Free Republic

The COP 28 climate confab opened today in Dubai. Some 70,000 true believers in the energy transition are said to be gathering. And not one of them appears to be either willing or able to do the simple arithmetic that shows that this can’t possibly work. So far, no country that has made a commitment to “net zero” has officially backed off. (Argentina may soon become the first.). Things proceed as if all that is needed is to build sufficient wind and solar generation facilities, until eventually you have enough of them to meet demand. But that’s not how this...

While it’s been a disaster in the wind industry lately (and fun as the dickens to cover) (Did I tell you Ørsted’s CFO and COO got the boot?), I hadn’t really had a chance to check in with the solar half of the big Green dream. You know, see if things are shaking out or just shaky?A quick glance around recent news reports is pointing to an industry wobbling like a bowl of Jello.Although I do like “clubbed like a baby seal” – that’s pretty descriptive.And it’s once again all based on the fantasy that the Green energy sector is...

Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary said Tuesday that clean energy funds and stocks are dropping because investors realized that clean energy companies can not make a profit. Several stocks and exchange-traded funds in the “clean energy” sector, including Enphase Energy, the Invesco Solar ETF, the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF and the First Trust Global Wind Energy ETF have seen substantial drops in their share prices in the last year. .. Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, spends $370 billion to combat climate change and is loaded with green energy provisions, including a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles,...

Travis Air Force Base and surrounding land in Solano County, Calif. Image: Google Maps Since 2017, a shadowy Silicon Valley company has bought up 52,000 acres of farmland around Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, Calif., totaling about $800 million.Flannery Associates is a company run by Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader. Beyond that, nothing much is known of the company except that some of the most famous names in Silicon Valley have invested in a project being promoted by Flannery. Some backers include Marc Andreessen, Powell Jobs, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, LinkedIn co-founder Reid...

Under the enlightened leadership of our expert bureaucrats in Washington and various state governments, we are embarked on a program to replace our functioning electricity generation system with an alternative system based on wind, solar, and energy storage. We are told that this will be easy, and in fact cheaper than what we currently have. Surely, if that is true for an entire country, it must be equally true for some small place like an island or a small town. Easiest of all for the demonstration would be an individual house, particularly if the house is surrounded by sufficient land...

Wind and solar are both terrible methods of generating electricity, both expensive and unreliable. The one thing that can make the situation worse is the drive to electrify everything, including motor vehicles. The impracticality of this “green” vision has become blindingly obvious, and the “green” movement has begun to fall apart. Steve noted this afternoon the collapsing share prices of renewable energy companies. Here are some more indications that the “green” movement is spiraling downward: From the Telegraph: “Electricity prices ‘must rise by 70pc to pay for more wind farms.’” No new wind farms will be built off Britain’s shores...

It’s not quite a replacement for diesel RVs, but the latest all-electric camper van from Grounded is getting there. The G2 claims a fully loaded range of 250 miles from its 165kWh vehicle battery, which easily trumps the Grounded G1’s range of 108 miles. It can be configured with up to 640W of rooftop solar and a hefty 10kWh house battery that can be charged from the main battery. It’s not cheap, with a starting price of $195,000, but living in the future never is. “The G2 is radically different from any other offering on the market,” said Grounded CEO...

Four headlines struck me, over my morning coffee, this week. They are headlines that I think will change forever our understanding of energy sources. From Germany comes “Wide-Scale Bankruptcies in the EU’s Solar Sector Now Seem Likely” and “Germany to Fire up ‘Brown Coal’ Power Plants because of Fears of Energy Shortage.” From Sweden, “Sweden Embraces Nuclear Energy,” and from France, “Nuclear energy now non-negotiable.” All four headlines are courtesy of the E.U.’s disastrous missteps in solar — and successes in nuclear. The disasters are the result of what I call “the seven dirty secrets of solar.” Germany has led...

The annular solar eclipse will be visible from eight states in the U.S. Southwest. On Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023, an annular solar eclipse will come to North America. We have summarized how you can watch the annular solar eclipse 2023 online and NASA has also released an interactive map where you can track the Oct. 14 annular solar eclipse down to the last second. The 'ring of fire' is not to be missed! Roughly 11 years after the same type of solar eclipse crossed the U.S. Southwest on May 20, 2012, this one will be visible from a similar region,...

New Jersey's Canoe Brook Water Treatment plant produces 14 millions gallons of drinking water a day. Each one of those gallons weighs around 8 pounds , so it's quickly apparent that a large amount of energy is needed to move water from a reservoir to the treatment plant and into the 84,000 homes and businesses that the New Jersey American Water Company serves in the area. So the water utility partnered with NJR Clean Energy Ventures, the renewable energy subsidiary of the natural gas firm New Jersey Resources, for a solution

Solar should be competing for sales in the marketplace, not for subsidies in Washington,' ... The Biden administration quietly issued a 59-page report outlining the current scope of federal energy-related subsidies revealed that the renewable energy sector enjoys significantly larger taxpayer backing than the fossil fuel industry. The report — authored by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) and published in August — represents the first of its kind since 2018. The EIA analyzed data from 2016 through 2022, and determined that, during that time period, the federal government doled out $183.3 billion in direct and mainly indirect...

This year, during the heat of summer, when temperatures in New York surpassed 90°F, the 22 solar panels on the roof of my house were doing absolutely nothing. This is not something I learned until September, four months after my husband and I bought this house with a purportedly functional leased solar system in upstate New York, months after logging into a website that inaccurately told us that the panels were working, months after we forked over $6,000 to prepay the remainder of the 20-year lease to the company supposed to be maintaining the solar panels, Spruce Power, which happens...

Pepsico explained how it uses its fleet of Tesla Semi electric trucks in a fascinating video that gives us a glimpse at the future of trucking. Tesla has only delivered a limited number of its electric semitrucks, and most of them are believed to be in operation in Pepsico’s fleet – primarily in its Sacramento facility, which has been completely electrified and is solar-powered. . Pepsico explained that it uses most of its 21 Tesla Semi electric trucks for deliveries within 100 miles with several stops. They operate for up to 12 hours a day. Dejan Antunovic, electrification program manager...

Hello, I have a technical question for 12V solar folks.In the process of building an off-grid solar set up for my camper trailer. Just need enough juice to keep the fan running in the propane fridge and to power the blower on the propane heater plus the lights and water pump.Going to do a 200 amp hour gel battery and two 100 watt panels. A couple of months ago I bought a new-in-box 100 watt panel at an estate sale that I was told was for a 12V system. Reading the back of the panel I don't see 12V anywhere...

Earlier this week Texas grid operator ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) asked residents to reduce energy usage amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid rolling blackouts. ERCOT manages electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers and represents 90% of the state’s electric load, according to the company. Temperatures soared to 115+ degrees with the heat index in parts of Texas on Thursday amid an excessive heat warning. ERCOT issued the voluntary conservation notice due to extreme temperatures, forecasted high demand and lower reserves due to low wind generation. ... The wind turbines aren’t producing enough energy. Texas...

A powerful solar flare disrupted radio and navigation signals across North America. on Monday (Aug. 7) and prompted space weather forecasters to issue warnings because of energetic particles hitting Earth. The flare, classified as an X1.5, was the 20th X flare — the most potent solar flare category — of the current 11-year solar cycle, which will reach its maximum next year.

Astrophysicists reveal the sun is beaming down gamma rays with energies higher than ever measured. The gamma rays lose energy in Earth’s atmosphere, meaning they don’t present a concern to life. This also allows them to be discovered by researchers working with the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC, located in Mexico. “This shows that HAWC is adding to our knowledge of our galaxy at the highest energies, and it’s opening up questions about our very own sun,” said Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral researcher with MSU and the corresponding author of the new report. Sometimes, the best place to...

A solar salesperson spent five hours in July on a site visit with Jan, a 76-year-old homeowner, to convince her that installing a small rooftop solar system on her Northeast Heights home would eliminate her electric bills overnight. Later, after printing out the one-page financial document she signed, Jan realized it was a 25-year agreement with a $79-per-month repayment plan. That’s $18 more than her current utility payments, which average about $61 per month based on a review of all her Public Service Co. of New Mexico bills since January 2022. Jan did cancel after consulting with Affordable Solar, which...

Sunlight beats down on a graveyard for dead solar panels in Yuma, Arizona, hundreds stacked in neat piles, waiting for their next life. The great majority of worn and damaged panels are still dumped in landfills. But with more and more piling up, many people know that needs to change. In this desert city where Arizona, California, Sonora and Baja California meet, North America’s first utility-scale solar panel recycling plant has opened to address what founders of We Recycle Solar call a “tsunami” of solar waste. Plans to address climate change rely on massively scaling up clean, solar electricity. The...

Global cobalt demand soared with the advent of cell phones and laptop computers. It exploded with the arrival of electric vehicles and now is skyrocketing in tandem with government EV mandates and subsidies. Cobalt improves battery performance, extends driving range and reduces fire risks. Demand will reach stratospheric heights if governments remain obsessed with climate change and Net Zero. States and nations would have to switch to electric cars, trucks, buses and tractors; end coal and gas electricity generation; convert gas furnaces, water heaters and stoves to electricity; and provide alternative power for windless, sunless periods. Electricity generation would triple...