“Southern California has been able to withstand the heat wave mainly due to municipal power contracts for imported coal and nuclear power, as well as generation from its local gas-fired power plants. Northern California, meanwhile, suffered the brunt of the blackouts due to green power mandates.”

“Soon, many Californians may have to install stationary gas or propane electrical generators or portable gasoline generators to withstand regular outages, but the poor will not be able to afford them.”

About 75 percent of Los Angeles electricity demand is being met by imported coal power and local gas-fired power plants during peak hours of the August triple-digit heat wave. This is the fact of facts, however politically incorrect.

Instead of thanking conventional energies, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) stated it was conservation efforts that avoided more extensive rolling blackouts.…

The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.

– W. S. Jevons, The Coal Question (London: Macmillan, 1865), p. 122.

If only the legion of energy experts and specialists in the colleges and universities, U.S. Department of Energy labs, and environmentalist organizations understood William Stanley Jevons of the 19th century and Vaclav Smil today. If so, they would understand why:

• Renewable energy is failing at times of peak demand (see the Duck Curve post this week).