Hi Everyone: YouTube just spoon-fed me this very interesting video discussing the integration of wind energy, which would include AWE if ever implemented, and solar, to the grid, specifically in the UK and the E.U.
We Spent £220 Billion on Decarbonisation and Saw Zero Financial Benefits: Kathryn Porter
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Hi Doug,
I watched this video which is indeed interesting in more ways than one.
Kathryn Porter is right about everything she says. But I am not going to review the energy choices of which I was aware of the harmful consequences, to focus on the AWE case.
In my opinion, and I repeat, AWE for electricity production should focus on the initial goals: harnessing more consistent and powerful high-altitude winds.
Thus, predictability would be improved, leading to potentially less disruption of the grid, as well as better utilization of the rare earth elements necessary for generators that would then be better capitalized.
But we are still in the realm of (renewable?) fiction.
Hi Pierre: I got interested in wind energy long before it was “a thing” - way back in the 1960’s. I just thought it was cool when I toured the hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls and realized it took no fuel to provide electricity at our house 70 miles away. The amount of water was limited, so I thought “What about wind?”
I just think wind energy is cool, lots of action, and fun, a mental challenge to get it working properly, and of course once set up, zero fuel expense.
BUT, hydroelectric is stable and the amount of water reserve upstream makes it a reliable source of “spinning reserves” for the grid.
The problem with solar and wind is they absolutely require backup power sources for dark or calm times, so powerplants become redundant, needing gas-fired plants and/or battery plants to fill the gaps, So now, just to accommodate the “renewables”, you need to build at least twice as many powerplants, that are only used half the time or less, and lots of electronic band-aids to integrate it all and emulate the “spinning reserves” that the grid normally relies on for stability. The result is electricity costing more than twice as much, and outages like the recent one in Spain & parts of France, where some people even died.
The case for the “renewables” sounds great when it is a small addition to an otherwise self-sufficient, stable grid, but past a certain level, the inherent negatives become impossible to ignore.
An expensive battery power plant is not producing power all the time, but rather either charging up, or just sitting there, most of the time. Same with gas peaker plants. Renewables seem to be serving as a demonstration that nuclear power might be a main way forward from here. Yes, it would be nice to harness the jet stream. Of course, it sounds great. Meanwhile nobody can reliably power even a single home with any little AWE system after nearly 20 years if empty promises, handwaving, and happy-talk. 
The positive thing about all this is that AWE is not likely to overload the grid.
That video was full of misdirection, falsehoods, poor logic, straw man arguments…
Here’s the comment I left them
Great that someone takes the counter argument but, I have issues with this.
Initial fault Iberia - was gas breakdown. Lack of grid forming inverters on the solar kit allowed the trip to roll. More Battery storage would have prevented it too. Reactive zonal grid design would have helped too.
As for we didn’t do it argument. 0.8% is our best case localised emissions. Not our historic contribution nor our total inc scope 1,2,3 emissions.
You can’t compare climate change death numbers to blackouts death numbers orders of magnitude lower.
You implied Germany getting rid of the more polluting deadly emissions coal wasn’t smart? Logic?
BTW England is MILES behind this game. Scotland already runs at 95% renewables. Where is your infrastructure England? Why is there no grid capacity North to South? Why do we in the North have to curtail generation because of your blocking rollout? Oh why do we have to pay to transmit when you get paid to?
So let’s get this straight… Is it the renewable energy that’s expensive / Or the contracting which encourages curtailment?
Just build them where they need to be - Where your users are - Get used to lovely turbines. We did - for you
Heathrow fire was not caused because the money went on curtailment - that’s another logical fallacy.
An inverter is not trying to be a transformer - These are two distinct separate device types - not a square peg trying to fit a round hole.
Net Zero is a shorthand way of saying electrify everything - it’s fast ommunication of something that needs done not something done to or by a group of elites. Yeah put us both in a room and point at the elite - it’s no me.
Yeah who in their right mind wants smart meters, cheap running EV’s, Cost efficient warm homes with heap pumps and insulation. Not English apparently. This is a HUGE North South Divide.
And a nuclear plant , is going to come from where? Take how long and many more x than the ticket to build?
Sail eugh so last century. Sneering at sail now that triggers me. So I’m not going to comment on that.
Sun dimming (shielding) Yep, policy that investigates all potential outcomes and options, that sounds sensible.
Is burning fossil fuels toxic? (you said so earlier when the generator killed a family, Wasn’t a solar panel fell on their heads)
More minerals for an EV… hardly. How many minerals does it burn? None. Ever seen re
cyclable diesel? what no? Lithium batteries are >99% recyclable. Who drives less than 15k Miles?
British Thought Leaders ? - Wow what a channel name. How about re-branding to MIND CONTROL STATION FOR BLIGHTY ?
An important point is mentioned on the video at 31:15: variability. It is due to intermittence, and leads to stop and go for fossil backup. This variability could be compared to that of crosswind kite during figure-eight paths inducing accelerations and decelerations. Both variabilities consume a lot of power.
The most populous countries emit the most CO2, from fossil fuels, without (maximum CO2 emissions excepted if hydroelectricity is available) or with (a little less CO2) intermittent renewables. China data are now available.
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