By Paul Homewood h/t Doug Brodie/Philip Bratby It’s started already! From The Telegraph: British solar farms have been paid to switch off for the first time as sunny days prompt a surge of clean power that could overwhelm the grid.
The Senate dealt a series of blows to solar and wind energy in the latest version of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill — taking a page out of House Republicans’ playbook to crack down on green energy tax credits enacted under former President Joe Biden.
Residential solar follows a similar pattern: it seems affordable for homeowners, but raises system costs through rate structures that over-incentivize adoption. Generous subsidies, like retail-rate net metering, drive excessive solar growth, risking grid stability and shifting costs to non-solar customers that are often less affluent.
Those that aspire to net-zero are condemning Africa to extreme poverty. Those that promote African access to fossil fuels, want Africans to have the chance to rise up.
by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler) Part 3 of this series examines power markets, promoted by policymakers (FERC) and industry advocates to lower costs through competitive bidding and merit-order dispatch. While markets can optimize resource allocation in many sectors, they struggle to deliver affordability and reliability in electricity systems dominated by intermittent renewables. This post first […]
By Frank Bosse at Klimanachrichten (Translated, edited by P. Gosselin) “Too much electricity is also a danger.” With that headline, Germany’s “n-tv” surprised its readers on Pentecost Sunday. Attentive readers of “Klimanachrichten” already knew this beforehand: The past holiday weekend was a stress test for our electricity grid: The sun is very high, provides a…
Now, in the aftermath of this blackout that could have been much worse, Spain has significantly increased its reliance on natural gas-fired power plants to stabilize its electricity grid. This strategic shift is the direct result of concerns about the grid’s ability to handle high levels of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, which accounted for a substantial share of generation during the outage.
by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler) Wind and solar power are often touted as the cheapest sources of electricity in many regions, capable of delivering low-cost energy for the vast majority of the time. At first glance, this might suggest that an energy mix heavily weighted toward renewables would be the most economical choice. However, this […]
Britain’s rush to Net Zero could leave it vulnerable to months-long blackouts, as reliance on intermittent renewables strains the grid, escalating costs and jeopardising energy security. The Telegraph has more.
By Paul Homewood https://gridwatch.co.uk/ At midday today, solar power was supplying 11.2 GW out of a total demand of 28.27 GW. (This is after adding back solar, which normally appears as a reduction in demand, because it is embedded generation). Mad Miliband plans to triple the current solar capacity of 16 GW by 2030. […]
Bill Ponton reminds us that in addition to being fickle, renewables are also costly, in his American Thinker article What are the merits of renewables? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. The Spanish blackout made us all aware of how unstable the grid can get when renewables are in the driver’s seat, […]
With more than 50 million EU electricity consumers suffering blackouts yesterday, campaign group Net Zero Watch has reiterated its warning that the UK power grid is also becoming increasingly unstable.
It has long been predicted that replacing conventional synchronous generators, which rotate together with the grid, with asynchronous inverter-based resources like wind, solar, and batteries will increase the risk of blackouts. Grid planners recognize that unanticipated adverse events—such as line outages, generator trips, substation failures, and major faults—will continue to impact power grids.
The political pushback against futile climate obsession is moving forward. Voters who resent having their pockets picked via massive subsidies for renewables, while facing government pressure to buy expensive electric cars, unwanted heat pumps, and more, can clearly see an alternative. – – – Reform has said it will “wage war” against the “lunacy” of […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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