All idiots all the time....the core message of people who demand that reality operate the way they want it to as opposed to.... reality. This is the central stupidity of ultra progressives and they are so stupefied by the world that any refutation of their position is met with feral screaming. Horrible illogical thinking.
And as you undoubtedly know, annual averages or seasonal averages are worthless metrics. What matters is what capacity factor can be guaranteed when energy is needed most and for wind/solar that number is just about exactly 0.00.
If only it would burn. There was a meeting the other evening I attended and a journalist there got up and began speaking about burning the blades on spent wind turbines and filling landfills. I have no clue what she was talking about.
I’ll wait for Jason’s take on this, he was part of AESO planning and quit when told he’d be leading the planning to integrate the renewables dreams of our accidental 2015-19 NDP govt.
The ambiguous tossing about of batteries as the third leg of their three leg stool has always dumbfounded me. It's like batteries are this cornucopia of free electrons when the wind or the sun stops. If you try to talk about the precious wind and solar capacity that solar have to give up to charge those batteries, they scatter from that conversation like crabs from an overturned rock. Batteries are the most expensive storage money can buy based on dollars per kwh amortized over the expected life of the batteries.
There is a company near me, ESS, (Energy Storage Systems) in Oregon, that is making container-sized units for solar and wind backup. They're very expensive, they weigh tons, it would take dozens and dozens of them to back up even a portion of an average batch of wind turbines, and to top it off, they're very high maintenance. See https://alchristie.substack.com/p/the-folly-of-phasing-out-fossil-fuels
Al I have ro agree with overall insanity of trying to stuff a whole solar/ wind project into a battery. I am somewhat supportive of flow batteries because they get us away from the explosive lithium ion technology. But like your friend says, they are complex and nit perfected yet. I own about a grand worth of stock on Storen Energy, another Vandum developer. They offered stock holders a shot at a 10 kW home Vandum flow battery. It was six feet tall, five feet long, weighed over two tons. It had to be in a space that never got below 42F. Not exactly practical.
I'm not familiar with Storen Energy - will check it out. It's true that vanadium flow batteries are safer than lithium, plus some other advantages. But the "flow" part of the system requires pumps and plumbing and valves - a lot of moving parts that can wear out, leak, and so require a rather intensive maintenance program. As you say, not very practical. Perhaps there will be design improvement, but so far, not economically feasible. What we really need is more nuclear power plants.
Being dairy folks as we are .... or were.... thought you might be interested they are putting in a $53 million dollar manure digester just down the road from me.... at a dairy farm - processing and sending gas via nat. gas pipeline.
We had 2 of the largest in the country sitting in our back yard built in 2008 & 2011, lasted 3 -4 years and now sitting idle, hazardous waste sites! But they are doing it again - oh, this IRA money - following one worthless project after another. There are lots of people would use that manure now prices of fertilizer are so high!
Batteries have the same issue of low energy density as wind and solar do. They require massive amounts of land yet are seen as friendly to the environment. Clown world.
Wind droughts were under the radar until recently because the meteorologists never mentioned them and there was no warning to avert the disaster of connecting subsidised and mandated intermittent energy to the grid. They ensure that the transition to wind and sun cannot work with existing storage technology. Is as simple as ABC:
A. Input to the grid must continuously match the demand.
B. The continuity of wind and solar input fails on nights with little or no wind.
C. The amount of storage required to bridge the gaps is not feasible or affordable.
Independent investigators in Australia discovered and documented wind droughts over a decade ago but nobody in authority took any notice. They used the public records of the continuous output from the wind facilities of the integrated grid for the South Eastern States of Australia. Droughts can last up to three days, across the whole of SE Australia.
Anton Lang, an Air Force electrician, recorded his observations in thousands of blog posts.
Wind droughts became newsworthy when fossil fuels ran down to the point where there there was not enough conventional power to meet demand on windless nights.
European Dunkelflautes got an entry in Wikipedia in 2020. Very strange because they must have ben known to mariners for ever and for centuries by millers on land.
I’m glad these wind monstrosities haven’t really shown up in my state of Louisiana. But I know there was a lease sale off the Louisiana coast (in hurricane alley) where one company bid. The lengths at which wind developers will ignore reality never ceases to amaze me.
The real battle is about to begin for true baseload power generation with AI and data centers. Can’t power those consistently with wind and solar and there is a lot of money at stake. The same can be said for the industrial facilities that have been popping up in the gulf coast area.
Thank you for shedding light on this issue. I think insanely expensive power bills will administer enough true pain and suffering where the people will notice. Or at least I hope so.
not happening yet - or fast enough and I don't want my bills to get much higher!
I am hoping so - but people seem to be too busy being busy to notice life is taking a turn around them! Also, not in their backyard so they don't seem to care!
This site provides far and away the best analysis of the electrical grid and the impact of renewables on it that I have seen. With trillions of dollars at stake and massive social risks associated with these issues, both here in the US and worldwide, it should have hundreds of thousands if not millions of subscribers. Only 23 likes? Absurd.
Pure unadulterated balderdash! What a confused, irrational time in which to live. Science students are corrupted by frankly uncurious and unscientific teachers spreading nonsense in the name of "saving the planet!!!". Mark Jacobson and his ilk have turned off their useful brains and replaced them with corn syrup dribbled out to an adoring and frightened media which preaches these terrible ideas to its collective audience. Truly we live in an Idiocracy of public unable to see what's happening because of antiintellectualism.
Really, really nice analysis. I for one, understand how extremely difficult that is. The technical understanding of this is a stretch for most people who understand grid operations and can do math. The average person cannot grasp it. This is the reason the “transition” goes forward pretty much unimpeded.
It is quick and easy to sit in your DC office, looking at your diploma in environmental “engineering”, and issue mandates. Building transmission lines is a little different. I’m amazed at how cavalier they are about building the airplane in flight. Have faith. It’ll be OK.
Even taking the "wind is always blowing somewhere" at face value the implication is they plan to over build wind machines EVERYWHERE to make up for the regional shortfalls.
This idea couldn't be sillier or more sinister if it were invented by a Bond villain. Try that for your next film metaphor.
Thank you for your data-driven analysis, which goes quite a way to showing how much energy storage would be needed to make the apples of intermittent energy sources equivalent to the oranges of dispatch-able generation. The answer appears to be qualitatively; rather a lot.
As I write, sick to death of the lousy weather we've had here for months, there's rather a lot of wind, driving 44% of the UK grid demand (12.7GW out of 29GW lower weekend demand).
UK government policy: "In a plan set out today (Tuesday 12 March 2024), the government has committed to support the building of new gas power stations to maintain a safe and reliable energy source for days when the weather forecast doesn’t power up renewables.
There has never been a more obsequious group of self flagallating gangsters than that bunch associated with AWEA. The wind is always blowing for them, it’s the hot air in the room they habitate at their expensive conferences. Developers with their dreams, bankers with bags of cash, do gooders of every stripe. All waiting for someone else to solve their problems, so they can keep the grift up. AWEA…wind..it’s going to crash to the ground at some point like a 1.5 megawatt nacelle 300 feet in the air and fully engulfed in flames caused by an over heated and seized gear box fed by the hydraulic fluid in the HPU. Nothing to see here folks, move along, those dead birds on the ground were in aerial combat, and the toxic smoke from the fire was a one in a life time event. Sure it was…everyone look the other way the wind is blowing somewhere and that shawdow flicker? You’ll get used to it Mr. And Mrs. Farmer the lease payments are well worth it! Sure they are, so is the expense of upgrading the distribution and transmission system. Can’t get anything built ashore? Go to sea maties! Fishermen, sea going freight, the whales you WERE worried about, no worries. Europe is doing it, why can’t we be like them!! Hmmm just ask the average THEM over there how they like their electricity bills.
The commentary on this site is just as useful, and amusing, as your articles. One of the things I like about this site is that EBB covers many topics that I have trying to get people to pay attention to for some time, and wind droughts are just one of those. So, if repetition is a valid pedagogical technique, then together we are more than the sum of us each indivdually.
Last Autumn I built a one-year model grid using data from EIA for what EIA calls the Northwest, and limited generation to just wind and solar scaled up to provide enough generation to meet annual average demand. I didn't include hydropower from BPA because geniuses in Oregon, Washington, and D.C. plan to eliminate dams eventually. What resulted was a grid that had to be overbuilt by a factor of around six, and with 120 hours of average system demand in battery storage, but which still ran out of energy during three multiday stretches during January 2023. So much for "one day in ten years of load failure." And the cost of such overbuild and battery storage, though inadequate, is astronomical.
While so many systems operator are focussed on summertime demand for A/C, people become blind to what goes on in dead of winter, and many of my analyses suggest even October is a difficult month to weather, if you'll pardon the expression. Then ponder what will occur when forced dependence on heat pumps for space heating in buildings pushes peak demand way up and displaces it into the winter season.
By the way, the graphs you show throughout this excellent article show one other important thing. Note how supply of wind goes relentlessly up and down making coal and gas (especially combined cycle plants) balance with extreme excursions up and down too. Mark Christie, chairman of the FERC, mentioned in U.S. Senate testimony last May that "early retirements" of thermal plants was flashing a bright red warning signal. Early retirements I think is a euphemism for thermal plants worn out early as a result of wild ramping constantly to run a grid with wind/solar. Utilities are loathe to take credit for wearing out thermal plants with such nonsensical operation. Why they ever thought constant ramping would not produce boiler steam leaks is a puzzle, but I suspect from experience that utilities hide as much from the public and the PSC as they think benefits them.
Not only does constant ramping raise costs of grid operation, by wearing thermal plants out early ratepayers miss the reward of generating assets fully depreciated, depreciation which no longer adds to net power costs, but which still generate power. It's a double whammy.
Great comment. Constantly ramping is tough on equipment. Another factor that I believe contributes to plant retirements, especially in areas where the fossil plants are owned by independent power producers is that the operators are constantly being told that they will be out of business soon. Why would you invest in anything but minimum maintenance if you thought the end was near?
I hate it when I misspeak, but when I said overbuild, what I meant to say was buildout above what is available as of today...renewables are bad, just not quite that bad.
The entire discussion is so stupid.
In Alberta Sask and the norther USA plains we can get <-30c for 1-2 weeks so zero wind available
Wind is 1/3 available in Alberta so for our small 12gw grid we must build 36gw wind just to average 12 over a year.
But they want to electrify everything meaning at least triple
So 108gw.
With 5mw turbines that is ~22000 turbines
Right
Then we are supposed to supply adjacent areas when they are short so build more
Plus a battery to support our grid for even 24 hours would weigh so much it would create a black hole in the center of the province and cost 5x gdp.
The entire discussion is stupid, pushed by stupid people, like the federal environment minister and prime minister.
All idiots all the time.
All idiots all the time....the core message of people who demand that reality operate the way they want it to as opposed to.... reality. This is the central stupidity of ultra progressives and they are so stupefied by the world that any refutation of their position is met with feral screaming. Horrible illogical thinking.
Lela Markham lives in Fairbanks, AK. You can just imagine what she thinks of going all electric.
https://lelamarkham.substack.com/p/alaskan-reality
https://lelamarkham.substack.com/p/pumping-cold-air
And as you undoubtedly know, annual averages or seasonal averages are worthless metrics. What matters is what capacity factor can be guaranteed when energy is needed most and for wind/solar that number is just about exactly 0.00.
Yes, that is the punchline of this entire stupid discussion.
Build 3-5-100 x the grid of renewable horseshit and you still need about 1.4x reliable generation
So my feeling is just build the 1.4 and burn the rest to the ground. At least we’ll get some heat value from it
If only it would burn. There was a meeting the other evening I attended and a journalist there got up and began speaking about burning the blades on spent wind turbines and filling landfills. I have no clue what she was talking about.
Would have to ask her how big her high temperature kiln is as there are none currently on the planet.
Unfortunately she is of average energy intelligence.
I like that one - average energy intelligence! May have to steal that sometimes...
It’s almost like that happened in Alberta on Friday!
Thanks again for the info! I’d already put this piece to bed but will incorporate it in the future
I'll look forward to seeing it
I’ll wait for Jason’s take on this, he was part of AESO planning and quit when told he’d be leading the planning to integrate the renewables dreams of our accidental 2015-19 NDP govt.
https://jasondoering.substack.com/
Thanks for linking to this!
Excellent write up and reality check.
Let's bring Clint back ASAP to clean up San Francisco!
It won't happen.
In one of those films he gets transferred to the personnel department & responds with another memorable line: "Personnel? That's for idiots!"
If 1970s bureaucracy in SF city government was too much for Det. Callahan, you won't see him in a badge today.😂
Thanks for making reading about energy fun. Need more of this approach to "edutainment" which is so wildly needed now.
I always tell people, “If you’re going to be boring, why bother?”
The ambiguous tossing about of batteries as the third leg of their three leg stool has always dumbfounded me. It's like batteries are this cornucopia of free electrons when the wind or the sun stops. If you try to talk about the precious wind and solar capacity that solar have to give up to charge those batteries, they scatter from that conversation like crabs from an overturned rock. Batteries are the most expensive storage money can buy based on dollars per kwh amortized over the expected life of the batteries.
There is a company near me, ESS, (Energy Storage Systems) in Oregon, that is making container-sized units for solar and wind backup. They're very expensive, they weigh tons, it would take dozens and dozens of them to back up even a portion of an average batch of wind turbines, and to top it off, they're very high maintenance. See https://alchristie.substack.com/p/the-folly-of-phasing-out-fossil-fuels
Another article on large scale batteries is https://alchristie.substack.com/p/tesla-grid-size-battery-packs
Al I have ro agree with overall insanity of trying to stuff a whole solar/ wind project into a battery. I am somewhat supportive of flow batteries because they get us away from the explosive lithium ion technology. But like your friend says, they are complex and nit perfected yet. I own about a grand worth of stock on Storen Energy, another Vandum developer. They offered stock holders a shot at a 10 kW home Vandum flow battery. It was six feet tall, five feet long, weighed over two tons. It had to be in a space that never got below 42F. Not exactly practical.
I'm not familiar with Storen Energy - will check it out. It's true that vanadium flow batteries are safer than lithium, plus some other advantages. But the "flow" part of the system requires pumps and plumbing and valves - a lot of moving parts that can wear out, leak, and so require a rather intensive maintenance program. As you say, not very practical. Perhaps there will be design improvement, but so far, not economically feasible. What we really need is more nuclear power plants.
That makes a lot more sense!
yep batteries are the short leg on that stool, cost you your a$$ if you sit on it!
I think you’ve got the stool upside down 🙃
Being dairy folks as we are .... or were.... thought you might be interested they are putting in a $53 million dollar manure digester just down the road from me.... at a dairy farm - processing and sending gas via nat. gas pipeline.
We had 2 of the largest in the country sitting in our back yard built in 2008 & 2011, lasted 3 -4 years and now sitting idle, hazardous waste sites! But they are doing it again - oh, this IRA money - following one worthless project after another. There are lots of people would use that manure now prices of fertilizer are so high!
Batteries have the same issue of low energy density as wind and solar do. They require massive amounts of land yet are seen as friendly to the environment. Clown world.
Exactly
Wind droughts were under the radar until recently because the meteorologists never mentioned them and there was no warning to avert the disaster of connecting subsidised and mandated intermittent energy to the grid. They ensure that the transition to wind and sun cannot work with existing storage technology. Is as simple as ABC:
A. Input to the grid must continuously match the demand.
B. The continuity of wind and solar input fails on nights with little or no wind.
C. The amount of storage required to bridge the gaps is not feasible or affordable.
Independent investigators in Australia discovered and documented wind droughts over a decade ago but nobody in authority took any notice. They used the public records of the continuous output from the wind facilities of the integrated grid for the South Eastern States of Australia. Droughts can last up to three days, across the whole of SE Australia.
Anton Lang, an Air Force electrician, recorded his observations in thousands of blog posts.
https://papundits.wordpress.com/?s=OzWindPowerGenerationTFO
Paul MIskelly published his landmark paper in the technical literature in 2012.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305x.23.8.1233
Wind droughts became newsworthy when fossil fuels ran down to the point where there there was not enough conventional power to meet demand on windless nights.
https://newcatallaxy.blog/2023/07/11/approaching-the-tipping-point/
European Dunkelflautes got an entry in Wikipedia in 2020. Very strange because they must have ben known to mariners for ever and for centuries by millers on land.
https://www.flickerpower.com/images/The_endless_wind_drought_crippling_renewables___The_Spectator_Australia.pdf
Thanks for sharing these awesome resources!
And there is more!
https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/the-energy-crisis-how-we-got-here-and-how-to-move-on
https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/list-of-briefing-notes
I’m glad these wind monstrosities haven’t really shown up in my state of Louisiana. But I know there was a lease sale off the Louisiana coast (in hurricane alley) where one company bid. The lengths at which wind developers will ignore reality never ceases to amaze me.
The real battle is about to begin for true baseload power generation with AI and data centers. Can’t power those consistently with wind and solar and there is a lot of money at stake. The same can be said for the industrial facilities that have been popping up in the gulf coast area.
Thank you for shedding light on this issue. I think insanely expensive power bills will administer enough true pain and suffering where the people will notice. Or at least I hope so.
not happening yet - or fast enough and I don't want my bills to get much higher!
I am hoping so - but people seem to be too busy being busy to notice life is taking a turn around them! Also, not in their backyard so they don't seem to care!
This site provides far and away the best analysis of the electrical grid and the impact of renewables on it that I have seen. With trillions of dollars at stake and massive social risks associated with these issues, both here in the US and worldwide, it should have hundreds of thousands if not millions of subscribers. Only 23 likes? Absurd.
Share it with all your friends!
Excellent research, and excellent point - "spending billions of dollars building new transmission lines can’t make the wind blow"
💯 %
Pure unadulterated balderdash! What a confused, irrational time in which to live. Science students are corrupted by frankly uncurious and unscientific teachers spreading nonsense in the name of "saving the planet!!!". Mark Jacobson and his ilk have turned off their useful brains and replaced them with corn syrup dribbled out to an adoring and frightened media which preaches these terrible ideas to its collective audience. Truly we live in an Idiocracy of public unable to see what's happening because of antiintellectualism.
Material for an addendum to Charles MacKay's "Extraordinarily Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds".
Really, really nice analysis. I for one, understand how extremely difficult that is. The technical understanding of this is a stretch for most people who understand grid operations and can do math. The average person cannot grasp it. This is the reason the “transition” goes forward pretty much unimpeded.
It is quick and easy to sit in your DC office, looking at your diploma in environmental “engineering”, and issue mandates. Building transmission lines is a little different. I’m amazed at how cavalier they are about building the airplane in flight. Have faith. It’ll be OK.
"building the airplane in flight" - good analogy
Even taking the "wind is always blowing somewhere" at face value the implication is they plan to over build wind machines EVERYWHERE to make up for the regional shortfalls.
This idea couldn't be sillier or more sinister if it were invented by a Bond villain. Try that for your next film metaphor.
Exactly. Let’s overbuild EVERYWHERE for EVERYONE else. What could go wrong?
Thank you for your data-driven analysis, which goes quite a way to showing how much energy storage would be needed to make the apples of intermittent energy sources equivalent to the oranges of dispatch-able generation. The answer appears to be qualitatively; rather a lot.
You may be interested in the existence of this book published in 2012 (I write from the UK): https://www.amazon.com/Wind-Farm-Scam-John-Etherington-ebook/dp/B00767VACM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2YK87RZA94IBB&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.X5iUG1yFQaw5TXtRjyeHnhZltiZRs-K1fVoIc-aSjWg3_CYwAg29Ug0NiY6hw0tkNQyAFjXBO_XMNVQFMlh4CLrE5hjDfv9bktv2HJl0L9Ud8OdrC6nTucmL4LLINdz53foS5xPVW9nkJHCggFJiJQ.aA62hQQ8TrbGat2Kzz8V6OV4n0kn_J7eQRTejVY3Jxc&dib_tag=se&keywords=The+Wind+Farm+Scam&qid=1712407237&sprefix=the+wind+farm+scam+%2Caps%2C381&sr=8-1
As I write, sick to death of the lousy weather we've had here for months, there's rather a lot of wind, driving 44% of the UK grid demand (12.7GW out of 29GW lower weekend demand).
UK government policy: "In a plan set out today (Tuesday 12 March 2024), the government has committed to support the building of new gas power stations to maintain a safe and reliable energy source for days when the weather forecast doesn’t power up renewables.
No other major economy has done more when it comes to cutting emissions." source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/energy-secretary-takes-action-to-reinforce-uk-energy-supply#:~:text=In%20a%20plan%20set%20out,it%20comes%20to%20cutting%20emissions.
I believe you call these peaker plants, and their costs should rightly be included in the tally for intermittent sources.
It may be more accurate to state that no other country has done more to move manufacturing and emissions to China.
Another little snag is our energy costs and economic stagnation, which may just be linked :) https://www.facebook.com/share/r/wVfFmcQsKuL1JgPX/
Deindustrialization and creative accounting do wonders for reducing emissions on paper.
There has never been a more obsequious group of self flagallating gangsters than that bunch associated with AWEA. The wind is always blowing for them, it’s the hot air in the room they habitate at their expensive conferences. Developers with their dreams, bankers with bags of cash, do gooders of every stripe. All waiting for someone else to solve their problems, so they can keep the grift up. AWEA…wind..it’s going to crash to the ground at some point like a 1.5 megawatt nacelle 300 feet in the air and fully engulfed in flames caused by an over heated and seized gear box fed by the hydraulic fluid in the HPU. Nothing to see here folks, move along, those dead birds on the ground were in aerial combat, and the toxic smoke from the fire was a one in a life time event. Sure it was…everyone look the other way the wind is blowing somewhere and that shawdow flicker? You’ll get used to it Mr. And Mrs. Farmer the lease payments are well worth it! Sure they are, so is the expense of upgrading the distribution and transmission system. Can’t get anything built ashore? Go to sea maties! Fishermen, sea going freight, the whales you WERE worried about, no worries. Europe is doing it, why can’t we be like them!! Hmmm just ask the average THEM over there how they like their electricity bills.
Here's a post on Alberta's "Brownouts" from Yesterday. This is what the Energy Bad Boys have repeatedly warned about!
https://open.substack.com/pub/penguinempirereports/p/thousands-go-without-power-during?r=2og74c&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
The commentary on this site is just as useful, and amusing, as your articles. One of the things I like about this site is that EBB covers many topics that I have trying to get people to pay attention to for some time, and wind droughts are just one of those. So, if repetition is a valid pedagogical technique, then together we are more than the sum of us each indivdually.
Last Autumn I built a one-year model grid using data from EIA for what EIA calls the Northwest, and limited generation to just wind and solar scaled up to provide enough generation to meet annual average demand. I didn't include hydropower from BPA because geniuses in Oregon, Washington, and D.C. plan to eliminate dams eventually. What resulted was a grid that had to be overbuilt by a factor of around six, and with 120 hours of average system demand in battery storage, but which still ran out of energy during three multiday stretches during January 2023. So much for "one day in ten years of load failure." And the cost of such overbuild and battery storage, though inadequate, is astronomical.
While so many systems operator are focussed on summertime demand for A/C, people become blind to what goes on in dead of winter, and many of my analyses suggest even October is a difficult month to weather, if you'll pardon the expression. Then ponder what will occur when forced dependence on heat pumps for space heating in buildings pushes peak demand way up and displaces it into the winter season.
By the way, the graphs you show throughout this excellent article show one other important thing. Note how supply of wind goes relentlessly up and down making coal and gas (especially combined cycle plants) balance with extreme excursions up and down too. Mark Christie, chairman of the FERC, mentioned in U.S. Senate testimony last May that "early retirements" of thermal plants was flashing a bright red warning signal. Early retirements I think is a euphemism for thermal plants worn out early as a result of wild ramping constantly to run a grid with wind/solar. Utilities are loathe to take credit for wearing out thermal plants with such nonsensical operation. Why they ever thought constant ramping would not produce boiler steam leaks is a puzzle, but I suspect from experience that utilities hide as much from the public and the PSC as they think benefits them.
Not only does constant ramping raise costs of grid operation, by wearing thermal plants out early ratepayers miss the reward of generating assets fully depreciated, depreciation which no longer adds to net power costs, but which still generate power. It's a double whammy.
Great comment. Constantly ramping is tough on equipment. Another factor that I believe contributes to plant retirements, especially in areas where the fossil plants are owned by independent power producers is that the operators are constantly being told that they will be out of business soon. Why would you invest in anything but minimum maintenance if you thought the end was near?
Absolutely.
I hate it when I misspeak, but when I said overbuild, what I meant to say was buildout above what is available as of today...renewables are bad, just not quite that bad.