Zambia increases load shedding to 12 hours a day

Kariba dam, on the Zambesi river, the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe

From CleanTechnica

The water levels in Kariba Dam are dangerously low, mainly due to climate change-induced irregular rainfall patterns. The dam is shared between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The dam hosts hydropower generation plants for both countries. The installed generation capacity on the Zimbabwe side is 1,050 MW. On the Zambian side, the installed generation capacity is 1080 MW.

In December of last year, the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA), the body that manages and regulates water usage at the Kariba Dam, announced that the water levels in the dam were now dangerously low. The ZRA issued a statement saying it had directed the two power companies, ZESCO in Zambia and ZPC in Zimbabwe, to reduce generation at Kariba. ZESCO Limited on the Zambian side was asked to reduce generation at the Kariba North Bank Power Station to 800 MW maximum. ZRA directed Zimbabwe Power Company (Link) reduce power generation to a maximum of 300 MW.

ZPC had used more of its water allocation for the year at Kariba compared to ZECSO as Zimbabwe’s aging coal power plants are struggling and therefore Kariba dam had to do most of the heavy lifting. The old units at Zimbabwe’s main coal power plant, Hwange, have an installed capacity of 920 MW, but generally hover around 300 MW. Zimbabwe also has small thermal power stations in Harare, Bulawayo, and Munyati that each have an installed capacity of close to 100 MW, but mostly oscillate between 0 MW and 10 MW. Therefore, the power utility had no option but to really make Kariba do most of the work. Meanwhile in Zambia, they recently commissioned new generation capacity at the new Kafue Gorge Lower (KGL) hydro plant. The addition of the 750 MW Kafue Gorge Lower (KGL) hydro project, which was constructed at a cost of approx.$2.3 billion, meant that until recently, Zambia had excess generation capacity of 1,156.8 MW. This meant that they could manage the water usage at Kariba more effectively.

But the situation has only gotten worse since early December and the water levels in Kariba are now even lower. Therefore, today, ZESCO Limited announced that it has to adjust the hours of load-shedding to twelve (12) hours daily with immediate effect until further notice. This is up from the 6 hours of load-shedding per day announced in December. ZESCO says “The Corporation’s ability to meet power demand remains constrained by the drastic reduction in available water in the Kariba reservoir for electricity generation at Kariba North Bank Power Station. At present, the power station’s generating capacity has been reduced from its installed 1080MW to below 400MW. Furthermore, the 150MW generator outage at Maamba Collieries Limited Power Plant for routine annual maintenance from 4 January until 20 January 2023 has exacerbated the situation.”

This is the second time in just a few years that Zambia has had to introduce 12 hour daily load-shedding cycles. Zimbabwe is in the same boat (actually even worse) as the power company there has had to implement 18 to 20 hour load-shedding in 2019 and again from late last year up till now. Further south, South Africa has also been implementing load-shedding for several hours a day. This is due to frequent breakdowns at its aging coal power plants. The Southern African region is facing a serious electricity crisis and needs to start working on some urgent solutions.

[Personal note: I grew up in Zambia, which was then called Northern Rhodesia.  I was at school in the years when the Kariba dam was built and started filling.  As the dam filled, the earth underneath it subsided, and we'd get mini earthquakes, which always startled us.   The rising waters created islands, and to stop wildlife drowning, rescue missions were carried out.  I hope Zambia can overcome its many difficulties and resume growth--in the 1950s, it was one of the fastest  growing economies in the world, because of copper exports.]

A near 100% renewables grid is feasible.

From RenewEconomy

(I talked about this analyst's simulations here and here)

There have been many simulations of a 100% renewable electricity grid for Australia, including some ground-breaking studies from Beyond Zero Emissions, The University of New South Wales and the ANU.

Even the recently released Integrated System Plan from the Australian Energy Market Operator exceeds 97% renewable in the 2040s.

So, what is the point of another one?

Well, this simulation differs from the others in a couple of ways:It uses actual generation and demand data rather than relying on synthetic traces for those quantities
It is being conducted in near real-time

The benefit of using actual generation and demand data is that some people are sceptical of synthetic wind and solar traces. They may also be dubious when you start modifying demand.

The benefit of the near real-time modelling is that people tend to be more concerned about recent events. If a recent day had very little wind and solar generation, some will take that as proof that you cannot run an electricity grid on renewables. A study based on data from a few years ago is unlikely to change their minds.

Another aspect of near real-time modelling is that it is one thing to optimise a simulation when you have all the data in advance, it is another when you design the simulation before you get the data.

With that in mind, exactly one year ago I started running a simple simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with approximately five hours of storage (24GW/120GWh).

Each week, I would download demand and generation data from OpenNEM. I left demand unchanged.

The generation data for wind, rooftop and utility solar data was rescaled to supply ~60%, 25% and 20% of demand respectively over the year. For example, over the last year utility solar generation has met 5% of demand. The target for utility solar was 20%, so I rescaled the last 7 days of utility solar data by 4x (ie, 20% divided by 5%).

Note that the sum of 60%, 25% and 20% is greater than 100%. This is important. Any optimised model of a highly renewable grid will have significant amounts of over-generation.

It is better to over-generate and have some curtailment than to generate exactly what you need over the year with significant shortfalls during some months requiring huge amounts of storage or backup. As will be seen later in this article, this simulation ended up having 18% excess generation over the year.

The decision to use 60% wind, 45% solar was based on rough optimisation experiments. A mixture reasonably close to 50:50 takes advantage of the fact that wind and solar are negatively correlated with each other.

Wind tends to generate above average during the night and during winter, complementing the solar generation. I have a bias to wind as it requires less short-term storage, which is used primarily to shift solar generation from the day to the evening and night.

My simulation used the 24GW/120GWh of assumed storage and existing hydro to firm up the wind and solar and match demand.

Both the hydro and storage were assumed highly flexible. Note that I did not use the actual hydro generation data. I completely changed the dispatch of hydro so that it had minimal generation on days when it wasn’t needed, and elevated levels whenever there was a day with significant shortfalls of wind and solar relative to demand.

This is reasonable as most of the hydro capacity on the NEM is associated with large storage dams, making the hydro highly dispatchable. However, to maintain consistency with historical generation, hydro generation was also subject to the following constraints:

Hydro generation was kept between 200 MW and 6,000 MW
Weekly hydro generation was kept above 168 GWh
Annual hydro generation was targeted at between 6% and 9% of demand, though ideally closer to 15,000 GWh, or about 7.5% of demand.

If the wind, solar, storage and hydro was unable to meet demand, then the model supplements generation with ‘Other’. ‘Other’ was deliberately left undefined. It could be gas generation. Indeed, in the short to medium term it is likely to be existing gas peakers that will help firm renewables along with storage and hydro.

But longer term, ‘Other’ could be a highly flexible dispatchable generator running on renewable fuels such as biofuels or green hydrogen, or it could be long-term storage such as Snowy 2.0. When calculating the renewable percentage of the simulation, I have assumed ‘other’ is not renewable, even though it is hoped that in the future ‘other’ will become renewable.

Each week I posted the results of the simulation of the previous seven days to my Twitter account. On Wednesday of this week, I posted the 52nd week, marking a full year of simulations.

I’ve copied the simulation below. It is fitting that the renewable penetration of 99% for the final week of the simulation very closely matched the renewable penetration over the entire 52-week period, 98.8%

Key results from the 52 weeks of simulations are summarised as follows:

• Renewables met 98.8% of demand over the year, with the remaining 1.2% met by ‘Other’
• ‘Other’ generation peaked at 6.59 GW on the night of July 12. Over the year its average capacity factor was 4.3%.
• Hydro met 6.9% of demand. This was lower than my target of 7.5%, and also less than actual hydro generation of 8%. This means that dam storage levels in my simulation would have ended the year higher than they did in the real world.
• 17% of the wind and solar generation was in excess of requirements and ended up being curtailed.
• 11% of wind and solar generation went into storage. Storage discharge met 10% of demand.
• 82% of demand was directly powered by wind and solar without having to pass through storage or be curtailed

The wind and solar generation ended up slightly exceeding the targets of 60%, 20% and 25% for wind, utility solar and rooftop solar respectively.

It is impossible to know in advance if the year would be above or below average, so it is not surprising that they did not exactly hit their target. However, the methodology used to rescale the wind and solar data meant that there was a high probability that they would exceed their targets.

The graph above shows the weekly fraction of demand that was met by ‘Other’. Levels of ‘Other’ were essentially zero for almost seven months from September to late March. However, by late April, the simulation started to become more ‘interesting’.

Most weeks from late April through to the present required some levels of ‘Other’, due to the inability of wind, solar, storage and hydro to entirely meet demand throughout the week. The week starting on June 29 proved to be the most difficult week of the simulation, with ‘Other’ having to provide 8.1% of demand that week.

The graph illustrates clearly that late autumn and winter will prove to be the most challenging periods for a mostly renewable grid in Australia. Solar generation in late June and early August can often be as low half the annual average.

And while wind tends to be above average during winter, there are often stretches of two or three days in a row that have significantly below average wind. This can leave a significant shortfall in generation that cannot be entirely filled by existing hydro.

The challenge of matching supply and demand during winter will be even more difficult as we start to electrify much more of the gas heating that is present in the southern states, particularly Victoria. Doing so will elevate winter demand much more than summer demand.

It is important to note that wind in Queensland is not well correlated with wind in the southern states. That means that when it is calm in South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW, it is often windier than average in Queensland. For this reason, it is unfortunate that wind only makes up 3% of Queensland demand, or about one-quarter of the NEM average of 12%.

More wind in QLD will greatly help to improve the geographic diversity of renewable generation, making it easier to match supply and demand over the year. However, it will not completely solve the problem. There will remain many days with poor renewable supply in both the southern states and in Queensland. Increases in Queensland wind generation will make it easier to get closer to 100% renewable electricity, but is unlikely to significantly reduce the peak requirements of ‘Other’.

It is interesting to note that the ISP is predicting that approximately 9GW of peaking gas or liquids will need to be retained in the NEM’s generation mix out to 2050. This is more than the 6.6GW required so far in this study.

However, the ISP is a much more sophisticated model than the simulation I have done here, with increased demand due to increased electrification. It has modelled many years of generation, ensuring that supply stays secure and reliable. It is quite likely that some winters may prove more challenging in a high renewable world than the winter of 2022 simulated here.

For countries without hydro, the results of this simulation for Australia suggest that to cover winter demand, "other" (natural gas, for now; SNG later) would need to be ±15% of the generation mix.  Of course, this would only be for part of the year.  The average over the year would still be modest, so even if we have to use gas, we would still cut emissions substantially.  But the simulation highlights the need for gas peaking/back-up.  If we use surplus green electricity to create synthetic natural gas (SNG) then we could in principle run a 100% green grid.

SW drought may end hydro power

 From ClimateCrocks

Meanwhile, in western North America, drought continues, along with record heat, and hydro resources are stressed.

Colorado Public Radio:

By early 2024, projections show water levels in Lake Powell could drop too low for hydropower turbines to operate and generate electricity.

Tanya Trujillo, the assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior for water and science, joined the conference virtually to talk about the Colorado River crisis and the demand for states to conserve more water.

“We are facing the growing reality that water supplies for agriculture, fisheries, ecosystems, industry and cities are no longer stable due to climate change,” Trujillo said.

Trujillo said the agency’s order for water cuts includes Colorado and other states in the upper part of the river system, even though they don’t rely on water supplies collected in Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

“We need to be taking action in all states, in all sectors, in all available ways,” Trujillo said. “We need to be thinking as one basin.”

Trujillo said it’s up to states to decide how to make the water cuts and said the agency didn’t have a formula for appropriate conservation measures. She said the states have been charged with creating lists of potential ways this water can be saved and that the federal government wants to support those ideas with funding and resources. Trujillo said some of the federal support for states’ efforts would come from the bipartisan infrastructure law enacted in January, which set aside billions of dollars for Western water projects.

Speaking on a conference panel, Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center at CU Boulder and a former assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, wondered what the federal government’s demand might mean for Colorado if junior water rights holders are cut off from using the Colorado River.

“What do our ski areas look like if we don’t have snowmaking anymore? Those are junior water rights,” Castle said. “What does it look like if part of our West Slope agriculture doesn’t exist anymore? What does that do to food security, what does it do to those communities? Those are the things that we’ve got to be thinking pretty hard about.”

If only we had a way to generate electricity using very little water. Oh, wait…

 

Australia could reach 99.9% renewables

 David Osmond, who works for the company Windlab in Australia runs a simulation estimating how much of wind, solar, hydro and storage would be needed to fulfil electricity demand in the National Electricity Market by scaling up the actual generation data from wind and solar.  These simulations suggest that Australia can reach 100% renewables, whereas the previous pieces I've written about this (links below) suggested that the amount of storage required would need to be much higher.  In effect, Osmond's simulation is using hydro as a battery, not as pumped hydro, but just releasing water through the turbines when needed.

Note how solar and wind are negatively correlated -- as solar rises, wind falls.  This isn't always true, though it was this week.

Note also that this was achieved using just 5 hours of storage.  When we have a 100% electric car/light truck fleet, they will provide another ±14 hours of storage, though obviously that's not all available at one time  (see  Balancing the grid without storage)

Each week I’m running a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using actual generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with just 5 hrs of storage (24 GW / 120 GWh)

Results:

last week: 99.9% RE 

last 31 weeks: 99.9% RE 

See also:

A vexed question: how much storage

How much storage

Undersea power cable from Norway to UK

 From the BBC

The world's longest under-sea electricity cable, transferring green power between Norway and the UK, has begun operation.  The 450-mile (725km) cable connects Blyth in Northumberland with the Norwegian village of Kvilldal.

At full 1,400 megawatt capacity it will import enough hydro-power to supply 1.4 million homes, National Grid said.

National Grid Ventures president Cordi O'Hara said it was a "remarkable feat of engineering".

She added: "We had to go through mountains, fjords and across the North Sea to make this happen. North Sea Link (NSL) is also a great example of two countries working together to maximise their renewable energy resources for mutual benefit."

National Grid said the €1.6bn (£1.37bn) joint venture with Norwegian power operator Statnett would help the UK reduce carbon emissions by 23 million tonnes by 2030.

It has four other power cables running to Belgium, France and the Netherlands and said 90% of energy imported in this way would be from zero carbon sources by 2030.

Hydropower in Norway and wind power in the UK are subject to weather conditions and fluctuations in demand.  Using NSL, renewable power can be exported from the UK when wind generation is high and electricity demand low, or be imported from Norway when demand is high and wind generation low.

Specially designed barges were used in the construction of North Sea Link

Micro hydro

 Here is an interesting video from Just Have A Think, about very small hydro-electric facilities, delivering from 5 to 15 kW, with small environmental impacts.  The costings estimated are very low: EU 23/MWh, or US$27/MWh.  This is cheaper that wind and utility-scale solar.  The minimum fall needed is 1.5m, and the maximum 5.  You need 66 of these micro-hydro projects to produce 1 MW of electricity, but you could say the same about rooftop solar, but there is now 3 GW (3,000 MW) of rooftop solar capacity in Australia.  The more diversified the sources of electricity supply are, the greater the reliability and security of the grid.  They would be a useful revenue source for farmers and small town water suppliers. But the greatest benefit of these micro-generators will prolly be for the billion or so people who don't have access to electricity.

Pakistan pushes renewables, but ...

Tarbela Dam, Pakistan

 From Reuters.

Pakistan this week set in motion a plan to boost the share of its electric power that comes from renewables to 30% by 2030, up from about 4% today, government officials said.

“The targets in the newly announced policy are a 20% share of renewables in installed capacity of Pakistan’s power mix by 2025 and 30% by 2030,” said Syed Aqeel Hussain Jafry, policy director for the government’s Alternative Energy Development Board.

That will include mainly wind and solar power, but also geothermal, tidal, wave and biomass energy, he said.

With boosts in hydropower capacity expected as well, the shift could bring the share of clean energy in Pakistan’s electricity mix to 65% by 2030, said Nadeem Babar, head of a task force on energy reforms in Pakistan.

But the legislation leaves in place plans to build seven more coal-fired power plants as part of the second phase of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor project - something that could impede scale-up of renewable power, warned Zeeshan Ashfaq, a solar and wind energy developer in Pakistan.

“A coal pipeline of around 4,000-5,000 megawatts will not provide much space for renewables,” said Ashfaq, managing director of SOWITEC (Solar Wind Technology) Pakistan.

New investment in renewable energy is expected to come from private investors, with potential suppliers bidding in annual auctions and low-tariff proposals winning, said Babar, chair of the energy task force and now special assistant to the prime minister.

Jafry, of the alternative energy board, said the policy represented a significant shift from the past, when investors approached the government with individual projects.

One big potential roadblock to scaling renewables is the focus of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project on building new coal-fired power plants, Ashfaq said.

“Nearly 70% of generation capacity of CPEC power projects is coal fired. With CPEC coal-power projects, coal-fired generation capacity will increase from 3% in 2017 to 20% in 2025,” he said.

Achieving the country’s renewable energy aims will require rethinking those plans, he said.

But Babar said “pre-authorized fossil fuel projects under CPEC will continue execution - they will go into construction”.

That suggests Pakistan will continue with plans to build all seven new CPEC coal-fired power plants by 2024.

China has recently strongly objected to Pakistan's attempt to cancel some of the planned coal power stations.  This is unfortunate, to say the least, given that to meet even the 2 degree target of the Paris Agreement, no new coal power stations should be built anywhere.  

China should stop funding coal power stations in the rest of the world, not just because of the climate impact but also because these new power stations will certainly become stranded assets.  

The good news is that a system of reverse auctions will rapidly demonstrate just how much cheaper than coal wind and solar are, and will make the construction of new coal power stations much more awkward.  

Pakistan can easily integrate wind and solar into her grid because of the high percentage of electricity coming from hydro.

Germany: growth as well as de-carbonisation

From a nice graph pack by Clean Energy Wire:

The German economy has grown even as emissions have fallen.
If they can do it, we can too.

Renewables started off slowly (they were very expensive), but growth in recent years has been rapid

10 years ago, renewables were under 20%, 20 years ago under 10%. 50% by 2022?  70% by 2030?

Some countries (e.g, Norway) have high renewables penetration because of hydro.  To some extent, Denmark and Sweden rely on imports from Norway.

Offshore wind could power the world

A sailing boat passes the Kentish Flats offshore windfarm. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Source: The Guardian

There are several carbon-free ways to generate electricity: hydro, onshore wind, offshore wind, solar PV (with either fixed or variable tilt), concentrated solar power (CSP), green methane and hydrogen (i.e., methane and hydrogen manufactured using wind and solar), biomass, nuclear fission (too expensive, too polluting) and nuclear fusion (not yet functional, except possibly for this).    The grid of the future will likely use all these methods, except for nuclear fission, because they complement each other.  The wind blows when the sub doesn't shine, offshore wind is less variable and stronger than onshore, CSP can deliver power 24/7, seasonal storage using green methane/hydrogen will cover week-long periods when wind and solar are low. 

From The Guardian:

Erecting wind turbines on the world’s best offshore sites could provide more than enough clean energy to meet global electricity demand, according to a report.

A detailed study of the world’s coastlines has found that offshore windfarms alone could provide more electricity than the world needs – even if they are only built in windy regions in shallow waters near the shore.

Analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed that if windfarms were built across all useable sites which are no further than 60km (37 miles) off the coast, and where coastal waters are no deeper than 60 metres, they could generate 36,000 terawatt hours of renewable electricity a year. This would easily meeting the current global demand for electricity of 23,000 terawatt hours.

“Offshore wind currently provides just 0.3% of global power generation, but its potential is vast,” the IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol, said.

The study predicts offshore wind generation will grow 15-fold to emerge as a $1tn (£780bn) industry in the next 20 years and will prove to be the next great energy revolution.

The IEA said earlier this week that global supplies of renewable electricity were growing faster than expected and could expand by 50% in the next five years, driven by a resurgence in solar energy. Offshore wind power would drive the world’s growth in clean power due to plummeting costs and new technological breakthroughs, including turbines close to the height of the Eiffel Tower and floating installations that can harness wind speeds further from the coast.

The next generation of floating turbines capable of operating further from the shore could generate enough energy to meet the world’s total electricity demand 11 times over in 2040, according to IEA estimates.

The report predicts that the EU’s offshore wind capacity will grow from almost 20 gigawatts today to nearly 130 gigawatts by 2040, and could reach 180 gigawatts with stronger climate commitments.

In China, the growth of offshore wind generation is likely to be even more rapid, the IEA said. Its offshore wind capacity is forecast to grow from 4 gigawatts to 110 gigawatts by 2040 or 170 gigawatts if it adopts tougher climate targets.

Birol said offshore wind would not only contribute to generating clean electricity, but could also offer a major opportunity in the production of hydrogen, which can be used instead of fossil fuel gas for heating and in heavy industry.

That this report comes from the IEA is telling.  It has in the past been far too conservative about the cost declines in renewables and about the rise in the penetration of renewables in the grid.  Good to see an analysis which is less favourable to fossil fuels.

There are no technological or financial impediments to de-carbonising our entire electricity grid.  The constraints now are political.

First unsubsidised solar in Canada

Mountain road in SW Alberta

Solar is cost effective in Alaska.  OK.  But there it's competing with  costly diesel flown in by DC-6.  But unsubsidised solar in Canada?   Electricity prices in Canada are relatively low, thanks to extensive hydro resources.  Yet unsubsidised solar is still possible.

After receiving its cheapest bids for large-scale solar under a public tender a week ago, the Canadian province of Alberta is now ready to host two unsubsidized solar parks with a combined capacity of 57 MW. The developer, German renewable energy company Innogy – a unit of Germany’s energy giant RWE – is in talks with local off-takers about signing a PPA.

In a statement to pv magazine, Innogy said its aim is to sign a long-term power purchase agreement for the projects and its commercial team is working intensely on that with confirmed interest from potential off-takers. The possibility of selling power to the spot market is being considered a fallback option if private PPAs do not materialize, Innogy said, adding: “We are confident that the projects are profitable either way.”

In a previous statement, Innogy had said it intended to complete construction this year. The plants – Prairie Sunlight II and III – will have capacities of 30 MW and 27 MW, respectively, and will be near the town of Vauxhall, in southern Alberta.

[Read more here]

Since Canada has so much hydro, "firming" the output from solar will be easy, whereas in places with no hydro, batteries are essential.

These are small solar farms as things go.  But the key point, though, is this: they are unsubsidised.  And that must send shivers up the spines of fossil fuel executives, everywhere.

India: three-quarters of new capacity renewables

From CleanTechnica:

India added a total (net) of 17.6 gigawatts power generation capacity in 2018, a record percentage (74%) of that capacity was based on renewable energy technologies — primarily solar power. The huge capacity coming online from renewable energy sector has made 2018 the greenest year in terms of new capacity addition so far.

Of the 17.6 gigawatts of total capacity added last year, 4.1 gigawatts came from fossil fuel-based technologies (various forms of coal and natural gas), around 435 megawatts were contributed by large hydro, and 13.1 gigawatts came from renewable energy technologies. Hydro power projects with installed capacity over 25 megawatts are not classified as renewable energy projects. Solar power projects with total capacity of 8.9 gigawatts and wind energy projects of 2.2 gigawatts were commissioned last year.

The share of renewable energy [excluding large hydro] in overall power generation in India stands at an all-time high of 9% for the period of January-November 2018, with final numbers for December awaited. Q3 2018 saw the record-breaking share of wind and overall renewable energy technologies in overall power generation at 8.2% and 11.9%, respectively. Q3 2018 also marked the first quarter ever when the share of renewable energy crossed 10% in the overall power generation in India. 

[Read more here]

The new  investment in fossil fuels is still too high.  To have a chance to prevent the likely 2 degree rise in global temperatures, no new coal power stations must be built anywhere in the world, and existing coal generators must be progressively shut down.  The economics of wind and solar compared to coal are helping this happen, but it's not happening fast enough.  We are all waiting for storage costs to fall enough for variable renewables to be usable at high renewable penetrations, but at India's level of renewable penetration and extensive hydro investment, storage isn't essential yet. 

California -- zero emissions from electricity

Crescent Dunes, a thermal solar plant near Tonopah, is the world’s first utility-scale facility to feature advanced molten salt power tower energy storage capabilities. Source: The Las Vegas Sun

We've mentioned this here before.  California has set a target of zero emissions from electricity generation by 2045.  The new target is 60% from non-carbon sources by 2030, and 100% by 2045.

In a move to solidify California's role as a world leader on climate action, state lawmakers voted this week to shift their state—the world's fifth-largest economy—to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.

The legislation now heads to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature. Brown hasn't commented on it but is widely expected to sign the legislation as one of the crowning environmental achievements of his administration, which ends in January. The renewable energy commitment also comes on the cusp of a Global Climate Action Summit that Brown is hosting in San Francisco beginning Sept.12.

In a summer when California has been fighting record wildfires while facing off against the Trump administration's attempts to rollback climate policies, the state's Democratic-controlled legislature sought to double down on its commitment to shift away from fossil fuels.

"After a grueling year it has finally passed," tweeted state Sen. Kevin de León, the Los Angeles Democrat who sponsored the measure. De León, who is challenging fellow Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein for her U.S. Senate seat in November, was in the Assembly chamber on Tuesday to help round up the final votes needed for passage. The Senate approved the amendments on Wednesday and sent the legislation to the governor.

"Our state will remain a climate change leader," de León said.

[Read more here]

This is actually quite a slow pace of transition.  Currently renewables provide 29% of California's electricity.  So to 2030, that's a transition of 2.6% per year, i.e., 2.6% of fossil fuel generation capacity will need to be retired and replaced with renewables.  From 2030 to 2045, it would be 2.7% a year.   Actually, it's even less than that, because of existing hydro-electric power.  But I'm being conservative and assuming hydro diminishes as global warming steadily dries out the SW of the USA.

How will California do this?

• More solar.  All new homes in buildings under 3 stories high will be required to have integral solar.  Plus, given California's solar resources, there will be more solar farms in California and across the border in Nevada
• More batteries.  Batteries are still too expensive for time-shifting, i.e., storing power from midday for the evening demand peak, but they are excellent for synthetic inertia, for stabilising the grid, and for providing some additional supply at peak demand times.  Falling battery costs will mean that the role of batteries will steadily increase.
• More concentrated solar power.  The Crescent Dunes CSP plant across the border in Nevada uses mirrors to focus sunlight to melt salts.  The stored heat is then used to drive turbines to provide power in the evening and at night.   The company which built the Crescent Dunes plant is planning one 10 times as large nearby.  The cost of CSP has halved over the last 5 years.
• Less nuclear.  The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is scheduled to close in 2025.  It produces about 9% of California's electricity.  
• Less gas.  This will be hard.  Gas is ideal for firming the variable generation from wind and solar.  Replacing it will require other forms of storage: batteries, pumped hydro, molten salts.  However, California may be the first place to use power-to-gas at a large scale.  That's where  surplus renewable energy is used to electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the hydrogen, with CO2, is then passed over a catalyst at high pressure and temperature to produce methane, which can be burnt without adding to atmospheric CO2. 

Even while California is switching to a 100% green grid, its transport will also be transitioning to EVs.  By 2045, 100% of California's car, lorry and bus fleet is likely to be non ICE (internal combustion engine)

California has already cut its emissions even while growing strongly.  As it often has in the past, it will again be leading the world.

Renewable energy now cheaper than fossil fuels

No, this is not from the lefty tree-hugging latte-sipping pinko.  It's from a German energy asset manager--and it's reported in Forbes:

For the first time in history, the production cost of renewables is lower than that of fossil fuels, an industry asset manager has claimed.

In a recent note to its clients, Hamburg, Germany-based Kaiserwetter Energy Asset Management, wrote that its "internal analysis" – based on data from Bloomberg, The Frankfurt School, Renewable Cost Database of the International Agency for Renewable Energy (IRENA) and UN Environment – puts fossil fuels generated energy costs in the range of $49 and $174 per MWh (Megawatt hours) in G20 energy markets in 2017.

Over a comparable period, renewable energy production came in between $35 and $54 per MWh. Breaking the data down further, Kaiserwetter said the international average cost for hydroelectric projects were more than $50 per MWh, wind power was $51 per MWh, and photovoltaic solar energy was $54 per MWh on average.

To arrive at its conclusion, the asset manager grouped the costs of 15,000 utility projects and calculated the risks that investors will assume across 54 countries between 2020, 2025 and 2030.

And the latest photovoltaic energy auctions in Dubai, Mexico, Chile, Abu Dhabi or Saudi Arabia, and onshore wind energy in Brazil, Canada, India or Morocco in 2017 suggested that the standard cost of energy can be reduced to $30 per MWh from 2018, Kaiserwetter said.

"However, onshore wind energy has already achieved similar costs in projects across Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico and Morocco, already reaching $30 MWh."

[Read more here]

Wind and solar as % of total electricity production, 2016
Source: Enerdata.  Click to enlarge

In 2016, 5.4% of China's and 4.3% of India's electricity came from wind and solar.  In both countries, there will likely be little net new coal power expansion in the future.  At a 3% growth rate in total demand, this suggests that they will reach about 40% of total electricity production from wind and solar in 15 years. 

Still not fast enough, but as the costs of renewables continue to fall, the chances are that technically viable coal power stations will be shuttered because of their economics, as has happened in the US.  Renewables (including big hydro) delivered 24% of world electricity supply in 2016.  By 2030, my forecast is that it will have reached at least 2/3rds of total production, driven by the falling costs of wind and solar and batteries, and the continued long-term rise in global temperatures.

(By the way, I recommend Enerdata's site.  It's full of useful stats)