Willem Post's Blog (686)

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,…

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; about 40% of that stream is used to generate electricity. Many 100% RE proponents, almost all of them never designed or analyzed any energy system, want to stop that stream; "leave it in the ground".

They would substitute the stream with weather and sun dependent, variable, intermittent, wind and…

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…

Daily, Weekly and Seasonal Electricity Storage

MIT Professor Steven Chu, former US-DOE Secretary, stated:

- Whereas, the turnkey capital costs of battery systems likely would be about 50% less over the next decade, that storage approach would never be cheap enough to accommodate the big seasonal shifts in renewable power production.

- Battery systems could prove…

EVS AND PLUG-IN HYBRIDS IN NEW ENGLAND AND NORWAY

The VT Public Utilities Commission, PUC, working together with self-styled transportation gurus, and RE activists, such as the Conservation Law Foundation CLF, want to subsidize low-income Vermonters to drive electric vehicles.

The same RE folks pushing for unilateral carbon taxes also are pushing for subsidies for plug-in EVs…

Most US economists do not worry about US trade deficits to a large degree. They claim trade imbalances are affected by a host of macroeconomic factors, including the relative economic growth rates of countries, the value of their currencies, and their saving and investment rates.

However, they often fail to acknowledge, US trade deficits could also be due to the US having negotiated bad trade agreements for decades, that enable “trading partners” to limit…

Vermont has an anemic, near-zero, real-growth economy, which does not produce enough tax revenues year after year, partially due to the huge RE giveaways, such as: 

1) Federal and state ITCs; upfront giveaways to offset any taxes. 

2) Federal and state taxes not paid due to rapid depreciation write-offs during there first 6 years 

3) Federal and state taxes not paid due to loan interest deducted from taxable profits.

4)…

A wise person would advocate putting the horse before the car, i.e., first use less energy, then build-out the much lesser capacity systems needed for the energy still being used. This is so simple. Most people get it, but most pro-carbon tax folks do not.

Pro-carbon tax folks want to have the unilateral carbon tax now, so the state government would set up various programs, and folks would have to go through various hurdles to qualify to get some of their money back; most…