What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it, and it will be cheaper to have unused electricity in May than to have too little solar in December.
While the politicization of renewable energy isn't great, the interesting and positive thing to me is that it's entirely possible we're past the tipping point where the politics really matter.
Republican politicians in the US publicly rail against renewable energy because it's red meat for the Fox News crowd, but in reality you see even very Republican states like Utah investing in renewables because economic reality ultimately beats political ideology on stuff like this.
Maybe the worst aspect of renewable energy being turned into yet another political culture war issue is that while renewable energy resources themselves are probably inevitable, the political nonsense surrounding them has helped limit US investment in their development relative to places like China. As a result, the US and the West as a whole is likely to be far more reliant on Chinese technology in renewables than we otherwise might have been.
Vaclav Smil would be quick to replace the word power with electricity in the title of this article. It is why Germany can say renewables supply 56% of its electricity while renewables supply only about 21% of its energy. The rest of energy generation won't quickly be replaced with renewables: diesel and kerosene moving freight and people, natural gas in furnaces and boilers, coke reducing iron ore into steel, methane feeding the reactors that fix nitrogen to make fertilizer, and coal that turns limestone into cement.
I am fully on board with renewables! I have just found Smil's perspective quite useful here.
You've learned well from Smil how to make problems seem insurmountable by intentionally not approaching them with an engineering mindset.
We know how to do 80% of electricity, 80% of low temp hearing, 80% of transport all while saving money, reducing local pollution and delivering better products.
The big problem isnt technical,it's the culture war that Smil is fighting on the wrong side of and which spreads lies about renewables, EVs and heat pumps.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 29.9 ms ] threadThey're on the western interconnect.
Combined solar and wind are about 25-30% of production there.
These articles about individual states are trash.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-solar-...
What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it, and it will be cheaper to have unused electricity in May than to have too little solar in December.
Most Australians now get free power for three hours a day because there is simply so much.
This is the way.
https://terraformindustries.com/
what a freaking horror show we are living in
Republican politicians in the US publicly rail against renewable energy because it's red meat for the Fox News crowd, but in reality you see even very Republican states like Utah investing in renewables because economic reality ultimately beats political ideology on stuff like this.
Maybe the worst aspect of renewable energy being turned into yet another political culture war issue is that while renewable energy resources themselves are probably inevitable, the political nonsense surrounding them has helped limit US investment in their development relative to places like China. As a result, the US and the West as a whole is likely to be far more reliant on Chinese technology in renewables than we otherwise might have been.
I am fully on board with renewables! I have just found Smil's perspective quite useful here.
We know how to do 80% of electricity, 80% of low temp hearing, 80% of transport all while saving money, reducing local pollution and delivering better products.
The big problem isnt technical,it's the culture war that Smil is fighting on the wrong side of and which spreads lies about renewables, EVs and heat pumps.