Back in my paper industry days in which I was tasked to see if there was any validity to solar or wind or tidal etc the answer like anything resides in $$$$$. in use today (or they were supposed to be) are controls based programs that distribute electrons based on cost and if the regulatory commission of Ca knows what it is doing it needs to say go to Cal Tech and have that program do the simple I maximize or I minimize algebra by minute by hour by day by week by month by year. what is also needed is to have what is termed "peaker stations" which are typically Nat Gas driven that can start in basically an instant (cannot do that with coal or wind etc). In lieu of that, you provide incentives to keep large boilers base loaded (33% of rated capacity) inc nuc. as for (if any) excess electrons there are only two cost effective ways of addressing this. First put in a giant flywheel or flywheels or a bank of really big batteries. there was a third and that is to build a water impoundment (like what was near Ludington, Mi) where in dump power was used to pump water into the impoundment during the night and the water ran out through turbines during the day. for starters politicians need to understand the following: Physics works and energy flow downhill and friction is not your friend. one last thing, the capacity of the batteries or the fly wheels needs to be at minimum 1.2 times the system demand and the system flow or it will fail. 'nuff said
This McMann makes malevolent mendacity of such Marxist magnitude that he would have to be in their thrall to make such claims. The hydroelectric runoff is because California didn’t build more dams and expand existing reservoir capacity so with the three recent years of extraordinary winter precipitation, the resulting rainfall bounty was released to the Pacific Ocean, creating extra hydroelectric power and nothing else. When the dry years cycle through again, as they do, it will be brown outs and blackouts conveniently blamed on mythical Marxist climate change. McMann, who sounds like the old comic character Boob McNutt was his uncle, throws words into the air without meaning or relevance to distract his audience from knowing California with wrecking ball Congressman Jared Huffman, is working to destroy all dams in the state so the rivers can run free to the ocean, like Klamath. The pretext is too costly to maintain what are both state and federal water projects that haven’t kept up with needs but it’s okay to waste in order to satisfy Gaia.
There was speculation before the Y2K panic that planetary alignment would cause California to fracture and fall into the ocean but we have the state determined to outdo such fanciful disasters at breakneck speed. They didn’t tear down paradise to put up a parking lot but rather solar panel blot on the best Central Valley agricultural lands in the country which need irrigation to grow food and maintain the water table.
Kristi Diener at CA water for food and people on FB has a never ending supply of the always ending the supply of water, food and plentiful power for the people of a once great state headed for an impact with an hideous reality.
Thank you for this concise summary of the madness that permeates the California energy 'vision', more like hallucinations. I noted restraint in mention of the two old hydro dams that the governor blew up using funds voters approved for water storage and transport. The resultant sweep of silt killed all the little fishies and more.
But, I digress- it appears this article may be shared? Am I right about that? I don't want to step on our favorite green chicken's feet :-) Or, maybe you already posted it on X and I can simply repost. I'll check. Happy flag day!
We live in a world that seems to be divorced from reality. People don’t learn from history and people believe what the crowd tells them to believe. The crowd has to somehow change its collective mind, which is a slow process unless something severe and life altering comes along
If nuclear receives the tax credits (senate dependent) that the unreliables lose pend for the tech bros and “Mr Aw Shucks” to pile into the power source they should have invested in decades ago.
Over on my LinkedIn, random people I once knew are showing brightly colored graphs and saying how great it is that solar powers basically all California’s energy needs during the day and batteries can cover ~10% at night. I think they’re in the electric car charging industry. It’s going to take multiple blackouts to wake folks up over there.
Thank you for this article documenting the absurdity of emulating Germany in their nuclear to coal transition. Clearly, Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) is critical for maintaining sufficient synchronous grid inertia (SGI) to maintain CAISO grid frequency stability.
Even more recent is the April 28, 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout. This blackout was caused by the Spanish Socialist government decreeing that the nation's grid use a very large proportion of solar and wind power, Five minutes before the mid-day blackout, inverter-based-resources (IBR), which do not contribute SGI provided about 21,156 MW. That was about 3.7 times the total generation produced by sources that contribute SGI. As CGNP noted in their March 4, 2024 GreenNUKE Substack article, "Why is Grid Inertia Important? Without sufficient synchronous grid inertia, the grid becomes unstable and a blackout occurs".
In accordance with the laws of physics, the Spanish grid collapsed as a consequence of a lack of SGI. The adverse consequences of this policy-caused blackout include the deaths of at least nine people and the likely economic loss of about a billion dollars from lost productivity and damaged or destroyed production equipment.
Despite the fervent wishes of solar and wind power advocates, batteries do not contribute significant SGI. While there is research underway, essentially all of California's roughly 13,000 MW of four-hour batteries utilize grid-following-inverters so they do not contribute meaningful amounts of SGI. The most cost-effective method for generating the essential SGI is to use large generators such as DCPP. The spinning mass of each of the pair of DCPP generators is about 1 million pounds (500 short tons.) This spinning mass rotates at 1,800 RPM. SGI is proportional to the product of mass and rotation speed squared. CGNP recently showed that the large hydroelectric generators at Helms Pumped Storage with comparable rotating masses to the DCPP generators contribute only about 1/25 of the SGI as DCPP since they only rotate at 360 RPM, a typical value for hydroelectric generators.
The Spanish Socialist government is likely aware of the political aftermath of ideologically-driven policies. Gray Davis, former California Governor was recalled in 2003 as a consequence of the poorly-managed attempt at deregulation of the California electricity market - Think ENRON. As a result, Spain now requires considerably more SGI at mid-day to prevent a recurrence of the blackout, per Red Electrica generation statistics.
On June 10, 2025 CGNP raised these points during their public comments at the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee https://www.dcisc.org/ , Since the DCISC has numerous scientists and engineers (and only one attorney) within the Committee and staff, they understood the important points CGNP was making. The DCISC committee reinforced this by adding the lack of CAISO grid stability in the face of the very large proportion of IBRs at mid-day during the spring and fall as an open item to be monitored. This condition can decrease DCPP plant safety. CGNP is working on a new GreenNUKE Substack article discussing these concepts.
A question around the impact of the BBB, the 45X is still on in the last draft of the reconciliation bill so if the batteries are manufactured in the us, they are still subsidized. Am i missing something?
CA generated 68 TWh electricity from solar in 23, nearly 30 TWh more than the compared decrease in baseload sources in your post.
It would be also useful to highlight the far more severe natural gas accidents in the same period that resulted in actual loss of life and displaced a lot more people when evaluating potential trade offs.
I'm in Palm Springs right now. All afternoon I've been resisting the urge to take the local wind turbine tour (not kidding, they have one) and asking difficult questions.
Your closing comment about Orangemanbad and shovels is not only accurate, it’s the most important part of your analysis.
People make stupid mistakes all the time. When it’s driven by dogma, the dogma keeps reality from teaching us the real lessons.
Orangemanbad + green dogma means CA will refuse to learn from the mistakes made.
That’s a bigger and longer term problem.
Too many in the public bank account (stealing) for freebies, Everything can be green these days and get a grant. Gotta stop somehow sometime.
Back in my paper industry days in which I was tasked to see if there was any validity to solar or wind or tidal etc the answer like anything resides in $$$$$. in use today (or they were supposed to be) are controls based programs that distribute electrons based on cost and if the regulatory commission of Ca knows what it is doing it needs to say go to Cal Tech and have that program do the simple I maximize or I minimize algebra by minute by hour by day by week by month by year. what is also needed is to have what is termed "peaker stations" which are typically Nat Gas driven that can start in basically an instant (cannot do that with coal or wind etc). In lieu of that, you provide incentives to keep large boilers base loaded (33% of rated capacity) inc nuc. as for (if any) excess electrons there are only two cost effective ways of addressing this. First put in a giant flywheel or flywheels or a bank of really big batteries. there was a third and that is to build a water impoundment (like what was near Ludington, Mi) where in dump power was used to pump water into the impoundment during the night and the water ran out through turbines during the day. for starters politicians need to understand the following: Physics works and energy flow downhill and friction is not your friend. one last thing, the capacity of the batteries or the fly wheels needs to be at minimum 1.2 times the system demand and the system flow or it will fail. 'nuff said
So well said! Taking away their shovels is also good father's day advice.
This McMann makes malevolent mendacity of such Marxist magnitude that he would have to be in their thrall to make such claims. The hydroelectric runoff is because California didn’t build more dams and expand existing reservoir capacity so with the three recent years of extraordinary winter precipitation, the resulting rainfall bounty was released to the Pacific Ocean, creating extra hydroelectric power and nothing else. When the dry years cycle through again, as they do, it will be brown outs and blackouts conveniently blamed on mythical Marxist climate change. McMann, who sounds like the old comic character Boob McNutt was his uncle, throws words into the air without meaning or relevance to distract his audience from knowing California with wrecking ball Congressman Jared Huffman, is working to destroy all dams in the state so the rivers can run free to the ocean, like Klamath. The pretext is too costly to maintain what are both state and federal water projects that haven’t kept up with needs but it’s okay to waste in order to satisfy Gaia.
There was speculation before the Y2K panic that planetary alignment would cause California to fracture and fall into the ocean but we have the state determined to outdo such fanciful disasters at breakneck speed. They didn’t tear down paradise to put up a parking lot but rather solar panel blot on the best Central Valley agricultural lands in the country which need irrigation to grow food and maintain the water table.
Kristi Diener at CA water for food and people on FB has a never ending supply of the always ending the supply of water, food and plentiful power for the people of a once great state headed for an impact with an hideous reality.
Thank you for this concise summary of the madness that permeates the California energy 'vision', more like hallucinations. I noted restraint in mention of the two old hydro dams that the governor blew up using funds voters approved for water storage and transport. The resultant sweep of silt killed all the little fishies and more.
But, I digress- it appears this article may be shared? Am I right about that? I don't want to step on our favorite green chicken's feet :-) Or, maybe you already posted it on X and I can simply repost. I'll check. Happy flag day!
We live in a world that seems to be divorced from reality. People don’t learn from history and people believe what the crowd tells them to believe. The crowd has to somehow change its collective mind, which is a slow process unless something severe and life altering comes along
If nuclear receives the tax credits (senate dependent) that the unreliables lose pend for the tech bros and “Mr Aw Shucks” to pile into the power source they should have invested in decades ago.
Over on my LinkedIn, random people I once knew are showing brightly colored graphs and saying how great it is that solar powers basically all California’s energy needs during the day and batteries can cover ~10% at night. I think they’re in the electric car charging industry. It’s going to take multiple blackouts to wake folks up over there.
Imagine the energy they could collect with Trump as a lightning rod!
California, the science of wishful thinking.
Thank you for this article documenting the absurdity of emulating Germany in their nuclear to coal transition. Clearly, Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) is critical for maintaining sufficient synchronous grid inertia (SGI) to maintain CAISO grid frequency stability.
Even more recent is the April 28, 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout. This blackout was caused by the Spanish Socialist government decreeing that the nation's grid use a very large proportion of solar and wind power, Five minutes before the mid-day blackout, inverter-based-resources (IBR), which do not contribute SGI provided about 21,156 MW. That was about 3.7 times the total generation produced by sources that contribute SGI. As CGNP noted in their March 4, 2024 GreenNUKE Substack article, "Why is Grid Inertia Important? Without sufficient synchronous grid inertia, the grid becomes unstable and a blackout occurs".
https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important
In accordance with the laws of physics, the Spanish grid collapsed as a consequence of a lack of SGI. The adverse consequences of this policy-caused blackout include the deaths of at least nine people and the likely economic loss of about a billion dollars from lost productivity and damaged or destroyed production equipment.
Despite the fervent wishes of solar and wind power advocates, batteries do not contribute significant SGI. While there is research underway, essentially all of California's roughly 13,000 MW of four-hour batteries utilize grid-following-inverters so they do not contribute meaningful amounts of SGI. The most cost-effective method for generating the essential SGI is to use large generators such as DCPP. The spinning mass of each of the pair of DCPP generators is about 1 million pounds (500 short tons.) This spinning mass rotates at 1,800 RPM. SGI is proportional to the product of mass and rotation speed squared. CGNP recently showed that the large hydroelectric generators at Helms Pumped Storage with comparable rotating masses to the DCPP generators contribute only about 1/25 of the SGI as DCPP since they only rotate at 360 RPM, a typical value for hydroelectric generators.
The Spanish Socialist government is likely aware of the political aftermath of ideologically-driven policies. Gray Davis, former California Governor was recalled in 2003 as a consequence of the poorly-managed attempt at deregulation of the California electricity market - Think ENRON. As a result, Spain now requires considerably more SGI at mid-day to prevent a recurrence of the blackout, per Red Electrica generation statistics.
On June 10, 2025 CGNP raised these points during their public comments at the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee https://www.dcisc.org/ , Since the DCISC has numerous scientists and engineers (and only one attorney) within the Committee and staff, they understood the important points CGNP was making. The DCISC committee reinforced this by adding the lack of CAISO grid stability in the face of the very large proportion of IBRs at mid-day during the spring and fall as an open item to be monitored. This condition can decrease DCPP plant safety. CGNP is working on a new GreenNUKE Substack article discussing these concepts.
A question around the impact of the BBB, the 45X is still on in the last draft of the reconciliation bill so if the batteries are manufactured in the us, they are still subsidized. Am i missing something?
In the State of Califorlornia, necessity is a mother.
CA generated 68 TWh electricity from solar in 23, nearly 30 TWh more than the compared decrease in baseload sources in your post.
It would be also useful to highlight the far more severe natural gas accidents in the same period that resulted in actual loss of life and displaced a lot more people when evaluating potential trade offs.
I checked, they do not contradict my claim
Check the links we provided in the piece
I'm in Palm Springs right now. All afternoon I've been resisting the urge to take the local wind turbine tour (not kidding, they have one) and asking difficult questions.
Lol
good piece
Thanks!
stupid is as stupid does. Can't wait for the Stupid Train completion.
Keep waiting 😂