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don't slam a solution that can't do what's promised? Why? It's obviously failing on all levels... "hurt the cause" facts tend to do that when promises aren't m

don't slam a solution that can't do what's promised? Why? It's obviously failing on all levels... "hurt the cause" facts tend to do that when promises aren't met and people suffer.

supernovae 4y ago
the thing is, wind in general has far surpassed its expectations.
- bequanna 4y ago
  How so? 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.
  - supernovae 4y ago
    We never transitioned, wind was just the most economical growth opportunity for generation and it works really well in that regard. Just because we have increased wind doesn’t mean we don’t need to increase base generation. Not sure why you frame it like this.
    - bequanna 4y ago
      > most economical growth opportunity for generation 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.
    - Paradigma11 4y ago
      Because it is clear who is paying for the additional wind generation, it is not clear who is going to pay for the mostly unused backup base generation.
      - Gasp0de 4y ago
        In Germany, we (via the grid operators) literally pay these power plants just for providing backup capacity. Another idea could be paying companies to stop consuming power in times of high demand. Things like cold storage facilities can easily shift their power consumption by a few hours.
      - juve1996 4y ago
        Which is why the Texas model fails in this scenario. It's unprofitable to have emergency backup load, so it doesn't get built.
        bequanna 4y ago
        Bingo. "Emergency Base Load" isn't a thing and would never make financial sense.
        supernovae 4y ago
        The reason Texas has failed is because this state is a state of excess and they’re proud of fact. If we incentivized efficiency we’d be much better off but instead we champion mocking that as something Californian.
        EricE 4y ago
        CA is actually facing rolling blackouts for exactly the same reasons, yet it's always amusing that TX only ever seems to get talked about here :p
        deskamess 4y ago
        CA had a blackout for non-safety (fire) issues recently?
        mrguyorama 4y ago
        CA's system has issues because it is a 100% captured monopoly and have utterly refused to fix problems that were identified by Enron in the 90s. 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.
grapeskin 4y ago
Literally nobody is saying "we should only have wind", though. 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.
- EricE 4y ago
  Who's going to pay for these mythical natural gas and coal plants that are idle until needed? 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.
- bequanna 4y ago
  > If there's no wind, solar can compensate. 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.
  - Gasp0de 4y ago
    Solar and wind behave antiproportional most of the time. When there is less sun (due to clouds) there is more wind. With a little bit of overbuilding both energy sources, most of our energy needs could be compensated.
  - dzhiurgis 4y ago
    > Except... There can be a large part of the day when there is neither wind nor sun. If people stopped wasting money on EV's and bought residential batteries instead...

don't slam a solution that can't do what's promised? Why? It's obviously failing on all levels... "hurt the cause" facts tend to do that when promises aren't met and people suffer.

supernovae 4y ago

the thing is, wind in general has far surpassed its expectations.

bequanna 4y ago
How so? 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.
- supernovae 4y ago
  We never transitioned, wind was just the most economical growth opportunity for generation and it works really well in that regard. Just because we have increased wind doesn’t mean we don’t need to increase base generation. Not sure why you frame it like this.
  - bequanna 4y ago
    > most economical growth opportunity for generation 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.
  - Paradigma11 4y ago
    Because it is clear who is paying for the additional wind generation, it is not clear who is going to pay for the mostly unused backup base generation.
    - Gasp0de 4y ago
      In Germany, we (via the grid operators) literally pay these power plants just for providing backup capacity. Another idea could be paying companies to stop consuming power in times of high demand. Things like cold storage facilities can easily shift their power consumption by a few hours.
    - juve1996 4y ago
      Which is why the Texas model fails in this scenario. It's unprofitable to have emergency backup load, so it doesn't get built.
      - bequanna 4y ago
        Bingo. "Emergency Base Load" isn't a thing and would never make financial sense.
      - supernovae 4y ago
        The reason Texas has failed is because this state is a state of excess and they’re proud of fact. If we incentivized efficiency we’d be much better off but instead we champion mocking that as something Californian.
        EricE 4y ago
        CA is actually facing rolling blackouts for exactly the same reasons, yet it's always amusing that TX only ever seems to get talked about here :p
        deskamess 4y ago
        CA had a blackout for non-safety (fire) issues recently?
        mrguyorama 4y ago
        CA's system has issues because it is a 100% captured monopoly and have utterly refused to fix problems that were identified by Enron in the 90s. 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.

grapeskin 4y ago

Literally nobody is saying "we should only have wind", though. 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.

EricE 4y ago
Who's going to pay for these mythical natural gas and coal plants that are idle until needed? 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.
bequanna 4y ago
> If there's no wind, solar can compensate. 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.
- Gasp0de 4y ago
  Solar and wind behave antiproportional most of the time. When there is less sun (due to clouds) there is more wind. With a little bit of overbuilding both energy sources, most of our energy needs could be compensated.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  > Except... There can be a large part of the day when there is neither wind nor sun. If people stopped wasting money on EV's and bought residential batteries instead...