Keep It Simple Is for Losers
Even though the grid doesn’t need fixing, the best people to lead the fix are politicians. Of course, it wouldn’t be the “fix” if it weren’t technically complicated, time consuming and expensive.
In the US, electricity works well and is not broken. So, here’s how to “fix” it:
- Give “the fix “to the politicians and deep state intellectuals.
- A 100% ruinables grid is possible.
- Ruinables are cheaper than (… )?
- Solar and wind capacity are growing (but never mind their tiny percentage of primary energy).
- Batteries available for 4 hours backup are enough.
- Heat pumps work well.
- EVs are great and sales are booming.
- With a fake engineering project, aren’t progress reports fake, also?
- There is no master plan that can be used for tracking progress.
In the Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton acknowledges that despite a narrow field, there are many candidates for the title of “worst of all information.”
What does Mr. Menton say to the assertion that wind and solar being the cheapest ways to generate electricity is the most pernicious of misinformation currently out there?
- The assertion is repeated endlessly and ubiquitously.
- It is the basis for the misallocation of trillions of dollars of resources and for great impoverishment of billions of people around the world.
- It is false to the point of being preposterous, an insult to everyone’s intelligence, yet rarely challenged.
In questioning the ubiquitous assertion that wind and solar are the cheapest ways to generate electricity, Mr. Menton suggests readers try Googling the question, “What is the cheapest way to produce electricity?”
You will get multiple pages of results advocating for wind and solar electricity, with almost no mention of the problems or costs of intermittency.
Classic Misinformation
The Manhattan Contrarian posts several examples, although there are dozens.
Try to find in any of them a serious discussion of the costs of backup, storage, or transmission upgrades to try to make an electrical grid work with these intermittent generators. You won’t.
And don’t think that the high-brow mainstream sources can be trusted for anything better. Here is the New York Times from August 17, 2023: “The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal.”
The problem is that the idea that wind and solar make the cheapest electricity is plain wrong, asserts Mr. Menton:
At least, it is plain wrong if the electricity you are talking about is the reliable sort that works whenever you want to turn on the switch.
The idea that wind and solar are cheapest fails to take account of any of the ancillary costs necessary to make a fully-functioning grid: the entire system of backup facilities to provide the power when the wind is not blowing and the sun not shining; the transmission facilities to take the power from wherever is windy or sunny to anywhere else it may be needed on a moment’s notice; the batteries or other storage facilities to save up energy in anticipation of inevitable wind and solar droughts; and so forth.
In short, the idea that wind and solar generation of electricity are the “cheapest” is classic misinformation, the endless repetition of an assertion that is clearly false and known to be false.
Meanwhile, among the people incapable of seeing through the fog of misinformation on this subject are (President Joe Biden and the governors) of New York and California.
In the case of the states, they throw tens of billions of dollars of handouts and subsidies to develop wind and solar facilities (hundreds of billions of dollars in the case of the feds), never having the presence of mind to realize that none of that would be necessary of this method of generation were actually cheaper as claimed.