The concrete piling will never be removed at the end of life. It will represent a significant hazard for navigation for hundreds of years, if not more. After the technology is abandoned.
Probably some repeated or amplifying thoughts here.
Ok. Where to start. Firstly, as eluded to by George Watts in the coments, it would be useful to compare the EROEI’s from other sources of energy when looking at EROEI numbers. For example, the reference supplied (Weissbach) charts the unbuffered and buffered EROEI’s of wind (being 16 and 3.9, respectively), while nuclear PWR is at 75, period. Those who claim EROEI’s of 40 plus (buffered?) for wind need to show their assumptions and calculations for other energy sources. In addition, the calculation for the EROI needed to run our society (currently thought to be around 12-15 by those who calculated buffered wind EROEI to be 4) should be in that comparison mix. It is clear that these numbers indicate an existential situation.
Secondly, incorporating EROEI savings due to recycling of materials is a misdirection, since the requirement is to EXPAND the wind and solar fleets by at least an order of magnitude to even begin to address greening of the energy economy. This is all new construction. We have as a species never done something at this scale in the specified time. There’s simply not the infrastructure, labor, capital and technical resources or even social buy-in for such a massive expansion of economic activity. Most of this new activity will have to be driven by fossil fuels, which would negate much of the “greening” anyway. And as we consider that, we still need to keep in mind the running our society as well as enabling the third world to join us.
I think that it is clear that trying to argue for windmills (and solar panels) is a distraction. The primary need is to find the highest reliable EROEI system for no better reason than to ensure the survival of the human race. This is the Darwinian situation where, if we aim to reduce our system EROEI’s, we may eventually disappear. This is one of the main mechanisms for biological evolution, after all.
Useful references:
“The Unpopular Truth: about Electricity and the Future of Energy" 2022 by Lars Schernikau & William Hayden Smith.
"Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution: The Energy Return on Investment" (SpringerBriefs in Energy, 2013th Edition) by Pedro A. Prieto,.
It's nothing short of ridiculous to claim the theoretical EROI of a wind turbine represents the actual EROI of a real world wind installation. And even for their wind turbine we've found out they have very poor data on Chinese manufactured components and materials, likely underestimating embodied energy by 3X on those.
You have to include the access roads to build the wind farm, the energy used by the construction of the wind farm including a portion of the giant cranes & heavy equipment, the energy consumed by the workers (from the income they've earned), the land use effects and of course all the transmission lines & substations. And then O&M energy used as well as the rebuild that is commonly done at ~12yrs. Even the financial services associated with the Wind farm have an energy cost.
And that's just the basics. Then getting into the costs of buffering and the both economic effects and physical effects of the wind farm on the overall grid efficiency. Taking into account such things like curtailment, overbuild, cycling inefficiencies, negative pricing and the economic forcing of low efficiency OCGT, diesel, biomass, conventional coal over high efficiency CCGT, hydro, ultra-supercritical coal and nuclear. Aggregating these effects are very significant on wind & solar since you have so little energy surplus to work with.
Don't forget the installation and maintenance vessels for offshore. They are very costly, particularly for larger turbines. The maintenance experience and lifetime is also probably underestimated problems. We wait to see how serious the problems are as admitted by Siemens. But a shorter life, more blade and hub replacements are not only costs but eat into uptime while waiting for the repair ship.
That's right. The embodied energy in all the wind installation and service equipment as well as O&M costs, including energy conversion of wages, should be included, at least for the portion of time that equipment is used on wind farms.
Plus the supply chain and manufacturing facilities required to create a) the wind generation products (highly specialised) and b) the supply chain and manufacturing facilities to create a). Consider the cranes used to construct the wind farms both on and offshore .. they are mind boggling in their complexity. How much FF is used to create those and to maintain them, plus all the infrastructure to create them etc etc. Also, commercial companies that manufacture all of the infrastructure have to innovate to stay in business i.e., they constantly update their products, so is not possible to rely on a particular design of a product to be available for decades so that like for like replacements can be made during the lifetime of a renewal. For example, an offshore wind farm is commissioned and runs fine for a few years and then some complex proprietary component starts to fail across multiple units e.g. inverter system. It could be that the manufacturer went bust and there’s no way to complete a repair as the components are no longer available and there’s no new alternative that readily slots in place. Guaranteeing that renewable infrastructure can be kept going for up to 30 years is going to be very challenging especially in a world that is becoming more unstable. If it can’t be kept going, and has to be trashed it’s EROI is going to be a lot lower just than predicted. There are plenty of images on line of abandoned wind farms (and smashed up solar farms) demonstrating that some organisation walked away from them as they no longer made economic sense.
To be fair though even FF power stations need vast amounts of plant to erect the equipment along with concrete foundations and steelwork. The reality is nothing comes free in the world but what needs to be taken account of is the energy required for all the back up power stations and transmission systems to fill in the gaps on windless days so that have an energy system that has the best EROI.
a) Wind & solar being intermittent, non-dispatchable, unreliable, seasonal energy sources they add a whole lot of extra system wide energy costs, traditional energy sources just don't.
b) Adding those usually ignored energy inputs might knock say Nuclear LWRs down from say 75:1 to 65:1, not a serious issue, while it will likely knock Wind down from 16:1 to ~4:1 and Solar even worse, making them a physically impossible replacement for fossil fuels.
In the case of Switzerland, Ferroni's in depth real world analysis of solar put it at a real EROI of 0.82:1, a net energy deficit. i.e. The more solar they are installing in Switzerland actually increases their emissions and fossil consumption.
And, of course, the Bentek study found adding Wind power to Texas & Colorado caused fossil emissions to increase. In other words the overall system wide EROI of Wind was <1:1.
That the carbon brief analysis is miles out doesn’t surprise me in the least, even less so that the author of that article is the very same one who after the AR4 round last year arrogantly declared offshore wind was ‘nine times cheaper than gas’ A line repeatedly trotted out by octopus energy in the past year.
One thing for sure the mouthpiece of carbon brief is tone deaf to any questioning of his findings.
I am being very lazy, I'm sure the interweb would spew answers at me, but may I ask if you have a list of bracketed EROEI of other renewable energy projects and initiatives? Curious on your take of battery backed solar, wave, hot rock etc..
Unfortunately, there's very little serious analysis of the EROEI of different energy systems beyond the work of Weissbach.
Battery backed solar might work in the tropics. At UK latitudes I think it's a complete non-starter. I don't think wave energy is mature enough to make a judgement other than "poor". Hot rocks can only ever be short term storage plus there's bound to be large round trip losses. But I guess the embedded energy in a few rocks is quite small.
I'm thinking about updating that to comment on a study done by academics that fails to do the right analysis, and in the light of Ergon's belated work on trying to reduce diesel use (by refurbishing the wind turbines and contracting for 1.5MW of rooftop solar that they control to prevent excess production on sunny days, which still leaves the diesel in place).
Thank you for that. I might have a dive into it, out of curiosity, just to see if there is anyone else bothering with what in essence is fairly important aspect to any of these projects!
Would I be correct in assuming that 12.0-14.5 is the unbuffered estimate for offshore wind EROEI and that once the effect of intermittency of power generation is taken into account, this estimate will drop dramatically?
Assuming that buffering technology results in a halving of the EROEI, that means it is a quarter that which we currently enjoy from fossil fuel generation and only a tenth that of nuclear power. In terms of geographic impact, this means that offshore wind installations probably need thousands of acres of pristine ocean environment to generate just 1/10th of the energy required by 1 acre of nuclear installation. The EROEI Lemmings are determined to drive us over that cliff, it would seem.
The concrete piling will never be removed at the end of life. It will represent a significant hazard for navigation for hundreds of years, if not more. After the technology is abandoned.
ANSI should be commissioned to develop a standard for the EROI calculation.
Probably some repeated or amplifying thoughts here.
Ok. Where to start. Firstly, as eluded to by George Watts in the coments, it would be useful to compare the EROEI’s from other sources of energy when looking at EROEI numbers. For example, the reference supplied (Weissbach) charts the unbuffered and buffered EROEI’s of wind (being 16 and 3.9, respectively), while nuclear PWR is at 75, period. Those who claim EROEI’s of 40 plus (buffered?) for wind need to show their assumptions and calculations for other energy sources. In addition, the calculation for the EROI needed to run our society (currently thought to be around 12-15 by those who calculated buffered wind EROEI to be 4) should be in that comparison mix. It is clear that these numbers indicate an existential situation.
Secondly, incorporating EROEI savings due to recycling of materials is a misdirection, since the requirement is to EXPAND the wind and solar fleets by at least an order of magnitude to even begin to address greening of the energy economy. This is all new construction. We have as a species never done something at this scale in the specified time. There’s simply not the infrastructure, labor, capital and technical resources or even social buy-in for such a massive expansion of economic activity. Most of this new activity will have to be driven by fossil fuels, which would negate much of the “greening” anyway. And as we consider that, we still need to keep in mind the running our society as well as enabling the third world to join us.
I think that it is clear that trying to argue for windmills (and solar panels) is a distraction. The primary need is to find the highest reliable EROEI system for no better reason than to ensure the survival of the human race. This is the Darwinian situation where, if we aim to reduce our system EROEI’s, we may eventually disappear. This is one of the main mechanisms for biological evolution, after all.
Useful references:
“The Unpopular Truth: about Electricity and the Future of Energy" 2022 by Lars Schernikau & William Hayden Smith.
"Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution: The Energy Return on Investment" (SpringerBriefs in Energy, 2013th Edition) by Pedro A. Prieto,.
"alluded to by George Watts"!
Good article David. Thanks for the info and intro to the topic for a “layperson”
It's nothing short of ridiculous to claim the theoretical EROI of a wind turbine represents the actual EROI of a real world wind installation. And even for their wind turbine we've found out they have very poor data on Chinese manufactured components and materials, likely underestimating embodied energy by 3X on those.
You have to include the access roads to build the wind farm, the energy used by the construction of the wind farm including a portion of the giant cranes & heavy equipment, the energy consumed by the workers (from the income they've earned), the land use effects and of course all the transmission lines & substations. And then O&M energy used as well as the rebuild that is commonly done at ~12yrs. Even the financial services associated with the Wind farm have an energy cost.
And that's just the basics. Then getting into the costs of buffering and the both economic effects and physical effects of the wind farm on the overall grid efficiency. Taking into account such things like curtailment, overbuild, cycling inefficiencies, negative pricing and the economic forcing of low efficiency OCGT, diesel, biomass, conventional coal over high efficiency CCGT, hydro, ultra-supercritical coal and nuclear. Aggregating these effects are very significant on wind & solar since you have so little energy surplus to work with.
Don't forget the installation and maintenance vessels for offshore. They are very costly, particularly for larger turbines. The maintenance experience and lifetime is also probably underestimated problems. We wait to see how serious the problems are as admitted by Siemens. But a shorter life, more blade and hub replacements are not only costs but eat into uptime while waiting for the repair ship.
That's right. The embodied energy in all the wind installation and service equipment as well as O&M costs, including energy conversion of wages, should be included, at least for the portion of time that equipment is used on wind farms.
Plus the supply chain and manufacturing facilities required to create a) the wind generation products (highly specialised) and b) the supply chain and manufacturing facilities to create a). Consider the cranes used to construct the wind farms both on and offshore .. they are mind boggling in their complexity. How much FF is used to create those and to maintain them, plus all the infrastructure to create them etc etc. Also, commercial companies that manufacture all of the infrastructure have to innovate to stay in business i.e., they constantly update their products, so is not possible to rely on a particular design of a product to be available for decades so that like for like replacements can be made during the lifetime of a renewal. For example, an offshore wind farm is commissioned and runs fine for a few years and then some complex proprietary component starts to fail across multiple units e.g. inverter system. It could be that the manufacturer went bust and there’s no way to complete a repair as the components are no longer available and there’s no new alternative that readily slots in place. Guaranteeing that renewable infrastructure can be kept going for up to 30 years is going to be very challenging especially in a world that is becoming more unstable. If it can’t be kept going, and has to be trashed it’s EROI is going to be a lot lower just than predicted. There are plenty of images on line of abandoned wind farms (and smashed up solar farms) demonstrating that some organisation walked away from them as they no longer made economic sense.
To be fair though even FF power stations need vast amounts of plant to erect the equipment along with concrete foundations and steelwork. The reality is nothing comes free in the world but what needs to be taken account of is the energy required for all the back up power stations and transmission systems to fill in the gaps on windless days so that have an energy system that has the best EROI.
That's true but:
a) Wind & solar being intermittent, non-dispatchable, unreliable, seasonal energy sources they add a whole lot of extra system wide energy costs, traditional energy sources just don't.
b) Adding those usually ignored energy inputs might knock say Nuclear LWRs down from say 75:1 to 65:1, not a serious issue, while it will likely knock Wind down from 16:1 to ~4:1 and Solar even worse, making them a physically impossible replacement for fossil fuels.
In the case of Switzerland, Ferroni's in depth real world analysis of solar put it at a real EROI of 0.82:1, a net energy deficit. i.e. The more solar they are installing in Switzerland actually increases their emissions and fossil consumption.
And, of course, the Bentek study found adding Wind power to Texas & Colorado caused fossil emissions to increase. In other words the overall system wide EROI of Wind was <1:1.
That the carbon brief analysis is miles out doesn’t surprise me in the least, even less so that the author of that article is the very same one who after the AR4 round last year arrogantly declared offshore wind was ‘nine times cheaper than gas’ A line repeatedly trotted out by octopus energy in the past year.
One thing for sure the mouthpiece of carbon brief is tone deaf to any questioning of his findings.
Very clear. Thank you.
Very interesting insight, thank you.
I am being very lazy, I'm sure the interweb would spew answers at me, but may I ask if you have a list of bracketed EROEI of other renewable energy projects and initiatives? Curious on your take of battery backed solar, wave, hot rock etc..
Unfortunately, there's very little serious analysis of the EROEI of different energy systems beyond the work of Weissbach.
Battery backed solar might work in the tropics. At UK latitudes I think it's a complete non-starter. I don't think wave energy is mature enough to make a judgement other than "poor". Hot rocks can only ever be short term storage plus there's bound to be large round trip losses. But I guess the embedded energy in a few rocks is quite small.
Solar plus battery in the tropics
https://euanmearns.com/wind-and-solar-on-thursday-island/
I'm thinking about updating that to comment on a study done by academics that fails to do the right analysis, and in the light of Ergon's belated work on trying to reduce diesel use (by refurbishing the wind turbines and contracting for 1.5MW of rooftop solar that they control to prevent excess production on sunny days, which still leaves the diesel in place).
Thank you for that. I might have a dive into it, out of curiosity, just to see if there is anyone else bothering with what in essence is fairly important aspect to any of these projects!
Please let me know what you find
Would I be correct in assuming that 12.0-14.5 is the unbuffered estimate for offshore wind EROEI and that once the effect of intermittency of power generation is taken into account, this estimate will drop dramatically?
Yes. The scale of the drop for buffering depends on the technology used.
Assuming that buffering technology results in a halving of the EROEI, that means it is a quarter that which we currently enjoy from fossil fuel generation and only a tenth that of nuclear power. In terms of geographic impact, this means that offshore wind installations probably need thousands of acres of pristine ocean environment to generate just 1/10th of the energy required by 1 acre of nuclear installation. The EROEI Lemmings are determined to drive us over that cliff, it would seem.