Willem Post's Blog (1,031)

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 the following would provide electricity service, 24/7/365, at a minimum reliability of 99.97%:

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) Utilizing the…

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…

Green Mountain Power, a subsidiary of a Canadian company headquartered in Quebec, has about 77% of the Vermont electricity market. Some of its policies are to promote renewable energy, especially if significant federal and state grants, federal and state investment tax credits, accelerated depreciation, and low-interest loans are available to implement projects.

Such subsidies create the false impression these projects have short paybacks, whereas, in fact, they would not…

The US Environmental Protection Agency, US-EPA, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, VT-DEC, and the Independent System Operator of New England, ISO-NE, calculate the CO2eq of Vermont’s electricity sector. They use different methods and obtain results that are significantly different from each other.

In this article I propose another method, which allocates the NE grid CO2eq to each state, based on the percent load each state imposes on the NE grid,…

ELECTRICITY STORAGE WITH TESLA POWER MODULES

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-example-of-electricity-storage-with-tesla-powerwall-2-0s

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Currently, we have energy storage in the form of fossilized carbon deposits. A stream of energy is being extracted from mines and wells to keep the world going;…

Vermont Business Magazine reports:

“Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions estimates in Vermont continued to rise for calendar year 2015, increasing from 9.45 million metric tons CO2eq in 2014 to 9.99 in 2015. This increase puts Vermont approximately 16% above the 1990 baseline value of 8.59 and adds to the difficulty of reaching the statewide goal of 50% below 1990 emissions levels by 2028.” So what?

- If Vermont reached the goal of 50 percent below 1990 (two…

The usual custom among energy systems analysts is to make projections regarding future energy consumption and work back from those projections to what is required to meet them. Following business-as-usual practices, Brussels projects a doubling of Europe’s energy consumption by 2050, and that 60 - 80% of the energy generation in 2050 will be renewable, but likely not CO2-free.…

My first reaction to the aerial photos of Fukushima power plant site was: why did they put the auxiliary transformers, that provide power to the plant, and the emergency diesel-generators, that provide power to the auxiliary transformers, on the OCEAN side? They should have been on the land side, protected from earthquakes, and out of reach of any tsunami.  

The lack of emergency power to operate the cooling pumps caused the reactor cores to overheat, melt and evaporate and…

Elements that contain unstable nuclei are radioactive; they are called radionuclides. They decay by releasing mostly alpha and beta particles accompanied by gamma rays. An alpha particle has low-energy, is positively charged and consists of two protons and two neutrons, i.e., a helium atom without its 2 electrons; it can be stopped by tissue paper or human skin.  A beta particle is a high-energy, negatively charged electron (negatron) or a positively charged positron; a sheet of aluminum can…

Proponents of wood burning often claim it is “carbon neutral”, so it is ok. In addition, wood burning provides jobs for loggers, etc.

Proponents fail to add “over a period of at least 80 years”.

Assuming a tree is harvested after it is has sequestered CO2 for about 40 years. Burning that tree immediately releases that CO2.

That CO2 would take at least 40 years to be sequestered again due to new tree growth.

That process…

Vermont has a Standard Offer, SO, program that uses federal, state and other subsidies and feed-in tariffs, c/kWh, in excess of wholesale prices to increase the build-out renewable energy systems. Most of those systems are large-scale, field-mounted solar systems. The Public Utilities Commission, PUC, oversees the program and issues a Certificate of Public Good for each project. This article examines the economics of a large-scale solar system.

This article examines the…

Based on the plan of eliminating fossil fuel plants (they emit CO2 and particulates) and nuclear fuel plants (they are alleged to be dangerous) by 2050, the existing gas, nuclear, coal and oil generating plants would be decommissioned and no new ones would be built.

This would require huge build-outs of wind, solar, and storage systems, and increased electricity supply via external ties to adjacent grids. There is no way one can close down nuclear, oil, gas and coal plants,…

Matt Cota, executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association testified: “Cold-climate heat pumps are inadequate during the colder days in winter. Many households with heat pumps found they could not adequately heat their houses. They had to turn off the heat pumps, which are very inefficient in cold weather, and turn on their oil and propane stoves or their wood stoves.”

Since about 2010, Efficiency Vermont and VPIRG have been extolling the virtues…