Solar and Wind Power Losing Worldwide Support: – “Despite years of favorable public policy, including renewable power mandates and billions in subsidies, solar power still produces only about 0.2 percent of the nation’s electricity. The National Conference of State Legislatures says power from most large, utility-scaled solar installations still costs about 35 percent more than electricity from natural gas plants; many other experts estimate the levelized cost is even higher.”
There is nothing like seeing the snow covered solar panel farms here in Vermont to give you that warm fuzzy about the future of solar power. I guess a better term for them would be tax subsidy farms.
If there is any hidden blessing in solar panels it is that they are a reason that Greenies will discover that they like pesticides. Or favour dropping the minimum wage to hire people to go and trim the shrubberies back so that the panel’s don’t get blocked by nature’s solar panels (ie burnable plant life).
Oh, wait, my mistake: I thought that they would apply critical thinking to how to resolve a real world problem. Silly me. They’ll just import some undocumented labourers instead that they can treat like slaves.
Wind and power losing support hasn’t hit the Ontario Liberals on the head yet, it’s full steam ahead. Of course they’ve got more pressing challenges coming to light that could end in serious charges over deleted emails concerning their cancelling gas plants to win in two ridings, tax payers ripped off for 2 billion to save two Liberal seats. In all of this neither McGuinty or Wynne knew/know nothing as this all went down under their noses.
So the multi billions globalists spent on climate alarmism was insufficient to get broad acceptance of their freeload capital projects.
Next time they won’t give us choice.
Quote: “Despite years of favorable public policy, including renewable power mandates and billions in subsidies, solar power still produces only about 0.2 percent of the nation’s electricity.”
Translation: despite lucrative crony hand-outs and extra-ordinary, market-distorting advantages given to “sustainable” energy production, physics still beats Greenie marketing and the very best that solar, wind energy and biomass energy production have been able to do is to keep up with rising energy demand instead of overtaking demand and becoming more than an insignificant part of the overall energy budget.
Math may be hard, but it doesn’t lie. The low energy density and high intermittancy of “sustainable” energy production means that they will never and can never replace “real” energy solutions.
As an electrical engineer I can tell you that no way in the universe is the true cost of solar just 35% more than electricity from gas. The difference is much higher.
Why are none of these fraudsters, with their fake accounting, and their lying, and their deceit, in jail?
Isn’t at least *one* of these ecofascists going to go to jail? Where is the accountability to the taxpayer?
Last Saturday morning in Ontario, the price of electricity was briefly NEGATIVE $4.40 MW/h. Customers buying at market prices were getting PAID to use electricity. Then for last Saturday night, (Sun, Mar. 23 1 am – 3 am) this was issued by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO):
“Surplus Baseload Generation (SBG) is expected to exceed forecasted exports of 2400 MW for HE 2 -HE 3. IESO may take actions to minimize the effect of SBG. These actions may include the curtailment of imports and reduction of
generation units.”
Translation: Transmission restrictions and market conditions meant hat no more electricity could be exported. Electricity demand was so low, this meant generators that we never want to shut down for cost, safety and reliability reasons, were at risk of being turned off. Our cheapest generators,hydroelectric, were reducing output. Meanwhile no more natural gas output could be reduced because so many are on guaranteed contracts. If we are shutting down base load generators we are either paying somebody to buy our most expensive wind generation, or paying much cheaper private nuclear generators to reduce output. Bruce Power was paid $62 million in the first 6 months of 2013 for this purpose. Wind generators are on guaranteed contracts, as well. Otherwise, we
would turn them off for the night. Of course, when the SBG probably occurred, we didn’t shut them down. Natural gas was steady at 994 MW. That’s it. No coal. No oil. Wind generation was actually more at 1395MW. Under a normal market, it would be 0MW. All of this is to be expected. It is March. It is the weekend. It is late at night in Ontario. If there was ever a time, when you can’t reduce CO2 output by reducing electricity consumption, it is here and now. So with complete disregard for electrical reality, this is exactly the time when Earth Hour promoters are telling you to do just that.
If everybody really took Earth Hour seriously (hard to believe anyone in Ontario does), we would have to pay customers in Ohio, Michigan, New York to buy our power this Saturday night, while we pay wind generators exorbitant prices and we all sit in the dark. If we all took it super seriously, a whole bunch of us would get called into work on an emergency basis to shut down nuclear units. The only time that has ever actually happened is what we should really worry about; the blackout that began Thursday, Aug. 14, 2003 at 4:11 pm.
Starting next year, the installed generating capacity in Ontario will steadily decline reaching a minimum around the end of 2020. As each year goes on, the risk of another blackout increases. Our installed generating capacity has been reduced by shutting down all our coal generators. The Liberal Provincial Government also cancelled contracts to build natural gas generators where it is
desperately needed. Also, the decision to build new nuclear generators has been delayed indefinitely. Next up, nuclear units will begin going into lengthy maintenance outages and then even longer refurbishments outages. The safety reserve of electrical capacity is disappearing. This winter’s ice storm reminded all of us how vulnerable we are to a blackout. Freezing in the dark
for days isn’t fun.
What is fun though is a holiday. I propose Blackout Day, 3rd Friday in August every year. This year it is appropriately Aug. 15th, like 11 years ago. On this day we can remember the Great Blackout, make a real difference AND have fun. Hopefully, it’s the hottest day of the year like it was during the real blackout in 2003. It’s days like that when we really need electrical conservation. Here’s how you can do it:
1. Before you go to bed, dry clothes in the dryer. Turn on the dishwasher. Put up the Christmas lights. Leave all the lights on. All night long. No extra CO2 is going to get emitted. Not in March. Probably not in August. It’s overnight. Electricity is cheapest. This year there is so much spring runoff and high water levels, hydroelectric generators, nuclear and guaranteed gas and wind generators can easily handle the demand.
2. In the morning, sleep in. Don’t go to work. Avoid the traffic. Don’t turn on the tv, radio, computer. Step away from the electronics. Not for 1 hour, but for all the daylight hours. This will reduce demand tremendously. Holidays and weekends reduce electrical consumption by 1000s of MW/H in Ontario.
3. Prepare for an emergency. We’ve had so many warnings, close calls and short term blackouts. Spend 1 hour this year and do something to get ready for an emergency. Make a plan. Pack or buy a medical kit. Set aside 1 week of emergency
supplies. Do something.
4. This could be tough, but for the sake of the reliability of the electrical grid, you can do it at least once in your life. Turn off the air conditioner! Don’t turn it down, turn it off. Nothing has messed up the reliability of the grid more than Ontario’s switch from peak demand in winter to peak demand in summer. Before ubiquitous air conditioning, it wasn’t always this way. When the rolling blackouts begin happening in Ontario every year, it will be in the
summer on the hottest, stickiest of days.
5. 17 straight years of no increase in the average earth temperature doesn’t mean much in the long stretch of history. In this short time frame though, the odds are good that next winter will be just as cold and just as hard. Increased heating costs have created a severe financial hardship for many in rural and more remote areas. Go up north. Go to a farmers’ market. Support the tourist industry and small businesses in the rural and northern parts of Ontario. Stay at a cottage, lodge, motel, etc. Go the beach or lake. Cool off there. Get out of the hot town in the summertime.
6. Don’t cook on the stove or in the microwave. Use the barbecue and invite all
the neighbours over just like you did the weekend of Aug. 14-17, 2003.
7. Write a letter to your MPP telling them that you will support any politician that proposes to reduce electricity prices for off-peak use. With little new generation on the way, consumers need incentives to time shift their use of electricity away from peak demand; in the summer, on a hot afternoon during the week ie. The opposite of Earth Hour.
8. Write a letter to the editor in support of building new electrical generators, new transmissions lines, more money to replace old equipment and more frontline staff to keep the electricity flowing. If necessary, even if it happens in your own backyard. Your neighbours will hate you, but we all will benefit from a reliable electrical grid.
9. Have lots of fun. Electricity use is not evil. Don’t feel guilty. Its use is a sign of prosperous people enjoying themselves. Millions would love to have the reliable electricity supply we used to have. Why give that up in pursuit of an ideology that produces poverty and misery? People around the world are leaving poverty behind. Electricity is helping them do that.
10. If you do all the above, even if you don’t care, you will do far, far more to reduce CO2 emissions than shutting off the lights during Earth Hour. Even though Ontario has shut down all our coal fired generators, the rest of the world has not. When we reach our peak demand on the hottest day of the year, that additional electricity will almost exclusively be supplied by coal
generators in the US. We can fool ourselves that because it wasn’t burned in Ontario, it’s not being burned for us. The created smog will blow over from the Ohio Valley right across the border into Southern Ontario anyways.
From the guy with all his lights and electrical appliances on this Earth Hour, have a good weekend.
Excellent suggestions; I follow the ones that apply to me every day, not just ‘earth day’. Conservation is a lifestyle, not something one does one day per year. The big advantage of a conserving lifestyle is that you always have more money for the important things in life, like good dark ale and old scotch.
Solar is as dirty or perhaps even dirtier than the oil sands. It’s not economically feasible to produce solar panels in North America. The labor costs in North America are prohibitively expensive and North American environmental regulations which keep our air, water and land from being heavily polluted don’t exist in Asia, so nearly all of the solar production is over there where they can pollute and keep their production costs low. The electricity to run their solar factories comes from dirty coal and the factories dump pollution into the environment. The same goes for their wind turbines. The greenies who tout solar and wind as the energy of the future haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. Polluters fund the MSM and greenies to spout their nonsense, pollution is profitable and greenies are easily brainwashed into doing just about anything, and most of what they do is counterproductive.