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The capacity of the US electric grid has historically been designed to meet peak demand, with limited additional generating capacity equal to +/- 20% of peak demand or sufficient to replace the capacity of the largest generating unit on the...

From: Master Resource

By: Bill Schneider

Date: March 1, 2023

Reliable vs. Intermittent Generation: A Primer

Part 1     ---     Part 2

“Why should a thermal plant spend money in a...

The US federal government has set a goal of transitioning the US energy economy to a fossil-fuel-free, “all-electric everything” energy economy by 2050. This transition would require an approximate tripling of the US electricity...

I believe it is essential that at least one large scale demonstration of a completely freestanding renewable plus storage powered grid be conducted under carefully controlled conditions. This demonstration should begin as soon as possible ...

This commentary provides a simplified overview of the process of replacing a single dispatchable powerplant with either wind or solar generation plus storage.

The powerplant to be replaced is a 1,000 MW plant, either coal or nuclear fueled...

From: Climate Etc.

By: Russ Schussler

Date: April 17, 2023

Renewable Experts: Undeterred and Unmoved by Failed Ideas

“Green” ideas and their proponents can create problems.  Like the antagonist in Terminator 2...

Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and clean energy standards (CES) are either requirements or goals for energy producers or providers to supply energy from low- or zero-carbon emission sources. US EIA

The Trump Administration has ended ...

The wind and solar generation systems installed in the US have been installed in the most favorable locations available, for obvious reasons. However, as wind and solar generation are expanded toward a renewable plus storage generation ...

The US transition to renewable electric generation is proceeding down a path which assures that electric rates will rise. Wind and solar are “source of opportunity” generators, producing electricity when the wind blows and the ...

From: Watts Up With That

By: Roger Caiazza

Date: November 14, 2024

Renewable Transition Raw Materials Challenge

The Bulletin of the Geological Survey of Finland “publishes the results of scientific research that is ...

The renewable energy industry apparently believes that its responsibility in the proposed energy transition is take maximum advantage of federal and state subsidies, incentives, preferences and mandates by installing as much generating ...

From: Watts Up With That

By: Roger Caiazza

Date: July 2, 2023

RGGI Investment Report Lessons for Cap and Invest Programs

Cap-and-invest emission reduction programs are supposed to effectively reduce emissions and generate ...

From: Watts Up With That

By: Kevin Kitty

Date: November 5, 2023

Setting Utility Rates

Until about a year ago, I thought about public utility regulation as too boring, too far outside my education, and unrelated to my ...

The Biden/Harris position on climate change has been shifting (shifty?) as their political campaign has “progressed” toward election day. The Green New Deal is one of the key issues on which the campaign has shifted with regard ...

From: Climate Etc.

By: Russ Schussler

Date: May 3, 2023

Silence of the Grid Experts

There are many reasons why grid experts within the electric utility industry have not spoken out when unrealistic “green” goals ...

Six Phases of a Project

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Praise and honors for the non-participants

This “smart joke” apparently originated in computer science in the ...

The US federal government is supposed to conduct cost / benefit analyses of proposed programs to establish their cost effectiveness. In practice, the costs are often grossly underestimated and the benefits grossly overestimated.

Much has ...

Broken Window Economics: an event that seems to be beneficial for those immediately involved can have negative economic consequences for many others.

The US and most countries have energy economies based on fossil fuels, plus contributions...

Preference :the act, fact, or principle of giving advantages to some over others
:priority in the right to demand and receive satisfaction of an obligation

The federal government, state governments and state utility regulators have ...

Subsidy: a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public.

The US federal government, several state governments and numerous local governments offer subsidies to assist ...

The energy transition currently being pursued by the current Administration imposes several types of societal costs, many of which are ignored.

The cessation of fossil fuel use would strand approximately $60 trillion of coal, oil and ...

The Administration goal of a fossil free grid by 2035 would require that the renewable portion of grid energy supply be supported by additional renewable generation plus electricity storage. The hourly, daily, monthly and seasonal ...

The capacity factor of solar photovoltaic generation systems varies as a function of geography, season, time of day, weather conditions and solar collector type. The most common utility scale solar array consists of numerous parallel rows ...

Intermittent renewable generation displaces a portion of the output of conventional coal and natural gas generators, but does not replace those generators. However, depending on intermittent renewable market penetration, the annual output ...

From: Watts Up With That

By: Rupert Darwall

Date: December 13, 2024

Stern’s Climate Lesson for the Trump Administration

“The 2015 Paris climate should take its place as one of the great triumphs in history,”...

A reliable electric grid supplied predominantly or exclusively by intermittent renewable generators such as wind turbines and solar arrays would require massive energy storage to provide continuous power to the grid when the output of the ...

The two defining characteristics of electric grid-scale storage systems are the amount of power they can deliver continuously (MW, GW, TW) and the total amount of power they can deliver before they are depleted (MWh, GWh, TWh). For example,...

US EPA  Administrator Lee Zeldin recently announced the EPA would be reassessing a number of past regulatory actions. Many of the actions being questioned were developed based on the application of the concept of the Linear No ...

“Technology forcing is a regulatory strategy that establishes currently unachievable and uneconomic performance standards to be met at some future point in time. ... Basically, technology forcing sets regulatory standards and provides...

Government regulators periodically issue regulations which they are fully aware cannot be met with currently available technology; that is, the regulations force the development of the new technology needed to satisfy them within some ...

“Technology forcing is a regulatory strategy that establishes currently unachievable and uneconomic performance standards to be met at some future point in time. ... Basically, technology forcing sets regulatory standards and provides...

We have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and much about which to be concerned.

We can be thankful that the much-predicted “climageddon” has not occurred and does not appear to be imminent, or even reasonable, despite ...

The solar and wind industries and their government and NGO supporters continually assert that a renewable plus storage grid would be more economical and more resilient than the current grid. Both assertions are demonstrably false. These ...

From: environMENTAL - Substack

By: Environmental

Date: October 13, 2024

The Bright Green Line

“Of course, the world is full of problems. But on the other hand it's important to get the sense... are we generally ...

Today marks the changing of the guard for the government of the United States. The new Administration promises many changes to programs and priorities throughout government. However, few areas will experience changes of the magnitude of the...

From: Friends of Science Calgary

By: Ken Gregory, P.Eng.

Date: December 21, 2021

The Cost of Net Zero Electrification of the U.S.A.

Executive Summary

Many governments have made promises to reduce greenhouse gas ...

From: The Global Warming Policy Foundation

By: Francis Menton

Date: December, 2022

THE ENERGY STORAGE CONUNDRUM

Introduction and Executive Summary

Advanced economies – including most of Europe, much of the United...

From: Robert Bryce - SubStack

By: Robert Bryce

Date: July 1, 2023

The Energy Transition Isn't

Despite $4.1 trillion spent on wind and solar, they aren't even keeping pace with the growth in hydrocarbons

We are ...

From: Hoover Institution - Tennenbaum Program for Fact-Based Policy

By: Steven E. Koonin

Date: September 26, 2024

The Factual Context For Climate And Energy Policy

Virtually all climate policy discussions assume that climate ...

From: Forbes

By: Tilak Doshi

Date: January 29, 2024

The Folly Of Climate Leadership

Lessons of UK Energy Policy Failure

Citing an International Energy Agency report, The Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday that UK ...

The United States electorate reached “The Fork in the Road” last Tuesday. They chose the fork to the right, away from the Green New Deal, Net Zero by 2050, “all-electric everything”, electric vehicle promotion, ...

President Trump has issued several Executive Orders (EOs) intended to encourage the continued operation of existing coal generating stations, to return some recently shuttered generating stations to operation and to restore access to ...

Green Hydrogen has emerged as the great green hope of the climate change alarmist community. It would be produced using emission free, intermittent renewable energy generated by wind and solar generators. It could be used for long-duration ...

From: Manhattan Contrarian

By: Francis Menton

Date: December 10, 2022

The Impossibility Of Bridging The "Last 10%" On The Way To "100% Clean Electricity"

As my last post reported, the Official...

The Internet of Things refers to the variety of devices which are remotely accessible from the internet. At their most basic, these devices include wall switches, electrical outlets and plug-in outlet adaptors which can be used to power ...

From: edmhdotme

By: Ed Hoskins

Date: October 31, 2024

The myth of cheap “Renewable” Power in the UK and Europe

Firstly the Non-Problem
As at its current concentration atmospheric CO2 at ~420 ppmv is already ~85%+ ...

From: Watts Up With That

By: Willis Eschenbach

Date: July 3, 2023

The Myth Of Replacing Fossil Fuels

A hat tip to the commenter on one of my posts who was kind enough to give me a heads-up as follows:

Mark BLR...

The US electric utility industry has historically sought to achieve “four nines” (99.99%) reliability of service. One key to achieving very high system reliability has been maintaining an approximate 20% capacity reserve margin ...

From: IER

Date: June 7, 2024

The Price of Going Green Is High

Key Takeaways

1. People around the world are beginning to object to the increasingly expensive costs of the “energy transition” being pushed by their ...

By: PragerU