Shocker: Unreliable Renewables Cause Power Shortages

It wasn't even a month ago that I wrote about NERC's recent predictions that increased reliance on renewables, such as solar and wind, in both California and Texas would cause shortages this summer that could require calls for consumer conservation, and eventually rolling blackouts if it gets bad enough.

Well, guess what?  It's happening, just as predicted.

California tells public to prepare for heatwave; power prices soar.

The California power grid operator told the public to prepare to conserve energy next week if needed as homes and businesses crank up their air conditioners to escape what is forecast to be a brutal heatwave.

But the ISO said it will notify the public if it needs to take steps to reduce electricity use, including a call for public conservation and if the grid becomes seriously stressed, rotating outages.

The group responsible for North American electric reliability has already warned that California is the U.S. region most at risk of power shortages this summer because the state increasingly relies on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar...

And what did California do?  It added more solar.  Yay.  Seems like it's not helping.

And then there's Texas...  Texas grid asks residents to conserve power as heatwave hits.

Texas's embattled electrical grid operator warned residents to cut electricity use "as much as possible" for the rest of this week, as several days of heat over 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32°C), combined with generation outages, could strain the grid even before summer officially starts.

ERCOT was "supposed to have enough reserves to meet peak demand this summer, yet here we are in mid June with the first bout of high temperatures and they are already seeking conservation," said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at ClipperData, a provider of commodities data and analytics.
"It does not bode well for the months ahead," Smith said.

Adding more wind, or more power lines to move unreliable wind around the state, isn't a long-term solution to this problem.  This is what happens when states rely on unreliable renewables. 

Thanks to federal subsidies for renewables that artificially make renewables the cheapest power out there, unsubsidized baseload fossil fuel power that can run when called is priced out of market and closed.  It's no secret that our federal government wants to force all fossil fuel electricity generators to close.  When they do, the entire country is going to be in the same boat as California and Texas.

It is suggested that spending trillions on new transmission for these unreliable renewables will be able to fill in the gaps by importing/exporting enormous amounts of electricity around the country.  It relies on the presumption that wind or solar will be producing in excess somewhere.  This only works on paper, or in some wacky computer simulation where renewable production is averaged out to a set percentage of full capacity.  Except it doesn't actually work that way.  When renewables are not producing, there is no power.  Presuming that your neighbors have enough excess to power your entire state is a fool's paradise during widespread weather events... or the roughly 12 hours per day when the sun isn't shining.  We simply don't have the technology to build enough batteries that can carry urban loads for any sustained period.

If we build some supergrid that sucks power from other regions to feed places like California, what are the other regions going to use to power their own towns?  Who makes the determination of power priority?  Will it be the federal government, making political decisions for the party that's in power?  Will rural America turn into a power-producing serfdom for the big cities that is blacked out first?  We're heading for disaster.  Why won't politicians listen to reliability experts like NERC?  Whatever happened to "science?"