From Reuters:
June 30 (Reuters) – The Texas power grid comfortably met record demand during this week’s heat wave with abundant power supply from wind and solar plants, data from the grid operator showed.
We have data through April for Texas, in terms of proportion of electricity generation, that shows why we have this outcome.
Figure 1: Proportion of electricity generation from utilities from coal (blue), natural gas (tan), nuclear (green), renewable (gray), nuclear (red), all other (orange). Source: EIA.
The above data is up to before summer but here is what Reuters notes:
So far this week, solar power generation peaked at a record of 13,086 MW on June 25, according to ERCOT. Wind power, meanwhile, reached a high of 24,237 MW on June 28, which was below its all-time high of 27,044-MW set in May 2022, according to federal energy and ERCOT data.
ERCOT has added over 6,300 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar power plants and over 1,300 MW of battery storage over the past year. The batteries help stabilize the grid, as battery operators store power when prices and demand are low and sell it back when prices and demand are high.
The storage business has been so good in Texas that investors including BlackRock and UBS have bought into battery projects.
Update, 7/2/2023:
A reader notes:
Utilities 101:
First, monthly generation data does not explain a utility’s ability to meet peak demand.
Second, the share of any given resource during a peak event does not *necessarily* suggest that particular resource is the reason a utility was able to meet peak demand.
Good points, which were addressed in part in previous posts (e.g., here). However, we can look to when peak wind and solar generation is, and how it relates to peak demand (as I recall usually around 4-5 pm during the summer months) to consider if it is mitigating peak load capacity issues. Here’s today’s graph of electricity generation.
Source: ERCOT, accessed 7/2/2023.
As a side note, I have had three opportunities to interact meaningfully with the issues of electricity generation, and peak load management. First was the debate between Reagan’s DoE and de facto CRS (capacity generation), the Cheney/Vice President’s energy task force (everything!), and the California electricity crisis of 2001. In any case, thanks to Econned for filling me in on the subtleties of the electricity generation/consumption issues.
Addendum, 7/2/2023:
Some people are still skeptical of the role of renewables in the recent heat wave. From Forbes today:
And here is the amazing statistic that few people know – Texas accounted for nearly 70% of grid battery additions in the U.S. in the first three months of 2023, resulting in a total capacity of 3,300 MW, almost all of which have come online since early 2021. In fact, Texas passed California last year in total installed solar and almost kept pace with California when it comes to new grid battery installations.
But during this historic heat wave, it’s been all these new, low-cost wind, solar and batteries that have kept the grid afloat and Texans cool – in many cases saving lives. Solar and wind provided 35% of statewide power last Tuesday and generated a record 31,500 MW Wednesday, which more than covered the 9,600 MW of electricity lost when extreme heat knocked several natural gas and coal plants offline. And just as solar power started falling in the evening, batteries kicked in immediately to get Texas through the most difficult part of the day when the sun was setting but the ACs were still cranking.
This all tallies with what energy system researchers have been saying for years: A combination of wind, solar, and battery storage are often more reliable than fossil fuel generation to handle periods of extremely high demand, especially if these peaks occur for short durations during a day.
The big knock against wind and solar power has been that they require battery storage capabilities, typically using lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are expensive and not exactly environmentally friendly. But there’s an old technology to the rescue; viz., iron flow batteries that are cheap and have minimal impact on the environment. It’s a technology that’s been around for a hundred years, but the sheer size of batteries limited their usefulness; however, that’s not a real concern when it comes to storing massive amounts of energy. You may not want something the size of a 20 foot container powering your watch or laptop, but you don’t really care if it’s storing wind or solar power.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/new-iron-based-battery-promises-to-be-a-cheap-alternative-to-lithium
2slugs, and any battery installation is paid for by either the taxpayers, users and most often both. Regardless of how financed, renewables and batteries will never meet annual demand and always add cost to the existent grid.
Some food for thought re: the world’s $T investment in renewablest:
Primary energy demand . . . in 2022 increas[ed] 1.1%. . . . (Primary energy sources include fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, and coal), nuclear energy, and renewable sources of energy. Electricity is a secondary energy source that is generated (produced) from primary energy sources.) https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
Global electricity generation increased by 2.3% in 2022 . . . .
Fossil fuel consumption as a percentage of primary energy remained steady at 82%. . . .
Carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, industrial processes, flaring and methane (in carbon dioxide equivalent terms) continued to rise to a new high growing 0.8% in 2022 to 39.3 GtCO2e, with emissions from energy use rising 0.9% to 34.4 GtCO2. Bottom line: it’s now $1 trillion per year, plus or minus, invested in wind and solar “renewables” plus grid upgrades and energy storage needed to accommodate them. And for that vast sum of money, the percent of primary energy from fossil fuels does not budge by even a tenth of a percent. And, as world energy consumption increases, carbon emissions just continue to increase. The trillion is just completely wasted.” https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/01/world-now-wasting-1-trillion-or-more-per-year-investing-in-useless-renewables/
Definitions matter when discussing energy and ?Climate Science? policies.
“any battery installation is paid for by either the taxpayers, users and most often both.”
CoRev must think he is profound here. Oh wait – everything is paid for by users or taxpayers. BTW – there is this concept called learning by doing. CoRev has no idea what that means as CoRev never learned anything but how to lie.
World Now Wasting $1 Trillion Or More Per Year Investing in Useless “Renewables”
Now that is quite the title. Yes boys and girls when one reads something that calls renewables “useful” get ready for a lot of lies. CoRev’s specialty!
Ole Bark, bark again demonstrates his reading comprehension: “…when one reads something that calls renewables “useful” get ready for a lot of lies. ” But the term used was Useless “Renewables. Why, oh why, is is so nece4ssary for liberals to lie?
the lying liberal mind is such n amazement.
WTF? Your gibberish is getting worse which I never imagined was possible.
“the amount of investment in “clean energy” first exceeded the investment in fossil fuels in 2016, and the gap has widened greatly in more recent years.”
Wow – we started seriously investing in clean energy 6 whole years ago. And this moron thinks those investments will immediately change the mix? After all investment takes time.
Oh wait those Reagan supply-side morons made the same mistake back some 45 years ago. They told us that if we increased investment now – growth would be immediately raise output a lot.
Now anyone remotely familiar with the dynamics of things like the Solow growth model would laugh at such absurdity. Oh wait – little CoRev has no clue what I just said. And neither does the moron who wrote this idiotic blog post.
Ask anyone in the oil&gas sector, or in the coal sector, or the uranium sector about how long it takes new investment to produce significant amounts of continuing energy flows and all of them would tell us that it can take decades.
But CoRev finds some moronic blog post that wonders why investment in renewables that may have geared up 5 years ago has not led to renewables dominated the energy sector.
CoRev finds a lot of really stupid things but this one may be the dumbest ever.
Ole Bark, bark, again can;t help himself from lying. “Wow – we started seriously investing in clean energy 6 whole years ago. And this moron thinks those investments will immediately change the mix? After all investment takes time.”
No, 6 years ago clean energy investment surpassed the Primary Energy sector. Of course this dullard doesn’t realize that the clean energy sector is a sub-sector of the electricity sector a sub-sector of overall energy, and even with its growth it has not affected the bad (in-his-liberal-mind) primary energy sector.
Can/will his liberal mind calculate the impact on Global Average Temperatures (?climate Change ? using his definition)? Bet’cha he disappears again.
The lying and ignorant liberal mind is an amazement.
CoRev You’re confused. Clean energy is part of the primary energy sector. It feeds the secondary electricity sector just as coal and natural gas feed the electricity sector. And do you honestly believe that CO2 emissions would not have been even higher in the absence of wind and solar energy? That’s what you seem to be implying.
And we’ve provided you with the estimated impact on global average temperatures many, many, many times. The failing memory of an old and useless man is an amazement.
2slugs, you obviously don’t remember what those temperature estimates are. Why not calculate it for your preferred Texas CO2/GHG mitigation approach.
I’ll wait.
2slugs, i stand corrected. I’ll continue to wait for your calculation for the Texas renewables impact on temperature.
Your little guru forgot to tell you what his own link said:
Coal
Coal prices reached record levels in 2022, with European prices averaging $294/tonne and the Japan CIF spot price averaging $225/tonne (increases of 145% and 45% over 2021 respectively).
Coal consumption continued to increase, rising 0.6% on 2021 to 161 EJ; the highest level of coal consumption since 2014.
The growth in demand was largely driven by China (1%) and India (4%). Their combined growth of 1.7 EJ was sufficient to offset declines in other regions by 0.6 EJ.
Coal consumption in both North America and Europe declined by 6.8% and 3.1% respectively. In 2022, OECD consumption was around 10% less than its 2019 pre-COVID level and non-OECD coal consumption over 6% higher.
Global coal production increased by over 7% compared to 2021, reaching a record high of 175 EJ. China, India, and Indonesia accounted for over 95% of the increase in global production.
The only reason the world used more coal was China and India as well as Indonesia (shhh – don’t tell your BFF JohnH who thinks China is going all green). North America and Europe saw coal consumption decline.
It seems CoRev has caught Bruce Hall disease, which is providing links he never bothered to actually READ. Good news CoRev – JohnH has that disease too. Maybe the three of you should go out on a hot date.
Ole Bark, bark, now you are arguing with yourself? Where’s the link?
The confused liberal mind is an amazement
Where’s the link? It was YOUR link which obviously you failed to read. DUH!
“JohnH who thinks China is going all green” pgl just can’t help himself from telling lies.
What I did point out is how much China is investing in solar.
pgl is clueless about what I think…but he sure has a good imagination…and he is determined to convince people that I think anything but what I actually state…a real troll.
For someone who attributes all sorts of made up stuff as to what others allegedly think – this is just whining. I guess you’re now doing I’m rubber you are glue. What a pointless childish game but then you are nothing more than a pointless little child.
CoRev You are one lousy economist. Did it ever occur to you that there’s such a thing as capital investment in the fossil fuels sector? According to BEA tables the mining, gas and coal extraction industry represents a net fixed asset stock of $2.04T and a depreciation rate of 8.9%. But that’s not all. Remember, fossil fuels are non-renewable, so you have to properly account for depletion of an exhaustible resource. Unfortunately, our captains of industry aren’t too bright so they don’t price oil such that it follows Hotelling’s Rule; i.e., they aren’t treating it as an exhaustible resource…at least not yet. Still more. Let’s not forget the externality costs associated with fossil fuels. Even if you use an extremely conservative estimate of $40/ton, that works out to more than $1.5T per year in damages that are not included in the market price but are absorbed by other third parties. If you want to talk about wasted resources, then look no further than all of the stranded capital in the fossil fuels sector.
2slugs, another apples to kumquat comparison: ” Even if you use an extremely conservative estimate of $40/ton, that works out to more than $1.5T per year in damages ” The US makes up ~13% portion of the world’s total CO2. So using the conservative estimate our portion of your $1.5T annual damages is ~$195B, while in 2023 we are spending ~$400B in Federal Funds alone. We’re doing this while the annual US CO2 emissions are actuslly going down.
What level of insanity is that?
Stranded capital in the fossil fuel sector? Fossil Fuel use keeps going up each year. What kind of economic craziness are you now preaching?
The insane and illogical liberal mind is an amazement.
Every time we think you could not make a more stupid comment – you exceed all expectations.
Ole Bark, bark, so stupid you can not refute it!?!
Regardless of how financed, renewables and batteries will never meet annual demand and always add cost to the existent grid.
[ This is an importantly incorrect comment.
Notice how easily the Chinese were able to avoid inflation by controlling energy prices these last years, even as energy use in China continually increased. Now China has just solved an important cost problem in the production from seawater of pure hydrogen, along with long distance delivery of hydrogen. Hydrogen serves are a fuel but also for energy storage:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05379-5
November 30, 2022
A membrane-based seawater electrolyser for hydrogen generation
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-02/China-produces-hydrogen-by-direct-seawater-electrolysis-1kjxYMpo2I0/index.html
June 2, 2023
China produces hydrogen by direct seawater electrolysis
By Liu Tianwen
China tested its hydrogen production technology at sea with a direct seawater electrolysis method on Friday at the Xinghua Bay offshore wind farm, east China’s Fujian Province.
The test was verified by a team of experts from Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE). ]
ltr notes: “Notice how easily the Chinese were able to avoid inflation by controlling energy prices these last years, even as energy use in China continually increased.”, while Ole Bark, bark noted: “Global coal production increased by over 7% compared to 2021, reaching a record high of 175 EJ. China, India, and Indonesia accounted for over 95% of the increase in global production.”
Yup! China is producing ever increasing amounts of less expensive electricity from coal.
Another incredibly stupid comment. Poor JohnH – his lead for 2023 troll of the year is getting more narrow. You can do it CoRev – keep the stupidity coming and you might just do it!
Ole Bark, bark, then refute it.
Regardless of how financed, renewables and batteries will never meet annual demand and always add cost to the existent grid.
[ A sense of the cost advantage of renewables that China is producing, comes from looking at energy production projects by China in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as in Israel. Also, relatedly, Chinese new-energy vehicles have become leading sellers from Israel to Saudi Arabia.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-30/China-generates-99-9-pure-green-hydrogen-world-s-largest-producer-1l3jTKlJuO4/index.html
June 30, 2023
China generates 99.9% pure ‘green hydrogen’ as world’s largest H2 producer
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202302/14/WS63eaef83a31057c47ebaea94.html
February 14, 2023
Chinese electric cars become new black in Israeli market as new energy vehicle industry thrives
https://english.news.cn/20220913/3bdd14cc292e44b799020ae9e8eab25d/c.html
September 13, 2022
Why are Chinese electric cars so popular in Israel?
By Wang Zhuolun
JERUSALEM — The Geometry C electric car produced by China’s automaker Geely Auto Group became the best-selling vehicle model in Israel in August, marking the first time that an electric car (EV) led the monthly list of all vehicle models sold in the country, according to figures recently released by the Israel Vehicle Importers Association (I-via)….
Regardless of how financed, renewables and batteries will never meet annual demand and always add cost to the existent grid.
[ Ninety percent of Chinese locomotives can be economically converted to green hydrogen:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-18/China-unveils-nation-s-first-converted-hydrogen-powered-locomotive-1kJkAQFEThS/index.html
June 18, 2023
China unveils nation’s first converted hydrogen-powered locomotive
China’s first hydrogen-powered locomotive converted from an internal combustion engine rolled off the production line in Datong City, Shanxi Province on Thursday.
China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. (CRRC), the country’s largest railway vehicle and equipment manufacturer, said the locomotive, Ningdong, is the world’s most powerful hydrogen-powered locomotive by far.
CRRC said the converted locomotive contains the largest fuel cell of any train around the world, with a capacity of 800kW. The power can expand to 2,000kW for different needs with various fuel cell types.
According to Huang Qichao, chairman of the Datong subsidiary of CRRC, the locomotive is equipped with a maximum of 270 kilograms of hydrogen supply. It can run continuously for 190 hours after completing a refuel for only two hours…. ]
Regardless of how financed, renewables and batteries will never meet annual demand and always add cost to the existent grid.
[ https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202306/20/WS6490d776a310bf8a75d6abef.html
June 20, 2023
China jolts EV market with affordable vehicles
By HENG WEILI
New York — One of the keys to success in the electric vehicle industry is making an affordable car for the mass market.
Chinese automaker BYD — which stands for “Build Your Dreams” — is doing just that.
At the Shanghai auto show in April, BYD rolled out a compact battery-powered hatchback called the Seagull that sells for around 79,000 yuan ($11,000).
“The Seagull was the shot heard around the world when it comes to affordability of electric vehicles,” The Washington Post quoted Bill Russo, founder and CEO of the Shanghai-based advisory company Automobility, as saying.
Tu Le, founder of Beijing-based consultancy Sino Auto Insights, said Chinese companies aren’t holding back on quality, either, Business Insider reported.
“They have the products to back it up,” he said. “I’ve driven a number of the Chinese EV brands, and boy, oh boy, the Europeans are in trouble.”
BYD, a conglomerate headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, surpassed Elon Musk’s Texas-based Tesla this year to become the top-selling EV brand in the world.
BYD delivered 547,917 passenger EVs, including hybrids, in the first quarter of 2023. Tesla shipped around 422,000 vehicles in that time, according to TechCrunch…. ]
Sodium-ion batteries are similarly less expensive and more bulky than the lithium kind. It makes no sense to use the same technology for stationary energy storage (grid) as for mobile energy storage (cars). As you point out, energy density and weight is critical for car batteries and doesn’t matter for grid energy storage.
Energy storage does become an issue when you have electricity production that comes at its own time (like wind and sun) rather than being turned on/off at your leisure (like green hydrogen and fossil fuel). For those with a can-do attitude these are all manageable problems – for the politically motivated can’t-do crowd, there is always some strained (reality denying) reasons why it “can’t be done”. Some people jump on the future train, others get left behind.
For many decades the alternative energy sector was up against the fact that it was more expensive than hydrocarbon energy production (at least if the negative externalities were ignored). That has turned, and we now have Wall Street and environmentalist pulling in the same direction. Fun to see that even Texas, where there are strong political headwinds, is moving away from the costly idiocy of fossil fuel. The market forces have spoken loud and clearly and it would be almost impossible for the GOP free market crowd to stop this development.
Most of the debating seems to be missing the point or trying to distract from it. The fact that production from alternative sources has its own schedule that doesn’t necessarily match the schedule of use, is not a big deal. You just have to build enough energy storage to deal with that problem. No different from the old problem of having sufficient hydrocarbon plants to produce all you need during peak demand (and when natural gas plants are shut down by frozen pipelines). Current systems have a balance between reliability and cost – so will the future of “alternative energy with storage”. It would be very expensive to get to “100% there a 100% of the time” – but that is not what fossil fuel systems are delivering at this time anyway.
As the first figure show, Coal and Nuclear are just not competitive and slowly going away. Natural gas is hanging in there and likely will for a little longer. The final nail in the coffin for NG power plants will be when the cost of building a plant is more than building a few weeks worth of long term storage (converting excess alternative energy to hydrogen and storing it for a year). At that point Wall Street will shut down building of NG plants and invest in green hydrogen storage.
The good news is that going from 0 to 50% alternative energy has the biggest environmental bang for the bucks and will happen in a fairly short time. Moving further to 75% will still have substantial effect, as will moving from there to 90%. The last 10% may take a little more time but also is the least important from an environmental standpoint. We will get there in spite of all the kicking and screaming from th can’t-do crowd.
“No different from the old problem of having sufficient hydrocarbon plants to produce all you need during peak demand”
as we saw during the winter storm, natural gas plants suffer from two negatives. the natural gas is actually the energy storage system, and the natural gas generator is the converter of chemical energy to electrical energy. for a natural gas system to work, you need to make sure there is no failure in the distribution, storage and generation steps SIMULTANEOUSLY. this is why, when you look into the details, you see that natural gas is not a very reliable energy source, especially when demand is very high. too many places for things to fail.
I look at it as 3 phases.
1. Producing the origin of the energy source
2. Converting it to electricity in sufficient amounts
3. Transporting that electricity to the end user
1. Renewable sources have the clear advantage of being abundantly available and not polluting the planet.
2. Both NG and renewables can be converted in endless amounts and both require large storage (NG tanks or batteries) to ensure reliable production of electricity, regardless of weather event.
3. Central production with long distance transportation is much more needed for NG than for renewables, making NG systems less resilient. However lots of small local batteries can improve resilience during short term interruptions to transport of electricity from production sites to users.
Baffled you missed the key point “in the way Texas manages its thermal sources due to focusing on renewables” then thermal sources are unreliable.
Why don’t you help 2slugs calculate how much Texas use of renewables has lowered temperatures.
I’ll wait.
I am pleased that texas is adding more renewables. Its good for business and good for our future. Hope they add more as they decommission old and unreliable fossil fuel plants.
I like to think in my weird/jaded/seniimental mind that this post was for our great friend baffling . But actually it’s an important national issue, so maybe this post would have gone up anyway. It’s pretty important stuff, in a state important to America.
Interesting story but one problem – this will induce CoRev to go off on his usual worthless barking.
See below…
Natural gas has always been a major component of Texas’s energy needs. Now before CoRev goes off with his usual worthless barking, let’s take a look at this price over time:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mhhngsp
Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price
This price did spike last summer but it is really low now. CoRev’s moronic barking keeps attributing any increase to “Biden’s policy” but the spike was more likely the result of Putin invading Ukraine. Now if CoRev wants to attribute the recent decline in natural gas prices, he is free to do so.
natural gas will be problematic price wise as we continue to export more lng each year. exporting lng drives up domestic natural gas prices.
All these pipelines that the GOP pressed through will benefit Wall Street and harm the consumers. Once again the shepple has been shared while it was busy looking at something else (trans people, etc.). But I am not sure whether to laugh or cry. Clearly the increase in NG prices will help support the switch away from its use as an energy source.
“The Texas power grid comfortably met record demand during this week’s heat wave with abundant power supply from wind and solar plants, data from the grid operator showed.”
JohnH keeps telling us that the US does not invest in renewable power. Could it be that Texas is the greenest state in the US?
Actually Texas has less solar capacity in absolute terms than China does. Then again, Texas’s population is a lot less than China’s population. A distinction apparently lost on JohnH’s little brain.
JohnH: “US solar installations are forecast to reach around 419 GW as the country accelerates its clean energy efforts and attempts to fully decarbonise its power system by 2035.” How nice! China already had 430 GW by the end of March. Talk about being behind!
Further, “China adds 62 Gigawatts of Solar Capacity in Just 5 Months, Compared to 10 Gigs in the US”
https://www.juancole.com/2023/06/gigawatts-capacity-compared.html
BTW China’s electricity consumption is about 2x the US; but their solar investment is currently running at 6x. (The US solution, of course, is to counter China by funneling more money to the Pentagon!)
pgl just loves to misrepresent what others write!
“China’s electricity consumption is about 2x the US”
For a nation with 2x of the population. I guess Jonny boy wants the Chinese never to see any more improvement in their standards of living. Faux progressive that this troll be.
Whoa, whoa whoa there Ole Bark, bark! Never, never bring up the benefits of increasing supply of electricity. And, never mention the source of that increased supply, when it is mostly from thermal sources. The only allowable points to discuss is externalities, social costs, and other hidden costs. Also remember the only allowable cost model is the incomplete and flawed LCOE which also ignores significant direct costs.
Remember, lying is needed to justify these renewables .
The lying liberal mind is an amazement.
Dude – your argument is with your boyfriend JohnH. Hash this one out on your next hot date.
Gee Jonny boy notes that the Chinese use electricity per capita that is only half that of the US so if they are really going green then we would expect the Chinese not be use that much coal but wait!
https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-country/
China’s use of coal is SIX times that of the US. Now had little Jonny boy been remotely interest in an honest discussion – one would expect him to have figured this out. Then again Jonny boy is the dumbest troll ever created.
Evidence that China already dominates the solar market.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/economic-coercion-chinas-leverage-in-trade/
How will pgl try to spin and misrepresent this?
also, china is restricting the export of germanium and gallium in an effort to impact silicon chips.
I guess what this means, John, is that china should not be considered a reliable trade partner.
Yes, China should not be considered a reliable partner…when it comes to strategic materials.
But then again, the US got control of the world oil markets for strategic reasons. As Henry Kissinger once remarked, t oil is the life blood of industrial democracy, Europe and Japan have been dependent on US “protection” of its oil supply for decades. Now Europe and Japan depend on US “protection” for their natural gas supply, albeit at prices that make its industry uncompetitive in many areas.
China has been dependent on US “protection” as well, but now it looks like they are breaking free and becoming energy independent. And Russia is pretty self sufficient in energy as well. And India and many third world countries, particularly in the Persian Gulf are breaking free of US “protection.” This gives the erstwhile hegemon the willies.
What do you think the war in Ukraine is all about/
‘What do you think the war in Ukraine is all about/’ – JohnH
Jonny boy blames Putin’s war crimes on the US wanting to import oil? I guess the Holocaust was caused by the French wanted to export wine.
Yes – Jonny boy is THAT SICK!
Wait – we import solar capacity from China. Maybe you are too stupid to get this but that increases the net inflow of US capacity while it limits the net inflow of China’s capacity.
Then again we know you are way too stupid to get even the most basic accounting concepts.
pgl takes logic for a curious spin. “Carrie Xiao at PV Tech reports that in the first five months of 2023, China has installed 62.1 gigawatts of solar capacity at a cost of $13.6 billion. ”
But pgl claims that “we import solar capacity from China.. that increases the net inflow of US capacity while it limits the net inflow of China’s capacity.”
So pgl concludes that part of the 62.1 gigawatts of solar capacity that China installed actually included the 6.1 g gigawatts installed in the US? Say what?
What pgl’s point? China installed A LOT of solar capacity, while the US investment paled in comparison. Biden’s much ballyhooed IRA includes a whopping $7 billion in solar incentives while China spent $13.6 billion on solar in the first five months this year!”
Apparently pgl’s math skills are too weak to understand that massive size of China’s investment in solar puts the US to shame.
If it’s any consolation, the US manage to find and additional $91 billion for the military. I mean, why invest in solar power, when you spend it on DOD abuse, waste, fraud, and mismanagement, and never be held accountable via an audit?
JohnH
July 4, 2023 at 10:59 am
And we thought CoRev was babbling incoherent BS. Jonny boy once again takes the lead for 2023 troll of the year!
“So pgl concludes that part of the 62.1 gigawatts of solar capacity that China installed actually included the 6.1 g gigawatts installed in the US? Say what?”
#1 – I never said that.
#2 – I figured you would not understand the basics of international trade AND you once again proved you don’t.
Come on Jonny boy – this stuff is way over your mentally retarded brain. Stick to basket weaving.
The 246 people who died in 2021 because of ERCOT’s bad grid management can’t appreciate this.
If I owned a coal fired generating plant anywhere in the U.S. I’d be looking for a buyer who is stupid enough to pay more than 70 cents on the dollar for the infrastructure.
One of my brothers worked for a utility company early in his career. Management was using its access to credit to buy up cash flow outside the utility industry while disposing of generating and transmission assets on the QT. They didn’t like the outlook for the industry. They used coal, gas, oil and nuclear power.
Brother was close enough to the effort to get rid of the reactor business to hear some insider chatter. Seems the entire industry was scheming to dump as much of the reactor shutdown cost onto as few companies as possible, leaving government holding the bad after the bankruptcy.
I don’t see evidence that ever actually happened. The major U.S. reactor operators are Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, the TVA, Arizona Public Service Company, Southern Nuclear Operations, Southern Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company and Florida Power and Light. The only ones strictly in the reactor business are Southern Nuclear and STP, and they are owned entirely by utilities which are in the generation and transmission business.
Even the firm my brother worked for is still in the utility business, still operating reactors, though no longer in the region where he worked.
the Davis-Besse nuclear plant has been an operating disaster for years, with dangerous leaks occurring. it costs more to generate nuclear power from this plant than other sources, so the state mandated a utility fee for customers to support the operation of this expensive energy source. rather than promote cheaper renewable energy elsewhere, republicans are mandating a state subsidy for an unsafe and money losing energy source.
Mcquack, do you realize you just disproved your claim? “… Seems the entire industry was scheming to dump as much of the reactor shutdown cost onto as few companies as possible, leaving government holding the bad after the bankruptcy.
I don’t see evidence that ever actually happened…. ”
The illogical, conspiracy theory believing and failed critical thinking liberal mind is an amazement.
I wrote what I wrote. You did your usual nonsense in response. Just can’t help yourself.
Off topic, a paternalistic explanation for poverty bites the dust –
Here’s a bit of what probably falls into the category of sociology that should end up in economics texts:
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-economic-inequality-individual-bad-choices.html
This study finds that a propensity to make bad choices does not correlate with poor individual economic attainment. In other words, “poor choices” is not an explanation for poverty.
Some years ago, a woman of limited means wrote an essay about her reasons for making bad choices, the upshot of which was that her bad choices weren’t bad, in context. The essay was a bit of a sensation.
Basic income provision tends to prove the point made in the essay – what look like bad decisions are often just painful ones. Give people just enough help, and they get better grades, stop showing up in emergency rooms, divorce less, miss fewer days of work, find better jobs…
If you’re well off, you can afford bad decisions.
If anyone has a reference to that essay, which I can no longer find, I’d really appreciate it.
Whew! Another POSSIBLE energy catastrophe passed, but how long before another winter Storm Uri event occurs, and where will it occur next?
Why do you folks ignore the caveats? Y’ano like these in the Reuters article:
“In a report last week, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) said more frequent extreme weather, high-demand conditions and a changing resource mix has made conventional generation, like coal- and gas-fired power plants, less reliable.
NERC said those challenges resulted in the highest overall outage rates of around 8.5% for conventional generation in 2022 since the reliability organization began gathering generator availability data in 2013.
Population and economic growth means the Texas grid is likely to continue to see demand scaling (cut backs and/or outages) new records in future years.” (clarification for the electricity energy illiterate)”
Or why do you not do the critical analysis to see that ~2.9 times current investment is still needed? Still needed to meet peek demand when the wind and solar are still optimal. Please, please Mr CoRev do not consider periods when wind and solar are less than optimal. From the Reuters article:
“At the peak hour on Tuesday, wind and solar provided about 35% of the power in ERCOT versus 44% from gas, 14% from coal and 6% from nuclear.”
Of course the most obvious points missed 1) that the price for electricity is NOT REDUCED by implementing these renewables: 2) Nor is there added reliability to the grid. Also the virtue signalling of saving the planet from catastrophic ?Climate Change? exceeds any negative impacts (or are they externalities?). Probably not externalities because these are just a subset of identified DIRECT COSTS ignored by LCOE, the current POPULAR cost model, favored by the renewables zealots.
The failed critical thinking of the liberal mind is an amazement.
“In a report last week, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) said more frequent extreme weather, high-demand conditions and a changing resource mix has made conventional generation, like coal- and gas-fired power plants, less reliable.”
Did you read your own cherry picked line? More extreme weather aka Climate Change that CoRev denies. And CoRev used to tell us coal was the most reliable.
I’m sorry CoRev but your insanity has fallen bit you on your tail.
Ole Bark, bark doesn’t understand that the cause of “…has made conventional generation, like coal- and gas-fired power plants, less reliable…” is the same in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and on and on, is “…changing resource mix…”. Worse he con not understand that the “changing resource mix” is a euphemism for adding “clean energy/renewables tot he electricity grids in the above list of locations. Where electricity prices are higher than they would have been before adding those Ole lower cost renewables. Just like in Texas and California,
The ignorance burns.
The ignorant and economically clueless liberal mind is an amazement.
comments like this make absolutely no sense. you have no point, other than talking points that are not even correct.
Question: when has CR made sense or had a point?
Fools babble. They’re self-styled experts on any subject. CR KNOWS energy, climatology, economics, agriculture.
Name it. He KNOWS it. Just ask. He’ll be glad to tell you.
Baffled, speaking of pointless, refute what I said.
CoRev apparently relies on the very 1st version of ChatGPT which clearly writes on no higher than the level of a 3 year old. Then again CoRev has the intelligence of a 2 year old.
Baffled and noneconomist, refute what Ole Bark, bark said. Just to remind you his quote was: “In a report last week, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) said more frequent extreme weather, high-demand conditions and a changing resource mix has made conventional generation, like coal- and gas-fired power plants, less reliable.”
To solve your comprehension problems I highlighted the part I want answered.
The uncomprehending liberal mind is an amazement.
Covid, renewables have no bearing on the reliability of thermo sources of energy. Wind did not make the nuclear and gas plants suddenly shut down. Your line of thinking is just stooopid. Please stop.
“This is nearly as bad as those who seek to shun all renewables due to intermittency concerns.”
Hey CoRev – the one line in Econned’s chirping that has a real point seems to be directed at you.
Couple of things –
“Why do you folks ignore the caveats?” Assumes facts not in evidence. You want to claim that “you folks” aren’t as wonderfully clever as you think you are, but that’s the same old made up stuff you rely on for all of your “Nyah, nyay, liberals!” silliness.
In policy making, getting things right may provide personal satisfaction, but hardly guarantees recognition. Texas politicians (and many other Republicans, not to mention CoRev) tried to blame alternative energy for the winter failures of Texas electrical and gas delivery – a bald-faced lie. Now that alternative energy sources have helped Texas cope with record power demand, Covid says “nothing to see here.” He’s all “what about, what about, what about” now that alternative energy is working well for Texas. There’s always a “what about”; so what?
McQuack, for someone who believes that ?Climate Change? adds volatility to weather extremes, fails to consider the impacts on electricity grids reliant on the WEATHER remaining moderate. Worse they lie about the actual costs of these added renewables to the grids. I refer you to the failure to include several of the DIRECT costs to the LCOE cost model.
As already shown above the addition of renewables to a grid, especially at the cost of the thermal backups and impacts of “primary energy” policy, almost always reduce reliability and add costs to the grid. Europeans are just realizing these facts of adding renewables to their grids. Renewables will soon be stranded investments. But, at least they will for a short period feel good about their virtue signaled planet saving efforts. Even as they fail.
The ignorant and virtue signaling planet saving liberal mind is an amazement.
CoVid has, once again, claimed to know what he cannot know. He claims to know what I’ve “considered”. Nothing I’ve written in comments to here supports CoVid’s conclusion. He simply chose to lie about what he knows.
This should come as no surprise, as many of CoVid’s assertions are unsupported; he makes up all sorts of stuff.
McQuack again defers to deflection versus discussing the reality of the issue. What reality? Whew, Texas survived a weather threat to its growing weather-based electrical grid. And the liberal celebrate that success, until the next one occurs.
The last weather threat failure cost just ~200 to 250 Texans’ lives.
“The last weather threat failure cost just ~200 to 250 Texans’ lives.”
because natural gas and nuclear failed during the cold weather event. those failures instantly took millions of watts offline, when they were needed the most. the grid is being updated to minimize these types of impacts in the future. renewables and batteries are part of that solution, and have been working well. to the dismay of covid.
Baffled, yup! Another grid management issue caused by focusing on unreliable renewables instead of grid reliability.
CoRev As already shown above the addition of renewables to a grid, especially at the cost of the thermal backups and impacts of “primary energy” policy, almost always reduce reliability and add costs to the grid.
So let’s get this straight. It sounds like you are saying that unlike renewables, greater reliance on fossil fuels would not raise energy costs in the face of higher demand. Is that right? So you’re positing a downward sloping supply curve. Is that what you’re claiming?
2slugs, makes a point: ” So you’re positing a downward sloping supply curve. Is that what you’re claiming?” Yes, for thermal sources when compared to what would have been added without renewables. To further clarify, I claim that Texas grid has added fragility for higher costs than if thermal sources had been expanded instead of renewables. That is obvious if the Full cost of Electricity model is used versus the flawed and incomplete LCOE.
But then I’m a conservative and like to include BENEFITS when discussing costs (direct and indirect) mitigation solutions. Both sides of the equation is important. Using the LCOE and only considering costs is lying.
The lying liberal mind is an amazement.
“To further clarify, I claim that Texas grid has added fragility for higher costs than if thermal sources had been expanded instead of renewables.”
and your claim, as usual, would be incorrect. you are so hell bent against renewables that it simply blinds you to what they can offer, covid.
Baffled, just refute the claim with data. I’ve already shown t6hat ERCOT plans on 30% performance from renewables when in fact during Winter Storm Uri they were often performing below 10%. your failure of critical thinking is a testament to the current education system.
The illogical and non-critical thinking liberal mind is an amazement
so to educate yourself, covid, during the time period of the winter storm, ercot did not anticipate 30% from renewables. you are incorrect, as usual. ercot had a plan in place for expected power, and it would have been sufficient. it was the unexpected loss of those thermal sources (natural gas, coal and nuclear) that created a problem for ercot. and that is a problem for grid management. it is not anticipated outages, those can be worked around. it is immediate loss of large scale power that produces a cascade of failure in the grid. nuclear and natural gas created that problem.
look covid, you can repeat talking points all you want. but we understand very clearly what the failures were during the winter storm. it was the unexpected and immediate loss of power from many thermal plants. and the state has remedied some of those failures through winterization and battery support.
the fact that you simply cannot accept change, and that change is in the form of renewables, reflects more on you than the industry. considering you believe in ghosts, I am not surprised by your inability at logical thinking.
again, covid, quit with the misinformation
“Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-storm/
the 30% number you are throwing around is simply misinformation. on twitter, you would be banned for continuing to promote this misinformation. intentionally promoting this misinformation. this is a direct rebuke of your “Baffled, just refute the claim with data. ” your statement has been refuted and shown to be categorically wrong. and yet in your next post, you will simply continue to feed that misinformation onto this blog, knowing you are wrong.
during the winter storm, ercot was not utilizing much renewables, because they were not required to satisfy demand levels. the blackouts primarily occurred not because of too much demand (at least initially), but because the supply dropped immediately with the loss of nuclear plants and natural gas plants. this sudden drop in capacity created the imbalance between supply and demand, that led to the rolling blackouts, which led to the overall blackout. as more power was lost, more plants lost the ability to receive natural gas, and the cascade of natural gas failures continued. once down, many of the plants could not be restarted because their local restart equipment either froze or lacked power and fuel. these failures had nothing to do with renewables. these failures occurred because the natural gas system the electric generators relied upon was not winterized, and failed in the cold weather. same thing happened a decade earlier, when renewables were not a part of the equation at all.
Baffled, you continue to lie about cause and effect of the Winter Storm Uri ERCOT managed Texas grid blackouts. ERCOT clearly states that demand dropped coincident with ERCOT’s initiation of blackouts. Leading up to that ERCOT decision renewables outputs were falling for hours, while thermals were still producing.
All the propaganda of the blackouts were caused by thermal plant failures is a lie. A lie which you willfully keep repeating even in light of Menzies’ chart.
The propaganda spewing (lying) liberal mind is an amazement.
Baffled, from your article we have: “ERCOT implemented blackouts on Monday as power plants went offline” ERCOT was managing the lower supply by issuing blackouts. A well managed grid will not be surprised by weather stressors, but ERCOT was in 2021.
How many times it was a management issue must be repeated? ERCOT’s grid is fragile. Adding more unreliable sources to it is foolish and risky. yet that is exactly what you think should be done. How many more must die?
Repeating a failed process in hopes of success, is a definition of insanity.
The insane liberal mind is an amazement.
So many words. So much gibberish. Come on CoRev – stop relying on an outdated and corrupt version of ChatGPT.
Off topic, again, but this kind of thing really gets under my skin; here’s what looks like some pretty bad economic thinking from Barron’s:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/productivity-working-from-home-americans-laziness-7c814395
The gist of the article is that since those who work from home spend less time working than those who work at their place of employment, working from home is less productive than at the place of employment. Aside from the fact that this ignores the normal definition of productivity – output per hour worked – the author also makes no effort to differentiate between part-time and gig work at home vs full-time employment.
The article is based on the latest American Time Use Survey from BLS, and amounts to comparing two numbers and arriving at a glib conclusion. Here’s the Survey:
https://www.bls.gov/tus/
In the first round of research on working from home, in response to Covid, there was a good bit of evidence found that productivity improved. For instance:
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/technology/pages/teleworkers-more-productive-even-when-sick.aspx
In fact, working from home became more productive over time:
https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/remote-work-productivity-study-finds-surprising-reality-2-year-study#:
Interestingly, dull tasks are performed more efficiently in the workplace than at home, while creative tasks are performed more efficiently at home than in the workplace. Anyone surprised by this?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268112000893
Looks like Barron’s is cheering for a return to the good old days, before office occupancy rates collapsed.
Menzie Chinn,
Utilities 101:
First, monthly generation data does not explain a utility’s ability to meet peak demand.
Second, the share of any given resource during a peak event does not *necessarily* suggest that particular resource is the reason a utility was able to meet peak demand.
I’m all for renewable energy and look forward to the continued expansion of these technologies (including batteries) but ‘analyses’ such as this blog post aren’t helping the public understand these issues. This is nearly as bad as those who seek to shun all renewables due to intermittency concerns. Partisan hackery won’t help the bigger picture (unless the big picture is pageviews).
Are you so reading impaired that you missed this?
‘At the peak hour on Tuesday, wind and solar provided about 35% of the power in ERCOT versus 44% from gas, 14% from coal and 6% from nuclear.’
Dude – I get you think you are the smart a$$ in the room but failing 1st grade reading is sort of pathetic.
I get that ELECTRICITY DATA BROWSER that Dr. Chinn linked to is monthly data. But if you have the data on an hour by hour basis, do some real work and provide that. Otherwise – take your worthless chirping over to the good people at the EIA.
And yea – learn to READ as in the Reuters story which was very clear.
Econned is stalking Menzie again
Econned, is it your contention that Reuters is engaged in partisan hackery? Is it your contention that Texas could have done just fine in a period of record demand without renewable energy? Or do you not actually have a point?
You state as a fact that Menzie’s post isn’t useful, as if your opinion matters. The reality is, you have once again launched a bitter little attack on a perfectly reasonable blog post. The other kids in econ class must have been really mean to you.
“is it your contention that Reuters is engaged in partisan hackery?”
How would he know? He did not even bother to read the Reuters account based on his stupid attack on Dr. Chinn.
Macroduck,
-If I’m “stalking Menzie”, then you’re stalking me.
-My contention is Menzie’s post is misleading.
-The Reuter’s article is quite clear and not at all misleading.
-ERCOT’s recent peak would have likely been adequately served without renewables because the grid would’ve been planned that way but there’s certainly no way of knowing. In any case, there was an excess of 13,900 MW at the peak hour on the 27th which is great.
-My opinion matters as shown by Menzie’s addendum and by your reply to my post.
-My “attack” is substantive and you’re just upset that Menzie’s post was a dud and he was called out for it. It flies in the face of your blind devotion.
-Your last sentence (and entire comment) shows you’re unable/unwilling to discuss the topic like an adult. Keep it up and I’ll add you to my ignore list just as I have done to other commenters here.
“The Reuter’s article is quite clear and not at all misleading”.
You finally read it! Its message was the same as that allegedly misleading writing by Dr. Chinn.
Econned – the worthless wonder!
“ERCOT’s recent peak would have likely been adequately served without renewables because the grid would’ve been planned that way but there’s certainly no way of knowing.”
actually, there is a way of knowing this, econned.
https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2023/05/03/sara_summer__2023.pdf
according to ercot, total thermal generation capacity in texas is 73 GW, but accounting for shutdowns, ercot expects about 65 GW on a typical July 2023 day. on June 27, ercot had a record demand of over 80 GW.
so econned, you are wrong. the peak could not have been adequately served without renewables.
rather than throw disparaging remarks against prof. chinn on his blog and calling his analysis lacking, you could have done your own analysis and not publicly showed the ignorance of your comments. instead you chose to make conjecture without any supporting data. something you accuse others of all the time.
the data does support what prof. chinn was saying on this blog.
and econned, since I am on your ignore list, I expect you to simply stay silent and accept that you were wrong and ignorant in your criticism of this blog.
Baffled, form your ERCOT source I calculated that ~67% of total sources was made up from thermal. Adding the estimated battery back up is a negligible ~.5%. So it appears that ERCOT grid management relies on an unreliable non-thermal sources of ~32.5%. Historically these sources can fall to 10% of their management goals.
That’s a risky position. Placing Texans into a higher risk position solely due to poor management decisions. And you folks celebrate this position when each weather threat is successfully passed, and blame the thermal sources when passing fails.
No! It’s a management issue unique to adding renewables to a grid and then relying on unrealistic estimates of performance during weather threat peak demand periods.
The life threatening risk producing liberal mind is an amazement.
Covid, the real problem is the unexpected shutdown of gas and nuclear plants. This occurs instantaneously. Recently nuclear shutdown impacted over 100,000 households. Significant grid management issue, NOT caused by renewables. Unreliable thermo sources exist.
“you could have done your own analysis”
Have you EVER seen Econned doing an actual analysis? I haven’t. I don’t think this troll has the mental capabilities of going past 2 plus 2.
Baffled, you finally hit on a basic problem now being ignored in Texas, ” …Significant grid management issue,..” is caused by the focus on implementing and investing in more and more renewables to the detriment of absolutely required thermal back ups.
That seems to be your goal until another 200+ deaths occur due to these misplaced demands and dreams.
The demanding liberal mind is an amazement.
Wow. I am sooooo chastened.
If I’m stalking you, it is with the purpose of getting you to end your bitter, annoying little attacks. You stop stalking and I will.
Macroduck,
My “attack” is fully supported, relevant, and reasonable. It isn’t really my concern that you either a) don’t understand the topic well enough to discuss it or b) can’t fathom Menzie isn’t flawless. At least you’re consistent in showing an unwillingness/inability to discuss the topic at hand.
Econned is pulling an ltr, declaring himself to be all virtue. His attacks always makesense, because he declare it to be so.
Bitter little man.
“My “attack” is fully supported, relevant, and reasonable.”
I will point out, for a SECOND time, that econned is absolutely wrong. Not fully supported, not partially supported. His assertions are mathematically impossible. Econned, you have made an argument that would not even pass a first year college composition class. It is void of data, inaccurate and unsubstantiated. Boy, just keep on digging in and show your true self. Never admit when you are wrong. Hack.
Macroduck,
I see you’re still unwilling or unable to discuss why you feel my comment is out of place. Even Menzie stated I made “good points”. As with so many others on this blog, you’re without substance.
“ERCOT’s recent peak would have likely been adequately served without renewables because the grid would’ve been planned that way”
evidence provided by econned against prof. chinn and macro. and mathematically incorrect. but rather than admit his failure of understanding, econned doubles down and accuses others of being in the wrong. it is a classic gaslighting technique. but it does not change the fact that ECONNED is absolutely wrong. full stop. so he is either ignorant or willfully deceitful. or both.
Menzie,
Your update to the post is better but still is still very misleading to those not in the know. Today’s generation is almost wholly irrelevant to that of another day. Moreover, looking “to when peak wind and solar generation is, and how it relates to peak demand (as I recall usually around 4-5 pm during the summer months) to consider if it is mitigating peak load capacity issues” is also misleading as it relates to the larger issue at hand which is not the peak on a typical day. The issue is really around the seasonal peak day(s) – the outliers when demand is extreme.
I would suggest reading ERCOT’s (or any utility’s) resource adequacy studies to better familiarize yourself with these important issues. While their supply/demand issues differ from those in Texas, the northwest utilities typically have great studies of resource adequacy that would likely (hopefully) help the substance of your blogposts.
It seems the Supreme Court should have never taken this fake litigation:
https://sentinelcolorado.com/orecent-headlines/colorado-web-designer-in-supreme-court-gay-rights-ruling-cited-client-who-denies-making-wedding-site-request/
A Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples cited a request from a man who says he never asked to work with her.
The request in dispute, from a person identified as “Stewart,” wasn’t the basis for the federal lawsuit filed preemptively seven years ago by web designer Lorie Smith, before she started making wedding websites. But as the case advanced, it was referenced by her attorneys when lawyers for the state of Colorado pressed Smith on whether she had sufficient grounds to sue.
The revelation distracts from Smith’s victory at a time when she might have been basking in her win, which is widely considered a setback for gay rights.
Smith named Stewart — and included a website service request from him, listing his phone number and email address in 2017 court documents. But Stewart told The Associated Press he never submitted the request and didn’t know his name was invoked in the lawsuit until he was contacted this week by a reporter from The New Republic, which first reported his denial.
“I was incredibly surprised given the fact that I’ve been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years,” said Stewart, who declined to give his last name for fear of harassment and threats. His contact information, but not his last name, were listed in court documents.
He added that he was a designer and “could design my own website if I need to” — and was concerned no one had checked into the validity of the request cited by Smith until recently.
Funniest thing I saw all day:
Buttigieg mocks DeSantis featuring ‘oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders’ in homophobic attack ad
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/buttigieg-mocks-desantis-featuring-oiled-up-shirtless-bodybuilders-in-homophobic-attack-ad/ar-AA1dkrls?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=2be508ba73064ea6967ee8634d6517d5&ei=7
United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg tore into Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis this weekend over an ad that the DeSantis War Room released on Friday attacking former President Donald Trump for supposedly being too soft toward LGBTQ Pride. The spot was “widely condemned as homophobic, including by a prominent group representing gay and lesbian Republicans,” The New York Times noted on Saturday. Yvonne Dean-Bailey, an openly gay GOP ex-legislator, wrote in The Daily Beast that she “was undeniably on Team DeSantis before his campaign shared what could be considered the most anti-LGBTQ+ ad in recent history, boasting about all the measures he’s supported cracking down on the LGBTQ+ community. Not only did DeSantis show that he is as anti-LGBTQ+ as the mainstream media has alleged, he made a mockery of any GOP candidate that shows an interest in LGBTQ+ rights, setting the whole party back decades.”
You know I’m gonna choose my words carefully, partly cuz I’m appearing as secretary so I, I can’t talk about campaigns. And I’m gonna leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of view in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is again, who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off, and what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?
Interesting, Reuters seems to be reporting both sides of the story. Solar power did generate more power; wind less than a year ago.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/reduced-wind-generation-puts-texas-power-system-test-2023-06-21/
Hey Brucie – try READING the Reuters story:
At the peak hour on Tuesday, wind and solar provided about 35% of the power in ERCOT versus 44% from gas, 14% from coal and 6% from nuclear. So far this week, solar power generation peaked at a record of 13,086 MW on June 25, according to ERCOT. Wind power, meanwhile, reached a high of 24,237 MW on June 28, which was below its all-time high of 27,044-MW set in May 2022, according to federal energy and ERCOT data.
Maybe wind came down a bit but solar went up a lot with their combined contribution being quite high. But little Brucie wants to pretend the two effects were exactly offsetting. Why does Brucie mislead this way? Someone is paying him to lie.
Jonny boy reads a few lines from Juan Cole on how China is going green but the US is not. Of course Jonny boy could not be bothered to follow his own links but I was able to translate into English this interesting paragraph:
2. Power generation production
By the end of March, the country’s installed power generation capacity was 3.26 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 2.9%. Among them, the installed capacity of non-fossil energy power generation was 1.13 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 3.15%, accounting for 9.50% of the total installed capacity, accounting for a year-on-year increase of 5.3 percentage points. Hydropower 0 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 4.2%. Thermal power was 5.4 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 13.4%, of which coal-fired power generation was 3.0 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 11.3%, gas-fired power generation was 1 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 8.1%, and biomass power generation was 2.7 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 4.4195%. Nuclear power was 8.0 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 5676.4%. Wind power was 3 million kilowatts (of which onshore wind power and offshore wind power were 3,8 and 34484.3089 million kilowatts respectively), a year-on-year increase of 11.7%. Solar power generation was 4 million kilowatts (of which photovoltaic power generation and solar thermal power generation were 3,42522 and 67,33 kilowatts respectively), a year-on-year increase of 7.%.
It seems coal fired energy production still plays a huge role in China and nuclear power is playing a major role. Two things Jonny boy tried to deny.
But as I keep saying: (a) China’s population is 4 times that of the US; and (b) Jonny boy never learned to read even the English language so how can we expect this moron to follow links that are in Chinese?
Also, installed capacity doesn’t equal usage. Two counterexamples – if I install a 10MW solar power site in the agricultural regions of South Korea, the air pollution + agricultural dust will greatly reduce its output relative to placing the same solar power site in the Taklimakan desert. You might get excellent output in the Taklimakan, but the length of the power lines will mean that what reaches the power grid and consumer would be less, about 2 – 3% per 1000 km of lines. It would be interesting to know the kilowatt-hours provided by each source to the grid and how that has changed over time, rather than just the nominal capacities.
“Two counterexamples – if I install a 10MW solar power site in the agricultural regions of South Korea, the air pollution + agricultural dust will greatly reduce its output relative to placing the same solar power site in the Taklimakan desert. You might get excellent output in the Taklimakan, but the length of the power lines will mean that what reaches the power grid and consumer would be less, about 2 – 3% per 1000 km of lines….”
Cleaning solar panels is as necessary on an urban roof, as in an agricultural community, as in a shifting-sand desert. As for long distance energy transmission, China has been constructing ultra-high voltage lines, with which minimal energy is lost, from energy production projects across the country:
https://english.news.cn/20230702/693506e89d09409e824856d7c86b27a9/c.html
July 2, 2023
China’s largest ultra-high voltage cross-river power transmission project put into operation
https://english.news.cn/20221230/20f7f612dff34e26824758aaddc08a22/c.html
December 30, 2022
Major Chinese power transmission project now fully operational
BEIJING/CHENGDU — China has put into full operation a major domestic power transmission project that sends electricity from the resource-rich west of the country to energy-consuming regions in the east.
The construction of the Baihetan-Zhejiang 800-kilovolt ultra-high-voltage (UHV) direct current power transmission project was completed on Friday and it has already started operating, according to the State Grid Corporation of China (State Grid).
The clean electricity generated in Baihetan, the country’s second-largest hydropower station, will be sent from the southwestern province of Sichuan to the eastern Zhejiang Province through a transmission line stretching 2,121 kilometers.
A similar project that transmits power from Baihetan to Jiangsu Province in the east was put into use in July.
About 60 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity will be delivered annually through the two UHV projects, saving 27 million tonnes of coal and helping reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 49 million tonnes, said Huang Yong from the UHV department of State Grid….
https://english.news.cn/20230617/a5911c1eaeed4fba95fd4dc9b8051506/c.html
June 17, 2023
China’s largest desert transforms into green development powerhouse for Xinjiang
URUMQI — Once known as the “sea of death,” the Taklimakan Desert, the world’s second-largest shifting sand desert, has become a driving force for green development in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
In recent years, photovoltaic (PV) stations have been constructed, and large plantations of vegetation such as roses and cistanche have emerged on the outskirts of this vast desert, equivalent in size to Malaysia.
This transformation has not only attracted tourism but also positioned the desert as a flourishing center of sustainable development.
GREEN INITIATIVES IN THE DESERT
Under the sun’s rays, rows of PV panels that generate electricity resemble a shimmering blue ocean.
Tian Juxiong, head of a power station in Lop County, Hotan Prefecture, regularly inspects these power generation systems and monitors their daily operations on the control center’s screen.
“The southern part of the Taklimakan Desert benefits from low precipitation and ample sunshine, resulting in up to 1,600 hours of electricity generation each year,” Tian said.
Operated by the State Power Investment Corporation, this station boasts a total installed capacity of 200 megawatts, producing 360 million kWh of electricity annually.
The station can meet the residential electricity needs of the 25.9 million residents of Xinjiang for around 10 days. Every year, it saves approximately 110,000 tonnes of standard coal and reduces 330,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and 1,300 tonnes of nitrogen dioxide.
The project is also equipped with an energy storage system with a capacity of 80,000 kWh.
“In rainy conditions when the station cannot generate electricity, the storage facility acts as a power bank, providing energy for approximately two hours,” Tian said.
According to Yu Zhongping, a researcher with State Grid’s Xinjiang branch, most PV and wind power stations in southern Xinjiang are equipped with storage systems to ensure a stable supply of renewable energy.
In Kuqa City, located on the northwestern edge of the Taklimakan, a green hydrogen project is set to commence operations, with an expected production capacity of 20,000 tonnes upon completion.
Solar power replaces fossil fuels in generating hydrogen, said Cao Jie, vice manager of Sinopec Tahe Refining and Chemical Company.
According to a document released by the National Development and Reform Commission, China aims to accelerate the construction of large-scale wind and solar power bases in desert regions, develop hydropower infrastructure, and explore and utilize biomass, geothermal, and ocean energy during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).
By May, the total installed capacity for renewable energy in southern Xinjiang had surpassed 8,400 megawatts, and an additional 8,259 megawatts of new energy facilities are currently under construction, according to Ding Biwei, who is responsible for grid connection of new energy at State Grid’s Xinjiang branch.
“As power grids are gradually being interconnected to encircle the Tarim Basin, the electricity generated from new energy sources not only injects green vitality into southern Xinjiang but also contributes to achieving carbon peak and carbon neutrality,” Ding said….
I would note that even in a grid that has zero renewable energy it would still make sense to have batteries. They ensure that in the extremely rare event of demand exceeding energy production capacity, you can still deliver all you need. To have a NG plant build for dealing with a one day a year event, makes a lot less sense than having energy storage to deal with that event. So grid resilience are served by reserves of production capacity, but also requires energy storage regardless of what % of the energy comes from what sources.
John A. Hofer says he wants audits but something tells me he does not want to audit this:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/pmc-wagner-group-reportedly-receives-10-billion-from-the-kremlin/ar-AA1dkZB9?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=f203aadbb0344a8a867c538a4fa94c4d&ei=15
The Concord company group, owned by the family of Prigozhin, has received another RUB 845 billion ($9.607 billion) from the Russian budget. “Founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, PMC Wagner received just over RUB 858 billion within contracts with the state. That’s close to a trillion,” Russian RIA Novosti quoted Kiselyov as saying on Telegram. “Under other contracts, Prigozhin’s Concord holding provided services (to the state) worth RUB 845 billion. This does not mean that they have earned that much, but it still shows the scale of the business and the scope of their ambitions.” Therefore, he brought to light another Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s piece of lie, who admitted that the Kremlin funded mercenaries, however lowering the sum tenfold.
Oh wait – Putin pays the Wagner Group to commit all sort of war crimes. According to little Jonny boy – paying for war crimes by Putin needs no auditing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/texas-heat-solar-energy.html
June 23, 2023
Facing Brutal Heat, the Texas Electric Grid Has a New Ally: Solar Power
The amount of solar energy generated in Texas has grown exponentially. Some Republicans question the state’s increasing reliance on renewable power.
By J. David Goodman
Strafed by powerful storms and superheated by a dome of hot air, Texas has been enduring a dangerous early heat wave this week that has broken temperature records and strained the state’s independent power grid.
But the lights and air conditioning have stayed on across the state, in large part because of an unlikely new reality in the nation’s premier oil and gas state: Texas is fast becoming a leader in solar power.
The amount of solar energy generated in Texas has doubled since the start of last year. And it is set to roughly double again by the end of next year, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Already, the state rivals California in how much power it gets from commercial solar farms, which are sprouting across Texas at a rapid pace, from the baked-dry ranches of West Texas to the booming suburbs southwest of Houston.
“Solar is producing 15 percent of total energy right now,” Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, said on a sweltering day in the state capital last week, when a larger-than-usual share of power was coming from the sun.
So far this year, about 7 percent of the electric power used in Texas has come from solar, and 31 percent from wind.
The state’s increasing reliance on renewable energy has caused some Texas lawmakers, mindful of the reliable production and revenues from oil and gas, to worry. “It’s definitely ruffling some feathers,” Dr. Rhodes said.
Several bills passed by the Republican-dominated State Senate in the spring contained provisions that would add new costs and regulations to the solar and wind industries and severely limit the number of new projects in the state, energy experts said. The bills failed to pass before the legislative session ended last month, but the desire among many Republicans in the state to take similar action, and their skepticism about renewable power, remains strong.
“Wind power was the biggest infrastructure mistake in TX history,” State Representative Jared Patterson, a conservative Dallas-area Republican, said on Twitter Wednesday. “It’s hot and will get hotter,” he wrote in an earlier tweet. “Solar is helping, but make no mistake, the 9th largest economy in the world runs on natural gas.” …
contrary to some on this blog who have an absolute disdain for renewables, the state of texas is moving forward with steps to further incorporate renewables into the grid. as I have argued before, energy storage is needed but also a very solvable problem. you can go high tech with modern batteries, or low tech with water gravity systems. but we have valid solutions.
since the texas blackout a few years ago, when natural gas and nuclear plants went offline suddenly and simultaneously, texas has continued to fortify its electric grid. texas is one of the leaders installing large scale battery support to the grid. these energy storage systems allow us to capture cheap renewable electricity and use it on demand. they keep the grid resilient, and can be utilized very efficiently during the day to store power and during the evening to distribute power.
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-power-grid-stress-heatwave-battery-storage-1808972
now contrast this with the recent push by some in texas to solve the problem by building even more natural gas plants, to handle high demand time periods. not only are these plants relying on a natural gas distribution system that exceedingly fails during high stress times, but this solution requires tens of billions of dollars to build plants that are only required to be used for a few hours each year! talk about an expensive energy source! rather than build out a reliable energy storage system to handle the few peak hours each year, the fools want to build billions of dollars in unreliable natural gas plants that will sit idle 99% of the time. just foolish thinking, and anybody supporting such arguments should be banished from an economics blog.
Jack Smith has been talking to Rudy Giuliani and it seems there may be a proffer agreement. Now where this leads who knows. But if RUDY rats out Trump – the latter is truly “toast”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/28/texas-heatwave-power-grid-solar-energy
As a deadly, record-breaking heatwave puts Texas’s grid to the test, renewable power sources are helping the state maintain energy reliability, contrary to some of the state’s lawmakers claims that clean energy is less reliable…
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/texas/texas-nuclear-power-plant-stopped-producing-electricity-friday-not-clear-why/287-351a43c9-8073-45af-afb6-e3fac2a18c8f
good thing texas installed a battery backup to support the sudden loss of nuclear power for hundreds of thousands of homes in the recent heat wave.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-30/China-generates-99-9-pure-green-hydrogen-world-s-largest-producer-1l3jTKlJuO4/index.html
June 30, 2023
China generates 99.9% pure ‘green hydrogen’ as world’s largest H2 producer
The world’s largest green hydrogen project, which generates hydrogen from solar and wind renewables without emitting carbon dioxide, successfully produced its first batch of “green hydrogen” on Thursday in Ordos, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China.
According to the World Economic Forum’s latest white paper, China is the largest producer and consumer of hydrogen globally, but less than 0.1 percent of the hydrogen it produces comes from renewable energy sources.
This new project is anticipated to yield an annual production of 30,000 tonnes of green hydrogen and 240,000 tonnes of green oxygen, resulting in a reduction of approximately 1.43 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year. To put it in perspective, this reduction is equivalent to planting 825,000 trees. China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), the country’s largest hydrogen producer, provided this information.
Ordos boasts abundant solar and wind resources, making it an ideal location for this project. The initiative combines two clean energy sources: solar power and hydrogen. It employs an electrolysis device that utilizes green electricity generated from solar energy to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The project marks Sinopec’s second green hydrogen project, following the one in Kuqa City, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the construction of which began in 2021. Liu Shiliang, general manager of Sinopec Nova, told China Media Group (CMG) that the Kuqa plant went into operation on Thursday with hydrogen purity reaching 99.9 percent.
The hydrogen production capacity of electrolyzed water of the Kuqa plant is 20,000 tonnes per year, and the hydrogen storage capacity is 210,000 standard cubic meters, with the hydrogen transmission capacity reaching 28,000 standard cubic meters per hour.
The green hydrogen and green oxygen produced by the project will be transported through pipelines to a coal-deep processing project. This will replace the existing coal-to-hydrogen process, promoting the clean and low-carbon transformation of coal-powered chemical products. Xu Zhendong, the executive director of Sinopec Star Petroleum’s Inner Mongolia branch, shared this information with CMG.
By exploring a pollution-free and zero-energy approach, this new hydrogen production model addresses a crucial issue of power balance and consumption in the grid’s high proportion of renewable energy connections….
“It seems coal fired energy production still plays a huge role in China…”
No matter the progress made in clean energy production by China, the refrain about coal will be used to dismiss the Chinese gains by people who have a disdain for the Chinese. Nonetheless, the progress towards clean energy production in China has been remarkable and forms example after example for other countries:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05379-5
November 30, 2022
A membrane-based seawater electrolyser for hydrogen generation
By Heping Xie, Zhiyu Zhao, Tao Liu, Yifan Wu, Cheng Lan, Wenchuan Jiang, Liangyu Zhu, Yunpeng Wang, Dongsheng Yang & Zongping Shao
Abstract
Electrochemical saline water electrolysis using renewable energy as input is a highly desirable and sustainable method for the mass production of green hydrogen; however, its practical viability is seriously challenged by insufficient durability because of the electrode side reactions and corrosion issues arising from the complex components of seawater. Although catalyst engineering using polyanion coatings to suppress corrosion by chloride ions or creating highly selective electrocatalysts has been extensively exploited with modest success, it is still far from satisfactory for practical applications. Indirect seawater splitting by using a pre-desalination process can avoid side-reaction and corrosion problems, but it requires additional energy input, making it economically less attractive. In addition, the independent bulky desalination system makes seawater electrolysis systems less flexible in terms of size. Here we propose a direct seawater electrolysis method for hydrogen production that radically addresses the side-reaction and corrosion problems. A demonstration system was stably operated at a current density of 250 milliamperes per square centimetre for over 3,200 hours under practical application conditions without failure. This strategy realizes efficient, size-flexible and scalable direct seawater electrolysis in a way similar to freshwater splitting without a notable increase in operation cost, and has high potential for practical application. Importantly, this configuration and mechanism promises further applications in simultaneous water-based effluent treatment and resource recovery and hydrogen generation in one step.
No matter how much China increases coal consumption, ltr will use stories about renewable resources to disguise China’s rapidly rising emissions of greenhouse gasses.
China’s consumption of coal is 50% of world consumption. Something that ltr and JohnH both ignore.
Solar is cheaper than coal, so you can expect China’s massive investment in solar to substantially reduce its use of coal…something that Ducky and pgl conveniently choose to ignore.
(Their goal is to bash countries the US doesn’t like, so they only focus on negative talking points about China…typical propaganda. Instead, maybe they should gain an appreciation of what the US could be doing, if it were serious about anything but being king of the mountain.)
“Solar is cheaper than coal”
A claim Jonny boy makes with zero support. Hey Jonny boy – your BFF CoRev is going to take exception to this unsupported claim. Maybe on your next hot date the two of you lying worthless trolls can settle this one.
We can expect China’s investment in solar energy to reduce its reliance on coal? China is building more coal generating capacity thanthe reat of the world combined, so it’s pretty clear China doesn’t expect sarpower to reduce its reliance on coal.
And bythe way, Johnny is pretending to be a mind reader again. He knows why I write what I write. He also knows that I only write about China. Even though I regularly write about the U.S. and Europe, and sometimes about Canada, Mexico, ancient Rome, Vietnam, the encomienda system in Latin America, soup, socks and booze.
Poor Johnny. Lying is such a reflexive habit that he stumbles when he tries to tell the truth.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-25/World-s-largest-hydro-solar-power-station-officially-operates-in-China-1kV6xfwZ7Pi/index.html
June 26, 2023
World’s largest hydro-solar power station enters operation in China
The first phase of the world’s largest hydro-solar power plant, also the world’s highest power station of its kind, entered full operation in China on Sunday.
With an installed capacity scale of one million kilowatts, the Kela photovoltaic power station’s annual generating capacity of the first phase will be two billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), and that is enough to cover the needs of 700,000 households for a whole year,” which is equivalent to 600,000 tonnes of standard coal and will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1.6 million tonnes,” Yang Zhiwei, the construction project manager, told China Media Group (CMG).
The plant, situated in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze in southwest China’s Sichuan Province’s Yajiang County, is now connected with Lianghekou hydropower plant, which was put into operation in March with a total installed capacity of three million kilowatts, marking the completion of the first phase of the grand project.
Upon full completion, the Kela project’s total installed capacity scale will exceed 100 million kilowatts, with annual power generation of around 300 billion kWh, sufficient to serve 100 million households for a year.
With a reliance on sunlight to generate electricity, the power generation of photovoltaic power stations fluctuates between day and night amid weather events. The hydropower component helps to regulate all instability in PV power supply, providing stable and high-quality clean electricity for the power grid….
heat pumps were a topic on this site a few weeks ago. here is a nice summary of the latest in heat pumps that are going into houses these days
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/14/1068582/everything-you-need-to-know-about-heat-pumps/
gone are the days when the excuse that “heat pumps don’t work in the cold” or that they don’t work to cool a house. you no longer need two systems, a furnace and air conditioner, when you install a modern heat pump. economically advantageous and work well with renewable electricity year round. the future is electric, my boy.
Thanks for a great link. I noted this “Heat pumps today can reach 300% to 400% efficiency or even higher, meaning they’re putting out three to four times as much energy in the form of heat as they’re using in electricity”. Furthermore, they now can simultaneously replace both AC and heating systems. When you start comparing to the cost of AC + heating systems, those heat pumps are not that expensive anymore. And the energy cost savings are substantial. Just like transportation is moving away from hydrocarbons to electricity, we may also see home climate controls doing the same. Then convert electricity production from oil to renewables and we can stop funding terrorist states like Iran and Russia.
Baffled sorry, efficiency of heat pump performance for heating has changed little with the advent of R410 refrigerant. Slightly better than R22 is still abysmal efficiency. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/docs/documents/1117/cop_heat_pump_theoretical.png
Now there times during a typical Winter day or days during Winter when a heat pump is more efficient than other sources, but, just like using renewables for electricity generation, those periods when the efficiencies are too low are dangerous.
Covid, Take your issue up with MIT, who published the link.
I don’t think he even know what he is linking to – and there is a good reason he only gives the link to a figure, not the associated text. The fact that current heat pump return “only” 3-4 fold more energy than the electricity they use; yet the theoretical limits are 5-40 fold depending on outside temperatures – is both true and also irrelevant. Who would say no to a 3-4 fold return just because in theory (but not yet in the real world) you could get more. It simply means that current heat pumps are a great bargain today and they could become even better in the future.
Ivan, McQuack and Baffled, “… yet the theoretical limits are 5-40 fold depending on outside temperatures – is both true and also irrelevant.” Irrelevant?
“high efficiency gas or oil condensing furnace: 85 – 95 %” (also from my above reference) 15-5% waste heat. But the cite also provides this gem: “Example – Maximum Heat Pump Efficiency
An air to air heat pump operates between temperature -5 oC on the cold side and temperature 40 oC on the hot side. The maximum theoretical efficiency can be calculated by using (1b) as
COP
Jus tot be clear. i live with heating = (40 + 273) / ((40 + 273) – (-5 + 273))
= 6.95
The typical practical value for a heat pump is in the range 2 – 4.”
Just to be clear. I live with both, and have watched my electricity bill double over the last few years. Oh, I live in the RGGI region, and our electricity supplier has its own solar farm. Yeah the real versus unicorn-based worlds.
The denying and lying/ignorant liberal mind is an amazement.
Remember when Dr. Chinn offered us this post?
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2023/06/real-defense-consumption-and-investment-1960-2023q1
Real Defense Consumption and Investment, 1960-2023Q1
Jonny boy’s latest comment was in effect saying we should look at nominal defense spending and not the real defense spending series as apparently BEA has manipulated the price deflator series. So John A. Hofer is accusing Dr. Chinn of abusing manipulated data.
Yea – this lying troll went that far to justify his incessant stupidity. Any other economist blog would have banned Jonny boy a long time ago.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05921-z
May 24, 2023
Flexible solar cells based on foldable silicon wafers with blunted edges
By Wenzhu Liu, Yujing Liu, Ziqiang Yang, Changqing Xu, Xiaodong Li, Shenglei Huang, Jianhua Shi, Junling Du, Anjun Han, Yuhao Yang, et al.
Abstract
Flexible solar cells have a lot of market potential for application in photovoltaics integrated into buildings and wearable electronics because they are lightweight, shockproof and self-powered. Silicon solar cells have been successfully used in large power plants. However, despite the efforts made for more than 50 years, there has been no notable progress in the development of flexible silicon solar cells because of their rigidity. Here we provide a strategy for fabricating large-scale, foldable silicon wafers and manufacturing flexible solar cells. A textured crystalline silicon wafer always starts to crack at the sharp channels between surface pyramids in the marginal region of the wafer. This fact enabled us to improve the flexibility of silicon wafers by blunting the pyramidal structure in the marginal regions. This edge-blunting technique enables commercial production of large-scale (>240 cm2), high-efficiency (>24%) silicon solar cells that can be rolled similarly to a sheet of paper. The cells retain 100% of their power conversion efficiency after 1,000 side-to-side bending cycles. After being assembled into large (>10,000 cm2) flexible modules, these cells retain 99.62% of their power after thermal cycling between −70 °C and 85 °C for 120 h. Furthermore, they retain 96.03% of their power after 20 min of exposure to air flow when attached to a soft gasbag, which models wind blowing during a violent storm.
A very informative story on how the Wagner Group exploited Central Africa for the benefit of itself as well as for the benefit of Putin:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/wagner-s-real-money-never-came-from-diamonds-and-gold/ar-AA1dkM9E?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=cf79c3fdf724415dbc7fcaf95aa16924&ei=10
ltr wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa and yet Xi turns a blind eye to this Russian exploitation.
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
[ Well, 52 countries in Africa are actively part of the Belt and Road Initiative. Along with South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt and Algeria have applied to be BRICS countries, and a host of other African countries have applied to be part of the BRICS bank. Just these past few days there has been a China-Africa state meeting and leaders all about Africa could not say enough words in kindness about China…
I suppose the Chinese built schools and hospitals and ports and roads and rail lines and energy projects means lots to Africans as well.
“— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa”
I have no idea where to even go with such nasty nuttiness. ]
“— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa”
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-07-02/Expo-bolsters-China-Africa-trade-ties-and-beyond-1l5nVDEE4bC/index.html
July 2, 2023
Expo bolsters China-Africa trade ties and beyond
By Stephen Ndegwa
The China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo (CAETE) underway in Changsha, Hunan Province is one of the major dates in the biennial calendar of events undertaken by both partners. This is the third biennial CAETE, which this year runs from June 29 to July 2, after the first and second sessions held in June 2019 and September 2021, respectively.
The first two sessions resulted in the signing of 216 projects with a total investment of $43.02 billion. Although this is no mean feat even by international standards, it shows that China and Africa have barely realized their trade and economic potential.
It is time to look ahead. The theme for the third CAETE is “Common Development for a Shared Future,” and has reportedly attracted 53 countries and many organizations. There are 1,500 exhibitors, an increase of 70 percent from the second expo.
The high-level cooperation forums of this year’s event include infrastructure, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS), healthcare development, agri-food supply chain, quality infrastructure connectivity, private sector, economic and trade cooperation in traditional Chinese medicine, and women.
Other promotion and business matchmaking events include those focusing on industrial parks, investment and trade in agri-food products, investment and trade in light industry products (fashion products), investment and trade in textiles and clothing. In addition, there will be high-level thematic seminars on the pilot zone for in-depth China-Africa economic and trade cooperation, digital economy, automobile industry, etc.
For the uninitiated, the comprehensive scenario depicted above is based on the spirit of the “Nine Programs” as outlined in the eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) that was held in Dakar, Senegal in November 2021. The nine programs include aspects such as medical and health, poverty reduction and agricultural development, and trade promotion.
From the beginning, China has taken the onus of helping Africa to achieve holistic development….
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
[ https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-28/The-magic-seed-How-does-Chinese-rice-helps-Africa-combat-hunger–1l0nLrn43MA/index.html
June 28, 2023
The magic seed: How does Chinese rice help Africa combat hunger?
Rice, an important food crop in the world, feeds more than half of the world’s population. Africa has a long history of planting rice, but it has been suffering from a low yield, with key bottlenecks, such as a shortage of new rice varieties and planting expertise.
To solve the problem, China has sent rice scientists to the tropical continent, hoping to bring new prospects to China-Africa cooperation in agriculture and poverty alleviation.
Chinese hybrid rice expert Hu Yuefang arrived in Madagascar in 2008 and has been devoted to studying localized hybrid rice varieties and helping the local people increase their rice yields.
The 65-year-old is still working at the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center’s Africa sub-center in Madagascan town Mahitsy, about 8,500 kilometers away from his hometown of Yiyang in central China’s Hunan Province.
With an area of about 600,000 square kilometers, the African island experiences four kinds of climate, featuring four types of terrains: tropical rainforest, tropical savanna, tropical plateau and a semi-arid zone. Hu and his team have traveled to almost every rice-growing area on the island to find the best-adapted varieties.
In 2010, Hu and his team selected three hybrid rice varieties capable of achieving high yields in areas with different altitudes, which received technical validation from Madagascar’s Ministry of Agriculture.
“The yield per hectare of these three hybrid rice varieties is three to four times higher than that of traditional Malagasy rice,” said Hu.
Madagascar has been cooperating with China in developing hybrid rice since 2007. Currently, the cumulative area of Chinese hybrid rice cultivation in the country has exceeded 50,000 hectares, with an average yield of around 7.5 tonnes per hectare.
In Africa, Madagascar has the largest area of hybrid rice cultivation and the highest yield, and it is also the first African country to realize the whole industrial chain of hybrid rice breeding, seed production, planting, processing and sales.
In Madagascar, the pattern of Chinese hybrid rice is printed on its 20,000 ariary banknote, the largest denomination in the country. It shows the gratitude of the country’s government and people who have taken a major step toward food self-sufficiency by planting hybrid rice…. ]
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
[ Imagine such perverse coarseness, having a need to defame a 5,000 year old civilization, to defame 1.4 billion people who have befriended Africa for generations. ]
Totally avoiding how the Wagner Group exploits Central Africa. Look – we know you write preapproved spin for Xi but come on.
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
[ Imagine such perverse nuttiness:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-28/The-magic-seed-How-does-Chinese-rice-helps-Africa-combat-hunger–1l0nLrn43MA/index.html
June 28, 2023
The magic seed: How does Chinese rice help Africa combat hunger?
In recent years, Chinese cooperation in rice cultivation has been rolled out in more African countries, such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Mozambique. The crop has become a token of friendship and cooperation between China and Africa.
Cultivated rice is mainly planted in sub-Saharan Africa, where it helps fight famine in the region.
One in five Africans, about 278 million people, were facing hunger in 2021, according to data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It says the situation has worsened due to climate change, regional conflicts and the fluctuating international food market.
In Africa, a significant portion of the population still relies on agriculture for a living. As a global leader in hybrid rice research, China is making positive contributions to Africa’s agricultural development. As the cooperation between China and Africa goes deeper, both sides are exploring new areas for trade.
The third China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo will be held from Thursday to Sunday in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, on the theme of “common development for a shared future.”
Fifty African countries and eight international organizations have signed up for the expo. More than 300 African companies will participate. It is expected that new cooperation agreements will be reached during the event, injecting new vitality into China-Africa cooperation. ]
UPS, Teamsters Reach Tentative Deal To End Dual-Wage System
https://labor411.org/411-blog/ups-teamsters-strike-tentative-deal-to-end-dual-wage-system/
Progress has been made in negotiations between UPS and the Teamsters as they reached a tentative deal on a notorious two-tier wage system.
The Hill reports:
“United Parcel Service (UPS) Saturday reached a tentative deal with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters that would end a dual-wage system for delivery drivers in its next contract, the union announced, a win for the Teamsters that could lower the chances of a nationwide strike as negotiations continue.
‘During a hard-fought day at the bargaining table, the #Teamsters reached [a] tentative agreement with @UPS on three major economic issues,’ the union announced in a Twitter thread, ‘tearing down the 22.4 two-tier wage system, establishing Martin Luther King Day as a full holiday for the first time, and ending forced overtime on drivers’ days off.’
The Teamsters last week held off plans to strike to head back to the negotiating table after UPS offered a counterproposal to the union’s requests with regard to compensation and benefits before the current contract expires on July 31.
‘The extraordinary gains, each of which have been key issues for #Teamsters throughout the yearlong contract campaign, came on the heels of an aggressive public warning from the Teamsters National Negotiating Committee that @UPS was running out of time to get a deal,’ the Teamsters union said Saturday.
At the same time, general president Sean M. O’Brien stressed that there’s still work to be done to get a new contract in place by August 1.”
The Putin purge may have begun:
https://www.timesnownews.com/videos/news-plus/putins-top-ukraine-war-general-missing-post-prigozhin-mutiny-has-sergei-surovikin-been-arrested-video-101462125
Oh well if the purge gets rid of the pet poodle known as JohnH – no one here will miss him.
Off topic, China’s PBoC –
There has been a personnel shuffle at the Bank:
http://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/03/chinas-central-bank-pboc-gets-a-new-party-secretary.html
It’s not clear if this reflects dissatisfaction with the Bank’s performance or is simply part of the wider shake-up of China’s financial bureaucracy.
As Moses recently pointed out, the renmimbi has been loosing ground:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/USDCNY=X/
That’s inflationary, and bad for profits among importers of primary and intermediate goods and services. Maybe that’s incentive to put on a show of “doing something”.
Here’s another article which discusses world-wide use of ALL energy. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/03/the-myth-of-replacing-fossil-fuels/ This chart shows current use by source: https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/a-2022-chart-good-folks-dream.png?resize=720%2C673&ssl=1
Notice how little growth there has been for wind and solar. The author make the point that traditional bio-sources: “… all the solar and wind in the world combined doesn’t provide even a third of the energy we get from wood and dung.”
1 $trillion per year investment and what growth in wind and solar. NOT!!!!
The pipe dreams of the liberal mind is an amazement.
You are still posting BS from an idiot who does not understand stock and flow dynamics. Oh wait – such basic modeling is also over CoRev’s retarded brain.
Ole Bark, bark now deflects to “stock and flow”modeling when the subject has been sources of annual electricity generation. You seem confused over the use of models, Y’ano using the flawed and incomplete LCOE, for comparing these sources, and accepting the wonky estimating models: “direct’ primary energy, which does not take account of the inefficiencies in fossil fuel production. Fossil fuel data is compared to electricity generation (not in input equivalents) of nuclear and renewables.” https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy-share-inc-biomass?tab=table
For some unfathomable reason renewables are treated as if name plate amounts are real. Now that’s a moral issue!
The confused and lying liberal mind is an amazement.
The author make the point that traditional bio-sources: “… all the solar and wind in the world combined doesn’t provide even a third of the energy we get from wood and dung.”
[ The author is a moral monster who thinks it is clever to mock fiercely poor struggling people for whom healthy, sustainable energy is beyond affording. Please think about the morality of a source. ]
“The author is a moral monster”
Now that is well point. I’m remembering this one!!!
ltr and Ole Bark, bark, moral monster? You seem to have a problem with data and facts, and add emotions to them. Now, that’s a moral issue.
The ignorant emotional liberal mind is an amazement.
——– per year investment and what growth in wind and solar.
[ China spent about $120 billion in 2022 and will spend about $150 billion in 2023 just on water conservancy, but for China “lush mountains, lucid waters” are beyond price. The Yangtze River is now closed to fishing for 10 years, but in the health of a mother river there is life for China and the Chinese understand. ]
——– per year investment and what growth in wind and solar.
[ https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-25/World-s-largest-hydro-solar-power-station-officially-operates-in-China-1kV6xfwZ7Pi/index.html
June 26, 2023
World’s largest hydro-solar power station enters operation in China
The first phase of the world’s largest hydro-solar power plant, also the world’s highest power station of its kind, entered full operation in China on Sunday.
With an installed capacity scale of one million kilowatts, the Kela photovoltaic power station’s annual generating capacity of the first phase will be two billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), and that is enough to cover the needs of 700,000 households for a whole year,” which is equivalent to 600,000 tonnes of standard coal and will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1.6 million tonnes,” Yang Zhiwei, the construction project manager, told China Media Group (CMG).
The plant, situated in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze in southwest China’s Sichuan Province’s Yajiang County, is now connected with Lianghekou hydropower plant, which was put into operation in March with a total installed capacity of three million kilowatts, marking the completion of the first phase of the grand project.
Upon full completion, the Kela project’s total installed capacity scale will exceed 100 million kilowatts, with annual power generation of around 300 billion kWh, sufficient to serve 100 million households for a year.
With a reliance on sunlight to generate electricity, the power generation of photovoltaic power stations fluctuates between day and night amid weather events. The hydropower component helps to regulate all instability in PV power supply, providing stable and high-quality clean electricity for the power grid…. ]
There CoVid goes again, linking to rubbish a preening about how clever he is in his efforts to mislead.
CoVid’s second link seems to show that renewable energy source make up a very small share of energy supply, and are not growing very fast. But the “renewables” series leaves out hydroelectric power, which is the largest source of renewables energy production. The graphic includes wind and solar power and hydrocarbons, but not hydro-power. Now why would some do that?
Now, it’s true that wind and solar energy production are far smaller than fossil fuel production, so when put on the same graphic, it’s hard to tell whether wind and solar production is growing very rapidly – which CoVid takes as an opportunity claim that they are growing slowly. He’s lying.
Here’s what IEA has to say:
“In 2021 renewable electricity generation rose by almost 7%, a record 522 TWh increase, with wind and solar PV technologies together accounting for almost 90% of this growth.”
https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-electricity
How much of global capacity is in renewables, when hydroelectric power is included?
“In 2019, around 11% of global primary energy came from renewable technologies.”
https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20around%2011%25%20of,share%20in%20the%20energy%20mix.
The same article shows wind and solar energy production showing double digit % increases in most recent years. And in the U.S. there had been a good many wind farm projects which were stalled because utilities lacked the capacity to deliver the power the farms would have produced. The Inflation Reduction Act provides money to expand the grid for renewable, so projects are coming off the shelf.
CoVid is just misrepresenting – lying about – the real size and growth of renewable energy resources. So is his source.
The main issue with CoRef is that he does sell primary energy as relevant, that is clever propaganda. (Working hypothesis, as it is clever it does not come from CoRev, he only cites without deeper understanding :-)) Around 75% of all fossil energy used in electricity generation or for transport is waste heat, we do not have substitute for this large portion. Secondary energy or useful energy is much smaller than CoRev’s claim, and the growth of PV is exponential with doubling in 4 years.
Ulenspiegel, both primary and secondary energy are useful energy, and create waste heat. It’s their use segments that impact heat efficiencies. Y’ano like using a heat pump during its cooling cycle. Where’s that ole heat collected go? What’s your point? These raving generalities without any critical thinking or support are just inaccurate and incomplete opinion(s).
The unthinking liberal mind is an amazement.
“Ulenspiegel, both primary and secondary energy are useful energy, and create waste heat.”
You are an idiot. Primary energy minus waste is secondary/final energy in most important cases. Therefore, to use primary energy in a RE discussion, in which the RE generators deliver high quality final energy is stupid or dishonest.
You only cite propaganda without being able to check data.
Ulenspiegel, you’re being an idiot.
“Secondary energy: When we convert primary energy into a transportable form we speak of secondary energy. For example, when we burn coal in a power plant to produce electricity, electricity is a form of secondary energy. Secondary energy includes liquid fuels (such as gasoline and diesel – which are refined oil), electricity, and heat.” https://ourworldindata.org/energy-definitions
Heat is an output from all forms of energy use. When it is unused it is wasted, like in using a heat pump to cool, where the heat removed from a building is dumped to the atmosphere. It is used when the heat pump takes it out of the atmosphere and dumps it into the building to heat it.
The inaccurate and faith-based liberal mind is an amazement.
corev, if you generate heat as a byproduct of your process, then it is waste. a heat pump does not do that. a heat pump moves existing heat into or out of the system. that is not waste. if you had an engineering background, you would understand this concept of efficiency.
“So is his source.”
CoRev always relies on disinformation from his preapproved troll farms. ltr got this right – the blogger here is a moral monster.
McQuack, did you miss this note in the World for data? “Note: Primary energy is calculated using the ‘substitution method’, which accounts for the energy production inefficiencies of fossil fuels.” IOW, they discount fossil fueled sources, and unless they say otherwise PROBABLY use name plate values for renewables.
This link is also from World of data: https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/a-chart-for-good-folks-who-dream.png?resize=720%2C687&ssl=1 BTW, it defines renewables as: “This is the sum of energy from hydropower,solar, wind, geothermal, wave and tidal, and bioenergy. https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20around%2011%25%20of,share%20in%20the%20energy%20mix
Don’cha just love data?
The data ignoring liberal mind is an amazement.
More from your moronic liar? Now I get that neither he nor you actually READS your own links but maybe you should try. North America and Europe has been reducing their use of coal according to his own link. But that is something your moronic liar fails to note in his blog post. No wonder you cite this blog so much. He is as stupid as you are and almost as dishonest.
“Since I had the new data, I thought I’d update the following graphic that I made a few years ago, which only covered up to 2019.”
Why note include more recent data? BTW that graph is exhibit A of how to lie in one’s data presentations!
I guess CoRev is too lazy to actually review the tables provided by The Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy.
It seems coal consumption has been rising by a mere 0.7% per year over the last decade whereas the growth rate for renewable energy has been growing by 12.6% per year for the last decade.
Now lying little CoRev will likely ask me to provide a link but this dumbass probably should check the links his own lying blogger has provided. It’s all there for the asking but do not count on CoRev to be honest about this or any other issue.
Nice propaganda.:-)
If you want to make a point provide energy use for electricity generation, heating and industrial applications. Then provide arguments why you use primary energy and why you do not assume that electric heat pumps are a solution for most of the heat demand. Only citing graphs without understanding the underlying issue is stupid, very stupid.
BTW: It is painfully obvious that we can cover the generation of electric energy with PV+wind on a global scale until 2050.
So clearly we have a problem that needs fixing. Thanks for showing how hig the problem is, and how much work we have left to do. I am undaunted.
— wants to pretend the PRC is a friend of Africa
[ As though the wondrous peoples of Africa and China are to be defamed for being traditional friends. ]
Now that we have all stopped laughing at DeSantis pretending to be MANLY MAN as he went full homophobic, Digby points to the damage DeSantis anti-immigrant policies has done to Florida’s agribusinesses and construction sector.
https://digbysblog.net/2023/07/03/where-the-economy-goes-to-die/
Like abortion the issue of immigration has always been a “we need the issue so don’t solve it” kind of problem. It is obvious that anybody wanting to solve the problem of people illegally coming to US simply had to severely punish those who employ illegal immigrants. If they cannot find work most of them will not try to come here. DeSantis (like certain new SCOTUS judges) is too dumb to understand that he is supposed to grand stand and rail against illegal immigration – not solve it.
Uh, oh. Brokered deposits…
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-us-banks-expensive-fix-declining-deposits-problem/
Fed rate hikes did not hurt bank profits, on average, initially, because conventional deposits are sticky. Bank runs, on the other hand, have increased the use of brokered deposits, which by design chase the best rates and are not sticky.
In addition to the profit problem featured in the BBG article, the collapse of lending margins probably means higher lending rates, on average.
Recentl drops in M2 and commercial lending does bot bode well for future economic performance.
I recently came across your article titled “Wind, Solar Help Texas Meet Record Power Demand During Heat Wave” on Econbrowser, and I wanted to express my appreciation for shedding light on the commendable role of wind and solar energy in meeting Texas’ power demand during the recent heat wave. I hope it reaches a wide audience and encourages discussions and actions toward a cleaner and more resilient energy future.