A Power Project in the Real World

November 4, 2024 rjdavison

OPS-79 – A Power Project in the Real World – U1 Download PDF

OPS-79 I am helping a small company set up a natural gas fired generation facility out in the Hanna/Sheerness area of Alberta. This project is a microcosm of the “climate change” discussion. Renewables (wind, solar, etc.) are not free despite the propaganda to the contrary. This post compares the proposed natural gas fired option to the existing PACE Canada LP’s (PACE) solar farm.

We are spending significantly more capital when renewables are added to the mix. To start with, renewables require backup (100% for days at a time). Effectively, requiring two fully capable grids (one renewable, one base load) when one (base load only) would be sufficient. Replacing the base load with battery storage is an option, but is still not technically, economically, or realistically feasible. The only direction costs go with renewable additions is higher.

#climatechange #delaythegreen #globalwarming #showusthedata

The solar farm (13 MW) will be producing into an existing substation capable of handling 17 MW. Given solar’s power generation profile (the sun is not always shining, and certainly shines a lot less in the winter), the substation has significant unused capacity. The proposed natural gas fired generation will access that unused capacity, effectively providing the 75% backup requirement proposed by the Alberta Government for new renewable projects. Combining small natural gas fired generation with existing solar facilities helps to level out the power supply at the individual substation level.

The costs for the natural gas fired backup generation ($4.5 MM) is significantly lower than the 17 MM$ PACE solar facility. Note, for another ±$1,000,000, the natural gas option could provide the same power as the solar facility. Another $1,000,000 fills the substation. Natural gas generation is obviously cheaper than solar and does not require the significant taxpayer participation inherent to solar (or renewables in general).

When the 75% Alberta Government backup requirements are rolled in, the costs really start adding up. With natural gas generation as backup, the capital costs will be $21.5 MM (17 + 4.5) when $5.5 MM (4.5 + 1) would have been sufficient. With battery storage as backup (the Net Zero option), the capital costs balloon to $75 MM (17 + 68, for just one day of storage) when, again $5.5 MM would have been sufficient. Based on historical data, one day of storage does not begin to cover the solar downtime. Solar capacity factors for November, December, and January are roughly 9.8%, 6.7%, and 7.8% respectively. Solar is not even capable of charging the batteries through most of the year (if at all). July’s solar capacity factor (the best month of the year) only gets to 35.9%. Effectively PACE’s 13 MW solar farm performs at a 4.7 MW level (in the middle of summer) and would not even be able to supply power to the 10 MW battery back up requirements. Looks like solar is a net draw on the grid not an addition.

Note, I am working on a post that looks at the entire Alberta grid. The 2023 solar and wind performance will be detailed there. For the record, current Alberta battery storage (191.6 MW, 340.2 MWh) is insignificant (roughly 2.1 minutes of backup). In 2023, the battery storage draw on the grid was 9,477 MWh, returning just 3,403 MWh back to the grid. Battery storage is using 2.8 times the energy they are delivering back to the system. So, what impact will more battery storage have on the grid. Expanding the battery storage to a full day would increase the yearly losses by 18 times to 112,084 MWh (4.9% of the energy produced by solar for the year). Increasing the storage to 1 week (7 days), takes the losses up to 784,587 MWh (34.3% of solar’s yearly output). Is 7 days enough storage? Not likely. Three weeks to a month is closer to a safe level of storage which would mean that solar adds virtually nothing to the grid’s overall performance.

Battery Storage does not come cheap. A Tesla Megapack (1.9 MW of Power, 3.9 MWh of Energy) costs around $1,000,000 US ($1,370,000 Cdn). For a small solar property like Hanna-Sheerness, the 75% back-up requirement (10 MW), would require (as a starting point) 3 Megapacks (for just one hour) at a cost of $4.2 MM Cdn (just for the battery packs). To cover a day, you need 62 Megapacks at a cost 80 MM Cdn. A week requires up to 431 Megapacks for $556 MM Cdn. Neither the taxpayer nor the power company can afford the battery back-up requirements.

Why are we spending (or being forced to spend) these ridiculous amounts on power generation? The Hanna-Sheerness substation (17 MW) could have been filled with a simple natural gas fired option for roughly $6.5 MM Cdn (no back-up required). PACE’s 13 MW solar facility (effectively a 2.8 MW facility based on solar’s 21.5% yearly efficiency) cost $17 MM Cdn. To compensate for the poor efficiency, the solar facility would have to be roughly 6 times the size of the existing operation, taking the costs over $100 MM Cdn. Obviously not a realistic option (the substation is limited to 17 MW), so we will move forward with just the existing solar facility. Since back-up is required, we can add in the always available natural gas fired option (10 MW for $4.5 MM Cdn). That takes the total (solar plus 75% back-up) to $21.5 million. If we must comply with Net Zero, that backup becomes battery storage. Obviously, nuclear, carbon capture, etc. do not work at this small scale. A one-day storage option (not nearly enough) balloons the costs to $97 MM Cdn+. One week (probably not enough) gets even scarier at $556 MM Cdn+. Remember these are numbers for a very small project.

So, which of these scenarios makes more sense (not a trick question)? Note, you do not need to be an electrical engineer, economist, or a “climate scientist” to answer this question correctly.

Natural gas fired generation – Gross/Net (17 MW) – $6.5 MM – no back-up required
Solar Facility – Gross-13 MW, Net-2.8 MW – $17 MM – no backup
Solar Facility – Gross-13 MW, Net-2.8 MW – $21.5 MM – 75% constant natural gas backup
Solar Facility – Gross-13 MW, Net-2.8 MW – $21.2 MM+ – 75% 1-HOUR battery backup
Solar Facility – Gross-13 MW, Net-2.8 MW – $75 MM+ – 75% 1-DAY battery backup
Solar Facility – Gross-13 MW, Net-2.8 MW – $567 MM+ – 75% 1-WEEK battery backup

Spoiler alert, the answer is “a”. So, why are we being forced to accept any answer from “b” through “f” and beyond? The answer to that question is also easy. As a dedicated climate realist, denier, or whatever term you feel is necessary to describe my position and a card carrying (but retired) representative of the oil and gas industry, I have obviously chosen to ignore the “Save the World” crowd and their simplistic, unscientific All CO₂, All the Time narrative. Realistically, I cannot be accused of ignoring their narrative, since one of the prime focuses in my life is addressing their mis, dis, and omissinformation. The capital required to back-up the Alberta grid with battery storage (estimated at $2 trillion (Cdn)) is just as absurd as the costs to backup this small project area. That assumes that you have already spent the astronomical capital required to convert Alberta’s ±65% natural gas generated grid to 100% renewable generation.

And for what purpose? To reduce the 2100 global temperature rise by Alberta’s miniscule share (power only) of Canada’s 0.001 and 0.007 °C global contribution? Bjorn Lomborg’s estimate is ±0.003 °C. Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and Willian van Wijngaarden’s range would be 0.001 to 0.004 °C. With Ross McKitrick coming in at a high end 0.007 °C.

There is literally no empirical CO₂/Temperature dataset that shows CO₂ driving the climate on any statistically significant historical time scale (a basic Scientific Method requirement). There is no proof in the empirical data that human emissions (primarily CO₂) are driving the climate. There is no proof that human emissions (primarily CO₂) will lead to catastrophically high temperatures over the next century. Computer Model projections are categorically proof of nothing. They are simply a product of their programming, Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO). It doesn’t help their cause that the modelers have self-acknowledged that their models “run way too hot” and use unrealistically high emission scenarios. And no, extreme weather events are not getting stronger or more frequent (at least not based on the empirical data). Even the IPCC acknowledges that an anthropogenic signal is questionable to non-existent in the current empirical data.

In their Climate Impact-Driver (CID) summary (the IPCC-AR6-WG1 report, Chapter 12, Table 12.12) there are 33 CID categories. 24 of those categories have “low confidence in direction of change” in the “Already Emerged in Historical Period” column. They have a “high confidence of increase” in the “Mean air temperature (except over a few regions (CNA and NWS))”, “Extreme heat (in tropical regions where observations allow trend estimation and in most regions in the mid-latitudes, medium confidence elsewhere)”, “Mean ocean temperature”, and “Atmospheric CO₂ at surface” and a “high confidence of decrease” in “Lake, river and sea ice (Arctic ice only)” categories.

So, with high confidence the IPCC has established that temperatures are higher, and CO₂ concentrations are higher (but apparently not all over the world). But solar activity, sunshine hours, and the net change in Absorbed Solar Radiation (ASR) and Outgoing Longwavelength Radiation (OLR) have also been increasing and cloud cover has been decreasing. All of which could be responsible for the 1.07 °C warming (the IPCC AR6 estimate) since the pre-industrial era (pre-1850). Note, 1.07 °C is within the natural variability of the Holocene temperatures over the last 10,000+ years (i.e.: the temperature increase out of the depths of the Little Ice Age could just be a progression of the cycles that took us into the LIA).

The remaining categories “medium confidence of decrease” in “Cold spells (Emergence in Australia, Africa and most of Northern South America)”, and “Permafrost” (both temperature related) and “Open Ocean – dissolved oxygen categories and “medium confidence of increase” in the “Open Ocean – Salinity” category do not add much important information to the “climate change” discussion.

Table 12.12 also includes the CDIs that can be expected in the future. One column for CDIs “Emerging by 2050 at Least for RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5” added 4 categories, and another column for CDIs “Emerging Between 2050 and 2100 for at Least RC8.5/SSP5-8.5” added just 1 additional category. That takes the IPCC up to 13 categories out 33 that have some degree of confidence that the category may be decreasing or increasing, but that may only be due to the use of the RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 emission scenario. An implausible to impossible scenario that the IPCC has said has a low likelihood of happening. Not surprising, since actual emissions are running below the much lower RCP4.5/SSP2-4.5 scenario. With the RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 scenario invoked; Table 12.12 forecasts are completely unusable. The IPCC certainly does not make a strong case for the All CO₂, All the Time alarmist narrative. They provide no evidence that hurricanes, droughts, floods, fires, sea level rise, etc. have become statistically more frequent or intense due to “climate change”.

That is not surprising, despite the constant lies to the contrary in the media and parliamentary venues around the world. The IPCC actually honours the extreme weather empirical data in their Working Group reports. Somehow when the IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) report is prepared, “the science” is massaged into the grey areas and then totally propagandized by the UN (led by Antonio “global boiling” Guterres) and its various affiliates (the WEF included). A discussion of extreme weather and CO₂’s ineffectiveness can be found in the articles/papers/posts included below. The alarmist narrative relies on the CO₂/Temperature correlation over the last few decades, the computer models that are self-acknowledged to “run way too hot” and use unrealistically high emission scenarios, and the lies that extreme weather is increasing in strength and frequency (backed by the attribution studies that are still using those climate models that “run way too hot” and use unrealistically high emission scenarios). LOL! Maybe, just maybe, There is NO Climate Emergency!

My apologies, that turned out to be a longer post than I was expecting it to be when I started writing it. Maybe I’m compensating for the time off I’ve taken recently. My posting was put on the backburner for a while. But I was still working on the “climate change” file, helping with a book soon to be published and an in-depth dive into Alberta’s electrical grid and its intricacies. More to come! Many thanks for your attention over the years.