Even if that’s true (debatable), it’s important to not use it as ammo to slam renewables as a whole - which republicans are keen to do. We need to wean off of fossil fuels asap, and this sentiment is easily manipulated to hurt that cause.
With that said, it's worth considering the aspect of what it takes to ensure energy is available when it is needed. With fossil fuels, plant generation capacity has been historically built to ensure satisfaction of peak loads. Fuel was stored nearby to allow meeting rated capacity whenever that capacity was needed. Renewables' generation is slightly more complex, since we have less control for making rated generation happen when we need it to meet demand.
Of course, there are many options with making renewables work. Storage is one approach, overbuilding renewables to ensure a minimum actual generation in adverse conditions is another. As we work to reduce the costs of renewables (and storage), various renewable based options become increasingly economically advantageous. We shouldn't ignore the downsides; we should seek to understand what can be done about them.
As far as data goes, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) provides power generation/consumption data for the US grid, including breakouts by generation source [1]. The data for the Texas grid (ERCO) is interesting to explore.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr... (you can expand the graphs and view hourly data for up to 30 days and daily data for a much longer period of time).
It should also be noted that nonrenewable energy sources also face supply issues. If anything, the issue is worse for nonrenewable energy in the long term since scarcity can only increase with time. Exploration and more intensive extraction techniques only postpone the exhaustion of resources while increasing costs.
(I also find it somewhat ironic that the burning of carbon would most likely intensify the problem in the long run by increasing energy demands and decreasing the effectiveness of renewables.)
Even if it makes absolutely no sense to do so?
A friend of mine purchases power for a municipal utility. Regulation requires that they have to reserve capacity for up to estimated peak usage. If they choose wind generation they can only apply 7% of that capacity to their requirement! So, in order to match the reliability of other forms of power they would have to purchase 14.3x as much as required.
Wind power is VERY unreliable. That isn't opinion, that is a fact recognized by everyone in the industry. If someone is telling you we can build a reliable grid with wind power as a large component, they are lying to you and pry lining their pockets.
Attitudes like the one you express in your statement are music to the ears of those seeking to take advantage via profiteering and crony capitalism.
This isn't investigated because 1) It is more expensive and 2) That will result in significant extra supply that will literally need to be "wasted". Electricity in many situations literally becomes "too cheap to meter"
I personally don't see that as a downside because that "overproduction" should be thrown at things like carbon capture, which is much more viable when the electricity is literally priced negatively
This is only not possible because people refuse to turn electricity into a fully public utility. They want their profits. The USA should treat it as a huge infrastructure project though, like the highway system, and either force or hugely subsidize the buildout of excessive renewable systems.
"hurt the cause" facts tend to do that when promises aren't met and people suffer.
Our transition to wind and other intermittent sources instead of building base load is creating a worsening reliability crisis.
It seems that people forgot that we still don't have many good ways to store energy.
If we incentivized efficiency we’d be much better off but instead we champion mocking that as something Californian.
Meanwhile, 48 more states in the union have a variety of significantly more or less regulated energy sectors than either Texas or California and how many of them have rolling blackouts every year?
I don't know why people keep pretending Texas's and California's problems are anything more than the stupidity, or willfull negligence of their respective governments.
Umm, I think you're missing something big here. The only reason this was "economical" were huge tax benefits/subsidies.
Decentralized energy production that involves a bunch of large moving parts will NEVER be as efficient as centralized energy production.
The point is to have an array of energy sources. If there's no wind, solar can compensate. If there's no sun, nuclear can compensate. If nuclear goes down, then you can tap into natural gas. If there's no natural gas, then go for coal or whatever.
Except... There can be a large part of the day when there is neither wind nor sun.
> If there's no natural gas, then go for coal or whatever.
Uh huh, but those coal plants aren't just sitting there waiting for you to use them. They have a long startup period and have to run pretty much all the time to make sense.
I think you're missing how badly we've screwed up base load and creating a reliability problem as we decommission coal plants and think we can replace them with wind.
If people stopped wasting money on EV's and bought residential batteries instead...
Are you proposing that we build some worldwide network of transmission lines to move solar power from Africa -> North America when it is night time in the latter?
Also with coal in particular it can take days to ramp them up - coal is for base load, not demand.
If it were only as simple as you are postulating - which is why these 2nd level effects of blindly pushing renewables without taking the whole system into account are causing issues like we are seeing in Texas, California and many other places too.
Unfortunately, whomever runs the Texas public utility commission doesn’t work for the people of Texas.
Your reductive reasoning is palpable. People will move to Texas in the near term for the promise of low COL, but I wonder how many massive power grid failures it will take for the rich to begin fleeing for greener pastures.
When my dads family grew up in the 1950s, the allure of buying a cheap bungalow in a lemon farm outside LA felt like paradise…
It had (ahem) some externalities, and wound up collapsing. Fast growth isn't inherently a sign of something being done right, or we'd be talking about Zynga a lot more.