If Anyone Can Make Power Grids Funny, it’s John Oliver

November 8, 2021

Posted by greenman3610
Filed in Crock of the Week

17 Comments »

17 Responses to “If Anyone Can Make Power Grids Funny, it’s John Oliver”

Don Osborn Says:

November 8, 2021 at 12:32 pm
Very good but all the more reason to continue to support distributed solar (DGPV or so called “rooftop solar”). Right now DGPV makes up over 40% of all solar in the leading solar state, CA. While centralized solar and wind are vital, so too is DGPV. Despite this, “rooftop” solar is under attack in many states by utilities and their allies, including in CA. DGPV provides much needed clean power where it is needed and reduces the demand on and the need to upgrade expensive transmission and distribution systems to the benefit of all. As it is increasingly doing, when paired with onsite storage (batterie systems making up solar+storage) these benefits to all will only increase,

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- J4Zonian Says:
  
  November 10, 2021 at 9:34 pm
  Distributed solar isn’t under attack despite being vital, it’s under attack because it’s vital. Koch, ALEC et al fund campaigns to destroy what they feel threatened by.
  
  In fact, it’s doubly vital, since it helps integrate utility solar, democratizes energy production (in a regressive sort of way) and allows people to incrementally lower the price of solar, from those most able to afford it on down.
  
  Rooftop solar and home batteries make a clean grid vastly more affordable
  Distributed energy is not an alternative to big power plants, but a complement.
  https://www.volts.wtf/p/rooftop-solar-and-home-batteries
  
  Things to add now: single or double-axis tracking, double-sided panels, triboelectric generation so they can produce energy day or night from rain, rain collection and storage, growing human and bee food under raised panels on roof.
  
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- rhymeswithgoalie Says:
  
  November 10, 2021 at 10:06 pm
  I like community solar/storage, but that doesn’t really deal with wintertime or overcast power needs for the rest of the country.
  
  Of course it seems like a necessary idea for California/Arizona/Nevada, who could plausibly lose major hydro power sources that used to be reliable, but the Atlantic seaboard still needs transmission lines.
  
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talies Says:

November 8, 2021 at 2:12 pm
Not available in UK 😦

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- peNdantry Says:
  
  November 9, 2021 at 6:47 am
  Indeed. It’s beginning to feel a lot like a banana republic over here 😦
  
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- rhymeswithgoalie Says:
  
  November 10, 2021 at 10:11 pm
  Does this work?
  https://www.hbo.com/last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver
  
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ubrew12 Says:

November 9, 2021 at 12:35 pm
This is deeply disturbing. I don’t sense America coming together on renewable power, especially since so much money is arrayed against it. If all those interests need do to prevent renewable adoption is NIMBY the power lines running from central states to the coasts, they should have no problem doing it, given the current mood of the country, which has the central states looking for ways to ‘stick it’ to the coastal states (ironically, FDR’s REA was a push the other way: to electrify the central states starting from, and being paid for by, the coastal states: I guess this is ‘another America’).

Coastal states should prepare ‘Plan B’ immediately. Maybe a larger mix of offshore wind/wave, more nuclear, and on the West Coast, more solar in the desert areas east of the Cascades/Sierras.

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- John Oneill Says:
  
  November 9, 2021 at 8:20 pm
  Do you think Plan B might include not junking the fossil-free power they already have ? Like Indian Point, that made a third of New York’s power till this year, Diablo Canyon that makes ten percent of California’s power, but is due to be prematurely closed in 2025, or Byron and Dresden, saved by one vote on the very last day before closure, four gigawatts of 24/7 carbon-free power for Chicago ?
  
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  - rhymeswithgoalie Says:
    
    November 10, 2021 at 10:28 pm
    Diablo Canyon looks political, but other nukes are claiming cost issues:
    
    “Entergy announced in 2017 that it would shut down both operating PWRs at the Indian Point Energy Center, citing factors that include sustained low current and projected wholesale energy prices that have reduced revenues. Unit 2 was shut down as scheduled on 30 April 2020.”
    
    It smells like Exelon is playing extortion/subsidy games with the Byron and Dresden nuclear plants, but perhaps you have more information:
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2021/02/01/a-nuclear-company-says-its-plants-are-unprofitable-but-the-author-of-an-independent-report-disagrees-inside-the-dispute/
    
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- rhymeswithgoalie Says:
  
  November 10, 2021 at 10:15 pm
  I suppose that man who didn’t want transmission lines going by his property wouldn’t mind the greater tax base not paying for the subsidized roads and power lines through rural areas.
  
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- J4Zonian Says:
  
  November 12, 2021 at 12:18 am
  “America” [sic] has been together on renewables for years. 90% of people in the US want more solar and wind power and more government help for them. 38% want more nukes. Only the duopoly party oligarchs are against clean safe renewable energy, which is why we don’t have much, and why we need to encourage them to walk off into a blizzard before winter ends.
  
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jimbills Says:

November 9, 2021 at 1:44 pm
News a few days ago – NIMBYism strikes again:

Maine voters reject $950M transmission line for hydropower imports from Canada
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/579887-maine-voters-reject-950m-transmission-line-for-hydropower-imports

Maine Voters’ Rejection Of Transmission Line Shows Again How Land-Use Conflicts Are Halting Renewable Expansion
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2021/11/05/maine-voters-rejection-of-transmission-line-shows-again-how–land-use-conflicts-are-halting–renewable-expansion/?sh=241f419b68e8

They had already cleared about 3/4 of the land to install the lines, and it was still rejected by the voters 60% to 40%.

Maine uses mostly biomass, followed by natural gas, followed by hydro.

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- J4Zonian Says:
  
  November 10, 2021 at 9:49 pm
  The US needs to declare an emergency and override anti-renewable fanaticism. But the oligarchic Democrats will never do that. I think we need Norway and Iceland to invade, conquer, colonize and renewablize the US, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
  
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  - rhymeswithgoalie Says:
    
    November 10, 2021 at 10:31 pm
    Norway is drilling new oil wells in the North Sea, and has offered more permitted areas for drilling in the Arctic.
    
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    - J4Zonian Says:
      
      November 11, 2021 at 12:14 am
      Yeah, no country is perfect, and no country is transitioning nearly as fast as we need. Iceland makes aluminum with its cheap, rock steady geothermal and hydro electricity, when it should fund the building of clean safe renewable energy where the bauxite mines are, so shipping is reduced and poor countries are less poor and more self-reliant.
      
      Every country is going to have to find new ways to support itself, and some will have to adjust to a diminished state. This is a windfall for MENA and the US if they can finally perform autorectal craniectomies; Scandinavia should be able to adjust if they can heal the horrible projecting shadow they’re afflicted with (racism eg), but a lot of countries are in for a pretty rough thousand years or so. US white males’ reaction to women’s new assertiveness and becoming a minority race doesn’t inspire confidence.
      
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- J4Zonian Says:
  
  November 10, 2021 at 9:53 pm
  PS, the author of the Forbes piece is the anti-renewable originator of many of the lies about energy density. Nothing he says is trustworthy; it will always be slanted, inaccurate, and deceptively incomplete. Since it’s Forbes, that goes double.
  
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J4Zonian Says:

November 10, 2021 at 11:37 pm
Just a couple of corrections for the video:

There’s no need for coastal states to rely on the midwest for energy.
The renewable energy already built in the eastern states plus offshore wind could supply not just the electricity but all the energy those states use, eliminating the duck curve in the process. Adding even half the potential rooftop solar for the area would make the east a big net electricity exporter. The 3 contiguous west coast states could supply all the energy they use with in-state onshore and offshore wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal. And Alaska and Hawaii could easily provide all they use with lots to spare.

Oliver mentions the “net zero by 2050” lie without pointing out the lieness of it; that we need to eliminate fossil fuels by 2030 and none of this “net” crap.

He also inadvertently reinforces the trollspeak lie about EVs breaking the grid.
The thing is, duh, not everybody IS going to get an EV tomorrow. We have years to improve & expand the grid to handle the roughly 17% increase over today’s grid (7-9% of the fully renewable grid of 2030 and that’s only if we allow our rulers to continue to be so emotionally disturbed we don’t switch most of that to rail).

Did he skip saying rural electrification was part of New Deal to avoid enraging berserk right wingers?

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