KJ - That pie chart is misleading. Maybe that's capacity. From the CA wind power regulators it isn't generating half that amount of electricity: "
In 2015, turbines in wind farms generated 12,180 gigawatt-hours of electricity."From the same folks: "As of December 31, 2016,
California has 5,662 MW of wind powered electricity generating capacity". By comparison: there is a total installed nameplate capacity of in
Texas of 20,321 MW. And the future growth of CA solar? From:
http://www.breitbart.com/california/201 ... alifornia/"Despite the U.S. Congress passing the Consolidated Appropriations Act in December 2015 to slather another $9.3 billion of taxpayer credits on new solar power added to the electrical grid,
California solar installments peaked in 2015 and are now headed south. The extension of the federal Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) through 2021 was quietly tucked into 3 pages of the 887-page continuing resolution that allowed Congress to spend about $3.85 trillion this year.
The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that extending solar tax credits will cost taxpayers $9.3 billion.
With supposed experts claiming a huge amount of solar demand was being undermined due to the expiring of the federal investment tax credit,
the renewal was expected to create another California boom. But the number of residential solar installations appears to have peaked in 2015 at 148,000 new installations,
and the numbers fell for the first time in a decade, to 140,000 in 2016, according to the state.A big selling point for renewing the solar investment tax credit was the promise that the cost of producing solar electric power would crash. But according to the California state website,
the cost only fell by 2 percent from $.50 a kilowatt in 2015 to about $.49 a kilowatt in 2016. Compared to natural gas on a national basis, solar costs 50 percent more to produce electricity than natural gas.
That does not adjust for the fact that solar electric generation is availability for only an average of eight hours per day.
During the other 16 hours a day the electrical grid must have 100 percent standby fossil fuel power generation capacity.Another serious downside for solar power is that during sunny days in the spring and fall, when Californians are not using much air conditioning, the daily demand for electricity is low. As a result,
the surge of midday solar power is more than the California electric grid can use.Balancing solar power availability and consumer demand has become a major challenge for the Independent System Operator that manages California’s electric grid for about 30 million people. Nancy Traweek, who directs system operations, recently warned, “It’s constantly solving a constant problem, meaning you’re always trying to balance.”