What do these four things have in common? They are entirely mythical. They simply don't exist in reality.
This article caught my eye this week. Google is partnering up with EDPR to build "community solar" that will power Google's gigantic data center power suck. Except they won't. The new solar projects won't provide power to Google data centers. They will simply "offset" Google's enormous thirst for electricity supplied by coal and gas-fired power plants. After all, if Google actually powered its data centers with solar, you wouldn't be able to use Google after dark, and everything would be erased by dawn each morning. Instead, Google uses good old reliable fossil fuel burning electricity and activates its climate guilt to build renewables somewhere else for someone else to use.
It's a scheme that has been around for awhile. Years ago, I investigated "renewable energy credits", or RECs to find out that they aren't actually energy at all. While renewable generators provide and sell power to actual customers, they also sell RECs. A REC is the social and environmental attributes of renewable power. It is a completely separate product that is bought and sold, although it doesn't actually exist. A REC is mythical, just like an offset. An offset pretends that a power customer like Google can "offset" its carbon footprint by producing enough renewable power to match its use of fossil fuel power. They believe if they produce as much power as they use then it negates their use of power. Someone else's use of that power is supposed to substitute for that person's use of dirty power. Except does it really? If Google cannot rely on solar power 24/7, can anyone else? Of course not. We all use power 24/7. This is starting to sound like a pyramid scheme where other people get stuck using unreliable renewable power 24/7 while Google uses all the good, reliable stuff without guilt because it has "offsets."
This is pure nonsense!
Sure, giving away money generated by the sale of community solar power is all Robin Hood-ish. But would the community solar actually benefit the community in which it was sited if that community did not meet the financial qualifications? Or is Google going to build these community solar projects in rural areas and give the profits to energy users in urban areas that qualify? It's all so much fairy tale fantasy.
Ditto on the idea that overbuilding of renewables and connecting them all by overbuilding transmission can somehow make up for renewable power's unreliable intermittency. But yet the political minions claim this to be so because it all works out on average. Average. A math problem. If we have this much renewable power, and it has an average capacity factor of 30%, then if we build 70% more than we actually need that will create a 100% capacity factor.
Capacity factor is the percentage of a power plant's maximum capacity that is actually produced. Power plants cycle up and cycle down to follow load. They don't run at their full capacity all the time. However, renewable generators cycle up and cycle down at the whim of nature and load is supposed to follow them. There's the difference.
Presuming that a region with lots of intermittent renewable power can "borrow" from its neighboring region when it doesn't have enough power doesn't work because its not a math problem. It's reality. What if the neighboring region is also experiencing inadequate generation? Night is long, and an hour's time difference isn't going to cover it. Say the sun sets in the Pacific at 9:00 p.m., and the sun rises over the Atlantic at 6 a.m. There's a three hour time difference, so the Pacific solar generation ends at midnight Atlantic time. It's still 6 hours before the sun rises there.
Battery power, you say? But we don't have the technology to store electricity for long periods of time, batteries are very expensive, and they come with their own environmental burdens. Not a solution.
We have not found the "clean power" silver bullet. It's not wind + solar + transmission. However, saying it is makes certain people and certain companies very, very rich. What a bunch of patsies! Making crap up for the sake of political and financial gain is never going to stop. However, we can all get a lot smarter and stop believing it.
When the power flickers on and off in the middle of the night, I used to think it was an equipment failure somewhere, roll over, and go back to sleep. Now when it happens, I feel compelled to get out of bed to check my phone to make sure the grid hasn't crashed in a spectacular way before I can relax enough to go back to sleep. Welcome to the land of Ogres, Orks, Obakes and Offsets.
This article caught my eye this week. Google is partnering up with EDPR to build "community solar" that will power Google's gigantic data center power suck. Except they won't. The new solar projects won't provide power to Google data centers. They will simply "offset" Google's enormous thirst for electricity supplied by coal and gas-fired power plants. After all, if Google actually powered its data centers with solar, you wouldn't be able to use Google after dark, and everything would be erased by dawn each morning. Instead, Google uses good old reliable fossil fuel burning electricity and activates its climate guilt to build renewables somewhere else for someone else to use.
It's a scheme that has been around for awhile. Years ago, I investigated "renewable energy credits", or RECs to find out that they aren't actually energy at all. While renewable generators provide and sell power to actual customers, they also sell RECs. A REC is the social and environmental attributes of renewable power. It is a completely separate product that is bought and sold, although it doesn't actually exist. A REC is mythical, just like an offset. An offset pretends that a power customer like Google can "offset" its carbon footprint by producing enough renewable power to match its use of fossil fuel power. They believe if they produce as much power as they use then it negates their use of power. Someone else's use of that power is supposed to substitute for that person's use of dirty power. Except does it really? If Google cannot rely on solar power 24/7, can anyone else? Of course not. We all use power 24/7. This is starting to sound like a pyramid scheme where other people get stuck using unreliable renewable power 24/7 while Google uses all the good, reliable stuff without guilt because it has "offsets."
This is pure nonsense!
Sure, giving away money generated by the sale of community solar power is all Robin Hood-ish. But would the community solar actually benefit the community in which it was sited if that community did not meet the financial qualifications? Or is Google going to build these community solar projects in rural areas and give the profits to energy users in urban areas that qualify? It's all so much fairy tale fantasy.
Ditto on the idea that overbuilding of renewables and connecting them all by overbuilding transmission can somehow make up for renewable power's unreliable intermittency. But yet the political minions claim this to be so because it all works out on average. Average. A math problem. If we have this much renewable power, and it has an average capacity factor of 30%, then if we build 70% more than we actually need that will create a 100% capacity factor.
Capacity factor is the percentage of a power plant's maximum capacity that is actually produced. Power plants cycle up and cycle down to follow load. They don't run at their full capacity all the time. However, renewable generators cycle up and cycle down at the whim of nature and load is supposed to follow them. There's the difference.
Presuming that a region with lots of intermittent renewable power can "borrow" from its neighboring region when it doesn't have enough power doesn't work because its not a math problem. It's reality. What if the neighboring region is also experiencing inadequate generation? Night is long, and an hour's time difference isn't going to cover it. Say the sun sets in the Pacific at 9:00 p.m., and the sun rises over the Atlantic at 6 a.m. There's a three hour time difference, so the Pacific solar generation ends at midnight Atlantic time. It's still 6 hours before the sun rises there.
Battery power, you say? But we don't have the technology to store electricity for long periods of time, batteries are very expensive, and they come with their own environmental burdens. Not a solution.
We have not found the "clean power" silver bullet. It's not wind + solar + transmission. However, saying it is makes certain people and certain companies very, very rich. What a bunch of patsies! Making crap up for the sake of political and financial gain is never going to stop. However, we can all get a lot smarter and stop believing it.
When the power flickers on and off in the middle of the night, I used to think it was an equipment failure somewhere, roll over, and go back to sleep. Now when it happens, I feel compelled to get out of bed to check my phone to make sure the grid hasn't crashed in a spectacular way before I can relax enough to go back to sleep. Welcome to the land of Ogres, Orks, Obakes and Offsets.
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