New York Faces Energy Shortages This Summer

New York has painted itself into a corner with its Green Energy™ policy. Extended heat wave could cripple New York’s grid this summer: NYISO. NYISO, or ISO, is the New York Independent System Operator. They run the grid for NY State.

New York legisators have demanded that the state cut back on the evil fossil fuels, and now are looking at problems for the summer.

“This assessment reflects the challenges of the grid in transition — declining reliability margins, performance issues with aging generators, and an absence of new dispatchable resources,” [Aaron Markham, ISO vice president of operations] said.

Dispatchable resources have been gas-powered turbine generators. They can be fired up fairly quickly, as these things go, and added to the grid to deal with extreme temperatures, lack of wind/solar generation, etc. They've been forbidden by a green energy law in NY.

So what happens if things go bad for the grid?

The ISO can take emergency actions, including purchasing energy, calling for voluntary industrial curtailment and allowing a reduction in operating reserves

Shutting down your idustrial grid, or asking them to "voluntarily cut back," doesn't seem like the way to grow your economy. Is New York trying to attract any AI data centers?

Things are so bad that even the politicians are waking up to reality.

The state has fallen behind on its decarbonization goals, and Gov. Kathy Hochul is considering rewriting landmark 2019 climate legislation to provide a longer path towards a carbon-free electric grid.

"Landmark" is not the word I would use. I do love it when politicians pretend to be engineers.

I think we are likely to see another NYC blackout in the next few years, probably associated with an extreme summer heatwave. Maybe not this summer, but soon.

Hat tip to William Teach at Pirate's Cove: New York’s Over-Reliance On “Green” Energy Could Cause Blackouts

Well, when you get rid of reliable coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy generation you are left with unreliable, undependable, and more expensive energy, which cannot meet the demands of more and more consumers/businesses, even with all those people moving out of NY.

The Direct Impact of Banning Fossil-Fuel Generated Electricity

The Democrats of Illinois are bent on destroying every bit of industrial capacity. Even electricity is leaving blues states - Don Surber

This is the reaction to the 2021 Climate & Equitable Jobs Act, which the Chicago Tribune called “one of Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature accomplishments, requires Illinois to phase out the burning of fossil fuels for electricity by 2045 and sets an earlier 2030 deadline for closing certain gas-fired plants.”

Instead of waiting for 2030, an energy generation plant in Elwood, Illinois, was sold off. Six of the nine gas turbines are moving to Texas. (Just load them up on a flatbed truck and off they go.) The other three will continue to run for a while. Those three have been purchased by a non-profit out of Wisconsin. (There is a carve out in the CEJA law for non-profits that own gas turbines.)

The underlying article is actually an editorial from the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune seems surprised that passing silly laws could have detrimental impacts on the local economy.

The Renewable Energy Fantasy

What do you do when your solar power farm is destroyed in minutes by a tornado? You fire up a conventional power plant. What else can you do?

This is MGUY Australia's video Massive SOLAR plant FLATTENED by tornado

Stay tuned for some incredible aerial footage of a destroyed solar factory. But first, you have to ask why solar panels would be located in areas well known for storms and tornadoes.

The video is just over 8 minutes

All This "Clean Energy" Is Causing Environmental Harm

From CFACT we get an article about the dirty truth of Wind Energy that the environmentalists somehow don't want to address. Waste from “clean energy” piles up across the U.S.

Disposal of wind turbine blades is an issue. An environmental issue.

Disposal of giant blades in landfills is often the only way to deal with equipment that is no longer serviceable. “Blades are frequently buried in fragments in several landfills throughout the Great Plains,” Cohen adds, “transforming sites in Wyoming, Iowa, and South Dakota into wind turbine graveyards. By 2050, the cumulative decommissioning material from wind turbines could reach 133 million tons. On average, 3,000 – 9,000 blades are being taken out of service per year in the United States, and that number is expected to increase to 10,000 – 20,000 blades per year by 2040.”

The blades for the giant turbines don't last as long as the environmentalists hoped they would. They can't be recycled. I wonder if the energy required to produce the blades, which are made out of fiberglass, epoxy resins, and carbon fiber, can ever be recouped by the turbine. That doesn't include the steel, the concrete, and the copper that goes into the entire thing.

Democrats and Your Electricity Bill

What happens when politicians pretend they understand the engineering and physical constraints behind power generation? Nothing good. From The Daily Caller: EXCLUSIVE: Democrats Are Behind Your Crippling Electricity Bills, Report Confirms

State policies are a monumental factor in electricity costs, and Democrat-led states have driven prices upward through pushing aggressive mandates and choking reliable power supply, according to a new report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

The new report, first provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation, found that blue states generally have higher electricity costs than red states. Titled “Blue States, High Rates. Electricity Prices: Elections Have Consequences,” IER’s report notes that all but one of the top 10 most expensive states for energy — measured by cost per kilowatt hour — are governed by Democrats.

The article almost touches on reliability, but doesn't quite. When you get enough solar and wind in the mix, keeping the grid stable becomes a nightmare, and then, if you keep adding "renewables" it becomes impossible.

When politicians pretend they understand engineering and physics, or just ignore the engineering and physics, bad things happen. (Hat tip to Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

Trump Cancels Green Energy Grants

The government should not be picking winners and losers in the market. From Watts Up With That? President Trump Cancels $700 Million of Battery Manufacturing Grants. The usual suspects are affected the most.

But two companies have vowed to push forward anyway.

What's this? The Market chasing ideas for technology development without government handouts?

Cancelling the grants pruned away the companies which weren’t confident in their business plan, and left the two companies which believe their battery investments will pay off.

Bringing sound economics to the renewable industry, or at least letting private investors carry the entire risk of green speculation, sure sounds like a win for US taxpayers.

The original article referenced by Watts Up With That?, is out of Australia. The author of that article, Joshua S Hill, is bent out of shape over the fact that the US isn't doing what the he wants.

Does anyone remember the battery-company grants handed out by Obama? I'm sure that Australian author doesn't. But then Joshua S Hill wasn't hit with a part of that the bill.

Turns Out You Really Can't Run an Economy on Rainbows and Unicorn Farts

But what about global boiling? Frantic California Trying to Stop Oil, Gas Companies From Fleeing

California is currently trying to "fast track" drilling permits. Of course I expect the usual suspects to sue over environmental something or other.

If this isn't a sterling example of "too little, too late," then there's no such beast. This goes well beyond the energy sector, of course. California's home prices, which are approximately at geosynchronous orbit right now, are a major problem. So are their nation's highest gas prices, their punitive taxes, the rampant crime in the major cities, and the endemic homeless enclaves. What's really amazing is that anyone remains in California at all.

There is a reason that U-Haul dubbed Newsom their #1 Salesman.

Turns out you need productive citizens for an economy to function.

Click thru.

And William Teach at Pirate's Cove has a post on the same issue. Surprise: Fossil Fuels Hating PRC Trying To Keep Fossil Fuels Companies From Leaving

I still maintain the companies should stop selling their products to the state government of the People’s Republic Of California. Stopping operations in the PRC will increase the cost of energy in the state, and moving operations to other states will deny a lot of tax money.

No-Subsidy from Government = No Bids on Offshore Wind Program

Germany wanted an offshore wind installation or two, but were offering no handouts. Germany’s No-Subsidy Offshore Wind Auction Flops with No Bids Filed

The Federal Network Agency’s auction for 10.1 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind farms in the German part of the North Sea ended with no investor submitting a bid for any of the two proposed sites, the Federal Association for Offshore Wind Energy, BWO, said.

The auction flop signals that offshore wind power developers are wary of taking on riskier, zero-subsidy projects amid rising costs and supply chain issues.

Hat tip to Kevin Killough (by way of William Teach) on X:

Anyone else find it curious that the "world's cheapest source of energy" dies without a steady pipeline of subsidies flowing to the industries? I'm going to go out on a limb and say someone's not telling the truth.

That doesn't even cover the problems, like the blackout experienced earlier in the year that hit Spain in April.

NIMBY and Grid Battery Storage

Would you like to live near a facility with the possibility of dumping huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the environment? Me neither.

Grid-scale battery storage facilities are a potential source of toxic fumes, in the event of a fire, and heavy metals after the fire.

This is MGUY Australia's video The growing BACKLASH against BATTERIES. The video is 12 and half minutes.

Deforestation Is the New Green

This is quite literally insane. Here’s Proof That Environmentalism Doesn't Motivate the ‘Green Energy’ Industry

It’s hard to imagine anything more misguided than cutting down a state forest to build a solar panel farm. Yet, that’s exactly what Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is moving ahead with, as it plans to clear 420 acres of state forest near Gaylord, Mich., for solar energy development.

We don't need those pesky forests. We need solar energy. Or something.

Like the author of this piece, I'm old enough to remember when deforestation was a bad thing, environmentally speaking.

As a kid, I remember learning about the devastating consequences of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Apparently, if you slap some solar panels on the cleared land, it's suddenly okay. Who knew?

There is so much more. Click thru.

Hydrogen As a Power Source versus Reality

People have been telling me that hydrogen gas is a "good" way to store power for a long time. When I ask them about the problems, and how those have been solved, they don't want to talk to me, and walk away. That's fine, and it isn't so fine. Not when you are spending some tax money on a pipe dream.

This Sabine Hossenfelder's video Hydrogen Hype is Dying, And That's a Good Thing

Using hydrogen to store energy sounds good at first. Combined with oxygen, hydrogen simply creates water plus energy. Zero pollution. Zero guilt. But not zero problems.

First, there’s the obvious, that hydrogen is a gas, and when mixed with air it’s highly explosive. To be useful as energy storage, it needs to be kept under pressure. That’s technically not all that difficult, but it’s inconvenient and can be dangerous. Though this is the least of the problems.

A bigger problem is that hydrogen, because it’s such a small atom, creeps into pretty much all materials and quickly degrades them. This affects everything from storage tanks to pipes to electronics and makes maintenance costly.

The effect hydrogen has on things like storage tanks is called Hydrogen Embrittlement in the video. It is also known as hydrogen-assisted cracking or hydrogen-induced cracking. Do you see why this might be a problem?

If you have a tank of hydrogen in your car, and the hydrogen causes it to crack, while it is sitting in your garage, or it is getting ready to crack right before you have a car crash, the resulting fire and/or explosion could be bad. Couple that with the fact that hydrogen flames are invisible, and you have the making of some big problems.

If the storage tanks, and transport lines out near your production facilities keep cracking, that probably doesn't do much for profitability either.

The video is 7 minutes.

Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist. Her videos are usually quite interesting.

Why Hydrogen as Energy Storage is Dumb

Hydrogen as "The Answer" to how to fix the problems with wind and solar is not the answer you think it is. Germany, the US, and the UK are all investing in the hydrogen, but there is a small problem.

The Hydrogen economy is basically an expensive way to apologize for the continued use of fossil fuels.

If you build a hydrogen power generating plant, that just happens to run on natural gas until you get your hydrogen supply sorted out, you can claim you doing Green Energy™.

This is the Sabine Hossenfelder's video “The most dumb thing" for energy storage: Hydrogen. The video is about 8 minutes long.

The Ongoing Problems With Wind Power

From REnews we get details on a suit. AEP sues GE over ‘defective turbines’

This article is focused on a lawsuit directed at GE's wind turbine division, but GE is not the only manufacturer that is having problems with the longevity of their turbines. GE does seem to be having more problems than their competitors, based on what the filing states.

American Electric Power Company, Inc. (AEP) is power generating company serving 11 state: Ohio, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

“Within only two to three years of commercial operation, the GE wind turbine generators have exhibited numerous material defects on major components and experienced several complete failures, at least one turbine blade liberation event, and other deficiencies,” alleged AEP.

The filing alleges that at the date of the complaint, 28 June 2024, a “significant portion of the wind turbine generators have completely failed or have otherwise been rendered inoperable, requiring immediate repair”.

I would really like video of that "blade liberation event," but I can't find it. One wind turbine, not belonging to AEP, just had a blade drop to the ground and shatter. Wind turbine blades do fail, sometime spectaularly, but there is usually not much excitement. They shred themselves due to manufacturing problems, and the turbine stops.

I can't find details on the specific problems that the GE turbines are experiencing, though apparently GE is also suing a bearing manufacturer. Cracked bearings in the gearboxes are one of the principle problems experienced by wind turbines, causing failure of the gearboxes. (See the video linked below.)

If you install a piece of industrial equipment expecting to get a 20 year lifespan, and that equipment fails after two years, you are going to be in trouble with respect to return on your investment. If you're a power company, counting on those generators, you are also going to have a problem with your customers.

Here is a video on the subject. The Problem with Wind Energy from Real Engineering. I have queued it up to the point where it is talking about the gearboxes in the wind turbines and their failure rate.

These heavy, 15 tonne gearboxes have been a major source of frustration for power companies. Although they have been designed to have a 20 year lifespan, most don't last 7 years without extensive maintenance.

While I have it queued up to the section on gearboxes, and their failure. The entire video, which is almost 17 minutes long, is a good explanation of the problem with wind power. Not just the problems with the gearboxes, but problems with getting the generated power to match the grid under changing wind speeds.

There are other videos, talking about the problems of composite airfoil manufacture of wind-turbine blades, and what causes them to fail, and videos on the difficulties of recycling the blades, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

So, is wind energy free? That doesn't even include the costs, financial and environmental, of disposing of wind-turbine blades, the mining of rare earth metals for permanent magnet generators, a market currently dominated by China, the epoxy and other compounds used to create the blades, etc.

An Energy Catastrophe in Our Future

The near future. No Sun, No Wind, Big Problem: Benign Weather Could Cause Blackouts in States With Green Grids, Officials Warn

"I'm afraid to say it, but I think the United States is heading towards a catastrophic situation," Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member Mark Christie said during a May Senate hearing. "The problem is not the addition of wind and solar, it's the subtraction of dispatchable resources like coal and gas." North American Electric Reliability Corporation president Jim Robb echoed Christie's sentiment during an April press conference, calling the newfound reliance on green power generation "highly concerning" given the increased demand associated with "electrification policies and electric transportation."

So. Less electricity generation and more demand (for electric vehicles and the like.) What could possibly go wrong?

I love it when legislators pretend that they understand engineering and physics. (Hat tip to Small Dead Animals.)

Batteries for Energy Storage? It Doesn't Add Up

Math can be hard, but it isn't that hard. And this is fairly simple math. Elon’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Battery Math

Tesla's "Master Plan" for weather-dependent renewables will require 960 years of Gigafactory battery output.

This is a story about what happens when a culture decides that math is not important.

In 2007, I interviewed Vaclav Smil by email. I asked the Canadian polymath and prolific author a simple question: why are so many people so easily duped when it comes to discussions about energy and power?

He replied: “There has never been such a depth of scientific illiteracy and basic innumeracy as we see today. Without any physical, chemical, and biological fundamentals, and with equally poor understanding of basic economic forces, it is no wonder that people will believe anything.”

The article goes on to detail how the use of lithium ion batteries for energy storage of "green" — that is unreliable — energy does not compute. That doesn't even consider the environmental devastation from lithium mining in South America, and nickel mining in Indonesia. It certainly doesn't take into account the slave labor being used to mine cobalt in Africa. Is slave labor being using in China to assemble batteries?

Then there are assumptions about availability of raw materials, such as cobalt or its replacement. Copper is not a abundant as most people assume. Then there is the question of whether or not there are enough linemen to upgrade the power grid in the time frame discussed. (How many electrical distribution workers do you know?) As for costs, inflation is NOT added to any of the calculations.

Someone at Tesla might think about investing in a calculator. Heck, I’m in Austin. I’ll lend them mine.

And believing a company like Tesla when they tell you that they can solve all of your problems, just trust them and give them all of your money is insane.

Europe and the Winter Energy Outlook

It will be a miracle if they avoid blackouts. The Worst of Europe’s Energy Crisis Isn’t Over

I’m a glass half-empty kind of person. If anything could go wrong, I assume it will go wrong. And that’s the lens through which I look at the European energy crisis. Perhaps my biases cloud me, but I think we should all be skeptical of the emerging narrative that says the worst is over.

The winter is just getting started. Wind and solar may not be all that was hoped for as some meteorologists are predicting Dunkelflaute, literally the dark doldrums, which would mean little or no help from "renewable" energy sources.

Germany has restarted some coal plants, but France took a bunch of nuclear reactors offline for maintenance, making the outlook for electricity problematic.

Countries have been subsidizing energy costs, but that can't go on forever, and will only kick the can down the road because eventually those bills will come due in the form of taxes.

Last week, Thomas Schaefer, one of the most senior executives at Volkswagen AG, publicly said what many other business people and policy makers had only raised in private. “When it comes to the cost of electricity and gas, in particular, we are losing more and more ground,” he said, warning that unless prices fall quickly, investment in Europe will be “practically unviable.”

The reality is: Energy prices remain extremely high, the continent is at the mercy of the weather, the cost of subsidies is rising at an unsustainable pace, and companies are warning of deindustrialization. Call me a pessimist, but it doesn’t sound like the worst is over to me. That’s because it isn’t.

As for the deindustrialization of Europe that has already begun with the steel industry.

Civilization was nice while it lasted.

Politics, Economics, and Lies — German Edition

German inflation is much higher than the official numbers. Food, energy, housing: the true inflation is 56 percent. The article is in German, but Google translate does a nice job with German.

Are we shocked that politicians everywhere, in this case from Germany, lie about how bad things are?

Official inflation figures are around 10 percent. But many citizens notice in their everyday life: Prices are rising - in the supermarket, at the gas station - much faster!

The true inflation is much higher: That's why there is now the inflation radar from Pleiticker.de - you can find this updated daily on our homepage. We have calculated price developments in the areas that really matter: housing, energy and basic foodstuffs. With the latest figures, inflation there was a whopping 56.3 percent over the past year - and 11.6 percent over the past week alone. For the average net income of a German household (€3,600), this means a loss in value of €1,296. This is mainly driven by the rise in energy costs. The price of electricity has risen by an unbelievable 344 percent in the past year.

11 percent per week is verging on hyperinflation. And 56 percent in a year is not good.

Could you deal with your heating bill this winter being 4 times what it was last year? With the price of gas, and food going up as well? And when businesses close, and people are put out of work, what then?

Natural gas is virtually unavailable. Electricity is not affordable. And it is October. I think Germany, indeed all of Europe, is in for a tough winter.

Hat tip to Gates of Vienna and The Big Chill. There are links to three other articles in that post, which deal with the Greens in Germany being put in charge of energy, and the disaster that is unfolding as a result. That includes one link discussing how the German Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, a member of the Green Party, is seen as a clueless idiot by people around the world.

Energy Prices Are Killing German Industry

But that is what the proponents of Green Energy want. Germany’s “Tenfold Increase In Gas And Electricity Prices” Is Driving Out Industry

What leaves once, will not come again. While energy prices in Europe are going through the roof, they remain moderate in the USA. This will have serious consequences for energy-intensive industries.

The world's largest steel producer, Arcelor-Mittal, shut down one of its blast furnaces, and started buying sponge iron from the US.

And the increase in costs are being passed on. So cars, appliances, and everything else down to scissors and paperclips will cost more.

Hat tip to Watts Up With That.

Freezing in the Dark

That is what is waiting for Europe this winter. A decade after Fukushima disaster, foes of nuclear power reconsider

From Japan to Germany to Britain to the United States, leaders of countries that had stopped investing in nuclear power are now considering building new power plants or delaying the closure of existing ones. The shift is especially notable in Japan and Germany, where both turned decisively against nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. And it comes even as fears mount about another potential nuclear disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

The Greens in Europe are riding high, so there will be problems, and I expect to see something akin to the "death from heatwaves" stories we saw earlier in the summer. Or not. (Those stories won't help the narrative.)

Natural gas in Europe is 10 times more expensive than it was a year ago, and the continent is now competing with Japan and other global buyers for supplies of liquified natural gas, driving up prices even more.

Electricity supplies are also especially low in Europe right now, because much of France’s nuclear power fleet is offline awaiting safety certifications. Although unrelated to the war in Ukraine, it has exacerbated the overall energy crisis.

Hat tip to Pixy Misa at Ace of Spades HQ: Daily Tech News 29 August 2022, who notes the following.

Ten years after Fukushima killed nobody despite being hit by an earthquake and a tidal wave the enemies of humanity have decided that freezing in the dark is not such a great option if it's going to apply to them. (MSN)

They weren't supposed to freeze in the dark. That's for those awful poors.

As for Fukushima Daiichi and the aftermath, see my post Fear Killed After Fukushima Daiichi. Radiation, Not So Much.

No one has died from radiation associated with Fukushima Daiichi. Say that again. NO ONE has died.

The workers in the plant AFTER the disaster will not develop cancers in measurable difference from the background rate. (Some people develop cancer, even if they have never worked in nuclear power.)

1600 people died as a result of the panic. And the stress it induced. Panic on the part of the government. On the part of the people. And on the part of Americans and Europeans. Because it is easier to cave into fear than convince you that you don’t know squat about radiation. But when politicians cave in to the “Do something!” demands, they often do the wrong thing.

As one of the articles noted, you cannot move people from a hospital's intensive care unit to a school gymnasium and not expect some people to die. Quite a few did.

Remember when the Germans Laughed at Trump Over Energy?

I wish a media outlet would track down all of the Germans who laughed at Trump (was it at the UN?) and ask them what they think about energy prices, and what Trump had to say today. None will of course, because Orange Man Bad™, and how does that help the narrative?

With energy at record highs, the economies of European countries are on the brink of recession. Europe energy crisis: German and French power prices notch record highs ahead of Russia's next pipeline shutdown

• German power prices, which is Europe's benchmark, jumped 17% to a record 750 euros a megawatt-hour for next year.
• In France, prices for next year climbed 12% to also hit a record 880 euros a megawatt-hour.
• Russia is set to halt Nord Stream 1 gas flows during a three-day maintenance period at the end of August.

For comparison, in my last-month's electric bill I paid $0.03148200 a kilowatt hour, or less than $31.49 per megawatt hour. So the Germans are (or will be) paying 2,382% more than I did last month. I said "will be" because the prices are futures, that will be paid in 2023.

Europe's energy crisis has been exacerbated by Russia's natural gas halts and reductions. And next week, the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline will shut down again for maintenance. Gazprom has already slashed gas flows to just 20% of capacity, prompting accusations that Moscow is weaponizing energy supplies.

Gee, you think? Or, where is it written that since Russia is at war with Western Europe that they can't use all of the weapons at their disposal? Are you saying that economic warfare is not Kosher? I direct your attention to the history of letters of Marquis and Reprisal.

What's that you say? Russia is at war with Ukraine and not all of Europe. If you truly believe that I have some Florida swamp-land you might be interested in. Pay no attention to the endangered species living on the property; I sure you will be able to build your dream home.

And while you may believe that Russia is not at war with all of Europe, what you believe doesn't matter. It really only matters what Vladimir Putin believes.

But then to admit that Russia using economic means of warfare was completely foreseeable means that the Europeans would have to admit that Trump was right when he said they were opening themselves up to a world of hurt at Putin's hands. And they will not admit that Trump was right, not even when they are freezing in the dark.

The graph above comes from Trading Economics: Germany Electricity Price as of 2022-08-27. That site will be updated. The graph above will not be updated.