You're saying we have to get away from the ways Dems have been doing policy and pointing to proposals that simply reinstate Biden-era Dem policy. What?
This is just hilariously bad analysis. I barely know where to begin, but perhaps one might note that *reinstating elements of IRA that Republicans killed* is not some bold break from previous Democratic policy, it quite literally IS previous Democratic policy! You've just dragged a bunch of right-wing stereotypes about environmentalism into a context where they are visibly, comically out of place.
The United States has 10 synchronous isolated electricity grids: 6 in Hawaii, 1 in Alaksa and 3 in the continental United States. For all practical purposes, no electricity flows between these grids.
In the continental U.S. there is the Western Interconnect, the Eastern Interconnect and the Texas Interconnect. If the sunny states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico could produce all the quantities of electricity used by the entire United States, that electricity would be unavailable to Texas and all the states in the Eastern part of the U.S. If the windy states of Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas could produce all the electricity the entire United States could use, it would be unavailable to Texas, California and all the other state in the Western Interconnect. It may be sunny and windy somewhere but so what.
Within the continental United States, electricity markets are organized as traditional integrated electricity markets (providers own generation, transmission, and distribution) or as restructured markets (ISO/RTO) where competition exists at the generation level and transmission must be open to all reasonable generators. Distribution utilities acquire the rights to electricity via self-generation, bi-lateral agreements, or day-ahead and real time markets. About 66% of Americans in the continental U.S. are serviced by ISOs and RTOS.
In the day-ahead and real time markets the order of economic dispatch is determined by the marginal cost (variable cost… i.e. the cost of fuel) to produce the last quantity of electricity. Wind and solar have zero or very low marginal cost, so if they are always dispatched if there is sufficient demand (there are some exceptions). That marginal cost does not include fixed costs such as the cost of a wind turbine, a gas plant, a solar farm, or a nuclear reactor, etc.
The price in the market paid to everyone is determined by the marginal cost of the marginal producer (i.e. the electricity generator who generates the last needed quantity of electricity in that generator period). All generators get the market clearing marginal price. If wind bids into the market at $0 per kWh, but the last marginal producer, natural gas, bids in at $0.15 per kWh, then everyone gets $0.15 per kWh (think producer surplus in economics). The difference between a generator’s bid price and the market clearing price covers its fixed costs or is profit.
If the marginal producer can only cover its variable cost, it will basically go out of business or will not be rebuilt once is useful life has ended. Unfortunately, the market for electricity generator includes generators with very different qualities of service. Wind and solar are not dispatchable, are intermittent, and keep no fuel on site. Nuclear is dispatchable, is not intermittent and could keep years of fuel on site. If this were a car market, it would say that a used Ford Pinto full of rust is just the same as brand new Toyota Camry, Ford F150 pickup truck, or Lamborghini. If we drive these dispatchable resources out of business, they will not be available when it is not windy and/or sunny. I live in MN, if it is not windy at 5:00 PM on January 2nd, under an all wind and solar scenario. I would not be able to heat or light my house or cook my food. I would freeze hungry in the dark.
To make sure future generators are built, ISO and RTOs either pay some sort of capacity payment (i.e. pay not to produce, but to be available) or in the case of Texas, allow generators to charge a very high price adder when they are the marginal producer. We are looking at prices that swing wildly at the wholesale level, or forever subsidies, most likely both. If we went all wind and solar, they could not cover their fixed costs and no new wind or solar would be built without subsidies.
Besides providing dependable power, sometimes with extra fuel on site, traditional fossil fuel generators also provide services to their grids to keep the grids in sync. Spinning turbines help maintain grid frequency and voltage. If the frequency deviates only a little, the entire grid can collapse. Wind and solar do not currently provide synchronization services. This is what happened recently in Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). Their whole grids went down. There are ways to do it, but that requires additional cost and complexity.
To build out wind and solar will require significant additional transmission capacity. According to Robert Bryce on Substack:
we added approximately 1,700 miles of new high-voltage capacity annually to the grid between 2008 and 2023. According to a DOE study, we will need to expand out grid by 57% by 2035. At historical build rates (1,700 per year), it will take 80 years to build out that 57%. That is not going to happen.
In addition, we don’t have enough linemen and there is no way we are going to get them. It takes about 7 years to train a high voltage lineman assuming you can find enough people who are interested in working outside in a very dangerous job. An article published in December 2022 on Linemancentral.com, claimed there will be about 21,000 lineman job openings in 2023 alone. I don’t have updated numbers, but that is not going to happen either.
Robert Bryce points out that from 2021 to 2022 utility product inflation was 2.6x US rate of inflation. He highlights several factors responsible for those price increases including labor shortages, shortages of specialty components, and government regulation.
The lead time for high-voltage transformer is now two to three years, and most made overseas. In 2022, the price for pole mounted transformers increased by 15%, and the price for for pad-mounted transformers (primary used for delivering electricity to endusers) increased by 47%
The transformer industry is having trouble getting specialty steel, in particular grain oriented steel. That steel is hard to manufacture and contains about 3% silicon by weight. Silicon improves the magnetic properties of the steel. Again, most is made overseas.
A proposed efficiency rule would require higher efficiency for transformers. They are now about 95% efficient. A 1% increase in efficiency would require retooling of factories.
Bryce quotes Theresa Pugh, who heads Virginia-based Theresa Pugh Consulting. If measure was put in place by the proposed deadline of 2027, it would likely result in a “2.5 or perhaps a 3-year wait for electric distribution transformers”.
No matter how much wishful thinking exists, we are not going to go all wind and solar any time soon, if ever.
This framing of Democrats needing to flip from "politics of subtraction" to "politics of addition" is spot on. The moment you mentioned how environmental groups kept blocking transmission lines in Virginia and Maine, it clicked why voters see the party as anti-growth. Gallego's focus on leading with lower bills instead of treating affordability as an afterthought is exactly the kind of reframing that could win back working class voters who actually work in resource extraction. If the plan treats nuclear and geothermal as progressive priorities rather than reluctant compromises, that's a huge mindset shift.
Gallego’s proposal has lots of good points about permitting reform, support for all energy sources (including fossil, nuclear, and geothermal which are rarely seen in Democrat energy policy. He also emphasizes affordability and energy abundance, and doesn’t even mention global warming or extreme weather, which is a refreshing change. However, his idea of affordability includes lots of subsidies, which while making the cost to the end user lower, just transfer the cost on to tax payers, and utilities (who have to deal with the instability of inefficient residential solar). He also wants to bring back producer credits for wind, solar and batteries which are no longer needed since the prices of the technology has dropped so much, so more taxpayer money spent for no good reason. Lastly while he talks about smoothing regulation and permitting, he piles on new regulations for energy industry to pay prevailing wages and requiring union labor and community inputs, which are not things which improve affordability.
You're saying we have to get away from the ways Dems have been doing policy and pointing to proposals that simply reinstate Biden-era Dem policy. What?
This is just hilariously bad analysis. I barely know where to begin, but perhaps one might note that *reinstating elements of IRA that Republicans killed* is not some bold break from previous Democratic policy, it quite literally IS previous Democratic policy! You've just dragged a bunch of right-wing stereotypes about environmentalism into a context where they are visibly, comically out of place.
The United States has 10 synchronous isolated electricity grids: 6 in Hawaii, 1 in Alaksa and 3 in the continental United States. For all practical purposes, no electricity flows between these grids.
In the continental U.S. there is the Western Interconnect, the Eastern Interconnect and the Texas Interconnect. If the sunny states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico could produce all the quantities of electricity used by the entire United States, that electricity would be unavailable to Texas and all the states in the Eastern part of the U.S. If the windy states of Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas could produce all the electricity the entire United States could use, it would be unavailable to Texas, California and all the other state in the Western Interconnect. It may be sunny and windy somewhere but so what.
Within the continental United States, electricity markets are organized as traditional integrated electricity markets (providers own generation, transmission, and distribution) or as restructured markets (ISO/RTO) where competition exists at the generation level and transmission must be open to all reasonable generators. Distribution utilities acquire the rights to electricity via self-generation, bi-lateral agreements, or day-ahead and real time markets. About 66% of Americans in the continental U.S. are serviced by ISOs and RTOS.
In the day-ahead and real time markets the order of economic dispatch is determined by the marginal cost (variable cost… i.e. the cost of fuel) to produce the last quantity of electricity. Wind and solar have zero or very low marginal cost, so if they are always dispatched if there is sufficient demand (there are some exceptions). That marginal cost does not include fixed costs such as the cost of a wind turbine, a gas plant, a solar farm, or a nuclear reactor, etc.
The price in the market paid to everyone is determined by the marginal cost of the marginal producer (i.e. the electricity generator who generates the last needed quantity of electricity in that generator period). All generators get the market clearing marginal price. If wind bids into the market at $0 per kWh, but the last marginal producer, natural gas, bids in at $0.15 per kWh, then everyone gets $0.15 per kWh (think producer surplus in economics). The difference between a generator’s bid price and the market clearing price covers its fixed costs or is profit.
If the marginal producer can only cover its variable cost, it will basically go out of business or will not be rebuilt once is useful life has ended. Unfortunately, the market for electricity generator includes generators with very different qualities of service. Wind and solar are not dispatchable, are intermittent, and keep no fuel on site. Nuclear is dispatchable, is not intermittent and could keep years of fuel on site. If this were a car market, it would say that a used Ford Pinto full of rust is just the same as brand new Toyota Camry, Ford F150 pickup truck, or Lamborghini. If we drive these dispatchable resources out of business, they will not be available when it is not windy and/or sunny. I live in MN, if it is not windy at 5:00 PM on January 2nd, under an all wind and solar scenario. I would not be able to heat or light my house or cook my food. I would freeze hungry in the dark.
To make sure future generators are built, ISO and RTOs either pay some sort of capacity payment (i.e. pay not to produce, but to be available) or in the case of Texas, allow generators to charge a very high price adder when they are the marginal producer. We are looking at prices that swing wildly at the wholesale level, or forever subsidies, most likely both. If we went all wind and solar, they could not cover their fixed costs and no new wind or solar would be built without subsidies.
Besides providing dependable power, sometimes with extra fuel on site, traditional fossil fuel generators also provide services to their grids to keep the grids in sync. Spinning turbines help maintain grid frequency and voltage. If the frequency deviates only a little, the entire grid can collapse. Wind and solar do not currently provide synchronization services. This is what happened recently in Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). Their whole grids went down. There are ways to do it, but that requires additional cost and complexity.
To build out wind and solar will require significant additional transmission capacity. According to Robert Bryce on Substack:
Out of Transmission Revisited, https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/out-of-transmission-revisited?r=kv14k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true)
47,300 Gigawatt-Miles from Nowhere, https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/47300-gigawatt-miles-from-nowhere?r=kv14k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Untransformed
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/untransformed?r=kv14k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
we added approximately 1,700 miles of new high-voltage capacity annually to the grid between 2008 and 2023. According to a DOE study, we will need to expand out grid by 57% by 2035. At historical build rates (1,700 per year), it will take 80 years to build out that 57%. That is not going to happen.
In addition, we don’t have enough linemen and there is no way we are going to get them. It takes about 7 years to train a high voltage lineman assuming you can find enough people who are interested in working outside in a very dangerous job. An article published in December 2022 on Linemancentral.com, claimed there will be about 21,000 lineman job openings in 2023 alone. I don’t have updated numbers, but that is not going to happen either.
Robert Bryce points out that from 2021 to 2022 utility product inflation was 2.6x US rate of inflation. He highlights several factors responsible for those price increases including labor shortages, shortages of specialty components, and government regulation.
The lead time for high-voltage transformer is now two to three years, and most made overseas. In 2022, the price for pole mounted transformers increased by 15%, and the price for for pad-mounted transformers (primary used for delivering electricity to endusers) increased by 47%
The transformer industry is having trouble getting specialty steel, in particular grain oriented steel. That steel is hard to manufacture and contains about 3% silicon by weight. Silicon improves the magnetic properties of the steel. Again, most is made overseas.
A proposed efficiency rule would require higher efficiency for transformers. They are now about 95% efficient. A 1% increase in efficiency would require retooling of factories.
Bryce quotes Theresa Pugh, who heads Virginia-based Theresa Pugh Consulting. If measure was put in place by the proposed deadline of 2027, it would likely result in a “2.5 or perhaps a 3-year wait for electric distribution transformers”.
No matter how much wishful thinking exists, we are not going to go all wind and solar any time soon, if ever.
This framing of Democrats needing to flip from "politics of subtraction" to "politics of addition" is spot on. The moment you mentioned how environmental groups kept blocking transmission lines in Virginia and Maine, it clicked why voters see the party as anti-growth. Gallego's focus on leading with lower bills instead of treating affordability as an afterthought is exactly the kind of reframing that could win back working class voters who actually work in resource extraction. If the plan treats nuclear and geothermal as progressive priorities rather than reluctant compromises, that's a huge mindset shift.
Gallego’s proposal has lots of good points about permitting reform, support for all energy sources (including fossil, nuclear, and geothermal which are rarely seen in Democrat energy policy. He also emphasizes affordability and energy abundance, and doesn’t even mention global warming or extreme weather, which is a refreshing change. However, his idea of affordability includes lots of subsidies, which while making the cost to the end user lower, just transfer the cost on to tax payers, and utilities (who have to deal with the instability of inefficient residential solar). He also wants to bring back producer credits for wind, solar and batteries which are no longer needed since the prices of the technology has dropped so much, so more taxpayer money spent for no good reason. Lastly while he talks about smoothing regulation and permitting, he piles on new regulations for energy industry to pay prevailing wages and requiring union labor and community inputs, which are not things which improve affordability.