Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t The White House; Even Forbes, whose deep green editors recently censored Michael Shellenberger for criticising the climate movement, has sharply criticised California’s headlong rush into a new dark age of unreliable electricity.
Blackouts Expose Perils And Costs Of California’s ‘Electrify Everything’ Push
Robert Bryce Contributor Energy
I write about energy, power, innovation, and politics.
Aug 18, 2020, 08:26pm EDTThe blackouts that hit California over the past few days exposed the fragility of one of the most-expensive and least-reliable electric grids in North America. They also show that California’s grid can’t handle the load it has now, much less accommodate the enormous amount of new demand that would have to be met if the state attempts to “electrify everything.”
The push to electrify everything would prohibit the use of natural gas in buildings, electrify transportation, and require the grid to run solely on renewables (and maybe, a dash of nuclear). But attempting to electrify the entire California economy will further increase the cost of energy at the very same time that the state’s electricity rates are soaring. That will result in yet-higher energy costs for low- and middle-income Californians.
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California may be known for Silicon Valley and the beauty of its mountains and beaches, but it also has the highest poverty rate of any state in America. When accounting for the cost of living, 18.1% of the state’s residents are living in poverty. For perspective, that means that roughly 7 million Californians — a population about the size of Arizona’s — are living in poverty.
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Years of misguided policies have left Californians plugged into a tattered electric grid that can’t handle a heatwave. Californians now rely on an electricity network that looks and acts more like a grid you’d find in Beirut or Africa than ones in Europe or the United States.
In short, the blackouts that hit California a few days ago appear to be only a taste of the pain to come. And the state’s consumers are going to be paying even higher prices for that pain.
Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/18/blackouts-expose-perils-and-costs-of-californias-electrify-everything-push/#3bbd57df7a01
In my opinion California has until now concealed the true scale of their electricity supply problems from voters, by quietly importing vast amounts of power from other states when their own unreliable green electricity system falters.
But this time the green energy charade failed. Spare power from other states was not available – during the recent widespread heatwave, demand in other states also surged, so other states did not have enough spare electricity to cover California’s needs.
Renewable advocates claim that the unreliability of renewables can be overcome by smart grids. But there appears to have been nothing smart about the allegedly incompetent management of California’s grid over the last week.
If the home of centers of technical excellence like JPL and Silicon Valley cannot get green energy right, then nobody can.
California’s Dysfunctional Electricity Policies may lead to more Blackouts – Shuttering of in-state power plants, “leaks” the generation and emissions to other states. As a result of California’s intermittent electricity from wind and solar being unable to provide continuous uninterruptable electricity in-state, California imports more electricity than any other state as a result of “leakage” to other states from them to generate emissions for the generated electricity needs of California. At the same time, the states “green” religion remains adamantly against in-state coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro power plants. Can you see the conundrum the state is in? https://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2020/08/californias-dysfunctional-electricity-policies-may-lead-to-more-blackouts/
We, 8000+ PG&E billing meter customers, had a short (2 to 3 minutes) power outage yesterday (around 2:30 pm). I was listening to a CASIO presentation at the time:
http://www.caiso.com/pages/recent-documents.aspx
Date Title Format
08/21/2020Audio – Special Session: Market Update Heat Wave Q/A – Aug 21, 202017117 KB
I had hoped to find out if Ivanpah’s output on the 14th during our black out was going to be picked up by PG&E at the PPA contract time of delivery (TOD) price of give or take $240 MUh, or was PG&E going to be paying Google and NRG the $1000 MUh noted in the day ahead market graphs.
With the power outage I never got back to the talk. Thanks for all the references in the post- it reminded me about the talk.
I didn’t see any comment regarding the larger problem California poses to this point, so let me just say that this is not a problem that we can just confine to California. As long as California gets to shed their excess production on the rest of the Western grid, they will be putting pressure on the viability of all fossil fuel generators as far inland as western Wyoming.
Then, in order to reach their portfolio goals, they encourage plans for the construction of yet more wind farms clear to the Wyoming/Nebraska border. And I encourage people to go have a look to see current and future retirement of dispatchable power.
Trifecta of madness.
Not only can’t CA handle a heatwave, but with many businesses shuttered – high rises, stadiums, restaurants, it can’t even handle a heatwave in the middle of a pandemic shutdown. Beyond stupid…
Ironically, this critique is exactly what Shellenberger was saying when he was censored by the same media outlet.
The big issue with RE is that is can only exist alongside fossil fuels, nuclear or standard hydro, where the legacy forms of generation are turned up and down to offset the irregualarities of RE. What is an important note in this article is the realisation that RE cannot be used to expand a grid or to retire existing legacy generation, which is why developing countries have not developed on RE, but have used mainly coal and gas and will continue to do so until the end of the century, unless nuclear options are provided.
Of course there is nothing new being flagged here, and the limitations of RE have been well understood before a single wind turbine or solar panel was deployed. The only issue is that the entire alarmist community is in denial of this obvious limitation and will seemingly press on until the entire grid collapses.
If the government of Mexico had an entrepreneurial bent (which I doubt), they could build a series of big nuclear power stations close to the California border, and they could sell baseload to the Golden State. They could have a few wind turbines around and pretend that it was all green and renewable so they could insert the “must take” clause into the purchase agreement.
Or they could license the private sector to do it (probably a better idea).
Missing from analysis here is HOW a fossil fuel grid would have better handled this situation.
How would it have handled record demand, beating 2006 by 75% of a small power plant?
with exactly the same limits on out of state power and hydro?
Were there ever really the peaker plants to meet that level of demand? Would anyone have built the gas plant to cover that additional load?
Of course, in 2006 San Onofre 2 and 3 were still running. That’s over 2GW of CO2 free electricity that could have been there still, and wouldn’t have gone AWOL when the sun went down. What was the gap – around 450MW? Which would have been cheaper? Building 2GW of wind turbines/solar farms or just keeping that plant going?
(I know it’s early in the US guys and gals – but, c’mon, I’ve got the popcorn ready)
A fossil fuel grid would have built more power plants as population, and hence demand, grew.
It doesn’t matter how smart the grid is, if you don’t have enough power, you have to cut people off. California’s idea of a smart grid was to buy excess electricity from the rest of the western states. In a big heat wave, the other states don’t have enough to spare. The more unreliables the other states acquire, the more reliable back-up they need, and the less they can send to CA. Texas (where I currently live) has a lot of windmills, but the wind doesn’t blow consistently or predictably. There are days when we are right at the edge of safety for the grid. No reserves will be sold to California when we are at our minimum.
California doesn’t have any states to it’s west. All the states are either north or east.
States to the east, the sun is even further towards the horizon than it is in CA. As a result, when CA starts to see a big drop in power from the solar plants, the only states it can rely on for excess power are even further down that solar power curve.
“the rest of the western states” was the statement, not states west of California. You are correct that importing power from PV arrays is usually not effective. Wind power can be produced when the wind blows, which includes the evening. The western electrical grid includes CA and covers all the states west of Texas, which is its own grid. In 2018, California imported about 24% of its electrical energy. I didn’t find data for 2019.
In the green utopia people will learn to not expect consistent electrical service when it is very hot, cold or dark.
That is really the whole point, a new sustainable way of life. Why should you expect electricity in a heat wave or in the winter? Just like travel and mobility, it will be limited to only the elite.
“Smart Grid” is a euphemism for government has a remote switch to control every appliance and lightbulb in your house and businesd.