As a recent week of winter weather illustrated, solar and wind don’t replace reliable power sources—they just save them fuel, usually at great expense.
I wonder when we will begin to see studies that describe how extremely large solar arrays change the weather regionally and beyond. Covering a desert sounds like a great idea, until you realize how that changes how much solar energy is absorbed and reflected, and that affects how wind currents, cloud formation, precipitation, nighttime versus daytime temperature variation, etc. Furthermore, deserts have different flora and fauna, but they have flora and fauna. Covering a desert with solar panels makes it no longer the desert.
We have collectively ignored the studies about the impacts of other energy sources on the climate and weather patterns, so I doubt anyone will worry about …
This is such a powerful expose of how wind and solar power are not inexpensive, and just a fuel savings source of intermittent energy. The US can not possible mine and manufacture enough batteries to provide reliable power for days or weeks.
I have quite a few discussions with Grok 3, (no fee) about the fallacy of RE. It now makes sense that this AI bot would be the most liberal. Elon is a very smart guy, but man, is he stuck on solar and batteries being a smart decision. WAKLE UP ELION!
There are carbon cults that will claim that any cost is worth it. You've shown the costs are insane to the overbuild, but what is more insane to me is that the carbon footprint of solar baseload also *exceeds* that of gas in many places and certainly of nuclear. So even by their own perverted carbon metric they are sorely mistaken.
A great data-driven analysis of this is available here that I recently watched:
Great analysis! Now we need to educate the Decision Makers? in Congress, those who control the national grids, the States, FERC etc how their policies and ridiculous subsidies of all forms of "green energy" and endless regulations and mandates, are destroying our way of life, and have been for about 30 years. We still have RINO's at every level of government who are convinced that climate change will destroy the planet. Witness my State of South Carolina where for at least a decade Republicans have dominated in the State and House races, yet to this day we are installing huge solar farms? For shame!
Your points are well taken, but you're defining capacity your own way, not the way it is generally being used. For example, solar is often said to have about 25% capacity. When they're at least a little bit honest, they say "average" capacity. In other words, even though there's zero output at night, and not much on very cloudy days, and the nights are long in the winter, they add in the really sunny days, and the long hours of daylight in the summer, and come up with an annual average.
This is like saying 'even though many people die in the hospital, on average, most people survive. Not very comforting to the families of the ones who died.
And a 25% "average" capacity is not very comforting to someone who is trying to keep warm or take a shower or cook some food in an all electric house in w bad winter storm blackout that could last for a week.
"Average" doesn't cut it for electric service. Imagine an internet service, which is dependent on data centers, being up and running "on average".
Batteries are no help at all if there's no sun for more than a day or two. Batteries don't make electricity - they just store it - for a few hours - if they can be re-charged.
My take is that, for all the reasons you mentioned, the term "capacity" (whose core meaning is to actually be able to do something) should never have been expanded to include intermittent generation sources.
If a small gas generator maintaining 60Hz has load added to it, that generator must increase fuel usage for the source to meet the demand.
This is the easiest way to explain dispatchable or baseload power - the grid must maintain both its power (voltage and current) and its frequency. When you have DC generating sources that are powered by weather, there will never be a direct match to grid demand. So the on-demand power sources must constantly cycle up and down to match the demand.
Imagine how hard that is on gas turbines and extrapolate that out over a decade or 2. The maintenance costs and outages get quite high.
Alex, have you seen Alexandra Fasulo's story (@alexandrafasulo on Substack) in New York? Crazy what she's uncovered with all the crony-capitalistic hidden public-private partnership scheming to get legacy farms to sell out, to be replaced with fields of solar panels.
This is a masterclass on how to understand energy. The only thing I would add is that the overbuilding plus storage would defeat the whole purpose of VRE - reducing carbon emissions. The production emissions would likely increase lifecycle emissions to levels higher than gas, and maybe even coal.
Alas, facts and proof rarely matter to ideologues and green grifters. Despite your impressive assemblage of proof, the climate change industrial complex will deny, deny, deny, and lie.
Perhaps you should create a graph and article contrasting the industrial & civil energy cost in a free market of energy (including nuclear) with the current steep costs of operating with heavy subsidies (for solar & wind) × subpenalties (for hydrocarbons and nuclear) including the damaging regulations for mining and production/distribution of all energy sources.
You could also include a future projection of free market costs (after nuclear especially modernizes it's electricity generation) versus a future projection of successful green policy implementation, as well as what the past GDP would've been like if hydrocarbons and nuclear weren't restricted/suppressed & what it would've been like if the current anti-hydrocarbons × anti-nuclear policies existed in the past century (you can stipulate solar & wind × battery efficacy of the present being available in that past; just to show that the huge costs would make today hell).
Intermittent fuel savers? And just how much might the savings be.? A modern gas turbine power plant requires 25% to 28% of its full power fuel requirement to maintain hot standby, where it is ready to go but making no electricity. Some require as much as 40%. At any power below full power their fuel economy rapidly declines. This is why gas turbines are not used in cars. At low power their fuel economy stinks and the couple thousand degree exhaust burns the chickens in the barnyard. Some number of gas turbine plants must be on hot standby in a grid in order to make up for shortcomings in wind and solar power in case the wind suddenly falls, clouds intervene, snow falls, or other weather or grid phenomena affects operation of wind and solar power supplies. At other times, part load operation may be required at which times, their fuel economy declines.
I have never seen a proper analysis of fuel economy in a grid operating in this manner. Mr. Epstein, you may be able to do such analysis or have friends or acquaintances who can. It may be that part and no load operation of gas backup machinery in a grid with significant wind and solar "contributions" saves nothing at all. Whatever the result, isn't it worth knowing?
It's also worth noting that solar and wind are still minor contributors to our overall energy consumption. We still get 25x more energy from fossil fuels than wind and solar. The data is in a recent post of mine: An Overview of U.S. Energy Production. https://briefedbydata.substack.com/p/an-overview-of-us-energy-production
The fanfare about China’s renewable progress is very misleading. Their strategy is energy security first and any reductions in GHG are collateral effects. With limited domestic petroleum sources, EVs, wind, solar and batteries (and hydro and nuclear) can make more sense especially if you’re the one actually making the machines (and selling them to altruistic de-industrializing countries). Making China a hero is just another example of the upside down inside out contorted logic of climate fanatics.
As this is a red herring, let's ignore the fact that Sicily is pretty mountainous and not at all suitable for the installation of vast areas of batteries; let's ignore the fact that Sicily is Sicily and that within a week of completing installation, eBay would be flooded with ads for cheap cheap batteries from Mobs R Us. Mischief aside, I suspect that the cost of a battery installation the area of Sicily would bankrupt the entire European economy. Change My Mind.
I wonder when we will begin to see studies that describe how extremely large solar arrays change the weather regionally and beyond. Covering a desert sounds like a great idea, until you realize how that changes how much solar energy is absorbed and reflected, and that affects how wind currents, cloud formation, precipitation, nighttime versus daytime temperature variation, etc. Furthermore, deserts have different flora and fauna, but they have flora and fauna. Covering a desert with solar panels makes it no longer the desert.
We have collectively ignored the studies about the impacts of other energy sources on the climate and weather patterns, so I doubt anyone will worry about …
This is such a powerful expose of how wind and solar power are not inexpensive, and just a fuel savings source of intermittent energy. The US can not possible mine and manufacture enough batteries to provide reliable power for days or weeks.
I have quite a few discussions with Grok 3, (no fee) about the fallacy of RE. It now makes sense that this AI bot would be the most liberal. Elon is a very smart guy, but man, is he stuck on solar and batteries being a smart decision. WAKLE UP ELION!
The green new deal is economic insanity!
Thank you ALEX!
There are carbon cults that will claim that any cost is worth it. You've shown the costs are insane to the overbuild, but what is more insane to me is that the carbon footprint of solar baseload also *exceeds* that of gas in many places and certainly of nuclear. So even by their own perverted carbon metric they are sorely mistaken.
A great data-driven analysis of this is available here that I recently watched:
https://substack.com/@wirescrossed/note/p-184619348?r=1we1xi
Great analysis! Now we need to educate the Decision Makers? in Congress, those who control the national grids, the States, FERC etc how their policies and ridiculous subsidies of all forms of "green energy" and endless regulations and mandates, are destroying our way of life, and have been for about 30 years. We still have RINO's at every level of government who are convinced that climate change will destroy the planet. Witness my State of South Carolina where for at least a decade Republicans have dominated in the State and House races, yet to this day we are installing huge solar farms? For shame!
Your points are well taken, but you're defining capacity your own way, not the way it is generally being used. For example, solar is often said to have about 25% capacity. When they're at least a little bit honest, they say "average" capacity. In other words, even though there's zero output at night, and not much on very cloudy days, and the nights are long in the winter, they add in the really sunny days, and the long hours of daylight in the summer, and come up with an annual average.
This is like saying 'even though many people die in the hospital, on average, most people survive. Not very comforting to the families of the ones who died.
And a 25% "average" capacity is not very comforting to someone who is trying to keep warm or take a shower or cook some food in an all electric house in w bad winter storm blackout that could last for a week.
"Average" doesn't cut it for electric service. Imagine an internet service, which is dependent on data centers, being up and running "on average".
Batteries are no help at all if there's no sun for more than a day or two. Batteries don't make electricity - they just store it - for a few hours - if they can be re-charged.
My take is that, for all the reasons you mentioned, the term "capacity" (whose core meaning is to actually be able to do something) should never have been expanded to include intermittent generation sources.
If a small gas generator maintaining 60Hz has load added to it, that generator must increase fuel usage for the source to meet the demand.
This is the easiest way to explain dispatchable or baseload power - the grid must maintain both its power (voltage and current) and its frequency. When you have DC generating sources that are powered by weather, there will never be a direct match to grid demand. So the on-demand power sources must constantly cycle up and down to match the demand.
Imagine how hard that is on gas turbines and extrapolate that out over a decade or 2. The maintenance costs and outages get quite high.
Alex, have you seen Alexandra Fasulo's story (@alexandrafasulo on Substack) in New York? Crazy what she's uncovered with all the crony-capitalistic hidden public-private partnership scheming to get legacy farms to sell out, to be replaced with fields of solar panels.
This is a masterclass on how to understand energy. The only thing I would add is that the overbuilding plus storage would defeat the whole purpose of VRE - reducing carbon emissions. The production emissions would likely increase lifecycle emissions to levels higher than gas, and maybe even coal.
Alas, facts and proof rarely matter to ideologues and green grifters. Despite your impressive assemblage of proof, the climate change industrial complex will deny, deny, deny, and lie.
Perhaps you should create a graph and article contrasting the industrial & civil energy cost in a free market of energy (including nuclear) with the current steep costs of operating with heavy subsidies (for solar & wind) × subpenalties (for hydrocarbons and nuclear) including the damaging regulations for mining and production/distribution of all energy sources.
You could also include a future projection of free market costs (after nuclear especially modernizes it's electricity generation) versus a future projection of successful green policy implementation, as well as what the past GDP would've been like if hydrocarbons and nuclear weren't restricted/suppressed & what it would've been like if the current anti-hydrocarbons × anti-nuclear policies existed in the past century (you can stipulate solar & wind × battery efficacy of the present being available in that past; just to show that the huge costs would make today hell).
This sort of framework can promote ripe clarity.
Hi Alex, I’d love to see a post about the subsidies for coal, gas, and nuclear, it’d be interesting to compare to wind, solar, and batteries.
Intermittent fuel savers? And just how much might the savings be.? A modern gas turbine power plant requires 25% to 28% of its full power fuel requirement to maintain hot standby, where it is ready to go but making no electricity. Some require as much as 40%. At any power below full power their fuel economy rapidly declines. This is why gas turbines are not used in cars. At low power their fuel economy stinks and the couple thousand degree exhaust burns the chickens in the barnyard. Some number of gas turbine plants must be on hot standby in a grid in order to make up for shortcomings in wind and solar power in case the wind suddenly falls, clouds intervene, snow falls, or other weather or grid phenomena affects operation of wind and solar power supplies. At other times, part load operation may be required at which times, their fuel economy declines.
I have never seen a proper analysis of fuel economy in a grid operating in this manner. Mr. Epstein, you may be able to do such analysis or have friends or acquaintances who can. It may be that part and no load operation of gas backup machinery in a grid with significant wind and solar "contributions" saves nothing at all. Whatever the result, isn't it worth knowing?
It's also worth noting that solar and wind are still minor contributors to our overall energy consumption. We still get 25x more energy from fossil fuels than wind and solar. The data is in a recent post of mine: An Overview of U.S. Energy Production. https://briefedbydata.substack.com/p/an-overview-of-us-energy-production
The fanfare about China’s renewable progress is very misleading. Their strategy is energy security first and any reductions in GHG are collateral effects. With limited domestic petroleum sources, EVs, wind, solar and batteries (and hydro and nuclear) can make more sense especially if you’re the one actually making the machines (and selling them to altruistic de-industrializing countries). Making China a hero is just another example of the upside down inside out contorted logic of climate fanatics.
As this is a red herring, let's ignore the fact that Sicily is pretty mountainous and not at all suitable for the installation of vast areas of batteries; let's ignore the fact that Sicily is Sicily and that within a week of completing installation, eBay would be flooded with ads for cheap cheap batteries from Mobs R Us. Mischief aside, I suspect that the cost of a battery installation the area of Sicily would bankrupt the entire European economy. Change My Mind.