"Virginia’s 100% renewables mandate has been estimated to cost its people billions of dollars, but a more realistic estimate is trillions.
... the Virginia Clean Economy Act or VCEA ... mandates 100% non-fossil fueled power statewide by 2045.
... For simplicity ... assume 100% wind power, because wind is the renewables workhorse.
The huge issue that the public is in the dark about is the astronomical cost of batteries to supply power when the wind generators do not.
As a benchmark we will look at the 7 day heat waves that Virginia gets every few years.
These heat waves are due to massive stagnant high pressure systems called Bermuda highs.
With temperatures around 100 degrees these are periods of peak power usage.
But they are also times of low wind, so low that there is no wind power.
The standard wind turbine requires wind speeds of around 30 mph for full power and 10 mph for any.
During a week long Bermuda high heat wave folks are lucky to get a 5 mph breeze.
So what might it cost for batteries to supply the desperately needed power to get through one of these awful heat waves?
Here comes the math:
A. Virginia consumes about 100,000,000 megawatt hours a year (rounded down from 118,435,380 MWh in 2019).
B. This works out to about 11,500 MWh an hour.
C. A week has 168 hours which gives roughly 2,000,000 MWh of no wind power.
D. The average cost of grid scale batteries is reported to be around $1,500,000 per MWh of storage capacity.
E. The 2 million MWh of storage required will cost a staggering $3,000,000,000,000
That is THREE TRILLION DOLLARS just for the batteries to get through a heat wave.
... Dominion Energy’s plan for VCEA compliance does not mention it ...
... the VCEA ... deems 2,700 megawatts (MW) of storage to be in the public interest.
... the VCEA batteries might provide from 5,400 to 10,800 MWh of power storage.
But we need 2,000,000 MWh to weather our heat wave.
... the Virginia Legislature did not know about this enormous storage requirement.
... the THREE TRILLION DOLLARS cost estimate ... might come down if grid scale batteries get cheaper.
... (but) this staggering cost might actually be very low.
... several ... drivers of higher cost:
1.
Our estimate is based on average power usage, but these heat waves create peak power usage, which can easily be 30% greater or more.
So we might need 30% or so more batteries.
2.
... Nationally the energy content of all the gasoline and diesel we use is much greater than the electricity we use.
... switching to electric vehicles might require more than double the present electric power output.
So we might need 100% or so more batteries.
3.
... the goal of switching all house, building and water heating from natural gas and fuel oil to electric power (which) would greatly increase the need for power, and so also for batteries.
... once in a while these low wind heat waves last a lot longer than a week, perhaps even two weeks or more. (doubling) the required storage.
Solar power is not considered here -- it produces no power most of every day.
Add ... a multi-day snowstorm dumping several paralyzing feet of covering snow with frigid temperatures and the storage numbers will again be enormous.
... The one VCEA cost estimate I know of is $84 billion.
The reality is likely between ... $800 billion and $8 trillion."