RSN Fundraising Banner
FB Share
Email This Page
add comment

writing for godot

What Every Presidential Wannabe Needs to Heed about America’s Energy Predicament

Print
Written by William F. Pickard   
Wednesday, 03 February 2016 09:02
What Every Presidential Wannabe Needs to Heed about America’s Energy Predicament and Its Associated
Intermittency Challenge


 At present there is no Energy Predicament. Extrapolations made by the United States Energy Information Administration and other respected agencies indicate that supplies of fossil fuels will be adequate throughout the present electoral cycle. And indeed as far as 2030. There being no clear and present danger, one can with sang froid ignore longer term dangers ― unless (of course) it seems politically expedient not to ignore them.

 However, fossil fuel is finite. The World will run out of it! Sooner if the Developing Economies rack up good growth rates. Later if they do not. But before the fossil fuel is completely gone, there will surely be shortages and price increases. Developed Economies, which fantasized that the good times would last forever, will most assuredly resist letting them slip away. Developing Economies, prudently fearful that they will never have their turn with the good times, may manifest dangerous annoyance.

 The finite nature of fossil fuel becomes a bona fide Energy Predicament only when its users thereof fail to develop a coping strategy well in advance of serious scarcity. Currently, there is:
(i) Little historical evidence for a major energy transition that required fewer than fifty years to implement.
(ii) No compelling evidence to reassure us that “serious scarcity” is indeed more than fifty years in the future. And
(iii) Precious few coping strategies that have been subjected to the requisite large scale experimental validation. To date, the coping strategies have been largely ENVISIONED.

 Historically, large scale changes of fuel supply have never taken place in the absence of obvious economic incentives. What are the reasons to presume that, when finally the market does provide attractive economic incentives to abandon fossil fuel, there will be adequate time to make a stable transition before the remaining fossil fuel is gone? If the time is inadequate, the World’s economy will be in an energy trap. What are the reasons to presume that it can escape from that trap?

 Fossil fuels are special because they store their own energy. Thus, as long as coal pile behind the power plant lasts, the plant can ramp up to 100% of its rated electrical output at any old time. On the other hand, a wind turbine can deliver 100% of its rated output only within a restricted range of wind velocities; and the wind is episodic. Likewise, a solar plant can deliver its rated power only when the sun is brightest: sunshine too is episodic. With renewables, the system is described not only by its maximum rated power generation but also by a capacity factor, which lies between 0 and 1 and is the ratio of [time average power] divided by [maximum rated power]; a typical value for the capacity factor of extant renewable schemes is 0.2, give or take a factor of two. The upshot is that each leading source of renewable energy poses an Intermittency Challenge.

 Futurists hope to dispose of the Intermittency Challenge by: (i) summing generation over a large geographic area; (ii) operating a smart grid that offers financial incentives to the customers who “voluntarily” shift the timing of their power demands; and (iii) buffering the interaction between generation and demand by installing massive electricity storage. The first solution (summing) has long been widely practiced. The second solution (smart grid) is now under development, but so are other envisioned advances that have resisted implementation for decades. The third solution already exists in one well developed instantiation (standard pumped hydro storage); but that technology is running out of prime locations for construction, and other instantiations (though long touted) have never actually been proven in practice and at the scales needed.

 A full bore assault aimed at validating reasonable solutions to only the Intermittency Challenge could easily cost 100-200 G$ spread over the next decade or so, with the really painful bite beginning in perhaps 2030.
 Actually implementing the chosen electricity storage solutions could then cost 200 G$ a year (give or take a factor of two), each year for the following fifty years.
 Note well that the price of the infrastructure needed to generate the electricity to be stored was not figured into the above costs. That would be extra. A lot extra!



William F. Pickard, older ‘n’ dirt, is a retiree (from Washington University in Saint Louis) who specializes in energy matters. He’s pretty much clueless as to how the crises confronting America might be surmounted. But at least he has had the good grace not to stand for public office.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Email This Page

 

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

RSNRSN