Especially One Key Promise They Are NOT Telling You About!
In this country we have become accustomed to having electricity available whenever, wherever, and in whatever amounts we want — in the early days of the construction of our electric grid, our national energy policy was based on having generating units and transmission infrastructure to meet this mandate. Hundreds of coal fired power plants, and many thousands of miles of transmission lines were built, so that when you flip a switch, you can be sure ‘something will happen’.
In the last 25 years the whole ‘global warming’ mantra (totally debunked and proven wrong) has now evolved in the ‘climate change’ mantra, and this has reached a crisis/alarmist level which claims we will no longer be able to live on this planet in the next “pick your timeframe here” if we do not cease emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Whether you believe this or not, the massive resources being thrown into ‘green energy’ (for the remainder of this article we will use wind and solar power as the basis for discussion) is having major implications as to what is happening to the power grid, and will very soon have serious impacts on our daily lives. How and when we use electricity is going to change, and we will have no choice but to adjust our lifestyles, and adjust our standard of living, accordingly.
Both wind and solar power are not the same as fossil fuel power. Outside of the obvious in terms of CO2 emissions, the ‘green’ alternatives are not reliable, consistent, and efficient sources of power. Wind turbines generate power only when the wind blows (and of course when they are properly maintained). Solar panels generate power only when the sun shines on them. Neither of those conditions exist 24/7. Remember the ‘always available’ mandate mentioned above? So, where does the power come from when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? There are ways to deal with this of course, like having ‘nasty, dirty, CO2 generating’ fossil fuel plants on 'standby' for when they are needed. This is a very inefficient and expensive way to have electricity always available! Or, you can vastly ‘over build’ wind and solar plants to generate power that will charge batteries (a real big problem that I will discuss in a following article), or pump water uphill for later use in generating electricity, or a few other schemes — but again, the cost and environmental impact is never talked about by the cheerleaders for green energy.
There is another way to deal with this, at least to some degree. It all comes down to math: on the left of the equation is the supply side, on the right, the demand side. When the supply side is not adequate (like when the sun goes down, or it’s a cloudy day, etc.), you must ‘manage’ (aka ‘reduce’) the demand side to equal what is available on the supply side. This is where the rubber-meets-the-road in terms of direct impact on our lives and on our standard of living. Utilities have procedures in place for what is called ‘load shedding’, which means controlled brownouts and blackouts, when they just don’t have the power needed to keep the grid stable. It causes major problems, and even social disruption, when the load shedding occurs. How then are we to manage the demand side in a manner that is ‘fair’, and does the least disruption to society?
Many of us are no doubt familiar with programs which have been offered by utilities for years whereby users will get ‘discounts’ on their power bills, IF they allow the utility to shutdown some of their usage when demand exceeds supply. This has been voluntary, until now, and special equipment is installed in your home to allow someone else to start turning off electricity usage as needed. These programs were popular, for a while, but have lost much of their allure for many reasons. In the past utilities and grid operators did not have to make accommodation for the effects of wind and solar generation on the grid. The situation is by the day growing evermore critical, and plans are afoot in the industry to move to a MANDATORY buy-in from everyone on the idea of having someone else control when-and-for-what you can use electricity.
Think of a sweltering hot North Carolina summer day in July. You go over to the AC control panel to get some more cool air in the house, but the panel says ‘Lockout in Effect’! Sorry – you just have to swelter and suck it up, buttercup! Want to charge the ol' EV for a trip tomorrow? Sorry – better keep those travel plans really flexible, since charging EVs will become the single largest residential demand on the grid – if current policy is allowed to go to its illogical conclusion! What about critical uses, like medical equipment and so forth? I don’t have answers for that (and neither do they (that I have read about)); in any case, think of the complications in trying to manage this whole thing. By the way, YOU will not be able to get around, or bypass, these remote controlled lockouts of your appliances. It’s not widely known, and certainly not acknowledged by any agency or appliance manufacturer, but the necessary circuitry to allow this remote control of your appliances is, and has been being, built into new units for several years now. It does not rely on internet connections. The shutdown/restart signals will be sent right through the power lines themselves via coded signals. The grid operators will know exactly what appliances you have, based on mandatory sale-record reporting from all retail outlets. Sorry – you will not get out of this one.
Of course, it will take a decade for enough ‘new’ appliances to be installed to make this widespread, but in the meantime you can be sure rolling brownouts are being planned for entire regions, if necessary. Not just ACs and EVs, but all electricity usage in your house will cease. Incorporating unreliable power sources into the grid will make this inevitable. Did I mention the real cost of this unreliable power? Count on your electric bills tripling, or more, in the next 10 years (likely sooner).
Green energy – sounds great when you hear proponents talk about how ‘cheap’ it is compared to fossil fueled generation. Stop climate change (an utterly absurd thing to say no matter how you look at this!) and save the planet! Again, regardless of whether you believe this or not, YOU are going to pay the price for it. Not just in how much you pay for your electric bill, but how you will have to rearrange your life around having someone else decide you can even use electricity. Think about this folks. It’s not too late to derail this insanity, but time is running out. Either fight it and stop it, NOW, or be prepared to deal the real consequences – the real promise of ‘green energy’!
Paul Lynch