Wrong way round

Bit by bit, the Ontario government is recognizing the futility of its renewable energy strategy. Still, it can’t help but throw more public tax dollars at developers eager to cash in at our expense.

This week, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) announced it was letting five contracts worth a total of $42 million to develop electricity storage technologies. The money will be used to develop a dozen demonstration projects around the province designed to capture and release energy— schemes that use batteries, hydrogen, flywheels and even bricks. Yes, bricks.

The problem is that none of these technologies work—certainly not on a scale sufficient to serve a regional electricity grid. Nor is Ontario the first to dabble in the search for this Holy Grail. Every jurisdiction that has dabbled in intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar has grappled with the same dilemma; what to do when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow?

It would have been wiser and more productive had these jurisdictions pooled their money to solve this problem before each erected forests of industrial wind turbines and covered vast tracts of land with solar panels. This may seem obvious with hindsight—except I, and many others, made this same point in in 2006.

Of course, it is far too simplistic to limit the challenge of intermittent electricity sources to its inherent unpredictability. The bigger issue is that it messes with the entire system— not just with the wires and transformers, but with the way we buy and sell electricity. How we match demand with supply.

On most days, we generate enough electricity to serve the province from our hydro dams and our nuclear power stations. Yet wind turbines and solar panels continue to push useless electricity into the grid. The excess must be dumped or the entire system is put at risk. It is why we spend about a billion dollars each year paying Ontario’s neighbours to take our energy. Now we also pay wind and solar energy producers to disconnect themselves from the grid.

Scott Luft does a great job on his blog Cold Air chronicling and describing the challenges that intermittent electricity wreaks upon Ontario’s system. He makes the point, backed by closely observed data, that the IESO has effectively lost its bearings.

Daily electricity patterns used to be easier to predict and to match to supply. Most of us rise about 7 a.m., turn on a light and put a slice of bread in the toaster. Electricity consumption continues to rise steadily until mid-morning when it sags a bit. It rises again predictably at lunch, then drifts lower until supper time for the third and final peak of the day.

The IESO managed this fairly predictable pattern along with variables such as weather and outages—bringing dispatchable energy sources up and down as required.

But now the erratic and unpredictable bursts of electricity from wind and solar generators arrive randomly into the grid. A once-stable system has been thrust into disarray. The problem is made worse with the addition of each new industrial wind turbine and 100-acre solar installation.

That is why the IESO is so eager to find a way to store electricity on a large scale. It is why every jurisdiction experimenting with wind and solar is doing the same thing.

So our government will buy battery concepts the size of arenas, despite the fact that the folks who have spent their career in the field say it won’t work—that if it did, we would have had batteries powering our cities and vehicles a hundred years ago. Some of these same folks figure it’s necessary to discover a new element on the periodic table in order to build batteries that are useful on the scale required of a utility grid.

We will see variations on hydrogen storage systems wheeled out. Hydrogen gas takes up a huge amount of space to store—it must be compressed to be useful. Compression requires energy.

We will see flywheels—variations on the technology on display at the Ameliasburgh pioneer museum. And we will see apartments in Hamilton clad in special bricks designed to store electricity as heat, to be released when the temperature dips.

Spain is doing the same things. So is Massachusetts. California. Germany. United Kingdom. Denmark. Each is racing to make rational their irrational renewable energy strategies.

We should pursue each of these avenues of investigation. And others. We should fund basic research.

In the mean time, let us stop erecting industrial wind turbines and solar panels until the fundamental problem of intermittent energy is solved.

We came at renewable energy entirely the wrong way around. Not just here, but in states, provinces and nations around the world. It was good politics, but lousy technology, weakening a complex electricity system. Ultimately, it has cost our economy jobs and opportunity. It will get worse. And your electricity bills will continue to rise to fund this folly.

By all means, let us fund energy science and technology, but let’s stop destroying our landscape and economies by building wind and solar facilities we know don’t work. The wind and sun will still be here when—or if—we figure it out.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca