“A 3-MW wind turbine contains up to 4.7 tons of copper”
COPPER. I live near one of the largest copper mines on earth. I helped manage a smaller copper mine for 8 years. Observation: VRE-battery supporters are completely out of touch with the costs and fossil fuel / environmental impacts associated with copper mining & production. /1 pic.twitter.com/zBclcOfpOE
— B.F. Randall (@brandall9481) September 25, 2022
Another grid buckles;
Polish power grid operator PSE asked some companies to lower power use on Friday evening, while generators will need to provide extra capacity to boost reserves for the peak demand hours.
PSE announced the ‘danger period’ during which there would be a lack of sufficient reserves in the system would run from 1700-1900 GMT.
While the announcement of the danger period marks a precedent, the grid manager regularly pays fees to power plants to keep generators on standby and to industrial users to be ready to cut their consumption.
PSE said the announcement would not affect regular energy consumers and was not immediately available for further comment, Poland’s climate ministry said it was monitoring the situation.
“I have called for the energy security team to convene. The situation is due to low winds and renewable energy today. Power reserves are being refilled. We are not threatened by a blackout,” Minister of Climate and Environment Anna Moskwa wrote on Twitter.
This seems like a good time to introduce the Board of Directors of SaskPower, the people responsible for bringing this system to our economy. You’ll be impressed by depth of their electrical generation credentials.
Last one to drive in California, turn out the lights.
From an acquaintance visiting Cape Breton Highlands National park.
” Our tax dollars! Yes, up there in the National Park, 4 charging stations able to charge 8 vehicles at a time for free and no cellphone service within a 15K distance in each direction!”
Parks Canada- Electric vehicle charging stations
A rising number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries has spurred New York City’s public housing authority to propose entirely banning e-bikes from their buildings. But the causes are not so simple, the solutions fiendishly complex, and the repercussions potentially devastating to thousands of hard-pressed delivery workers.
New York City firefighters have responded to 26 battery-based fires in public housing since 2021, according to reporting from The City. That includes fires in early August that killed a 5-year-old girl and 36-year-old woman in Harlem, and a death and injury in The Bronx. And battery-based fires are rising elsewhere in the city resulting in 73 injuries and five deaths, according to Canary Media, with 130 investigations so far this year. It’s a sharp upturn from 104 battery fire calls the year before, 44 in 2020, and 30 in 2019.
Prayers are being answered.
Russia has indefinitely suspended the operations of the Nordstream pipeline. Europe is now cut off.
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 4, 2022
“So here are 5 coal miners pushing a battery car to the coal mine to charge up.”
Soaring energy costs are fueling inflation, undermining the euro currency, and disrupting factories as Russia squeezes supplies to the continent amid its six-month war on Ukraine. With Europe already heading toward recession, failure to contain the crisis threatens to spur social unrest and political upheaval if the supply crunch prompts blackouts and cold homes this winter.
The continent relies heavily on liquefied natural gas imports to fill the gap left by Russia, but competition for the fuel with Asia has intensified after a relative lull earlier this summer. Asian prices are also surging as utilities there rush to secure supplies ahead of the cold season.
European Union energy ministers may hold an emergency meeting to discuss price spikes as leaders strike a more urgent tone. Member states have already earmarked almost $280 billion to ease the price burden but that is unlikely to be enough, while more than half of UK households risk being pushed into energy poverty with bills likely to rise by roughly 80% from October. […]
The rally is being accelerated by Electricite de France SA’s announcement that more of its reactors will take longer to come back online after halts. Coupled with tighter hydropower supplies, that means higher demand for gas in power generation.
Electric mini digger, works for 2 hours, then requites 8 hours on a diesel generator to be fully charged. pic.twitter.com/2IZIHs88ch
— Nando (@Nandospage) September 2, 2022
Brian Zinchuk: At the moment SaskPower set a summer consumption record, wind power was generating just 4.7 % of its capacity
“Extreme heat drives up electricity consumption, and higher peaks are a sign of the growing demand for power in Saskatchewan,” said Kory Hayko, SaskPower Vice-President of Transmission and Industrial Services, in a release. “Demand will continue to grow in the coming years, and SaskPower is making significant investments in the grid to ensure that need is met with reliable and sustainable power.”
At that time of the peak, SaskPower was getting just 29 megawatts from its eight wind facilities, most of which operated under power purchase agreements. Saskatchewan has a total of 615 megawatts of nameplate wind power capacity, meaning that when the demand was highest, wind was generating just 4.7 per cent of its installed capacity.
As weather tends to track from west to east, it probably wasn’t much of as surprise, as the day before, Alberta saw its wind power generation drop to 0.5 per cent of its capacity at 4:08 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 30. At that time, Alberta was producing just 13 megawatts out of a nameplate capacity of 2,589 megawatts.
Note the word “sustainable” in the Kory Hayko quote. That’s code for “we’re paying millions for unreliable crap to appease the climate gods”.
This province sits upon thousands of years’ worth of reliable energy sources in the form of uranium, coal, oil and gas. Yet, we continue to witness purported pragmatic, conservative politicians squander our money and the stability of the electrical grid — while knowing they’re squandering our money and the stability of the grid — to appease a hard left environmental lobby who hates us and wants us dead. Enough. Enough with the virtue signalling at our expense.
We had a power outage here a couple of days ago. The power just went down, for no good reason. It happens relatively frequently, and brownouts are increasingly common. If SaskPower can’t keep the lights on during a calm, sunny Saskatchewan summer afternoon — something’s wrong.
Lithium prices have tripled in a year, so now what?
Consultancy forecasts average price cap will soar from £1,971 at present to £4,420 next April.
They have their wind turbines to keep the lights on: Restaurants, pubs, butchers, cafes and shops are among small businesses forced to close as soaring energy bills begin to bite
Just 70K miles. Maybe it’s best they go up in flames, after all.
Related, from the comments;
So I may or may not work for a foreign car company 🙂 . Biden’s recently passed “climate bill” eliminates tax credits for foreign manufactured EVs. Customers now canceling EV pre-orders in droves, with boatloads of refund $ now flooding out the door. In a way I absolutely love it because the company is infested with Biden voters, they’re constantly virtue signaling their alliance with wokesterism, all the millennials have their personal pronouns in their email signature, and “DEI” is all the rage.
What’s the phrase? “Get ******” lol
Fresh record high prices for 🇩🇪 and 🇫🇷 electricity:
German 1-year forward: €725 per MWh
French 1-year forward: €870 per MWhThe 2010-2020 average was around €41 per MWh
Russian energy weapon; French nuclear crisis; low wind production. Drought-hit hydro.
If it wasn’t for bad luck: Days after Russian state-owned energy Gazprom announced that it was temporarily halting its main natural gas pipeline to Europe (Nord Stream 1), another gas pipeline — this time the one that brings gas from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan via Russia — has gone out of operation “due to damage.”
"Wouldn't you guys rather buy some hydrogen nobody uses? Here's a field where we're probably going to make it some day." https://t.co/4vSLwadxyY pic.twitter.com/GDc352KsPH
— Tristin Hopper (@TristinHopper) August 24, 2022
@JavierBlas – Day-ahead electricity prices in Europe are eye-watering, with lots of countries setting record highs for today. Notable to see the Nordics close to €400 per MWh, and Germany at €600. Before 2020, anything above €75-100 was considered expensive
As the Finnish Prime Minister parties into the night: Fingrid has published its first estimate of the adequacy of electricity for the coming winter. The war in Europe and the exceptional situation on the energy market have increased uncertainties related to the availability of electricity. As a result of the great uncertainties, Finns should be prepared for power outages caused by possible electricity shortages this coming winter.
Bloomberg: European Power Prices Surge to Records Yet Again on Wind Dearth
The Euro slowly dying…
Reader GregN, in the comments;
We were stuck in an 8-hour travel stoppage on BC 97C Connector last night. EV drivers were sweating it out in the heat, poor dears. Quite a few tried backing up or turning around to drive against the stopped cars on the shoulder. Fortunately for them the incompetent Mounties and BC road crews were nowhere to be seen to keep them from blocking or jamming up the stoppage any further. We had no worries with a 500 km range remaining in our natural recycled dinosaur derived hydrocarbon fuel.
More people have been killed by wind turbines in just Oregon alone, than died at Three Mile Island.
In the early hours of Feb. 1, one of the spinning blades on a turbine at Portland General Electric’s Biglow Canyon wind farm in Sherman County launched into the night.
The 135-foot piece of fiberglass, wood and metal weighs more than seven tons.
It flew the full length of a football field.
An investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found that the seemingly isolated incident, which has not been publicly reported until now, is part of a pattern of maintenance problems that have undercut production at PGE’s flagship wind farm, shortchanged ratepayers and landowners, and put those who cultivate wheat under the turbines – and their cropland itself – at risk.
Related: Who needs Golden Eagles anyway?
h/t Raymond
… and Estevan (and SaskPower consumers) will suffer the consequences.
SaskPower is going to beef up its power transmission interconnect with the U.S. Southwest Power Pool (SPP), from the existing 150 megawatts to 650 megawatts. It’s a connection to 106 utilities across 14 states from North Dakota right down to include the Texas panhandle.
The idea is when they need power, and we have power to offer, we sell power into the SPP. And when we need power, we can buy it from the SPP. And for that privilege, we will pay a tariff of $52 million per year. More on that later.
This sort of interconnected grid is really important when it comes to intermittent power sources like wind and solar. Especially wind and solar. When I was typing up the initial story this morning, I checked on how Alberta’s power grid is doing. And at that moment, at 10:46 a.m., Alberta’s power grid was producing 188 megawatts out of a theoretical 2,389 megawatts of wind power connected to their grid, a measly 7.9 per cent. And this has happened numerous times this summer. I’m losing track, really. […]
Let me be clear on this – Alberta is one of the most energy-rich jurisdictions on the entire planet. It’s got more oil, natural gas and coal then almost every energy producer on the third rock from the sun, never mind wind and solar. And it is routinely, almost every single day, drawing on power production from its neighbours to keep its lights on.
And this is what I anticipate will happen in Saskatchewan. Sure, we could send power to North Dakota. But it’s more likely that we will be drawing power from the SPP, nearly all the time.
[..]
But what really got me thinking were these comments: “Over 50% of North Dakota’s power is coal fired. Carbon tax free,” said one. And that’s true. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “In 2021, coal-fired power plants provided 57 per cent of North Dakota’s electricity generation, and wind energy accounted for 34 per cent, which was the sixth-highest share from wind power for any state.”
And this comment hit home, as most of my neighbours are either coal miners or work for SaskPower.
“And no jobs here in coal. Goodbye Estevan, you’re ruined.”
[…]
And that $52 million annual fee – which I must compliment the Leader Post on finding that out. I missed that. That’s a lot of bucks. Indeed, it’s much more than what SaskPower pays the provincial government in coal royalties via its coal purchases.
Wait, what?
You got that right. We pay next to nothing for coal – at least the coal on crown land, which is most of it.
Read it all and subscribe. Then, call your SaskParty MLA and remind them what happened to the Alberta PC’s.
Related: Judge revives Obama-era ban on coal sales from US lands
