Here we go again

[AlbertaFarmer5]

For a full 24 hours now, wind power in Alberta has hovered near 0 MW. Occasionally bumping up to 1 or 2, out of 1781. Which realistically makes them a net drain on the grid considering the parasitic loads they impose when not producing power. Solar has been only marginally better breifly reaching about 16% of capacity at noon.

this is during the coldest weather we have had this winter, with resulting highest loads.
As Hamloc points out, it will warm up with the incoming Chinook winds, loads will drop, and output will ramp up drastically.
Completely out of phase with demand.

[Chief]

If a farmer buys one wind powered tractor and two diesel tractors for a farm that really only needs 1.5 tractors how does he stay competitive? Sure he reduces diesel usage when the wind is blowing. However his neighbor with two diesel tractors and the same acreage will have more money in his jeans all day long. The big question is, can farmer A stay viable with this business model just so he can reduce diesel usage?

Have a great day.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

If a farmer buys one wind powered tractor and two diesel tractors for a farm that really only needs 1.5 tractors how does he stay competitive? Sure he reduces diesel usage when the wind is blowing. However his neighbor with two diesel tractors and the same acreage will have more money in his jeans all day long. The big question is, can farmer A stay viable with this business model just so he can reduce diesel usage?

Have a great day.

Easy. Farmer A can pass all of his unnecessary costs directly to his customers thanks to a mandate from the government. He won't reduce his diesel usage at all, since he will need to move all the tractors to the field and keep them all warmed up ready to take over at a moments notice, in fact the diesel tractor will need to be hooked up in tandem with the wind tractor, since if the wind fails for even a few seconds, the air seeder will inevitably plug, so needs the back up to be instantaneous to avoid major downtime and even higher costs.

[Chief]

Me bad. I always look at things from a farmers perspective, assuming shit runs down hill and lands on my head with no one to pass it on to.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Again another non answer, you did not address the fact and not a mythical computer model that there are extended periods of next to zero electrical generation from wind. You also did not address the cost or scope of battery storage and how short of a period it could release power for before requiring recharging.

I on the other hand have no problem addressing some of your thoughts directly. In regards to 30% renewables very simple. At present Alberta has 16403 megawatts of generation capacity, 30% of that is 4921 megawatts. 16403 - 4921 = 11482 megawatts of dependable not intermittent generation. Alberta’s electrical demand peaks at just over 11000 megawatts meaning that in most situations Alberta can satisfy its electrical needs without depending on renewables(unreliable imo) for a single watt of generation at 30% penetration. But what is funny is that even at 30% penetration in generation capacity there would be days when over 90% of Alberta’s power would still have to come from fossil fuels. If Alberta installed nuclear power generation this wouldn’t be the case! So Chuck2 I would say that factual numbers show that it is you that is deluded not AB5!!!

Have you noticed that Chuck's non answers in the unreliable energy topics are the exact same non answers as he provides in the climate change topics?
Always ignores any real time up to date evidence and results, and instead defers to hypothetical studies and models of some future event. Never ever ever revisiting the outcomes of all such past studies and models to see how dismally they predicted the future.

If anyone can find me a study from any of the energy regulators or public utilities who correctly prognosticated the black outs, rationings, price escalation etc. that their policies would create, I will concede my case and declare Chuck the champ.

[chuckChuck]

A5 and Hamloc, I am sure the AESO will be calling to get your advice on managing Alberta's shift away from coal to renewables and gas. You certainly seem to be having some influence. LOL

https://majorprojects.alberta.ca/details/Travers-Solar-Project/3656 https://majorprojects.alberta.ca/details/Travers-Solar-Project/3656

Construction of one of the largest solar power projects in North America, capable of producing 400-megawatts of power. The project has approval from Alberta Energy and the Alberta Utilities Commission. The location is south of Lomond, Alberta.

The project was approved by Greengate Power and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners on February 4th 2020.

[TASFarms]

Why wouldn’t you build it. You get a nice big some of money from the govt and take a nice wage. Then sell it to the next guy to take a bath or you shut it down in 2 years time because you are broke. A good example is The original owners of the brooks solar farm. Wouldn’t build just did the planning stage and dumped it.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Wind power was 0 all day again. Finally blipped up to 15 MW as of 5:40 PM That is still less than 1% of capacity.

So I checked how long this has been going on.

After a few days of bouncing between little to no power last week, wind farms started declining to zero as of last Sunday evening, most of which stayed at zero all this time, the last 4 went off line on Thursday early morning.
So, many of the wind farms have now had over 6 consecutive days of virtually no output.
The last 4 have been at virtually 0 for ~18 consecutive hours so far.
The 7 day capacity factor for these wind farms are almost all in single digits, many much under 1 percent. Some samples: 0.7%, 0.5%, 0.2%, 0.6%, 1.2% This is for an entire week.



Meanwhile solar has been booming along peaking out at almost 20% of nameplate very briefly at noon today. Brooks is up to 4% capacity factor.

But a chinook is coming, weather will warm up, demand will drop, wind farms will increase by infinite amounts ( from 0), at hte same time the snow melts off the solar panels and the clouds disappear. Anyone care to do the math on how much it would cost for storage for a week, and how many more wind farms we would need to charge that storage with week long capacity factors of far less than 1%?

How long of a wind drought would we need to budget for in a completely fossil fuel free grid? Do we have the data to know how many weeks the wind can refuse to blow?

[Hamloc]

A5 and Hamloc, I am sure the AESO will be calling to get your advice on managing Alberta's shift away from coal to renewables and gas. You certainly seem to be having some influence. LOL

https://majorprojects.alberta.ca/details/Travers-Solar-Project/3656 https://majorprojects.alberta.ca/details/Travers-Solar-Project/3656

Construction of one of the largest solar power projects in North America, capable of producing 400-megawatts of power. The project has approval from Alberta Energy and the Alberta Utilities Commission. The location is south of Lomond, Alberta.

The project was approved by Greengate Power and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners on February 4th 2020.

“Capable of producing 400 megawatts of power”. So how many megawatts would it have produced in the last week? Looking at the Brooks solar farm it peaks out in the middle of the day at about 20% production efficiency. It would be about as useful as Alberta’s 23 wind farms have been the last week(200 mw of a potential 1781 this morning). Wind and solar are very much like grain farming, on a grain farm you can buy the best seed, fertilize according to soil tests, manage the pests but if the weather doesn’t cooperate you can still end up with nothing!!!

[chuckChuck]

Interesting analogy Hamloc.

You would have to be really unlucky or a really bad farmer to get nothing from a farm. Fortunately that is a very rare occurrence on most farms.

On most western Canadian farms, even the longest growing plants only start growing at the earliest in April and finish in late September. The rest of year there is very little to zero plant growth. Many plants only capture 6 months of solar energy at best. Many crops only capture 3-4 months of solar energy. The rest of the year it is too cold.

Solar panels on the other hand can capture solar energy 12 months of the year with December and January being some of the lowest production months.

Instead of looking at the production levels at any small point in time in the depth of January, you really need to look at the whole years production on farms and with solar panels to measure the output to know whether they are economic and efficient.

I am sure that when a company invests $500 million in a solar system that they have calculated that the project will be productive and economic, even if it doesn't produce anything in January or on January 30th.

So how much solar energy are your crops capturing today Hamloc? Since the answer is zero and will remain zero untill April, then that must mean your crops and farm are a failure based on your thinking about solar and wind energy.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Chuck, your analogy absolutely does not apply.
The grains, hay, silage etc. that Hamloc is growing are all storable commodities. In fact, the only reason we even need to harvest some of them is because we get winter, and so we need to store them. By my math, over the life of a grain bin, storage costs are probably 10 cents per year. With an indefinite shelf life.

Contrast that with solar and wind in Alberta( Yes, there are places where they match demand much better). Their max supply is completely out of phase with max demand, but there is no economic or large scale storage. Certainly not season long or even years long as can be done with grain. These are harvested at random times throughout the year, and must be consumed at that exact second, regardless of demand. And demand does not go away waiting for supply to catch up, although that is the model proposed to be applied in places like California, Germany, Australia etc. Might work for AC, not so great for stock waterers.

[chuckChuck]

Don't need to store solar if you are displacing kwh from other sources or getting paid for the ones you produce. Once you are hooked up to the grid, storage, transportation and marketing are all taken care of.

Interesting story from Australia:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon


Ammonia—a renewable fuel made from sun, air, and water—could power the globe without carbon

By Robert F. ServiceJul. 12, 2018 , 2:00 PM


SYDNEY, BRISBANE, AND MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA—The ancient, arid landscapes of Australia are fertile ground for new growth, says Douglas MacFarlane, a chemist at Monash University in suburban Melbourne: vast forests of windmills and solar panels. More sunlight per square meter strikes the country than just about any other, and powerful winds buffet its south and west coasts. All told, Australia boasts a renewable energy potential of 25,000 gigawatts, one of the highest in the world and about four times the planet's installed electricity production capacity. Yet with a small population and few ways to store or export the energy, its renewable bounty is largely untapped.

That's where MacFarlane comes in. For the past 4 years, he has been working on a fuel cell that can convert renewable electricity into a carbon-free fuel: ammonia. Fuel cells typically use the energy stored in chemical bonds to make electricity; MacFarlane's operates in reverse. In his third-floor laboratory, he shows off one of the devices, about the size of a hockey puck and clad in stainless steel. Two plastic tubes on its backside feed it nitrogen gas and water, and a power cord supplies electricity. Through a third tube on its front, it silently exhales gaseous ammonia, all without the heat, pressure, and carbon emissions normally needed to make the chemical. "This is breathing nitrogen in and breathing ammonia out," MacFarlane says, beaming like a proud father.

Companies around the world already produce $60 billion worth of ammonia every year, primarily as fertilizer, and MacFarlane's gizmo may allow them to make it more efficiently and cleanly. But he has ambitions to do much more than help farmers. By converting renewable electricity into an energy-rich gas that can easily be cooled and squeezed into a liquid fuel, MacFarlane's fuel cell effectively bottles sunshine and wind, turning them into a commodity that can be shipped anywhere in the world and converted back into electricity or hydrogen gas to power fuel cell vehicles. The gas bubbling out of the fuel cell is colorless, but environmentally, MacFarlane says, ammonia is as green as can be. "Liquid ammonia is liquid energy," he says. "It's the sustainable technology we need." ........story continues

[AlbertaFarmer5]

The seasonality of plant growth in Western Canada is as predictable as the sun rising in the east. The seasonality of livestock feeding equally as predictable.

Millenia of practice has established a workable system for matching the two. We figured out when and what to harvest, what moisture, how to store.

Droughts, hail, floods, frosts, snow all happen, we know that is a probabilty, and we prepare. We carry over stocks from previous harvests, we don't tell the cows to go without this winter since there was a drought last summer. We don't make it someone else's problem that we didn't prepare.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Don't need to store solar if you are displacing kwh from other sources or getting paid for the ones you produce. Once you are hooked up to the grid, storage, transportation and marketing are all taken care of.

What a brilliant and simple solution.
Now scale that up to 100% in a zero fossil fuel powered world, as the politicans are promising. Do you see any potential hiccups with your plan? At what point do you run out of other peoples money ( or in this case, energy)?

[chuckChuck]

Net zero may include CCS with fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, hydrogen and ammonia as mentioned in the science story from Australia.

A5, A lot of your assumptions are based on very negative view that human energy sources and technology will never evolve or replace fossil energy sources with anything else.

Your assumption that affordable storage for renewables will never be found or implemented is probably wrong.

Why would you think it is a good idea to ignore the reality that the earth receives massive amounts of solar energy every day. Don't you think it is a good idea to explore all the possible uses?

Australia on its own has renewable potential that is incredible.

"More sunlight per square meter strikes the country than just about any other, and powerful winds buffet its south and west coasts. All told, Australia boasts a renewable energy potential of 25,000 gigawatts, one of the highest in the world and about four times the planet's installed electricity production capacity."

Its not surprising that Albertans like you are scared shitless of the future. Alberta has come close to putting all its eggs in one basket and many can't seem to think of anything else than oil and gas as the engine of Alberta's economy. Yup the worlds going to change. You better get used to it and start planning for the future rather than trying desperately to hang on to the past.