The big wind drought in Europe has acolytes ranting about giant batteries saving the day. It’s a typical but delusional response to wind power’s hopeless intermittency.
True enough, at the margins, it is possible to store electricity. But, the cost of doing so on any kind of scale is simply out of this world. Then there’s the way giant batteries are developing a habit of spontaneously exploding into giant, toxic fireballs (see above and below).
Eric Worrall reports on the latest ‘batteries will save us’ wheeze, this time it’s the US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen taking us down the rabbit hole.
Treasury Secretary on European Wind Drought: “Energy Storage … Can Be Deployed”
Watts Up With That?
Eric Worrall
4 October 2021
If Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has calculated how much must be spent on energy storage to stabilise a 100% renewable grid, she does not seem keen to share.
Why Treasury Secretary Yellen testified that climate change ‘must be addressed’
Grace O’Donnell
Assistant Editor
Mon, October 4, 2021, 11:54 PM
Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen recently reiterated her stance that climate change poses a threat to the U.S. economy.
“Climate change is an existential threat, and it is a very high priority of President Biden’s and of mine to address it,” Yellen told the Senate Banking Committee last week.
…
Yellen also responded to a question about the Biden administration’s plans to shift U.S. energy to be reliant on renewable sources by 2035.
“I don’t believe that the president’s program is going to lead to increases in the cost of energy,” Yellen said, referring to the fuel shortage and high gas prices in the UK and Europe more broadly.
She added that “in the case of the UK, there’s a question of what to do if the sun isn’t out and the wind doesn’t blow, and I believe there is storage technologies that can be deployed and, you know, other means to address that, and of course that has to be part of a plan to switch to renewables and address climate change.”
…
Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/treasury-secretary-yellen-climate-change-135431579.html
A while ago I performed a rough calculation, total cost of wind turbines to produce enough annual power, to replace the current US generator fleet is around $20 trillion.
But the cost of battery storage to redistribute the peaks and troughs into a smooth supply throughout the year, by my calculation, was around $50 trillion. My rough calculation didn’t take seasonal variations in supply and demand into account – that $50 trillion only buys you five days backup, and assumes the batteries have a full charge at the start of the 5 day “energy drought”.
Maybe my rough calculation is wrong. But hand-waving proposed expenditure of anything like that magnitude just isn’t good enough.
US Treasury Secretary Yellen must be totally candid about her department’s green energy generation and storage cost calculations, her calculation parameters, her expenditure timeframe, and explain to the American people how the USA will be more financially stable after the USA borrows or raises 10s of trillions of dollars, and somehow passes those costs onto US businesses and consumers.
STOP THESE THINGS 
The big question is why is RE centered on/from Germany? It’s international financing of RE and associated manipulation of governments?
Does it have anything to do with WWI & WWII, the restrictions on the UN considering its increased membership, & expansion of NATO, the World Bank & International Monetary Fund?
Who will argue against that there are only two political systems; socialism & fascism? With their governing subjected to their purpose of service?
I recently have written an article to give a simple explanation on the possibilities of lithium storage for a very small wind farm. In Australian terms it would cost $938 million to support an actual 99 MW station. The article was submitted to WUWT but it seems they are not going to publish it. If this website wishes to publish and they are very welcome.
Hi Mike,
Thanks. Yes, we are glad to publish it, we will probably run it the week after next.
next week then thanks. How should I normally submit this?
The same way works for us. Thanks. We will run your text or work from linked docs, as required, as posts. We will treat anything you send as a post, as such, rather than a comment (which will not appear). Thanks.
Add Janet Yellen to the list of corrupt officials looking out for their personal profit over the nation’s welfare.
Either that, or she’s incompetent.
Or has put her trust in an advisor who is either corrupt or incompetent.
Battery cost: In case of general “go-ahead” to build them, add to the above material scarcity (Lithium, cobalt,…) price impact; after the bottoming out, thence comes the “inflated prices” impact.
I would estimate $100 sextillion cost based on accounting systems such as the constant overruns on the bullet train to nowhere in California. Lower costs can almost always be traced to everything being manufactured in China which 100% does all of it’s manufacturing using Earth Based Energy (EBE) even such fuels that are provided by all the countries that buy their products that claim they are doing everything beyond humanly possible to save the universe. Even if those were all installed and it provided 10 days power you can bet the farm that everything you use will be rationed by apps. Every single thing will be tied to that app, you will only be allocated 5% of what you use, just enough to keep your refrigerator on for 10 minute periods, and recharge your phone so you can keep checking in every 15 minutes with your health information. Central servers that suck energy to control it all “to save energy”. Big tech gets richer than God and it’s rulers use more fossil fuels than anyone 100x more than they did in 2021 as they will carve out exceptions, like for their jets, and you know like those they carved out by keeping big business and liquor stores open while killing your gym and convenient indoor dining facilities “for your health” and banning plastic bags and straws “to save the planet” then mandate disposable masks stop no invisible threat if it even existed which it does not while it cuts off oxygen so that you can no longer think things through and as they carve out exceptions to they and their rich friends being Fauci’s lab puppy torturous experiment as they do everything they can at warp speed to hustle the world into not noticing what Dr. David Martin is saying about their corona scam that started 21 years ago, a hustle of many in the medical fraud arenas that CONSUME MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF ENERGY.
https://internetmatter.com/martin-david-covidcon21-speech.html
The real capacity of “big” batteries. The price is now lower than the figures collated in this study but the cost curve is bottoming out, not flattening.
https://www.riteon.org.au/netzero-casualties/#2112