Solar, Wind Renewable Energy

[Koolau]

The point was, it was nowhere near complete, despite what API propaganda would have you believe.

It still wouldn't be complete now.

I would say ONE point is that it was nowhere complete. The main point is that no self-respecting O&G company will invest in any long-term "solution" to the oil shortage as long as they believe those in charge can undo all the planning, staging, investing, and w*rk they might have already done. Again, it's the classic "Fool me once..."

If the same "forces" that said "stop" had said "what can we do to help?" It WOULD be done now.

Keep in mind that when it comes to a commodity on the knife edge of inelastic demand, simply "saying" something is almost as effective as "doing" something in changing the price. The recent Saudi announcement didn't change the actual oil available yet, but prices have spiked simply in anticipation. That's how oil and wheat and cobalt, etc. prices work. YMMV

 

[explanade]

Anything to back that up? Even if we accept 8% of pipe was laid, that doesn’t mean 8% of the project was complete.

Take a look at construction times on the various phases which are operational. Phase I opened back in 2010. Without the various government delays, it would all have been completed years ago.

When the chickens come home to roost with an energy crisis we always hear this argument on oil and gas related projects that were blocked. They say it wouldn’t have mattered much or wouldn’t have been done yet. They forget the many projects before that which certainly would have been done. Individually they may not be huge but taken together it does add up.

What energy crisis?

Do you see lines at gas stations or people unable to get power or gas to heat their homes?


Oil prices are up this year, mainly because of the war. But they're well off the peak. Brent reached almost $128 in the first week of March, soon after the war began. It reached another peak around $122 in early June, then dropped to about $83 in late September and is currently just under $97.

In all this time, nobody has been unable to get gas.

Production is supposedly increasing but they're not borrowing big to rush to produce more because they got burned in the last decade when they borrowed heavily and prices didn't hold up.

 

[Koolau]

What energy crisis?

Do you see lines at gas stations or people unable to get power or gas to heat their homes?


Oil prices are up this year, mainly because of the war. But they're well off the peak. Brent reached almost $128 in the first week of March, soon after the war began. It reached another peak around $122 in early June, then dropped to about $83 in late September and is currently just under $97.

In all this time, nobody has been unable to get gas.

Production is supposedly increasing but they're not borrowing big to rush to produce more because they got burned in the last decade when they borrowed heavily and prices didn't hold up.

Not all aspects of the energy crisis are as clear cut or obvious as gas lines. Diesel stocks are way down and expected to get worse. Nothing moves without diesel. In effect heating oil is for the most part the same stuff. I read an article indicating very high prices for heating oil this year. I saw one estimate of as much as $5K to heat a home with #2 fuel oil this year.

Energy crisis - yeah I think we got one but I hope YOU are right (and YMMV.)

 

[Popeye]

What energy crisis?

Do you see lines at gas stations or people unable to get power or gas to heat their homes?


Oil prices are up this year, mainly because of the war. But they're well off the peak. Brent reached almost $128 in the first week of March, soon after the war began. It reached another peak around $122 in early June, then dropped to about $83 in late September and is currently just under $97.

In all this time, nobody has been unable to get gas.

Production is supposedly increasing but they're not borrowing big to rush to produce more because they got burned in the last decade when they borrowed heavily and prices didn't hold up.

Ahh, so you don’t have anything to back that previous point up. Got it.

As to the word crisis, it’s always a bit subjective. But if there was no crisis, we wouldn’t have tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, right? Surely either a crisis was present or imminent.

Aside from that here’s another “issue”. I’ll avoid the word crisis for now.

U.S. diesel supplies are becoming critically low with shortages and price spikes likely to occur in the next six months unless and until the economy and fuel consumption slow.

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...y-likely-until-economy-slows-kemp-2022-10-27/

Stocks are at their lowest levels in the 40 years of record keeping. There’s a $60 per barrel premium for some December futures. And I heard on a news report last night that they are already rationing deliveries to customers in New England states. I hope we don’t get a cold winter here in the east.

Finally you mentioned the war. Discussion there would probably end the thread. I’ll just say that the West’s self-weakening energy policies emboldened Putin enough to roll the tanks. The XL pipeline was just one small piece of that but it all adds up eventually.

 

[explanade]

What backup, what previous point?

You mean refuting the API?

It’s not like they’re not pumping oil in Canada becaUse they didn’t get a new pipeline. Keystone pipeline is running. What wasn’t built was the Keystone XL and it wouldn’t be finished now.

But Canada is still producing the oil, just not sending it to a new pipeline.

 

[Popeye]

What backup, what previous point?

You mean refuting the API?

It’s not like they’re not pumping oil in Canada becaUse they didn’t get a new pipeline. Keystone pipeline is running. What wasn’t built was the Keystone XL and it wouldn’t be finished now.

But Canada is still producing the oil, just not sending it to a new pipeline.

No, not refuting the experts in the field. I’m was talking about your claim that the pipeline would not have been finished by now. If you look at how long the other phases took and the distances laid down and remove all of the bureaucratic roadblocks put up since the project was announced in 2008, it would easily have been completed by now. They probably could have built it twice.

And sure, they are still extracting oil in Canada, it just costs twice as much to transport since it’s going by rail car instead of pipeline. And Canada is going to have a pipeline west to the coast which will send some to China et al. There it will be refined in a far less environmentally friendly way.

 

[NW-Bound]

From Bloomberg:

New England’s largest utility is imploring President Joe Biden to start preparing emergency measures to prevent a potential wintertime natural gas shortage.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has “acknowledged for many months that New England will not have sufficient natural gas to meet power supply needs for the region in the event of a severe cold spell this winter,” Joseph Nolan, chief executive officer of Springfield, Massachusetts-based Eversource Energy, wrote in a letter to Biden. “This represents a serious public health and safety threat.”

 

[ls99]

At least one company in Germany has decided that continuous source of energy is more important than intermittent wind power.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/...ntrys-energy-supply-drawing-climate-activists
"A German energy company is dismantling a wind farm to allow for an adjacent coal mine to expand its operations, officials said. "
""The three lignite units each have a capacity of 300 megawatts (MW). With their deployment, they contribute to strengthening the security of supply in Germany during the energy crisis and to saving natural gas in electricity generation," RWE said in September."

""In the current situation, all potential for the use of renewable energy should be exhausted as much as possible and existing turbines should be in operation for as long as possible," a ministry spokesperson said in a statement earlier this week, according to the Guardian."

Presumably if the Germans decided to keep and build nuke plants, The coal production could have been avoided.

 

[ERD50]

At least one company in Germany has decided that continuous source of energy is more important than intermittent wind power.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/...ntrys-energy-supply-drawing-climate-activists
"A German energy company is dismantling a wind farm to allow for an adjacent coal mine to expand its operations, officials said. "
""The three lignite units each have a capacity of 300 megawatts (MW). With their deployment, they contribute to strengthening the security of supply in Germany during the energy crisis and to saving natural gas in electricity generation," RWE said in September."

""In the current situation, all potential for the use of renewable energy should be exhausted as much as possible and existing turbines should be in operation for as long as possible," a ministry spokesperson said in a statement earlier this week, according to the Guardian."

Presumably if the Germans decided to keep and build nuke plants, The coal production could have been avoided.

Such poor planing on their part at so many levels. Sad.

Wind farms are fine to supplement the grid with green energy. But without a real plan that says they will never need that coal again, it was just plain stupid to build a wind farm over the coal mines.

It takes a lot of energy, and especially a *lot* of concrete for the base of the wind turbine. All that, wasted due to pie in the sky "you just have to want it" thinking.

-ERD50

 

[JoeWras]

Such poor planing on their part at so many levels. Sad.

Pressure plays a part.

 

[NW-Bound]

I just saw this article by The Telegraph that once more underlined the intermittency of wind and solar power.

National Grid has narrowly avoided activating its emergency blackout plan for the first time this winter as low wind speeds and nuclear outages push supply closer to the danger zone.

The company in charge of keeping the lights on said on Monday morning that it may need to pay households to switch appliances off during tea-time on Tuesday evening because of a looming power crunch.
...
Households will need to have signed up with their supplier beforehand to get payments of £3 per kilowatt-hour of electricity saved - potentially yielding up to £20 per day if they cut their typical energy usage.
...
Monday’s notice that the scheme may be called upon is the first time it has been seriously considered.
...
This week’s problems are not as a result of gas shortages. Instead, National Grid was faced with forecasts of colder weather on top of low wind speeds on Tuesday evening, as well as lower output from both the French and UK nuclear fleet, which ware both owned by EDF.

It is interesting that homeowners are paid as much as £3 (US$3.6) for each kWh that they do not use. That's a lot, but how do they know how much people have not used? It must be based on a computed average of past usage.

PS. The paper added that it turned out National Grid did not have to pay for conservation. The higher price of electricity drew in more power imported via undersea cables, and this helped meet demand. I wonder how much they had to pay. Hopefully, it was a lot less than US$3.6 per kWh.

 

[Koolau]

I just saw this article by The Telegraph that once more underlined the intermittency of wind and solar power.




It is interesting that homeowners are paid as much as £3 (US$3.6) for each kWh that they do not use. That's a lot, but how do they know how much people have not used? It must be based on a computed average of past usage.

PS. The paper added that it turned out National Grid did not have to pay for conservation. The higher price of electricity drew in more power imported via undersea cables, and this helped meet demand. I wonder how much they had to pay. Hopefully, it was a lot less than US$3.6 per kWh.

HECO has a plan in which it rebates $3/month to folks who allow them to turn off their electric hot water heaters (IIRC) for an hour at a time (IIRC) a "few" times per month. The effect is unlikely to be felt by the home owner. When we had such a heater, we gladly opted in. It did require a service tech to wire the unit which took maybe 30 minutes. We never noticed any effects. We are now on a building boiler, so it no longer is available to us but such a system should be especially useful for larger installations. Haven't heard of it being used in that way. Seems a better system than counting on consumers to dutifully turn stuff off but YMMV.

 

[explanade]

US auctioned off two deep offshore wind sites off the coast of CA, both 20 miles out, in mile deep waters.

The auction fetched $757 billion in bids. An earlier auction for sites off the coast of NY and NJ fetched $4.37 billion.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...re-wind-auction-nets-757-million/10847186002/

These are all pilot sites as the technology to build wind farms in "deep offshore" site is not yet developed or proven. Because in these locations, the ocean floor is too deep to anchor the platform which will hold the wind turbines. So there are various design ideas, like tethering to the ocean floor but the platform is going to be floating.

Beyond that there are all kinds of infrastructure challenges. The turbines are going to be over 300 feet long and the turbine base is going to be 300-500 feet tall, or the height of the Statue of Liberty to the height of the Washington Monument.

There may not be enough ships under US-flag which can transport these turbines and turbine bases out to sea. Laws may require using only ships registered under the US flag.

In CA, the ports may not be able to accommodate large enough ships and the bridges not tall enough to transport these turbine components upright. Sure they can lay them horizontally but then it's another engineering problem to raise them at the wind farm site.

All this means lot of spending to develop infrastructure, including probably manufacturing and assembly of these giant turbines. So a lot of jobs.

Why are they investing in sites with such hassles? Much greater wind capacities than even just offshore near the coasts and as it happens, the peak winds 20 miles offshore tend to start in the early evening hours, just as wind near the coasts or on land and solar starts to generate less electricity.

 

[meierlde]

Much of the technology you discuss already exists.

Much of the tech for offshore wind is very similar to that used in offshore oil. Platforms are transpored horizontally and upended, for deep water tension leg tech is used, so the platform is essentially anchored to the bottom 4 or more times with long chains. There would be two choices for pacific sites, one to bring the platform from the Gulf coast around Africa, or build the platform in South Korea. Oil rigs have been anchored in up to 8000 feet of water in the Gulf. The odds are that for stability the hull of the platform likely be round and large enough to keep the center of gravity of the platform within the bounds of the platform, but naval architects do this all the time for ships.
The tallest oil rigs go up to 300 foot above sea level, So again the tech is already tested. Oil rigs for the gulf don't have to be built in us ship yards, which makes south korea the place the pacific wind rigs would come from.

 

[NW-Bound]

US auctioned off two deep offshore wind sites off the coast of CA, both 20 miles out, in mile deep waters.

The auction fetched $757 billion in bids. An earlier auction for sites off the coast of NY and NJ fetched $4.37 billion.

You scared the heck of me.

No, it's $757 million, not billion.

The technology of building these things and the economics of it is way beyond my knowledge. I have to believe that people think of the economic feasibility before committing the capital to it.

 

[JoeWras]

The UK has plenty of real world experience in off-shore wind generation. There are plenty of Youtubes, Discovery, Curiosity Stream documentaries regarding the building, care and maintenance of these. Check them out!

There are positives and negatives to it. I don't want to pontificate too much on it, except to say that off shore generation has really high maintenance impacts. Some were anticipated, some were not.

Of course, the effects of salt air were anticipated when it comes to metallic rusting and erosion. The big unanticipated impact was the effect of leading edge erosion by dry aerosols, i.e. salt air evaporated into nasty bits of grit eroding the blades. You can google/bing/duckduckgo search this.

It is interesting stuff. Maybe not a show stopper, but surely a show delayer. There are great documentary shows on this, where they are putting band-aids on the leading edge of the blades to slow the erosion.

Here's the thing: we've seen this before. It will work out. Some of the early adopters will feel the pain. I'm thinking of the late 70s, when all the automobile owners were "test subjects" for all the new regulations. The 72-to-85 cars had so many issues dealing with the regulations. Eventually, those problems were solved as experience worked its way through the system.

 

[explanade]

Well deep offshore wind is expected to cost up to almost 7x solar and offshore (but near the coast) wind.

Initially.

Because unknown about how efficiently they will build these platforms and all the issues with getting the turbines out there.

They don't get quite the NIMBY as the coastal wind farms which ruin those multimillion dollar views but they do get opposition.

For instance, trade association of fishermen are challenging a site near MA because their vessels would have to route longer ways.

And some groups associated with opposing any climate change measures are claiming certain species of whales could be hurt by these platforms.

 

[NW-Bound]

At 3PM, I went out to the backyard solar shed, and saw that the battery was full. Whoa!

Last week, the solar panels were struggling to provide enough power, and I turned off the 120V inverters that feed the kitchen appliances and the house lighting, and left on the 240V inverters feeding the heat pumps. Even then, everything switched back to running off the grid in the late evening, as there was not much surplus power during the day to charge up the battery.

Now, suddenly I found I had extra power. Part of it was that the sky was clearer with bright sunlight. The temperature has not changed much though and the heat pumps were still running at night, and on/off during the day.

So, I turned the 120V inverters back on to use more of this "free" solar power. Told myself I needed to continue with designing the automation of all this power management.

It is hard to balance supply and demand of electric power. I appreciate more what power utility companies are doing to keep the light on for everybody.

 

[ncbill]

At 3PM, I went out to the backyard solar shed, and saw that the battery was full. Whoa!

Last week, the solar panels were struggling to provide enough power, and I turned off the 120V inverters that feed the kitchen appliances and the house lighting, and left on the 240V inverters feeding the heat pumps. Even then, everything switched back to running off the grid in the late evening, as there was not much surplus power during the day to charge up the battery.

Now, suddenly I found I had extra power. Part of it was that the sky was clearer with bright sunlight. The temperature has not changed much though and the heat pumps were still running at night, and on/off during the day.

So, I turned the 120V inverters back on to use more of this "free" solar power. Told myself I needed to continue with designing the automation of all this power management.

It is hard to balance supply and demand of electric power. I appreciate more what power utility companies are doing to keep the light on for everybody.

I found a new kind of mini-split for you, can run directly off solar panels, no battery required:

EG4 High Efficiency AC or Solar DC Heat Pump

 

[NW-Bound]

^^^ Very interesting.

It occurred to me that the motors of my mini-splits, same as all modern heat pumps, actually run on high-voltage DC power. So, if you feed it DC, you bypass the charge controller (DC-to-DC), then also the inverter (DC-to-AC), then the AC-to-DC rectifier inside the heat pump.

Should I open up my mini-split to investigate? Before even doing it, I did see some problems.

1) the DC voltage from the panels will not match the DC voltage that the motor controller wants to see
2) the panel voltage will vary with temperature and sunlight

This means you need a DC-to-DC converter to match the power source to the power consumer.

3) the panel power output will not match what the motor uses. The panel output power varies with temperature and sunlight, and the motor power consumption also varies greatly with the refrigerant pressure, which varies with inside/outside air temperature and your thermostat setting.

If you have excess power, you need some electronics to divert it to a battery else you are not making the most of your panels.

If the panels do not produce enough, you need electronics to borrow the supplement from a battery or from the grid.

All this means complex electronics. It is not simple, although it should gain some efficiencies over what I have now.

I will keep an eye on this as it is interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[JoeWras]

DC everywhere. Edison's revenge!

 

[ERD50]

^^^ Very interesting.

It occurred to me that the motors of my mini-splits, same as all modern heat pumps, actually run on high-voltage DC power. So, if you feed it DC, you bypass the charge controller (DC-to-DC), then also the inverter (DC-to-AC), then the AC-to-DC rectifier inside the heat pump.

Should I open up my mini-split to investigate? Before even doing it, I did see some problems.

1) the DC voltage from the panels will not match the DC voltage that the motor controller wants to see
2) the panel voltage will vary with temperature and sunlight

This means you need a DC-to-DC converter to match the power source to the power consumer. ....

It seems to me there is very little to be gained. Since the solar panel inverter needs to have the MPPT tracking function, I'm not sure it matters much if that is converting to DC or AC? edit/add: OK, I see it connects directly to the panels. Hmmm, but if the heat-pump is taking most of the available energy, that seems it would mess with the MPPT? Seems a bit 'tweaky' to me.

Similar story on the heat pump side, if it's chopping the power to adjust, does it make much difference if it is chopping AC or DC?

I guess if you were running the heat pump direct from the batteries, this could help. But then are we talking 24-48V? heavier wires to avoid added IR losses. Can you win?

-ERD50

 

[NW-Bound]

Grid-tied converters perform the function of MPPT as part of the DC-to-AC conversion. They sit between the panels and the grid. There's nothing else.

For non-grid-tied systems like mine, the MPPT function is done by the DC-to-DC conversion that matches the panel voltage to the battery voltage. So, if you want to run the heat pump with DC, the electronics between the panels and the heat pump motor controller would look more like an MPPT battery charger, with the exception that its output voltage is higher and up to a few 100s Volts.

Then, if you want to not waste excess power from the panels, you need another circuit to deal with this, whether to dump it to the grid (for a grid-tied system) or to a battery. Then, another circuit to import power from the grid or battery when the panels come up short.

 

[Sunset]

....

Now, suddenly I found I had extra power. Part of it was that the sky was clearer with bright sunlight. The temperature has not changed much .....

So, I turned the 120V inverters back on to use more of this "free" solar power. Told myself I needed to continue with designing the automation of all this power management.

It is hard to balance supply and demand of electric power. I appreciate more what power utility companies are doing to keep the light on for everybody.

It's amazing how it fluctuates... I never noticed before.

After my first Summer of using solar to run my solar cooler as a refrigerator. I learned how amazing the sun really is. To me a bright day was a bright day, but some bright days the solar power collected was incredible, and we were charging up everything we could find to not waste the juice.

 

[NW-Bound]

I looked some more at the above EG4 DC/AC mini-split, and it does not do the fancy things that I described earlier that are theoretically possible.

What happens is that if the panels are capable of more power than what the mini-split needs, the excess potential power that can be harvested goes to waste. There's no battery to dump the excess power to, nor this unit is allowed to dump into the grid.

So, you don't want to use too many panels on this. It would be like buying a pickup with a big V8, just to pull a trailer once in a while.

Still, the advantage is for people who do not have a grid-tied system, nor a stand-alone system with a battery storage. Instead of a conventional mini-split running off the grid, they can use this along with some panels, and the panels will help reduce the electric bill. If the unit does not cost too much more than a conventional mini-split, it is viable.

What happens if there's an electric outage, and the mini-split reverts to running totally on the panels, and the panels do not put out enough juice? Or you lose power in the late afternoon, when the sun angle is low and the panel output is weak?

In the case above, I would hope that the machine is programmed to reduce its speed, and manages to run on the reduced solar power. This means that you would still have some cooling during a blackout in the summer, just not to the level that you normally get.

Of course when the sun is down or at night, you don't have any AC without the grid. You would need a battery.

PS. My 18,000-BTU variable-speed minisplit power draw varies from 200W to 1500W, depending on the indoor/outdoor temperatures and the thermostat setting.