Why wind and solar power are running out of juice

Grokmaster

Well-known member
Contributor
Wind and solar CANNOT POWER MODERN SOCIETY...not even close, and the investors are bailing like rats from a sinking ship as REALITY exposes the great deficiencies of both.

Until we develop a "room-temperature super-conductor", they will remain inadequate.




Why wind and solar power are running out of juice


Green energy and the push to electrify everything have been in the news recently but for all the wrong reasons.

Instead of the green energy nirvana politicians and green energy advocates have promised, economic and physical reality has begun to set in.

Start with the economic realities.

Wind turbine manufacturers like Siemens and General Electric have reported huge losses for the first half of this year, almost $5 billion for the former and $1 billion for the latter.

Among other problems, turbine quality control has suffered, forcing manufacturers such as Siemens and Vestas to incur costly warranty repairs.

In Europe, offshore wind output has been less than promised, while operating costs have been much higher than advertised.

Offshore wind developers in Europe and the US are canceling projects because of higher materials and construction costs.

In Massachusetts, Avangrid, the developer of the 1,200 MW Commonwealth Wind project paid $48 million to get out of its existing contract to sell power to ratepayers.

That way, the company can rebid the project next year at an even higher price.

Close by, the developers of the 1,200 MW SouthCoast Wind Project off Martha’s Vineyard will pay about $60 million to exit their existing contract.
Homeowners and building owners will be forced to replace gas- and oil-burning space and water heaters with electric heat pumps.

And, gas stoves will be regulated out of existence.

~New York also will soon implement another California import: a carbon “cap-and-invest” program, which will impose a tax on fossil fuels sold by wholesalers and utilities.
Rhode Island Energy, the state’s main electric utility, recently rejected the second Revolution Wind Project because the contract price was too high.
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~Homeowners and building owners will be forced to replace gas- and oil-burning space and water heaters with electric heat pumps.

New York also will soon implement another California import: a carbon “cap-and-invest” program, which will impose a tax on fossil fuels sold by wholesalers and utilities.

~ The billions of dollars collected each year will provide a green slush fund, allowing the governor and legislators to hand out money to their politically favored cronies, as has so often been the case in the past.

Washington State began its “cap-and-invest” program in January of this year.

Modeled after California’s, Governor Jay Inslee promised the program would have “minimal impact, if any. We are talking about pennies.”

Instead, the program has raised gasoline prices – almost 50 cents per gallon so far this year. Washington State now claims the honor of having the highest gasoline prices in the nation: In Seattle, for example, the average price of regular gasoline is over $5 per gallon.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/oth...p&cvid=ba78869c2de341c89c4e62ca251c1173&ei=12

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Heat pumps are both impractical and uneconomic but are adored by the Left.

A new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that heat pumps are uneconomic in the UK. The findings call into question the Net Zero heating plans of energy minister Grant Shapps who has today called for every home to be equipped with a heat pump by 2050.

The economics of heat pumps are driven by the ‘gain’, the amount of heat output per unit electricity input, and by the ratio between electricity and gas prices. New data from the Energy Systems Catapult reveals that the typical heat pump delivers a gain of 2.8, but the price ratio is 4. This means that the majority of people will find a heat pump more expensive to run than a new gas boiler.

Moreover, nobody will see an overall payback once the capital cost is taken into account. The paper also shows that the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions using heat pumps is much higher than estimates of the cost of the damage due to global warming.

The paper’s author, Andrew Montford, said:

As renewables make the grid progressively less efficient, heat pumps are becoming steadily less economic. They already make no sense for consumers or for the economy. And they also make no sense as a decarbonisation tool because the heat pump medicine is worse than the global warming disease.”

Key points

• The economics of heat pumps are driven by the ratio of electricity and gas prices, and the heat pump ‘gain’ – the units of heat energy emitted for each unit of electricity used.

• Heat pumps are mostly deployed in countries with very cheap electricity.

• In the UK, the electricity:gas price ratio has been increasing for many years, as increasing penetration of renewable energy makes the grid progressively less efficient. The ratio is currently around 4.

• Heat pump gains have been improving, but only slowly. The median for an air-source heat pump is around 2.8.

• Thus, even taking into account inefficiencies of gas boilers, the majority of people will find a gas boiler cheaper to run than an air-source heat pump.

• Although substantial grants are available to install heat pumps, once the (net) capital cost is taken into account, almost nobody doing so will see an overall payback.

• To assess the overall economic effect of installing a heat pump, the capital cost before grants has to be incorporated into the calculation. If this is done, it is found that no heat pump installation is economic.

• The marginal abatement cost of reducing emission through heat pumps is over £300/t CO2, several times more than estimates of the damage caused by global warming.

• Installing heat pumps is therefore a mistake, on every measure.

https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/new-paper-reveals-governments-heat-pump-plan-as-uneconomic/
 
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