101 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, April 25, 2021”

  1. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/young-adults-relocations-are-reshaping-political-geography/ar-BB1g20Fz?ocid=BingNews

    I’ve been watching this happen now for a long time, and it doesn’t take adding a whole lot of new people to one side of the political equation while losing a bunch on the other side to flip a state.

    I don’t see enough young liberals ever leaving California or NY, etc, to flip them to the Republicans, but there are enough such voters arriving in some sunshine states to flip them within the next two or three election cycles, considering that the hard core of Republican voters in such states is beginning to die off of old age.

    1. I suspect that changing attitudes and a big voter turnout are more likely to flip Republicans than new arrivals.

      For example, Trump cost the Republicans a lot of suburban vote.

      1. You’re probably right in terms of the big picture. But in some cases, when the vote is close, that last few thousand liberal votes from newcomers is enough to make the difference.

  2. UK installed wind generation capacity is about 25,000 megawatts.
    Mid-day April 8th the system was producing about 12,000 to 13,000 MW.
    Within 10 hours the system was down to about 3 MW.
    For the past 18 days the system has averaged about 2 to 3 MW and twice touched 5 MW.
    SO, for this extended period about 22,000 MW of turbines have sat idle.
    Question, Please describe the battery backup system to supplement this loss of wind generated electricity and its cost.

    1. Ervin electrical generation in not in MW. That refers to nameplate capacity.
      Electrical generation is measured in MWhrs.

      Wind is variable. Oil is depleting. What are your other choice preferences?

      1. Hickory, you will have to take up the MW MWHour issuer with National Grid website.
        When I was the Maintenance Superintendent of a manufacturing facility, our electric bill each month had a charge for KWH and a demand charge for our max KW load.
        The reason was, we had to pay for the ability to receive 5 MW of load from the power company even though it would occur only 3 of 4 times a year. The infrastructure to handle the 25,000 MW wind system exists and cost Billions of $$ to build. The best that can be said is that over a years time on ,average, about, 8,000 MW will be in use.
        Look at it this way, you start a business and hire 100 people but you know that on average 30 will be productively working and the other 70 on average will never produce a thing. That’s how I look at wind energy. This wasteful system exists for two reasons. As Mr. Buffet said years ago, and it’s still true, the only reason to build wind energy are the .023 cents per KWH subsidy and the argument the the carbon dioxide molecule with end life on earth. Ever since Mr. Drake discovered oil in Pa. the last of oil is just around the corner.

          1. Hoover dam has an installed capacity of 2080 megawatts and a 23 percent capacity factor.

            I’m betting Ervin is one of those of the 77 percent of the employee’s who do nothing because he has nothing constructive to add to this blog.

        2. Every kilowatt hour produced by wind and solar power is one more kilowatt hour the Limey’s don’t pay for imported gas and oil to generate it. The North Sea is a shadow of what it once was….. back when I was a young guy, lol.

          The savings over a period of time are quite substantial…. because while the long term trend in the price of oil and gas has ALWAYS been up, over time, and will CONTINUE to be up, over time, as these finite resources DEPLETE, and inflation bites into purchasing power…… wind and sun will continue to be FREE.

          It was hard on me to make the mortgage payment on the first house I ever bought. But twenty years later, I was making the payment in a third as many hours working time… half of that was due to wage inflation. I was paying more for food, energy, medical care, etc…… but my house payment was LOCKED in and DECREASING , in real terms, from one year to the next.

          When you find some significant new oil fields in lands belonging to the UK, Erwin, let us all know, will ya?

          The North Slope was rocking and rolling back when I was young too. It’ s about played out now, lol.

        3. “Look at it this way, you start a business and hire 100 people but you know that on average 30 will be productively working and the other 70 on average will never produce a thing.”

          How do you feel about combustion engines? Only about twenty of those 100 employees are producing useful work.

      2. Hickory,

        Oddly enough, Ervin’s electrical units were about the only thing he got right. Watts are for power, watt-hours are for energy. So at a single point in time a wind farm with a nameplate capacity of 600 megawatts might be putting out 200 megawatts, and over an hour it would put out 200 MWhours, in 2 hours it would be 400 MWhours, etc.

        Capacity is measured in watts, and so is the instantaneous output of a generation source.

        1. The Nick and Ervin Electricity Club.
          “We pretty much know what we’re thinking”

          1. Come on, Hickory, exercise a neuron or two and engage with ideas. Explain what you disagree with, rather than just dissing people.

            1. OK Nick. A neuron.
              I use the standard electric industry terminology.
              You don’t like that terminology and have decided to use your own version despite having links provided to you that simply explain what is the convention.
              So, I have no interest in further engaging with you on it.
              You can write to some people in the industry and lobby them for changes in terminology.
              I have no role in that.

            2. Hickory,

              You haven’t explained anything. How is what I said not standard terminology? Please give a specific example.

              Do you disagree that watts are a measure of power, and watt-hours are a measure of energy? That nameplate generation is specified in watts (or megawatts or gigawatts, etc)? That instantaneous power levels are specified in watts (or megawatts, etc.,)?

            3. Here is how people use the terminology, in simple terms.
              Lets say you two identical solar system 1000 watt capacity.
              You put one in Arizona, and one in Buffalo.
              After one year the on in AZ generated 3238 KWhrs of energy
              The one in Buffalo generated 1729 KWhrs of energy.

              We are done with this topic Nick. Have fun elsewhere.
              If you seek further understanding, I know you have the ability to look it up on your own.

            4. Ah, good, we’re making progress.

              Okay, let’s divide the annual watt-hour output by the number of hours in the year (8,760) to get average watt output, and by our convenient 1,000 watts nameplate to get capacity factor:

              For AZ it’s 3238/8760 = 370 watts, and CF=37.0%
              For NY it’s 1729/8760= 197 watts and CF=19.7%

              So, that all makes sense. Frankly, I don’t see where we disagree.

    2. Ervin,

      I took a look at the last month of UK generation: renewable generation has. been about 5,000 megawatts, down from the average for the last couple of years of about 8,000. That’s a reduction, but not nearly as dramatic as wind alone. It doesn’t make sense to look at wind power alone.

      https://grid.iamkate.com/

      Wind power capacity factor is not expected to be 100%. To suggest otherwise is to present a dishonest picture. It’s a bit similar to suggesting that the fact that your car is only used for 1 hour per day is a dramatic problem that makes your car’s operating cost 24 times higher than it should be.

      As for batteries: no one who is deeply familiar with utility and grid management would suggest that chemical batteries should be used for *seasonal* backup for renewables. There are a lot of strategies, including supply diversity, overbuilding, long distance transmission (including interconnectors), demand management, “wind-gas”, and many many others.

      We see a lot of discussion of the limits of chemical batteries for seasonal/longterm backup – it comes from people who don’t really know what they’re talking about, or who want to present things in an unrealistic light

      1. I had a different perspective on Ervin’s battery comment. Earlier today I was reading about the recent changes in battery technology. some of the advances are really eye-opening. The number of new technologies appearing on the scene are simply going to change the energy paradigm over the next couple of decades. Ten years ago I thought we had done everything possible in battery chemistry.

        When your main point is that you hate something new because it is required for your political position you can find an incredible number of irrelevant data points to secure your opinion.

        1. I agree in general, but batteries would have to fall in price by another 95% in order to be a primary solution for seasonal backup for renewables. Fortunately there are plenty of other workable solutions.

          1. I think there are two Jims posting here. I’ve been away for a while and, without thinking used that name. Normally I post under “JJHMAN”

  3. I am reposting this from the Oil/Gas side, since I think it is ground shaking info to digest and some people don’t go over there.
    Cheers IslandBoy

    Energy Reserves-

    Oil Reserves denote the amount of crude oil that can be technically recovered at a cost that is financially feasible at the present price of oil.
    The present price of oil is in part determined by demand, and demand can thus clearly affect the Reserve level. With a falling price in the setting of lower demand lowering reserves, and vis-versa.
    What could cut oil demand?-
    1-a falling population (not happening-the world is adding a billion more people by 2035),
    2-a decline in economic activity (depression),
    3-or replacement by some other form of energy- And I will be addressing this here.

    An energy source cheaper than oil is already here, in 2020, and replacement of fossil fuels is in the early stages and gathering momentum quickly. In large swaths of the world solar energy is cheaper than oil energy. This is a new phenomenon, and most people have not yet realized the magnitude and implications of this information.
    Clearly solar does have a few challenges that will slow its adoption in transportation- that being intermittency, form, and global vehicle stock inertia. Intermittency is big problem that will prevent a 100% replacement of oil by solar, at least in the next couple decades. Form- Solar energy is electric, and that form requires electric motors and batteries for vehicle use. And inertia- it takes time to adopt a new technology once it has emerged as a better technique/equipment. To this point, I suspect that combustion-only vehicles will only make a small percent of new vehicles sales by 2030, but it will take a long time to retire the current fleet of combustion-only vehicles throughout the world. Discussions on each of three factors could fill volumes. I’ll not get into the details here.

    Back to the idea of energy reserves- A report on solar energy indicates that global reserves were close to zero percent at year 2015, meaning that the percent of technically available solar energy that was also financially viable was close to 0%.
    But year 2015 (roughly) was an inflection point. As a result of the inexorable and dramatic drop in Photovoltaic [PV] cost over the past decade, by 2020 it is now estimated that about 60% of the technically feasible global solar energy capacity is now also financially feasible!!! And what is now 60% feasibilty is projected to be 90% by 2025 (based on the gradual fall in PV cost). And if that does not shock you, you simply do not understand the truly vast size of the global PV reserve. This PV resource that is now ‘reserve’ status makes the oil reserves of all the middle eastern countries look small!
    “The world’s largest oilfield, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, which occupies 8,400 square kilometers, produces the equivalent of 0.9 PWh each year. Building solar panels over the same area would generate 1.6 PWh/yr.” And solar is not a depleting resource.
    Globally, current energy consumption is 65 PWh/yr [Peta Watt hours]. As of 2020 the global solar energy reserve is estimated at about 3600 PWh/yr, and by 2030 the reserve growth indicates a global total of over 5500 PWh/yr.

    The major point here is that there is a massive untapped energy resource that has now achieved reserve status- ready to be tapped. That is the key. How quickly will it be tapped? If PV is deployed rapidly, it has the capacity to significantly replace oil in transportation, as well as most other forms of energy use. This hinges on the manufacturing capacity of the world industrial base for components of EV vehicles (batteries and electric motors), and for PV panel production.

    Will bottlenecks arise that limit the deployment of PV or electric vehicles, be they industrial, political or in the form of limited capital? I suspect so, but the impact on energy supply and on oil demand will be massive, nonetheless. This is on a scale that can serve to gradually reduce oil demand over the next 10-15 years, and much more so thereafter. This relation is demonstrated on Fig 7 of the report linked below.
    Will this transition be quick enough offset fossil fuel depletion? I guess not, and if not the price of petrol will increase. This petrol price increase will only further underline the cost advantage of electric vehicle transportation/mile in the minds of drivers and business operators across the globe. Other scenarios are possible, but I consider this one most likely.

    There are big ramifications of this huge solar energy (and secondarily wind energy) reserve, other than the effect on fossil fuel demand, and transportation. There will be a geopolitical shuffle based which countries will have the new ability for energy independence, and on the other hand those who will lose fossil fuel export income. And at a local level across much of the world families, communities and small businesses will have the ability to generate their own energy. The implications are bigger than most of us have yet to imagine.

    Much of this information is derived from a report just out- “Solar and wind can meet world energy demand 100 times over 23 April 2021
    Here is a summary link- https://carbontracker.org/solar-and-wind-can-meet-world-energy-demand-100-times-over-renewables/
    I strongly recommending the download of the full report for those who would like to consider these ideas with more information under their belt.

    1. The carbontracker article is good. I like the comparison of Germany to other countries like S Korea and Japan, all of which will have to stretch a little to obtain enough domestic renewable energy.

    2. So i am trying to understand the real cost of solar.
      If you look just at the cost of electricity coming from a panel in the sunlight, it is pretty low.
      But to get through a day you need energy storage but the question is how much storage.
      if you look at the capacity utilization factor solar typically ranges 16-30%, let just use 25% (to make the math easy)
      That seems to indicate that on average you get 25% of the electricity directly from the sun and 75% gets run though the solar + energy storage, or roughly 6 hours from the sun directly and 18 hours from the energy storage.
      What is the cost of that kind of system? ( a purely solar system that will get you though an average day)
      I think that value should be used to understand the cost of solar.

      Now before anyone complains, i realize that solar + energy storage + behavioral change should be able to significantly reduce the cost of the solar system. And that is great.
      maybe we could come up with a cost estimate for solar + storage + a particular set of behavioral changes.
      then you could say “this set of simple behavioral changes will reduce the cost of the system by 30%, this set of more comprehensive changes can reduce the cost by 50%, and this set of integrated changes can reduce the cost of the system by 70%.”

      1. Are you thinking about the costs for a utility/grid, or for something off-grid?

        Going off-grid is far more expensive, so you really have to want it…

        If you’re thinking about utility/grid, then you have to remember the wide variety of solutions which are cheaper than batteries: integration with other sources like wind, hydro, etc..; long distance transmission; overbuilding; demand side management, etc.

        So, first thing: relying on one source alone (like solar) is deeply suboptimal and expensive. 2nd, if want solar alone, then you clearly want to move your consumption to the middle of the day.

        And don’t forget efficiency: it’s far cheaper to eliminate unneeded power consumption than it is to provide it with solar & batteries. That includes high efficiency appliances, insulation & very good windows, LEDs, occupancy sensors for lighting, etc.

        1. Thanks for the replay Nick. I am just trying to understand our predicament.

          I understand that going with one source of power is sub-optimal.
          But according to Tom Murphy (who did the math) solar is the only single source of renewable power that can scale to the whole world. And the cost of solar panels and energy storage has dropped so much and looks like it will continue to drop. So i am interested in getting an idea of how much solar done simple would cost. A big enough array of panels to provide an average days energy use and an energy storage system to hold 75% of an average days usage.
          I want that number as an upper bound on the cost.

          then i can start to think about how much you can save by moving from simple solar to smarter solar power usage and adding in things like wind, hydro, etc.

          1. A few thoughts:

            Wind doesn’t have to provide 100%. If it only provides 20% of overall consumption that makes an enormous difference.

            Wind power costs are also dropping. The decline isn’t quite as fast as solar, but it’s more than fast enough to make it an important part of any grid.

            So just to be clear, you’re really thinking about utility/grid costs?

            1. yep utility/ grid cost.
              for the expensive pure solar / storage system able to cover an average days use.

              I am trying to get an idea on how much more expensive that kind of system is.

              I have read that solar pv when the sun is shining is at ~0.02$ per kwh, how much more expensive is it to add energy storage equal to 75% of a days average use?
              Would that make the system cost 0.30$ per kwh or 1.00$ per kwh or 4.00$ per kwh?

              I just want to get a feel for what a pure solar system costs.

            2. Jim. Maybe you can find you answer here. This organization is known for excellent data in this field.
              https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/

              In the actual world, some places like Calif and Australia are finding that solar with battery storage at utility scale is the best bang for their buck currently.
              Here is a project in central Calif-
              https://www.energy-storage.news/news/at-300mw-1200mwh-the-worlds-largest-battery-storage-system-so-far-is-up-and

            3. Jim,

              I’d estimate that you’re talking about roughly 5 cents per kWh to provide the battery backup you have in mind. Here’s an article with some costs: https://esterobaynews.com/vistra-proposes-worlds-biggest-battery-storage-facility/

              We see that the project will cost $210-250 per kWh of storage ($500M to 600M for 2.4 gigawatt-hours). If we estimate that each kWh of storage will be used for about 2,500 charge-discharge cycles, that’s about 10 cents per cycle. If 50% of the PV plant’s output is used directly and half goes through the battery, that averages to about 5 cents per kWh overall.

              These costs will continue to fall, probably fairly quickly, and can also be reduced by a variety of strategies.

              As Hickory says, utilities are finding that batteries are a cheaper solution for peak generation and backup, vs natural gas peaker units: that’s pretty cheap.

            4. thanks for the replies Nick and Hickory

              all i can say is WOW!
              that is really good news that battery storage is only 10 cents per kwh.
              that is a little cheaper than my retail cost of electricity.

              it is good to know that a simple (almost stupidly simple) solar + battery system can handle the daily intermittency of solar rather cost effectively.

              (seasonal variation is another issue but this will have me rethinking some some things)

            5. Jim, I wouldn’t hang your hat on Nicks “calculations’
              He has no expertise on this and is making leaps of faith on the assumptions, and frankly I think he has got all wrong. Nothing personal Nick, but I don’t think this is anywhere close to your area of expertise.
              Its probably much more expensive than he is saying.
              Thats my opinion.
              Check that Lazard link if you want some accuracy.

            6. Hickory,

              Again, don’t make general statements: specifically tell us how you would analyze this question. I’m perfectly aware that the calculations I provided were massively oversimplified: they didn’t include the time value of money, operating costs, assumptions about battery chemistry, average or peak depth of discharge, decline rate, calendar life, operating characteristics, etc., etc. Jim asked for a very simple answer that told him the rough order of magnitude of the cost: 30 cents per kWh? A dollar? $4 dollars? The calculations gave him a roughly correct sense of the magnitude of the costs, and also gave him a flavor for what affects costs.

              Please remember: PV with storage is beating the pants off of single-cycle natural gas peaker plants. They aren’t doing it by being massively expensive.

              OTOH, peaker plants have a very low utilization, and battery storage currently tends to also have low utilization: in this transitional period it’s still commonly used for frequency regulation, peak events, etc. The scenario we’re talking about here is very different: it involves massive load-shifting and 365 day per year utilization. That reduces per-discharge costs proportionally.

              So. If you think a different approach would be better, please provide it, with calculations. If you want to offer sources, that would be great, though it would be helpful if you could explain their methodology (I like Lazard, but I haven’t been able to figure out their storage cost methodology – perhaps you can help. Heck, just identify the numbers in the Lazard report that you think are most relevant).

              That would add to the discussion.

            7. Nick and Hickory

              thanks for your responses

              It does give me a better feel for the cost of storage.
              It seems to be about an order of magnitude more expensive than solar but not 2 orders of magnitude more expensive.

              so here are my take aways:
              there will likely always be significant advantage to using solar directly and
              storage is costly but not so bad that high value electrical activity can’t go in in the dark.

          2. “But according to Tom Murphy (who did the math) solar is the only single source of renewable power that can scale to the whole world.”

            That is an useless simplification: As long as long-term storage is an economic issue, the relevant question is which combination of PV and wind power requires the lowest demand for storage. Here the answer depends on the country under dicussion. Germany needs a combination of wind:PV installed power of 1:1, i.e. 75% of the energy will come from wind, 25% from PV. In the USA the picture may be a little bit more PV heavy.

            However, to calculate only with PV is stupid IMHO.

      2. Yea this is actually interesting and I need more information about it as i am ignorant on the topic. I am seriously considering going off-grid myself, so all information will be useful.

        I am lucky in terms of solar, living in Australia, there is plenty of sunshine all year round (with the exception of the top end with wet/monsoonal seasonality).

        So in my case i’d be going at it alone, so that immediately makes it easier in terms of power consumption. I was thinking just taking notes of my daily energy usage for a month or two to get an idea of the kWhs involved. I am sure there are loads of information on the topic online and youtube videos. But it will be case by case and still rather a complex thing to figure.

        1. Here’s a simple starting point: monitor your power usage from things that plug in, with this meter available on Amazon:
          P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor

          1. Nick G,

            Thank you, will do. I am expecting to be surprised and shocked because i think as humans we usually underestimate how much we actually use electricity and take it for granted.

          2. Hey Nick,
            Good to see you getting on board with standard terminology/thinking on electricity.
            The Electricity usage monitor you suggested has a
            -Large LCD display counts consumption by the kilowatt-hour

            I didn’t think you believed in energy being counted in KWhr’s.
            A good start.

            Iron Mike. If you have energy bills/account, you can just use that see how much annual consumption you had, and base your assumptions on that. Many people see quite a lot of variation throughout the year, especially if they have AC or electric heating. So the monthly tally will be important. If you are planning for off-grid you will need to have a system that works for your most consumptive month.

            And leave room to expand the system so you can charge up your next vehicle.

            1. Hickory,

              Now I begin to see where it appeared that we disagreed. Yes, I think kWhrs are useful for certain things. Power (watts) and energy (watt-hours) are just mirror images of each other: energy is cumulative, and power is an average. You can describe the annual performance of a system either way: I think most people find average power numbers and capacity factor percentages more useful.

              ——————————

              That’s a good thought about including capacity to power a car. It’s best to reduce consumption with efficiency before designing a PV system, but one should also include new power demand like a car, or a heat pump.

        3. Mike, the long version. This has come up very recently in my neck of the woods:

          We need a bold vision for energy – Paulwell

          The Jamaica Public Service revealed that power theft for all of 2019 was billed at US$178 million.

          Riverton, an inner-city community in St Andrew, had more than 90 per cent of its households stealing electricity, drawing about US$2.2 million illegally per year.

          JPS reported losses in the sum of US$61 million for the 12-month period ending December 2020 in Kingston and St Andrew North alone for 2020.

          Paulwell is therefore proposing that solar technology be used to remove approximately 200,000 illegal connections to the grid to drive down the cost for paying customers.

          “We can over a five-year period – it will cost you $20 billion(Jamaican dollars) – but you can get all of those 200,000 people from the grid and free up the cost so that the legitimate users will be able to see a reduction by 17.5 per cent,” the opposition spokesman pitched.

          By Paulwell’s figures, it would mean the Government will have to invest $5 billion(Jamaican) per year in procuring solar technology to remove non-paying users.

          This newspaper responded with an editorial:

          Editorial | Debate Paulwell’s solar proposal

          At last count, Jamaica Public Service (JPS), the monopoly electricity transmission and distribution company, had over 594,000 residential customers. But it is estimated that between another 180,000 and 200,000 consumers use electricity generated by the JPS without paying for it. In other words, the number of electricity thieves is equivalent to up to a third of the company’s residential customers, or between 27 per cent and 30 per cent of its entire client base.

          While the illegal abstraction of electricity happens across all social and economic classes, the problem, by far is, more acute, low-income, urban, inner-city communities, especially in the Kingston metropolitan region and the parishes of St Catherine and St James. Residents generally attach wires from their homes to the light and power company’s distribution lines. A generation of efforts, including offering incentives for people to properly join the grid, as well as the introduction of ‘smart’ metering technology, have failed to significantly dent the problem.[snip]

          Under the plan, the Government, over five years, would provide the 200,000 households that regularly steal electricity with solar panels and lithium-ion and lithium ferro phosphate batteries capable of supplying up to 200 kWh of power. That would be twice the amount of electricity on which the JPS, under its licence, is required to provide customers a significant discount – the so-called ‘life line’ rate.

          Mr Paulwell estimates that his proposed system, minus the cost of installation, could be delivered at J$100,000 per household, which translates to a cost of J$20 billion for the entire project, or an investment of J$4 billion annually. He said it could be paid from the special tax on petrol that was intended for a since-disbanded hedge fund against rising oil prices.

          This exchange prompted me to do a little investigation of my own. The editorial referred to a system, including storage that is “capable of supplying up to 200 kWh of power”. This highlights the problem of non-technical people opining on technical subjects. As covered in the debate between Hickory and Nick, a kWh is a unit of Energy with the kW being the unit of power. Power is the rate of energy use/production. I assume that what they meant was a system capable of delivering 200 kWh of energy per month or 6.67 kWh per day.

          In Jamaica the amount of energy that can be generated by 1kW of nameplate capacity varies from 4.25 to 6.67 kWh per day with a year round average of 5.7 kWh (You can find the data for your location at https://www.gaisma.com ). Taking the worst case, the system will have to produce 6.67 kWh over the course of the day with only 4.25 kWh possible from each kW of installed capacity,. This means 6.67/4.25 = 1.57 kw of capacity would be required and adding 20% to account for de-rating of the PV modules due to heat and system losses and we’re looking at 1.9 kW. I could find PV modules F.O.B. Miami for US$0.48 per watt so that’s $912 plus shipping.

          The storage part is the hard part since it is very dependent on the usage profile. If the usage profile matched the power available from the sun, little to no storage would be required for a perfectly sunny day. If little is consumed during the day with most being consumed at night, as is the case for most households where parents and children are all out for most of the day, a large portion of the energy to be used will have to be stored. I chose a figure of 5kWh for required storage and looked for all in one battery/charger/inverter systems available. I was able to find one for US$2,380 plus $775 shipping for a delivered price of $3,155. This is a brand I have never heard of coming out of China. For a reputable German brand with a significant installed base in the US, Germany and Australia, their 5kWh unit is US$15,000. The amount of charge cycles varies widely from 1,000 to 10,000 cyles (2.7 years to 27 years at 1 cycle per day). Just looking at these numbers, the Jamaican opposition spokesman on energy appears not to have done his homework, since a basic 7kWh a day system is looking like at least three quarters of a million Jamaican dollars (US$5,000) rather than the J$100,000 figure he stated. This is made worse by the fact that US$5,000 would buy a system of questionable quality.

          A grid tied system is considerably more simple and less costly with 2 kW grid tied inverters costing between US$500 (Chinese) and US$1,000 (European). Grid tied system are becoming less attractive as utilities balk at allowing customers to get credited at full retail price for power they supply to the grid. The amount of jurisdictions where the feed in tariff is equal to or greater than the retail rate is shrinking and it is becoming more common for the feed in tariff to be considerably less than retail, as is the case in Jamaica. In Australia some jurisdictions are considering levying charges on system owners that feed the grid, especially during peak solar output periods. You can find out more by poking around at https://reneweconomy.com.au (e.g.
          Rooftop solar tax could bite twice as hard as was modelled, says report          ).

          I hope I’ve helped you find some of the answers you’re looking for.

      3. Jim,
        I’m not sure what your question is.
        Are you talking about a standalone residential system, or utility scale system?
        Either way it is a very different analysis if you are trying to get all your electricity from solar (plus battery) vs a mix of sources (and grid).
        Most of these kind of electrical generation analyses (whether it is from coal, nucs, wind, etc) use a 30 yr cost, since equipment for all the sources is expensive and the equipment life/financing is long.
        And of course with solar, the sunnier your locale, the lower the cost is the output.

        And in many places now, you can get a few solar companies to analyze your particular location to give specific numbers.

  5. Very disturbing scenes . An absolute collapse . Playgrounds, parking grounds have been converted for funeral pyres . Worst is the govt has instituted NSA (National Security Act) equivilant of Espionage Act against doctors , hospitals or other health workers s who go to media with complains about lack of oxygen cylinders or medicines.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XspQv5Y-OEg
    It has now moved from India to Pakistan .
    https://www.rt.com/news/522199-pakistan-military-coronavirus-khan/

  6. CHINA DOUBLES DOWN ON COAL PLANTS ABROAD

    In 2020, China opened three-quarters of the world’s newly funded coal plants, according to the UK-based monitor CarbonBrief, and accounted for more than 80 percent of newly announced coal power projects. And, China will press ahead with its multi-billion-dollar financing of coal plants in developing countries.

    https://phys.org/news/2021-04-china-coal-carbon-pledge-home.html

    1. Concurrently,

      CO2 EMISSIONS SET TO SURGE

      “The International Energy Agency estimated in its annual Global Energy Review that CO2 emissions will increase by almost five percent this year to 33 billion tonnes, largely reversing the decline registered last year as the pandemic idled swathes of the global economy.”

      Daily CO2: Mauna Loa Observatory
      Apr. 26, 2021 = 420.01 ppm
      Apr. 26, 2020 = 416.12 ppm

      https://phys.org/news/2021-04-co2-emissions-surge-iea.html

  7. https://slate.com/technology/2021/04/home-solar-power-costs-benefits.html

    But this is not the case by utility design. In the US we have Dualolopy for Residential Solar due to Module Level
    Rapid Shutdown requirements. So I drafted the following to show how silly single mode PV systems can be.

    ECO impact of UL 1741 Grid Interactive Solar

    Mass to Energy = 400grams/kWh for coal
    A Microinverter/Panel combo produces 500 kWh/year
    Enphase Battery to kW Ratio of 1.5 for Keepalive
    = 266 grams of coal burned per kWh produced by Solar.
    ~ 1 Metric TON of Coal MUST BE combusted to keep 6 Panels AWAKE per Year = Many TONS of CO2.
    ALSO Add
    Tons of herbicides/customer per decade for vegetation management
    Barrels of Diesel/decade/customer to keep the poles and wires standing.
    Beware of the evil of Interdependence!
    Solar deployments are not equal. It’s not a zero sum game.
    EROEI is another matter entirely. Comments?

    1. I’m eager to think about what you have said…… if you will translate it into ordinary English.
      What the fxxx does it mean when you say you have to burn a ton of coal to keep six solar panels alive for a year?

      I can’t even imagine any scenario where in tons of herbicides are used per customer per decade, not even in my wildest imagination….. unless maybe the customer is the electrical ulitity/ grid itself considered as one customer.

      Damned little diesel fuel is used to maintain transmission lines in terms of keeping the poles and wires in working order, considering the size of the grid and the number of people it serves, etc.

  8. Belgium is the second poorest in the country in the world- In terms of solar and wind energy technical potential to supply current overall energy demand. Only Singapore ranks more poorly.
    Other countries that rank relatively poorly in their capacity to supply current consumption from wind and solar reserve include- Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan. Some of these countries may do well with deep offshore wind energy?

    https://carbontracker.org/solar-and-wind-can-meet-world-energy-demand-100-times-over-renewables/

    aside-
    “It takes around 2.5 MWh of chemical energy in a lump of coal to generate 1 MWh of electrical energy”

    1. And now the discussion gets interesting, because not every country has a “green” energy potential. Does it mean that a country has to get poorer in energy terms, or have to depopulate over time or can have some imports of energy boosters (fossil energy) due to superior industrial capacity? Can the most sinister scenarios be avoided all together?

      47 scientists recently came out and claimed it is possible for the whole world to run on renewable electricity. https://cleantechnica.com/2021/04/10/47-scientists-world-should-go-100-renewable-electricity-by-2030/

      Electricity can be more accurately be pinpointed to it’s use, mobility or heating for example. So there is some hope, even though the total energy consumption will go down. To support industry on 100% (in my view) green energy means dematerialisation and adoption of new materials and solutions based on current outlooks. It is not so grim though; we got too much concrete, steel and plastics, and even cars, everywhere right now.

      It is not a big problem in my view that engineers and other people from Germany and Belgium move to the north of Norway to a battery factory because the electricity necessary is local. And that the workforce move back home 2-3 months a year. Just an example of what might happen in the future.

      1. Kolbeinh —
        Renewable resources are certainly more evenly spread around the world than fossil fuel.

      2. Kolbeinih-
        A few ideas here-
        -electricity is not necessarily local. HVDC transmission lines from hydroelectric projects, for example, have been build in China and S.America that take the energy over a thousand km to the target for use. North Sea wind and offshore Pacific wind can provide a huge amount of energy to the handful of countries that don’t have great solar reserve. Mediterranean and Sahara region solar can be sent north. Texas solar can get to Chicago, etc.
        -“Does it mean that a country has to get poorer in energy terms, or have to depopulate over time …?
        Well, yes. That is the fate of the whole world as fossil fuel deplete….with the exception that the depletion can be offset by other energy if we are serious about. Countries that do nothing about replacing depleting energy will contract, and likely collapse in short order over the coming decades. Some quicker than others. Other countries can and perhaps will replace their fossil fuel energy with other forms. The solar reserve (from within their own borders) of most countries is far greater than they now use.

  9. No surprises here.

    72% OF ALL PEOPLE LIVE IN COUNTRIES WITH BIOCAPACITY DEFICITS

    “The researchers found that overall, global demand for resources is outstripping the planet’s ability to replenish them — and the problem is getting worse. In 1980, for example, humans were using resources at approximately 119% of the planet’s ability to replenish them. By 2017, it was at 173% — a trend that is clearly unsustainable.”

    https://phys.org/news/2021-04-people-countries-biocapacity-deficits-below-average.html

    1. And, on a similar vain,

      JUST 3% OF WORLD’S ECOSYSTEMS REMAIN INTACT

      “Just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat. These fragments of wilderness undamaged by human activities are mainly in parts of the Amazon and Congo tropical forests, east Siberian and northern Canadian forests and tundra, and the Sahara. The analysis did not take account of the climate crisis. “Accelerating climate change is becoming the overarching threat to the functionality of entire ecosystems. Yesterday’s mammal intactness hardly tells us a lot about the functioning ecosystems in the [global heating] age.””

      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/15/just-3-of-worlds-ecosystems-remain-intact-study-suggests

      1. So bro, are you ready to adopt a stone age lifestyle so that Mexicans can get their glaciers back?

        2. More like giving up the practice of digging up stones and setting them on fire. Moving away from the age of hand tools and gadgets and into the solid state, software driven world.

        3. Captain_Nakamura.
          “So bro, are you ready to adopt a stone age lifestyle so that Mexicans can get their glaciers back?”

          Who taught you to think like that? Fox news, Giuliani?
          Most people don’t try to be that stupid.

  10. How’s the buy-and-hold Fanbois feeling about their ‘ethical investment’? Remember those days lol
    http://peakoilbarrel.com/electric-commercial-vehicles-a-ten-year-update-part-2/#comment-675434
    http://peakoilbarrel.com/electric-commercial-vehicles-a-ten-year-update-part-2/#comment-675376

    “Tesla’s (TSLA) $1.5bn (£1bn) investment in bitcoin (BTC-USD) has a carbon footprint equivalent to the annual emissions of 1.8m cars, according to estimates from Bank of America.”

    https://www.itpro.co.uk/technology/cryptocurrencies/358938/teslas-bitcoin-investment-equivalent-to-carbon-footprint-of-18m

    Time to sell yet?

    I used to get called a Russian fossil fuel troll when I dissed what’s his nuts with the 1/2 dozen kids. Now I feel like people don’t want to be reminded of their poor judgement. It must be embarrassing!

    1. Severe case of obsession.
      Any other interests or hobbies?
      I’m into woodworking.

    2. I learned a long time ago that it’s wise to separate the man as a person from any discussion of his actual work in the business world unless his personal behaviors reflect on the way he treats customers and employees.

      And while I haven’t spent any time yet trying to really learn where all that energy supposedly goes in terms of bit coin, I think maybe the various governments of the world will figure out a way to tax the living hell out of it if and when it gets to be a REAL problem. That ought to take care of it.

      1. OFM —
        Here’s a partial explanation of bitcoin: It tracks accounts containing bitcoins and transactions between accounts, but doesn’t have a central computer. So to figure out how much is in a given account, you have to search through all the transactions ever made on that account (all the deposits and withdrawals) and add up the results.

        This system is much more expensive than the usual system of storing the current value, or at least a recent audited value. It’s like balancing your checkbook for your entire lifetime every time you open you wallet.

        The “blockchain” bitcoin is based on is just a method of maintaining a list of transactions without a central storage unit. You want three things for a system like that: It should be fast, decentralized and error-free. There is a math theorem (the CAP theorem) that says you can have any two of them, but not all three at the same time. Bitcoin chooses error-free and decentralized. So transactions are inherently slow and expensive.

  11. A NOBEL view:

    WE ARE TAKING A ‘COLOSSAL RISK’ WITH OUR FUTURE

    The failure to halt climate change, the destruction of nature and other intertwined global crises poses an existential risk to humanity. The Nobel winners said societies must repair and restore the “global commons” that have allowed our species to flourish — the climate, ice, land, ocean, freshwater, forests, soils, and rich diversity of life that regulate the state of the planet. There is now an existential need to build economies and societies that support Earth system harmony rather than disrupt it… What we are doing [now] amounts to an uncontrolled experiment on Earth’s life-support system.

    Meanwhile, Energy needs are increasing — every week until 2050 Earth’s urban population will increase by about 1.3 million.

    https://phys.org/news/2021-04-humanity-colossal-future-nobels.html

    1. ” What we are doing [now] amounts to an uncontrolled experiment on Earth’s life-support system.”

      Indeed, but it seems to me it is simply against the inherent nature of humans to collectively control our growth, our destruction, our consumption.
      At the end of the day, we do whatever it takes to put some meat (that used to be from a living animal) on the fire and then put in our mouths. And to take/get as much material as we can, as if it will guarantee more sex, and/or immortality.
      I don’t see the wise or humble ape rising to the surface and altering the tide of human history.
      Only hard limits will.

      1. Hickory , a comment on Prof Bardi’s blog . Better to press on the accelerator and crash as fast and soon as possible . Enjoy this :
        ” If we are near the limits of sea exploitation, and if we know that reaching limits is unavoidable, than it makes sense that competitors (nation-states) double down in exploitation, not to restrain from exploitation, because everything one competitor save “for the future generations” will be picked up by the enemies. I usually say to my friends that there is no point to save energy. In fact, it makes sense that Serbs spend as much of domestic resources as possible, to exploit it without limit, because that way the enemies won’t have the reason to invade, the resources will be exhausted. There is always some enemies that look on your resources from outside and wait for the opportunity to grab your resources. Conservation is no longer an option, especially with the mentality that humans have. “

        1. Hole in Head. I get the point. Typical human rationalization.
          Its about the last kind of attitude that nature and humanity need.
          I reject it simply out a sense of good and bad.
          I know, how quaint.

      2. Hickory —

        Agreed. The main problem I see is all the focus on simplistic solutions while ignoring the bigger picture. For example, having everyone drive a fancy EV still = a “car culture” — more consumption, more resource depletion (esp., nickel, manganese, and cobalt), more fields covered in asphalt, more kicking the can down the road. And, mining the ocean floor to get metals for batteries seems like insanity, to me. Don’t get me wrong, I have no solutions on offer. As Ron is wont to say, human nature won’t change in one decade, if ever.

        NB Every year we dump a massive 2.12 billion tons of waste. This stunning amount of waste is partly because most of the stuff we buy is trashed within six months.

        1. “Don’t get me wrong, I have no solutions on offer.”

          That’s the problem with you folks addicted to climate change, it’s not really about offering solutions to “save the planet” but more about suppressing freedom to the point where everybody is forced to live under the thumb of big government.

            2. Joe , Doug is 100 % correct . Half solutions are no solutions . Never have I heard of a lady who was a little bit pregnant but I always hear about a prostitute who is a virgin . The train has left the station . QED .

            3. When one reads idiot posts like those Joe Minch posts I laugh but feel like crying. Such utterly stupid people, they think it’s all about politics, a leftist conspiracy theory.

              But people, wake up and smell the coffee, it’s not just about climate change. There are at least a dozen other environmental problems that are at least as serious as climate change. And the driver of them all is overpopulation. The earth has at least four times as many people as the earth can support long term.

              Of course, it can support eight to ten billion short term, very short term. The earth’s ecosystem is not about to collapse, it has already started collapsing. But it’s like the from in the boiling pot. It’s happening just slow enough that few people even notice.

              But the sad part is there not one damn thing anyone can do about it. Of course, eight billion people acting in unison could do something. But that’s just not how human nature works. Way over half the world’s people are totally ignorant of the problem. Like Joe Minch, they find a devil to blame.

          2. Ha! Ha!

            Sorry, but you don’t have to read much to realize that many many people who are convinced of the threat of climate change are working on ‘solutions’. Some of those solutions may not work, some may work but not be cost effective, some may work and be cost effective but also be ‘too little – too late’.

            We don’t know how it will all work out. The private sector is making strides, but those strides are only happening due to the pushing and prodding of ‘big government’.

            “…addicted to climate change…” Ha! Ha!

          3. Hey Joe Minch.
            Do you remember being in school, and there were some kids who got A’s in Science.
            Later they went to college and some even got A’s there- in Chemistry, Physics, Microbiology, BioChemistry, Atmospheric Science, Material Science, Neurophysiology, Computational Geometry, Entemology….and a hundred other branches of Science.

            And guess what- almost every single one of them across the whole country, and the world, understands the climate emergency issue. Regardless of religion, country, age, political party, or musical taste. Simply because it what the accumulation of science knowledge shows to be the case.

            It is what it is, regardless of your foolish looking Maga zombie hat, or your Q Anon religion.
            Keep up with your attitude and ignorance, and you guys will lose even Texas within a few more election cycles. Even your desperate voter obstruction attempts will fail in the face of reality, truth and knowledge.

  12. What about Belgium and Singapore running on green energy? Impossible.

    And now the discussion gets interesting, because not every country has a “green” energy potential. Does it mean that a country has to get poorer in energy terms, or have to depopulate over time or can have some imports of energy boosters (fossil energy) due to superior industrial capacity? Can the most sinister scenarios be avoided all together?

    47 scientists recently came out and claimed it is possible for the whole world to run on renewable electricity. https://cleantechnica.com/2021/04/10/47-scientists-world-should-go-100-renewable-electricity-by-2030/

    Electricity can be more accurately be pinpointed to it’s use, mobility or heating for example. So there is some hope, even though the total energy consumption will go down. To support industry on 100% (in my view) green energy means dematerialisation and adoption of new materials and solutions based on current outlooks. It is not so grim though; we got too much concrete, steel and plastics, and even cars, everywhere right now.

    It is not a big problem in my view that engineers and other people from Germany and Belgium move to the north of Norway to a battery factory because the electricity necessary is local. And that the workforce move back home 2-3 months a year. Just an example of what might happen in the future.

    ——————
    I just reiterated a post I made further up the thread, because I think it is important. It is not possible to solve environmental problems unless touching very immeasurable subjects like population and our materialistic consumption. But there is a way out of this, which means kicking the can several decades down the road. Green electrification as much as possible. And if that is accomplished the question is more; can renewable energy be built up with renewable energy in the future? It can, because less population (look at fertility rates in at least developed/urban based nations) and economic focus on necessary materials will prolong the problems once again.

    1. KOLBEINIH —

      “Electricity can be more accurately be pinpointed to it’s use, mobility or heating for example.”

      Don’t forget cooling. ?

      “Using air conditioners and electric fans to stay cool accounts for nearly 20% of the total electricity used in buildings around the world today. Rising demand for space cooling is also putting enormous strain on electricity systems in many countries, as well as driving up emissions. Absent firm policy interventions, there is no doubt that global demand for space cooling and the energy needed to provide it will continue to grow for decades to come.”

      https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-cooling

      1. Yes, it’s an issue. My focal point is Northern Europe, with it’s spoiled population. Finding a solution to kick the can down the road for some time in my opinion. Cooling problems is too much for me to take onboard.

    2. Friend , I live in Belgium only 50 km from Oostende and I have visited the off shore windmills off Oostende . I am aware of the energy mix of electricity in Belgium . In my line of work I visit the nuclear plants and get a chance to talk to the engineers there .All you hear is propaganda . Like they say ” All air , no punch ” . FUBAR . When ? I don’t know . Why ? Because the grid is intercontinental . Belgium draws from France when it is short .

    3. Kolbeinih-
      “; can renewable energy be built up with renewable energy in the future?”

      Yes it is a great question. It is one we find out the answer to, one way or another. No choice.
      Time, oil depletion, and population growth are marching on.

    4. “What about Belgium and Singapore running on green energy? Impossible.”

      If these countries can run on imported fossil fuel energy, they can at least potentially run on imported renewable energy.

      The technologies that enabled us to overpopulate the planet to the point a hard crash is inevitable are also enabling us to do something significant and substantial about shortages of resources.

      It may well be too little too late for a substantial portion of our species, and countless others as well, but within another decade or two, assuming Old Man Business As Usual manages to hobble along, we will be building high voltage long distance transmission lines out the ying yang, and electrolyizing water to obtain hydrogen which will go a very long way toward solving the electrical energy storage problem, because hydrogen in a fuel cell or even in an ICE is going to be a practical and economical ( compared to doing WITHOUT) way of using renewable electricity around the clock and around the calendar.

      Solar cells will be cheaper than ever, and they will be incorporated into dozens of materials such as window glass, roofing, outside wall coverings, even the tops and sides of large trucks.

      Wind and solar power will be available during off peak hours at near zero prices, and various new industries, or branches of new industries, will spring up to take advantage of this dirt cheap energy.
      Consider how easily water is stored in large reservoirs, or even in aquifiers, if properly managed, and that once stored, it can be kept for years and years, except for evaporation or possible pollution problems.

      So we can desalinate almost any amount of water, insofar as domestic household use is concerned, and we can learn how to get by just fine on half as much as most of us Westerners use today.

      I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime real soon, but some of the richer countries, in terms of skilled workers and industrial capacities, will be able to produce a substantial portion of the country’s total food supply indoors…… where there are near zero losses to bad weather, shipping costs are slashed as much as ninety percent, losses in shipping are close to zero……. etc.
      Now will such food be expensive? Sure it will, but maybe we can quit spending so much on sugar water, and candy, and cosmetics, IF WE HAVE TOO, and afford food produced this way. And incidentally this sort of agriculture is very likely to require a LOT of cheap semi skilled or unskilled workers ……….. who might as well be PAID to do the work needed as supported on outright welfare.

      I could go on all day.

      1. “The technologies that enabled us to overpopulate the planet..” I couldn’t help but chuckle at this OFM. It isn’t technology that is causing overpopulation it’s something that young people are much too eager to do and always have been. ;>)

        Seriously I have been looking at hydrogen technology lately and think we may be better off for 90% of our energy future to look at batteries. Hydrogen has some basic physics issues that may limit its future to little more than long distance trucking where the weight/kWh storage capacity is advantageous. For short distances and stationary power needs I think that upcoming battery technology may be better.

        But nothing will help if we can’t get those young people to find a less destructive pastime.

    5. Kolbeinh-
      Belgium and Singapore together make up 0.2% of the world’s population. If that’s all the worries you have, then you have no worries.

  13. From 2010 through 2019, Brazil’s Amazon basin gave off 16.6 billion tonnes of CO2, while drawing down only 13.9 billion tonnes.

    AMAZON MAY BE TURNING FROM FRIEND TO FOE

    “We half-expected it, but it is the first time that we have figures showing that the Brazilian Amazon has flipped, and is now a net emitter,” said co-author Jean-Pierre Wigneron, a scientist at France’s National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA).

    Deforestation — through fires and clear-cutting — increased nearly four-fold in 2019 compared to either of the two previous years, from about one million hectares (2.5 million acres) to 3.9 million hectares, an area the size of the Netherlands. The Amazon rainforest is one of a dozen so-called “tipping points” in the climate system.

    https://phys.org/news/2021-04-climate-amazon-friend-foe.html

    1. Brazil can do very well on hydro power, wind power and biofuels based on sugar canes. It’s more than enough. They can even reduce soy bean and corn exports. Deforestation of the Amazon can be regulated for sure.

      1. Kolbeinih , yes , I can loose weight by going on a cabbage soup diet , but am I willing to do it and bear the pain ? Now , that is another question .:-0

      2. Of course it can be saved but will it and when? A total of 11,088 sq. km (4,281 sq. miles) of rainforest were destroyed from August 2019 to July 2020. Not encouraging!

        1. ..and rainforest destruction is much more important for the future of the biosphere than whatever Brazil uses to generate electricity or move their transportation.

  14. Doug, upstream you said “The main problem I see is all the focus on simplistic solutions while ignoring the bigger picture. For example, having everyone drive a fancy EV still = a “car culture” — more consumption, more resource depletion (esp., nickel, manganese, and cobalt), more fields covered in asphalt, more kicking the can down the road. And, mining the ocean floor to get metals for batteries seems like insanity, to me. ”

    Unfortunately, the human race has not decided to go into contraction mode. Rather, we all are on the collective overshoot highway. There will be an additional 1,000,000,000 people additional by 2035.
    There will be more vehicles desired and purchased, even if it just replacing the current fleet as it degrades.
    Whether or not we see it as problem- it is going to happen.
    With that in mind, accomplishing the task of transport is better with EV than ICE, heating the home is better with heat pump than oil boiler, and eating food from local is better than shipping it 1000 miles. Fancy has nothing to do with it. Environmental impact/person has all to do with it.

    1. PS- I know that you know all this Doug, perhaps better than I. But thanks for giving me the chance to say it. Again.

    2. One child policy, none of the other shit works if you not solve the problem

  15. Speaking of long duration grid energy storage, that doesn’t involve chemical batteries, a Canadian company has been awarded the contract for 1,000 MW of long-duration energy storage in California.
    The two projects will use the company’s Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES) technology, which provides eight to 12 hours of energy storage. The two projects represent a combined investment of more than $1.5 billion. Hydrostor said that development work, including transmission interconnection, engineering and permitting activities, are underway.

    https://www.hydrostor.ca/

    1. Here’s a link that describes the system.
      https://newatlas.com/energy/hydrostor-compressed-air-energy-storage/

      Now I’m not an engineer or physicist, but back in the Dark Ages, I did take a few relevant courses, lol.

      It’s not immediately obvious to me why the compressed and therefore hot air shouldn’t be put into the storage caverns HOT, because that would result in higher pressure and drive the turbine more efficiently.

      The round trip efficiency doesn’t look very impressive, but it is true that compressors and turbines can be built to last for generations, and are routinely built to this standard, and have been, for a long time already.

      If I understand the system correctly, then all that’s necessary to increase the storage capacity would be to increase the size of the caverns, thereby enabling the turbine to be operated for a longer period of time at a given output.

      That would be reasonably cheap I suppose, although I don’t really have any idea how such caverns are to be constructed. I suppose a shaft will have to be sunk big enough to get conventional tunneling or mining machinery down to the necessary depth to do the excavating.

      It seems to be pretty much a sure thing that there will be PLENTY of other wise surplus solar energy to charge up the caverns almost every day, due to the duck curve nature of solar production, so the efficiency need not be a big concern…… until somebody figures out a way to use that energy more profitably, which I believe will happen eventually.

      In that case, such a storage system could wind up stranded.

      1. A 60% round trip efficiency is not great, but the 50 year expected lifespan equates to a very good longterm cost equation, apparently.
        Nothing too exotic (like chemistry) about the whole setup.

  16. Here’s a primer for the (fortunately rare) “it’s only a trace gas” lads.

    Why is a trace gas, such as carbon dioxide, (0.04% of air) referred to as the control knob of the Earth’s thermostat? How can a small change in carbon dioxide (CO2) content make a critical difference to the actual global surface temperature of the Earth? Nitrogen and oxygen comprise the bulk of the atmosphere but do not absorb the earth’s heat radiation. Although water vapour and clouds together absorb 75% of the Earth’s heat radiation, they cannot determine the temperature of the atmosphere. Water vapour and clouds depend on temperature and air circulation in ways that CO2 does not. They condense and cannot maintain a temperature structure for the atmosphere. CO2 accounts for 80% of the non-condensing gases that maintain the temperature structure of the Earth and acts as the control knob of the Earth’s thermostat. It controls the amount of water vapour and clouds. CO2 absorption is strong as it absorbs in the frequency range where the Earth’s heat emission (Planck field) is strongest. The instant doubling of CO2 content (e.g., from pre-industrial 280 ppm to 560 ppm) would reduce the Earth’s emission of heat radiation to space by about 4 Watts for every square metre of the Earth’s surface. Yes, CO2 absorption is that strong. The atmospheric temperature must be raised to radiate an extra 4 Watts per square metre to restore the Earth’s energy balance. The increased surface temperature of 1.2 degrees C from the instant doubling of CO2 content allows an increased water vapour content by maintaining a constant relative humidity. The extra water vapour increases the overall absorption by water vapour itself raising the surface temperature further by about 1.2 degrees C. The total increase is about 3 degrees C when all feedbacks are included.

    Perhaps it would be easier to give the “it’s only a trace gas” lads a free way ticket to Venus, where atmosphere is mainly carbon dioxide, with pleasant clouds of sulfuric acid droplets (and a surface temperatures running roughly 880 degrees F). 😉

    http://www.globalwarmingequation.info/amazing carbon dioxide.pdf

    1. Doug ,interesting . Never realised this , though I have commented earlier ” A small hole can sink a big ship ” . Wake up call .

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