About two weeks ago, New England got a punch in the mouth from old man winter. I tuned into the Mt. Washington Observatory (New Hampshire) to check the conditions. On Friday evening, February 3, it was cool and breezy at minus 46°F with 99 mph wind and freezing fog. I dig that. Today’s post continues last week’s discussion on wholesale electricity markets, including capacity and energy-only markets. Summary of that post: Wholesale markets are headed for trouble because Electricity cannot and will not be stored in bulk quantities Society cannot function without electricity Grid loads are getting spikier, and that…
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PSA I thought of making some wisecracks about the trial balloon that the Chinese Communist Party drifted over the United States. Whatever the intent, it’s no good. The thing that gave me a chill is that these balloons are a top ‘delivery platform’ for a nuclear EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack. These balloons “can fly up to 200,000 feet, evade detection, and carry a small nuclear bomb that, if exploded in the atmosphere, would shut down the grid and wipe out electronics in a many-state-wide area.” I mentioned this last week and wrote an entire post on this threat five years…
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Last week I described how net zero sounds grand, it’s easy to do, but it doesn’t work to support the transition to a clean-energy grid. The reason is that everyone, whether utilities or customers, overproduces simultaneously, and then later, customers all need energy from thermal power plants simultaneously. We have an exploding deficit of customers to take that overproduction and shift load or store it for use when intermittent renewable supplies shut down. In Renewables at Scale, I described how renewable supply and batteries would never be sufficient. The gaps in intermittent renewable supply are too big for batteries to…
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A couple of weeks ago, I drove across Southern Minnesota, starting in the SW where wind alley is, and therefore, hundreds, or maybe thousands of wind turbines. The following was my observation while cruising I-90. Since the turbines were not spinning, I can only assume that excessive wind forced the Midcontinent Independent System Operator to curtail several hundred megawatts of wind generation. This, for one reason, is why net zero is as worthless as a three-dollar bill, but also, utilities have power purchase agreements with these non-spinning resources, right? Who pays? The MISO hub prices were as follows that day.…
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