By Jo Nova
Let’s run an experiment on a whole nation that we can’t even do easily on a single home
Imaging scaling this up for a country?
The Daily Sceptic has the story of an Australian farmer in Victoria who has gone off-grid to try to be as self sufficient as he can, not out of ideology, but for pragmatic reasons. He has two 3 bedroom homes, with 30 solar panels and a 1kW wind turbine each. For storage they have about 30 German lead acid batteries which at current prices is about $15,000 of batteries each. But even so, each house still has bottled gas stoves, and a 6 kVA petrol generator. The generators are set to come on when the batteries get too low, which often happens in the evenings of autumn, winter and sometimes in spring. (He estimates about 60 – 100 hours each year). Even above all that equipment that needs gas, fuel and maintenance and cost about $160,000 in total to set up, they still have to grow, cut and collect, ouch, 100 kg of wood (220lbs) per week in winter for each house.
He warns that anyone who thinks the nation can run on wind and solar without fossil fuel or nuclear energy is “totally deluded”. And these are farmhouses on the coast in Victoria — so a milder climate — we’re not talking of snow.
The author was a part time specialist medical practitioner until the government tried to force him into a medical experiment (you know the one) that he didn’t want to take part in. Now he is an anonymous peasant farmer with chicken and sheep. So he’s a bright guy, who had a good income, and the kind of man that can rebuild a 70 year old diesel generator that weighs 1.4 tonnes. How exactly does this kind of system translate into a national energy for people living on high density blocks with no trees, a heat pump and a Tesla they need to plug in?
Living Off-Grid Has Shown Me That Modern Society Cannot Function on Renewable Energy
by Pseudonaja Textilis, Daily ScepticExtrapolating from our renewable energy experience, anyone who thinks that a modern society can function with a power grid that runs on just solar and wind power without fossil fuel or nuclear backup that’s able to immediately provide up to 100% of power needs on cloudy, still days and dark, windless nights, is totally deluded!
And getting grid-scale lithium ion battery storage to provide the sort of supply time that we have on our farm would cost trillions of dollars, deplete the planet’s non-renewable resources to the point of imminent exhaustion and then it would have to be done all over again in 10 years.
Nothing is truly set and forget:
After 20 years the first of our solar panels have started to fail and have been replaced. …
Renewable energy systems should more honestly be called replaceable energy systems. None of the components can be expected to work for more than 25 years and often a much shorter time than that.
Even with nearly 3 tons of lead acid batteries for two homes, they still really only have a one day supply:
The most productive source of energy to power a robust economy is fossil fuels.
Green energy is a fools errand.
Drill baby drill.
Wind and Solar cant not be depended upon since there are calm days without any wind and there are still cloudy days and Nighttime Wind and Solar is a Hazard to Birds espiecaly the Larger ones(Eagles, Condors, Hawks, Falcon & Owls) their a terrible Eyesore and Wind and Solar takes up way too many acres of land and are not safe for Whales either
Set and forget?
How about water wheels?
How about wind mill grain grinders?
How about hydro-electric dams?
Nope, not unless the water/wind just keeps on all year at a steady pace.
They would be far better are safer for the Birds and are great for Photos
The feds and state regulators wont let you build any water power, they are getting fussy about boat docks, seems they claim jurisdiction on all the land next to any water moving or not, and tax the living crap out of waterfront property.
Wind and solar are supplements at best, and expensive supplements at that. But, like worrying about the cost and availability of expensive EV’s, the plan is not to power our current standard of living but to only sustain smaller living spaces with no air conditioning and bugs to eat.
Well, unless you’ve managed to get rich off the climate scam or happen to have won the ruling elite lottery.