![Sandiego_skyline_at_night[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/sandiego_skyline_at_night1.jpg?quality=83)
“By striking a sensible balance between protecting our environment and growing our economy, San Diego can support clean technology, renewable energy, and economic growth.”
San Diego joins San Francisco, Sydney, and Vancouver in its effort to run entirely on renewable energy.
Good luck with that, what could possibly go wrong? Striking a “sensible balance” should also include a backup generation plan for those times when wind doesn’t blow, sunlight is reduced, or private schemes go belly up because the subsidies that make them profitable get yanked.
And, with the fragility of the power grid responsible for the Great 2011 Southwest blackout, one wonders how well San Diego will fare if their windfarms don’t produce enough power and load shedding occurs to protect the grid from failure, like it did in 2015, leaving thousands in San Diego without power.
Plus, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is offline, and will be decommissioned, so San Diego is in an even weaker position that they were before, losing 20% of their local power capacity. Renewables just won’t maintain a reliable base load.
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Not to mention to 40MW of continuous power required by the new Carlsbad Desalination Plant
San Francisco, just signed up for 100% renewables by 2030.
G
East County Magazine, Calif.
Ocotillo, Calif. which is east of San Diego
Scroll down to:
March 2, 2016
‘Ocotillo Wind Falls Short Of Capacity Forecast For Third Straight Year’
East County Magazines has carried a series of article on Wind Projects east of San Diego.
This is not a wealthy area and the residents there have been suffering now for several years with wind turbine effects.
There is also the issue of increased Valley Fever cases because the soil is disturbed by construction which releases the fungus spores to the air.
No one seems to care what happens to the local residents that live in this area. In the mean time developers get rich!
http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/taxonomy/term/14759
Note the news article on:
The San Onofre nuclear power settlement on the above East County Magazine website.
Shine, baby, shine!
If installing solar panels creates jobs, why don’t they go with bicycle driven generators and create even MORE jobs?
These things come and go in cycles.
Ohhhh!
Auto – amused!
Hear! Hear!
Haha! 🙂
Are these cycles known as ‘Ponzi Cycles’ by any chance?
Stationary pedal bikes, plus a horde of “immigrants” could generate more electricity in the exact same space, as Ivanpah does. And if you put on three shifts you can run it day and night.
Elon Musk says he’s working towards the end of fossil fuels. He claims the fossil fuel industry gets more subsidies than does his money losing Tesla Motors, who just lost $280M or thereabouts because of inability to deliver his electric SUV X model.
Far as I know the US Federal Treasury does not give one red cent to any US based petroleum company.
Maybe Musk, does not know about the concept of Depreciation, which allows businesses to recover the cost of their capital equipment, so they can buy new stuff when the old wears out.
Either Musk is ignorant of standard profitable business practices or else he has the same concept of truth as Barry Sotello; which would be my guess.
G
David
Introducing the pedal a watt personal bike driven generator.
http://www.econvergence.net/
Every household in San Diego will need at least one. We need to get the dealership rights straight away.
Tonyb
Check this out and get back to me.
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ”
too many folks have no clue how much energy modern society requires just for nnormal living.
Talk about back to the future!
In Australia early last century families in the outback relied upon pedal powered radios to communicate with the Flying Doctor service and School of the Air. Isn’t this 21st century innovation just wonderful?
Let’s install them on the seats of baseball and football stadia for night game continuity!
getitright
that’s a great film. some years ago the BBC conducted an experiment to demonstrate how many cyclists it would take to power the energy needs of a family.
http://road.cc/content/news/11779-cyclists-power-family-home-bbc-show-highlight-energy-wastage
As you say, people have no idea at all of the energy needed to power modern life
tonyb
We have addressed this particular breed of nonsense so many times here on WUWT.
I cannot believe that this “job creation” fallacy will never die. It’s really only a version of the “broken window” fallacy. And just as tedious to keep explaining. So here’s my last attempt to parody such thinking, from a thread last year:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/12/californian-climate-mutiny-democrats-side-with-republicans-to-defeat-jerry-brown/#comment-2026812
I think he was being sarcastic, Frog.
Don’t worry, I assume that such proposals are sarcastic, when presented here. But I have genuinely encountered individuals who have proposed that we should return to a “human powered” economy.
Whilst we may joke, there is no idea to stupid to receive “serious” attention from MSM, or popular support, or government funding.
I know. I’ve had to pull out the “fake electricity” Scientific American article on people whenever they seriously bring up bicycle-power.
Well just plain common sense will tell you that if a new process creates more jobs (more labor cost), than what it replaces, then it must be lower efficiency.
Now disruptive technologies can create entirely new industries, which have much higher skill, higher paying jobs (for those with the necessary skills), but just replacing one function with the same function but requiring more workers to do it, is NOT increasing efficiency .
G
Brilliant! Keep the bicycle fanatics busy. Lets make the bicycle coalition run them bicycle driven generators, that way it will keep them busy & that will stop the anti-car agenda they try to keep pushing forward.
…And it’ll keep them off the !@ur momisugly#$% roads, too! LOL
and cut down on the obesity epidemic 🙂
…and healthcare costs, and the unemployed need something to do.
george, liberals consider any tax that is less than 100% to be a subsidy.
Except when they are the ones not paying.
In the long run, almost all power is renewable. It is simply a matter of how much time it takes before it is renewed. In the case of nuclear power you need to wait for a supernova and all, but that happens. Ironically, the energy that the sun produces from fusion is a once only deal.
In the long run nothing is sustainable. Everything requires net energy inputs. There is no such thing as sustainable farming. Fertilizer, water, tending crops, harvesting require energy in amounts that are not generated by nature in a timely fashion. The entire sustainable movement is based on perceptions inconsistent with the real world.
It’s difficult to argue rationally with these people. When I talk (or write) with them on the subject of entropy and and the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, eyes just glaze over (in good encounters) or voices are raised. They just don’t understand there is no “sustainability” known to physics. No perpetual motion machine. It just doesn’t exist.
But they don’t get it. No matter how simple you try to make the explanation, they don’t get it.
~Bartelby, I think the idea is “more sustainable” , less consummation, not the end of entropy.
Greg: The idea is to sell more stuff to people that don’t understand science or language. Marketing.
I’m sorry Greg, but that’s the epitome and a perfect example of exactly what I was describing.
According to every known law of physics, “sustainability” not only doesn’t exist, it can’t ever exist.
The tragic component of the sustainability movement, in my opinion, is the measures they take to encourage what they call “sustainability” or as Greg re-states “less consumption [consummation]” actually increase consumption rather than reduce it.
By regulating a simple energy conversion and making it more complex, it necessarily becomes less efficient. Emission controls often reduce the efficiency of converting potential energy to work. Often these controls are necessary to maintain a functional environment, however recently we’ve begun to see attempts to control those conversions that don’t provide an environmental benefit, or don’t provide one that makes any economic sense. An example would be the advent of electric cars, which suffer huge losses and provide no measurable environmental benefit over simple, well controlled, internal combustion. Deliberately making an engine less efficient in trade for an unmeasurable “gain” in reduced “carbon footprint”, which itself has no known effect on the environment, is simply foolishness couched in scientific terminology. It actually harms the environment.
It seems to me what’s happened is a “more is better” ethos; the idea that, if some regulation and control over energy conversion is good, more can only be better, has taken hold. It isn’t the case and it seems few people have the intellect to understand that.
You keep using that word …
My unicorns run on gluten-free sustainable malarky produced by free range organic Malarks…
I’m for more consummation.
No, no he’s using the right word! Less consummation, means fewer people, and that’s the dream of all sustainable types. We have too many people now, so we need to eliminate a lot and stop procreating so fast (of course, they mean eliminate OTHER, less concerned people).
Texas is smiling……….
The problem is that Californians keep voting like Californians, even after they move.
Liberals just never learn.
Oh, it is quite easy to move to a more sensible state inside the US. For both businesses and citizens. Therefore California can go on with its Grand Experiment, right to the bitter end. Which, of course, means joining the Rust Belt.
Correct!
As “Venezuelafornia” self destructs, sane people elsewhere will pick up the slack and benefit greatly.
Maybe we should build a wall around them?
Oh please do build a wall around us and leave us alone. we Californians (and I am third generation so I can speak for Californians) Have always done quite well for ourselves, So if you are wanting to leave don’t let anyone stop you. But forget all this hype on solar and wind they will never by themselves give us enough energy to be sustainable without first killing all our birds and covering all of the land. No we need to concentrate on energy out of magma. The us government did a study in 1975 by tapping into the lava lake in Hawaii and had the conclusion forty years ago this was economically feasible. Just enter us taps magma for energy 1975 and you can see for yourselves. After that look up my Patent by David Alan McBay entitled The Geothermal Energy Collection System. This is A completely new technology that I have invented using any species of Molten Salt to tap the heat out of Magma or any super critical Geothermal heat. The benefits are very apparent. No dangerous pressurized steam, and by using a material that stays a liquid and is twice as heavy as water the ability to hold heat therefore energy goes up tenfold. This is the new future folks check it out. David Alan
McBay Inventor of advanced geothermal energy recovery systems.
David Alan McBay, Geothermal thus far is a complete failure, the cost is the highest of all forms of Geothermal. California has played with Geothermal for years. Molten Salt? At an extreme temperature, I bet they will be all over that idea out in Brawley/Calipatria. I wonder how corrosive that will be to the pipes? Are you going to pump that 10,000 feet deep? Then pump it up? Or will bring up that toxic brine to the surface, with its arsenic? And lets not forget, as soon as you tap into any geothermal source, just like opening the lid on a teapot, the pressure and heat goes down. Hence you will constantly be drilling, same rig as they use to drill for oil, you will constantly be drilling and using new pipes to find new sources of heat. Just like they do now in Calipatria. That is the south end of the Salton Sea.
Lets not forget the Geysers in northern california, they literally frack up there, inject water into the geysers, because they all but dried up when they cracked that teapot open.
Geothermal is toxic mess that eats up steel, releases CO2, and is just plain old expensive, not to mention very weak.
I know a bit about California’s Geothermal, I have worked inspecting the metals, Non Destructive Testing, VT, UT, and ET.
There is one thing that will keep a person in everlasting ignorance, and that is contempt before investigation “Hubert Spencer”. you have left quite a long winded Rant about my new Molten Salt Geothermal Energy Collection System based on Zero content of facts. Let me give just a few otherwise I will be here all day for they are many. molten salt technology has been around for over One hundred years. the Aluminum smelting process has used sodium fluoride at one thousand Celsius to achieve the desired results for the smelting process, There are over twenty eight thousand Patents granted based on some species of Molten salt being used on just as varied amounts of different technologies. more to the important facts that involve this discussion is how they apply to the harvesting of heat to produce steam to turn a steam turbine. The solar industry is being revolutionized by the use of Molten salts to harvest during the day and storing until the night time or until peak use hours. Look up crescent dunes one hundred and twenty mega watt concentrating solar tower power plant in Nevada, Then the parabolic trough reflector systems and many variations on this theme. You can at the same time look at the new Molten Salt Thorium Nuclear Power Plant that uses two separate flows of molten salt for this new technology. One is for the Thorium circulation through the fissile chamber and the other is to cool the plant by tapping the heat at five hundred and sixty five Celsius for the energy production phase of the operation. The Us government classifies most Species of Molten salts as environmentally benign. My System does not work in the way you stated as a single shaft in solid rock. I create artificial chambers with heat shafts penetrating the hot rock and preferably magma. Once again if you would have read my full letter you would Know that I did not create drilling into molten rock but the US government the (D.O.E) did this in nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty in the Hawaiian project. Just look at US taps energy out of magma 1975 With the final conclusion that even with materials of forty years ago that it is economically attractive to get our energy out of magma. I am going to stop their
except to say that I welcome all opinions, even ones that are obviously meant to be antagonistic and that are ill informed, this gives me a great back drop to paint the real picture. Sincerely David Alan McBay inventor of Advance Geothermal Energy Solutions. PS the magmatic pluton that under lies the southern end of the salon
sea is twenty miles long by four miles wide and two miles thick holding enough energy in the form of heat to run our country four hundreds of years just by itself so wake up.
Thanks, Anthony. The headline was perfect.
“Renewables just won’t maintain a reliable base load.” is an understatement. Renewables (except large hydro) don’t provide any demand load either. You can’t demand the sun shine brighter or the wind blows stronger.
Large hydro in Venezuela is a bust at this moment too.
Yes, the stores close during the blackouts and the refrigerators stop running so .what little food they have in Venezuela spoils. No wonder they want to ban guns for the folks in California.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-31/blackouts-loom-for-venezuela-s-capital-as-water-levels-fall
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, but since the Socialist government seized the industry, it’s been crumbling ever since.
http://www.energyinsights.net/cgi-script/csArticles/uploads/6276/Venezuela-Crisis-Oil-Production-Peaked-1999-EnergyInsights-net.gif
‘We have to understand, this is a war,” Luis Motta, Venezuela’s minister of electricity, declared in an interview on state TV Tuesday. Venezuela’s socialist president even gave the entire country a week off to reduce stress on the power grid caused by a government-created electricity crisis earlier this month.”
“The government has been rationing electricity across the country for months, as the hydroelectric-reliant country goes through a drought. The ruling socialist party blames the lack of water on global warming and “sabotage” by political foes, while the party’s critics cite a lack of maintenance and poor planning.”
http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/30/venezuela-blames-enemies-for-its-failure-to-keep-the-lights-on-threatens-war/
Why don’t they import electricity from San Diego?
Large hydro in Tasmainia is also a bust at this moment.
They thought it would be a good wheeze to close the backup gas plant, as that is nasty and dirty and produces lots of plant food. But then they ran out of water. And someone cut the interconnector (not mentioning any names).
So the Green Tasmania Dream is now diesel powered. Yup, you really could not imagine people being quite as stupid as some of these Greeny types are. If you wrote this as fiction, they would say you are having a laugh, and to be more reasonable. And yet these people still get elected.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-31/temporary-diesel-generators-unveilled-meadowbank-power-station/7287076
Ralph
“ralfellis May 8, 2016 at 3:34 am”
Hydro Tasmania (HT) was on the list of the top 250 “carbon” polluters when the “proice ohn cahbon” was introuduced. In the first year of that tax HT made an extra ~AU$50mil for doing nothing!
The Tasmanian Hydro ran their dam levels from about 50% 3 years ago to 23% at the beginning of this Summer in December to profit from the carbon tax with their green energy. Tasmania is in a Winter rainfall zone and only this week have the dam levels stabilised at 13%. They were relying on the cable across Bass Strait to import electricity from coal fired Victoria but it failed in mid Dec. and still is not repaired, perhaps July. Anyhow they are installing 200 MW of diesel generators to bide them over. Statements about lack of rainfall is the cause of the problem are dubious as average rainfall has been received. The question is would one run the dam levels so low selling your green energy over the cable for a profit and rely on off-peak coal fired power to keep the lights on at home? The cost of the exercise for Tasmania is very large: reduced industrial output for months, the cost of the diesel generators, and the loss of their green image.
They don’t count large hydro as renewable in California. So, that’s out.
Idaho Falls is 100% renewable, but then theyre small and have the Snake River. Oh wait, hydro doesn’t count.
Yes, the greens appear to be rather rabid in that regard. They have hydrophobia.
100% renewable? What happens to you when WY decides the Palisades really belongs to them? (just joking).
IF is renewable because your hydro power is generated using water from WY. You’re not self-sufficient. The water from your snow isn’t doing the job. It’s far more complicated than you suggest.
It doesn’t matter who one has to pull the power from as long as it’s all renewable and one can put that on their letterhead. As commented above, Texas may love CA if they can sell wind energy there. WY has lost it’s mind and wants to do the same to make a billionaire in CO even richer. There is no sanity in this. Just environmental damage and dead eagles.
Reality, after many years in WY, I have to question it has a mind. Honestly. GOing from county to county, I found more different cultures 50 miles in any direction than I’ve come across anywhere else on Earth, and I’ve been a few places.
Driving across Wyoming is like walking across Los Angles, but with a lot more space and not so many people.
Yeah, Snake River doesn’t count.
They are going to power the economy entirely from Snake Oil River.
Watch out though – it’s full of sharks.
I thought it was full of snarks.
The greens want to blow up (dam removal) all those hydro renewables. Only in the diminished intellectual state of a watermelon does that make any sense.
I saw a story about a food store chain in the UK installing electric generation for all its stores because they don’t think the UK can keep the lights on.
Story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/04/sainsburys-builds-its-own-power-plants-amid-energy-shortage-fear/
I read “The Suicide of the West” a long time ago. James Burnham should see us now!
This is a completely foreseeable result that will spread. Create an unreliable electrical supply and everyone will buy home generators – far more inefficient than a large central generating plant. Result more expensive energy and higher emissions of all types. Of course the response to that will be government licensing and restrictions on home generators – not the logical response of building large gas powered electrical generator plants.
Or, given its San Diego, and Mexico has no obligations to reduce CO2 emissions, I can see large south of the border generation plants with transmission lines running north over the border.
I’ve bought a good number of used diesel gen-sets over the years.
Not one of them would pass an emissions test. Not nearly. They are generally stinky and noisy beasts.
And as you point out they do not benefit from the higher efficiencies of scale or heat-recovery systems of full scale clean modern power stations.
But the greens wanted a de-centralized grid. And so maybe their wishes will be granted!
Just not quite in the form that they imagined.
So true. I think we’ve just become too dumb to live anymore.
They have an extra-special brand of Kool Ade out there, called “Crazy Ade”.
Do I hear “San Antonio Chargers” in the future?
How about the El Paso Padres?
IIRC, the Chargers are threatening to move to LA if San Diego doesn’t kick in $300B or so to help build them a $1B stadium. Out of curiosity, I looked up Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA. It’s fifteen years old, cost a bit over $300M total and the Patriots paid for it themselves — probably a good investment as they have sold out every home game since the stadium opened.
I wasn’t very impressed with San Diego when I lived there, but from what I read, paying $300M in blackmail to keep an NFL franchise is a bit much even for them. So, yeah, the Chargers may well be headed elsewhere — LA or Vegas or Abu Dubai or some other target of opportunity.
I seem to remember that San Diego has some of the highest electrical rates on the planet – I remember a quote of 35 cents per kWhr.
“I remember a quote of 35 cents per kWhr”. It is 38 cents per kWhr now for the top rate (which is what most of my usage gets billed at).
And when you add on all of the usage fee’s for shut down of San Onofre, grid access fees(thanks solar),
etc….my bills in the end add up to 43ct per kwh. We’re on the coast and have to subsidize those living inland who have run AC 8-9 months a year. My actual electricity usage is low. So spending 12-15K plus a new roof just doesn’t add up to save $100-150 a month. This plan of theirs is truly insanity. They’re going to dedicate millions for bike paths so the wealthy/well off can exercise on our roads on $1000+/- bikes and wearing their tight clown outfits.
Naa–San Diego will just depend on imported power from jurisdictions without their green fantasies. Of course, that says nothing about cost, as i remember the brownouts and blackouts some years ago when the greens were into “conservation”, and blocked any new power generation. Enron made quite a lot of money off that insanity.
what needs to happen is as soon as some idiot bureaucrat declares this kind of nonsense plans are established to cut off all forms of energy supply bar renewables on the date they declare “running 100% renewable”.
no cheating with generators, log burners etc for the citizens of the state or area involved, they voted the clowns in ,they have to live with the consequences. i would imagine the number of idiots declaring this kind of nonsense would reduce significantly in the aftermath.
Enron was the insanity, they took powerplants offline to increase rates. Watch” enron, the smartest guys in the room”
[San Diego will just depend on imported power from jurisdictions without their green fantasies.] They’re actually going to put restrictions on that as well. When the fecal matter hits the oscillating device in the fall with hot weather and Santa Ana winds and a fire breaks out somewhere and knocks out transmission lines or they have a relay station short out it could get ugly fast.
The elites will have their generators, the average bloke can eat cake.
Will the hospitals be allowed to have generators?
They already have them…
SO how do they plan to maintain grid ignorance amongst the citizenry for the next 20 years?
I wonder if part of the plan is to ban diesel gensets and household sized generators? No cheating! Renewables for all.
On the other hand, what’s not to love? Sandy Eggo does a spectacular Crash and Burn. A real auger straight in at maximum velocity from 10,000 ft. Crash and Burn. A real swan dive into an expensive smoking crater.
The climate refugees fleeing the disaster area would probably not be to keen on repeating the experiment any time soon. For many, I suspect the episode would provide the first real education any of them ever got.
Too bad it is not set for 2020, it would be popcorn time.
Imbed the Naval Station will ba making their own arrangements…
I’ll give them my generator when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
We keep waiting for reality to sink in, yet that rarely occurs. Socialism has destroyed Venezuela, yet the response by Venezuelans is simply to double down with ever more fantastical accusations against the remaining parts of the private sector.
Things could get REALLY bad for San Diego, but the villains will not change: White Privilege and Big Oil.
Unfortunately you are wrong. The climate refugees will run to some state with a functioning economy and demand all the looney things that killed the place they ran from. Remember the indoctrination centers no longer connect actions with results so these little flowers are clueless that the damage was caused by the person looking at them in the mirror every morning.
yessir. They immigrate to Austin. Insist on 15% sucharge (last I looked) to support *sustainable* electricty. Demand that drunks drive their own cars, or support the taxi lobby.
Well planned. We waited too long to build the wall on the “Venezuelafornia” border. (h/t Larry)
“Discovered by the Germans in 1903, they named it San Diago, which means…”
Canberra/ACT (in Australia) has a similar plan..
They are going to do it by pretending to be using wind farms 1000km away, through the grid.
People should realise that Canberra is the seat of the federal government in Australia, like Washington D.C., and is full of left leaning bureaucrats, common sense is in short supply
Useful idiots. Please do hurry up and provide an object lesson in California Dreamin stupidity to the rest of the world. Like UK apparently plans to do next winter.
San Onofre is gone, and by 2030 4 Corners likely will be also. News flash. The sun sets at night. Another news flash. Because greenies blocked Eagle Ridge pumped storage, you have no prospect of adaquate grid storage. That lovely night skyline will be dark.
Contribute to the cause like North Korea will be in play.
Unfortunately these fools are spending all the taxpayer’s money on ancient technology that will not work rather than investing in or developing new technology via real research that might replace fossil fuels someday.
they repeat the same failures day after day.
‘ rather than investing in or developing new technology via real research that might replace fossil fuels someday.’
Research is not underfunded.
“Research is not underfunded.”
Polywell Fusion is.
You didn’t produce for the Navy, so they are stopping funding. So, yeah, polywell fusion is underfunded.
And the great experiment at Tonapah solar is an abject failure (it’s not as sunny as they thought!) . They can’t meet their contracted amount of power and are having to add more gas fired turbines to try and reach goals before they’re forced to mothball it.
and in the real world-
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/06/the-world-bank-notices-the-asian-coal-rush/
https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/regulatory/1-1-16%20Schedule%20DR%20Total%20Rates%20Table.pdf
I am not familiar with all the codes, but it looks like the final cost is between 18 and 41 cents per kwh.
Someone more familiar with the codes can correct me.
BTW it looks like income distribution is in play here.
Interesting the Big Bang Theory gang will all be looking for Science jobs in China
Stand by for a dramatic reduction in the value of San Diego real estate, as residents wake up to this foolishness and flee for more logical locations. Preferably where ignorant Greenies do not control local authority decision making. There must still be a few places like that in the USA, surely?
i would make the residents stay put, forcefully if necessary. they voted these clowns in, let them deal with them.
Hmm, Living in a desert climate and depending on 100% renewable energy. Yeah that doesn’t sound like a plan for disaster.
Especially in a geographic region known for a very large population of vegetarians and vegans.
For some reason, I find it difficult to consider wind farms as tolerant to strong or frequent earthquakes.
Plus the current totalitarian dirty whitehouse scheme is to allow copious eagle wind farm kills.
A few weeks of little to no power could be enlightening. A law suit seeking protection for flying critters from solar and wind machines, again, would be better.