Willem Post's Blog (102)

New England has the highest electric rates of any region in the US.

New England has the worst wind and solar conditions of any region in the US, except the rainy, overcast US Northwest.

See NREL wind map and NREL solar map.

https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/100m_wind/awstwspd100onoff3-1.jpg…

SunCommon of Vermont commissioned Synapse-Energy to perform a study that would show the benefits of before-the-meter (BTM) solar. The study shows there were almost $20 million of benefits for all of New England, about $1.3 million for Vermont during the very sunny period of July 1 to July 7; that period had very little wind, and thus almost no wind generation.

That joyous news was released with much fanfare, plus admonitions from SunCommon not to reduce solar…

RE proponents want to “electrify” the New England transportation sector. That means:

- Much less consumption of gasoline and much more generation of electricity.

- Internal combustion engines using gasoline, hereafter called E10 (a blend of 90% gasoline/10% ethanol from corn), would be replaced with electric vehicles.

For this article, it is assumed only EVs will be used to replace IC vehicles that currently are using gasoline.

Plug-in hybrids…

Connecticut Governor Dannell Malloy, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, and Vermont Governor Phil Scott held a meeting about energy and issued a statement, which included the following topics.

The wording of the Governors Statement reflects the thinking of various RE proponents that appear to have hijacked the proceedings, such as the:

- Conservation Law Foundation

- Acadia…

VEIC, BERC and EV: Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, VEIC, a non-profit, quasi-government entity, assumed control of:

- Efficiency Vermont in 2008. EV, a quasi-government entity, is financed by a state-mandated surcharge on electric bills, about $60 million in 2016, which is annually increasing.

- Biomass Energy Research Center, BERC, a non-profit, in 2012. BERC became an in-house, captive entity that performs biomass studies for VEIC, Vermont…

Vermont’s wood burning harvest was 354,462 cords, or 886,155 green ton for firewood + 347,342 green ton for electrical generation = 1,233,497 green ton in 2014. See URL.

http://fpr.vermont.gov/sites/fpr/files/Forest_and_Forestry/Forest_Based_Business/Library/2014 HARVEST SUMMARY_final.pdf

About 347,342/719,033 = 48% of total…

100% RE aficionados, almost all of them never even designed, analyzed and operated any energy system, claim wind and solar, and hydro + bio + waste, and energy storage, and demand management, and energy efficiency, and heat pumps and the batteries of electric vehicles will provide electricity, at a minimum of 99.97% reliability, 24/7/365.

They likely do not know it takes only 40% of all US primary energy to generate electricity. That leaves 60% which would be much more…

The 100% RE proponents in New England are opposed to additional gas lines gas to bring more gas to New England, and are opposed to additional gas storage systems. They support the 100% RE proponents in New York State and Massachusetts, who have blocked pipelines to bring low-cost, domestic natural gas from Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale.…

David Ismay is an attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation. He wrote a commentary in VTDigger criticizing ISO-NE for making erroneous and overly conservative assumptions, etc.

https://vtdigger.org/2018/07/18/david-ismay-isos-sky-falling-message/

Mr. Ismay creates the impression the NE electric system can meet all future demand, including electric heat pumps for buildings and charging…

In the 2016/2017-crop year, the US had 85.8 million acres planted with corn, of which 31.4 million acres were planted to produce ethanol. The corn production was 14.440 billion bushels, of which 5.30 billion bushels were for corn to ethanol. The 169 bushels of each acre yielded 478 gallons of ethanol. Ethanol blended with gasoline was 14.80 billion gallon, about 10% of the gasohol fuel for vehicles. See table 1.…

Shortcomings of Wind And Solar

Variable and intermittent wind and solar electricity cannot exist on any electric grid without the traditional, dispatchable generators performing the peaking, filling-in and balancing. Battery systems could be used, but the cost would be well in excess of $400 per kilowatt-hour delivered as AC to the high voltage grid. See Note.…

Almost all studies compare ICs and EVs, as if they traveled the same number of miles over a period of years. This is a serious error, because EVs travel, on average, about 9642 miles per year and ICs about 13433 miles per year, i.e., EVs travel about 28% less miles than ICs. The average annual miles driven by a driver is 13476. See Appendix.

In actual practice, EVs are mostly used for shorter trips, because of a lack of range, but ICs are used for short…

Governor Sununu made a very wise decision to veto the two energy bills; one would have provided $90 million in subsidies to wood chip plants, the other would have provided $20 million in above market rates to larger capacity RE systems over three years.

These bills would have added about $110 million over three years to the electric bills of NH ratepayers. Most of that $110 million of subsidies would have been additional revenue for the owners of the wood-chip…

RE proponents claim New England’s nuclear, gas, oil and coal plants could be shut down because: 1) Wind and solar; 2) hydro + bio (mostly wood) + refuse + landfill methane; 3) energy storage (mostly batteries); 4) supply management (including curtailments) and demand management (may include forms of rationing); 5) energy efficiency, 6) heat pumps for building heating and cooling; and 7) utilizing the batteries of electric vehicles for smoothing the surging and ebbing of variable wind and…

Much confusion exists in the minds of lay people regarding having wall-mounted batteries or not. The below article shows the homeowner cost is at least 32 c/kWh to own the Tesla Powerwall 2.0 battery for 10 years. After the 10 years have elapsed, the unit is returned to Tesla for reprocessing, because it has outlived its useful service life.

Some homeowners with roof-mounted solar systems think such batteries can be used to shift their excess midday solar…

The ISO-NE reports, prepared by energy systems analysts with decades of experience, describes in great detail the operation of the grid during the cold weather period, with insufficient gas and fuel oil supply, and minimal solar most of the time, and near-zero wind on 5 days, and France taking advantage of the US by charge outrageously high prices for liquid natural gas (LNG), plus an outage of a major transmission line. It was a miracle rolling blackouts were avoided. Millions of…

GERMANY

Germany, a major industrial country, is a leader in renewable energy generation. However, Germany made a significant mistake. Germany decided to phase out its nuclear plants, which produce low-cost electricity that has near-zero CO2/kWh, instead of replacing the plants. Germany continued to the use of lignite, a soft coal (low-Btu/lb.) coal, and hard coal. As a result, the CO2eq emissions have not decreased for the past 8…

Proponents, including installers of solar systems, present many numbers, usually in not too clear a format, to show how profitable it is to have solar on your roof.

This article presents a spreadsheet analysis of two plans:

- Plan A, the Standard Plan, which is to invest in a rooftop solar system.

- Plan B, the Warren Buffett Plan, which is to invest in shares of AT&T that pay a…

If a cold snap occurred, and if wind and solar were minimal, and if gas supply (after being politically restricted) were diverted from power plants to residential and commercial buildings for space heating (because of very cold weather), and if duel-fuel gas plants were to have insufficient gas and fuel oil supply, and if a plant or transmission outage occurred, and if electricity supply via tie lines with Canada and New York State were kept at present levels, then rolling black-outs likely…

During the past few years, the media have often published about the decreasing prices of wind and solar. The lay public who reads these stories are intentionally left with the impression the more wind and solar, the lower electricity prices will become. The real world facts show it actually is the opposite.

Plant Closures and Economics and Politics  

Since 2010, California closed one nuclear plant (2,140 MW) and Germany closed 5…