A Free-Market Energy Blog

Reliable vs. Intermittent Generation: A Primer (Part II)

By Bill Schneider -- March 2, 2023

“IVREs are inherently unreliable. One cannot demand that the wind blow or the sun shine. Industrial wind power and on-grid solar is not cheap but expensive, duplicative, and parasitic.”

Intermittent variable renewable energy (see Part I) generation sources are primarily wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels (solar PV). But they can include underwater-based turbines (“tidal”) and solar collectors (“mirrors”); large-scale lithium-ion battery storage facilities (“batteries”); and electric facility-stored fuel (water/hydro, oil, coal, natural gas, or nuclear energy), to be turned into electrons when needed, since these fuels can be stored at less cost than electrons.

Storing fuel and converting it into moving electrons (electricity), with the exception of planned maintenance (relatively rare occurrences) and unplanned outages (even rarer), most generators were designed – and, more importantly, costed – to operate at a fairly steady state.…

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Reliable vs. Intermittent Generation: A Primer (Part I)

By Bill Schneider -- March 1, 2023

“Why should a thermal plant spend money in a government-rigged market that threatens a reasonable profit? Why should the plant even remain in the market under these conditions?”

“For IVREs it’s a no-risk deal, with markets guaranteed and taxpayers country-wide adding profits. But what about the need for reliable power?”

This two-part post (Part II here) is a follow-up to Robert Bradley’s recent IER article, “Wind, Solar, and the Great Texas Blackout: Guilty as Charged.” His article discussed how regulatory shifts and subsidies favoring Intermittently Variable Renewable Energy (IVRE) producers resulted in prematurely lost capacity, a lack of new capacity, and upgrade issues with remaining (surviving) traditional capacity. These three factors–“the why behind the why”–explain the perfect storm that began with (or was revealed by) Storm Uri.

Part I below describes how the market was originally meant to work–but has not worked given the governmentally redesigned power market, beginning with generation.…

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Geoengineering: New Area for the Climate Industrial Complex?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 28, 2023

“There are substantial environmental, technical, and cost challenges in using carbon dioxide removal (CDR) at the scale needed to significantly reduce global warming…. [that make it] unlikely that CDR could be implemented rapidly enough or at sufficient scale to entirely avoid dangerous levels of climate warming in the near term.” (Pro, public letter, February 27, 2023)

“The speculative possibility of future solar geoengineering risks becoming a powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate denialists, and some governments to delay decarbonization policies.” (Con, open letter: January 17, 2022)

It is hard, contradictory, and hypocritical to be “green” as conventionally defined. I am reminded of a comment in the 1970s that noted “a general frustration generated by the energy crisis: every solution to the problem seems to create tremendous problems of its own.”…

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Energy and Environmental Review: February 27, 2023

By -- February 27, 2023
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The Texas Blackout: Markets or Regulators?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 24, 2023
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Chris Tomlinson (Houston Chronicle) in the Church of Climate

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 23, 2023
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The ‘Energy Transition’: Learning and Retreat at BP

By -- February 22, 2023
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Green Energy: Greatest Wealth Transfer to the Rich in History

By Steve Goreham -- February 21, 2023
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Still More Vogtle Nuclear Delays (how will it end?)

By Kennedy Maize -- February 20, 2023
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Are Electricity ISOs/RTOs Government Central Planning?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 17, 2023
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