Captain Obvious

You are all aware that wind turbines have been getting bigger and bigger … and for good reason.  However, nobody seems to be focused on the consequences of these mega machines on the operational reliability and true final costs of the grid to enable and integrate their contribution.  And, no, I am not talking about the bird loss, NIMBY or other obvious concerns.

The key here is the true financial and operational impact.  Power plants have always had economy of scale benefits, but the concern has also been LUOS (largest unit out of service) consequences on reliability and balancing.  Reliability is now more complex because the individual variability of the output of these devices is going to be significant and possibly impossible to meet with the current design of the load following power plants in our electrical system.  Solar has the same concerns and the alarm has gone up about the ramping loads which, if the future solar plants are built according to plans far outstrips our load following generation capabilities.

The problem by comparison here is the sun is much more predictable.  The wind tends to gust and die with almost no warning.

The other problem that no one seems to be asking about is the cost of these load following power plants on the true economics.  It is not being priced into the short term markets so that we can clearly see it.  It is being priced into long term costs with what are called uplift charges … a dull instrument of price correction and evaluation.

When will we learn that there is always more to the story?

 

Many of you who know me have heard me ask that question when I am talking about something that should be pretty obvious. It usually gets a laugh because what I had said just before that was so obvious.

For example, if I was talking about electric rates and stated that sudden increases in rates will kill customer satisfaction. Following that with this question almost always gets a chuckle.

Well, I have to admit I may be going a bit too fast if I assume you know the earth (and the other planets and stars in the sky) are round.You would think that today’s average person in the US has seen the news about other countries and knows you can fly in either direction to get there… some longer and shorter of course.

You would think that most people have been on big lakes or the coast and watched ships seem to disappear until only their masts or upper structures show on the horizon.

Take a look at this article from Forbes.

I guess I have been going too fast. Certainly for some…

I remember the time when Tom Peters seemed to own the airwaves with his “In Search of Excellence” series of lectures and consulting.  His book by that name extolled the virtues and business acumen of firms like Federal Express with their motto: “When it absolutely positively has to be there overnight!”

As my prior blog on them pointed out, they no longer feel that way.  When I asked the package delivery agent how I could get my wife’s computer to Denver she said I first had to give her the dimensions and weight and would not answer the question when it would arrive until I did.  Little did I know that she was simply following the instructions for the tracking initiation software.

My wife Susan and I lectured using his stories and I recounted my experience at Nordstrom’s with shoe laces in another blog as one more example.  People in the audience laughed until it hurt as we recounted story after story in our own lives of how service excellence made a difference.

The word that seems to have replaced “ownership” of a customer’s situation is “monetization.”   If it is not saving money or making money it is discretionary.  Sure, airlines like Southwest seem to be getting away with this, but I suspect they can easily be disrupted by better value and service.  I know from our staff that they no longer buy the cheapest seats on their airline tickets because flexibility has value.

It is interesting to contrast this with things people do seem to care about.  The recent win of Tiger Woods is all the rage for golfers.  I don’t follow sports but I am sure each has its passionate followers of this or that team.  Does it make any sense to talk about “good enough” in these areas?  Good enough relegates you to a position pretty far back in the pack.

Nope, I still maintain good enough simply isn’t.

 

“The Arctic Ocean is warming up!  Icebergs are growing scarcer, and in some places, seals are finding the water too hot according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulate at Bergen, Norway.  Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and historically unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.

Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points, well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

Within a few years, it is predicted that due to the ice melt, the sea will rise and make most coast cities uninhabitable.”

Oh, I neglected to mention that this news article was from November 2, 1922 , as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post.  That was 96 years ago. This must have been caused by the Model T Ford’s emissions or possibly from horses 🐎 🐎and cattle 🐄 🐄 passing gas. You can check this out for yourself on SNOPES, a liberal leaning truth checker and they found it is true.

Now there is a word I have not seen lately.  And, it struck me as refreshing, but a bit odd that the wind industry would be the one to point out that Iowans are gullible if they swallow the idea that wind creates jobs.  As we have all learned, there is almost always more the to the story.  It was especially remarkable that the article uses the famous movie The Music Man to illustrate the gullibility.

Read what National Wind Watch has to say. 

The word gullible is used to describe people who are easily duped or cheated.  I couldn’t agree more, but why stop with Iowans … why not simply tell everyone in the US and around the world for that matter that the emperor is nude.

But, there is more to this than that.  The underlying reason we become gullible is more sinister.  We fall prey to this when we lose our curiosity for the rest of the story and we accept superficially appealing notions to capture the argument.

Our national lack of dialogue around energy issues rests on our gullibility.  What is worse, those in leadership positions will not “disturb sleeping dogs” when they think the gullibility is in their favor on an argument.

We live in a democracy where we need an informed electorate.  Gullibility is a formidable enemy to its success.