With all the rhetoric being spoken of in respect of the need to move away from coal fired power because of the emissions of Carbon Dioxide, now labelled as a dangerous Greenhouse Gas, and the imperative of moving towards the use of renewable methods to generate the electrical power we need, it’s worthwhile looking at actual statistics for that Renewable Power sector, especially those now favoured methods of Wind Generation and both forms of Solar Power Generation, and to see if they actually are doing what is being claimed. In looking at these statistics, it provides us with some insight into what we have to look forward to if this move to renewable power is ramped up to the scale we are told is what is needed.
By its very nature this is a long post, but if you want to see the real truth about renewable power, then it’s worth taking the 15/20 minutes of your time it will take to read it all, if only to see just how poor Renewable Power really is when it comes to delivering electrical power to the power grids, and consumers.
This post continues the series for this year, 2010, where I am explaining how Renewable Power is not equal to the hype you are being told about.
The posts for the earlier series are as follows:
January: Renewable Power, But Not For When It’s Needed Most (Part 2)
February: Kerry Lieberman American Power Act – Renewable Power – Strike Three
March: Renewable Power – March 2010 – ‘Clean Energy Future’ Fail
April: Renewable Power Fail – As Usual – April 2010
It’s an easy thing to say that the currently popular forms of Renewable Power, Wind and Solar, are the way of the future, and then, in support of that argument, to quote from some statistics that give the impression that it is indeed beginning to take up some of the power that is needed to keep that huge level of electricity available at the grids that we are all connected to. Those quoted statistics seem, in isolation, to actually be quite impressive, and that is just the exact reason that they are being used.
However, what needs to be taken into account is that those people who are selectively using those statistics have no real comprehension of just how that electricity is being used, and also, just how much of that power is being generated, because these are two distinct and separate things.
It’s simple to quote the numbers of wind towers and solar farms that are producing electrical power, and the total power that all those towers, mirrors and panels can actually produce.
What is the more accurate thing to be looking at is the exact total of the power that they ARE actually generating for consumption by users, and this is where those figures differ, and differ spectacularly.
This is a difficult thing to comprehend, and that is what those who do selectively quote those figures at you are relying upon, the fact that you are not electrically trained to differentiate the actual facts, or even to know where to go looking for them. What is also being told to you is that those quoted totals can in fact supply what seems to be quite a large number of households with electrical power. Again, these statistics are extrapolated out from the maximums that might actually be generated and then taken in context with what the average electrical consumption an average household might use on a yearly basis. This in fact is a severe bending of the truth on two fronts. Those Renewable power plants, be they Wind, or the two versions of Solar Power Generation are in fact connected to the overall grid that supplies power only to the area close to those Renewable Power Plants. They are never connected directly to those households. Then, the second misdirection is that the power that they do provide to those grids is then consumed by the three main areas of power consumption, the Residential sector which consumes 38% of all that power from the grid, the Commercial sector, (37%) and the Industrial sector. (24%) So, at no stage, ever, are those renewable plants supplying those quoted numbers of households. They are only supplying their power to the grid.
You may think that this is nit picking, but when those huge numbers of households are mentioned, you need to place it in the same context of what could be supplied by an equivalent sized coal fired plant, or natural gas fired plant, or for that fact, a nuclear power plant extrapolated down to the same power totals.
A startling example of that would be the figures quoted for say, one Wind Tower complex, and as an example I would cite the proposed Cape Wind Project, still as yet unconstructed, and now nearly ten years in planning. This plant will have 140 huge towers, the main structures taller than The Statue of Liberty, and the huge three bladed propellor adding again on top of that height. The plant is proposed to run at around a 35% efficiency rating, something that is not effectively explained by those who cleverly use some statistics to impress you with. Even so, that figure of 35% is quite sanguine indeed, when the current efficiency rate for all Wind power across the U.S. is running at around 20% efficiency of power delivery, which is also closer to the current Worldwide average for all wind plants totalled out together.
So, for this plant, with the 3.3MW nacelles atop each tower, the total power that feasibly might be generated should all those turbines be rotating at all the time is 462MW of power and this is the total often quoted, because it is seemingly so large.
However, that plant will operate, or so those who propose it would like to tell us, at around 35% efficiency, meaning that over a year it will deliver its power at an easily calculated total, that being 1.42 Billion KWH. The average consumption per household is around 6,000KWH per year so, that total figure can be extrapolated out to show this plant can effectively provide power for around 240,000 homes, which is also a statistic that is often quoted, even though this is shown to be spurious, as I explained above. When taken in isolation, this figure of 240,000 homes makes it seem like the plant is delivering a lot of electrical power, because that’s how the average household consumer might equate it to, that being what they personally use at home, if you can see that point.
Let’s then look at an equivalent coal fired or for that point an equivalent natural gas fired plant of the same capacity, that being the 462MW total Nameplate Capacity. These types of plant effectively operate at around 87% when used to supply their power all the time, as they are designed do, and that 87% means 13% down time, mainly just for regular maintenance, and here it must be realised that this 87% figure is actually on the low side, as most of the huge coal fired plants of 2000MW Capacity and higher operate more efficiently again. So while Wind always quote on the high side, when it comes to fossil fuel plants, they always quote on the low side, so I don’t mind. I’ll go with that lower figure, because the results are still astoundingly eye opening.
Using the same formula, an equivalent coal or natural gas fired plant of 462MW will actually provide 3.55 Billion KWH, or 2.5 times as much power. That equivalent plant can provide power for 600,000 homes, far and away more than the Wind Plant can provide, even at that inflated efficiency rate. Using the current 20% World average efficiency rating, the coal fired plant can actually provide power for 4.4 times as many homes.
So, in this example, at the 35% rate, wind can power 240,000 homes while coal can provide power for 600,000 homes.
For an even greater perspective, a large Nuclear power plant of 2000MW capacity can provide power for 2.8 million homes.
See now how some statistics are used by those with their agenda to push can quite easily be misconstrued, even though what they are saying is in fact the truth.
Electrical Power Consumption Chart For May 2010
So then, let’s look at the figures for the month of May, and these are provided directly from the Government’s own huge database, that being from the Energy Information Administration. (EIA) These figures are for actual power consumption across the whole of the U.S.
This chart at left is from the EIA database for the month of April, and released in July, and is shown at this link. Click on the image to open it in a new and larger window.
As I mentioned in those earlier posts, and as I have been doing for the last two and a half years now, this quite effectively shows that Renewable Power is not only failing to deliver what is being told to you, it can never be able to deliver the amounts of power that are being claimed.
The difficult part for me is to try and explain this so the average person can understand it. Trained in the electrical engineering field as I am, these figures can be understood, provided you know what you are looking at, so the Government is perfectly safe in actually being up front about releasing these 100% accurate figures, because the average person in the street would be totally clueless when looking at them, even considering that they knew how to find them in the first place.
There are also some things that you need to be aware of as you read through this, and where possible I try and offer explanations that can be understood, because it may even look as if I am using these statistics to pursue an agenda I might have. I have no agenda. All I am attempting to do is to point out that Renewable Power, even though it is touted as the direction for the future, can never supply what is being claimed, and no amount of wishing and hoping can make those plants provide something that they just cannot do.
That small pie chart you see there is the running total of power being consumed from the sectors that actually generate the power we all use. This is not the chart just for the month of May, as I originally thought when I first started to use these charts, but the running total for the year to date, in this case for the 5 months up to and including May.
OVERALL
When referring to last month’s chart you can see that there has been a slightly marginal drop in the power supplied from the coal fired sector, even though actual power supplied from that coal fired sector for the Month of May rose by 12%. This may seem odd, but again, you need to know how to read the actual data. This rise in that coal sector is in the main the bulk of the overall rise in total power consumption from every sector, that total rising by 14% in all. The large rise for this Month is due to moving from cool early Spring, closer to the hot Summer months, and can be in the main attributed to the changes in the use of air conditioning. Having said that, you need to keep that too in context. Some people would think this could mean household air conditioning, but that air conditioning in the residential sector would make up less than the tiniest fraction of overall power consumption from air conditioning. Look at every structure above 2 stories in sight, the skylines of every city and right down to the smallest of towns. Every one of those structures has air conditioning, not for the comfort of the occupants and visitors, but to actually provide the breathing air inside those buildings. That’s every structure, be it apartments where people live, but in the main, workplaces for all those people. Those conditioners on the roofs of every one of those buildings must run 24 hours of every day to keep the air inside them breathable, so, as those thermostats come off the Winter settings and are adjusted for Summer temperatures, those compressors driving the conditioners are running flat out. This rise in that area is felt mainly in the Commerce sector which consumes 37% of all power in the U.S.
From the chart, you can see that the power provided from the Nuclear sector stayed the same, even though the actual power provided from that Nuclear sector rose by 15%.
The smaller sectors of Hydro and Petroleum also rose slightly due to the overall increase, but those percentages reflect on the chart as staying relatively unchanged.
The other large increase on the chart is in the Natural Gas fired sector which rose by a small amount on the chart, but in actual power delivery rose by nearly 16%, and there’s a good reason for that which I’ll come to later here.
That renewable sector rose fractionally on the chart, which seems somewhat anomalous, because in actual fact, the power actually delivered from that Renewable sector fell by 7%. So, while all those ‘green faith’ followers would have you believe Renewable power is the way of the future, it’s not even pulling its weight in the present. Virtually every other sector supplied more power for this month, and the only sector to actually fall was that Renewable sector.
So, let’s now look at that Renewable sector in isolation, and see just how much power it did provide for the month.
WIND POWER
The total power provided from the Wind sector alone fell by 12%, and here you need to realise that when other sectors rise by 12% it is over a huge base, while here for Wind Power, that base is quite small indeed.
The actual power provided from the wind amounted to only 2.57% of the total power consumed across the whole U.S.
For the totals from the month previous to this Wind power supplied 3.3%, so this fall in power supplied for May is indeed quite a dramatic, and substantial fall.
Currently, the U.S. is the largest consumer of electricity generated from the Wind sector on Earth, and the total Nameplate Capacity of Installed power comes in at 38,000MW, which, when viewed like that is quite an impressive total, and one often used to impress a point, as false as that point actually is, when the real truth is explained.
The total amount of power that can be provided from all those wind towers if they were running full steam all the time would be 28.3 Billion KWH for the month of May.
The actual power they all delivered was 8.4 Billion KWH. This means that for the Month of May, all those wind towers were running at a power delivery efficiency rate of 29%. This is considerably less than the 35% for the previous month. It is still marginally better than for the Wordwide average of 20%, but that is mainly due to the U.S. wind towers coming on stream more recently than a lot of existing World wind towers, hence the technology would be a little better. Even so, this is still considerably less than the claimed 35% efficiency rate.
Over the rolling five month period so far this year, Wind Power is running at an overall 26% efficiency rating for power delivery.
For the purposes of equivalency, the actual power delivered from the same 38,000MW of coal fired power would have been just on 25 Billion KWH, just under three times as much power. For the equivalent Nuclear sourced electrical power, that amount comes to 27.2 Billion KWH, or 3.25 times the power. Those equivalent Nuclear power plants would have supplied the same amount of power as all those wind towers did in the first nine and a half days of that Month of May.
This places that ‘Wind Power For The Future’ rhetoric into some sort of realistic perspective.
SOLAR POWER
As Summer now approaches, Solar power will start to come into its own, or so we will be told.
Let’s then look at the actual figures for Solar Power. For the Month of May, every solar plant in the U.S. supplied the grand total of 0.038% of all the power consumed in the U.S. Read that again. That’s just a little over one thirtieth of one percent, a figure so small as to be exactly what it is…..inconsequential. The rolling five month total for power supplied from the Solar sector comes in at 0.019% of the total power consumed, less than one fiftieth of one percent.
Imagine the Billions of dollars of public funding being outlayed for what effectively amounts to nothing, and to quote their own ‘green’ rhetoric back at them this is barely enough to supply power for 17,000 homes.
The installed nameplate Capacity for Solar Power in the U.S. is around 800MW of total power, so that means if all of them were producing at their maximum, then the total available power would be 595 Million KWH for the Month of May. They all actually delivered a total of 124 Million KWH, giving them a power delivery efficiency rate of 20%.
The rolling five month total gives Solar Power an efficiency rate for power delivery of slightly less than 11%.
I might suggest that for the purposes of comparison, you might be a little miffed if that same efficiency rate was reflected in other areas of your daily life, say that you had a new car which only worked one day in ten, the same efficiency rate as indicated here for all the Solar Power plants in the U.S.
For equivalency purposes the same amount of coal fired power would have delivered almost four times the power, and Nuclear even more again. Those equivalent coal or nuclear plants would have delivered the same power as for all those Solar plants in the first 7 days of the Month of May.
NATURAL GAS FIRED POWER
Remember how I earlier mentioned the substantially large increase in the consumption of power from this Natural Gas sector. Even though the coal fired sector increased, which is really only to be expected, that increase in the power consumption from that Natural gas sector is due, virtually in whole to the fact that there was a decrease in power from that Renewable sector.
What this most effectively shows is that even though there is a substantial increase in the numbers of Wind and Solar Plants, they just cannot deliver the power that is required, all the time, and to cover this, then that power just has to come from somewhere, and that means that while those wind turbines are stationary, and while the Sun is not shining…..like during the night, then that power has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the Natural gas sector, so those (fossil fuel consuming) Natural Gas fired plants need to run for longer periods of time, hence the dramatic increase in power consumption from this Natural gas Fired sector.
CONCLUSIONS
Again, this Renewable Power sector has failed to deliver, not only what is being claimed, but even marginal amounts of power. Adding together the power from all those wind towers and all those Solar plants, the total power consumed from these two main areas of the Renewable Power sector amounts to only 2.6% of all the power used in the US, down considerably from the previous Month, and the rolling five month total for these two favoured Renewable Power sources comes in at just 2.3% of the total power consumed in the U.S.
No matter how much they ramp up the rhetoric for Renewable Power, the facts indicate that it just cannot deliver power on the basis it is needed for, that of supplying power for the full 24 hours of every day. What would they tell us would happen for the rest of the time when those turbines are stationary, and all through the night when the Sun doesn’t shine.
It just cannot provide the requisite amount of power even on a limited basis, so no amount of telling us we need to ramp it up to 20% and more will make them supply any more power. To actually achieve that 20% would entail a monumentally huge scaling up of construction of these plants and the investment of literally Trillions of dollars, and still it could not provide power on the 24/7/365 basis it is required.
As I have said so many times. If you actually believe that this is the way of the future, then you are seriously deluded. This is not the way of the future. It is a recipe for absolute disaster, a disaster that is costing Billions of dollars already, and is supplying only minimal amounts of power that can never be relied on, and in fact, most electricity Authorities are not relying on them, and if they were, then they are being negligently reckless.
RENEWABLE POWER – STILL NOTHING MORE THAN AN ABSOLUTE FAILURE
For reference purposes the data was obtained from the following EIA sources:
RenewPowerFail2010
papundits
Ditzy Dee
Grumpy Old Man
T Lee Humphrey
marlin6
Annie Apple
TonyfromOz
Carl
Turtle
steevesna
Doc'
Joe from PA
mjmotley
sosUSA
Aussie
patpacer
Guest Contributor
glenncz
08/24/2010
You give 20% as output which represents the % of installed (nameplate) capacity in May. That is likely correct because May is early summer in the USA. For the year the output is only 15%!
Go Here http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelrenewable.html
and click on the Electric Capacity http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/table4.html
and see that for 2009 there was 603 MW’s of installed Solar.
Then go back and click on http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/table3.html
and you will that the 603 MW’s produced 808,000 Thousand kWh’s which is 808,000 MW’s. Note: You will often see Renewable statistics in kWhs instead of MWhs because the output is so tiny.
Now here is the simple equation everyone needs to learn. There are 8760 hours in a year.
So 808,000 MWhrs per year, divide by 8,760 hours to yield = 92 MW’s. That is what the output of all those solar panels would be if they were working 24/7, like a nuclear plants of just about what other forms of traditional generation output.
Now divide the 92 MW output by the 603 “rating” of all solar plants and your get a pitiful 15%! So another way of looking at it is the solar plant only works at full output about 1 out of every 7 hours through the year. And the price is at least 5x more than traditional.