By Robert Bradley Jr.
“And you wonder why people are skeptical. [Bradley] made a comment. You disputed it. He provided support. You deflected and avoided the issue with a completely illogical statement. Oh, that’s right, you are a ‘journalist’.” ( – Mike Robinson to Elisa Wood, below)
Elisa Wood, writer and editor at Energy Changemakers, [1] posted:
A 75-year-old science group offers a new direction following the Trump administration’s climate rollback. Here’s why the plan features rooftop solar, batteries, microgrids and other forms of distributed energy.
I commented:
Rooftop solar? Those big companies (like Sunnova) have gone bankrupt and left customers with long-term contracts they do not like. It is a litigation paradise.
Wood: “Logical fallacy here. One company’s bankruptcy doesn’t damn a whole technology.”
Bradley: “Sunnova was the biggest. But okay, let’s continue with some of the rest. [I listed around 100 firms on the solar bankruptcy list.]
Wood: “Rob Bradley, 50 clothing stores went bankrupt in the US last year. By your logic, this makes clothes a bad thing.”
Bradley: “Fallacious. Can you document how many solar companies went under as far as the total population? And unlike clothing stores, solar is a government/taxpayer play. We need clothes but not solar.
Yes, the rooftop solar industry is in serious decline. If you have a link to argue oppositely, please provide.”
Elisa Wood went silent, as she has no argument to make, evidently. She just ‘did her job’ as best as she could in a ‘say it to help make it true’ postmodern world.
At this point a Mike Robinson commented with what should be the last word:
And you wonder why people are skeptical. He made a comment. You disputed it. He provided support. You deflected and avoided the issue with a completely illogical statement. Oh, that’s right, you are a “journalist.”
Which came after his comment on the real economics of rooftop solar:
There’s no “new direction” offered in this article. Just the same old buzzwords: “reimagine”, distributed energy”, and “no subsidies needed because it’s so cheap”.
The simple fact is that “rooftop solar” only is economically viable when the State steps in and makes the Distributor pay “retail” for mid-day solar “surpluses”. This practice is being phased out in many areas because it’s a loser on every level for anyone who doesn’t have rooftop solar. That means that the people that were inclined to do it, have already done it. This is a dead end market right now.
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[1] Wood’s biography states:
Elisa Wood is an award-winning writer and editor who specializes in the energy industry. She is the founder, editor, and publisher of EnergyChangemakers.com and its magazine, Decentralized Grid. She also leads the company’s content services division.
She co-founded Microgrid Knowledge and was editor-in-chief and co-host of the publication’s popular conference series from 2014 to 2023.
In addition, she co-founded RealEnergyWriters.com, where she led a team of energy writers who produced content for energy companies and advocacy organizations for two decades.
She has been writing about energy for more than three decades and is published widely. Her work can be found in prominent energy business journals and mainstream publications. She has been quoted by NPR, the Wall Street Journal and other notable media outlets.
“For an especially readable voice in the industry, the most consistent interpreter across these years has been the energy journalist Elisa Wood, whose Microgrid Knowledge (and conference) has aggregated more stories better than any other feed of its time,” wrote Malcolm McCullough, in the book, Downtime on the Microgrid, published by MIT Press in 2020.
Elisa’s specialties include distributed energy resources, electrification, grid modernization, smart grid, energy efficiency, electric transmission, competitive wholesale and retail power markets, investor-owned and public power utilities, renewable energy, energy policy and economics, and other topics related to the electric power industry.
She wrote for S&P Global/Platts for more than two decades. Her work can also be found on several energy news sites, among them Renewable Energy World, Power Engineering International, GreenBiz, Public Power Magazine and Utility Dive.
