exacerbates refugee crises
The article talks about impacts of high temperatures on agriculture. I wonder if people are also just tired of the extreme heat. Syria average summer temperature is 30 degrees. It could be part of the reason for the migration.
Related article: “How Australia’s extreme heat might be here to stay”
www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-42657234
“While it is record-breaking that tends to make news, scientists say it is the unbroken run of hot days in the high 30s and 40s that causes the significant problems for human health, and other life.”It’s not being able to cool down at night, and in the days that follow, that causes problems,” he says. (Death rates spike during heatwaves)
“I was camping in the Blue Mountains [west of Sydney] on Saturday night. It was about 30 degrees at midnight, and I could feel my heart racing. Now, that extra stress on my cardiovascular system didn’t kill me, but it might have if I was 20 years older.”
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nigelj at 07:10 AM on 16 January 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #2
"Exxon Ramps Up Free Speech Argument in Fighting Climate Fraud Investigations"
It's hard to see where they are going with this, or why they think it would work. The Supreme court has long recognised that commercial speech is not fully subject to first amendment rights. (Refer "First Amendment to the United States Constitution" Wikipedia).
It just looks like a desperate defence from a company with big problems. A company that allegedly hid a lot of things from shareholders and the public.
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william5331 at 04:54 AM on 16 January 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Climate change may have added to the problem of oceanic dead zones but the primary cause is the export of Nitrogen from our farm lands via our rivers into the oceans. Witness how the major dead zones are at the mouth of rivers. The wide adoption of the so called Conservation Agriculture would hugely mitigate nitrogen pollution while keeping this valuable and expensive nutrient on the land where it would be a fertilizer instead of a pollutant. The best explanation of Conservation Agriculture I have seen is the book by Prof Mongomery, Growing a Revolution
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michael sweet at 00:29 AM on 16 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Riduna,
According to Jacobson et al (2015), there is approximately 22.2 GW of installed pumped hydro in the USA. Jacobson proposes building no additional pumped hydro storage. New dams (for both regular hydroelectric power and pumped hydro) are one of the most flexible and useful sources of power or storage. The consensus of most observers is that the ecoloogical and social damage from building the lake is not worth the usefulness of the dam. It is virtually impossible to get locals to move so that a new dam can be built anywhere in the USA. There is talk of removig existing dams.
The amount of total existing hydro in the USA is enough to provide about 3% of power in 2050. Pumped storage is only a small percentage of needed back up for renewable wind and solar. In Jacobson's plan, storage of solar thermal power and concentrated solar power is about 600,000 MW while all hydro is about 90,000 MW.
For 2050, if pumped storage is the "best" method of storage please provide a reference that states where all the storage and receiving lakes can be built, and their cost.
Hartley's blog piece claims using pumped sotrage as the primary method of storage of all power in the USA. This amount of pumped storage would greatly exceed the capacity of any concievable pumped storage lakes that could be built. Since locals would refuse to move, it would be impossible to build even 10% of the capacity Hartley claims to use. His analysis can be dismissed out of hand because it is impossible to build the storage he claims to use.
In addition, pumped storage is much more expensive than alternate methods of energy storage. His cost analysis is a straw man based on a method that is too expensive to use.
While pumped storage is useful, it cannot be the primary means of power storage in a future renewable energy system. Hartley has proposed a straw man to support his claim that renewable energy is too expensive. Serious proposals use alternative methods of energy storage.
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Daniel Bailey at 00:27 AM on 16 January 2018It's not bad
"there's no mention of Daniel Bailey's article about ice ages"
Out of curiosity, what is this supposed article that I wrote? While I've written a variety of articles published in this and other venues, I don't recall writing one on that topic.
Link citations are best.
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Eclectic at 16:53 PM on 15 January 2018It's not bad
Agreed, David — should any "ultra-low probability" harmful global cooling happen to rear its head in the year 4000 AD or later . . . then we can easily use Plan B , which is the digging up & burning of 50 Gigatons of coal (we know it's easy, because we've already done that very thing several times over, during the past 100 years ! Easy-peasy !
However, right now and for the next couple of centuries, the only intelligent thing we can do — is use Plan A , which is the quick-as-we-can elimination of fossil fuels. Not quite such an easy achievement, but well within our capabilities over the next 5 decades.
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Riduna at 16:43 PM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
NorrisM @ 22
The URL I was given is
file:///Users/michaelpope/Downloads/SA%20battery%20ops.html
It appears to work OK for me.You are right about bulk storage – that is storage to replace prolonged outage caused by failure of a generator for a day or more. That role is best served by pumped hydro
Peaks in demand lasting several hours are addressed by Peaker Generators (gas or pumped hydro) but for immediate sub-second/second response, batteries of the type used in South Australia are the best way of maintaining grid frequency.
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NorrisM at 14:15 PM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
michael sweet and nigelj
More reading! Will definitely read the Connelly paper assuming it is not paywalled. Also plan to look at the comments on Climateetc on Hartley because if this draft paper (article) it is so far off the mark then I have to confess a little disappointment with it appearing on the Curry website.
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NorrisM at 14:09 PM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
saurerj @ 34
Thanks. It makes sense that to get to MW/h you would multiply by 1000 and divide by the number of hours in a month. So the conversion factor is 1.37. I will see if Google can confirm mo means month. A little frustrating that the chart would not use the same measurement.
This would mean Combustion Turbine (Gas Turbine or GT) proposals were at around $0.0657/kWh which does mean that the GT bids were higher than the wind and solar and battery storage which were at an average of $0.0306/kWh. On the other hand, the Hartley article quotes an assumed cost of $0.0390/kWh.
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David A at 13:29 PM on 15 January 2018It's not bad
Thanks for the response Ec! I'm no expert, so I'm just going by what it says in other articles on this site that conclude there is a chance that global warming has prevented an imminent ice age. I would align myself more to the views made in the articles on this site, I think anyone emphasising a 'zero' scientific probability is not thinking with proper scientific scepticism. I agree with you that the correct preventative measure is man-made global warming though.
Moderator Response:[JH] You are merely cherry-pickking to support your pre-determined conclusion. This tactic impresses virtually no one. In addition, you are skating on the thin ice of excessive repetition which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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sauerj at 11:38 AM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
NorrisM @ 30
"... help me with a conversion of $/kW-mo to $/MWh". ... I assume 'mo' = 'month' which, on average, contains 30.4375 days (365.25/12) or 730.5 hours (I'll round this to an even 730 hours). Therefore, converting by 'canceling units' would be as follows:
$1/kw-mo x (1000kw/1mw) x (1month/730 hrs) = $1.37/MWh, or
$1/MWh = $0.730/kw-mo
But, if my assumption of 'mo' is not month, then my numbers are wrong. So, double-check my numbers by Googling or other cross-check.
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michael sweet at 08:51 AM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Norrism:
I find it interesting that you found the Hartley opinion piece (it is not a paper since it has not been peer reviewed) at Curries blog. It shows the lack of quality that she posts.
You are correct about ERCOT. It is still too small an area to compare electricity in ERCOT to all power in the entire USA.
Natural gas can easily be manufactured from CO2 and electricity. Connolly et al (2015) describe converting all power to renewable electricity and natural gas. They then manufacture all the gas from CO2 and renewable electricity to get all renewable energy by 2050. The gas is the storage. I am thinking of writing a summary of Connolly for SkS. One key point: they get 100% power from renewables at a reasonable cost and use a completely different method than Jacobson. This shows that there are many pathways to 100% renewable power. I found Connolly relatively easy to read. Often I skip the details and read only the abstract and conclusion which are not as technical (I read all of Connolly).
Jacobson uses hydrogen gas as his primary storage. He stores additional heat in a variety of mechanisms that are less efficient. Jacobson does not like natural gas because he feels the pollution during combustion is too great. Natural gas is also less energy efficient, but it can be directly used in existing equipment.
I doubt that conventional batteries will ever be able to store the amount of energy required for the world. There are other methods of storing energy. The link Nigelj has from Wikipedia is a good place to start. It is generally cheaper to convert the electricity to some other form than to build giant batteries. The final storage mechanisms are the key to a renewable power system. Jacobson and Connolly have shown that multiple solutions exist.
I have not done the conversion. Try Google. Think Progess says the wind and solar bids are the cheapest energy in the USA. They will be underbid this year by new renewable energy bids.
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nigelj at 05:37 AM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Norris M @30
You are inquiring about electricity storage. The following is an excellent overview of all options written in plain language. As you can see there are many options. "Grid energy storage" on wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage
Please note that in addition to batteries and pumped hydro, there are systems that convert electricity to stored liquid fuels, flywheel systems, hydrogen storage etc.
Right now gas fired makes sense as backup power because its the cleanest, and obviously you decommission coal and oil fired power first. This might leave 10 - 20% of the grid being gas as you point out.The grid thus moves towards renewable sources and some gas fired.
Eventually the remaining gas fired is replaced partly or completely with storage, whether pumped hydro or converting electricity into stored liquid fuels. By the time we get to this point, the technologies will have improved, and likely become more economic.
Remember wind intermittency can be partly dealt with by also having a surplus of wind generation, because the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the power can then be moved around. This minimises the need for either gas fired electricity, or storage options.
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nigelj at 05:07 AM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
NorrisM @23
I agree with M Sweets comments.
Lithium is too expensive for mass storage: just look at the cost per mw hour. It is being used In Australia for specialist applications as it provides very quick power in the event of power outages, as in the article I linked to at post 10. It has specialist applications suitable for power outages up to one hour, but not several hours, or extended periods of insufficient wind.
There is also unlikely to be enough reserves of lithium for massive bulk power storage instillations. Like all minerals, lithium carbonate is a limited resource mostly in places like Chile.There are enough reserves for the normal battery applications of electric cars etc, and it can be recycled.
Having said, that the worlds oceans contain vast reserves of dissolved lithium salts, and these have been experimentally removed using a dialysis procedure. This is believed to be about 5 - 10 years from commercialisation. But again, even this is unlikely to be sufficient for bulk storage for power stations. Refer following article.
www.technologyreview.com/s/538036/quest-to-mine-seawater-for-lithium-advances/
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NorrisM at 04:44 AM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
michael sweet @ 27 and 28
Thanks for clarifying some things. I should have tried to link the Hartley paper (I have been unsuccessful in the past in doing so). If someone can again direct me to where on this website I can figure it out I will again try next time.
Interesting comments about the Hartley paper. To answer where I found it, I do not go searching for these things. It was referenced by Judith Curry on her website. I will go back and see what comments were made on that site. I did not read all of the posts. The reason I did not just "post" the paper is that I agree that his reference to nuclear power made me ask what his responses were to the Abbott papers. I was more using it to analyze costs. He did use the EIA 2016 estimates of nuclear cost in his paper and the ERCOT 2016 Wind Integration Report so I am not sure what you mean by data 20 years out of date unless this only references his inclusion of nuclear power in the equation. I do not want to get into a discussion of perhaps why the Georgia and South Carolina projects might not be illustrative of what could be done with a knowledgeable operator because I simply do not have any information and Abbott was pretty compelling on both the availability of uranium and the number of plants required.
But to correct one misconception in your blogs, ERCOT statistics do not just relate to a "small part of Texas", it is most of Texas covering 24 MM households in Texas. On its website here is what ERCOT says as to its coverage:
"The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages scheduling on an electric grid carrying 90 percent of Texas' load. This section contains data about the grid and key measurements of its operation."
Thanks for your clarification as to where the technology is as to bulk battery storage. I thought that the Tesla information was "too good to be true". It is used as a voltage regulator and not as bulk storage of RE. That makes more sense.
My underlying sense is that we need natural gas to provide the "backup" for RE and I realize that you have agreed with this in other exchanges. To the extent that there are other natural gas plants in an area (rather than coal plants) I completely agree that there is no need to quote RE plus storage. But the Xcel quote was to replace existing coal fired electrical generation. It may be that there also were available natural gas plants.
I have attempted to read the articles you previously provided. The first one was so theoretical that I gave up. Perhaps you can point to one that discusses these issues more generally than providing a massive number of formulas.
But if mass battery storage is not currently economic and if pumped storage is too expensive and not practical in many flat areas (even run-of- river hydro) then why can Jacobson make statements that it is presently possible to completely replace fossil fuels now? Unless he is like my famous economist who makes assumptions about can openers when it comes to opening cans of beans? Seems to me that Clack et al are more reasonable with their suggestion of an 80-20 mix of RE and natural gas for the US economy (and probably the world) until there is some breakthrough in bulk battery storage technology.
Could you help me with a conversion of $/kW-mo to $/MWh so I could compare all of the Xcel Energy bids? I assume that "Combustion Turbine/EC Engines" references a traditional gas plant supplying electricity with gas-fired combined cycles being the kind of natural gas plant technology assumed in the Hartley paper.
I am assuming that in the summary of Xcel bids the "blacked out" bids were not considered to be representative because of the small number of them.
Moderator Response:[BW] Regarding embedding links: you can do that by using the tab called "Insert" in the comment box. The link-icon is available in its header and it works like in many other editor boxes: it becomes active as soon as you highlight the text you want to show as a link.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:11 AM on 15 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
There is a wide variety of storage solutions out there and pumped hydro is not necessarily as worthless as was suggested above. This does not mean that the Hartley paper is of interest. It comes across as run-of-the-mill denier junk.
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aleks at 02:14 AM on 15 January 2018Ocean acidification isn't serious
Tom Dayton,
Let's consider one example of “correct chemical explanation” in OA is not OK. In the part 12, Fig.6 the graph of pH change in 1990 – 2010 is given, and the drop of pH in 20 years is found of 0.035. The data are processed contrary to the statistics rules without specifying the uncertainty and the correlation coefficient. The scatter of the data during the same year is about 2 times greater than above mentioned drop.
Compare, please, this graph with Fig.13 in part 14. According to Fig. 13, pH value in Atlantic ocean is of 8.1, in Pacific 7.8. In the Fig. 6, pH value about 8.1 is given, while measurements are made on the Hawaii Station.
Can you explain these facts? What about Michael Sweet's explanation: “pH is Pacific is less, because Pacific was formed before Atlantic”?
And the last. It took you 15 minutes to find my post and define it as incorrect. But neither you, nor anyone else, having “the right theory” didn't try to answer Michael Schroeder's question (@76) for more than 2 weeks. May be you will offer your explanation?Moderator Response:[DB] Baiting snipped.
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Ciência e Clima at 23:50 PM on 14 January 2018The 'imminent mini ice age' myth is back, and it's still wrong
A paper (forgot the reference, sorry) last year suggested that changes in ocean currents in the north sea also contributed to make winters more severe during the little ice age.
About the news: if you follow the link, you'll get to an article from Sky News and there is only two quotes from the professor in it. So it is not an interview. And you could note that the journalist was promoting the idea of a little ice age, whilst the professor point of view was extremely cautious about it.
Be aware of the media, my friends! -
michael sweet at 23:35 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Norrism,
This is apparently Hartley's paper. You should link your sources. The fact that he has not submitted it for publication tells us he thinks it is not accurate. It appears to be written to be cited by deniers on the web. Here is an article where Hartley supports coal and fossil fuels.
Hartley models electricity production in a small part of Texas to make claims about generating all power in the entire country. This does not make sense. His paper is 20 years out of date.
Hartley uses an energy storage method that is completely impractical and expensive. (Hydro was primarily built to store nuclear energy). Then you wonder why his cost of storage is so high. Hartlley has used an industry cost for building nuclear plants and not the actual cost from Georgia and South Carollina.
If you read the articles I linked for you previously you would see that no-one who is serious considers mass hydro storage for wind energy. Hartleys' article is using 1960's technology to argue that wind will not work now. For Hartley to be serious he must address the storage methods that renewable energy proponents actually propose using. His paper will never be published in a reliable journal. You should have recognized this. Where did you find this bogus paper? Why do you read such trash? The $.03/kwh was correct for wind energy. Storage is estimated at a fraction of generating cost. Nuclear is much more costly.
Hartley did not address the 15 reasons Abbott details why nuclear cannot be used to power the economy. Since he did not, we must conceed that nuclear is completely impractical. There is not enough uranium to run the nuclear plants and they are not economic.
It is common for nuclear supporters to write long, unsupported statements why they think renewable energy has problems. I suggest you read more articles from people who are researching renewables to see what they actually propose.
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michael sweet at 22:30 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Norrism,
You are asking for renewable energy to provide more than you are asking fossil fuels. Do coal and nuclear plants have to bid for baseload energy plus peak power? Why do renewable energy plants have to provide extra support like storage? Fossil fuel companies require renewable to provide storage in an (unsuccessful) attempt to make renewable uneconomic. Storage is not necessary in our current grid when renewable penetration is less than 50%. As grid managers learn how to use renewables higher penetration is possible and less storage is needed.
Currently existing peaker plants (mostly gas) are more than capable of providing back up for renewable energy on windless nights. Storage is not needed. Requiring current renewable energy plants to build out storage just increases the cost of power without providing any additional economic use.
The battery in Australia appears to be used primarily to regulate voltage. In the past this use was not asked for but now fossil fuel companies are asking for voltage stabilization in an attempt to make renewable energy more expensive. As demonstrated in Australia, renewables can easily be used to stabilize voltage. From what I have seen, the battery is cheaper and faster than fossil voltage regulation.
Pumped hydro is not the most efficient method of storing energy and not many locations are suitable. Most existing pumped hydro was built in the 60's or 70's as storage for excess baseload power to provide peak power since nuclear and coal cannot provide peak power. Gas peaker plants are currently cheaper. Pumped hydro is unlikely to be widely built in the future. When do you hear supporters of baseload power discussing pumped hydro storage of baseload power? Yet they complain of storage of renewables.
Mass battery storage is currently not economic. Already existing gas peaker plants provide more storage than the grid needs. All plans for future mass storage use some method to convert electricity into gas or liquid fuels that would then be stored in existing facilities for use in peaker plants. Requiring additional battery storage on current renewable plants is a scheme to make renewable energy more expensive so utilities can continue to stiff customers for more expensive fossil energy.
If renewable plants must provide storage, fossil plants should have to bid for peak power also. You are comparing renewable energy costs to provide all power to fossil costs which only provide baseload power and not peak power.
It is not necessary for renewable energy plants to provide all energy using the fossil fuel model of power generation. The future grid will not have baseload energy. It will have variable renewable energy and peaker plants (storage).
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bozzza at 18:34 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Is Jeff a bored, tryhard upper middle-class white guy with an attitude trying to fit in with the boring upper crust suburb he grew up in?
I bet Jeff can’t jump so instead he tries to play practical jokes on the human race....
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agno at 18:26 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
One Planet Only Forever @ 20
Let me add an "e" CO2e, and reiterate that I was suggesting this as a "wedge". Taxation strategies will probably be a larger piece of the pie.
It is somewhat similar to divestment, only at a personal level and targets all economic activity. Your arguments against carbon labeling probably apply to divestment too?
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Eclectic at 17:07 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
NorrisM @22 , the big new lithium battery in South Australia is certainly not what you and I would call "bulk storage". Its capacity is quoted (by journalists) as only 129 Megawatt-hours.
Nor have I seen its official cost — which is expected to be in the region of USD35million.
Reports say that it is saving big dollars already : and at the present rate it will pay for itself in 2 or 3 years (i.e. in approximately 10% of its expected lifetime) . . . owing to the complex variable contractual arrangements that the various Australian power generation companies have on the national market.
The main benefits of the big lithium battery are in its rapid response to national grid load, in stabilizing grid voltage/frequency, and allowing time for gas turbine generators to spool up in event of a big outage. I gather that it has been so successful thus far, that a number of provincial regions are now planning to install similar (but somewhat smaller e.g. 20 Mwh) lithium batteries.
The SA "big battery" is fed by nearby wind turbines. But obviously a much bigger wind/solar generation system will need real bulk storage, likely in the form of hydrogen generation (for gas turbines or power cells) or Pumped-Hydro or salt/ammonia/hot-gravel etcetera.
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NorrisM at 16:47 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
John Hartz @ 17
Thanks for these references. I found second article (Christopher Arcus) discussing the Xcel Energy request for bids to replace 660 MW of coal-fired power capacity especially interesting but also confusing. Xcel Energy requested bids based upon wind, solar, natural gas and storage. It seems increasingly clear to me that if we are going to compare RE with natural gas generated electricity we need to include storage with any bid for wind and solar.
Unfortunately, in comparing the various bids they received there was an “apples to oranges” problem (at least for me) when it came to comparing the quotes for combustion turbines and other fossil fuel bids compared to bids for wind, wind and solar, wind with battery storage etc. In the former case, the quoted measurement was $/kW-mo (I have no idea what that means) and in the case of the RE bids, the measurement was $/MWh.
Can you provide some help in trying to sort through these different measurements?
I have recently read a 2017 “working paper” by Peter Hartley, Ph.D. of Rice University looking at Texas to compare the relative costs of replacing fossil fuels as the base load with various possibilities including wind power and storage, nuclear power and storage, or some combination of wind or nuclear with backup natural gas. In all these cases, the measurement is the same based upon ₵/kWh.
Could you help me with the relative conversions of the measurements in the Xcel Energy article with the measurement used in the Hartley paper of cents/kWh? Dividing MWh by 1,000 to get to kWh did not seem to make sense. Otherwise, the quoted cost of wind and solar and battery storage in the Xcel Energy article works out to $.03060 kWh.The Hartley paper is suggesting that the approximate cost of wind with storage (albeit pumped storage, not battery storage) is around $0.1513 to $0.24171 (dependent on whether the cost of capital is 5%, 7.5% or 10%).
Something does not add up here unless there has been a massive breakthrough in battery storage which I would have thought would be front line news.
I can provide a citation for the Hartley paper if anyone is interested. Supposedly Hartley has put this paper out for comment. He notes that it is a “work in progress and has not been submitted for editorial review.”Anecdotally, Hartley puts a price on what a carbon tax would add to the price of natural gas which is interesting. According to EIA data, burning one MMBTU of natural gas (about 1,000 mcf) emits about 53.07 kg of CO2. Thus a carbon tax of $10/metric tonne of CO2 is equivalent to a tax on natural gas of around $0.53 /MMBTU. The average price of natural gas in the US in 2016 was $2.89/MMBTU.
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NorrisM at 15:08 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Riduna @ 18
Thanks, but I could not access the url. Could you provide a full address for the site?
I am interested in whether this technology has the potential to replace what I believe is termed as "bulk storage" or is it just a short term replacement in the case of some unplanned shutdown of the renewable energy source. I appreciate that the difference is really a question of capacity of the backup.
From what I understand is that given the present technology, pumped hydroelectric storage represents more than 99% of current worldwide bulk storage capacity.
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Lachlan at 14:25 PM on 14 January 20182017 was the hottest year on record without an El Niño, thanks to global warming
Dana, thanks for the article.
The confusion you mention in @10 seems quite natural, given that the text says "15 billion", and a reader will naturally parse this as a single number before even reading the next word. I also read "15 billion-dollar" as "$15 billion".
Perhaps in future you can use the more verbose form with something (such as a "disasters", or at least a comma) between "15" and "billion".
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agno at 14:16 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
Another wedge among the potential solutions to climate change, which has not been discussed, is carbon content labeling.
The global economy is predominantly (≈ 80%) fossil fuel powered. So long as goods and services are produced with fossil fuels, every dollar we earn, spend, borrow or loan; every way in which we participate in the economy, contributes to climate change. CO2 emissions dipped during the GFC. It's the economy, stupid.
So, less economic activity is a pathway to reduced CO2 emissions. A truly inconvenient truth. More accurately, less fossil fueled economic activity is a pathway CO2 emissions reduction. If we knew the CO2 emissions attributable to, or embedded in, every transaction we made, we would be able to; chose a pathway of lowest emissions; measure and manage our total emissions; assess the emissions of different activities, businesses, companies, countries, and administrations etc.
In buying a car, building a house, planning a holiday, choosing an employer or political candidate, I could be carbon informed. In all my economic activity I could exercise more ethical behaviour.
We have the technology today to do this. Every transaction could give us an instant carbon content calculation. The carbon content of our lifestyle could be on our facebook page. Only what gets measured gets counted. Like obesity and diabetes, high CO2 emissions is a triumph of marketing. Marketing could go some way to redeeming itself, by promoting low emissions lifestyles.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:51 PM on 14 January 2018The Key To Slowing Global Warming
agno@19,
The currently developed global economy has definitely been over-developed in an incorrect direction regarding the burning of fossil fuels (and many other unsustainable and damaging trendy popular and profitable activities).
Labelling for CO2 could help, but would require the vast majority of consumers to base their buying decision on Ethical Labels. And consumers who do not care would benefit relative to the more caring ones by buying cheaper items (the reason that development in incorrect directions happens).
And the labelling would have to be adopted in all nations.
An additional consideration is that methane emissions and many other results of human activity are significant parts of the problem.
A rigorously applied Carbon Fee (accounting any activity impacts on GHG in the atmosphere) in all nations would be far more effective than labels. It would put the Carbon Fee into the price of everything with Carbon impacts in amounts relative to the magnitude of impact. And the people who do not care have 'no way around it' (the people who do not care being 'free to believe what they want and do as they please is the reason that development in incorrect directions happens).
Also, a global carbon fee program does not require all nations to implement a consistent Carbon Fee system. An International Carbon Fee would be based on the scientific understanding of what is going on and what level of Fee is globally needed to have a decent chance (50-50), of achieve the agreed objective of 1.5C warming and a better chance of not exceeding the dangerous 2.0C warming. Trade tariffs and sanctions would be applied to any nation that did not implement a Carbon Fee, or having a lower carbon fee, or not having a comprehensive carbon fee program. The amount of trade penalty would be determined by the understanding of their national carbon impacts with special evaluations for specific high impact products. However, to be fair, the less developed nations would be assessed based on a lower carbon fee where the carbon intensity of activity was reasonable and the activity was seen as a short duration transition to more sustainable activity.
When discussing the economics of ending the burning of fossil fuels it is essential to reinforce that the current perceptions of prosperity due to over-development in the incorrect economic directions are undeserved. The correction has to occur and may very well mean that the 'supposedly more advanced/developed who are laggards in correcting their incorrect economic development will lose some of their developed perceptions of superiority relative to others.
It is also important to remember that Carbon Fees only help correct the incorrect developments in the economy. A Carbon Fee by itself would not achieve the required rapid ending of burning of fossil fuels. Assistance is required for the expansion and improvement of renewable energy systems. And staged blanket global termination of activities with highest impacts will probably be required to responsibly limit the harm being done to future generations by those in the current generation who do not care.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:16 PM on 14 January 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
nigelj,
There is an additional concern related to the over-extraction of aquifer water in the delta that does not appear to be mentioned in the research in Environmental Letters Journal you linked because it does not affect the subsidence issue that was being investigated.
Rapid aquifer drawdown near ocean/sea interfaces will result in salt water encroaching into the inland extraction locations. This occurred on Oahu, Hawaii when prolonged over-extraction resulted in salt water being drawn up from extraction wells. The over-extraction was not appreciated before the salt water arrived because the water head at the extraction point was not dropping.
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