GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

By   Norman Rogers October 11, 2024 Most people think that solar electricity is an excellent choice for powering the electric grid.  Most people are delusional due to overwhelming propaganda. Solar can work for houses too isolated to be connected to a power line.  But as a large-scale power plant, generating 500 or 1,000 megawatts of electricity, solar energy is close to being a hoax. Solar energy, dependent on the weather and the solar cycle,  is unreliable .  It must be backed up by conventional generating plants.  Solar energy is peaky, peaking around noon. But electricity consumption tends to peak in the early evening. Solar congestion happens when the flood of electricity at the noon peak overwhelms the grid.  Serious solar farms must be equipped with time-shifting batteries that store the excess midday electricity and release it a few hours later when it is needed. Unsubsidized solar electricity is exorbitantly expensive, costing about $150 per m...

  Electricity rates in U.S. states have diverged sharply in recent decades. In 2004 residential electricity in the five most expensive states was only twice as expensive on average as in the five most affordable states.   Today it is 160% more expensive. What explains the difference? State policies . Eight of the 10 most costly states have enacted renewable portfolio standards, “net zero” carbon-emission mandates, and regional cap-and-trade schemes.  All eight are controlled by Democrats. New York gets special honors. The Empire State has refused to develop the prodigious shale gas resources that have enriched Pennsylvania.   And it has blocked construction of new natural-gas pipelines, depriving New Yorkers—and New Englanders—of affordable electricity. Among the most populous states,  Florida stands out as an island of sanity in a sea of government madness.  Under continuous Republican governance since 1999, the Sunshine State took advantage of the shale b...

  In 2022, the Biden administration held an   “ electrification summit ”   at the White House. The goal of the meeting, which included top White House officials, as well as leaders of various NGOs, including the American Federation of Teachers, Greenlining Institute, and Rewiring America — a dark-money outfit whose goal is to “electrify everything for everyone” — was to create a “strategy to accelerate affordable, equitable, and efficient electrification of American homes, businesses, and transportation.” The same day of the summit, the White House published a   “ rapid innovation agenda ”   that touted President Biden’s goal of “a carbon pollution-free electricity grid by 2035, and to reach net-zero GHG emissions no later than 2050.” It declared that by “electrifying our homes, businesses, industry, and transportation, the United States can get more than halfway to our goal of a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.” It also claimed that electrifying  everyt...

  By   Ted Nordhaus   and   Alex Trembath It is hard to overstate the symbolism of Constellation Energy’s  announcement  last month that it planned to restart the recently shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The partial meltdown of Unit 2 in 1979 marked the beginning of America’s turn away from nuclear energy. Dozens of orders for nuclear reactors were canceled. A wave of new regulations by the NRC  led to skyrocketing costs  for those already under construction and the end of new nuclear construction for the better part of three decades.  By the time that Exelon Energy prematurely shuttered Unit 1 in 2019, the nuclear sector in the United States had reached a nadir. Not only had the United States stopped building new reactors but it had begun to close existing plants as well. The power sector was awash in cheap natural gas, electricity demand was not growing quickly, and neither liberalized el...

  Google CEO  Sundar Pichai  is considering using electricity from nuclear plants to power his company’s data centers, as the tech giant contends with the expansive energy demands of artificial intelligence (AI). Pichai also plans to increase Google’s investment in solar and thermal power, he said in an interview with Nikkei. “We are now looking at additional investments, be it solar, and evaluating technologies like small modular nuclear reactors, etc.,” Pichai told the outlet while in Tokyo.  AI requires vast amounts of energy. A single ChatGPT inquiry requires nearly 10 times the amount of electricity as a typical Google search, and generating images uses more than 60 times as much energy as generating text. To feed this energy-hungry technology, some tech companies are turning to nuclear power. Microsoft announced last month that it struck a deal to  reopen Three Mile Island , the site of a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979, to power its data centers.   ...

  In early January 2023, the Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka, Jr. told  Bloomberg   that a ban on natural gas cooking stoves was “on the table.” The response was immediate and firmly against a ban. Many elected officials issued statements condemning the banning of gas stoves, including Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.), who demanded on Twitter that President Biden “get your hands off our gas stoves!!!!” Within days, the CPSC “clarified” that they were only looking into making stoves safer and were not considering a ban on gas stoves. Their only concern, they said, was the “health risks” of gas emissions. While the media mostly ignored the subject, the controversy raged on. In November, Kamala Harris posted a photo with her husband standing next to her gas stove, with the caption, “From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving.” Her post generated a flood of responses, with many conservatives accusing her of “hypocrisy.” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas )  w...

When it comes to ensuring a clean energy future for the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act was supposed to be a game-changer—a way to bolster the domestic supply chain and rapidly boost US manufacturing in renewable energy, while reducing dependence on China. But as a new  report  from the consulting firm Horizon Advisory reveals, the exact opposite is happening. China’s state-backed solar industry,   bolstered by  massive government subsidies , is  exploiting loopholes in US policy and using taxpayer-funded IRA tax credits to expand its dominance over the global solar market, including in the United States. Horizon’s report exposes the stark reality:  Chinese solar firms are using the IRA’s 45X tax credits, designed to increase US domestic manufacturing, to set up assembly plants on American soil. This move allows them to access  $125 billion  in federal tax credits, while retaining control over the higher-value segments of the supply cha...