Long Article on US Conversion to Renewable Power in Weekend WSJ ...

[MJCronin]

Has anyone read the rather long and detailed article about conversion of all US power generation to Renewables ?

"Building the Wind Turbines Was Easy. The Hard Part Was Plugging Them In"

Seems that the author (Russel Gold) has just discovered the major stumbling block that industry has been warning about for decades: distribution. You simply cannot generate a Megawatt of power in Nevada and use it in Florida.

Yes, it seems that the most modern efficient windmills, generating power at full load and solar panels under full direct sun, can be cheaper than existing coal plants. (I have worked on coal plants and I hate them)...... This is all great as long as we ignore the massive grid rework necessary to distribute renewable power.

Oh and we haven't even talked about the remnants of the existing power plants and grid that we will need to keep things stable ..... Messy issues like these are left to engineers and other propeller heads to "straighten out"....chop, chop !!!!....

Nuclear Plants that are paid for, clean and stable and emit no CO2 ..... are not socially acceptable and are ignored in this article

Like every other shoddy Journalism major, Gold ignores huge, significant issues about our power grid in an effort to sell his new book

https://www.russellgold.net/

All we need now is a group of federal MBA/Nazis spouting deadlines from their ass*es and demanding that our grid be rebuilt within 3 years...



MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[MJCronin]

https://www.powermag.com/new-jersey...gfspkG2z87boZE1OvNbAzh_IVNsfZ3ER637X_d0CZxApo

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[IRstuff]

Seems like an anecdote stretched to prove a possibly non-existent point. For the power described in the article to be useful, it needs AC, not DC, so it has to be converted somewhere along the way. Had this guy converted the power to AC, he possibly could have made use of existing reciprocity agreements among the 9 US regional grids to transport the power to most places in the US. Even Arkansas, made to be a bad guy of the article, is part of one of the regional grids.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[GregLocock]

Intermittency is the big capital cost that is currently ignored in solar/wind projects, and, in Australia, the cost of deploying high power lines to the middle of nowhere, which is where the wind and solar farms are often sited. There is a vague move to require a certain amount of storage backup on site for each facility, which I imagine will be sternly resisted by the public spirited entrepreneurs behind each development. One of the more convincing analyses of renewables for the UK, is

https://www.withouthotair.com/

which at least provides a template for an attempt at making a given grid renewable.




Cheers

Greg Locock


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[rb1957]

"rather long and detailed article" = "long winded" ?

thank you, thank you; I'm here all week ...

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

We seem to be at risk of falling down a politically-tainted rabbit-hole here.
Grid-scale storage is the holy grail of renewables, the nice side effect of which will be to shut up the mainstream media experts naysaying renewables.
BTW, I think 'long winded' is an insider joke among renewable energy engineers

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

 

[GregLocock]

Since we've had a graphic demonstration of what an over reliance on intermittent generators combined with a lack of storage give, in South Australia, I'm with the naysayers until grid scale storage is deployed. Up to about 20% its seems that wind and solar don't stress the grid too much, beyond that you have to start switching people off. As I write renewables are supplying about 15% of SA's power, whereas it has a nominal 50% renewable capacity. It pulls off that magic trick with a long extension lead to a coal powered power station.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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