Preface.  The U.S. Department of energy has admitted that a renewable grid is impossible without long-duration storage (LDES) and plans to hand out half a billion dollars to commercialize (LDES) (Colthorpe 2022).  Another recent report also argues that round-the-clock renewables and decarbonization will not be possible without LDES (McKinsey 2022).

Though surely there is quite a bit more money than that floating around, since Utah just got a $504 million dollar grant to develop hydrogen storage (BW 2022, Fitzpatrick 2022).

This post explains why natural gas is essential to keep the grid up, and other posts in the energy storage category why the U.S. DOE and other researchers are not likely to find an alternative. Basically because pumped hydro, compressed air, battery, hydrogen and other storage methods don’t scale up, have limited potential locations, limited metals, high costs and more. 

And of course, both of my books are about why electricity can’t replace 80% of the ways we use fossil fuels (and even the electric grid is two-thirds powered by fossils). We really ought to be spending this money insulating homes, converting industrial farms to organic farms and so on….

In a 100% renewable energy storage system mainly dependent on wind and solar, there needs to be a tremendous amount of energy storage for up to six weeks when there is little wind or sunshine. The only storage now is Pumped Hydro Storage which can store at best 2% of the energy generated a day in the 10 states that have hydropower, Compressed Air Energy Storage at just one place only in Alabama, and almost non-existent battery storage that can’t scale up to what’s needed due to lack of lithium and other minerals. This is why natural gas is THE energy storage today. Gas steps in when wind or sun stop, and steps out when they blow or shine so the grid doesn’t become unbalanced and black out. Gas is essential for the few days with peak demand when weather is very hot or cold, as well as the baseload power around the clock. The U.S. electric grid uses 35% of natural gas, and this percentage is expected to grow as coal and nuclear power plants continue to shut down.

But the electric grid is competing with other essential uses of finite natural gas. About half of us alive today, four billion people, are here because of fertilizer (ammonia) made from natural gas and with natural gas as the energy source to create the tremendous heat and pressure needed to produce it to grow up to 5 times more food than before fossil fertilizer. Natural gas also heats homes and businesses and for cooking. Natural gas is a component of half a million products and again, often the energy source of production.

In the news: 2020 California grid operator warned of power shortages as state transitioned to clean energy. Growing shortfall as solar power goes offline in early evenings California is having black outs because there isn’t enough natural gas to balance solar and wind. The article says that “We have a much more risky supply of energy now because the sun doesn’t always shine when we want and the wind doesn’t always blow when we want, now that 33% of the state’s electricity comes from renewable sources.

With large solar farms making up an increasing percentage of California’s power generation, crunch time happens in the late afternoon, particularly on hot days. People turn on air conditioning and other devices around 5 p.m. as the heat peaks and they come home from work. Electricity demand surges, just as the sun is setting and solar power is drying up.

Wolak, of Stanford, said the state should make efforts to keep gas-power plants around until battery storage technology for solar plants can be ramped up. “Some folks in the environmental community want to shut down all the gas plants. That would be a disaster,” said Jan Smutny Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association, a trade association representing solar, wind, geothemal and gas power plants. “Last night 60% of the power in the ISO was being produced by those gas plants. They are your insurance policy to get through heat waves.”

Many of the state’s gas plants have become less competitive because they are more expensive to run than solar, he said. In fact, some have been shutting down on their own because utilities are buying more power from solar and wind.

My book “When Trucks stop running” explains the scaling, seasonality, national grid, balancing the grid, different types of energy storage, limits of materials and so on best, though most of these issues are also discussed in posts at this website.

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

***

Clemente, J. 2020. Germany proves how essential natural gas is. Forbes.

No country ever has spent more money forcing the adoption of renewable energy than Germany. Passed in 2010, Germany’s Energiewende is an “energy transition” based on relentlessly installing as much wind and solar power capacity as possible, with little to no consideration to cost.

The Energiewende demanding the use of renewables could ultimately cost the country as much as $4 trillion by 2050. Already costing hundreds of billions of dollars, wind and solar now generate just ~18% and ~8% of Germany’s electricity, respectively, and still account for just a small fraction of total energy needs:

Despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars on renewables, wind and solar barely register, and Germany is still overwhelmingly fossil fuel-based.

The reality is that natural gas is also quickly becoming an even more important source of energy in Germany. Not just as a vital standalone energy source providing 25% of all energy consumed, gas is the backup fuel needed for intermittent wind and solar. As the energy policy advisor to the U.S., Germany, and the other 34 developed, rich OECD nations, the International Energy Agency (IEA) touts gas as the backbone of the electric power system, to have a flexible, reliable grid where gas supports renewables (Schulz 2020).

Germany wants to add three or four more Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals to help expand Europe’s total LNG import facilities to nearly 35, a “dash to gas” that is extremely telling for a continent that has deployed massive funding and policy support to force more wind and solar into the system.

Indeed, Germany offers a number of lessons for the U.S. and the world – a series of energy warnings that we must heed. Illustrated by Germany’s plan to eliminate both coal and nuclear, which effectively is happening here in the U.S., gas only becomes more essential.

Further, massive payouts to force more wind and solar power into the system can only last for so long, and there are physical and cost limitations that not even rich countries can ignore forever. To illustrate, as tax breaks run out, opposition grows, barriers to new power lines persist, and construction approvals slow, there is a major shortage of new wind projects: “Germans fall out of love with wind power.”

Many though probably see this slowdown in German wind as a positive, financially drained of the levies to pay for renewables subsidies. The “renewables only” tunnel vision has helped soar Germany’s electricity prices for families to being three to four times more expensive than they are here in the U.S.: “If Renewables Are So Cheap Why Is Germany’s Electricity So Expensive?”

After Denmark, Germany has had the highest electricity prices in the world. In fact, ridiculously high energy prices have sadly created a new term in Germany: energy poverty, “Renewable Energy Mandates Are Making Poor People Poorer.”

Just think about it: despite years of promises to effectively “get rid of them,” oil (33%) and gas (25%) still supply almost 60% of Germany’s primary energy needs (not all that surprising since wind and solar are strictly sources of electricity, a secondary energy source that accounts for just 20-30% of all energy demand).

If Germany cannot survive on just “wind and solar” how are the poor countries supposed to?

References

BW (2022) Advanced Clean Energy Storage Project Receives $500 Million Conditional Commitment from U.S. Department of Energy. Businesswire.com.  

Colthorpe A. 2022. Long-duration energy storage ‘for everyone’ says US DoE as McKinsey publishes advice to corporates. Energy-storage.news    https://www.energy-storage.news/long-duration-energy-storage-for-everyone-says-us-doe-as-mckinsey-publishes-advice-to-corporates/

Fitzpatrick T (2022) Plan to fill giant Utah caves with hydrogen gets $504M federal boost. Project under IPP plant near Delta — the first of its kind — would store enough green energy to power 30,000 homes for a year. The Salt Lake Tribune.

McKinsey (2022) A path towards full grid decarbonization with 24/7 clean Power Purchase Agreements. LDES council.

Schulz, F. 2020. German needs more LNG to complement renewables, IEA says. euractiv.com