There's a must-read report at Real Clear Investigations this morning about California's push to rely entirely on play-like energy forms within a couple of decades. The state is building lots of solar and wind power capture infrastructure, but there is presently no way to translate that energy into usable electricity:
California's precariously out-of-date hybrid power grid can't handle the state's growing amounts of solar and wind energy coming online, with system managers already forcing repeated cutbacks in renewables and a continued reliance on conventional energy to keep the grid stable, according to state data.
The shortcomings of the transmission grid, which energy consultants in this bellwether state have warned about for years, raise the prospect that marquee products of the growing battery economy such as electric vehicles – "emission free" on the road – will be recharged mainly from traditional electricity-generating power plants: energy from fossil fuels, some of it from out of state.
Writ large, the transmission problem threatens the zero-carbon future envisioned by green advocates nationwide. “We’re headed toward duplicate systems whose only benefit is to permit the occasional use of ‘clean power,’” said Grant Ellis, an independent electrical engineering consultant in Texas.
So, to deal with it, California has just nixed - "curtailed" - production of that power:
So-called "curtailments" of renewable power have become much more frequent for the state’s blackout-prone power grid because the state hasn't constructed enough transmission lines, transformers, poles, and other infrastructure to keep up. The amount of renewable energy curtailed in California tripled between 2018 and 2021, according to operator statistics.
The two parties involved in seeking a way past the impasse can't agree on which of them should bear the cost of getting transmission up to speed with production. And government's solution? Getting in the middle of the discussion with free-market-distorting redistributionist measures:
Eric O’Shaughnessy, a renewable energy consultant who has worked with the federally funded Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, blames a stalemate between renewable energy providers and electric system operators over who will pay for any infrastructure buildout.
“The system operators say, ‘We need this huge investment, and you are going to have to pay it,’ and the solar developer believes everyone should pay,” O’Shaughnessy said. Then politics comes into play “and that project gets shelved.”
The government’s answer is more taxpayer funding for transmission, although it will take at least 10-15 years to develop a new project, according to the Transmission Agency of Northern California, a group of publicly owned utilities in the state.
There is also the inevitable bureaucratic doo-dah that the involved parties must contend with:
The messy process of connecting solar and wind plants to the grid is made more complicated by a maze of committees, panels, and lawyers that need to weigh in on the specifics of each project.
“If an energy company in California wants a transmission line, it has to go to a public utility to build it, and to the California Energy Commission and a bunch of other commissions,” said Rajat Deb of energy consultant LCG. “And the cities also have to approve in some cases, so it takes all that to get a transmission line. That’s a lot of hoopla you have to go through.”
So wind and solar plants sit idle for up to three years before getting approval to sell their products.
Going to throw this suggestion out there, with the understanding that the entire state of California may be too far gone for anyone to give it serious consideration: Eliminate the wind and solar stuff until such time as they demonstrate true viability in the marketplace. Just let providers of tried-and-true energy forms - the dense and readily available ones - power the cars, homes and general modern way of life directly.
That would, of course, mean giving up on the fallacy that the global climate is in some kind of dire trouble.
As I say, probably too much of a leap for California, but that state can serve as an example of what not to do for the rest of the world.
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