It is hard to know what to believe in the media these days, particuarly on anything to do with climate change and associated policies such as replacing conventional coal and gas generators with wind and solar. The following article debunks a series of attempts by National Grid to show that renewables are cheaper and just as reliable as the traditional coal and gas plants.
National Grid Resorts to Propaganda - by David Turver (substack.com)
As you read through this article, there are quite a few examples of high capacity RE systems in different countries outperforming their counterparts in reliability. There is quite a bit more information at the link.
ReplyDeletehttps://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-energy-and-the-grid-debunked
s wind and solar power have become dramatically cheaper, and their share of electricity generation grows, skeptics of these technologies are propagating several myths about renewable energy and the electrical grid. The myths boil down to this: Relying on renewable sources of energy will make the electricity supply undependable.
Last summer, some commentators argued that blackouts in California were due to the “intermittency” of renewable energy sources, when in fact the chief causes were a combination of an extreme heat wave probably induced by climate change, faulty planning, and the lack of flexible generation sources and sufficient electricity storage. During a brutal Texas cold snap last winter, Gov. Greg Abbott wrongly blamed wind and solar power for the state’s massive grid failure, which was vastly larger than California’s. In fact, renewables outperformed the grid operator’s forecast during 90 percent of the blackout, and in the rest, fell short by at most one-fifteenth as much as gas plants. Instead, other causes — such as inadequately weatherized power plants and natural gas shutting down because of frozen equipment — led to most of the state’s electricity shortages.