Browsing All posts tagged under »Renewable Power Storage«

Breakthrough In U.S. Grid Storage Estimating

June 17, 2022 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ Regular readers know I have been writing about the astronomical cost of energy storage required to make solar and wind (SAW) power reliable. I have published some simple engineering analyses showing that short term intermittency, a few cloudy or low wind days, requires a huge amount of storage. Now we […]

Backup Battery Cost Fantasies Abound

June 9, 2022 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ The only technologically feasible way to make renewables reliable at in the foreseeable future is with massive amounts of grid scale batteries. Whether this is even remotely feasible depends on the cost and here things get truly strange. On the one hand we have real utility reports of the capital […]

VCEA Makes Virginia’s Electric Grid Dangerously Unreliable

January 22, 2022 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ The oddly named Virginia Clean Economy Act or VCEA mandates the phaseout of fossil fueled power generation by 2045, with deadlines all along the way. Dominion Energy, Virginia’s primary electric utility, recently filed what is called an Integrated Resource Plan. In their recent IRP, Dominion’s Alternative Plan C is designed […]

Unreliability Makes Solar Power Impossibly Expensive

January 20, 2022 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ Many states and the utilities they regulate are talking about replacing their coal and gas fired generators with solar and wind power. For example, I recently wrote about how the crazy-named Virginia Clean Economy Act already has almost 800 square miles of solar slabs in the developmental lineup. See https://www.cfact.org/2021/12/27/paving-virginia-with-solar-slabs-is-a-bad-law/. […]

It Takes Big Energy To Back Up Wind And Solar

March 22, 2021 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ Power system design can be extremely complex but there is one simple number that is painfully obvious. At least it is painful to the advocates of wind and solar power, which may be why we never hear about it. It is a big, bad number. To my knowledge this big […]

Virginia Will Pay Trillions For Renewable Power

February 6, 2021 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ Virginia’s 100% renewables mandate has been estimated to cost its people billions of dollars, but a more realistic estimate is trillions. Dominion Energy, the big Virginia utility, must know this, but they are hiding it so they can build a lot of expensive wind and solar generating facilities. The more […]

Battery Storage Is An Infinitesimal Part Of Electrical Power

July 3, 2019 by

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By Steve Goreham ~ Large-scale storage of electricity is the latest proposed solution to boost the deployment of renewables. Renewable energy advocates, businesses, and state governments plan to use batteries to store electricity to solve the problem of intermittent wind and solar output. But large-scale storage is only an insignificant part of the electrical power […]

Batteries Cannot Make Renewables Reliable

April 27, 2019 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ Utilities are starting to experiment with adding batteries to wind and solar projects. These storage projects are feeding the mistaken belief that batteries can cure the intermittency that makes wind and solar unworkable as a reliable source of power. The reality is that these battery projects are trivial in size […]

Battery Trickery By U.S. Utilities

March 6, 2019 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ The use of big batteries to partially offset the intermittency of renewables is growing rapidly. Unfortunately some utilities have adopted a deceptive practice with the public, making these battery packs seem much more important then they are. It is all part of hyping the utility’s supposed greenness, which helps their […]

Colorado Energy Plan Bid Rigging?

November 30, 2018 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ The Colorado Energy Plan is a massive $2.5 billion scheme by Xcel Energy that substitutes wind and solar-plus-storage power for existing coal fired generation. The Plan is supposed to be based on a competitive procurement that received a multitude of bids. Only a few were selected and the makeup of […]

100% Renewable Deception

November 26, 2018 by

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ Press coverage of the crusade for 100% renewable electricity invariably talks about wind and solar energy. As I have pointed out, the wind and solar fantasy requires a stupendous amount of battery storage, which is never mentioned. This is because the 100% feasibility studies are deceptive. Wind and solar come […]

Energy Storage Isn’t Ready For Wide Deployment

November 7, 2018 by

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By Todd Royal ~ When understanding and examining energy storage for wide-scale, societal deployment that is scalable, affordable and reliable needs to include these factors: energy security, renewable power production and cyber security. At this time energy storage doesn’t meet any of these criteria. The best example is Tesla’s seemingly successful deployment November 2017 in […]