A cascade of net zero policies put Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois on a collision course with disaster when solar and wind fail.
Walz’s Climate Policies Could Leave the Midwest in the Dark
The Wall Street Journal reports Walz’s Climate Policies Could Leave the Midwest in the Dark
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz last year signed one of America’s most aggressive climate laws, mandating that 100% of the state’s electricity come from carbon-free sources by 2040. Even if he doesn’t ascend to national office, he may end up leaving not only Minnesota but other states in the dark. As we show in a new paper, politicians like Mr. Walz are destroying the electricity markets that are essential to economic success and even individual survival.
We analyzed seven Great Lakes states with connected electricity grids—Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. For decades, these states have bought and sold electricity in regional markets, benefiting from the abundance of reliable power generated from sources like coal, natural gas and nuclear. But through a combination of state mandates and utility company decisions, all of them are moving away from those reliable sources toward unreliable wind and solar power, in pursuit of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Where will states like Minnesota turn when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, two inevitable daily occurrences? Mr. Walz and net-zero backers surely assumed they could buy backup power from across the region, but other states assumed the same thing. In a classic tragedy of the commons, Mr. Walz and other leaders act as if they don’t realize their neighbors are also on track to run short of power.
Minnesota is moving to close its largest power station—the coal-fired Sherco plant—by the end of the decade. It has already shut down one of the plant’s three units, with the second going offline by 2026. The largest solar project in the Upper Midwest is supposed to replace it, but when it fails, Minnesota will have to rely on other power sources to keep the lights on.
Can it look to Wisconsin? That’s getting harder. The Badger State has its own net-zero mandate and is rapidly decommissioning power plants, while its largest utility plans to phase out coal power within a decade. Likewise Illinois, where a net-zero requirement has already contributed to power-supply issues, with multiple plant closings under way.
In 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order committing the state to net-zero emissions by 2050. The state Legislature subsequently expanded the mandate, requiring electricity providers to use 100% “clean energy” sources by 2040. Utilities are already closing coal plants, have closed nuclear ones, and are dramatically ramping up wind and solar.
When subzero temperatures sweep across the Great Lakes every January, states will increasingly ask each other for power that doesn’t exist. Ditto when heat waves crest in July and August. Factories will lose power—a death knell for competitiveness—while families will lose air conditioning or heat. In Michigan, we estimate that a wind-, solar- and battery-based grid will cause blackouts lasting as long as three days during extreme winter weather. People will die.
Michigan is cloudy most of the winter. How’s that supposed to work? And what about the cost?
It’s going to be interesting watching Ford and GM produce cars with rationed energy as costs go through the roof.
NetZero energy policies are pure fiction, and they won’t last.
The real question is whether any Midwestern infrastructure survives long enough to be useful again. If not, then the inevitable ascendency of the NatGas economy will simply be siphoned & re-routed to adjacent regions.
W.NY, W.PA, W.MD & WV should be booming, not dying.
Re-patriated mfg. + new tech/data center capacity should logically be located @ Appalachian Basin, on top of the Marcellus Formation.
Don’t forget the increased electric demand from AI. The politicians are too busy drooling over their AI profits to contemplate the impact. The only way to get them to reverse course is to have events. But in this case, they will just blame the utilities and other states.
They can buy nuclear generated electricity from Ontario.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/sunpower-bankruptcy-inflation-reduction-act-subsidies-green-energy-joe-biden-kamala-harris-a8bef0c6
Another Green Energy Subsidy Bust
SunPower files for bankruptcy, thanks in part to Biden’s tariffs.
We ignor climate change at our peril. In reality the world is having a tough time changing into a cleaner energy system. The benfits are there and can be transitioned into in a constructive way.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/ip3/www.brookings.edu.icohttps://www.brookings.edu › wp-content › uploads › 2019 › 10 › Environmental-Facts_WEB.pdf
PDF Ten Facts about the Economics of Climate Change and Climate Po
INTRODUCTION: SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND FACTS
1. Damages to the U.S. economy grow with temperature change at an increasing rate.
2. Struggling U.S. counties will be hit hardest by climate change.
3. Globally, low-income countries will lose larger shares of their economic output.
4. Increased mortality from climate change will be highest in Africa and the Middle East.
5. Energy intensity and carbon intensity have been falling in the U.S. economy.
6. The price of renewable energy is falling.
7. Some emissions abatement approaches are much more costly than others.
8. Numerous carbon pricing initiatives have been introduced worldwide, and the prices vary significantly.
9. Most global GHG emissions are still not covered by a carbon pricing initiative.
10. Proposed U.S. carbon taxes would yield significant reductions in CO2 and environmental benefits in excess of the costs.
The IRA inflation reduction act works on many of these areas. I believe the 1.5*C increase in temperature is already here. With the latest record setting El Nino, we reached 1.64*C over the preindustrial average. It appears global warming may going faster than we thought. Many things have benefits down the road for having a cleaner easier to live in society than one of dirty prolonged fossil fuel use.
Net-zero emissions can be achieved only through a universal transformation of energy and land-use systems
–Power, consisting of electricity and heat generation: 30 percent of CO₂ emissions, and 3 percent of nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions5
— Industry, consisting of various industrial processes, including production of steel, cement, and chemicals, and extraction and refining of oil, gas, and coal: 30 percent of CO₂ emissions, 33 percent of methane emissions, 8 percent of N₂O emissions
— Mobility, consisting of road, aviation, rail, maritime, and other forms of transportation: 19 percent of CO₂ emissions, and 2 percent of N₂O emissions
— Buildings, including heating and cooking: 6 percent of CO₂ emissions — Agriculture, consisting of direct on-farm energy use and emissions from agricultural practices and fishing: 1 percent of CO₂ emissions, 38 percent of methane emissions, and 79 percent of N₂O emissions
— Forestry and other land use, primarily land cover change: 14 percent of CO₂ emissions, 5 percent of methane emissions, and 5 percent of N₂O emissions
— Waste, consisting of solid waste disposal and treatment, incineration, and wastewater treatment: 23 percent of methane emissions, 3 percent of N₂O emissions
And then there are external costs not included in what fossil fuels does to us that will cost us dearly. Sea level rise alone will shift a lot of factors on our largest cities in the world on the different coasts.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/clean-energy-12-trillion-savings
The world would save at least $12 trillion by phasing out fossil fuels and shifting to renewable energy by 2050, according to a new analysis from the University of Oxford.
“Renewable costs have been trending down for decades. They are already cheaper than fossil fuels in many situations and, our research shows, they will become cheaper than fossil fuels across almost all applications in the years to come,” Doyne Farmer, an economist at Oxford and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “And, if we accelerate the transition, they will become cheaper faster. Completely replacing fossil fuels with clean energy by 2050 will save us trillions.”
Extrapolating from recent trends, the new study takes a more optimistic view of future clean energy costs. Researchers modeled a scenario in which solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles, and other green technologies displace fossil fuels by mid-century, with the world using 55 percent more energy than it does today. In that scenario, the shift to increasingly cheap renewable technologies would save upwards of $12 trillion, far more than if countries continue burning fossil fuels past 2050. The findings were published in the journal Joule.
And without reading all the comments my immediate response to the headline would be: And yet it won’t change how the 4 knucklehead states vote. They like much of American are voting for their own demise as they, like Mish, focus on the demeanor of one candidate over the disastrous energy (illegal immegration, crime, funding of police, etc) policies of the left. None of the garbage that folks focus on will matter if they can’t heat their home in winter in the states mentioned. Just keep pulling the blue lever and saying how bad Trump is, ignore the buffoon candidate on the left, don’t even mention her name or how she was simply selected in the name of saving democracy /sarc.
Their energy policy alone should deter voters but it won’t. Until they are effing freezing and in the dark wondering why the Republicans/Trump did this to them.
As we know … our resident Green Groopie Genius — Jeff Green … is on the job…
He is buying up thousands upon thousands of used Tesla vehicles… and we have been laughing at Jeff…
But Jeff will have the last laugh…. because he is parking them in lots around the mid west and wiring up the batteries charging them off the grid… storing the energy… then when the black outs hit … Jeff is gonna feed the stored power into the grid (for a big fee)… and power up the midwest.
Well done Jeff… we applaud you for your Genius… bravo bravo … all hail Jeff Green
So he’s solved the problem of storing energy? Please share.
Nuclear will solve the world’s energy needs. After WW3, the demand for electrical power will be greatly reduced.
Why nuclear power will never supply the world’s energy needs https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html
The End of Cheap Uranium (Cornell University Research) https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.3617 https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production.aspx
Yes, what I call the Impoverish and Kill Minnesotans by 2040 Act
NetZero == Mass Murder
Is that not obvious?
In 20 years, when people start dying, will these people then be strung up from lampposts?
I’d pay money to attend that event.
Zaporizhzia nuke is burning.
This is great! The voters will actually get to experience getting what they voted for!
The most important question is how people will heat their homes with zero emissions.
Even specialized cold climate heat pump stop working on the coldest days. The choices are gas or electric resistance heating.
Electric heating causes a huge increase in electricity demand exactly when the wind and solar are lowest.
Gordian knot has a good discussion https://open.substack.com/pub/jackdevanney/p/the-jacobson-roadmap?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=kv1m5
If you mandate zero emissions, the choices are rationally regulated nuclear energy at much lower cost, dying in the cold, or hoping for a magic technology.
Mad Max in Ohio … Net Zero = Population Zero. We are carbon based life forms who exhale CO2 with every breath.
Nancy impeached Biden. The lame duck Biden might take Bibi with him, if he signs a ceasefire with Hamas on Aug 15, for Biden’s legacy.
As Bibi has said, he’s the most powerful man in America. He’s not going anywhere with Bidet.
Depleted Uranium penetrate bunkers and tanks. Depleted U bombs were not used in
Ukraine. There are plenty depleted U barrels buried in storages.
I expect nuclear to quickly come into the picture before that happens, around Mach 10.
Nope. Nuclear is still a minor player and will remain so for quite some time. It provides less than 19% of US electricity, which equates to less than 4% of all energy use. There are no plans for new US nuclear plants because they cannot make a case for profitable operation. Lots of hype though.
Sad it true. What’s really odd is the only group that can build a nuclear plant on budget and on schedule is the Navy.
Nuclear is often touted as cheap power.
It is cheap, very very cheap.
Now, safe nuclear power, like the kind that is virtually guaranteed not to blow up and spew radiation all over, is very very expensive. That’s the kind of nuclear power we want and desire, and it’s not cheap at all.
Not even in the realm of reality. As Silicon said, the tech is plenty safe and proven for decades in the Navy.
Just out of curiosity, do you even wonder how much just one aircraft carrier nuclear power plant could power? Those two reactors the size of a semi truck could power 110,000 homes, based on the older reactors in a study back in 2006. Now? Those reactors have 27% more output, so almost 140,000 homes from a reactor that could fit in a parking lot.
And yes, it could be pretty cheap and is already safe.
Wanna guess how much an aircraft carrier costs?
You make wild claims but do not at all consider costs.
The cost per MW of an aircraft carrier to power a city very high indeed.
You claim it’s cheap without any data.
Based on data, nuclear is currently the most expensive form of power in the USA that is widely utilized.
??? You think I’m proposing parking an aircraft carrier in a town for power?
The point is, the nuclear power plant, not the costs of building an aircraft carrier to power a town…
You are lost in the conversation. There are far cheaper nuclear power plants already in use by the Navy that are available, and have been for decades.
No, the Navy does not in fact have a cheaper nuclear plant. And no, they haven’t been available for decades.
Ask me how I know? Cause my dad ran a Navy nuclear reactor in the Idaho desert for nearly 20 years. It was not cheap power by any means and no, it wasn’t cheaper than gas or oil. He was literally the guy who ran the place.
Nuclear is the most expensive power in the USA today except geothermal. It’s expensive to run because of the fail safes that must be in place.
You literally are making stuff up because it suits you. You can make up whatever you want, but that doesn’t make it true.
All the data available states that nuclear is expensive. It’s reliable and useful, but it’s not at all cheap.
And….in case you ask why the Navy ran a nuclear reactor in the Idaho Desert, like 900 miles from the ocean.
They had a reactor out there to train nuclear sub guys. If you were on a nuclear sub in the 1980’s and 1990’s you trained at the reactor my dad ran. Everyone did.
Nuclear on an aircraft carrier is possible because the ocean is the cooling mechanism and no back up is needed. Wanna know how much it would cost to do that on land, above grade?
An order of magnitude.
Additional expenses for ground based nuclear vs. ships:
Errr … you don’t need to park the entire carrier somewhere.
Coal plants dump rare earth minerals into rivers as toxic materials. The “wastewater rule” force 24 coal plants to shut down in the midwest and 75 in the US. Between 11AM and 4PM, when the sun shines, during peak consumption, solar energy dominates. It clogs for 5hr other energy sources in the pipeline, rendering coal and nuke unprofitable redundancy. High tech PGH loves it. They improved storage capacity to use what we got for free that charges ev batteries in 10/15 min, while drivers buy junk food and drinks. Senator Casey is fully committed to the “wastewater rule”.
Not sure what the point was (I think you’re supportive), but frankly, the acid rain poison and other particulate crap from Ohio power plants coming into Western PA can just stay there. If the rule stops that, then I’m all for it. Boo-hoo if the power generation has to either install better pollution controls, switch to NG, or shut down. After all, in Western PA, most of the profits go to a Singapore investment group, so screw them.
More mandates. This time for 2040 and 2050. Easy to say and far enough away to be meaningless.
One thing to consider is that demand for electricity is growing far more rapidly now than it has in the past; thanks in part to EVs, AI, and Crypto.
Personally, I expect a boom in the build-out of natural gas plants for electricity generation. They are the most cost effective and quickest-to-build solution to our growing electricity demands.
And the US has lots of natgas, and it’s very cheap right now; the equivalent of $13 oil. And natgas emissions are half of coal. We could reduce our emissions a fair bit by replacing coal generation with natgas.
How do u invest in this PapaDave??
With natural gas producers. Diamondback, Tourmaline, Canadian Natural, NuVista.
THe USA is flaring off a very high percentage of it’s NG anyway, especially in N. Dakota. It’s a total waste. May as well get some power from it.
Yes. Flaring is a waste. But it is less than you think. It has decreased from 1.3% in 2018 to 0.5% in 2023. Companies don’t want to waste it either.
I thought Exxon’s plan to use flaring to power Bitcoin mining was a stroke of genius.
They found a way to capitalize a loss. Good for them.
Yep. Look for innovative ways to waste less and profit more. Win, win.
To use it outside ND you’d need to use a pipeline, that will never get built.
Except the same NetZero Climate Zealots seeking to end civilization and humanity will not allow nat gas. It sill produces CO2
The sick thing is none of these people has ANY idea what they are talking about
How is it that our Australopithecus and following ancestors were able to survive when the earth was more than 20 degrees warmer and CO2 levels 50% higher prior to the onset of the last glaciation period 2.4 million years ago? A time when there was essentially NO ice in the arctic, no polar bears either. They had not evolved yet, because no ice.
How was mankind able to survive the sea level rise ONLY from the end of the end of that glaciation period 15,000 years ago of over 400 feet?
I wrote a humorous piece patterned on Galileos Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems on bangpath.substack.com that goes over some of the history
Nope. Please send a link to where you are getting your information from. Because it is all wrong.
Australopithecus lived between 3.7 and 2.8 million years ago; not 2.4 million years ago.
During that time period CO2 levels were 400 ppm, which is lower than today’s 420+ ppm; and certainly not 50% higher.
Temperatures were just 1.5C warmer than today; not 20 degrees warmer.
Which is where we are headed over the coming century. About another 1.5C warmer.
And sea levels were 40 feet higher. Which is also where we are headed in the next 200 years.
If there was no ice at all, sea levels would have been 250 feet higher.
And there have been many glacial/interglacial periods in the last 3 million years; not one. In just the last million years there have been eleven, each lasting roughly 90,000 to 100,000 years.
The GENUS Australopithecus lasted from roughly 4.2 to 2.0 million years ago. If you two knuckleheads are inferring, incorrectly, that “Lucy” is the only species within the “Australopithecus” genus then Lucy’s species (Australopithecus afarensis) lived between 3.9 and 3 million years ago.
In a nut shell you are both correct and both wrong at the same time. Horray!!!!
I couldn’t give two fucks about the climate change shit so continue to banter back and forth like children. Reading these conversations is the equivalent to the arguments my friends and I would have when I was boy about whether the Sega Genesis was better than Super Nintnendo. My God what a waste of time that was.
Neither of us mentioned Lucy.
Yes, I was referring to Australopithecus afarensis. But that was not what I considered important.
As usual, my goal was to dispel the misinformation that often appears here on climate; in particular his statements on CO2 levels and temperature which were way off.
Unlike you, I do care about climate change. I find it fascinating. It’s a problem that will lead to quite an upheaval in our world and we seem incapable of dealing with it. I also recognize that there is nothing I can personally do about it; other than look for ways to take advantage of the situation.
The fact that you don’t care about it at all is also interesting to me.
And yes, I will continue to address the topic. Please feel free to ignore me.
Nope, don’t care. Nothing I can do about it (man caused climate change), assuming it’s even a real thing, so why worry or even think about it? I live my life around things I have direct control over. I suppose one could take advantage of it monetarily if they wanted (just like with alot of things), but I’m good on that front. I’d rather spend my time wood working, with my family, and enjoying the nature that surrounds my home. You seem to have a great interest in this topic and that’s great, but the ego driven need to correct others is a fool’s game (and I don’t fancy you as a fool). Go spend time with your family or continue researching your energy sector equities. You’ll be happier, and you’ll have something to show for your time.
Also, you may want to chose your words a bit more carefully because the statement below is full of claimed certainties that you can’t possibly know are factually true at this point in time.
“It’s a problem that will lead to quite an upheaval in our world and we seem incapable of dealing with it.”
Revised:
“It’s a problem that MAY lead to quite an upheaval in our world and we MAY BE incapable of dealing with it.”
Take care buddy.
Thanks for your reply.
If you have read some of what I have posted here, you will notice I frequently mention my focus on health, wealth, family and friends. But I am not here to discuss my health, family, or friends.
Good luck to you.
Some folks enjoy virtue signaling.
Energy is life. A forced transition away from hydrocarbon energy will cause mass human suffering, mass human starvation and mass death. Mass murder in other words. It must be stopped by ANY means.
You may not care about question one, which is whether there is a problem or not. Fine.
But to not care about question 2, which is what, if anything to do about it, when the oligarch imposed solution currently being illegally forced on all of humanity necessarily involves the murder of civilization itself, is immoral.
You did not read what I wrote in the comment
And yeah I know it wasnt one monolithic glaciation period. But the SERIES started 2.4 million years ago
And the TEMP, at least in northern Greenland, WAS reportedly 50 degrees warmer than today. And Siberia was 20 degrees warmer in the same time frame. ROW? I dont know
Links are all int he piece I wrote and referenced above. You can read it there.
**rolls eyes** We here in the Midwest will do just fine thank you
“Net Zero Climate Policies Could Leave the Midwest in the Dark”
Coupled with Net Zero farming, left starving. Was reading that an AI search required 10X the energy consumption of a standard search. AI data centers will be energy hogs.
Agenda ignores common sense and scientific reality. Chris Martinson, on his Peak Prosperity YTube, said the math doesn’t work. Well, maybe it does for the copper thieves in L.A., but hundreds of street lights are out, due to their efforts.
“Was reading that an AI search required 10X the energy consumption of a standard search.”
And return results 1/10th as precise….
It does,however, facilitate transferring 10x the wealth from productive people to the; at best; 1/10th the brain power of Page/Brin, rank imbeciles who make up the Fed enriched “investor” classes.
Which is all it was ever designed to do. No different from any other area of life in the #Dumbage….
Storage is getting better awfully fast. I’d bet on this being a non issue.
Now, if you turned off all the gas and coal plants tomorrow, you’d certainly have a problem. But 15 years from now? 15 years ago an electric car that would go 300+ miles and could be recharged in an hour was a pipedream fantasy.
Things get better all the time. The future is bright.
Nonsense. Solar hardly produces in upper midwestern states in main winter periods. What will you charge the batteries with? Batteries are still very expensive on a grid level.
The future is dark with ridiculous mandates. The baseload plants will close much sooner than 2040. With the The cost of a grid dominated by intermittent/seasonal power plants is unknown. The only countries with grids dominated by intermittent/seasonal power have abundant hydro power to provide a battery and baseload.
The availability of magical technologies at an arbitrary future date is unknowable. Perhaps nuclear and geothermal will be developed cost effectively although huge challenges remain for both. There are as many unknowns on the demand side as supply side with Democrats mandating huge increases in power demands in transportation and heat as well as huge new demands from generative AI.
A sensible approach is goals, not mandates. Goals can have many conditions that ensure power availability at reasonable costs.
I think we’re at like 40 percent renewable here (CO and NM) already and there’s been no issue at all even though those numbers have ramped up really, really fast over the last decade. Shrug. If the power isn’t available to run things, the policy/goal/mandate will just get abandoned anyway, so why worry about it?
The advocates’ & rulers’ backup plan if power isn’t available to run things is that those things are not and should not be run.
To the extent they can anticipate that they will prohibit those things in advance.
Nope. CO is not 40% wind/solar. Misinformation. Wind/solar are not dispatchable power. They may produce too much at some times and nothing during other times. The grid demands 24/7 dispatchable power, not intermittent/seasonal power. Wind/solar have backup NG generators and perhaps some storage now. The backup NG plants run inefficiently with more pollution than using them as baseload power generation.
The Independence Institute did a study about the amount of battery storage needed in Colorado to power their Utopian power dreams. The II estimated that the Democrat plan for intermittent/seasonal power coupled with battery storage will $628B by 2040 but also incur substantial reliability problems.
Not true about the dangers of mandates. The mandates have already forced the closure of many baseload power plants. CO has an excellent coal fired plant that has an anticipated lifetime until 2070. Democrats are forcing the closure in 2030, 40 years ahead of its projected lifetime. By the time that the public understands power generation failures, it will be too late to change without enormous costs. Of course, Democrats will blame everyone but themselves for grid failures and costs.
Don’t forget “Leave them Broke too”
Same old story: Stupid is as stupid votes.
Martin Armstrong one hour interview on the world economics and politics!!
URGE SEE!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kjuUrES4oI&t=68s
I used to listen to Armstrong until I realized that his forecasting machine based on ‘quantum mechanics’ was bunk. He does say the ‘right things’ and I do agree with many of his opinions but therein lies the danger – a flim flam man will attempt to appeal to your ego and biases. Listen to him if you wish, but be warned.
I pretty much agree. Martin is definitely self-important and the predictions are interesting but take them accordingly.
So many fools, follies and failures from leftist losers; how do we count the ways?
Greens want nuclear power banned, that is the best source of free CO2 electricity.
Maybe California must sue green NGOs for promoting global warming.
I’ll further add that there are a lot of ways to deal with carbon problems:
I live in Florida where the sun shines plenty and strongly. A friend put in a solar water heater in one part of his house. It was *ok* at best and often generated lots of lukewarm water (ie first shower was nice and hot, 2nd and subsequent were warm then cold) when used heavily.
Gas is VASTLY more efficient than solar or electric for heating water.
Lastly, not sure why you didn’t suggest the most obvious solution. Tankless heating of water. No need to waste any power keeping heated water that’s not in use. Just heat as required. They are great, you should check them out.
Solar is way more efficient when built correctly.
I engineered my own. IT’s basically 100 feet of copper pipe under glass screwed to a metal 4×8 sheet metal. THere’s a circulation pump that works for 3 hours a day and pumps the water to my electric water heater. The water in the tank is 195 on most days and will last over 130 for about 3-4 days. I have a mixing valve which reduces the temp for in home use, to make it safe. The 195 temp serves as a time buffer, giving an extra 2-3 days before the temp falls below 130. I super insulated my tank with R50 insulation, so that it loses heat very very slowly. If, at any time, the water temp falls below 130, the electric water heater kicks on and heats it back up. However, it never falls below 130, ever, from late Feb until late Nov. Costs just 12 cents a month in power usage to power the circulation pump.
There is absolutely no way a nat gas powered water heater can compete with that.
DUring the months of Dec and Jan, I take it offline because the pipes on the roof will freeze at night, even though I drain them. It’s not worth the risk so I just drain the system.
A solar water heater, built well, should cost less than .50 a month once built. Nothing competes with that. Nothing. It’s basically free.
If this is so great, why haven’t you formed a company and sell this to consumers. Sounds like you’d be a billionaire quickly as the government would be happy to send to a ton of cash to make this work.
I imagine 100 ft of copper pipe costs a LOT of money these days (there is a reason everyone using PVC these days and drifters stealing copper wire in homes). Can’t imagine what the sheet metal and rest of this cost. You will quote a cost of when you made it (whenever that was) but I bet this costs thousands to make now and needs a lot of surface area (100 ft is a lot of pipe).
How big is your hot water tank? If you drain it entirely, how long to refill with hot water. In say my house we need to have 4 people shower in 1 hr in the mornings and I doubt I’m alone in that.
My gas tankless hot water heater creates infinite hot water (ie until the gas or water runs out).
THere are billionaires in China who have done exactly this.
Their product isn’t sold in the USA because of……tariffs.
Tariffs on China’s solar products hurt Americans.
I do know a few people in the area though that have made what I have made.
It’s easy to make it for 500 bucks, but it’s not pretty. A pretty version would cost over 1k to produce.
You can buy them for 3k however on Ebay if you want. They work fantastic. THey are incredibly popular in Asia and almost every house has one. They aren’t used here for the same reason Americans use black shingles (the worst product for reflecting solar radiation) instead of more reflective roofs like most of the world uses. We like appearances rather than practicality.
To answer your question:
My tank is 50 gallons. I have a wife and three kids, one of whom I have to yell at multiple times a week to get out because she spend 30 min in there doing nothing.
I have never once run out of hot water. Not once in 11 years living here.
Half inch copper pipe sells for 2 bucks a foot, so 100 feet of it is 200 bucks. SHeet metal to screw it to (heat exchange essentially) is another 100, glass is 200 and maybe 100 bucks for misc parts and 100 bucks for insulation. Could probably make a nicer one with a tig welder for 1k today. Stuff has gone up, for sure.
The circulation pump runs from 11 AM to 3 PM and the water at the end of the day is at 195. It shuts off automatically at 195 because any hotter risks blowout.
195 degrees of 50 gallons is equivalent to about 120 gallons of 130 degree water in terms of hot water storage, since the hot water must be mixed with cold water to lower the temp to a safe use. It doesn’t always get that hot but most days it does.
For me, it works. It’s .12 a month to use and I’ve never run out. Obviously it wouldn’t work for commercial use but for residential, it works just fine, and does for most people around the world.
Believe it or not, there are more people in the world who use solar water heaters than use electric.
You are obviously a southerner.
Yes, I live in NC. Solar water heaters work well here.
The Math changes in Minnesota for sure. Probably would only work for like 6 months there. Here they work well for like 10 monthsl
I hope that as soon as possible that a perfect storm of a week of freezing blizzards strike those states and the power fails with a few tens of thousands of deaths. Seems cruel but that sort of catastrophe is needed to wake the West up to the stupidity of green mandates and unreliable power and we can quickly start up the mothballed conventional plants.
If such a storm is delayed for another decade then the death toll could hit millions and by then all the mothballed nuclear, gas and coal fired plants will have been demolished making a U turn take years.
I like solar and wind power. I like the idea a lot.
I also like having uninterrupted power.
The only way solar and wind will make economic sense for the masses is when storage is sufficiently built to tide over the cloudy, non windy days. There are neat things happening in this space.
I personally believe that lithium can be a solution. I believe people are resilient and creative and when allowed to be free to invent things, they do. Lithium used to be scarce. Then, a lot of demand was created for it and viola! People discovered massive deposits of the stuff everywhere. I predicted there would be a lithium glut and I was right. The known deposits now are sufficient for decades of increasing use, once it’s mined which it isn’t.
I also believe that lifted weights can be a creative solution….pumped hydro in mountainous areas and weights in flat areas. Expensive to build but once built will last generations.
It will take time to do all of this.
Anyone who says it can be done by 2030 is nuts. Maybe 2130.
The base issue is the ideology, a fallacy, that there is such a thing as clean mass energy production. People do live off the grid, but a manufacturing unit cannot. Minnesota and Wisconsin have approximately 54 to 58 percent sunny days a year. Even with vast lithium reserves, the batteries will not store enough energy to compensate for lost sun days.
Energy production on a scale is a dirty process; it will always be messy, no matter the technology used. Lithium mining is multiple times worse than the inhumanity of diamond mines using slaves. It also tears up the earth. According to a recent paper, wind and fiber blades are equal to asbestos. They can’t be recycled, and the fine particles are hazardous.
This is why our Sun is so far away; it is a ball of dirty energy that we enjoy from a distance. There is now much more straightforward nuclear, and it uses spent fuel rods from older nuclear plants that can now be recycled. But, as usual, political forces get in the way of logical progress.
“Sufficient storage” is already there in the form of coal and natural gas. Carving up mountains, processing huge amounts of lithium (if it can be found), or other schemes of this type would consume massive amounts of energy.
Hopefully by 2130 this would be unnecessary – fusion or something better should be up and running then.
I don’t buy the “lithium is dirtier than coal” argument.
If you compare mining lithium to mining coal and only the quantities of earth displaced, then yes, lithium is dirtier.
Coal however is 1x use. Lithium, especially as the tech to recycle gets going, is usable thousands of times. Lithium per kw hour stored is already used many hundreds of times more than coal is.
Lithium can be part of a closed loop recycling program, and parts of it already are. Coal cannot be recycled at all.
That’s a huge problem for coal going forward. There are sufficient quantities of lithium already in the USA to meet all current demands of it and future demands for many decades, especially since the largest deposit every found in the world was found in the last year in a worthless piece of land out West in a desert where no one cares. Water will be a problem though.
However, I am with you on fusion.
I don’t know if fusion is technically possible, especially with the tritium problem (it would take thousands of years to generate enough tritium to power the world). A current fusion understanding is that a fusion reactor generates just enough tritium to sustain itself, plus a tiny bit more that can, after many months or years, be removed from several plants to produce more fusion plants. To get enough plants going is thought by some to take hundreds or even a thousand years, and that’s if fusion can even be sustained long enough to generate power.
Some people think funding fusion research is going to be fruitless….but I think the risk is worth it. It may prove fruitless but the payoff if it works will be more revolutionary than the discovery of electricity or the computer revolution was.
Fusion research is exciting to me, even if I don’t understand all the science of it.
Not sure Lifted weights / pumping water up hill will ever scale to the level that’s going to be needed. You’d need incredibly large water reservoirs at the top and bottom and you’d need to prevent that water from ultimately going anywhere (ie evaporation, draining out at the bottom part via river etc). Try building damns and flooding large areas these days and you’ll have environmentalists all over you to prevent it.
Nuclear is the only viable path forward for picking up the slack when wind/solar etc aren’t available. There are much better options than there were 40 years ago when all the plants had to be able to make nuclear material for bombs. Then we need to get over the NIMBY argument of where to put them and where to put the long term waste.
Example:
https://npshistory.com/brochures/laro/grand-coulee-dam-pump.pdf
the reservoir is Banks Lake.
Never said it didn’t work. There is one such place near where I grew up in Canada. But it’s not really that large a scale (ie can only power a couple thousand homes) and it’s not really viable in the winter (ice).
THere are about 200k different places that have been identified as good locations for pumped hydro. BEcause of that, it’s not considered a problem for nearly any location, especially since the water is constantly recycled and there are very efficient ways to reduce or almost eliminate evaporation.
Most people are unaware of just how good of a battery pumped hydro is or that it can work even in flatter locations. They are building them all over the world right now.
200K places. How many would we actually need to build to supply the WHOLE COUNTRY with power during night / times wind isn’t blowing?
Do we need to build 1000 such places, 10000 such places, 50000 such places? Then how much does each one cost and what’s the maintenance (you have to maintain those pumps for decades or longer).
Finally, to make this viable, you have to generate enough wind and solar during the day to power all the homes and businesses PLUS enough extra to pump all the water back up the hills so it can flow back at night to power things all during the night time. That means the total power needed during the daytime is everything we use now plus everything we use all night which is probably 30% more than we use during the day time now. It’s an incredible amount of extra power needed to make this work.
Then what’s the plan in the winter time in the northern states. Frozen water (ice) doesn’t pump back up hill.
Finally we still haven’t factored in all the newly needed power for EV’s (if they take off at a real scale) or AI (and AI uses power on the order of small cities for 1-2 AIs).
It’s a cool idea and it obviously works. But it’s not going to scale enough to matter for the evenings.
I think it actually will.
Pumped hydro does work in the winter.
THey are now using old abandoned mines to store and pump water. MInes do not freeze, even in Minnesota, though I doubt they are being considered there.
I don’t think it’s a valid argument to say, or even insist that one form of energy must supply all the power. I think it’s fair to say that a mix that works for the local area would be best.
Geothermal works great in Iceland but not so good in NYC. Hydro works great in Idaho (over 90 percent of power there is hydro, but not so good for NEbraska. Wind works great (with storage) in Texas, but not so good in Maine.
THe problem with current levels of green energy is the lack of storage Texas froze not because they had wind and the wind stopped, but because of design flaws and lack of storage.
Pumped storage can be used and scaled nearly everywhere. Obviously, water is going to be a problem in the Sahara but then again no one lives there and solar is a better fit for that area.
Here’s a list of possible locations where it would work: There’s actually 600k locations, which means it can be used basically anywhere.
https://re100.anu.edu.au/#share=g-e5955e35f1c7f3677ac265bcddb4c30b
You did not respond to the reply by TexasTim65. The possibility to build pumped hydro does not indicate the feasibility of a grid dominated by intermittent/seasonal power production and pumped hydro storage. If pumped hydro is a magical technology, why is there little adoption in the USA?
Because there hasn’t been demand for it until the last few years.
It takes a decade or so to get one built, much like a hydroelectric project.
THere are several in the works right now. As demand for storage increases, there’s going to be more….because capitalism demands it.
I’m a capitalist because it works.