Hours of the Top 50 CAISO Electricity Loads in California, July 2019.

[NNadir]

The data which I have sorted into hourly power demand on the California (CAISO) grid can be found here: CAISO July 2019 Hourly Power Demand

CAISO Home Page

The first column is the power demand; the second is the ranking of the demand, and the last is the hour of the demand (on a 24 hour clock.)

It seems the top ten all took place in the early evening hours, while among the top 20, 6 occurred in the late afternoon, with the other 14 being in the early evening.

Isn't solar energy great? No wonder it's saving the world, and we're "only" increasing the concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide 2.4 ppm/year, the highest rate ever recorded, but who's counting?

43025 1 18
42723 2 17
42358 3 19
42260 4 16
42203 5 18
41915 6 17
41870 7 18
41859 8 18
41857 9 19
41639 10 19
41605 11 20
41502 12 19
41499 13 17
41418 14 19
41264 15 17
41168 16 18
40879 17 16
40771 18 15
40749 19 21
40720 20 20
40617 21 20
40613 22 16
40591 23 20
40280 24 20
40226 25 16
40214 26 18
40037 27 19
39921 28 17
39666 29 19
39623 30 18
39546 31 18
39527 32 19
39482 33 21
39472 34 17
39385 35 19
39363 36 15
39338 37 21
39318 38 14
39212 39 18
39164 40 20
39164 41 15
39155 42 21
39152 43 21
38892 44 22
38773 45 17
38742 46 17
38585 47 20
38559 48 15
38518 49 16
38333 50 20

I wish you a pleasant Friday.

[msongs]

1. great! let's put a chernobyl in every back yard! nt

[defacto7]

4. Or we can use sensible fact based science rather than

relying on comedy of the absurd as an argument.

[Igel]

8. Because history shows that every nuclear plant is

in fact a Chernobyl.

Meaning, of course, there's only been one True Nuclear Plant.

I can live with that. Let's have lots of faux nuclear plants.

[Beartracks]

2. Even as more renewables come online, total demand still grows.

But, yeah, there should be a lot more aggressive and creative deployment of solar on rooftops and other places.

=======

[NNadir]

3. Intermittent forms of energy are an environmental disaster.

We don't need more future electronic waste, which is what solar cells will become in about 20 years time.

We need reliable energy. There is one, and only one, safe and sustainable form of energy. That is nuclear energy.

The solar and wind fantasy has not worked, is not working and will not work. The reason is physics.

[NeoGreen]

5. Nuclear is not the answer...

...and never was:

"Nuclear energy is never profitable", new study slams nuclear power business case..
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127130185

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=130197
...

While examining the history of nuclear power development globally, DIW Berlin found that it was military considerations that were the primary driver of nuclear reactor developments, with power generation a secondary product.

“The further development of nuclear weapons and other military applications was the focus. Nuclear power plants were primarily designed to be “plutonium factories with appended electricity production,” the DIW Berlin report said.

Emphasis added.


https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=127786
...

For years, my concerns about nuclear energy’s cost and safety were always tempered by a growing fear of climate catastrophe. But Fukushima provided a good test of just how important nuclear power was to slowing climate change: In the months after the accident, all nuclear reactors in Japan were shuttered indefinitely, eliminating production of almost all of the country’s carbon-free electricity and about 30 percent of its total electricity production. Naturally, carbon emissions rose, and future emissions-reduction targets were slashed.

Would shutting down plants all over the world lead to similar results? Eight years after Fukushima, that question has been answered. Fewer than 10 of Japan’s 50 reactors have resumed operations, yet the country’s carbon emissions have dropped below their levels before the accident. How? Japan has made significant gains in energy efficiency and solar power. It turns out that relying on nuclear energy is actually a bad strategy for combating climate change: One accident wiped out Japan’s carbon gains. Only a turn to renewables and conservation brought the country back on target.

Emphasis added.

The real cause for elevated CO2 is the use of fossil fuels, and (if you require, or are seeped in, hyperbole) the nuclear power industry's failure to live up to the implied promise from Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, who in a 1954 speech to the National Association of Science Writers said:

It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter


Blame does not belong with the nascent renewable energy efforts of today.

Nuclear power has failed to live up to its promise, it has failed us here and now, the world, and our children's future.

[NeoGreen]

7. Worth repeating...

...

It turns out that relying on nuclear energy is actually a bad strategy for combating climate change: One accident wiped out Japan’s carbon gains. Only a turn to renewables and conservation brought the country back on target.

Think about that, it only took 1 accident. One nuclear accident.

[Igel]

9. Which is why

we had such outrage when subsidies for solar power were reduced.

Not ended. Reduced.

Because solar power was so profitable.

That happened when the Obama-era home solar energy rebate ended. It happened when there were reductions in support for commercial solar power.

Note that costs have come way down, and it's still not profitable. If it was that profitable, there'd be no need for legislation to drive a shift to solar power. The greedy capitalists (so to speak) would be rushing towards it.

Which, oddly, is largely what's happened in Texas with wind energy. I often think that part of the love of solar apart from the fact that Helios has more adherents than Boreas is the fact that Texas dominates wind, while for years there was pushback against wind in the Finger Lakes region, off the coast of Long Island, and numerous other places noted for their aggressively RW politics. (Not!)

One wonders where nuclear power would be if it got the kind of government research investments that solar got.

[NeoGreen]

6. There is only one answer to our future energy supply conundrum...

...we will use less.

Much, much less, whether we want to or not.

Nothing we do will save our current level of energy use life styles and expectations.

We are victims of the Mr. Strauss's promise of electricity that would be "too cheap to meter". The chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission lead us down the path that brought us to this world of excessive and copious consumption of electricity.