It’s the query that should all the time be entrance and heart in your thoughts while you learn something generated by advocates of power transition as a supposed answer to “local weather change”: Is that this simply rank incompetence, or is it intentional fraud? (The third chance — affordable, good religion advocacy — can usually be dominated out within the first few nanoseconds.). As between the choices that the advocate is totally incompetent or an intentional fraudster, I suppose it will be higher to be merely incompetent. Nonetheless, typically the misdirection is so blatant that it borders on inconceivable to consider that the creator may very well be so silly as to truly consider what she or he is saying.
So let’s apply this inquiry to a chunk that has come to my consideration prior to now few days.
From euronews.inexperienced now we have a chunk from November 12 with the headline “Powered by wind and water: The Canary Island proving it’s doable to run on renewables.” The byline is Lauren Crosby Mendicott. Ms. Mendicott declares the thrilling information that one in every of Spain’s Canary Islands, El Hierro, has just lately reported that it ran its electrical energy system fully on wind and water energy for 28 consecutive days. Excerpt:
The smallest of the Canary Islands has achieved a file of solely utilizing wind and water energy for 28 consecutive days. . . . [T]he 1.1 million-year-old volcanic island is on path to being 100 per cent power self-sufficient by way of clear, renewable sources. Its 10,000 inhabitants and native authorities are equally dedicated to the sustainability of the island.
Wow, that’s nice! However OK Lauren, inform us extra. If the system ran on simply wind and water energy for 28 days, what occurred on days 29, 30, 31 and thereafter? Can we anticipate that with only a few tweaks the system can get to working three hundred and sixty five days a 12 months on its wind/water system with out fossil gasoline backup? Or is it the truth is nowhere near that aim? Sadly you’ll not discover any data on these topics in Ms. Mendicott’s piece.
As readers right here know, I’ve been considerably centered on the El Hierro undertaking for a number of years, as a result of it’s the closest factor on the planet to an try and construct an illustration undertaking to point out that wind energy mixed with power storage can create a fully-functioning electrical energy grid with out fossil gasoline backup. I’ve had quite a few items over time coping with the outcomes of the El Hierro undertaking, most just lately this one on September 30, 2023. My conclusion from the info accessible at the moment:
The Gorona del Viento undertaking (wind generators and a pumped storage reservoir) on El Hierro Island off Spain fails worse and worse yearly.
The El Hierro system has wind generators and power storage from a pumped hydro system with nameplate capability seemingly effectively in extra of peak electrical energy utilization on the island. So theoretically they need to don’t have any downside getting all of their electrical energy from the wind/storage system — proper? And but, while you take a look at their annual knowledge, by some means they solely appear to common about 50% of annual electrical energy from the wind/storage system. Generally it will get to 70% or so for a number of months, however then at different instances it drops again to as little as round 30%. Once I visited the Gorona del Viento web site again in September, I discovered knowledge for what it claimed as hours of operation on “100% renewable” era for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 — and nothing thereafter. For some motive, that they had stopped reporting these knowledge after 2020. The numbers have been 2300 hours in 2018, 1905 in 2019, and 1293 in 2020 — a relatively precipitous ongoing decline. On condition that there are 8760 hours in a non-leap 12 months (24 x 365 — seemingly past Ms. Mendicott’s math abilities) these numbers characterize shockingly small percentages of the annual operation of the system, declining from 26.3% in 2018 to solely 14.7% in 2020 (a bissextile year with 8784 hours).
Going again to the Gorona del Viento website at this time, I discover the identical determine of 1293 hours of “100% renewable” era for 2020, and no subsequent knowledge. Perhaps these knowledge are lurking someplace within the Spanish-language parts of the location the place I can’t discover them. However by some means I believe that if that they had some nice information to report on that topic, it will be entrance and heart.
El Hierro is blessed with a uncommon near-perfect website for a pumped-storage hydro facility, with a volcano rising practically straight up from the ocean and a giant crater on the highest to retailer the water. Here’s a image of the shoreline, with the mountain rising practically perpendicular out of the water:
And but, regardless of having such a uncommon near-perfect website for a big pumped hydro storage facility, the El Hierro system doesn’t have practically the power storage wanted to supply full-time electrical energy from the wind/storage system. It will must multiply its storage capability by at the very least an order of magnitude to return near 100% electrical energy from this method. In the meantime, most of its electrical energy comes from a backup diesel generator — a reality nowhere talked about in Ms. Mendicott’s piece.
So, is the piece mere incompetence, or intentional fraud? A number of components would appear to provide sturdy help to the inference of intentional fraud — failure to say the diesel backup in any respect; failure to say the variety of hours in every current 12 months the place the diesel backup needed to be known as into exercise to maintain the lights on, and whether or not that variety of hours was trending up or down; failure even to contemplate how a lot power storage can be wanted to allow the system to function full time with out the diesel backup, and whether or not there are any plans to supply that quantity of storage or at what price. Is it doable that somebody might write a chunk on this topic with out even being conscious of those points? You be the choose!
