Wind turbines shut down when needed most..
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Say what? CA wildfire season is around October, the grid is not stressed by then.
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So, as @KrisZ noted, if that's true, then explain California. Alternatively, there may be another explanation...TX power suppliers knew the issue, but TX bcs. it is not regulated by Federal govt. can set up its own rules:
:watermark(cdn.texastribune.org/media/watermarks/2021.png,-0,30,0)/static.texastribune.org/media/files/0bb3e3da33232820654479ca024f11b3/ATX%20Winter%20Storm%20Feb%2018%20MG%20TT%2006.jpg)
“Power companies get exactly what they want”: How Texas repeatedly failed to protect its power grid against extreme weather
Texas regulators and lawmakers knew about the grid’s vulnerabilities for years, but time and again they furthered the interests of large electricity providers.www.texastribune.org
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CA blackouts are driven chiefly by wildfire mitigation.
But yes, CA has an issue, mostly stemming from oversized reliance on PGE.
You know very well that I am all up for nuclear power, and dropping coal is not going to be made up with wind or solar or anything else. But, the picture is not that simple, just as DEI is not responsible for door blowout on Boeing MAX9.
CA wildfire season is now 8 months long. Keep up with the times.
This year it was not an issue bcs. you had extremely moist soil from a wet winter. If this winter stays dry, you will have wildfire issue this summer bcs. fuel, and with that blackouts are going to come.
I think this is a bit disingenuous since the big spike at the end is the Ukraine war / Nordstrom pipeline blown up. Germany does not have their own fossil fuels, the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow. The only fuel they have of their own is lignite - a really lousy form of coal. There screwed to put it bluntly. If ever there was a use case for Nuclear this was it.
OTOH California is completely self inflicted.
And yet they had blackouts this summer. And they do every single year when the temps get hot enough.
Wildfire have nothing to do with these blackouts.
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All of these grids have something in common.
Mitigation means you cut out electricity not to cause wildfire. You do not cut it once when it happens; wildfire might do it for you.
PGE does that every summer. But I agree, CA has a problem, mostly driven by PGE having too much power and no one willing to deal with that issue. That requires both regulation and also incentivizing investments. The problem is not simple, as green does not work.
They do, they all have multiple sources.
I think the biggest problem is not figuring out how to incentivize nuclear. The thing is, the French model, would never work in the US.
Again with the regulations. You do realize that it is the CA regulations that created the monster we now know as PG&E?
So how do you solve a problem that regulations created in the first place? With more regulations? Does that sound logical to you?
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Exasperated by the Ukraine situation? Absolutely, but the trend is obviously upward. As noted by one of the folks behind it, cheap energy was never the goal of Energiewende.
name the reliability regulation that was weakened. I’m not aware of any and have worked in the field.
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Ontario has multiple sources, we don't have supply deficits and rolling blackouts. That's not it.
No, but it was an ends to a means other than energy.
Germany is the most productive country in Europe. But there resource poor. They tried to take over Europe a couple times, and would have, but there enemies have rich and powerful western friends. So they tried a new way - take over economically - via the Euro Zone.
And it was working splendidly. All they had to do to gain friends in the Euro zone was join the greens. Easy enough - they had no real energy resources themselves. So build some windmills, install some solar. You don't think German engineering realized their futility - they have terrible climates for either. It was diplomacy through windmills.
That left Russia as their only competitor in Europe. What better way to be friendly with Russia than become there biggest customer. So feign green energy and burn Natural Gas from Russia - to the angst of Western powers. You may remember the German's were very neutral on the Ukraine war - until Nordstrom was blown up and they had no realistic chance of fulfilling their needs via Russia.
So they have fired up their Lignite burning coal plants, and stopped their plans to decommission nuclear. We shall see what they do next. But it was never about the cost per kWh.
You know way more about energy than I do - but don't confuse the California or even Texas Agenda with the German agenda. There very different.
We do have multiple sources. Actually, we decommissioned the coal plant two years ago, and we do not have problems.
I posted link above. Takes time to read it.
Just looking at the curve, it looks like the increase was between 2.5 and 3% per year over the 23 year period prior to 2022. I wouldn't call that out of control. Seems to be in line with inflation in Western nations.
An upward trend doesn't mean things are out of control or out of whack.
So yes, if not misleading, then perhaps the issue is drawing the wrong conclusion. The graph shows me that electric prices were growing at a rate in line with inflation prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Some of our hydro plants were around a penny a kwhr
We took out those and nuclear out to replace with expanded coal, wind, solar all of which cost as much or more .
Our cost per kwhr is over half to pay back decommissioning costs and cost to build new infrastructure that goes underutilized
There is more to it:
1. The first problem is that Germany has a real issue with nuclear dating back to INF deployment there. That was one of the most important operations by KGB, to encourage that anti-nuclear movement. KGB got their ROI, and then some, as right about the peak of that movement, the Three Mile Island happened, which got anti-nuclear things into overdrive. Then just as things started to slow down with that movement, Chernobyl happened, and that was it. This anti-nuclear movement actually turned into anti-nuclear culture. Then Fukushima sealed the deal.
2. German greens want Germany green. They are fine with coal power generation in Poland, the Balkans, etc., which supplies Germany with electricity. They are the worst "not in my backyard" folks (well, that generally goes for the EU). Greens realized that whatever they wanted could only happen at a political cost, and they liked power, too. So, keep Germany clean so voters can see it, but who supplies power does not matter.
3. That all backfired when this UKR thing happened. However, relations between German politicians and Russia are far deeper than just energy. And it has a historical background too.
4. Consider all that; they are paying a hefty price bcs. politics of Schroeder and Markel. They will be the only G7 that will have a decline in GDP in 2024, and the French economy might overtake them in size, compliments of nuclear power.
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