On El Hierro Island, At Least They Kept The Diesel Backup

On El Hierro Island in Spain, they set out to build an electricity system powered only by wind, with backup from a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant.  The relevant statistics for El Hierro are:  average electricity demand: 5 MW; nameplate capacity of the wind turbines: 11.5 MW (i.e., 2.3x “overbuild” compared to average usage); storage capacity of the pumped storage system:  70 MWh (i.e., 14 hours of average usage).  The operator of the facility has provided eight years of operating data for the system.  I reported on the results in my last post on October 23.  In summary, the wind/storage system provided 56% of the island’s electricity use in the best year, and only 35% in the worst year.

During these years, the remainder of the island’s electricity — ranging from 44% in the “best” year for the wind system to 65% in the worst year — has been provided by a diesel generator.  The wind/storage system has fallen far short of its stated goal of supplying all the electricity for the island.  But at least they have kept the diesel generator around.  The diesel generator has sufficient capacity to meet the full electricity demand of the island, even when the wind is calm and the storage reservoir is empty.  As a result, the system operators have been able to continue to provide electricity to the residents despite the total failure of the wind/storage system to meet its promises.  

But here’s some important information you may not be aware of.  Here in the U.S., during the Obama and Biden administrations, the regulators took the opposite approach.  Rather than proceeding like El Hierro, and building out a wind/storage (or a wind/solar/storage) system first, and only then reducing fossil-fuel backup capacity as that became feasible, they instead ordered that the fossil-fuel capacity must be shut on a fixed schedule without any knowledge or assurance that there would be sufficient wind, solar, storage, or anything else to replace it.

And this was for the whole country, not just for a small island of 11,000 people.  All 340+ million Americans were to be enlisted as involuntary guinea pigs in this wild adventure.