California solar plant shutdown triggered by night.

[NNadir]

In a remarkable and unexpected event, a California solar plant shutdown was triggered by night.

Despite an international campaign to talk endlessly about batteries, solar electricity in California, which has never represented 1% of the energy output of the state, and has never been so reliable as to produce 25% of its rated peak capacity, shut down after 8 pm. Solar officials are studying the matter, but the official word, unconfirmed by solar authorities, said the shutdown occurred because of night.

Efforts to take photographs of the event were stymied by, well, darkness. Much to the surprise of solar plant officials, cameras apparently don't work in the dark.

The slack was taken up not by batteries, even though in theory someday possibly it could happen maybe in a way sort of. The slack was taken up by burning dangerous fossil fuels.

There is no word on whether California officials plan to fine solar power users for dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere because of the shutdown.

Solar power production in California, along with wind power, has been in serious decline in recent years, having fallen by 77% from trivial in 2000 to less than trivial in 2005.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/ELECTRICITY_GEN_1983-2006.XLS

Notoriously unreliable solar electricity trails hydroelectric, nuclear, coal, waste (aka "garbage") burning, and even declining wind production in California.

Because of the trivial production of solar energy in California, the shutdown was completely unnoticed by anyone anywhere at anytime leading to authorities to say nothing at all about the matter.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Edison abandoned the Mojave plant years ago. It was being run by

some investment scheme. The value of the power produced didn't pay for the wages & maintenance of the thing.

[roody]

2. Enjoying my electric bill $ -59.67

[spag68]

3. Solar power

This is total bullshit, anyone with a background in the business,knows that solar is on an average yearly basis. It puts it's power output into the system during the day when it is most needed by running the meter backwards into the grid. Your attempt at humor is a total failure. Solar power is making strides and could actually make a difference,if the industry got the 18 billion that the oil industry gets.There are strong forces aligned against solar, because if a sufficient number of citizens got solar roofs, the big money schemers would be shit out of luck. No one would want oil at any price if there was an alternative,and we all know it. Don't be fooled by these straw man arguments, think of all the industry's that got subsidized, electric co's. ,oil company's,railroads,military contractors and anyone named Bush. The have rescued Chrysler, the banks, steel co's airlines, all have received some of our money. By the way banking, doesn't that remind you of the Keating 5 or an Oklahoma S&L run by a bushie Time to wise up and throw them out, along with any Dem that conspires with them. IMO they are shaking in their boots crying dickie, dickie, did we go to far, and is the plane ready to go to Paraguay. Good night kiddies.

[NNadir]

5. Well that explains it.

I just knew it was a conspiracy.

Apparently it's working.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html

I think if you drive over to New Mexico and find you're way into Area 51, you will be able to get to the bottom of this.

Good luck.

[tinrobot]

6. One chart... over and over.

You keep posting that one tired link. Is that all you got?

[NNadir]

7. Yup. It's the only thing I have ever thought about at any time in my entire life.

Does this mean you can prove it wrong with your broad insightful urbane and witty deeper interpretation?

Please share it with us, especially if it includes information about inequalities.

[ElectricGrid]

9. should be start posting anything there is a problem with a nuke plant?

[NNadir]

11. If a bolt falls loose in a nuclear plant, we have 500 posts here on the subject.

I have personally seen lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of posts from people who act like nuclear energy has reliability problems.

In fact, nuclear energy has the highest reliability of any form of energy on the planet. In the United States this capacity utilization is better than 90%. I could post data on the subject - I've done it lots of times - but that has not prevented the SELECTIVE ATTENTION that characterizes the anti-nuke position.

If you have posted ONE post on this website about the reliability of a coal plant, you are free to point it out. If you have posted ONE post on this website about deaths associated either with coal accidents - which are relatively regular - or the deaths associated with normal operations of coal plants, you are free to link it.

Frankly I have long argued that people who are particularly obsessed with whether a door hinge at a nuclear power plant are mostly notable for the fact that they couldn't care less about dangerous fossil fuel reliability or dangerous fossil fuel accidents.

Unlike the dangerous fossil fuel shills who work this site, I have remarked previously on lots of dangerous fossil fuel accidents. I can, should I desire, produce hundreds of remarks on dangerous fossil fuel accidents that I've produced. Here's just one: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/19/21588/6802">Situation Grave at Chinese Coal Mine: 172 Human Beings Missing Underground.

These people - and they are hardly unique - died less than one year ago. The number of fundie anti-nukes who have written posts commemorating these deaths - or even noting them - is ZERO.

You could - if you were interested - easily prove otherwise by producing a post from anyone who has made a big Chernobyl memorial on this website - that mentions these dead in China, or any of the coal deaths in the Ukraine in the last 10 years, or any of the coal deaths anywhere in Europe, South America or anywhere in Asia.

You won't because you can't.

But the subject was not the moral indifference of the yuppie anti-nuke community - which is spectacular - but rather the reliability of energy systems.

For coal, capacity utilization, it is in the low 70% range. Gas, partially by design, is less than 50%. Solar is LUCKY if it reaches 25% capacity utilization and wind is just as pathetic. One reason that neither solar nor wind is an alternative to coal is that they are trivial forms of energy. Another reason is that they are wholly unreliable.


On the other hand, if you would like to assert that people only turn their air conditioners on after they check to see that either the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, I'd love to hear some data supporting this case. Frankly it would surprising to learn that the peak moment for air conditioning is precisely coterminous with the time that the wind is blowing.

Now, I couldn't care less if rich people want to buy solar toys. It's better than buying a Hummer, even a hydrogen Hummer. But that's not the issue here. They have probably managed to displace tiny amounts of dangerous natural gas with these toys, although obviously hardly a significant amount.

The issue here is that the anti-nuke community is claiming - with zero evidence - that nuclear infrastructure should be vandalized and destroyed during a severe climate change crisis that threatens all human life. In particular they are claiming that their 50 years of bullshit talk about how we don't need nuclear urgently should be believed when in fact, their talk is spectacularly reminiscent of Bush's claims to have restored dignity to the White House.

Doublespeak is wrong.

Got it?

No?

Why am I not surprised?


In fact there are ZERO types of power plants that do not shut down because of malfunction, maintenance or unavailability. Nuclear energy is spectacular only because it sets the world standard for reliability. No other form of energy comes close.

[kristopher]

12. There you go again...

Nuclear energy is spectacular only because it sets the world standard for reliability.

Actually failures in the nuclear power sector attract a great deal of attention because such failures have the potential for large scale, "spectacular" disaster. It's much the same as a crack in Hoover Dam might be perceived.

[NNadir]

13. Um, if you have EVER produced one post on the world's largest energy disaster,

I'd like to see it.

I'm going to bet that you have no clue as to what the world's largest energy disaster even was.

Let me give you a hint, Ronald Reagan, it was a renewable energy disaster.

There is no evidence WHAT. SO. EVER. that you give a rat's ass about this disaster.

One may wonder whether your spectacular evocation of the Hoover dam in this case grows out of either contempt for the dead or complete ignorance about what the disaster was. If I were a betting man, I'd go with the latter, not that I think you have any sympathy whatsoever for the victims of energy accidents.

I have written on the world's largest disaster:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/27/23239/9852


You, as far as I can tell, haven't.



The diary I wrote (and you didn't write) makes reference to how a worse disaster was prevented from taking place in the United States by sending a guy out to buy plywood from a local hardware store.

There are ZERO anti-nukes who give a rat's ass about this story, although ever damn one of them makes a big deal if a picture is crooked in the control room of a nuclear power plant.



If you have written ONE remark on this website or any other website calling for banning the form of energy that caused the world's largest energy disaster, we'd all love to see it.

But you won't, because you can't.

In fact, the anti-nuke cults are spectacular for selective attention and indifference to human suffering. It's all about self-congratulation and denial.

There I go again indeed...

And people wonder why I have so much difficulty concealing my contempt.

IGNORANCE KILLS.

[kristopher]

15. Actually, I'm writing a what I expect to be a journal article

on the topic of the system of misinformation and deception put in place during the Reagan era and the current manifestations of that system as they occur in public discussions on energy issues. Thanks for contributing.

[NNadir]

16. I would suggest you submit it Foreign Affairs.

They publish lots of anti-scientific hallucinatory selective attention stuff.

Shit.

They even published Amory Lovins.

[tinrobot]

17. When a nuke plant fails, it's a major disaster

When a nuke plant fails, thousands can die, and hundreds of thousands of acres can be contaminated. At Chernobyl, hundreds died, thousands were contaminated, and nearly thirty to forty times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So, yes, nuclear plants do have to be very reliable, because when they fail, they fail catastrophically with the possibility of very high casualties. The bottom line is that the risk of high casualties is still there.

When a solar plant fails, there's no catastrophe and no casualties. A semi-reliable solar plant will always be safer than the most reliable nuclear plant.

[Zachstar]

19. What are you talking about? Nuke plants fail all the time without spills.

Like the camera incident forcing a shutdown.

Power grid issue forcing a shutdown.

Etc...


So what are you talking about? Stop fear mongering!

[tinrobot]

25. Bush is about to start a war with Iran over a nuclear power plant.

We're not starting a war with Denmark over their windmills, Iceland over their geothermal, or Spain over their solar plants.

Just sayin'

[NNadir]

23. So what? When a coal plant operates normally thousands can die

In fact, coal plants do operate normally all the time, and unremarked by you, they kill continuously.

You couldn't care less.

Chernobyl, when measured on the scale of the continuous climate change disaster, about which you couldn't care less, was trivial.

If you are here to announce that the city if Kiev is uninhabited, that would be interesting.

If you would like to inform me that Ukraine - where I think they know more about Chernobyl than you do - is not building more nuclear plants, that would be interesting.

I have written about Chernobyl many times, one of my favorite pieces being http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/9/103512/0949">"Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl," Some Comments.

Chernobyl sets the limits for nuclear disaster. It has not been repeated in 22 years.

We have no idea what the limit for dangerous fossil fuel disaster will be since it is continuous and unrelenting.

You talk solar which is the same as talking about nothing at all. I note, with due contempt for your indifference, that you have no idea what the size of the disaster from manufacturing even 5 exajoules of solar capacity will be. You pay arbitrary and self serving selective attention to the cost of manufacturing this crap. Solar escapes attention to its external cost because it's too expensive, too unreliable, and too difficult to manfacture to have become a significant form of energy.

[tinrobot]

24. Your'e right, coal is dangerous.

More dangerous than nuclear. It's our biggest catastrophe.

But I wasn't the one who brought up nuclear power. You did. I just pointed out the potential of a different type of catastrophe.

So I must ask again - how many people have died because of solar power?

[Zachstar]

26. Due to pollution? Unknown. Youd have to look DEEP into the villiages of india and china first.

[XemaSab]

8. Area 51 is in Nevada

:shrug:

[Kolesar]

10. If you FEED them, they will keep coming back

So please don't FEED them.

[losthills]

4. More!! (i'm not out of popcorn yet.....)

:popcorn:

[Systematic Chaos]

14. Well, then, if I ever need to run for the hills

I'll be sure to bring along plenty of non-GMO margarine and salt for the so-inclined.

:eyes:

[losthills]

18. I've always got a couple of cold ones....

[Dogmudgeon]

20. At least it happened in California

They get three extra hours of daylight on the West coast.

--p!

[Nihil]

21. Yeah but ...

... I bet it takes those West Coasters a full three hours longer
to get it back up!

:-)

[Zachstar]

22. OH SNAP!