It’s Below Zero And Your State Has A Natural Gas Shortage ?

So what you say we went green, we don’t need no stinking fossil fuel let it go away we have wind and solar it’s free forever and non polluting (well except when it does but that’s not for today), we’re covered. Except you aren’t especially if you were Minnesota this January  it was welcome to the 21st century where problems we solved in the 18th century are coming back again.

Bitter cold shows reliable energy sources are critical

Coal, natural gas, nuclear power largely delivered. We should think twice about leaning too much on intermittent forms like wind, solar.

Because of the extreme cold, Xcel Energy urged its natural gas customers in Becker, Big Lake, Chisago City, Lindstrom, Princeton and Isanti to reduce the settings on their thermostats, first down to 60 degrees, then to 63, through Thursday morning to conserve enough natural gas to prevent a widespread shortage as temperatures remained 14 below zero. Some Xcel customers in the Princeton area lost gas service, and Xcel reserved rooms for them in nearby hotels.

—Star Tribune

The screenshot below is from Electricity Map. It’s a fun app that tells you how your electricity is being generated at any given moment in time.  Turns out wind is  producing only four percent of electricity in the MISO region, of which Minnesota is a part.

While that’s not good, what’s worse is wind is only utilizing 24 percent of it’s installed capacity, and who knows how this will fluctuate throughout the course of the day.

—Center For The American Experiment

76% of the deployed windpower wasn’t producing power electricity. Can you imagine 76% that means at a minimum if you need a gigawatt of power you have to build generating capacity of 4 gigawatts to insure you have it when you need it.

You would think that this kind of weather would make anyone recoil at the thought of going big on unreliable power ? Not so much for the rulers of Minnesota

50 by 30 Renewable Energy Standard

Building on Bipartisan Progress with 50 by ‘30A New Bipartisan Goal for Minnesota–Minnesota is on track to surpass the renewable energy goals set by the bipartisan Next Generation Energy Act. However, Minnesota has only reduced its carbon pollution emissions by 7 percent, missing our bipartisan goals. This year, the Dayton-Smith Administration and legislators have proposed increasing Minnesota’s Renewable Energy Standard from 25 percent by 2025 to 50 percent by 2030.The increased goal will help Minnesota remain an energy leader and capture the health, environmental, and economic benefits of clean energy

—Minnesota State Government

You have to wonder at a state that is willing to force its citizens to freeze in the dark during winter and that’s being kind.  When you have basically two forms of renewable power that can be installed at the levels needed to meet demand i.e wind and solar neither of which are up to the job, you have to ask what are they thinking ?

We already saw what happened with the wind, well solar is even worse especially in this circumstance. In Minnesota when the sun isn’t out it’s coldest. No sun, no sunlight, no heat, 50% of your power gone boom. that’s not to mention that during the winter the days are shortest as well.   You lose 50% of your generating capacity expect your grid to be shut down and your interties to other utilities cut off to prevent you from overloading them.

I look at these power initiatives and I see so much of what is wrong with our society. There’s that whole need to make decisions based on feeling good about the decision and not considering the results. The fact that a large segment of the population has been scared spit less by an imaginary boogeyman. Then  there’s the creeping force of government being used to divert money from productive projects to utterly stupid uses, that benefit connected interests. Finally there’s the horrid breakdown of representative government from the fact there’s too much of it being too intrusive. The only way these things get done is when the people who are making the decisions don’t have to suffer the consequences (The same people that fly their private jets to Davos to talk about Global Warming), and there is just far too much of that.

Drink up That’s it for the Watercooler today. As always it’s an open thread