IT’S TIME TO SIMPLIFY THE GRID
GET WIND AND SOLAR OFF THE GRID AS QUICKLY AND PAINLESSLY AS POSSIBLE
The power supplies of the west are in diabolical trouble. Even in the US, power prices are rising and there is a looming shortfall of dispatchable power.
They are finding that installed capacity of wind and solar aint’t necessarily real capacity, like some oils ain’t oils. 40 seconds.
They are running into the brick wall that The Energy Realists of Australia described in 20201, see Briefing Note 21.7. Wind and solar can DISPLACE coal but they can’t REPLACE it. That note, and many more, circulated to 800 state and federal lawmakers and a hundred leading journalists.
Overseas readers need to know that Australia used to run almost entirely on coal, with limited hydro and a little bit of very expensive gas. No nuclear and no interconnectors to other grids.
STARTING WITH THE CONCLUSION OF THIS PIECE. We need to get wind and solar off the grid as quickly and painlessly as possible. Historians can work out how wind and solar managed to become so intrusive. Here is a sketch of the story that leads to the conclusion.
The root of the problem is global warming alarmism and the demonisation of CO2. This is a very minor greenhouse gas and the foundation of life on earth (plant food.)
As for the threat of warming and CO2, just read a good book or two and relax! Since the Little Ice Age ended some 300 years ago, warming has been unequivocally beneficial. We are still a degree or more short of the Roman Warm Period which was the best time on earth for living things.
Fear of warming and CO2 has driven the most damaging public policy blunder on record, with trillions of dollars wasted around the western world on the attempt to transition to intermittent wind and solar power.
Would you spend a single dollar to get the results of this great experiment?
Electricity costs have doubled or tripled in some places. The supply is less secure, with blackouts looming in Germany, Britain, and Australia. The current is less stable in voltage and frequency, which are vital for modern manufacturing machinery.
And the environmental carnage!
From the overseas mines to the cancerous proliferation of wind and solar facilities carving up our forests and farmlands, to the impending tsunami of toxic waste when the hardware has to be thrown away and replaced.
The most damaging legacy of this episide may well be the tragic division of families and communities in rural areas where the environmental damage is happening. But what would city folk know or care about that?
Blackouts have been deferred in Australia thanks to the loss of industries and businesses, large and small, which has flattened the demand curve. This can’t go on forever. How many more smelters can we close?
We know that wind and solar won’t work, thanks to the combined effect of wind droughts and the lack of feasible and affordable grid-scale storage. Break the bank and build storage if you must, but McBatney’s Law dictates that you will never charge it with intermitent wind and solar.
In the big picture, wind and solar are unsustainable because they are parasites on the more efficient conventional generators. Schernikau and Smith explain that they are a net drain on the energy economy of the world.
They displace coal but can’t replace it, as noted above , resulting in the “wind drought trap.” This is set slowly, as coal plants close without being replaced. The process is easy to see in Australia because the picture is not complicated by significant amounts of hydro and gas, and there are no nuclear plants or imports.
The capacity of dispatchable power declines towards the base load which is required through the night, approaching a point where a combination of nocturnal wind droughts, extreme weather conditions and outages of coal or gas will precipitate a catastrophic power crisis.
GET WISE ABOUT WIND DROUGHTS
The good news is that Paul Burgess is now telling the wind drought story in a hypnotic presentation, adding to his amazing collection of climate and energy materials.
The Australian pioneers looked directly at windpower generation without being confused by decades of world weather data and elaborate statistical analysis which confuse more than they illuminate.
The leaders are Paul Miskelly, with helpers, and the amazing solo observer, Anton Lang. They started around 2008 and their revelation of severe and prolonged wind droughts across the whole of the SE Australian grid could have put a stop to the wind power tragedy in its infancy.
CONCLUSION
We need to get wind and solar off the grid as quickly and painlessly as possible. Historians can work out how wind and solar managed to become so dangerous, to the point where wind droughts became an existential threat to Western civilisation. I was joking the first time I said it, but now look at Britain and Germany.
Reality is in the UK we aren't getting rid of the wind or solar we already have connected until its either life expired or more than likely its subsidies expire. What we need to do is cease to subsidise anymore of it and get back to having reliable firm dispatchable capacity. In some respects the fact that DESNZ are consulting on adding an additional higher priced tier in the Capacity Market to incentivise new build, as they recognise we need standby generation, is nicely setting us for solar and wind falling off the system.
Wind and solar are con jobs.