Engineering Reply to Peter Lang: As I discussed on this blog thread with “Planning Engineer” its not necessarily what the CE Ideological Wolfpack (e.g., Postrel, Lang, Jim2, etc.) say — its what they don’t say or address. In using this deceptive tactic, the Wolfpack develops black/white absolutism conclusions of very negative perceptions on solar and wind energy that many people at CE clearly want to hear.
Here is the Game that the Ideological Wolfpack plays here at CE:
Step 1: To go to an individual source of renewable energy (as Mr. Lang did) and show its intermittency characteristics.
Duh — No engineer disputes these individual characteristics.
(Note: Its very revealing though that the Wolfpack never talks about other intermittency problems that Utility System engineers also deal with routinely — its just renewables. It sure wouldn’t shock me that the Wolfpack would lay the blame on all the problems going on in Texas [ERCOT] on wind energy].
The Wolfpack’s deceptive “Game” comes in their next step:
Step 2: Since renewables are intermittent, it must then be concluded each and every solar array or wind turbine must always require a fossil fuel generation backup (unless one wants to have reduced reliability). Factoring in this “hidden cost”, renewables are clearly uneconomic. Slam dunk, end-of-story — the Wolfpack declares victory, and most on CE rejoice.
Either 1 of 2 things are going on with the Wolfpack: (1) Either they’ve never set foot in a large electricity dispatch center (folks, it’s like a NASA Mars mission control room); or (2) they are trying to be deceptive.
As Mr. Lang (and the Wolfpack) continues to fail to recognize on this and other issues, one can not just look at something on an individual basis. One must use a macro view of its impact on an integrated grid — using sophisticated system planning software such as MAPS, PROVAL (which I wrote), etc.
System Controllers have a tremendous amount of both supply and demand side tools (e.g., DSM load control programs) at their disposal in managing an integrated grid. The Electricity System (with tremendous redundancy) is built that way.
Now, I have a life other than fact-checking every ubiquitous black/white absolutism claim the Wolfpack makes. But for example, there are over two hundred studies that have shown that there will be no major costs or technical problems for a grid until the percentage of renewables is ~30%. Our CE’s “Planning Engineer” cited a percentage of 10%.
Per the EIA, for most electric utilities, we have a long way to go before these thresholds are reached: For the entire U.S., Solar is 0.23% and Wind is 4.13%.
Hitting these thresholds will be a whole lot different in places like Georgia (zero wind projects), versus mid-western States.
What the Wolfpack never mentions are reputable studies (NREL and EPRI) where wind energy actually improved an integrated grid’s reliability:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60574.pdf
Also, Europe is clearly not following the CE Wolfpack’s paradigm/model (and achieving high reliability).
As one can easily imagine, renewable energy trade groups have their antithesis of the CE Wolfpack — where intermittency is basically a non-issue:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/12/intermittency-of-wind-and-solar-is-it-only-intermittently-a-problem/
Conclusion: Common Sense should tell everyone that the so-called TRUTH is not going to be found in extreme pro or con positions on either side of this issue. The answer is somewhere in the middle.