Thank you gents for an excellent explanation of the situation. This always seemed the most likely outcome to me, even though I am no expert in the situation, but I do have a basic understanding of things like physics and chemistry from my undergraduate days at MIT.
since the issue is entirely political, perhaps the proper way forward is to recognize that the climate change narrative is a religion (after all, it shares all the attributes of religion, belief without proof as well as the religious heirarchies and ability to pay indulgences like carbon offsets). Thus, the Church of Carbon (not my name, but cannot remember who first said it) being a religion must be separated from the state and is ineligible for any subsidies of any type. so all those subsidies for wind and solar would be unconstitutional and ended. Perhaps then, we could go back to a reality based process for expanding our ever growing energy needs.
"The IRA is a disingenuous accounting gimmick that allowed the EPA to pretend that its regulations on greenhouse gas emissions on coal and natural gas power plants would not cost the country hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars in compliance costs. As a result, the IRA subsidies were the primary enabler of the EPA’s regulatory overreach by allowing the agency to claim the rules passed a cost-benefit test."
This is example one of an opinion not supported by any presented facts.
Point #2
the administrative state is also using them to punish the dispatchable power plants that keep the lights on and force them to close for good. This is why lawmakers cannot choose wind and solar subsidies and also have a reliable grid.
No facts. Just opinion.
Point #3 of faceless opinion
Repealing the subsidies for wind and solar will save the American taxpayer trillions of dollars, but also the electric grid as a whole.
Exhibit A. Why you are wrong. From the NERC report. Basically solar is adding important capacity
Exhibit B. Why again you and the pros miss the big picture. Forever until deregulation and decoupling of electric service from electric transmission and generation,Electric utilities were PUBLIC regulated MONOPOLIES. NOT owned for M&A and Private Equity.
Guess which will invest in 20 year ROI, upkeep maintenance, and maintain capacity at 80% (instead of 95% utilization) - public utilities and NEVER private utilities. Why? Because the former serves the public good MONOPOLY and the latter serves the greedy private company. Example. Here in Tucson Arizona, the 2000 mile away foreign company, Canadian Fortis, bought our Tucson Electric Power TEP. Raised rates 50 to 80% to pay off the M&A and under invested in capacity.
NERC report. Which underwhelms root causes like private equity
"The addition of solar resources is helping to raise summer on-peak reserve margins in the assessment area, despite rising demand forecasts and additional coal-fired generator retirements. Since the 2023 LTRA, solar PV resources have grown from 1.5 GW to an expected 4.7 GW by the end of 2024. An additional 2 GW of solar PV resources are in the process of connecting. The summer peak demand forecast has also risen since the 2023 LTRA, increasing by 2.8 GW (6.3%) over last year’s projection. The area reserve margins have increased in the near term as a result of the solar resource additions then drop off after 2028 due to higher demand forecasts and planned generator retirements."
"The IRA is a disingenuous accounting gimmick that allowed the EPA to pretend that its regulations on greenhouse gas emissions on coal and natural gas power plants would not cost the country hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars in compliance costs. As a result, the IRA subsidies were the primary enabler of the EPA’s regulatory overreach by allowing the agency to claim the rules passed a cost-benefit test."
This is example one of an opinion not supported by any presented facts.
Point #2
the administrative state is also using them to punish the dispatchable power plants that keep the lights on and force them to close for good. This is why lawmakers cannot choose wind and solar subsidies and also have a reliable grid.
No facts. Just opinion.
Point #3 of faceless opinion
Repealing the subsidies for wind and solar will save the American taxpayer trillions of dollars, but also the electric grid as a whole.
There are hyperlinks in the piece to extended arguments that might persuade you. Not every essay can or should recapitulate covered territory. This would be unworkable and counterproductive.
Having said all that, your training as a physicist has zero bearing on identifying as you put it “an opinion not supported by any presented facts.” So why the appeal to authority that is in any case irrelevant?
Back to the point. You made a factual claim: these gents are biased and off the mark. Fair enough. But you’ve been asked to support this several times and, in all this back and forth, you’ve yet to do so.
I think we’d all be better off with a good faith wrestling with the subject than this, what seems like a complete waste of time.
Exhibit A. Why you and the bros are wrong. From the NERC report. Basically solar is adding important capacity
Exhibit B. Why again you and the pros miss the big picture. Forever until deregulation and decoupling of electric service from electric transmission and generation,Electric utilities were PUBLIC regulated MONOPOLIES. NOT owned for M&A and Private Equity.
Guess which will invest in 20 year ROI, upkeep maintenance, and maintain capacity at 80% (instead of 95% utilization) - public utilities and NEVER private utilities. Why? Because the former serves the public good MONOPOLY and the latter serves the greedy private company. Example. Here in Tucson Arizona, the 2000 mile away foreign company, Canadian Fortis, bought our Tucson Electric Power TEP. Raised rates 50 to 80% to pay off the M&A and under invested in capacity.
NERC report. Which underwhelms root causes like private equity
"The addition of solar resources is helping to raise summer on-peak reserve margins in the assessment area, despite rising demand forecasts and additional coal-fired generator retirements. Since the 2023 LTRA, solar PV resources have grown from 1.5 GW to an expected 4.7 GW by the end of 2024. An additional 2 GW of solar PV resources are in the process of connecting. The summer peak demand forecast has also risen since the 2023 LTRA, increasing by 2.8 GW (6.3%) over last year’s projection. The area reserve margins have increased in the near term as a result of the solar resource additions then drop off after 2028 due to higher demand forecasts and planned generator retirements."
Are wind and PV dispatchable? Merely adding capacity is irrelevant if that capacity requires the operation and maintenance of a parallel generation network that must be curtailed to let W/PV contribute to the grid when and to the extent it can. This artificially reduced capacity factor to pretend “renewables” make any sense at all is precisely why your utility bill exploded; not the “greedy” hand rubbing Mr. Burns from Canada.
It’s why W/PV look “cheap” and fission looks “expensive”. When you hide the true cost of a thing, that thing starts to look attractive.
To wit: your greedy capitalists. Who do you think is building out all this “green” infrastructure? Show me the incentives, right? If government pays a greedy utility to build something stupid, they’re going to oblige…and have; to the point where it’s no longer a chuckle in the boardroom (extra rev from idiotic government policy) but an emerging crisis.
But there’s a more fundamental problem with W/PV: their real (not delusional modeled) energy payback. Many if not most of these installations (see Germany for pete’s sake) will never generate more energy than they consume. And the ones that do boast on the order of 4:1 EROI…before they need replacing.
Let me put this in a way that might hit closer to your training. Going backwards down the entropy ladder isn’t going to work because it cannot.
Do you have an argument? If so, spell it out. If not, you’ve contributed nothing to the discussion.
If you have merely a sentiment (this is in fact what you appear to have) that’s fine. But let’s bot pretend you’ve in anyway rebutted or added context to the piece.
I’m a Berkeley EE with 40 years experience working on the western grid, the last 15 years with my own consulting company working on large interconnections. These guys analysis of the situation is top notch. maybe the best I’ve seen. And your qualifications, Doug?
Doug’s LinkedIn indicates he’s spent many years working in the biomedical space. I’m sure he’s helped countless people and animals with his efforts but his relative lack of experience looking at energy explains why many of his points are wanting
Thank you EBBs and happy new year! It struck me (from the UK) that our own governments' policies are putting us in a position that "hostile "actors" have been striving for - to "turn out the lights". Germany has been referred to many times as the exemplar of this folly, sometimes to the point of ridicule. I've yet to see anyone ridiculing our neighbours the French over energy (not even the Brits). It is in their psyche not to want to be beholden to others and I believe this motivated them decades ago to establish a large fleet of nuclear power stations which have provided them with safe, secure and weather-independent power with a particularly low per capita "carbon footprint" for a developed nation. (As I write, France is supplying 3% of the UK grid demand.) There's no need for the hypothetical; examples exist. "They have eyes, but they refuse to see. If their minds were not closed, they might see with their eyes".
The power crisis in Texas in February 2021 was a taste of things to come when a bitter cold spell and low winds overnight caused a partial blackout of the state. The inadequately winterised gas supply underperformed and a complete blackout was only narrowly averted, possibly due to some coal and nuclear capacity. Hundreds died and a complete blackout could have killed many thousands.
That is the way things are going in all the grids in the US and every other system in the world where net zero policies are in place.
The root of the problem is the failure of the meteorologists to issue wind drought warnings. It was left to unofficial observers in Australia to find them over a decade ago by looking at the continuous record of windpower generated in the wind facilities attached to the grid. This information was reported on Jo Nova’s blog but the news didn’t travel.
As the subsidised and mandated wind and solar power displaced coal the infected grids fell into a “wind drought trap.”
The trap takes some years to set and there is a “frog in the saucepan” effect because conventional power retires in small steps and that does not cause problems in the early years while there is spare capacity. The trap only causes public alarm when it is too late, as we see in Britain and Germany.
The trap closes when the conventional power capacity (traditionally dominated by coal) declines to a critical point, a “tipping point” where there is not enough power to meet the base load overnight. Then the grid is in a “red zone” where windless nights are potentially lethal because there is no wind or solar generation, regardless of the amount of installed capacity.
The incompetence or negligence of the Government meteorologists around the world allowed this situation to develop because they didn’t issue wind drought warnings even though they know that high pressure systems cause low winds.
Consequently, the Dunkelflautes came as a surprise in Europe although mariners and millers must have experienced them for centuries.
The plot thickens when we discover that the World Meteorological Organization must have known about wind droughts because the first Assessment report of the IPCC recommended a survey of the wind resources of the world to assess the prospects for large-scale wind power. That would have been led by the WMO, working with the official meteorologists around the world.
Moreover The WMO was a first mover in the climate alarm campaign in the UN and all the met offices have been hyperactive in supporting the scare by tampering with temperature records and attributing extreme weather events to climate change.
The climate alarmists in the UN set out to wreck the capitalist economies of the west and they have practically achieved that objective in Britain and Germany where the lights are kept on precariously with imported power while they deindustrialize to reduce demand.
In the United States there is no time to waste to avoid the trap by saving coal and gas generators from the impending EPA regulations that were designed to close them down.
Community support for the net zero program must be undermined by explaining the wind drought problem, which makes the energy transition impossible, and the cost of the program, which makes the effort prohibitively expensive. The public need to know that trillions of dollars have been spent to make power more expensive and less reliable, with catastrophic damage to the planet.
At the same time the meteorologists should be put on the rack and forced to confess that they have been playing a devious game on instructions from the WMO and the United Nations.
That will justify the termination of financial support to the offending agencies.
With leadership from the Federal administration and support from red states, a sustained and effective communication campaign could give climate and energy realism a moral ascendancy over the ideological, financial and political interests that support the climate industrial complex.
Sadly, we’ve demonstrated the propensity to explore the entire landscape of wrong before being forced into right after colliding with physical reality.
The rolling blackouts will undoubtably be blamed on climate change or some other distraction with the natural solution being: do more.
Your last paragraph is a powerful warning, but many folks still believe that the problems in 2021 were a failure of gas and not a failure of wind. After all, "wind wasn't expected to show up."
I think you guys wrote an article about that topic at some point. You may wish to add a reference in your final paragraph.
Wind consumes existing dispatchable margin on the grid without paying for the privilege, until there is no dispatchable margin available to cover excursion events. Then, governments such as Texas, spend $8B to buy more dispatchable margin, instead of just ending the wind that stole their margin to being with.
Great write up again! Unfortunately until something is done about the new EPA section 111 rules on power plant CO2 emissions, you will not see any new thermal plants built. That has to be the other half of the equation.
You energy Energy Bad Boys do a great service to us all by highlighting these issues. Having said that, I am glad that DougAZ has shown up here because he provides some commentary that either needs to be corrected or that raises a valid concern and ought to be addressed.
Unfortunately I don't want to hog the thread here, but let's just look at a couple of points.
First, DougAZ makes the irrelevant point that Issac and Mitch are mere journalists and political science guys and not qualified as such to make the arguments they do. Generally speaking, arguments have to be judged on their own merit and not on who is making them. This is true even if the folks making the argument are known rascals, which EBB certainly are not. So, let's set the ad hominem aside.
Second, DougAZ does have a point that corporate profits (which he calls greed) have an outsized influence in this arena. However, the IRA has distorted the markets and this allows undue influence of profit incentives on grid specification. I could point to what goes on in public necessity and convenience hearings or even general rate cases to bolster my point. One could argue that true public utilities might ( and I emphasize might) serve the public better in some instances. Yet, the regulatory environment is a large part of the problem that won't be solved by making the entire service a publicly-owned entity because the overhanging issue of "social costs of carbon" is a made-up cost, is run by a regulatory mindset, and represents an uncertainty for everyone involved in this market. The IRA complicates this issue.
Third, DougAZ points out that the NERC report cites solar as adding needed reserve. However, this statement is specifically for the SERC area and the area of greatest concern is MISO. I'm pretty sure that adding solar in Minnesota or Manitoba does not do anything but spend money. The IRA subsidizes such sillyness.
Moreover, you notice that this NERC statement is made on the basis of summer reserves. This brings up the issue of bad-thinking. Seasonal capacity factors are better than using annual capacity factors, but only marginally so. Solar is capable of providing a lot less than a seasonal capacity factor at any time during a season. Making up for the eventuality of true load-carrying capacity falling off a cliff is the expenditure of very large amounts of money on transmission and storage assets that are used infrequently. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the entire green energy fantasy is rotten with instances of poorly utilized capital that the rate-payers will eventually be forced to cover. And this rotten problem exists independently of who owns the assets.
There is so much to discuss, and life is so short.
Great work. I like the way you frame the issue. When it comes to these massive subsidies, it's an either-or question. To use the title of a 1964 speech by Ronald Reagan, it's "A Time For Choosing." I just looked up the text of that speech. Sixty years ago, Reagan nailed it: "No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments' programs, once launched, never disappear." As I wrote in my piece here on Substack yesterday, if Trump and the DOGE boys are serious about cutting spending, the should immediately focus on the ITC and PTC.
DougAz is simply a troll, repeating the same nonsensical statements over and over.
You cannot build two grids worth of generation instead of 1 and have it cost the same as one, so installing renewables drives up the costs because it has to.
Duh
Then because the renewables are favored when they actually produce, the useful dispatchable generation has to shut off, destroying its economics.
The reliable grid provides the backup the renewable grid must have therefore the renewables operators should be forced to pay the costs and losses they force onto the reliable generation.
We can do fine without the renewables grid, we all die without the reliable one, and that’s the final answer to all of this.
According to a baseless rumor I am now spreading, the truck & ice shanty photo portrays a Thanksgiving misadventure carried out by the Energy Bad Boys.
Thanks Isaac and Mitch for the reporting. I saw a recent video from either a MISO or NERC executive about the coming arctic blast and how it is likely to strain our energy resources. Grid operators are seeing the same things y’all are seeing so don’t let the naysayers claim you have no basis for your statements.
I live in MISO south (Louisiana) and see we are also shown as high risk. But we also have very little intermittent generators and a vast natural gas pipeline network. Is there a similar risk for my area compared to the much colder MISO north? I don’t think we’re at as high of a risk but maybe I’m naive.
A big reason for energy policies that have no relation to energy and stability, it is somewhat of an eye opener to look at the people who have been in charge of America's energy under Biden (and not just Biden if looking further back):
DOI head - Deb Haaland-activist-cooked for protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline-objective-shutter a pipeline moving 750,000 bbls of crude a day;
BLM head - Tracy Stone Manning - eco-terrorist-turned on her comrades she joined to drive spikes into trees targeted for clearing - objective: maim workers ;
EPA-head-Michael Regan-environmental lawyer with focus to decrease and halt use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy;
BOEM head- Amanda Lefton Director for the Nature Conservancy to 2023- pro-wind with emphasis offshore;
BOEM head 2023- Liz Klein - NYU law, attorney serving under Haaland promoting offshore wind - on 12/20/24 approved the 11th offshore wind project - result- to date 4 operational offshore wind farms. One Vineyard Wind considered commercial.
A side note - Vineyard Wind, as the 4th offshore wind turbine built 10 1,000' turbines, offshore Nantucket operations beginning January 2024. In June, 2024 a 350' 70 ton blade exploded sending 1/2 of the blades mass to the ocean floor and scattering fiberglass and foam along the entire coast and shards have been found as far as RI. Vineyard Wind was shuttered since other blades showed stress fractures by GE Verona the manufacturer. But Ms. Klein's BOEM construction approval sub-agency gave Avangrid, subsidiary of Spanish conglomerate Iberdrola the green light to go for it. So, 62 of these useless towers of wildlife destruction will be sitting offshore MA.
The DOI, BLM and BOEM with oil and gas regulated by EPA are the main components of the agencies that institute the regs for the industry both onshore and offshore on federal lands and waters, submit oil and gas leases for competitive lease sales, issue oil and gas leases, approve permits for drilling, rights-of-way, bonding requirements, approve assignments, transfers, well completion etc., and regulate the industry itself to death. The DOE is not mentioned since it is basically a money machine that delivers grants to groups who are start-ups for renewable fantasy projects and NGO's to handle lawsuits, protests and the energy to consistently attempt to take down reliable energy.
As the Trump team is announced, once again, people without any real oil and gas experience are in the drivers seat. However, one appointment for DOE, Gary Wright, is actually in the oil and gas industry and owns a fracking company. So there is that ray of hope and although fracking is a process for completion of a well and not in exploration and drilling, he and Doug Bergman may be able to bring reality back into the federal oil and gas leasing program. When and we hope they soon willunderstand all the increases in royalties, bonds, applications and permits to drill, restoration, rights of way fees, must be in the lap of Congress pronto since there will be no drill baby drill with the IRA's stranglehold of fees and regs on the independent oil and gas producers who will be held hostage to the Major oil and gas companies deep pockets.
Meanwhile, as to the grid, ERCOT, the operator for Texas sent a letter out to its customers: paraphrasing "Just letting ya'll know that mandated blackouts will be happening and your electric utility will be required to participate in a controlled outage event. And by the way, the outages will be unpredictable. Thank you so much for your understand!" So, for a choice to stop the allure of subsidies and tax credits that the grid operators thrive on, the time is now or never. And please, let's get some people with oil and gas experience in the government!
Thank you gents for an excellent explanation of the situation. This always seemed the most likely outcome to me, even though I am no expert in the situation, but I do have a basic understanding of things like physics and chemistry from my undergraduate days at MIT.
since the issue is entirely political, perhaps the proper way forward is to recognize that the climate change narrative is a religion (after all, it shares all the attributes of religion, belief without proof as well as the religious heirarchies and ability to pay indulgences like carbon offsets). Thus, the Church of Carbon (not my name, but cannot remember who first said it) being a religion must be separated from the state and is ineligible for any subsidies of any type. so all those subsidies for wind and solar would be unconstitutional and ended. Perhaps then, we could go back to a reality based process for expanding our ever growing energy needs.
Also an MIT physics grad. These gentlemen are journalists and political science grads.
There analysis are biased, gapped and flawed
If that’s the case, show it, don’t blow it.
Point #1 of the faceless opinion:
"The IRA is a disingenuous accounting gimmick that allowed the EPA to pretend that its regulations on greenhouse gas emissions on coal and natural gas power plants would not cost the country hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars in compliance costs. As a result, the IRA subsidies were the primary enabler of the EPA’s regulatory overreach by allowing the agency to claim the rules passed a cost-benefit test."
This is example one of an opinion not supported by any presented facts.
Point #2
the administrative state is also using them to punish the dispatchable power plants that keep the lights on and force them to close for good. This is why lawmakers cannot choose wind and solar subsidies and also have a reliable grid.
No facts. Just opinion.
Point #3 of faceless opinion
Repealing the subsidies for wind and solar will save the American taxpayer trillions of dollars, but also the electric grid as a whole.
More opinion and zero facts
Exhibit A. Why you are wrong. From the NERC report. Basically solar is adding important capacity
Exhibit B. Why again you and the pros miss the big picture. Forever until deregulation and decoupling of electric service from electric transmission and generation,Electric utilities were PUBLIC regulated MONOPOLIES. NOT owned for M&A and Private Equity.
Guess which will invest in 20 year ROI, upkeep maintenance, and maintain capacity at 80% (instead of 95% utilization) - public utilities and NEVER private utilities. Why? Because the former serves the public good MONOPOLY and the latter serves the greedy private company. Example. Here in Tucson Arizona, the 2000 mile away foreign company, Canadian Fortis, bought our Tucson Electric Power TEP. Raised rates 50 to 80% to pay off the M&A and under invested in capacity.
NERC report. Which underwhelms root causes like private equity
"The addition of solar resources is helping to raise summer on-peak reserve margins in the assessment area, despite rising demand forecasts and additional coal-fired generator retirements. Since the 2023 LTRA, solar PV resources have grown from 1.5 GW to an expected 4.7 GW by the end of 2024. An additional 2 GW of solar PV resources are in the process of connecting. The summer peak demand forecast has also risen since the 2023 LTRA, increasing by 2.8 GW (6.3%) over last year’s projection. The area reserve margins have increased in the near term as a result of the solar resource additions then drop off after 2028 due to higher demand forecasts and planned generator retirements."
Well, I don't do this for a living. But a fair request of course.
An appeal to (dubious) authority followed by a hand wave is an automatic disqualification from the adult table.
Feel free to re-submit your objection in the proper format.
Point #1 of the faceless opinion:
"The IRA is a disingenuous accounting gimmick that allowed the EPA to pretend that its regulations on greenhouse gas emissions on coal and natural gas power plants would not cost the country hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars in compliance costs. As a result, the IRA subsidies were the primary enabler of the EPA’s regulatory overreach by allowing the agency to claim the rules passed a cost-benefit test."
This is example one of an opinion not supported by any presented facts.
Point #2
the administrative state is also using them to punish the dispatchable power plants that keep the lights on and force them to close for good. This is why lawmakers cannot choose wind and solar subsidies and also have a reliable grid.
No facts. Just opinion.
Point #3 of faceless opinion
Repealing the subsidies for wind and solar will save the American taxpayer trillions of dollars, but also the electric grid as a whole.
More opinion and zero facts
There are hyperlinks in the piece to extended arguments that might persuade you. Not every essay can or should recapitulate covered territory. This would be unworkable and counterproductive.
Having said all that, your training as a physicist has zero bearing on identifying as you put it “an opinion not supported by any presented facts.” So why the appeal to authority that is in any case irrelevant?
Back to the point. You made a factual claim: these gents are biased and off the mark. Fair enough. But you’ve been asked to support this several times and, in all this back and forth, you’ve yet to do so.
I think we’d all be better off with a good faith wrestling with the subject than this, what seems like a complete waste of time.
And with that, I think we’re done here.
Exhibit A. Why you and the bros are wrong. From the NERC report. Basically solar is adding important capacity
Exhibit B. Why again you and the pros miss the big picture. Forever until deregulation and decoupling of electric service from electric transmission and generation,Electric utilities were PUBLIC regulated MONOPOLIES. NOT owned for M&A and Private Equity.
Guess which will invest in 20 year ROI, upkeep maintenance, and maintain capacity at 80% (instead of 95% utilization) - public utilities and NEVER private utilities. Why? Because the former serves the public good MONOPOLY and the latter serves the greedy private company. Example. Here in Tucson Arizona, the 2000 mile away foreign company, Canadian Fortis, bought our Tucson Electric Power TEP. Raised rates 50 to 80% to pay off the M&A and under invested in capacity.
NERC report. Which underwhelms root causes like private equity
"The addition of solar resources is helping to raise summer on-peak reserve margins in the assessment area, despite rising demand forecasts and additional coal-fired generator retirements. Since the 2023 LTRA, solar PV resources have grown from 1.5 GW to an expected 4.7 GW by the end of 2024. An additional 2 GW of solar PV resources are in the process of connecting. The summer peak demand forecast has also risen since the 2023 LTRA, increasing by 2.8 GW (6.3%) over last year’s projection. The area reserve margins have increased in the near term as a result of the solar resource additions then drop off after 2028 due to higher demand forecasts and planned generator retirements."
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Are wind and PV dispatchable? Merely adding capacity is irrelevant if that capacity requires the operation and maintenance of a parallel generation network that must be curtailed to let W/PV contribute to the grid when and to the extent it can. This artificially reduced capacity factor to pretend “renewables” make any sense at all is precisely why your utility bill exploded; not the “greedy” hand rubbing Mr. Burns from Canada.
It’s why W/PV look “cheap” and fission looks “expensive”. When you hide the true cost of a thing, that thing starts to look attractive.
To wit: your greedy capitalists. Who do you think is building out all this “green” infrastructure? Show me the incentives, right? If government pays a greedy utility to build something stupid, they’re going to oblige…and have; to the point where it’s no longer a chuckle in the boardroom (extra rev from idiotic government policy) but an emerging crisis.
But there’s a more fundamental problem with W/PV: their real (not delusional modeled) energy payback. Many if not most of these installations (see Germany for pete’s sake) will never generate more energy than they consume. And the ones that do boast on the order of 4:1 EROI…before they need replacing.
Let me put this in a way that might hit closer to your training. Going backwards down the entropy ladder isn’t going to work because it cannot.
Who made you so good?
This is still not the proper format.
Do you have an argument? If so, spell it out. If not, you’ve contributed nothing to the discussion.
If you have merely a sentiment (this is in fact what you appear to have) that’s fine. But let’s bot pretend you’ve in anyway rebutted or added context to the piece.
You didn't address my specific comment. So how do argue against me other than opinion?
I’m a Berkeley EE with 40 years experience working on the western grid, the last 15 years with my own consulting company working on large interconnections. These guys analysis of the situation is top notch. maybe the best I’ve seen. And your qualifications, Doug?
Doug’s LinkedIn indicates he’s spent many years working in the biomedical space. I’m sure he’s helped countless people and animals with his efforts but his relative lack of experience looking at energy explains why many of his points are wanting
Doug is a mental disordered liberal that suffers from the delusion that you can pick up a turd from the clean end.
Definitely a religion. The climate fascists pray at the altar of the Church of Carbon and live on EV Fantasy Island.
Thank you EBBs and happy new year! It struck me (from the UK) that our own governments' policies are putting us in a position that "hostile "actors" have been striving for - to "turn out the lights". Germany has been referred to many times as the exemplar of this folly, sometimes to the point of ridicule. I've yet to see anyone ridiculing our neighbours the French over energy (not even the Brits). It is in their psyche not to want to be beholden to others and I believe this motivated them decades ago to establish a large fleet of nuclear power stations which have provided them with safe, secure and weather-independent power with a particularly low per capita "carbon footprint" for a developed nation. (As I write, France is supplying 3% of the UK grid demand.) There's no need for the hypothetical; examples exist. "They have eyes, but they refuse to see. If their minds were not closed, they might see with their eyes".
Can the US escape from the wind drought trap?
The power crisis in Texas in February 2021 was a taste of things to come when a bitter cold spell and low winds overnight caused a partial blackout of the state. The inadequately winterised gas supply underperformed and a complete blackout was only narrowly averted, possibly due to some coal and nuclear capacity. Hundreds died and a complete blackout could have killed many thousands.
That is the way things are going in all the grids in the US and every other system in the world where net zero policies are in place.
The root of the problem is the failure of the meteorologists to issue wind drought warnings. It was left to unofficial observers in Australia to find them over a decade ago by looking at the continuous record of windpower generated in the wind facilities attached to the grid. This information was reported on Jo Nova’s blog but the news didn’t travel.
As the subsidised and mandated wind and solar power displaced coal the infected grids fell into a “wind drought trap.”
The trap takes some years to set and there is a “frog in the saucepan” effect because conventional power retires in small steps and that does not cause problems in the early years while there is spare capacity. The trap only causes public alarm when it is too late, as we see in Britain and Germany.
The trap closes when the conventional power capacity (traditionally dominated by coal) declines to a critical point, a “tipping point” where there is not enough power to meet the base load overnight. Then the grid is in a “red zone” where windless nights are potentially lethal because there is no wind or solar generation, regardless of the amount of installed capacity.
https://newcatallaxy.blog/2023/07/11/approaching-the-tipping-point/
The incompetence or negligence of the Government meteorologists around the world allowed this situation to develop because they didn’t issue wind drought warnings even though they know that high pressure systems cause low winds.
Consequently, the Dunkelflautes came as a surprise in Europe although mariners and millers must have experienced them for centuries.
https://www.flickerpower.com/images/The_endless_wind_drought_crippling_renewables___The_Spectator_Australia.pdf
The plot thickens when we discover that the World Meteorological Organization must have known about wind droughts because the first Assessment report of the IPCC recommended a survey of the wind resources of the world to assess the prospects for large-scale wind power. That would have been led by the WMO, working with the official meteorologists around the world.
Moreover The WMO was a first mover in the climate alarm campaign in the UN and all the met offices have been hyperactive in supporting the scare by tampering with temperature records and attributing extreme weather events to climate change.
The climate alarmists in the UN set out to wreck the capitalist economies of the west and they have practically achieved that objective in Britain and Germany where the lights are kept on precariously with imported power while they deindustrialize to reduce demand.
In the United States there is no time to waste to avoid the trap by saving coal and gas generators from the impending EPA regulations that were designed to close them down.
Community support for the net zero program must be undermined by explaining the wind drought problem, which makes the energy transition impossible, and the cost of the program, which makes the effort prohibitively expensive. The public need to know that trillions of dollars have been spent to make power more expensive and less reliable, with catastrophic damage to the planet.
At the same time the meteorologists should be put on the rack and forced to confess that they have been playing a devious game on instructions from the WMO and the United Nations.
That will justify the termination of financial support to the offending agencies.
With leadership from the Federal administration and support from red states, a sustained and effective communication campaign could give climate and energy realism a moral ascendancy over the ideological, financial and political interests that support the climate industrial complex.
Sadly, we’ve demonstrated the propensity to explore the entire landscape of wrong before being forced into right after colliding with physical reality.
The rolling blackouts will undoubtably be blamed on climate change or some other distraction with the natural solution being: do more.
Your last paragraph is a powerful warning, but many folks still believe that the problems in 2021 were a failure of gas and not a failure of wind. After all, "wind wasn't expected to show up."
I think you guys wrote an article about that topic at some point. You may wish to add a reference in your final paragraph.
Wind consumes existing dispatchable margin on the grid without paying for the privilege, until there is no dispatchable margin available to cover excursion events. Then, governments such as Texas, spend $8B to buy more dispatchable margin, instead of just ending the wind that stole their margin to being with.
Great write up again! Unfortunately until something is done about the new EPA section 111 rules on power plant CO2 emissions, you will not see any new thermal plants built. That has to be the other half of the equation.
You energy Energy Bad Boys do a great service to us all by highlighting these issues. Having said that, I am glad that DougAZ has shown up here because he provides some commentary that either needs to be corrected or that raises a valid concern and ought to be addressed.
Unfortunately I don't want to hog the thread here, but let's just look at a couple of points.
First, DougAZ makes the irrelevant point that Issac and Mitch are mere journalists and political science guys and not qualified as such to make the arguments they do. Generally speaking, arguments have to be judged on their own merit and not on who is making them. This is true even if the folks making the argument are known rascals, which EBB certainly are not. So, let's set the ad hominem aside.
Second, DougAZ does have a point that corporate profits (which he calls greed) have an outsized influence in this arena. However, the IRA has distorted the markets and this allows undue influence of profit incentives on grid specification. I could point to what goes on in public necessity and convenience hearings or even general rate cases to bolster my point. One could argue that true public utilities might ( and I emphasize might) serve the public better in some instances. Yet, the regulatory environment is a large part of the problem that won't be solved by making the entire service a publicly-owned entity because the overhanging issue of "social costs of carbon" is a made-up cost, is run by a regulatory mindset, and represents an uncertainty for everyone involved in this market. The IRA complicates this issue.
Third, DougAZ points out that the NERC report cites solar as adding needed reserve. However, this statement is specifically for the SERC area and the area of greatest concern is MISO. I'm pretty sure that adding solar in Minnesota or Manitoba does not do anything but spend money. The IRA subsidizes such sillyness.
Moreover, you notice that this NERC statement is made on the basis of summer reserves. This brings up the issue of bad-thinking. Seasonal capacity factors are better than using annual capacity factors, but only marginally so. Solar is capable of providing a lot less than a seasonal capacity factor at any time during a season. Making up for the eventuality of true load-carrying capacity falling off a cliff is the expenditure of very large amounts of money on transmission and storage assets that are used infrequently. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the entire green energy fantasy is rotten with instances of poorly utilized capital that the rate-payers will eventually be forced to cover. And this rotten problem exists independently of who owns the assets.
There is so much to discuss, and life is so short.
Great work. I like the way you frame the issue. When it comes to these massive subsidies, it's an either-or question. To use the title of a 1964 speech by Ronald Reagan, it's "A Time For Choosing." I just looked up the text of that speech. Sixty years ago, Reagan nailed it: "No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments' programs, once launched, never disappear." As I wrote in my piece here on Substack yesterday, if Trump and the DOGE boys are serious about cutting spending, the should immediately focus on the ITC and PTC.
DougAz is simply a troll, repeating the same nonsensical statements over and over.
You cannot build two grids worth of generation instead of 1 and have it cost the same as one, so installing renewables drives up the costs because it has to.
Duh
Then because the renewables are favored when they actually produce, the useful dispatchable generation has to shut off, destroying its economics.
The reliable grid provides the backup the renewable grid must have therefore the renewables operators should be forced to pay the costs and losses they force onto the reliable generation.
We can do fine without the renewables grid, we all die without the reliable one, and that’s the final answer to all of this.
Stop wasting money on useless garbage
According to a baseless rumor I am now spreading, the truck & ice shanty photo portrays a Thanksgiving misadventure carried out by the Energy Bad Boys.
. . . . . . . . Wind Power© . . . . . . . .
.
Wind Power's a fraud, don't you know?
'Cause a subsidy's what makes it go.
Greens cry, "Give us your trust!"
But their program's a bust,
'Cause so often the wind doesn't blow.
Thank you EBB! You supplied the perfect information needed to share to the misinformed. Starting with the 2 Senators here in GA.
What exactly were the facts presented. Not opinions you like but observable facts?
This is worthwhile reading.
Thanks Isaac and Mitch for the reporting. I saw a recent video from either a MISO or NERC executive about the coming arctic blast and how it is likely to strain our energy resources. Grid operators are seeing the same things y’all are seeing so don’t let the naysayers claim you have no basis for your statements.
I live in MISO south (Louisiana) and see we are also shown as high risk. But we also have very little intermittent generators and a vast natural gas pipeline network. Is there a similar risk for my area compared to the much colder MISO north? I don’t think we’re at as high of a risk but maybe I’m naive.
This is certainly a dire situation. Thanks for shedding light on it! Now if only law makers will see the truth and support the grid!
A big reason for energy policies that have no relation to energy and stability, it is somewhat of an eye opener to look at the people who have been in charge of America's energy under Biden (and not just Biden if looking further back):
DOI head - Deb Haaland-activist-cooked for protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline-objective-shutter a pipeline moving 750,000 bbls of crude a day;
BLM head - Tracy Stone Manning - eco-terrorist-turned on her comrades she joined to drive spikes into trees targeted for clearing - objective: maim workers ;
EPA-head-Michael Regan-environmental lawyer with focus to decrease and halt use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy;
BOEM head- Amanda Lefton Director for the Nature Conservancy to 2023- pro-wind with emphasis offshore;
BOEM head 2023- Liz Klein - NYU law, attorney serving under Haaland promoting offshore wind - on 12/20/24 approved the 11th offshore wind project - result- to date 4 operational offshore wind farms. One Vineyard Wind considered commercial.
A side note - Vineyard Wind, as the 4th offshore wind turbine built 10 1,000' turbines, offshore Nantucket operations beginning January 2024. In June, 2024 a 350' 70 ton blade exploded sending 1/2 of the blades mass to the ocean floor and scattering fiberglass and foam along the entire coast and shards have been found as far as RI. Vineyard Wind was shuttered since other blades showed stress fractures by GE Verona the manufacturer. But Ms. Klein's BOEM construction approval sub-agency gave Avangrid, subsidiary of Spanish conglomerate Iberdrola the green light to go for it. So, 62 of these useless towers of wildlife destruction will be sitting offshore MA.
The DOI, BLM and BOEM with oil and gas regulated by EPA are the main components of the agencies that institute the regs for the industry both onshore and offshore on federal lands and waters, submit oil and gas leases for competitive lease sales, issue oil and gas leases, approve permits for drilling, rights-of-way, bonding requirements, approve assignments, transfers, well completion etc., and regulate the industry itself to death. The DOE is not mentioned since it is basically a money machine that delivers grants to groups who are start-ups for renewable fantasy projects and NGO's to handle lawsuits, protests and the energy to consistently attempt to take down reliable energy.
As the Trump team is announced, once again, people without any real oil and gas experience are in the drivers seat. However, one appointment for DOE, Gary Wright, is actually in the oil and gas industry and owns a fracking company. So there is that ray of hope and although fracking is a process for completion of a well and not in exploration and drilling, he and Doug Bergman may be able to bring reality back into the federal oil and gas leasing program. When and we hope they soon willunderstand all the increases in royalties, bonds, applications and permits to drill, restoration, rights of way fees, must be in the lap of Congress pronto since there will be no drill baby drill with the IRA's stranglehold of fees and regs on the independent oil and gas producers who will be held hostage to the Major oil and gas companies deep pockets.
Meanwhile, as to the grid, ERCOT, the operator for Texas sent a letter out to its customers: paraphrasing "Just letting ya'll know that mandated blackouts will be happening and your electric utility will be required to participate in a controlled outage event. And by the way, the outages will be unpredictable. Thank you so much for your understand!" So, for a choice to stop the allure of subsidies and tax credits that the grid operators thrive on, the time is now or never. And please, let's get some people with oil and gas experience in the government!
You forgot the Village Idiot - Jennifer Granholm, Harvard Lawyer, who never worked in the energy industry.