Three minutes of a glorious “reaming” of the Federal Government in Ottawa by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. As a retro flash: “You go girl!”
Seems the Canadian Constitution says the electric grid is the responsibility of the Provence, so Alberta is just saying “NO.” to the “renewables” mandate and to the effective ban on {gas, nuclear, hydro, and presumably coal too} and is refusing to accept an incredibly expensive, unreliable, and harmful / risky “wind & solar” unstable grid.
I’m sure this is going to cause some heartburn and red ears in Ottawa (Justin Turdoh especially ;-) So “watch this space” for future fireworks as the two clash.
I know Texas has their own grid, so they can control what-all gets done when. They do have a LOT of wind turbines though. No idea if other individual States can just tell any US Federal “mandates” to go bugger off… I’m pretty sure Florida is going to say “NO.” since solar panels and windmills don’t mix well with hurricanes… Can you say “Gone With The Wind“? I knew you could…
Musings from the Chiefio 
Unfortunately Duke Power is building lots of solar farms in Florida. We just had a new one built next to Panama City with more solar farms planned.
Doesn’t get much plainer spoke than that. Nice!
A local municipal government near me is experimenting with solar. The experiment is tiny at a couple thousand square feet a set. No wind turbines though, and that’s expected. We don’t get much wind here. Typically 5 to 10 mph. Often calm, rarely stronger; but when stronger, can and does knock down tree limbs or whole trees. Said city is also supplied by two hydroelectric dams and a good sized coal fired plant and those are all within 30 miles or so as the crow flies.
“Oh the irony — Green heat pumps and EV’s will need to be curtailed on a Green Grid
We’re watching the real time collapse of parts of the “Climate Industry” in on itself. The left eats its own. The EV’s and heat pumps the German government was coercing people to use are so incompatible with unreliable expensive energy, they will be among the first appliances to be restricted in the new clean green economy.
The truth is — Solar and wind power can’t power EV’s. In Germany the network regulator is working on ways to limit electricity to hungry EV’s and heat pumps so they don’t crash the grid.”
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/11/germany-you-will-own-a-car-and-a-heater-but-you-cant-use-them/
E.M. – Thanks for what ever you did with the comment problem
@Another Ian:
What “I did” about the “block comment editor” was complain about it here, and state a hope that it would be rapidly withdrawn due to being a pig ignorant idea. And it looks like it was rapidly withdrawn (I suggest due to rampant complaints by everyone from folks trying to write a comment to blog operators saying “WT? why are comments down 90% and what remains are complaints?”.
I don’t know who, or why, the “block editor” is being “pushed”. What “features” they think it brings. I’ve spent a few years finding ways to avoid it for editing postings / articles (with increasing difficulty). In fact, I’ve thought of just ditching “wordpress” to avoid it. (I would need to get a personal web identifier {www.foo.yada} and likely a personal instance of the wordpress code running on a self administered machine and… )
Like Pottering & SystemD: Folks get enamored of their newest Shiny Thing and think everyone else would love to have it shoved at them too… and forget that most folks just want a nice “comfort food” world with things they know and like That Do NOT Change A Lot.
Remember when some Restaurant World magazine published an article on how BORING mashed potatoes were and you could “jazz them up” with garlic? And it became damn near impossible to get Plain Mashed Potatoes (for “the kids” or you…)? They didn’t “get it” that “Comfort Food” is, by definition, the familiar thing you know and like.
Blame it on MBA Marketing classes (that I’ve had, BTW… so I know whereof I speak). “Sell the sizzle not the steak”. Well, damit, I want the STEAK, and cooked properly without a lot of gimmicks AND with a PLAIN baked potato with butter and sour cream on the side… and bacon bits (real bacon, please) if you have a grill and strips of smoked pig belly… not something I can’t pronounce made from things I’ve never eaten…
Stop selling me fake sizzle and give me known good “comfort food”. At dinner or in editors…
Oh Well…
@ EM:
Yummmm! Sizzling REAL steak and mashed potatoes like I grew up with…
The fanciest thing Mom ever did with mashed potatoes was to sprinkle a bit of paprika on top of them right before bringing them to the table. Other than that, it was just butter and salt pepper mixed in.
On the plus side:
“ Solar-powered “hurricane-proof” town takes direct hit from Hurricane Ian, never loses electricity”
Link https://www.cbsnews.com/news/babcock-ranch-solar-power-hurricane-ian-60-minutes-2022-10-09/
A solar installation can be (obviously) designed to withstand hurricane conditions. Here, we have an existence proof.
Texas wind farms did just fine during and after Cat 4 Hurricane Harvey of 2017:
“Texas Wind Farms Survive Hurricane Harvey”
Link https://www.cleanenergy.org/blog/texas-wind-farms-survive-hurricane-harvey/
If all of us “stupid” people in Texas can do this, surely the geniuses in other states and countries can figure this out.
Is this yet another existence proof?
Offshore, you say? Perhaps the geniuses can refer to the floating offshore WTG called Hywind, offshore Scotland in the North Sea. Rather brisk winds and substantial waves, there.
The fact that a solar PV or wind farm can stand a hurricane does not in any way imply it’s a good idea to build them.
For Jim2: is reducing the price of natural gas a good reason to build wind and solar? Aside from reducing customers’ utility bills? Note that some countries are importing LNG to get through the winters.
If I say that solar panels are warming up the planet, some will think I must be crazy.
Well…I am not.
on a hot summer day in the hot sun, you can walk barefoot in a field as it is not too hot. In some cases it is even cool depending on what grows there. Green grass definitely remains cool.
but try walking barefoot on the black pavement and it is so hot it hurts your feet.
now if millions of square feet of fields that used to remain relatively cool in the sun are covered with millions of square feet of black solar panel that become hot enough to cook and egg, those millions of square feet of solar panel become one gigantic oven.
that field that used to be relatively cool is now an oven that is at probably close to 170 F ( solid black objects left in the sun can easily reach 150 F sometimes as much as 170 F this is a fact )
The more we install solar panel the more we are turning the earth’s surface into an oven.
I have not gone trough the numbers, I don t know if someone has done it , but it is undeniable black solar panels act like ovens while green grass acts like an air conditioner.
If we painted planet earth all white it would cool down a bit and if we painted it all black it would become hotter.
It is exactly why so many houses in Greece or Italy are white, and why vinyl seats in a car left in the sun are so hot it leaves a mark on your skin.
Those are undeniable realities, and dare I call it science.
Unless they can make white solar panels, going solar will warm up the planet not cool it down.
RS: The very best and brightest way to lower nat gas prices is to produce as much of it as possible. Nat gas should be getting the subsidies gotten by useless wind and solar.
Canadian Friend: Seriously? This says the opposite. Solar panels actually cool the roof or ground beneath them. Farmers love them. Also see NREL website for the facts.
https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/do-solar-panels-cool-your-roof.php
Really.
If you do a bit of research you will find out that the average solar panel reaches 150F in the sun
you can get hot water trough solar panels. If you run pipes on top of them you get very hot water.
if you fill a field of say one mile by two miles full of black solar panels you have just created an open air oven of one mile by two miles.
if every town and village does that you are warming the planet.
it may be cool underneath because of the shade but on top it is radiating 150F heat.
heat that green grass and green field were not creating.
Canadian Friend: well, if you are correct, then NREL are idiots.
Enjoy your opinions!!
It is not an opinion, it is a fact.
Google exactly these words,
” how hot do solar panels get ”
you will get tons of sources that tell you they reach at least 150 F.
This is a scientific fact, not an opinion.
Black things in the sun become much hotter than white things,
this is not an opinion either, it is a scientific fact.
The average solar panel gets 35 F hotter than the air around it ( google it is is scientific fact)
while shade reduces temperature by 2 to 5 degrees
the cooling effect of 5 F from the shade of the solar panels is canceled by the warming of the solar panel of 35 F.
This is not opinion, these are the facts.
I do not know if the NREL are idiots or just lying-crooks.
Most people are either malicious or idiots, some are both.
that includes politicians, global warming preachers and companies that are trying to get rich with any scam that the masses fall for.
If telling people the lie that solar panel remain cool helps them sell more solar panel that is what they will say.
The NREL is part of the US government, if the government said that from now on 2+2=5 the NREL, the CDC, the FBI and every other department ( and the Main Stream Media ) would say it is true that 2+2=5
They – the people in charge – have been lying to us about global warming for over 20 years, they certainly can lie about the solar panels the Biden administration wants you to buy.
You can either trust them or trust scientific facts such as solar panels get easily 35 F hotter than the air around them, and they easily reach 150 F
Um… “Not my circus, not my monkey” but…
I’ve spent a good 50 years interested in solar panels. They DO get hot. No doubt about it. You can increase the efficiency by running water behind the solar cells, and make domestic Hot Water in the process.
Yes, shade behind them is cooler, but the panel is trying to be 100% dark and the land is an average 18% Grey Scale dark (or nobody would sell 18% grey scale cards to photographers… )
Solar panels MUST have darker albedo than the average or they are not absorbing enough light. What you want is 100% conversion to electricity and absolute black. What is the best possible (so far) is about 24% commercial and 35% R&D Lab cells (multi-layer and more trick stuff)
Compare plant ground cover: IF it gets much over 80F the plant increases transpiration of water to vapor to hold close to 85 F max. HEAT goes into evaporated water, not temperature….
So yes, solar panels and especially the high efficiency ones, convert more solar radiation into heat and electrons than the typical land scaping that makes evaporated water and tries for an 85 F upper bound…
Thank you E.M.Smith.
Black things getting hotter than white things (in the sun) is not an opinion, it is a scientific fact.
There is no reason why black solar panels would defy the laws of science and remain cool in the sun.
If one googles ” heat islands” they will find a million sources telling us that parking lots because they are a large black area ( asphalt is not even as dark ad solar panels are ) become as hot as 150F in the sun, and sometimes hotter than 150 F and because it is a large area, it does heat up the air around it.
Google results do confirm asphalt, or roofs of building covered in tar (in the sun) cause warming.
Google results also do confirm solar panels get extremely hot in the sun.
but of course Google – being far left and thus part of the global warming scam – will not provide results that say that a large area covered with solar panel becomes a heat island just as a large parking lot does.
Every inconvenient truth about ” green” energy is suppressed.
It is a scientific impossibility for a solid black object, be it asphalt, a piece of black metal, black plastic or a black solar panel to remain cool in the sun.
Beating a dead horse here, I know, but I will say this again, it is why you can walk barefoot in the grass and the grass is not hot, but if you walk on black asphalt it is so hot it hurts your feet.
Covering tens of thousands of square miles of green fields with black solar panels turn an area that used to be cool into an oven.