Guest “too fracking funny” by David Middleton
CLIMATE CHANGE
Renewable Energy Isn’t to Blame for California’s BlackoutsDharna Noor
WednesdayOn Friday and Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Californians had their power cut for a spurt in the evening. And more of this could be in store in the coming days as record breaking heat beats down on the state and wildfires burn out of control.
State officials have said the need for the shutoffs shows the inadequacies of renewable power. On Monday, Stephen Berberich, president of California’s Independent System Operator (CAISO), the agency which made the call to enact the rolling shutoffs, blamed the California Public Utilities Commission for failing to ensure adequate power capacity on hot nights after the sun sets. That’s when electricity generated by the state’s solar panels drops to zero but demand for air conditioning remains high. The implication, that transitioning away from fossil fuels has made California’s energy less reliable, could work in the gas industry’s favor, since the state is reviewing proposals to keep several natural gas plants in Southern California online.
[…]
But despite Berberich’s and other’s assertions, there is no evidence that solar actually failed at all. In fact, energy experts have noted that based on the energy reserves that are available, the state should be able to handle the peak electricity demand that increased air conditioning use amid the heat wave is causing.
[…]
The heat wave is causing a spike in energy demand, and the state did lose some sources of power at the same time, causing what CAISO called a “perfect storm” of events. But the biggest power sources that went offline this past weekend weren’t solar power plants. CAISO’s own data shows that on Friday when the blackouts were announced, the solar supply remained pretty consistent, but the state’s natural gas supply underperformed by 400 megawatts.
“It was actually gas that failed,” said Shana Lazerow, a staff attorney at environmental justice nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.”
Wind energy also underperformed over the weekend, producing about 1,000 megawatts below state analysts’ expectations.
[…]
Even if the heat waves had caused an insurmountable spike in energy demand, Stokes said moving away from renewables would be exactly the wrong response.
“Let’s be real, why do we have heat waves right now, across the western U.S.? It’s because of climate change,” she said. “Parts of California … have warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 degrees Fahrenheit]. These are places that historically didn’t need air conditioning, and now they do because they’re seeing record high temperatures for days in a row, so people are going to need more electricity. And that is because we have burned fossil fuels for over 100 years.”
Gizmodo
Before I move on to the natural gas nonsense, this bit is irresistible:
Even if the heat waves had caused an insurmountable spike in energy demand, Stokes said moving away from renewables would be exactly the wrong response.
“Let’s be real, why do we have heat waves right now, across the western U.S.? It’s because of climate change,” she said.
“Even if the heat waves had caused an insurmountable spike in energy demand…moving away from” unreliable energy sources “would be exactly the wrong response” because… Drum roll, please… climate change”. I really couldn’t make this sort of schist up, if I tried.
On to the natural gas nonsense
The heat wave is causing a spike in energy demand, and the state did lose some sources of power at the same time, causing what CAISO called a “perfect storm” of events. But the biggest power sources that went offline this past weekend weren’t solar power plants. CAISO’s own data shows that on Friday when the blackouts were announced, the solar supply remained pretty consistent, but the state’s natural gas supply underperformed by 400 megawatts.
Both the “solar supply” and natural gas supply” links go to this document:
CAISO Briefing on system operations, August 17, 2020
Neither “natural gas” nor “gas” appear anywhere in the document. There is an entry about losing 475 MW of generating capacity at 2:56 PM on Friday August 14, but it doesn’t specify what that capacity was. Here’s the timeline:
The lack of resources was identified on August 12 and power plant operators were notified to restrict maintenance operations,
Here are Friday’s details:
At noon, they realized they would not be able to obtain additional resources, lost 475 MW of generation capacity, dispatched “contingency reserves” and began rolling blackouts until about 8 PM, when demand decreased. Then on Saturday, the wind acted up:
So the wind kicked up and reliable generation (natural gas) had to rapidly ramp down… Then the wind died and reliable generation (natural gas) had to rapidly ramp up. Mind boggling.
At this point, they were looking at a resource deficiency of up to 4,400 MW on Monday, as demand ramped up and solar ramped down:
Somehow, natural gas is to blame for this:
According to CAISO, the factors that could affect their maximum generating capacity from 5 to 8 PM were:
Capacity to meet peak hour load approximately 46,000 MW but can
be ultimately be affected by:
• Resource and transmission outages
• Fires affecting transmission availability
• Availability of imports based on west wide load and supply conditions
• Cloud cover affecting solar production
• Weather conditions affecting wind production
• Hydro conditions
• Ambient derates to conventional generators due to heatCapacity to meet 8 pm (net load peak) demand approximately
43,000 MW
• Lower due to no solar production after sunset
Can anyone see anything in this document that supports this claim?
“It was actually gas that failed,” said Shana Lazerow, a staff attorney at environmental justice nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.”
I can’t even find the quote anywhere else, except in an article quoting the Gizmodo nonsense.
“It was actually gas that failed,” while solar performed as designed
The closest support I can find for this claim, is from this Mercury News article:
California grid operator warned of power shortages as state transitioned to clean energy
Growing shortfall as solar power goes offline in early eveningsBy PAUL ROGERS | progers@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: August 17, 2020[…]
[L]ast fall, top officials at California’s power grid operator ominously warned that electricity shortages were likely as soon as 2020 during a big Western heat wave. The reason: The state’s historic shift away from fossil fuels such as natural gas, which provide consistent power, toward cleaner sources such as solar and wind energy, which rise and fall with the weather and the sun.
With less reliable energy supplies, they say the power grid has become more difficult to operate and more at risk of blackouts, calling it a “most urgent issue” that “really needs timely attention.”
[…]
“We have a much more risky supply of energy now because the sun doesn’t always shine when we want and the wind doesn’t always blow when we want,” said Frank Wolak, a Stanford University economics professor who specializes in energy markets. “We need more tools to manage that risk. We need more insurance against the supply shortfalls.”
The blackouts are not a surprise.
[…]
Starting Friday as temperatures soared above 100 degrees and hit 110 in some parts of the state, the warnings came true. The ISO ordered utilities such as PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric to impose rolling blackouts over the next two days and warned millions could lose power this week. ISO officials said two natural gas power plants in California had gone offline, demand for electricity was higher than they expected, and not enough power was available from other states to close the gap.
Wolak, of Stanford, said the state should make efforts to keep gas-power plants around until battery storage technology for solar plants can be ramped up.
One long-time industry official agreed.
“Some folks in the environmental community want to shut down all the gas plants. That would be a disaster,” said Jan Smutny Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association, a trade association representing solar, wind, geothemal and gas power plants. “Last night 60% of the power in the ISO was being produced by those gas plants. They are your insurance policy to get through heat waves.”
Many of the state’s gas plants have become less competitive because they are more expensive to run than solar, he said. In fact, some have been shutting down on their own because utilities are buying more power from solar and wind.
Jones also said utilities should be required to sign more contracts with generating companies to lock up power to provide a better cushion during heat waves and other events, even if they never use that power. Some utilities have resisted because of the cost.
“Nobody likes to pay for insurance,” he said. “But if you need a heart transplant, or your house burns down, you’re glad you had it.”
[…]
Mercury News
Natural gas is supposed to work 24/7. Solar is supposed to stop working as the Sun goes down… Therefore, when two natural gas-fired power plants went offline… “It was actually gas that failed,” while solar performed as designed. The problem with this line of thinking (or lack thereof), is that all power plants are subject to going offline for mechanical reasons, often related to weather.
When you are relying on natural gas as your “insurance” policy and you keep dialing back your coverage as your potential need for that insurance is growing, you’re literally playing with fire.
From the Soviet Union of Concerned Scientists:
Natural Gas Power Plant Retirements in California
MARK SPECHT, ENERGY ANALYST | FEBRUARY 25, 2019As the rest of the country rushes to build natural gas power plants, California continues to downsize its fleet. While the official numbers are not yet in, 2018 appears to have been a big year for natural gas power plant retirements in California.
California saw three big plant retirements last year: Encina (854 MW), Mandalay (560 MW), and Etiwanda (640 MW). The retirement of Encina and Mandalay was no surprise – those two plants used ocean water for cooling, and California has been phasing out plants that use that cooling technology because of its harmful effects on marine life. On the other hand, Etiwanda shut down simply because it was not making enough money. While California has figured out solutions to keep the electric grid operating reliably without the Mandalay and Etiwanda power plants, Encina is being replaced by the Carlsbad Energy Center, a new 500 MW natural gas power plant.
A dwindling fleet
These retirements in 2018 continue California’s downward trend in natural gas power plant capacity. California’s gas fleet peaked in 2013 with just over 47,000 MW of gas capacity, but California has shed roughly 5,000 MW of gas capacity since then.
[…]
Soviet Union of Concerned Scientists
Since 2013, California has shut down 5,000 MW of natural gas-fired generating capacity and on August 17, 2020, they were looking at a 4,400 MW shortfall as the Sun was going down.
Too fracking funny!
How do people get to be this stupid?
According to LinkedIn Dharna Noor, author of the Gizmodo article, has a 2014 BA in political philosophy, social science and vocal music. Shana Lazerow is an environmental attorney (’nuff said). The energy analyst for the Soviet Union of Concerned Scientists has even more humorous qualifications:
Mr. Specht earned a BA in integrated science and science in human culture from Northwestern University, and an MA in philosophy from the University of Otago in New Zealand.
SUoCS
Disposable technology, renewable drivers. Irregular energy, environmental hazards. Flora, fauna, and people are at risk for a green return. The Green Blight does not live up to the political and quasi-religious myths that its proponents and investors demand that we accept on faith.
I am not one to complain that someone should not offer an opinion because they have the wrong credentials. Rather one shouldn’t offer an opinion if one has no idea what they are speaking of. However, this would require people be intelligent enough to recognize their limitations. Most cannot.
I was laughing at their qualifications, not complaining… 😉
David, I think you can call attention to stupid, but you can’t fix it. Kalifornia reminds me of the Jim Croce song “like a fool in a hurry I took her to my room…”. Afterward, Jim spent 10 years in prison. Kalifornia now realizes they shouldn’t have done that (cut back dependable power in favor of greenie nonsense), but it’s too late, so they can spend 10 years in figurative prison while they rebuild gas or nuke. Wait for it.
???? That was just a song not real and the character was supposed to spend 20 years in prison and be released at 45. Jim Croce was on tour and died in a plane crash when he was just 30 – and he was planning to retire from that because he couldn’t stand being away from his young family.
Next month, September 20th will be the 17th anniversary of his death.
I think it will be the 47th anniversary of the untimely death of the great Jim Croce.
From 2014 BA to 2014 BC…
You can’t fix stupid.
A man has got to know his limitations.
But no one ever said nuffin about women.
Kevin it’s called the dunning-kruger effect. I blame our education system for the apparent proliferation of stupid overeducated individuals that have been awarded meaningless academic credentials. I’ll bet Spechts MA is on the philosophy of navel gazing.
Mike
Kevin’
Another opportunity for that useful word
“ultracrepidarian”
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ultracrepidarian
Social… environmental justice are relativistic conceptions of each moral and quasi-moral imperative are injustice everywhere.
I call total bs on this one….” These are places that historically didn’t need air conditioning, and now they do”
Areas that were once rural and greenspace and are now paved over could give that result. Nothing to do with climate though. Most of the records were set in the 1930’s. They’re lucky its cooled off so much.
No one needs airconditioning ever. That is us humans always wanting to make our life better if we can.
People with some health conditions often do need air conditioning.
I think Jeroen was being sarcastic and poignant all at the same time. The Marxists deplore our capitalist striving for decadence, but really we just want to get a sound nights sleep and not sweat buckets. The Marxists want to work us like rented donkeys to tax us to death to then hand out the money to their political friends who are running the moneymills, oops did I say that outloud!, windmills.
Do they mean the places that were uninhabitable until the advent of air conditioning? link
Latitude
Yes, most of the contribution to the rising average temperature is from an increasing daily minimum temperature. So, places could show an increasing average and still have little or no need for air conditioning. I lived in California from 1955 to 2003 and never had a house or car with air conditioning. Yet, it was often over 100 in the Summer and I was rarely even uncomfortable. The air is usually dry and the body does a decent job of keeping itself cool with an assist from a box fan. However, I did find that when it got to about 110, it felt better to roll up the windows on my car.
No one had air conditioning in the early 1900s and before.
And they stunk!
There are places that can’t join the first world without air conditioning, Singapore, for example.
Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore from a sleepy fishing village to the third richest country in the world on a per capita basis.
Air conditioning is a necessity, not a luxury, for a modern developed economy. Without it, your productivity slides into the ditch for several months of the year.
I lived in Texas and New Mexico for 4 years total as a young child in the 1950s. Neither our homes nor our cars had air conditioning. It has only been relatively recently that it is considered a necessity for life. Certainly it is worthwhile to have the energy infrastructure to have it, though.
Maybe California is intent on returning to those “good old days”. I’m glad my state has more intelligent and more wise people in it than they obviously do.
I lived in NM from 2001-2004, didn’t have an air conditioner but my swamp cooler turned the housed, in the wife’s words, into a “Meat Locker”. Did I need it? Not with the dry desert heat but it sure made me more comfortable until the sun went down. Most of my life has been spent in the PNW without an AC unit. When we’ve had one the wife doesn’t let me run it when she’s home anyway. I swear she’s not warm until it’s >90F!
What do we call failure?
Solar fails every single evening! Wind fails so regularly that we just don’t call it failure and there’s absolutely nothing that can be done about it anyway. When the sun is shining and the solar is producing it can go away in a heartbeat and does so regularly with every passing cloud.
These people are clowns who wallow in their own personal disinformation universe. We have to call it out for the nonsense it is. We need smart meters that can be disconnected and people can decide in advance if they only want non-fossil fueled power. Those that do can then be cut off and the rest of us can carry on with life.
Yep. Greentards must suffer for their beliefs. The rest of us shouldn’t.
“Wind fails so regularly that we just don’t call it failure and there’s absolutely nothing that can be done about it anyway.”
It must be stressful for the person who has to watch the windmill output and try to keep the load balanced. Things are going along great, and then the wind stops blowing. Do alarm bells go off when this happens?
So what is the solution according to the alarmists? They want to add more windmills.
Here’s a clue: It doesn’t matter how many windmills you have, if the wind isn’t blowing, none of them are producing power.
Windmills and ground-based, industrial solar are not capable of powering society. If you don’t like CO2, then you better get used to using nuclear.
Look at all the complications and problems the lying Climategate Charlatans have caused. They are as bad as the Chicoms when it comes to harming the human condition.
John,
Wind and Solar are intermittent and unreliable *by design*, which means that whatever they do, they are operating “as designed”. Hardly fair to compare them to plants that are designed to run 24×7 at greater than 90% reliability, but the people like Dharna Noor either don’t know the difference or don’t care. Either way, their opinions on the subject can be considered ignorant propaganda and immediately discarded.
John says, “Solar fails every single evening!”
Yes, but as this failure is solars nature, you can’t fault it, at least according to these yahoos. ( I on the other hand, have no problem blaming them for choosing it, and for taking my money to pay for it.)
Mods? Not posting yet again.
I don’t know, David, shouldn’t natural gas plants be required to stand by at any cost as an essential public safety consideration even if they make no money whilst solar and wind are mandated preferred sources instead, just so renewables can continue their escalation toward that heart worming [sic(k)] California virtue-signaled dream of ENTIRELY. Also the actual electrical generation expertise of Ms. Noor and the others must surely remain unquestionable, as they only desire to throw what little min-noor they can onto a most urgent subject (noor being Arabic for light).
Why isn’t what they wrote worth a Billy Madison Award, or a Ron White Medal.
Dharna Noor seems to me to be the real Voice of Stupid here:
So a Ron White Medal of achievement goes to Dharna Noor:
https://youtu.be/CosD7h2703o
I’m trying to tone down the snarkiness… for Lent… Or something.
If/when you figure out a way that consistently works would you mind passing it on?
I could use some help in that department.
“It was actually gas that failed,” said Shana Lazerow, a staff attorney at environmental justice nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.””
Total BS, and I can see why you’re head up about it. A properly designed/executed/maintained peaker system could have kept up without even breathing hard. So, if nat gas peaker capacity is part of your green grid reliability plan, then it needs to be paid for as part of that plan. And Governor Newsome’s investigation needs to center on why this capacity was dropped. If, in toto, the green up plan is not competitive, with ALL costs considered, then jet it.
But to refresh – ALL costs – is a 2 way street. Cal has beaucoup external oil and gas costs that have been socialized on the populace. Leaky gas storage fields, 10-11 figures worth of unfunded asset retirement obligations, a still Trumpian YUGE oil and gas production AGW impact, etc. Apples/apples, I’m predicting that the recommend will be to add gas peaker capacity and continue on…..
California has three problems:
1) Solar predictably rolls off while demand is ramping up.
2) Unlike Texas, wind is unpredictable.
3) Solar + wind can’t carry base-load.
Huh, David? I’ve lived in Texas for over 40 years now, and I know for a fact that we here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area almost had a similar debacle to that of California in one hot summer in either 2013 or 2014, I think, when the wind turbines (effectively mandated by our dumb State Legislature) in West Texas stopped running because the wind had just died down for an extended period of the summer (as is mostly usual, even around here.
I heartily agree with your other two points, David.
Wind in Texas predictably works well in spring & fall and not in summer. It’s predictable.
4) A really stupid populace that keeps electing the same virtue-signalling morons every year.
That’s basically it.
re: AGW impact
That’s a modeled, not real hazard. Even then, the models are in denial, and have to be forced, steered, to go along to get along with the sociopolitical consensus.
“if nat gas peaker capacity is part of your green grid reliability plan, then it needs to be paid for as part of that plan.”
Agree, and:
Does windmills not get paid for switching off on occasions where there is too much wind-power?
So why should the “real” power plants not receive payment for turning down output at unscheduled times?
RE: “Since 2013, California has shut down 5,000 MW of natural gas-fired generating capacity and on August 17, 2020, they were looking at a 4,400 MW shortfall as the Sun was going down. Too fracking funny! How do people get to be this stupid?”
It’s a question we may never get answered, David! You could not have summed up the stupidity more succinctly, yet a majority of Californians voted for and will defend this as being ‘the right decision’. How could they be sooooo stupid? It’s very basic math and easily understandable… yet they don’t understand. My compassionate heart sympathizes deeply with the folks that argued and voted against this stupid CA energy policy. They are forced to participate in the stupid consequences caused by the stupid energy policies their stupid neighbors voted for and defend today!
Plus, I read in the excerpts that Wind failed by 1000 megawatts, at the same time Natural Gas failed by 400 megawatts. Is it only government where 400 is larger than 1000, or only California government, or only Democrats in government “Service”?
All this shows is how delusional these warmists are. When we had blackouts in Victoria last year they tried to blame coal. They then conclude that this means it would be better if only we had more renewables.
It’s actually the opposite conclusion that should be made. The grid worked pretty well when all you had was baseload energy and then renewables were introduced to replace baseload but needed to be backed up by fossil fuel generation because they are intermittent.
From this I would conclude that we should get rid of renewables and just use base load.
You and your facts and logic. We need more unicorn poop!
I conclude we should get rid of Liberal politicians.
Careful or that might happen
“The Marxists have forced out the Conservatives, now they’re coming for the Liberals”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/08/the-marxists-have-forced-out-the-conservatives-now-theyre-coming-for-the-liberals/
Washington Post reporter Jennifer Rubin claims to have been so moved by the speeches during the DNC convention, that she cried 15 to 20 times.
In the first line of the article, she is referred to as a “conservative opinion writer”.
Forgot the link
https://www.foxnews.com/media/jennifer-rubin-cried-during-democratic-national-convention
Sharna Noor could easily have written articles for RenewEconomy. Giles Parkinson rolled out exactly the same excuses/blame for both the Victorian blackout you mention and the New South Wales industrial blackout the previous summer.
On further reflection, technically, they’re right. Without reliable energy, the blackouts wouldn’t have been merely “rolling”, but simply pervasive, perhaps progressive, as Green Blight resources would become intermittently viable with the green solar driver and winds that blew within range. #SaveTheBirds
I hope, the German responsibles will have a close look to what happens there, as they are believing to be on a good way to set on renewables.
Funny how all the other states that use natural gas don’t have these electrical blackout issues.
Yes the solar/wind worked as designed. The design is make the consumers bear the cost of insufficient back-up by imposing rolling blackouts. This much has been obvious from the get go.
Consumers think blackouts are a bug. Leftists, whose sole desire is to impoverish, humiliate, and demoralize the lower classes regard it as a prime feature of the system. The lower orders must be made to taste the lash, and love the punishment.
I don’t know how the “J-Manual” has changed in the Era of Carbon Guilt, but when you ask a contractor for a bid on a new or replacement central air conditioner, they use formulas based on your level of house insulation, the amount of window area, number of people in the house, anticipated use of showers and kitchen appliances adding humidity and so on.
These formulas are “worst case” because the contractor doesn’t want to sell you an air conditioner and then you coming back to them complaining that it doesn’t keep the house cool. These formulas also have a “margin of safety” in them so they end up selling you an air conditioner that could be oversized to your requirements, especially if you are careful about drawing the window shades on hot summer days and if you avoid a lot of cooking under those conditions. Besides a larger air conditioner having a higher installed price, a larger air conditioner that runs less often draws less humidity out of the air, and in humid climates such as Florida, the American South, and even the Midwest that gets frontal systems bringing up hot humid air from the Gulf of Mexico, this can leave the house feeling cold and clammy.
You could introduce building codes that limit the size of the air conditioner a contractor could install. You add up the amount of fossil-peaker-replace-wind-and-solar generating capacity, de-rate the gas turbine plants for the warmer inlet air reducing their power, and tell people, “this is the maximum sized air conditioner you are allowed to have because if you need more air conditioning than this, the power company simply won’t be able to supply you with the required amount of electricity. On exceptionally hot days, you can run your A/C full blast, but it might warm up in your house over part of the day.”
I know my central air is oversized on this criterion. Admittedly it was a summer when a nuclear plant was offline for maintenance on its heat exchangers or some such thing, but when it got to the point that nags went out over the TV about dialing up your thermostat, my unit was anywhere near running constantly.
The generating plants have a certain maximum output, the loads, such as air conditioners used in summer have a certain maximum electric input, and you match the two. Easy peasey!
If there is one thing all climate scientists agree on, it’s that in the absence of a sufficiently long data history the periodicity of short term climate cycles are not established.
copy
… much of the evidence for existence of the cycle was established on the basis of auroral records [Gleissberg, 1958; Link, 1963; Gleissberg, 1965; Siscoe, 1980; Feynman, 1983; Feynman and Fougere, 1984]. The most decisive evidence for the Gleissberg periodicity in solar–terrestrial phenomena was brought by a maximum entropy spectral analysis of the number of aurora reported per decade in Europe and the Orient from 450 A.D. to 1450 A.D. [Feynman and Fougere, 1984]. It revealed a strong and stable line at 88.4 ± 0.7 years for the time span of the last ∼11 Gleissberg cycles which cover an interval of almost 1000 years. Another confirmation of 88‐year cycle was presented by Attolini et al. [1988, 1990] from spectral analysis by Blackman‐Tukey (correlation‐spectral) method of decennial frequency of aurorae record over the 689 B.C.–1519 A.D. compiled by Attolini et al. [1988].
1988 (IMHO) is the approximate end year of climate science and the beginning of climate science manipulation and propaganda and it keeps getting worse. currently we read:
“It was actually gas that failed,” said Shana Lazerow, a staff attorney at environmental justice nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.”
“It was actually gas that failed,” said Shana Lazerow, a staff attorney at environmental justice nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.”
“Let’s be real, why do we have heat waves right now, across the western U.S.? It’s because of climate change,” she said. “Parts of California … have warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 degrees Fahrenheit]. These are places that historically didn’t need air conditioning, and now they do because they’re seeing record high temperatures for days in a row, so people are going to need more electricity. And that is because we have burned fossil fuels for over 100 years.”
Lazaro doesn’t appear to be too interested in climate cycles, and instead clings to her CO2 climate control knob. I find interesting news reports that Death Valley recently saw it’s highest temperature since 1931, 89 years ago, Hmmm , what was that again? …”a strong and stable line at 88.4 ± 0.7 years for the time span of the last ∼11 Gleissberg cycles ” …ya, ya, not causation.
All of this rather reminds me of something a Libertarian Party presidential candidate said quite a few years ago.
Don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that: “Government breaks your leg and then hands you a pair of crutches. It then takes credit for your ability to get around on those crutches without mentioning that it broke your leg in the first place.”
Don’t know if and when the climate alarmist narrative is ever going to be discredited once and for all. But when it finally is, a lot of people in California and elsewhere are going to look extremely stupid.
Like anybody who buys “You didn’t build that (business of yours), you were just standing there while we made you pay for it all!”, if I may paraphrase just some of what politicos shamelessly get away with of late.
Libertarian Party candidates tend to be naïve about how the country works.
I mean, consider the Affordable Care Act. A modestly prosperous self-employed person tells themselves, “I was paying $500/month for pretty good health insurance and this law that was supposed to improve things replaced it with $1000/month payment with a $10,000 annual deductible I didn’t have before. What kind of stupid improvement is this?”
The doubled monthly payment and the huge deductible is actually a tax that got imposed on you by this new system, where a guy with a disabled kid needing very expensive long-term treatment who is much less prosperous qualifies for subsidy on the Insurance Exchanges. This guy will raise holy heck when interviewed by the TV station about a plan to change this system whereas the reporter doesn’t bother to visit to tell the TV viewers about your experience.
So it is more like the government breaks your leg and hands someone else a pair of crutches who will be crying about his sad story about the plan to take those crutches away.
The Libertarian fallacy is that not breaking your leg will raise general prosperity enough so that other guy can pay for his own crutches. What is missing from the equation is that the exploitation of hydrocarbon fuels, remember the original research on the technology was government funded, has, can and will raise general prosperity to such an extent that having your legs broken to pay for Tiny Tim’s crutches won’t annoy you all that much. That is the secret sauce of how the economy boomed for the last 3 years, and that secret sauce will be gone if a certain guy with bad hair loses reelection.
The scandal of what is happening in California is not that people have to sweat for short stretches from the rolling blackouts. At least there is natural gas backup, even if it is coming up a few hundred kilowatt hours short. The scandal is that people actually believe in the “Net Zero (carbon emission) by 2050” slogan that is printed on my monthly power company bill a long distance from California. This will really impoverish us.
The belief capitalism is the only means by which prosperity can be raised for all is, not being naive, it is just reality. Arguing over whether which candidate will be better at using government to create prosperity is what is naive.
Even if it was a gas fired plant that was the source of the 475 MW drop out. So what?
CA officials are planning on mothballing gas fired power plants that produce many times that amount over the next decade.
And no matter how many solar plants you have, they still go to zero well before the sun goes down.
Don’t forget the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. 2.25GW gone in 2025
CEC generation capacity data at their website shows that California had 48,912 MWs of natural gas generating capacity in 2013 and as of 2019 only 40,383 MW’s of natural gas generating capacity remains.
Thus CEC generation capacity data by resource type shows a reduction between 2013 and 2019 of 8,520 MW’s.
To use a famous climate alarmist phrase “It’s worse than we thought.”
Excellent article. Thanks
40,383 mW of natural gas capacity, 475 mW of it goes off-line (1% more or less) and it’s natural gas generation that’s to blame for the shortfall? How’s that for reliable base load reserve? What a State.
Don’t forget that San Onofre was shut down in 2013. That’s another 2.25GW of dependable power lost and there have coal plants shut as well.
It’s even worse than the picture you present.
David, I’m disappointed, What no, “The Stupid it Burns” cartoon . How could that have been more on the mark.
I was getting too formulaic… 😎
Fine. Just shut down all the NG plants tomorrow since you can’t depend on them. Problem solved.
I like the way you think. I’m
Natural gas plants are unreliable? Funny how that only seems to apply to those in California – no where else.
Everywhere else we build enough extra capacity into a system to absorb a plant having to shut down – you just ramp up one of the backups that are always online. In the Green Energy world there IS no additional capacity for failure – you just fail. I guess night fall is a failure as well.
These people make me laugh (I laugh so that I do not cry). They are grossly stupid. And put in charge. Wow.
And now we are in so much smoke from the forest fires that the solar probably is not working again.
Governor DumDum you have to be put out to pasture and left to feed on dead grass and no water.
California was once the Golden State. Now we are becoming a Third World State. Recall Newsom !!!!!!!
Boot out Pelosi. Kick out Carbohal. Extinguish Harris. Cancel Maxine Waters.
Lets vote this California State Red and it will again be the Golden State attracting people companies and money.
Mr. Middleton,
I commend you for your ability to find humor in this ginormous clusterf*ck and object lesson. Ordinarily, one would expect and hope that those responsible for honest errors of judgment would learn from their mistakes. In this case, I despair of that hope.
I’m afraid I find it sad. I really and truly do not wish to live in a state or a country governed by idiots elected by morons.
What’s the point in having ginormous clusterf*cks if you can’t laugh at them? 😆
We are well down the Idiocracy track. The Dems are making Elysium look more like a doco as well.
Link to CEC website for California generation energy and capacity data.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/electric-generation-capacity-and-energy.