harm to wildlife

Unaffordable Renewables. Lefties love them, while we get poorer.

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KONRAD YAKABUSKI

A sunny Ontario experiment gone wrong

KONRAD YAKABUSKI

The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Aug. 04 2014, 

That glare coming off selected southern Ontario farmlands these days is not the result of some secret state experiment with atomic vegetables. No, it’s the product of another form of state-sanctioned mad science that is costing Ontarians dearly without doing diddly to improve the environment.

After Germany and California, Ontario is “enjoying” its day in the sun as a global hot spot for solar power. Photovoltaic panels are carpeting fertile and fallow farmlands at a furious rate this summer as solar power promoters rush to complete projects before the subsidy gusher slows.

By the end of 2015, more than 2,000 megawatts of solar power will be connected to the Ontario grid as developers take advantage of the province’s feed-in-tariff, guaranteeing them a heady two-decade return on their investment, courtesy of the weary Ontario electricity consumer.

The newly re-elected Liberal government scaled down the FIT program last year, but not before a small group of savvy operators hit the sweet spot by locking into its risk-free cash flow. One 10MW solar farm under construction in eastern Ontario’s cottage country will get 44 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity it produces over 20 years.

Compare that to the average 8.55 cents per kWh that Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator says it cost to produce power in the province in 2013. The price includes a wholesale price of 2.65 cents (what the power was actually worth on the open market) and a so-called “global adjustment” of 5.9 cents to cover the sunk costs in existing nuclear, hydro and wind projects.

No other province has imitated Ontario’s folly. No wonder the solar lobby worked so hard to re-elect Premier Kathleen Wynne in the June election. The opposition Progressive Conservatives vowed to pull the plug on Liberal FIT contracts that will further burden the province’s already uncompetitive manufacturers and saddle consumers with a 50 per cent rate hike within a decade.

Solar power is not the only culprit. Far more FIT-contracted wind power will be added to the grid. Together, these contracts demonstrate the madness of Ontario’s so-called green energy policy. Not only will it cost more, it won’t remove much if any carbon from the atmosphere.

The biggest myth about wind and solar power is that they automatically displace carbon dioxide produced by coal- or gas-fired power plants. Solar power producers consistently make this claim without any proof to back it up. Quite often, the opposite is true.

Take Ontario, which counts on baseload nuclear power for 60 per cent of its installed electricity capacity. Nuclear produces no carbon emissions. Neither does the hydro power that accounts for about one-quarter of Ontario’s capacity. On many days, demand in Ontario isn’t high enough to require power from additional sources. But when it is, wind and solar can’t be counted on.

Quite simply, neither wind nor solar are reliable sources of electricity. In its latest 18-month outlook, the IESO forecasts that 99.5 per cent of Ontario’s 12,947 MW of installed nuclear capacity will be available during summer consumption peaks. But it predicts only 13.7 per cent of the 1,824 MW of installed wind capacity will be available. Solar is even less reliable. So, when wind and solar actually do produce power, it’s usually dumped.

To meet consumption peaks, Ontario’s grid operator needs a dependable supply of complementary power. In the past, that came from coal plants, which could be fired up on an as-needed basis. Thankfully, they’ve all been closed and replaced by natural gas-fired plants.

Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, but its carbon footprint is half or less that of coal. And modern combined-cycle gas plants are so efficient, reliable and cheap to build (relative to other forms of electricity) that Charles Frank of the centrist Brookings Institution calls them, along with nuclear power, “the ‘best bang for our buck’ as we seek to reduce emissions.”

“A nuclear or gas combined-cycle plant avoids far more emissions per MW of capacity than wind or solar because it can operate at 90 per cent of full capacity,” Mr. Frank notes in a new study. “Limited benefits and higher costs make wind and solar less socially valuable than nuclear, hydro and combined-cycle gas.”

Add in the alarmingly high failure rate of solar panels, the absence of a long-term track record, and the quashing of local content rules and the outcome of Ontario’s sunny experiment could be even darker than it looks.

Ontario’s Folly…..What a Complete Waste of Taxpayer Dollars!

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 That glare coming off selected southern Ontario farmlands these days is not the result of some secret state experiment with atomic vegetables. No, it’s the product of another form of state-sanctioned mad science that is costing Ontarians dearly without doing diddly to improve the environment.

After Germany and California, Ontario is “enjoying” its day in the sun as a global hot spot for solar power. Photovoltaic panels are carpeting fertile and fallow farmlands at a furious rate this summer as solar power promoters rush to complete projects before the subsidy gusher slows.

By the end of 2015, more than 2,000 megawatts of solar power will be connected to the Ontario grid as developers take advantage of the province’s feed-in-tariff, guaranteeing them a heady two-decade return on their investment, courtesy of the weary Ontario electricity consumer.

The newly re-elected Liberal government scaled down the FIT program last year, but not before a small group of savvy operators hit the sweet spot by locking into its risk-free cash flow. One 10MW solar farm under construction in eastern Ontario’s cottage country will get 44 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity it produces over 20 years.

Compare that to the average 8.55 cents per kWh that Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator says it cost to produce power in the province in 2013. The price includes a wholesale price of 2.65 cents (what the power was actually worth on the open market) and a so-called “global adjustment” of 5.9 cents to cover the sunk costs in existing nuclear, hydro and wind projects.

No other province has imitated Ontario’s folly. No wonder the solar lobby worked so hard to re-elect Premier Kathleen Wynne in the June election. The opposition Progressive Conservatives vowed to pull the plug on Liberal FIT contracts that will further burden the province’s already uncompetitive manufacturers and saddle consumers with a 50 per cent rate hike within a decade.

Solar power is not the only culprit. Far more FIT-contracted wind power will be added to the grid. Together, these contracts demonstrate the madness of Ontario’s so-called green energy policy. Not only will it cost more, it won’t remove much if any carbon from the atmosphere.

The biggest myth about wind and solar power is that they automatically displace carbon dioxide produced by coal- or gas-fired power plants. Solar power producers consistently make this claim without any proof to back it up. Quite often, the opposite is true.

Take Ontario, which counts on baseload nuclear power for 60 per cent of its installed electricity capacity. Nuclear produces no carbon emissions. Neither does the hydro power that accounts for about one-quarter of Ontario’s capacity. On many days, demand in Ontario isn’t high enough to require power from additional sources. But when it is, wind and solar can’t be counted on.

Quite simply, neither wind nor solar are reliable sources of electricity. In its latest 18-month outlook, the IESO forecasts that 99.5 per cent of Ontario’s 12,947 MW of installed nuclear capacity will be available during summer consumption peaks. But it predicts only 13.7 per cent of the 1,824 MW of installed wind capacity will be available. Solar is even less reliable. So, when wind and solar actually do produce power, it’s usually dumped.

To meet consumption peaks, Ontario’s grid operator needs a dependable supply of complementary power. In the past, that came from coal plants, which could be fired up on an as-needed basis. Thankfully, they’ve all been closed and replaced by natural gas-fired plants.

Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, but its carbon footprint is half or less that of coal. And modern combined-cycle gas plants are so efficient, reliable and cheap to build (relative to other forms of electricity) that Charles Frank of the centrist Brookings Institution calls them, along with nuclear power, “the ‘best bang for our buck’ as we seek to reduce emissions.”

“A nuclear or gas combined-cycle plant avoids far more emissions per MW of capacity than wind or solar because it can operate at 90 per cent of full capacity,” Mr. Frank notes in a new study. “Limited benefits and higher costs make wind and solar less socially valuable than nuclear, hydro and combined-cycle gas.”

Add in the alarmingly high failure rate of solar panels, the absence of a long-term track record, and the quashing of local content rules and the outcome of Ontario’s sunny experiment could be even darker than it looks.

Follow Konrad Yakabuski on Twitter: @konradyakabuski

The Truth About the Faux-Green Renewables Scam!

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Carbon Footprint of Wind Turbines

This is a thought provoking essay from an Australian website called “Andy’s Rant”. 

http://www.andysrant.com/ ; His carbon focus is mostly on the base but frequently the question has come up about what goes into the base and the fact that manufacturing cement is a heavy carbon emitting process.  I thank him for that analysis alone.  He also states what I have been saying all along in this battle to educate the public about the false promises of wind:  “wind turbines will incur far more carbon dioxide emissions in their manufacture and installation than what their operational life will ever save.”

Measures are metric, so if you don’t think in metric, open another window and set up a metric converter (meters to feet, etc.)

So What’s the Carbon Footprint of a Wind Turbine

with 45 Tons of Rebar and 481 M3 of Concrete?

Its carbon footprint is massive – try 241.85 tons of CO2.

Here’s the breakdown of the CO2 numbers.

To create a 1,000 Kg of pig iron, you start with 1,800 Kg of iron ore, 900 Kg of coking coal 450 Kg of limestone. The blast furnace consumes 4,500 Kg of air. The temperature at the core of the blast furnace reaches nearly 1,600 degrees C (about 3,000 degrees F).

The pig iron is then transferred to the basic oxygen furnace to make steel.

1,350 Kg of CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg pig iron produced.

A further 1,460 Kg CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg of Steel produced so all up 2,810 Kg CO2 is emitted. 

45 tons of rebar (steel) are required so that equals 126.45 tons of CO2 are emitted.

To create a 1,000 Kg of Portland cement, Calcium carbonate (60%), silicon (20%), aluminium (10%), iron (10%) and very small amounts of other ingredients are heated in a large kiln to over 1,500 degrees C to convert the raw materials into clinker. The clinker is then interground with other ingredients to produce the final cement product. When cement is mixed with water, sand and gravel forms the rock-like mass know as concrete.

An average of 927 Kg of CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg of Portland cement. On average, concrete has 10% cement, with the balance being gravel (41%), sand (25%), water (18%) and air (6%). One cubic metre of concrete weighs approx. 2,400 Kg so approx. 240 Kg of CO2 is emitted for every cubic metre.

481m3 of concrete are required so that equals 115.4 tons of CO2 are emitted.

Now I have not included the emissions of the mining of the raw materials or the transportation of the fabricated materials to the turbine site so the emission calculation above would be on the low end at best.

Extra stats about wind turbines you may not know about:

The average towering wind turbine being installed around beautiful Australia right now is over 80 metres in height (nearly the same height as the pylons on the Sydney Harbour Bridge). The rotor assembly for one turbine – that’s the blades and hub – weighs over 22,000 Kg and the nacelle, which contains the generator components, weighs over 52,000 Kg.

All this stands on a concrete base constructed from 45,000 Kg of reinforcing rebar which also contains over 481 cubic metres of concrete (that’s over 481,000 litres of concrete – about 20% of the volume of an Olympic swimming pool).

Each turbine blade is made of glass fibre reinforced plastics, (GRP), i.e. glass fibre reinforced polyester or epoxy and on average each turbine blade weighs around 7,000 Kg each.

Each turbine has three blades so there’s 21,000 Kgs of GRP and each blade can be as long as 50 metres.

A typical wind farm of 20 turbines can extend over 101 hectares of land (1.01 Km2).

Each and every wind turbine has a magnet made of a metal called neodymium. There are 2,500 Kg of it in each of the behemoths that have just gone up around Australia.

The mining and refining of neodymium is so dirty and toxic – involving repeated boiling in acid, with radioactive thorium as a waste product – that only one country does it – China.  

All this for an intermittent highly unreliable energy source.

And I haven’t even considered the manufacture of the thousands of pylons and tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission wire needed to get the power to the grid. And what about the land space needed to house thousands of these bird chomping death machines?

You see, renewables like wind turbines will incur far more carbon dioxide emissions in their manufacture and installation than what their operational life will ever save.

Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the “cure” of using wind turbines sound worse than the problem? A bit like amputating your leg to “cure” your in-growing toe nail?

 

This was posted by Tory Aardvark, Last November. The Numbers Have Grown!

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14000 Abandoned Wind Turbines In The USA

Posted by

There are many hidden truths about the world of wind turbines from the pollution and environmental damage caused in China by manufacturing bird choppers, the blight on people’s lives of noise and the flicker factor and the countless numbers of birds that are killed each year by these blots on the landscape.

The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or  the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms.

The US has had wind farms since 1981:

“Some say that Ka Le is haunted—and it is. But it’s haunted not by Hawaii’s legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are “Na leo o Kamaoa”– the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm…

The ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us. Five other abandoned wind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles—but it is in California where the impact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy’s California “big three” locations—Altamont Pass, Tehachapin (above), and San Gorgonio—considered among the world’s best wind sites…
California’s wind farms— comprising about 80% of the world’s wind generation capacity—ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa. In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills…”

The problem with wind farms when they are abandoned is getting the turbines removed, as usual there are non Green environmentalists to be seen:

The City of Palm Springs was forced to enact an ordinance requiring their removal from San Gorgonio. But California’s Kern County, encompassing the Tehachapi area, has no such law

Imagine the outraged Green chorus if those turbines were abandoned oil drilling rigs.

It took nearly a decade from the time the first flimsy wind turbines were installed before the performance of California wind projects could dispel the widespread belief among the public and investors that wind energy was just a tax scam.

Ben Lieberman, a senior policy analyst focusing on energy and environmental issues for the Heritage Foundation, is not surprised. He asks:

“If wind power made sense, why would it need a government subsidy in the first place? It’s a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end.”

“It’s a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end” therein lies a lesson that is going be learnt by those that sought to make fortunes out of tax payer subsidies, the whole renewables industry of solar, wind and biomass is just an artificial bubble incapable of surviving without subsides from governments and tax payers which many businesses and NGO’s like WWF, FoE and Greenpeace now think is their god given right, as the money is going on Green Climate Religion approved clean energy.

The Green evangelists who push so hard for these wind farms, as usual have not thought the whole idea through, no surprises for a left agenda like Climate Change, which like all things Green and socialist is just a knee jerk reaction:

Altamont’s turbines have since 2008 been tethered four months of every year in an effort to protect migrating birds after environmentalists filed suit. According to the Golden Gate Audubon Society, 75 to 110 Golden Eagles, 380 Burrowing Owls, 300 Red-tailed Hawks, and 333 American Kestrels (falcons) are killed by Altamont turbines annually. A July, 2008 study by the Alameda County Community Development Agency points to 10,000 annual bird deaths from Altamont Pass wind turbines. Audubon calls Altamont, “probably the worst site ever chosen for a wind energy project.”

The same areas that are good for siting wind farms are also good for birds of prey and migrating birds to pass through, shame for the birds that none of the Green mental midgets who care so much about everything in nature, thought that one through when pushing their anti fossil fuel agenda.

After the debacle of the First California Wind Rush, the European Union had moved ahead of the US on efforts to subsidize “renewable” energy–including a “Feed in Tariff” even more lucrative than the ISO4 contracts.

The tax payers who paid for the subsidies to build the wind farms, then paid over the odds for an unreliable source of power generation will, ultimately be left to pick up the bill for clearing up the Green eco mess in the post man made Global Warming world.

 

Updated November 24th

In answer to several allegations that the number of abandoned wind turbines was made up,  the following quote from the article and link will confirm this figure to be true:

California’s wind farms — then comprising about 80% of the world’s wind generation capacity — ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa. In the best wind spots on earth,over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.

Stop the Windweasels Dead in Their Tracks! It’s a SCAM! NO R.E.T.!

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Lessons from Germany’s Wind Power Disaster

August 3, 2014 by  

crystal-ball

All lies and promises – the wind industry has finally been rumbled in Germany and is about to be shown the door in Australia.

The wind industry and its parasites have been guilty of more than just a little hubris.  Claiming to be able to deliver cheap, reliable sparks was always going to be their undoing. Gradually, Europeans are waking up to the unassailable fact that wind power is based on a technology that was redundant before it began.

No modern economy can run with electricity delivered at crazy, random intervals.  To compensate for that meteorological fact, Germany is flat out building more coal fired power stations – not less.  Around the globe the wind industry promises to displace “dirty” coal fired power and Germany is no exception. But the reality is very different: the facts have finally caught up with them – wind power will never replace fossil fuel generators and the costs of having capacity to back up wind power is astronomical.

German industry is bailing out and heading to the US – where power is a third of the cost that it is in Germany – and some 800,000 German homeshave been disconnected from the grid – victims of what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty”. For Germans the attraction to wind power is fading fast – funny about that.

A group of Swiss energy market economists have launched a scathing attack on Germany’s wind and solar policies: “Development And Integration Of Renewable Energy: Lessons Learned From Germany” – Hans Poser; Jeffrey Altman; Felix ab Egg; Andreas Granata; and Ross Board
July 2014 (pdf available here).

We’ve extracted some of the key findings and conclusions below.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Over the last decade, well-intentioned policymakers in Germany and other European countries created renewable energy policies with generous subsidies that have slowly revealed themselves to be unsustainable, resulting in profound, unintended consequences for all industry stakeholders. While these policies have created an impressive roll-out of renewable energy resources, they have also clearly generated disequilibrium in the power markets, resulting in significant increases in energy prices to most users, as well as value destruction for all stakeholders: consumers, renewable companies, electric utilities, financial institutions, and investors.

The rapid growth of renewable energy in Germany and other European countries during the 2000’s was due to proactive European and national policies aimed at directly increasing the share of renewable production in their energy mixes through a variety of generous subsidy programs. Two main types of subsidy programs for renewable power developed in Europe include feed-in tariffs (FITs), which very quickly became the policy of choice for Germany and many other European countries, and quota obligation systems.

FITs are incentives to increase production of renewable energy. This type of subsidy guarantees long-term (usually for 20 years) fixed tariffs per unit of renewable power produced. These fixed tariffs normally are independent of market prices and are usually set by the government, but can be structured to be reduced periodically to account for technology cost decreases. The level of the tariffs normally depends on the technology used and the size of the production facility. Because of their generosity, FITs proved capable of quickly increasing the share of renewable power, but since the FITs are set administratively, it is difficult to meet renewable energy goals in the most cost-effective way possible.

The most important lessons learned include:

Policymakers underestimated the cost of renewable subsidies and the strain they would have on national economies. As an example, Germany’s FIT program has cost more than $412 billion to date (including granted and guaranteed, but not yet paid FIT). Former German Minister of the Environment Peter Altmaier recently estimated that the program costs would reach $884 billion (€680 billion) by 2022. He added that this figure could increase further if the market price of electricity fell, or if the rules and subsidy levels were not changed. Moreover, it is estimated that Germany will pay $31.1 billion in subsidies for 2014 alone. A recent analysis found that from 2008 to 2013, Germany incurred $67.6 billion (€52 billion) in net export losses because of its high energy costs, compared to its five leading trade partners. Losses in energy intensive industries accounted for 60 percent of the total losses. This was further highlighted by a recent International Energy Agency report, which stated that the European Union (EU) is expected to lose one-third of its global market share of energy intensive exports over the next two decades due to high energy prices, expensive energy imports of gas and oil, as well as costly domestic subsidies for renewable energy.

Retail prices to many electricity consumers have increased significantly, as subsidies in Germany and the rest of Europe are generally paid by the end users through a costsharing procedure. Household electricity prices in Germany have more than doubled, increasing from €0.14/kilowatt hour (kWh) ($0.18) in 2000 to more than €0.29/kWh ($0.38) in 2013. In Spain, prices also doubled from €0.09/kWh in 2004 to €0.18/kWh in 2013 ($0.12 to $0.23) while Greece’s prices climbed from €0.06/kWh in 2004 to €0.12/kWh in 2013 ($0.08 to $0.16). Comparatively, household electricity prices in the United States average $0.13/kWh, and have remained relatively stable over the last decade.

Fossil and nuclear plants are now facing stresses to their operational systems as these plants are now operating under less stable conditions and are required to cycle more often to help balance renewables’ variability. Investments in retrofits will be required for these plants in order to allow them to run to these new operational requirements. Moreover, renewable resources are dramatically changing thermal plants’ resource planning and margins. As a result, many of these plants are now being retired or are required to receive capacity payments in order to economically be kept online.

Large scale deployment of renewable capacity does not translate into a substantial displacement of thermal capacity. Because of the variability of wind and solar, there are many hours in the year during which most generation comes from thermal power plants, which are required to provide almost complete redundant capacity to ensure the reliability of the system. In turn, grid interventions have increased significantly as operators have to intervene and switch off or start plants that are not programmed to run following marketbased dispatching. For instance, one German transmission operator saw interventions grow from two in 2002 to 1,213 in 2013. It is higher amounts of renewables with low full load hours relative to the total portfolio of power production that creates greater variability and strains on the grid. In the case of Germany, it is the large-scale deployment of both wind and solar that has impacted the entire system.

Large-scale investments in the grid are being required to expand transmission grids so they can connect offshore and onshore wind projects in the north of Germany to consumers in the south of the country. The total investment cost for the build-out of German onshore and offshore transmission systems is estimated to be around $52 billion (€40 billion) over the next 10 years. Moreover, the grids are now being challenged to meet the dynamic flows of variable renewables and require significant additional investment to accommodate increased penetration of renewables. All of these costs will ultimately be passed on to electricity consumers. This has not gone unnoticed in Germany or in the EU. A report was released in late February 2014 by an independent expert commission mandated by the German government, which concluded that Germany’s current program of incenting renewables is an uneconomic and inefficient means to reduce emissions and therefore should be stopped. Moreover, the European Commission released new guidelines on April 9, 2014, with effect starting in 2017 that will correct market distortions. It will essentially ban all FIT subsidies and introduce technology agnostic auctions as the only incentives for renewables.

Large thermal as back-up – grid interventions 

The more variable renewables there are, the more the thermal power plants will serve as back-up and balancing for renewables.

Fig 24

Figure 24 shows the daily production of solar, wind, and conventional generation in Germany. The maximum daily solar and wind-combined production in 2012 was 530 GWh on January 5, 2012, while the minimum was only 30 GWh on December 19, 2012.

Given the average daily power consumption of around 1,643 GWh in Germany, this means that in spite of the 13.2 percent share of wind and solar power in total power generation, there must be almost complete redundant capacity of thermal plants or storage.

Wind and solar energy, by their very nature, are highly variable, with fluctuations in weather conditions causing significant variance over multiple timescales: seconds (gusts of wind and passing cloud cover), minutes (wind speed variations, briefly overcast skies), days (diurnal cycles, creating peaks of solar condition), months/quarters (seasonal cycles), and years (annual variation in environmental conditions).

At yearly and seasonal levels, both wind and solar generation can be forecasted with relative certainty. It is when considering diurnal (daily) generation profiles that variability occurs and requires system operators to intervene and make sure that supply and demand of electricity are equal at all times.

In Germany, as the percentage of renewable power increased, so did the number of times that grid operators had to intervene to rebalance the market. In 2012, there were 1,213 such interventions.

fig 25

For new thermal power plants to replace the currently uneconomical power plants once they reach their technical lifetime, current prices will have to rise. The effect of fewer operational hours needs to be compensated by higher prices in these hours. As a consequence, it is likely that markets will experience lower prices in times when there is sufficient renewable power and much higher prices at other times.

Renewables generate higher direct costs than traditional power production. Traditional base load wholesale power can be generated in Germany at around €65/MWh, but wind power and solar PV in Germany receive a FIT of around €90 /MWh.

Because renewables, like wind and solar, do not produce at certain times, available back-up power to the system is required. The back-up capacity must be financed even if it is used only occasionally as back-up. Therefore the little power that is produced in the back-up plants will become expensive. Data drawn from business models of Finadvice show that a CCGT can produce 3000 GWh per year at fixed costs of €11/MWh, in a power system without renewables. If renewables reduce the production of the CCGT to for example 1500 GWh, the price needed to recover fixed costs will double to €22/MWh. In a nutshell, this could mean that the cost of power in the hours with renewable power is the subsidized €90/MWh instead of conventional €65 MWh, and when there is no renewable power, the (back-up) power price will be €76/MWh (65 + 11).

CONCLUSION: TAKEAWAYS OF THE GERMAN AND EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE WITH RENEWABLES

The United States and other countries have a unique opportunity to assess the lessons learned in Germany and other European-member states and achieve positive results at lower cost and risk for all stakeholders.

The large increase in market share of variable renewable generation (mainly from solar PV and wind) is changing the dynamics and operations of electricity markets, as exemplified in Germany:

  • While in the past, German wholesale prices followed the demand curve, they now react to the weather, going down when the sun shines and the wind blows, and up, during times of high demand, when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Accordingly, price forecasts and power trading now require new modeling and different inputs, including a much greater focus on weather forecasting.
  • Power trading has become more short-term (intra-day, quarter hour, regulation, capacity) than in a conventional generation environment.
  • Regulatory policies were not designed to incentivize flexible renewable power to be available where and when needed. Therefore, further regulatory interventions will be required to create a balanced system that will ultimately impact investments for both renewable companies and utilities over time as various energy markets transition to an increased portfolio of renewables.
  • The power grid has to be upgraded to accept dynamic power input from many decentralized and distant variable sources.
  • In the absence of energy storage, current electric systems cannot easily cope with the surplus of renewable energy, and curtailment will be required at times in order to maintain reliability.
  • Intermittent renewables, like solar and wind, tend to cannibalize their own market by reducing prices when they are available. With current cost structures, if wind and solar are to produce a significant share of the power generation, they will likely require support through energy storage or additional subsidies to be profitable.

In conclusion, the lessons learned in Europe prove that the large-scale integration of renewable power does not provide net savings to consumers, but rather a net increase in costs to consumers and other stakeholders. Moreover, when not properly assessed in advance, large-scale integration of renewables into the power system ultimately leads to disequilibrium in the power markets, as well as value destruction to both renewable companies and utilities, and their respective investors.

Finadvice FAA Financial Advisory AG
July 2014

The takeaway from all that is that if Australia wants energy market chaos; energy poverty; and to kill what’s left of its manufacturing sector it need only keep following Germany’s lead.

The mandatory RET must go now.

abbottcover

Faux-green Enviro-fanatics Hide Their Sins…A Diesel Spill, no less!

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Week-end Humour! Green Group Dumps Oil on Great Barrier Reef

Posted: 01 Aug 2014 12:38 AM PDT

It may not be Australia’s Exxon Valdez,  but when a ship dumps 500 litres of diesel into the pristine Trinity Inlet at the Great Barrier Reef, there would be headlines around the world, wouldn’t there?

Well, wouldn’t there?

And wouldn’t the Greens led by Christine Moan and the “Sea Patrol” Devotee Sarah Hanson-Bling be screaming to the high heavens?

Well, it happened. And they didn’t raise a murmur.

In fact it happen five months ago.

Do you remember the headlines in all the Main stream Media (MSM)?  Did you see ANY headlines in the MSM?

If the answer is no; obviously you do not read the Cairns Post. (LINK)

diesel spill that dropped up to 500 litres

of diesel into the Trinity Inlet

And why, you pry, didn’t we hear a cry? Shouldn’t they fry? Who was the bad guy? Was it Captain Bligh? No, according to Moan and Hanson-Bling it was a good guy!
It was the New Atlantis under the Captainship of the Green’s Fellow Earthling Bob Brown, Sea Shepherd extraordinaire.

….ship owned by conservation group Sea Shepherd dropped up to 500 litres of diesel into the Trinity Inlet. The environmental organisation, whose Australian arm is chaired by former politician Bob Brown, yesterday pleaded guilty to the marine pollution offence in the Cairns Magistrates Court.

Surely you heard about it, didn’t you?  You would have heard about it

  • From the SMH and the Age
  • Blasted over “our” ABC’s speakers;
  • From 7’s Mark Riley and 9’s Laurie Oakes;
  • The Deafening wail from the Greens;
Did the crew of the Sea Shepherd discover the dreadful leak?    NO.

The court was told a passerby noticed diesel flowing into the sea about 6.30pm and tried to alert crew members before notifying the master of a ship moored alongside who boarded the New Atlantis and told them.

“She noticed a strong smell of diesel fuel and saw liquid running from the New Atlantis into the water,” the court document read.

“The smell was so strong the passerby had to put a jumper over her nose … “

Well, even if the Greens, the MSM and the TV channels didn’t think to mention it, the Magistrate thought that it was significant.

Magistrate Kevin Priestly called the amount “not insignificant” and questioned why a crewman was performing the fuel transfer and not the chief engineer.

Department of Transport and Main Roads prosecutor Anne Roseler called for a penalty of between $15,000 and $30,000. Mr Priestly adjourned the decision to a date to be fixed.

Hhmmmmm…….

Stormy Seas Ahead, For Offshore Wind!

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Centrica and Dong Energy ditch Irish Sea offshore wind farm plans

British Gas owner confirms £40m writedown from Celtic Array project, following warnings last week that UK should slow development of offshore wind farms

By Jessica Shankleman

lincs-turbine-install

The UK’s offshore wind industry has suffered a fresh setback today, after Centrica and DONG Energy confirmed they have shelved plans for the giant Celtic Array offshore wind farm in the Irish Sea.

Announcing the news in its interim results, Centrica said the project had proved uneconomic and would lead to a writedown of around £40m.

FURTHER READING

Since winning the rights to develop the Irish Sea zone in the Crown Estate’s Round 3 licensing round in 2010, Centrica has repeatedly raised doubts about the economics of the proposed Celtic Array and last week the company issued an energy “manifesto” calling on the UK government to slow the development of offshore wind farms on the grounds that they are too expensive.

“We have reviewed the economic viability of our Round 3 Irish Sea Zone project, Celtic Array, and following discussions with The Crown Estate and our partners in the project, Dong Energy, development activity has now stopped,” the British Gas owner said in a statement.

“We have recognised a charge of £40m, principally in respect of writing off the total book value of the project, and as a result the renewables business reported an operating loss.”

The Crown Estate this morning confirmed that one of the main reasons for the shelving of the Celtic Array was the discovery of “challenging seabed conditions”, and as such the organisation has no plans to reoffer the zone to other developers.

The decision echoes that of RWE over the Atlantic Array in the Bristol Channel, plans for which were also shelved as a result of seabed conditions.

However, the news is likely to come as a blow to the offshore wind industry, which has experienced a turbulent 12 months, with a number of other projects halted, including the second phase of London Array and the Argyll Array, as well as the Atlantic Array Round 3 zone.

However, RenewableUK director of offshore renewables, Nick Medic, maintained that the sector still had a healthy pipeline of projects under various stages of development.

“Although it’s disappointing that this particular project isn’t going ahead, the reasons are understandable – conditions on the seabed would make the project economically unviable at this stage,” he said. “Overall we still have over 37GW of offshore wind capacity in the UK’s project pipeline, so we’re set to maintain our huge global lead in offshore wind, creating tens of thousands of jobs in the decades ahead to add to the 13,000 we have already.”

He added that the offshore wind industry was still well positioned to play an increasingly influential role in the UK’s energy mix. “Offshore wind is already powering the equivalent of two and a half million British homes and that’s set to more than treble by the end of the decade, providing a secure supply of clean energy at a cost which is reducing constantly through economies of scale,” he said.

RenewableUK said there were currently 62 offshore wind farm projects planned in UK waters, 22 of which are already operational, and a further five are under construction.

Another 11 projects have been consented and nine are in the planning system. A further 15 projects are being developed but have not yet entered the planning system.

The news came as British Gas sparked a fresh row over energy companies’ prices and profits, after it confirmed profits fell as a result of the mild winter and rejected calls for it to cut prices further as a result of falling wholesale gas prices, insisting forward-purchasing practices make rapid changes to prices unviable.

 

Bio-Blitz At Ostrander Point. Come out & volunteer. You may learn something!

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Participate in PECFN’s BioBlitz at Ostrander Point, August 9-10, 2014

JUL 31

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BioBlitz poster FINAL low colour-page-001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Public invited to help inventory the biologically significant Ostrander Point.

Prince Edward County (July 30, 2014) – The Prince Edward County Field Naturalists are hosting the county’s first ever BioBlitz at Ostrander Point. The event runs over a 24 hour period from noon on Saturday August 9 to noon on Sunday August 10, 2014 and includes guided tours for the public focussing on how to identify a variety of species from plants to birds, insects and amphibians and reptiles.

Ostrander Point is located within the South Shore Important Bird Area, a site recognized globally for its importance to birds and biodiversity.

“Much of the biodiversity of the South Shore Important Bird Area has not been identified” notes Myrna Wood of the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists Club. Wood continues “Ostrander Point was the subject of an Environmental Review Tribunal hearing during which it became clear that we still have a lot to discover about the flora and fauna of the site. We hope this BioBlitz will help us uncover mysteries of who is living here as well as introduce the public to this unique site. Ostrander Point really is a gem that we have in the County, and it needs to be better understood.”

Wood and other naturalist experts [see list below] are aiming to identify as many species as possible at this unique site in a 24 hour period. The Ostrander Point BioBlitz is being held with the support of the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory and Nature Canada.

For more information including a full schedule of events and directions to the site, members of the public are encouraged to visit http://www.saveostranderpoint.org .

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Media Contacts
Myrna Wood, Prince Edward County Field Naturalists myrna@kos.net 613-476-1506
Cheryl Anderson, cherylanderson23@sympatico.ca 613-471-1096
Sheila Kuja, sanda.kuja@bell.net 613-399-3018

Confirmed experts / leaders:
Paul Catling (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, ERT expert witness) –alvar plants.
Ted Cheskey (Nature Canada, ERT expert witness) — insectivore birds.
Don Davis (ERT expert witness),  Myrna Wood (PECFN) – monarch butterflies.
Henri Goulet (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada) – insects and habitat.
Kurt Hennige (Kingston Field Naturalists ) – insects.
Megan McIntosh (Nature Canada) – purple martin roosting site search.
Tanya Pulfer (Ontario Nature Amphibian and Reptile Atlas ) – amphibians and reptiles.
Terry Sprague (Nature Stuff) – local birds..

Wind Action Meeting in Harriston, Aug. 16th. Hope to see you all there!

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Saturday, August 16th, 2014, Meeting for Wind Warriors at the Royal Canadian Legion in Harriston:

 If you haven’t let me know that you are coming already, please let me know before meeting day so we can accommodate everyone comfortably.

 

Royal Canadian Legion in Harriston, 53 Elora St.  Phone is 519-338-2843.  Legion is almost next to the Ford dealership on the main Street of Harriston. There is parking behind the Legion and usually the front door is open but you can always get in through the back doors.

 

People are generally able to stay to talk to those newer to the issue who want more info, after the meeting.  In fact we often seem to have an informal meeting afterwards at the local restaurant while we have lunch and would love to see you join in!

 Please send any other agenda item you want to see up for discussion.

Agenda to date:

 

The only rule we have and hold to is that we DO NOT rehash frustrations with wind company or govt.  We do not rehash common knowledge re wind company and govt as per what might be discussed at a public info session. Meetings are held to discuss next steps and concrete plans for action. 

 

–  Ontario Regional Wind Turbine Working Group becoming Ontario Wind Action: 

There is keen interest in changing this meeting group currently known as Ontario Regional Wind Turbine Working Group into Ontario Wind Action, with development of a website to go along with the change in name and specific contact names for media use.  Regional group has always been about concrete action and next steps in the battle against industrial wind turbines.  This development has the potential to help build strength, inclusiveness and focus to the fight.  Bring your ideas for this one.  (FYI, below please see minutes of very first Regional/Actiongroup meeting from Dec. of 2010.  So many people have been hard at work ever since!)

 

– Paul Kuster will speak to the initiative he is using to sell seeding trees to plant as an alternative to ‘planting’ giant turbines in communities. A handout on turbines goes with the seedlings.  It’s a wonderful opportunity for your group to both educate and fundraise! 

 

–  Municipal elections are coming up quickly.  It’s important to discuss some strategies now, before election time is upon us. 

 

–  SWEAR will update on Julian Falconer legal work and upcoming Divisional court dates

 

–  Sherri Lange will present the possibility of launching succession demands and working to qualify for special powers under the Charter of Rights.  Possibilities include giving urban centers a wake-up call on why there is the major divide between urban and rural Ontario.

 

– Jaki of West Grey’s  http://howgreenisthis.org.  will give a brief lesson on using social media, ie ‘twitter’, facebook, etc. to further spread the message of STOP the Wind Turbines.

 

Please send any other agenda items you want to see up for discussion asap.  We will  leave some time for discussion on ‘Orange Zone’, MPAC and any items we would prefer not out in print in an email.  Merci!

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For your interest, below please see minutes of the very first Regional meeting held in Maxwell in December of 2010. These were the days of wind industry open houses every week, townhall info sessions almost every week, a barrage of letters to the editor, protests, struggling to find a legal stand; anything and everything….

 

While moving the meeting place to Damascus and then to Harriston, Regional meetings continued to occur approximately 4 times a year, every year since then and continue to date.