Integrating solar on to the grid is much easier when to do when you can easily turn natural gas plants up and down to accommodate their intermittency. And it’s much easier to do when it is 12 percent of your electricity instead of 20 percent.
But even at low levels, problems arise. According to the research done by Lion Hirth, solar’s value drops by 50 percent when it gets to just 15 percent of mix. While those values may be different for Nevada, the impact of unreliability is the same.
What is most remarkable about U.S. states heavy in solar and wind is that electricity prices rose so much given the huge decline in natural gas prices.
Highly readable and coherently reasoned article.
I’d wager that I could easily make the case that ANY time government is involved with any kind of activity – education, health, power supply, homes, transportation, even the financial world – over time, the market gets distorted (e.g., the price of college tuition has gotten completely out of hand in the U.S. ever since “student loans” became de rigueur).
The reason? Whenever government gets involved with something, it does so for one reason and one reason alone: itself.
If someone thinks otherwise, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them.
God help Canazuela, should Tinkerbell Nationalize Kinder Morgan…not like something said genetic shit STAIN hasn’t done before…?
Well then … will the eco-proselytizers STOP selling solar as … “cheap, plentiful and renewable”?
Of course Not Kenji…its not about a cheaper or Less ” polluting” method of energy production…its to fill the pockets of Liberal insiders who build said plants, the FIT they negotiate and to make Western Hemisphere citizens …ENERGY POOR.
Create a problem: AGW
Define the Culprit: CO2
Monetize said Culprit: Carbon Taxes – Push Renewables…EV’s Etc.
Reap the Profits (subsidies provided by fleecing the end user)
Instant SCAM…with Legs…!!
Flim Flam style
George Soros is loving it, as would his dead compatriot, a Canadian…Maurice Strong.
Add population Replacement & Their new world order is well on its way to becoming a reality.
“Well then … will the eco-proselytizers STOP selling solar as … “cheap, plentiful and renewable”?”
Especially in Canada where there is 2 feet of snow on the panels for half the year along with only 7 hours of feeble sun with mostly cloudy days. Solar is beyond stupid in Canada.
Renewables are a solution in need of a problem….one that not 1 country in the Western Hemisphere had.
Until the quasi religion of AGW came to forefront back in 91-92… Brazil.? That was the beginning of what I see as the Marxist plan to transfer wealth from the West to the UN and the rest of the stone age planetary citizens.
Al Gore cemented the deal by putting the blame on CO2 and it’s been game on since then. Fast forward 25 years and the west is straining under massive energy costs, Marxism gnawing at our feet and countries flooded with ME and African migrant bringing disease, violent ideology and creating chaos that we simply seem unable to look at with an honest eye.
Sad…the only place that stands even half a chance is the USA – 2A being the difference and a population that WILL not put up with domestic enemies.
As a Canadian born overseas with parents that survived 1939-45, I envy that
This is a good article by Michael Shellenberger. He’s captured most of the problem, but he’s missed just two key elements.
1. He notes correctly that RE demands much more in the way of physical inputs, land, materials, etc. However, what he misses is that in most jurisdictions, the RE is hooked up to the grid for FREE. It’s not free of course; the ratepayer still pays as an add-on to the electricity delivery charge. In effect, everything else subsidizes RE.
2. The old electricity system was a jurisdictional monopoly. It determined what was built and what was turned on as needed based on cost. The least costly was turned on first, the most expensive last. As a monopoly its rates were regulated to allow a fixed, relatively low rate of return.
However, the introduction of breaking up the vertically integrated utilities changed all that. Now, electricity was to be based on price, not cost. If there was a shortage, prices skyrocketed for every watt-second of electricity generated by ALL generators. Enron in the late 1990s. demonstrated how the system could be gamed if you controlled enough power plants to create artificial price spikes. But now there’s no need for Enron-style corruption. With physical capacity factors of less than 20%, RE creates price spikes and shortages simply by its existence when it’s not available. The more RE there is on the system, the greater the number of price spikes and the greater the amount of grid instability.
Moreover, as Shellenberger has noted, electricity market structures are based on the immediate price. They have no way of valuing long term matters such as reliability and low cost over a lifetime of operation.
Finally, because of this inherent instability which RE creates, it makes lots of room for useless middlemen functioning as various forms of electricity brokers. Given all the various economic groups that have a vested interest in inserting additional costs between producer and consumer, the political interest in adding a few more cents/kWh to make a lot of happy friends becomes overwhelming. It is certainly true to say that RE cannot exist economically under the old, reliable monopoly-regulated electricity system.
when all of the so called green energy bs is over and people have to survive, the solar panels and wind mills will become just so much refuse to be recycled. The gas, oil and coal will keep we humans alive for hundreds more years, at least 600 years by some counts. Of course as the world cycles into an ever cooling ice age none of what we are discussing will mean a damn thing. Nukes will be available for a few thousand years.