When it comes to writing texts, I have never liked nitpickers, especially if they are right. Yet I must play this role to correct elements of language that are disruptive to political life and to the planet’s energy future.

So don’t say:

This new solar panel farm will supply the electricity needed by a town of twenty thousand inhabitants in the form of renewable energy.

Because that is a lie.

Then say:

This new solar panel farm will remain idle for 89% of the time and will only sporadically harvest energy and turn it into electricity that will be either excessively or insufficiently available to the inhabitants of any city.

Explanation:

• The said inhabitants will receive nothing in the middle of the night and very little on cloudy days.
• The capacity factor (CF) expresses the utilisation rate of a facility as an annual average percentage. For photovoltaics (CF=11 % in Switzerland) or wind power (CF=20 %) this depends on local and uncontrollable conditions, which are only partially predictable (day-night). 
  The remaining percentage (89 % for solar or 80 % for wind) is therefore an average rate of technical unemployment.
• Electricity cannot be stored as is. To do so, it must be transformed, which requires additional facilities and leads to significant losses in charging and discharging.
  Let’s not forget that charging installations (hydraulic pumps, battery chargers, hydrogen electrolysers) will necessarily have a higher rate of unemployment than intermittent power production, which leads to oversizing and disproportionate costs.
• Renewable energy?
  • No energy is renewable.
    At most, production facilities that must be renewed every 25-30 years, such as solar panels or wind turbines, can be called renewable…
  • Primary energy is harvested where it is stored (coal, oil, gas, uranium mines, reservoirs, biomass) or where it flows (radiation, wind, rivers, geothermal). There is no renewal, only consumption from finite reserves, which is also the case for the sun, although it may last for a few more billion years.
  • Only living beings renew themselves from generation to generation, each creature being new and original even if it resembles the previous one.
• The allegedly successful experiments in Germany or the USA are only possible because of gas or coal-fired power stations. If they were to run out, the blackout would not be probable but certain.
  Coal and gas are the mask for an energy transition that dare not be revealed in all its aspects.

This post is also available in German on the Carnot-Cournot-Netzwerk blog.

As a Bonus: Presentation of the Swiss photovoltaic production in Switzerland in 2021

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