The Insanity of Solar Power and California's Energy System: The Price of Green Political Correctness
Back in November of last year, California was forced to greatly restrict its solar subsidies that allowed homeowners with already-subsidized solar panels to sell unused and worthless solar energy back to the grid at near retail prices. It was an absolutely absurd policy and had to curbed because it was only further unbalancing the Golden State energy supply and making electricity more expensive for those without solar panels and, of course, all taxpayers paying direct subsidies for the panels themselves.
Here is what the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) energy supply for electricity looked like yesterday (August 15, 2024):
Talk about a duck curve! This is about as bad as it gets. Renewables provided nearly all the electricity between 10 and 11 AM but relatively little from 6 PM to 6 AM with electricity demand having peaked at about 7 PM. This, in turn, forced natural gas and imports to pick up the slack during those periods when renewables couldn't deliver.
The problem with this, of course, is that this drastically reduces the efficiency of natural gas, for example, but it cannot be eliminated because it's essential for about half the day, which means the renewables not only require subsidies themselves but also create additional costs for the electricity created with the gas.
And, on top of this, notice the grid cannot use more renewables during the time they work. They’re essentially maxed out. So, allowing homeowners to sell the worthless extra green energy at retail not only ignores the costs to the grid for taking the electricity but attaches value that simply isn't there. It couldn’t go on and so it didn't.
And, what was the result? Well, it was entirely predictable:
SunPower, a major rooftop solar company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, the company announced.
SunPower filed for bankruptcy in Delaware after a string of corporate struggles, changes to California’s rooftop solar subsidy programs and high interest rates weighed down its business, according to Bloomberg News. Before it unraveled, SunPower was among the leading solar companies in the U.S…
In 2023, state policymakers changed California’s rooftop solar subsidy programs and weakened the incentive for companies to push rooftop solar by reducing payments to homeowners who sell back excess power the panels generate, according to CalMatters. Those changes negatively affected SunPower’s business, culminating in its bankruptcy filing, according to Bloomberg.
Yes, the whole solar scam began to collapse because it was based on privilege, if you will. A privilege of claiming subsidies at both the front end and back end and when the latter, which incentivized homeowners to participate in the scam, couldn't go on, neither could SunPower, which existed to serve a completely phony artificial market.
California and SunPower have illustrated the insanity of green energy.
#California #GreenEnergy #Electricity #CAISO #Solar #DuckCurves #SunPower
Thank you for this excellent summary, Thomas. Another problem with California solar (or wind) is that it does not contribute necessary synchronous grid inertia (SGI) to the California electric power grid. See this article from March, 2024: https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important
But it gets worse! California must pay adjacent states to take California's useless solar power at the time when those states are also producing useless solar power. The costs of curtailment are substantial.
Annual California Curtailment Costs
Year MWh "Approximate Annual Cost ($)"
2018 461,054 $1,000,000,000
2019 961,343 $2,090,000,000
2020 1,587,497 $3,440,000,000
2021 1,504,840 $3,260,000,000
2022 2,449,247 $5,310,000,000
2023 2,659,527 $5,770,000,000
2024 2,827,489 $6,130,000,000
Total 13,399,762 $27,000,000,000
Data to June, 2024
CGNP estimated that the curtailment costs were equal to the 2018 payments to adjacent states cited by then-California Assemblyman Brian Dahle during floor speeches on SB 100.
This is why these economically-damaging policies occur......Here's one example of a well-heeled elite who admitted circa 2014 he is on the gravy train at taxpayer expense. (Buffett's father was a four-term U.S. Representative from Nebraska.) Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett explained the rationale for solar and wind generation in 2014:
"For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
"Big Wind's Bogus Subsidies - Giving tax credits to the wind energy industry is a waste of time and money."
By Nancy Pfotenhauer, Contributor | May 12, 2014, at 2:30 p.m US News & World Report
https://tinyurl.com/Buffett-Wind-Scam
- A more accurate economic description of solar power is an elaborate, socially-sanctioned Ponzi Scheme.
It is very hard for me to have any sympathy for those people that got rich illegitimately at other people’s expense. I am glad these creeps are going broke. They are not much better than drug dealers.