Willem Post's Blog (143)

Vermont has the 4th highest percentage of forest coverage, after Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia. In 2015, Vermont had about 4,511,000 acres of forest, of which 4,288,000 acres were classified as timberland. However, only about 2,200,000 acres of the timberland acres were “accessible, ecologically appropriate, and estimated as managed for logging”.

In 2015, the new growth of aboveground biomass on all forestland was about 4,825,000 ton, on…

Dartmouth’s planned biomass plant would only make things worse

https://www.vnews.com/Column-Burning-Forests-for-Heat-at-Dartmouth-27594239

GEORGE M. WOODWELL, WILLIAM SCHLESINGER and JOHN D. STERMAN

We are three Dartmouth College alumni who have led major scientific programs and research institutions dealing in part with forests as cause…

I A nearby farm in Hartford, Vermont has 200 acres of open fields, plus 700 acres of woodland. During a recent logging operation, the trunks of the high quality healthy trees were set aside and cut to 8.5, 10.5 and 12.5 ft lengths, for transport to lumber mills, and the less valuable material, such as tops of trees and branches, misshapen trees, standing dead trees, sickly trees, etc., were gathered and piled up for chipping.

The less valuable material is fed into very large…

The New England high voltage grid provides electricity throughout New England. There are several hundred electricity-generating plants directly connected to the grid via substations. In 2018, the total output of these plants was 103,702 GWh, about 84% of the total supply to the NE grid. The rest of the supply was 21,409 GWh via 3 connections to nearby grids. See URL.…

Regarding wind and solar, cost shifting is rarely mentioned, identified or quantified. Those costs, as c/kWh, could be quantified, but it is politically expedient, using various, often far-fetched reasons, to charge them to:

- Directly to ratepayers, via electric rate schedules, and/or added taxes, fees and surcharges on electric bills

- Directly to taxpayers, such as carbon taxes, user fees and surcharges.

- Directly to federal and state budgets and…

The existing Dartmouth campus central cogeneration plant required about 3.5 million gallon of No. 6 fuel oil in 2018. The plant had a minimum heating load of 4 MW (13.65 million Btu/h) in summer and a maximum of 32 MW (109.2 million Btu/h) in winter. See page 11 of URL

The Dartmouth campus required about 50000 MWh of electricity in 2018, of which about 80% was purchased and the existing co-gen plant generated about 20%.

 …

The Norwegians have about 60 years of experience building and servicing oil/gas rigs and laying undersea electric cables, gas lines and oil lines all over the world.

They have invested billions of dollars in specialized deep-water, Norwegian harbors and facilities for assembly of oil/gas rigs and invested in specialized sea-going heavy lifters, and specialized sea-going tugboats to tow the oil/gas rigs from Norwegian building sites to oil/gas production sites. The heavy…

As more EVs will be used in the future, a problem will arise what to do with the old batteries. Some folks say they can be reused for grid-scale storage to provide electricity, such as during multi-day wind and solar lulls, which in New England occur at random anytime of the year.

The old EV batteries would come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They would have to be arranged in buildings and kept at about 70F for best performance. Older batteries have more in and out…

1) Wind and Solar Subsidies Provide a Bonanza for Wall Street

This URL shows wind and solar prices per kWh would be at least 50% higher without direct and indirect subsidies. They would be even higher, if the costs of other items were properly allocated to the owners of wind and solar projects, instead of shifted elsewhere. See below section High Levels of Wind and Solar Require Energy Storage.

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This article assumes the highly productive (CF = 0.90), near-CO2-free, NE nuclear plants would be closed in 2035, when their licenses would have expired, but the highly efficient (up to 60%), low-CO2, gas turbine plants would continue to operate as at present. 

Wind and solar (after the meter, ATM + before the meter, BTM) would be greatly increased by 2035, based on ISO-NE projections; 32% of a total NE grid load, versus 5.5% in 2018.

As a result of replacing…

A Tesla Model 3 has a worse life-cycle carbon footprint than a similar-sized Mercedes diesel car, the renowned German think tank, IFO, has found. It warns that electric vehicles are "no panacea" against climate change.

https://www.dw.com/en/ifo-study-casts-doubt-on-electric-vehicles-climate-saving-credentials/a-48460328

When the IFO released its findings…

Most people, including myself, really have no clear idea regarding the various subsidies required to attract capital for the build-outs of solar systems. Relatively few insiders, such as some legislators, the Vermont Department of Public Service and the Vermont Public Utilities Commission, likely are intimately familiar with all the detailed ins and outs.

The Vermont Public Utilities Commission administers the Vermont Standard Offer Program that promotes and subsidizes the…

PV Solar Output Variability During variable Cloudy Weather

Clouds are the main reason PV solar generation experiences intermittency (excluding the normal nighttime disappearance).

PV solar generation can rapidly decrease by 60% within seconds, due to a cloud passing over the solar panels causing a reduction in solar insolation.

The time taken for the cloud to pass is dependent upon cloud height, sun elevation and wind speed. These factors need…

The Hornsdale Power Reserve, HPR, battery system, 100 MW/129 MWh, in Australia, was the largest battery in the world in 2017. It is located near a 315-MW, French-owned wind turbine plant.

In 2017, various capital costs of the system were mentioned. About 1.5 y later, documents revealed the turnkey capital cost was about 56 million euros, about US$ 66 million, or 66 million/129,000 = $512/kWh; this was a low price, because Tesla was eager to obtain the…

In view of the grave concerns raised by 5 to 17 year old children on the impact of CO2 on the Earth’s climate, the government will introduce legislation to address the most pressing issue of our times, namely CO2 emissions and the ensuing climate mayhem that they cause. See Appendix 1.

CO2 has risen to record levels from 0.0280% (pre-industrial) to 0.0405% today. See Appendix 2.

The policy, inspired by the GND, has four main aspects, for…

ABSTRACT OF ARTICLE 

In this article it was assumed all New England fossil and nuclear plants would be closed down, and the 2017 capacities, MW, of wind and solar would be increased 22 times, to offset the electricity shortfall of the closed plants. It was assumed the load (electricity fed to grid) on the NE grid increased from about 123 TWh/y in 2018 to about 175 TWh/y in 2050, mostly due to electric vehicles and heat pumps. See tables 1 and…

The main purpose of this article is to determine how much AC electricity has to be drawn from the wall socket to have one kWh of DC in the battery. This appears straightforward, but it is not, because it takes energy to convert from AC to DC and to overcome the internal resistance of the battery.

Also, once the electricity is in the battery, it is used to operate the vehicle’s systems, whether in motion or not, such as heating/cooling the cabin and battery. That electricity…