Energy Jenny’s “obsession” with everything but reliable energy
A summary of who and what is to blame when your lights go out.
Keeping electricity, gasoline and natural gas reliably flowing to American consumers and businesses should be the top priority job of the U.S. Energy Secretary. But the official X/Twitter handle for Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm (@SecGranholm) describes her as “obsessed” with none of that good stuff:
“16th Secretary of @ENERGY. Former Governor of Michigan. Obsessed with solving climate change and creating good-paying clean energy jobs.”
In my “unauthorized biography” of Granholm I explained how past performance was indeed an indication of future results. Each day as Michigan governor she demonstrated “more ignorance of energy and electricity than the dumbest electrician you can locate.
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Full story here: ‘Bonkers’ About Batteries: The Unauthorized Biography of Jennifer Granholm
Speaking of sketchy reliability, the Center for the American Experiment reports that Michigan is part of the regional electrical grid that is at “high risk” of electricity shortfalls even during “normal peak conditions.” That’s even worse than California.
They describe the formula for blackouts this way: “Among the main drivers of reliability concerns in the report are the premature retirement of reliable power plants, a growing dependence on non-dispatchable wind and solar generators, the risk of fuel supply disruptions to natural gas power plants, and rising electricity demand.”
Thanks again, Energy Jenny!
More of the bad news here: Winter Storm Elliot: The Ghost of Christmas Future
Finally, the less-wonky meaning for “non-dispatchable wind and solar generators” is “weather restricted wind and solar that only show up when they want to.” The more unreliable your power generators, the less reliable your power is. Strange but true.
But thanks to the U.S. taxpayers, there’s a lot of loot to be made from producing flaky power. I’ve been cranking out profiles of the firms lined up at the trough.
One of them is NextEra, whose wind machines shouldn’t be judged solely by how much they weaken the electricity grid. They also kill eagles and provide “isolated incidents” of excitement:
On March 28, 2023, a NextEra-managed wind turbine in rural western New York caught fire. Mechanical fires atop tall poles placed in windy areas are obviously troublesome. In this case, according to a local newspaper, “fiberglass insulation material burned into the wind and was distributed across a wide area in the tiny town.” Residents endured “fiberglass particles on their land, stuck in trees, and presumably in ponds within the distribution area.”
“We believe this was an isolated incident,” said NextEra, in response to the fire.
[...] In January 2023, two months before the rain of flaming fiberglass in western New York, a NextEra-owned turbine collapsed in Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported in March 2023 that NextEra had still not given a reason for the failure of the 400-foot-tall structure.
But the firm gave a familiar reassurance: “We believe this was an isolated incident as turbine malfunctions are rare.”
More NextEra misadventures in “NextEra Energy: A Messy Green Goliath with Other People’s Money.”
Part 1: The King of Green Power
Part 2: The Sierra Wind Turbine Club
Part 3: “Exceedingly Rare” Incidents
Part 4: Not So Rare