It seems that one of the major objectives of the Biden administration, and I guess all Democratic politicians, is to dismantle everything that built this nation and made it great, and of course to spend us into oblivion without acknowledging any consequence for their actions.
The one warped initiative that may end up being the most painful is the push to shut off the energy spigot and somehow replace it with fairy dust and unicorn farts.
Yes, I’m talking about the fantasy that green “renewable” energy can replace our current, efficient and abundant fuel sources like coal, oil and gas – and, of course, our cleanest and greenest source of energy, nuclear, which the left will barely acknowledge.
It was a grave concern of various myopic gloom and doomers for decades – the fear that we will reach “peak oil” soon, that discovery and production will decline and eventually just run out. Then what do we do?
The theory has been around since 1956 and “refers to the hypothetical point at which global crude oil production will hit its maximum rate, after which production will start to decline.”
But somehow, we just keep finding massive reserves of that awful oil and gas, and ingenious ways to extract it, so consequently, we hear much less from the “peak oil” crowd. They were merely replaced by other gloom and doomers: the green weenies.
And that leads us to today, where hopes (and promises) abound that green energy can somehow replace all current fuel sources.
And how? Well with wind farms and solar panels. Woke big tech firms like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple are all touting their pledge to become 100% renewable in less than a decade. Of course, they all remain attached to the “dirty” power grid because they know that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine.
But what about battery backup? Doesn’t that solve the wind and sun issue?
No – no it doesn’t. Not even close. If it were the solution, we’d have “net zero” emissions already. It’s been the problem all along for supposed green energy – how to store enough power to maintain electricity when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining.
This was proven in 2018 when Tesla produced the largest battery cluster storage unit for a wind farm in South Australia. As it turns out, according to Sky News Australia, this massive battery storage unit would only be capable of powering the region for an estimated three minutes – off-peak maybe for as much as a whole hour.
Physicist and engineer Mark Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explained that it would take Tesla’s production plant in Nevada, the world’s largest battery manufacturing facility, 500 years to produce enough batteries to power the United States for a single day.
In fact, it is estimated that New York City alone would have to spend $3 trillion on batteries just to store enough energy for a seven-day period. That’s twice the metro area’s entire GDP.
But do you think this will deter New York leftists? Of course not. Money be damned – results be damned – reality be damned.
David Wojick writes in Townhall that, “New York City will soon be home to the world’s biggest industrial-scale battery system. It’s designed to back up the city’s growing reliance on intermittent ‘renewable’ electricity [wind farms]. At 400 megawatt-hours (MWh), this cluster of batteries will be more than triple the [aforementioned] 129 MWh world leader in Australia.”
However the city will need more than one cluster. A lot more!
Every summer the city is hit with one or more, shall we say still periods, “caused by stagnant high pressure systems called Bermuda highs. These highs often last for a week and because they involve stagnant air masses – and an absence of breezes [no more than 5 mph] – there is no wind power generation.”
Wind turbines require about 30 mph sustained winds to operate at full power and a minimum of 10 mph just to turn the blades at all.
So let’s do the math – something the leftist green warriors apparently haven’t done. Or maybe they have and are still so determined to rid us of planet-killing fossil fuel that they just don’t care.
New York City requires about 13,000 MW per hour (MWh) to run the city. If there is little to no wind for seven days, this equates to 168 hours they will need battery power.
13,000 MW times 168 hours equals 2,184,000 MWh.
Remember, the plan is to produce a single, massive 400 MWh battery cluster.
Ugh – more math. 2,184,000 MWh (the power needed for a week long summer doldrum) divided by a single 400 MWh battery cluster = 5,460.
This means that New York will only have to buy an additional 5,459 battery clusters to meet their needs during one Bermuda high week. That’s all!
Oh, my bad. I forgot to mention that each 400 MWh battery cluster will cost about $1.5 million per MWh. 400 X $1.5 million = $600 million per cluster times 5,460. And there’s the $3 trillion I mentioned earlier.
I’m all for innovation, but batteries are not the answer, nor is sole reliance on wind or solar. However, I doubt we’ll have much success convincing the greenies. After all, what’s another $3 trillion to them?
Money is no object. Spend it all – Biden will make more!
Listen to an audio version of this column:
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
