John Moore
1 min readDec 24, 2022

I doubt your renewable cost includes that of providing reliable power, not intermittent power. Renewables have a low marginal cost of energy, but that's because the costs incurred by the grid in order to provide continuous, reliable power are not factored in.

In Texas, renewables are driving reliable sources out of business, because of this pricing imbalance (created by highly biased rules of ERCOT). Soon Texas will not be able to keep the lights on, if this continues.

California faces the same problem.

Renewables must be evaluated with all costs considered, and the most important one that is ignored is backup generation (storage is a pipe dream at this point). Backup generation capability means keeping backup plants operational, perhaps warmed up, all the time, even though they are selling no energy. You have to do that to keep the grid from crashing. Electricity has to be available instantly to meet demand. Our traditional systems were engineered with this in mind, and produce remarkably high levels of availability. Renewables cannot do that.

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John Moore
John Moore

Written by John Moore

Engineer, actively SAR volunteer

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