Grid Brief is a daily email for energy junkies. It is well worth receiving, you can subscribe here. Yesterday’s email included a graph that shows the past week’s electricity generation, from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This shows the sources of electricity for the nation as a whole. Click to enlarge:
This is pretty typical. Natural gas is by far the dominant source of power in the U.S. Gas plants produce more during the day, and less when demand for power declines at night. Nuclear power is in second place. Nuclear power isn’t as flexible as natural gas, but nuclear plants produce electricity with monotonous certainty, 24/7. Despite all the efforts to kill it, coal ranks third, responding to demand much like natural gas.
Then we have the also-rans. The yellow line is solar. It contributes a modest amount during a few daylight hours, then switches off. Wind is more unpredictable. Occasionally, when the wind is blowing, the green line shows a decent amount of electricity being produced, although nothing like natural gas or nuclear. Worse is the fact that when the wind isn’t blowing, it often isn’t blowing all across the country. Thus we see periods when the nation’s thousands of wind turbines are producing almost nothing. Obviously, a normal life can’t be run on occasional electricity, let alone an economy.
In some parts of the country, the picture is even more stark. New England, for example. Click to enlarge:
New England’s electricity comes overwhelmingly from natural gas, with nuclear in a strong second place. Hydro ranks third. Solar and wind are not worth mentioning.
New York is similar to New England:
Natural gas supplies the largest share of New York’s power. Nuclear is in a strong second place and hydro also does well. Solar and wind are invisible.
Liberals are promising to replace all natural gas and coal generation (some would add nuclear) with wind and solar by some early date, like 2050, while at the same time adding a vast amount of new demand for electricity. Such projections are absurd. They can’t happen, and any attempt to force them to happen will cause economic collapse and untold personal tragedy. The “green” movement is a road to disaster.
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