THE ABJECT FAILURE OF RENEWABLE POWER FOR THE PROPOSED ‘CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE’.
In the President’s recent address to the Nation, he spoke of the need to move to a Clean Energy Future.
He either has not bothered to find out the facts, or he’s being badly advised, because renewable power just cannot supply the electrical power that is needed to keep the U.S. running. Linking renewable power to oil is like linking Soccer to Baseball. They are both sports, they both use a ball, but they are totally and utterly different one from the other.
In the U.S. you are lucky because statistics for power consumption are easily and readily available. Because statistics like this are not easy to compile, nearly every other developed Country does not have that bureaucratic structure that enables statistics of this nature to be readily compiled, and of the ones that do, those figures are one to two years old when they finally are assembled together in the one place.
However, the U.S. has a wonderfully large organisation, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and one task they do, and do very well is to compile accurate statistics with only a three month lead time, a task that is astronomical by its very nature. Those new statistics, although published every month are on a monstrously huge database. The problem with that is those figures are virtually meaningless, unless you know how to read them, how to decipher them, and then how to effectively explain them to a general public not trained in what electrical statistics mean.
I have now been referring to those stats for nearly two and a half years now, so I know where to look, what to look for, and how to explain them.
Senators Kerry and Lieberman recently introduced the American Power Act to add to the earlier Waxman Markey legislation to impose a huge new tax a cost on Carbon, (and Congressmen and Senators, that should be Carbon Dioxide when you talk about it) and also to legislate for what is now being called a Clean Energy Future, by using renewable forms of electrical power generation.
One of the single and most glaring errors they made is that they are using the wrong sets of figures when ‘artfully’ explaining just how effective these forms of renewable power really are.
What is interpreted from this legislation is the total Nameplate Capacity of the renewable power plants currently being used. This artificially gives the impression that these renewable plants are indeed providing significantly large amounts of electrical power.
However, the abject failure of this assumption is that even though the totals they quote ‘seem’ quite high, these are the theoretical maximum power totals that these plants can provide, and, in actual fact, these renewable plants do not even get close to those maximum totals, and in fact, at best, supply barely 20% on average of that total Nameplate Capacity power.
As a comparison, a large Nuclear power plant has an Efficiency of power delivery rate (ER) of 92.5% and higher, while a large coal fired power plant has an ER of 87.5%. The only times that these two (nuclear and coal) are not delivering their maximum power is during scheduled down time for maintenance, and in the case of nuclear power plants, for refuelling. (replacing the fuel rods) That refuel time for nuclear power plants is around 18 months, so if that scheduled time falls towards the end of one year, then it is feasible that the plant can run for the complete 12 month recording cycle, supplying its full power for the whole year, and this has actually happened in some cases.
However, in the case of these Renewable plants, it is not the Nameplate Capacity that is the most vitally important factor, as is the case with any type of power plant. What is significantly more important is the actual power these plants provide to the grids for consumers to use.
That is where this huge EIA database comes into its own, because it provides exact statistics for all forms of power generation.
March 2010 Electrical Power Consumption Chart By Sector
The stats for March 2010 have just been released and although showing a slight improvement in that renewable sector, they still show that they supplied very little power on the overall basis.
The image at left here is the pie chart for March from that EIA site. If you click on the image, it will open in a new and separate window.
The percentage from coal fired sources has fallen slightly to 47.7%, and although the total from all renewable sources has risen slightly to 4.2% that rise was barely a third of one percent. Why most sectors fell, that was due entirely to the fact that March is a benign month with respect to the weather, when large amounts of heating are not needed, and not yet in the heat of Summer when airconditioning is almost a required essential of a comfortable life, at work, at home, and whilst out shopping etc. Total power consumption fell almost 3% on February’s stats, and almost 16% from those bitterly cold months of December and January.
The page at this link shows the total power consumed in the U.S. both on an overall basis, and also for each of the different sources of power generation.
That overall figure is almost at the bottom right of that page. Go down the left to the heading 2010. then down to March and then all the way across to the right for the total power consumed in the U.S. for March, that total being 311,933 and that figure is expressed in Thousand MegaWattHours, or a figure you might recognise from your own power bill where it is expressed in KiloWattHours (KWH) so that figure is now expressed in Million KWH.
When you look at totals for individual sectors, you can see that most sectors fell, due to the benign nature of the month, as I explained above.
While those large producers of electrical power have fallen because of reduced demand, the renewable sector did actually increase, but that increase was minimal when looked at on the overall basis.
The page at this link shows the totals for renewable power, and although that sector’s slice of the pie amounts to 4.2%, those two sectors most referred to with respect to renewable power, Wind and Solar make up only two of those five areas, and even though this area is supposed to be the renewable sector, two of those five renewables shown there actually do emit CO2 on much the same scale as for those Natural Gas fired power plants.
WIND POWER.
So looking at wind power as part of this renewable sector and then referring it back to the overall total power consumed, we find a different story emerging. At that link above for renewable power, we see that the total power consumed from wind powered sources for the month of March amounted to 8196 Million KWH. This comes in at 2.6% of all power consumed in the U.S. but that’s not the whole story.
The American Power Act and those explaining it, and providing analysis on it use the Nameplate Capacity for Wind Power. The U.S. currently has 38,000 MW of total maximum Nameplate Capacity. What that amounts to is an equivalent number of 19 large coal fired power plants of a Capacity of 2000MW, so let’s then look how much power those wind towers did produce, and compare it then to those equivalent coal fired power plants.
The total maximum power theoretically available from that 38,000MW of wind power comes in at 28,300 Million KWH. They actually provided for consumption 8196 Million KWH. This gives them an Efficiency Rating (ER) of Power delivered vs nameplate capacity of just under 29%, which is fairly impressive, because that figure is actually close to the 35% operators claim as average supply. However, what needs to be considered is that over the whole year, that ER shrinks considerably to 21% (for whole of year 2009) which is closer to the Worldwide average of 20%.
Comparing it to those 19 large coal fired plants also highlights further startling insight.
Those 19 coal fired plants can actually produce a total of 28,300 Million KWH, so they actually provided 3.45 times more power than those wind towers did over that same 31 day period, proving conclusively that you just cannot use Nameplate Capacity as the guide when ‘artfully interpreting’ how much power is provided by those wind towers.
That 29% ER can also be explained on a time basis, meaning these plants only provided their power for 29% of the whole month or for only 9 days. If nearly 70% of every Watt of power generated in the US from every source is required for 24 hours of every day, 24/7/365, then it is starkly obvious that Wind power just cannot fulfill this requirement.
SOLAR POWER.
At that same renewable power link above, we can see that the total power produced from Solar means for the month of March amounted to 64 Million KWH, which when compared to the overall total amounts to 0.02% of all power consumed.
The U.S. currently has 600MW of Nameplate Capacity Solar power plants from both sources Solar Photovoltaic, and Concentrating Solar, so let’s then compare the power these solar plants provided to the grids for consumption with an equivalent sized coal fired plant of 600MW capacity, keeping in mind that this sized coal fired plant is a medium to small plant. The total power theoretically available from 600MW for one month is 446 Million KWH, so this power actually delivered from all Solar sources of 64 Million KWH amounts to an ER of 14.3%, or that they supply their full power for barely 4 days and 10 hours of that month of March.
If you then compare it to that one small coal fired power plant, you can then see that the coal fired plant provides nearly 7 times as much power for the month. That’s one small coal fired power plant.
CLEAN ENERGY FAIL.
So, when you add together the totals produced from these two ‘Clean Energy’ renewable power sources currently the flavour of the month, Wind and Solar, we see that they only supply 2.62% of all power consumed in the U.S. for the month of March. One month in isolation can sometimes not give an overall picture, but for the whole of year 2009, the amount of power consumed from both Wind and Solar sources only amounted to 1.8% of the total power consumed from every source.
A further stark comparison is when you look at those wind towers being constructed at such a furious rate. There is now 38,000MW of total Nameplate Capacity, and, as I mentioned above, this is the equivalent of 19 large coal fired power plants of 2000MW.
Currently in the US, there are 29 coal fired power plants of a Nameplate Capacity of 2000MW and greater. That number has not changed now for literally decades, as no new coal fired plants of that size have been approved for construction. These same 29 large coal fired power plants have been around longer than Wind towers have been in our thought process, and long before any of them were put into construction on the large scale and size that we see now being constructed.
What is well worth understanding is that we are so often told that these wind towers will be able to take the place of those coal fired power plants.
Of those 29 large coal fired power plants, not one of them has closed down, even though we now have the same capacity as 19 of those large coal fired power plants. Think about that if you are wavering in the direction Wind Power.
NOT ONE HAS CLOSED DOWN.
Clean Energy, and here in current times where only two methods are spoken about, that means Wind Power and Solar Power, can never be relied upon to provide the electrical power that is needed, and needed absolutely on that 24/7/365 basis.
I showed how these forms of power cannot be relied on when they are most needed, the depths of a the harsh Winter just gone at this post with stats for December and January, and in this post for February, and even though March is becoming more benign, they can’t even be relied upon to provide power when consumption reduces considerably from those high usage periods.
So when you hear how we need to move towards a ‘Clean Energy Future’, be fully and absolutely aware that this is nothing more than hot air and spin, brought to you by people who (a) just do not know, (b) have not even bothered to find out the true facts, or (c) people who not even bothered to get advice from people who know the true facts. Whichever of those is true, then it shows that these people are culpable of deception on a huge scale.
These people are using your money, and literally hundreds of billions of dollars, to throw at something that does not work, and can never be made to work on the scale required.
THIS IS A FAIL ON THE GRANDEST OF SCALES.
RenewPowerFail2010
papundits
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Grumpy Old Man
T Lee Humphrey
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Turtle
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patpacer
Guest Contributor
papundits
06/21/2010
Re: your 2nd from last paragraph.
You can safely add that they do know but don’t care because it fits their agenda of Socialism.
Has Socialism every been tried in a thriving economy?
Isn’t only when the people are desperate and grasping for straws that they will allow it, even if only incrementally. —ed