I hope people are paying attention to Rud's comment on the <b>flexibility</b> of natural gas combined cycle units (which have and are replacing old coal and nuclear units).
This <b>flexibility</b> can play a major role in penetration levels of Renewables using sound engineering economics.
There are many engineering concepts that must be understood when issues of penetration, backup and intermittency are discussed (e.g., natural gas CC units, ELCC, availability of large hydro, etc.).
Comment on German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep by Stephen Segrest
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Comment on German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep by Les Johnson
In effect, Germany and Denmark have used the European and Nordic grids as a large battery.
In other words, it’s a Reverse Ponzi Scheme. It will only work as along there is the rest of the Continent to take cheap renewables, often at negative cost.
Of course, the difference from a conventional Ponzi, is that owner of the scheme is the one hurt financially.
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Comment on German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep by timg56
Stephen,
Wind generators get a preference in the PNW. It is economic based in the sense that due to the production credit, they get upset when they get told to shut down (since peak wind is also peak hydro), even when they get preferential treatment by being the last generators to shut down.
2 years ago they sued BPA and filed a FERC complaint. FERC ruled in their favor. In other words, preferential treatment based on politics, not economic advantage.
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by Don Monfort
The Tornados will do some proper damage, Tony. There are plenty of targets, as fearless leader from the rear Obama wouldn’t let our chaps actually drop their bomb loads, unless they could prove that they weren’t going to damage anything or hurt anybody.
We have to stick together, Tony. The rest of the world is either hostile, or unreliable.
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by richardswarthout
Dr Curry
Will you be discussing the IPCC Fingerprint method; resulting in, essentially, zero natural variability?
Richard
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by knutesea
Bob
Is that better ?
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Comment on German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep by Davis Swan (@davis_swan)
I can’t read German but I did find an English analysis of the “2014 German Renewable Act revision” at http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=18626 which reads in part “renewable energy continues to enjoy feed-in priority in the grids” so I do believe that there is a legislated mandate in Germany to accept renewables as a first priority. There are also legislated Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) in many U.S. states that require certain percentages of total generation be from renewables. Utilities are required to report their compliance towards RPS minimums which implies that they would have to accept renewable generation without regards to economics at some point. FIT compensation is based upon generation in many jurisdictions and presumably any attempt to cut back on FIT supported generation would trigger complaints if not law suits for lost revenue. So I think the body of evidence supports the contention which is widely reported that in most jurisdictions renewables have preferential access to grids.
This raises another very interesting question regarding traditional merit order dispatching. When the FITs run out for roof-top solar in a particular region (as they must over time) which home-owner will get access to sell power to the grid? I suspect that with no criteria available for a merit order for distributed generation that such power will eventually attract a price that is very low trending to zero. At that point no home owner will be able to ever get a reasonable return on the installation of solar panels and that market will dry up. I have discussed here. http://www.theblackswanblog.com/blog1/2013/05/30/the-inevitable-self-destruction-of-renewable-economics/
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Comment on German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep by jim2
Maybe someone can come up with an Eagle powered turbine …
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by omanuel
Thank you, Professor Curry, for participating in this Senate Hearing. This letter to US Senator Ted Cruz explains how we know the AGW story is based on DOGMA, rather than DATA !
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Manuel_Letter_to_Senator_Cruz.pdf
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by Turbulent Eddie
<i>The subset of studies that assess temperature increases suggest that with the INDCs, we will witness 2.7-3.7 degrees C (median chance) of warming compared with pre-industrial levels</i>
Interesting that the IPCC wants to use as a baseline, <i>pre-industrial</i>, a time from which there is not a global measurement data base in place.
That's probably because they were so embarrassed by AR4 predicting actual rates.
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by Joseph
And Steyn is sufficiently qualified to discuss hockey stick data versus dogma.
You mean he is qualified to discuss the most recent reconstruction studies? Isn’t that what really matters now? And if so, why do you think he is qualified to do that? Why not bring someone else who more qualified to discuss reconstruction studies whether it is Mann’s from over a decade ago or the most recent?
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Comment on Decision making under uncertainty – maximize expected social welfare by jim2
You can’t prove this is the optimal way to make decisions – in fact, I’m pretty sure there are better ways. It’s just not provable.
I don’t believe hunger involve morals since even an amoeba will eat to survive. Morality requires a highly developed brain – and all animals get hungry and eat.
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by timg56
You can’t help yourself, can you Josh.
Judith doesn’t select the witnesses. Now could she have made a comment on the makeup of called witnesses? Sure, she could have. But what point is made by whether she does or doesn’t comment? Did you even consider the possibility she gives her readers enough credit to make up their own minds regarding the witness list? I’ll guess you probably did, seeing as you are not a dumbass, just a dishonest putz.
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by richardswarthout
Don and Tony
I remember clearly, standing on the flight line at RAF Wethersfield in 1964 and watching in amazement as RAF planes came in low pivoted in front of us and went almost vertical into the clouds; these were not stunt pilots. My admiration goes to the RAF. At the time I was in the USAF, stationed at RAF Wethersfield.
Richard
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by timg56
+100 Steve
But it is Jim D making the claim, so that says a lot about accuracy.
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by curryja
nope, too complicated for this audience. i have long been planning a post on this topic, but haven’t gotten around to it.
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Comment on Senate Hearing: Data or Dogma? by timg56
Don,
I guess I could do a google check, but I believe the RAF has retired its Tornado fleet. They fly the Typhon multi-role fighter now.
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Comment on German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep by AK
Round trip efficiency of Power to Gas to Power is around 44% when hydrogen is used, but lower at around 38% if the hydrogen is first converted to methane. So it’s not as good as pumped hydro storage.
But it has several advantages pumped hydro lacks:
• Once converted to methane (or liquid hydrocarbons) the resulting fuel can be fed into existing distribution, storage, and use infrastructures. This eliminates the need to develop new technology for storage.
• By depending on existing infrastructure, current and near-term investment no longer becomes a sunk cost longer term. Infrastructure developed for fossil fuels can continue to pay for themselves using new, fossil-neutral fuels.
• Transporting methane via pipeline is a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper than new electrical transmission, IIRC. Similar economies apply to liquid fuels.
• Large-scale use of this process would allow existing investments in hydrocarbon-powered transport to continue to pay for themselves.
• Large-scale use of this process would support current use of combustion-based heat sources, such as cooking, heating, and much manufacturing.
• If/when the conversion technology can be properly miniaturized, it can be located very close to the intermittent energy source, eliminating any need for electrical transmission. Given the far lower cost of transporting hydrocarbons, most of the world’s energy generating capacity could be located in remote parts of the ocean, eliminating much of the current inconvenience.
While pumped hydro, especially with manufactured deep-sea lower reservoirs, is scaleable and might well be fairly cheap with proper economies of scale and learning curve, the power→fuel option, combined with solar PV which has been seeing decades of exponential price reduction, will probably (IMO) end up dominating the mid/late-21st century energy scene.
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Comment on German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep by Peter Lang
All irrelevant innuendo useless for options comparisons unless you give the cost of electricity on an LCA basis (including all costs) on a properly comparable basis with other options. Every time you do such properly comparable analyses you find a large proportion of nuclear (e.g. 75%) and backed up by hydro where available and by gas where hydro is not viable is the least cost way by far to reduce the emissions intensity of electricity
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Comment on German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep by Peter Davies
CG,
It is not clear what period the individual dots represent in the original Frauenhofer document. I did email the author to ask for the information to be included in the document, but to no avail.
However, the density of dots does represent the relative probability of different combinations of wind and solar power produced on average for whatever the time period was.
The rest of the charts go down to no smaller than hourly resolution, so my guess is that is what he has used for these charts too i.e. each dot represents the average generation power over an hour period.
If it is an hour then you could convert yourself from kW power (for an hour) to kWh (energy) as the numbers would be the same.
Incidentally the most recent version of the chart is chart 48 in https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/data-nivc-/electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-2014.pdf which looks very similar.
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