{"id":21596,"date":"2016-09-10T14:18:11","date_gmt":"2016-09-10T19:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21596"},"modified":"2016-09-10T14:18:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-10T19:18:11","slug":"intermittent-renewables-cant-favorably-transform-grid-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21596","title":{"rendered":"Intermittent Renewables Can\u2019t Favorably Transform Grid Electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2016\/08\/31\/intermittent-renewables-cant-favorably-transform-grid-electricity\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Intermittent Renewables Can\u2019t Favorably Transform Grid\u00a0Electricity<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-meta\">Many people are hoping for wind and solar PV to transform grid electricity in a favorable way. Is this really possible? Is it really feasible for intermittent renewables to generate a large share of grid electricity? The answer increasingly looks as if it is, \u201cNo, the costs are too great, and the return on investment would be way too low.\u201d We are already encountering major grid problems, even with low penetrations of intermittent renewable electricity: US, 5.4% of 2015 electricity consumption; China, 3.9%; Germany, 19.5%; Australia, 6.6%.<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that\u00a0<strong>even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to the electric grid in the\u00a0absence of very much better and cheaper electricity storage than we have today.<\/strong>\u00a0There are too many costs outside building the devices themselves. It is these secondary costs that are problematic. Also, the presence of intermittent electricity disrupts competitive prices, leading to electricity prices that are far too low for other electricity providers, including those providing electricity using nuclear or natural gas. The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices.<\/p>\n<p>Leaders around the world have demanded that their countries switch to renewable energy, without ever taking a very close look at what the costs and benefits were likely to be. A few simple calculations were made, such as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Life-cycle_assessment\">Life Cycle Assessment<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested\">Energy Returned on Energy Invested<\/a>.\u201d These calculations miss the fact that the intermittent energy being returned is of<em>\u00a0very much lower quality<\/em>\u00a0than is needed to operate the electric grid. They also miss the point that\u00a0<em>timing and the cost of capital<\/em>\u00a0are very important, as is the\u00a0<em>impact on the pricing of other energy products<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Intermittent Renewables Can\u2019t Favorably Transform Grid\u00a0Electricity Many people are hoping for wind and solar PV to transform grid electricity in a favorable way. Is this really possible? Is it really feasible for intermittent renewables to generate a large share of grid electricity? The answer increasingly looks as if it is, \u201cNo, the costs are too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1233,14237,1232,674,7307],"class_list":["post-21596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-gail-tverberg","tag-grid-electricity","tag-our-finite-world","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar-photovoltaic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21597,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21596\/revisions\/21597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}