[theluckycountry]

I didn't nail PeakSolar like I did PeakEV, I wasn't watching it, it was too convoluted and almost defied analysis. What with it's mishmash of residential commercial and government activity and the interaction of the utilities etc. It's happened though, sometime in the recent past. The collapse of the US retail market was a shock to me though because that's one end of the spectrum where it actually makes sense. They did something very very wrong over there...

[AdamB]

I didn't nail PeakSolar like I did PeakEV, I wasn't watching it, it was too convoluted and almost defied analysis.

yes. We know you are uneducated and stupid. The only thing you've ever nailed was an unfortunate lass who gave you at least one child. Who you suspiciously seem to REALLY want to not talk about. Did he turn out like you, and seeing your own deficiencies cast into his DNA make this an embarassing topic?

[theluckycountry]

Modern economics is shrouded in idiosyncratic self-serving definitions, arcane mathematics, and circular arguments which make it very difficult to understand. But once one gets the scorecard straight, it can be seen that modern economics is nothing more than a social imitation of nineteenth-century physics. Economists are trained to believe that "money" is to the economy what "energy" is to the physical world. This leads them to believe that whatever is "economically" possible is "physically" possible too. What economists fail to realize is that the economy is a subsystem of the physical system, and thus constrained by universal physical laws that they have not studied.

Since economists study the prices of everything, they feel they are qualified to issue opinions about everything. But the reality is quite the opposite. Economists first abstract all commodities to money -- which of course, obliterates all physical differences between the commodities themselves. This leaves economists uniquely unqualified to know the physical relationships between the commodities they purport to study. Because of their total dependence on the measure of "money", today's leading economists do not know the difference between "libraries" and "oil":

From the writings of Jay Hanson, 01/01/2000

And this, is the reason alternate energy systems are not renewable, not even rebuildable in the near term. Economic thinking has put the cost of all these systems into dollar terms, not in terms of the physical products needed to construct deploy and site them. And all that, in today's analysis, comes down to the dollar cost "today" of fossil fuels and minerals.

Burning finite coal in a simple power station to generate electricity is much cheaper (coal wise) than burning it to construct high technology wind and solar energy systems and deploy them. But since coal is relatively cheap, it's price controlled and kept low to benefit society, the amount consumed hardly enters the equation. As time passes though and the coal (and oil) becomes harder and harder to get, the cost differential between simple plants and complex manufacturing processes will balloon out.

Coal fired plants are typically sited along rail lines, the coal is mined at one end and transported efficiently to the power station at the other end. This is feasible because of the long time horizon for coal burning stations. it makes economic sense to invest in the rail line and maintain it. Solar on the other hand has many many diverse mineral needs, Bauxite for aluminum, sand for glass and high grade silicone for modules. Silver and other rare elements to dope the cell substrate, etc etc. All this has to be mined and brought to the plant, in final refined form from other factories, even before the panels can be constructed. Then there is an enormous transportation chain to get it onsite and installed.

In dollars this isn't so bad today, but in 30 or 40 years when mining and transport is very expensive due to the depletion of Diesel it will be another matter. Mining coal is easy, it falls out of the ground basically and needs no processing. You just shovel it on the train and send it to the power station. Power the train by electricity from the same station if you like. So why is/was solar power investment overtaking oil production investment? Basically because the latter is not subsidized and the oil companies know there isn't much profit left in oil. It's simple economics, real economics. If there was another Saudi Arabia out there they would be fighting like cats and dogs to invest and bring it on stream. But there isn't. All that's left is the dregs, the deepwater and the unborn oil in shale deposits.

But our monetary system, a debt backed fiat system, required exponential growth to keep everyone fed and to pay back the interest due, therefore new money is created as a matter of course whether it finds a productive end or not. Some of this new money has been directed into boondoggle alternate energy schemes, some into wars and war materials, other into social security payments, and on and on. We might like to think that all this debt is being created because we demand it but our demands are artificially imposed on us. Holidays, new cars, new bigger homes. It doesn't matter as long as we are borrowing new money and circulating it so a percentage can be used to pay the enormous interest repayments due from last years debt. Stop borrowing, stop the money creation and the whole house of cards comes crashing down. Pensions crash, banks crash. That's why they all agreed to increase the federal debt by 5 trillion. They have no other choice, it's that or the collapse of a huge part of the economy.

Alternate energy, wind and solar is great in certain niche applications, but it's mass uptake is doomed to failure and has been occurring for no other reason than that stated above. A sink for new money.

[AdamB]

Modern economics is shrouded in idiosyncratic self-serving definitions, arcane mathematics, and circular arguments which make it very difficult to understand.

From the writings of Jay Hanson, 01/01/2000

[theluckycountry]

The recent Iberian blackout was not caused by a failure of solar power generation, but rather by a voltage spike and subsequent grid instability that cascaded into a major outage. While solar farms were involved in the initial generation loss events, the root cause was a breakdown in how the electricity system was managed, not a fundamental flaw in renewable energy sources

Nice bit of Spin isn't it. Solar didn't cause it, but solar farms were involved in the generation loss. Soooo, they triggered it, and then the management of the complex system was blamed. Pretty lame attempt at a coverup if you ask me. Here is a more honest appraisal of the event.

Grid Collapse in Iberia: Analyzing the 2025 Power Outage from Solar to Cascade Failures

On April 28, 2025, a massive power outage swept across Spain and Portugal, leaving millions without electricity. Known as the Great Iberian Blackout, this event began just after noon and lasted ten hours. It exposed weaknesses in the power grid, tied to solar energy and cascade failures, making it a critical lesson for the future.

This blackout, the largest in Europe’s history, started with grid oscillations from a solar plant. Nearly 60% of Spain’s power came from solar at the time, but the system couldn’t handle it. We’ll explore what caused this power outage, its effects, and how to stop it from happening again...

https://meyka.com/blog/grid-collapse-in ... -failures/

Chalk another abject failure up to renewable energy.

At noon, solar output peaked. With 60% of the grid’s power from solar, the system needed balance it didn’t have. The lack of control fueled the cascade of failures.

Clouds I would suspect, just a few fleecy clouds crossing a solar array can cause the voltage and power output to plunge instantly. I experience it here at home and know the effect. It's not a problem at home of course because I'm grid-connected and there are good quality coal fired plants maintaining grid frequency and voltage, a buffer. Plus the solar here isn't concentrated into massive fields, it's on isolated houses, spread across the whole region allowing plenty of time for the coal plants to spin up and cover any anomalies. They have pushed solar too far, have taken it beyond it's practical limits, Idiots! Just like the idiots that took thousands of perfectly practical laptop batteries and installed them in a car. They pushed the technology too far and now the public is suffering because of it.

greed never learns.

[AdamB]

Grid Collapse in Iberia: Analyzing the 2025 Power Outage from Solar to Cascade Failures

https://meyka.com/blog/grid-collapse-in ... -failures/

[theluckycountry]

Department of Energy Releases Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security

And it's not good.

The Department of Energy warns that blackouts could increase by 100 times in 2030 if the U.S. continues to shutter reliable power sources and fails to add additional firm capacity. The analysis reveals that existing generation retirements and delays in adding new firm capacity, driven by the radical green agenda of past administrations, will lead to a surge in power outages and a growing mismatch between electricity demand and supply...

https://www.energy.gov/articles/departm ... d-security

PeakElectricity of course. It had to come someday, the depletion of fossil fuels guaranteed it. The hopium and delusions the masses have been believing would save them from the darkage is being exposed as Lies. How could such bold faced lies ever get told in the first place, what was the reasoning? Obviously to keep the masses quiet and consuming. The peakOil message was alarming in it's consequences and it had to be buried under a bright green future. Once you accept PeakOil and it's consequences you an never go back to normal 20th century thinking, growth, expansion, endless profits. That ws the early message of peakoil.com. It got lost somewhere along the way.

[theluckycountry]

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/forumdisplay.php?f=3

Green Power Talk, go and have a look. No delusions there, just down to earth backyard systems, mostly based on old reliable designs. For a farm or a rural property small wind power generators are a good call. For powering cities they are a dead-end.

You'll notice the forum is as dead as this one, the solar section too. I think the minority of people engaged have just given up on such things and the younger generations haven't a clue as to how to start a lawnmower so the tech is no use to them. A planet of couch potatoes and phone junkies.

[AdamB]

Department of Energy Releases Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security

The Department of Energy warns that blackouts could increase by 100 times in 2030 if the U.S. continues to shutter reliable power sources and fails to add additional firm capacity. The analysis reveals that existing generation retirements and delays in adding new firm capacity, driven by the radical green agenda of past administrations, will lead to a surge in power outages and a growing mismatch between electricity demand and supply...

https://www.energy.gov/articles/departm ... d-security

[theluckycountry]

Power systems: It's a relief to know these "oil tankers" so to speak take a long time to slow down. It gives many of us time to prepare. Here in Australia we have been lucky but many other 1st world nations are right on the brink.

How New Zealand got through the power supply threat by a narrow margin

10 May 2024: National grid operator Transpower gave the industry less than 24 hours notice of the immediate risk of power cuts and blackouts, with a call for as much as power as possible and a warning to be ready to reduce demand. That was followed by the mid-afternoon public call for conservation or face the risk of power cuts.

In the end it got through with businesses and households delivering savings of about 260 megawatts (MW), equivalent to power that would have been consumed by Hamilton city. "It was colder than expected, so the response from Kiwis at home and our major industrial electricity users was essential to ensure that all New Zealanders had continuous access to power this morning," chief executive Alison Andrew said. But there were a few nervous moments as one plant went down on Thursday night, and a couple of the gas fired plants took time to get online.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/516 ... row-margin

The public had to turn off power hungry devices, heaters I presume. The story shows just how close to the edge the systems run now, there is little backup like in the old days. Gas fired plants saved the day there. Fossil fuels to the rescue.

Electricity prices over there are only a little more expensive as here and the reason for that is not coincidence. There is only so much consumers can afford to pay, when prices pass a certain point they aggressively cut back. All this is known by the providers, actuaries no doubt have laid it all out in terms of optimum pricing, like they do in supermarkets with fresh produce. Of course it leaves no room for higher generation costs due to scrapping cheap coal. There is only so much water you can wring out of a sponge and then it's dry. Once the peak price they can productively charged is surpassed the population will use less and less, it will be a snowball and the only thing that could save it would be government subsidies for power (charged to the public still)

Push the price of tomatoes up from $4/kg to $10 a kg and you'll sell a lot less, but profit on the amount you sell will be greater. The unsold tomatoes you simply toss in the bin. EG:

A 1000kg shipment of tomatoes costs you $2/kg. $2000
@$4/kg you sell the whole 1000kg shipment in a few days. $2000 profit
@$10/kg you only sell 450kg but your profit is now 4500-2000-20 (for dumping) = $2480

This is the maximum price point so to speak, sell them for less and you'll sell more but for less profit, sell them for more and you'll sell less, again for less profit. It's a crime really, to throw all those away, but look in the bin out back of your local supermarket and see for yourself, or ask a young assistant in store. If approached correctly they will tell you how much good product they toss out each day. I have done both.

The same rational profit maximizer applies to electricity sales, how could it not. Sure government bodies oversee these corporations to ensure they don't get too greedy, but we all know how effective government oversight is. So it's all "Just in Time" now, JIT spare parts and tomatoes and electricity. A flawed system based on greed but there it is, my response is to accept it as it is and then go on to build my own buffer. As with many of the choices I have made over the years in response to peakOil, and PeakStupidity, this one has proven to have added benefits. Not only is my home secure from blackouts, with a modest offgrid system and a nice Honda generator, but I save money by putting my overnight consumption onto the offgrid system. And have a neat genset for camping trips. I have already used the generator once at home when a transformer blew and took out some of the local grid. That lasted 10 hours and the Honda saved me hundreds in frozen food since the offgrid system wouldn't have coped, not having time to have recharged from it's overnight usage.

Things will only get worse as we move forward so we need to think ahead or we'll be left in the dark with only candles.

[theluckycountry]

New Zealand's dilemma explained.

All-blackout

Guest articles
9 Aug 2024

New Zealand has major problems with its power supply. There are three underlying reasons: the weather, a flawed electricity market and a drive for ‘net zero’. Sixty-five percent of New Zealand’s electricity is provided by hydropower, and the remainder by geothermal, gas, coal, wind and some solar. In a dry year, hydro’s ability to deliver falls away, and we lose about 10% of our generation. In the past, we always tried to have the reservoirs full by the end of summer to guard against this possibility. But, when we switched to an electricity market, this was forgotten.

This year, we failed to refill the reservoirs, and levels are now unusually low, and declining fast. They could bottom out if it does not rain heavily in the next month or so. The ability of our fossil fuel power stations to step into the gap has been severely restricted. We used to get 20% of our electricity from gas-fired power stations, but six years ago, as part of their decarbonisation policy, the previous government banned further exploration, and we are now desperately short of fuel. The new government is encouraging new exploration efforts, but it will be too little too late.

And the situation has been made worse by poor market design. New Zealand was one of the pioneers of electricity markets, and chose a risky model, which has proved to be seriously flawed – it has failed to deliver sufficient generating capacity to get us through a dry year.

As a result, the problems this year have led to wholesale market prices rising to ridiculous levels – as much as £1/kWh. This has already caused some factories to shut down; others are under threat. The politicians are beginning to realise that the energy crisis could have serious effects on consumers, and there is speculation that they will be forced to intervene. This could mean forcing our gas and coal-fired power stations to run flat out day and night – assuming they have got enough fuel, which is not at all certain. Failing this, the only solution in the short term may be rolling blackouts. That will cause major disruption all over the country.

How did we get here?
Firstly, the electricity market is simply not fit for purpose. The underlying propositions are that ‘electricity is a commodity like any other’ and that ‘when the price goes up, the demand goes down’. But electricity is not a commodity like any other, because it does not have an alternative good and it does not have significant price elasticity. So it isn't a market that Adam Smith would recognise. As two departing CEOs said, the way to make money in the market is to keep the system on the edge of a shortage. Which means that disaster is inevitable if a dry year occurs. An article I wrote that explains why the market is a failure can be found here. It recommends a single buyer market, a design which I believe would work because all it does is add genuine competition to the old integrated system, which did work quite well.

But another cause is the blind pursuit of ‘Net Zero’, which is what has driven the closing down of gas exploration and the desire to shut down our coal fired station, which, right now, is doing a vital job in keeping the lights on.

The long-term problem...

https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/n ... -blackouts

Why have your electricity bills gone up?

July 5, 2025 -- Are you paying more for your electricity? If so, you are not alone, as widespread price increases hit consumers across New Zealand. But why have people’s power bills gone up, and where is this money going? What’s going on?

Last year, the Commerce Commission announced it had agreed to increase revenue limits for national grid owner Transpower and local lines companies. The move, they said, was due to increasing costs for material and labour, higher interest rates, and rising levels of investment in the electricity network.

Consumer NZ told Stuff on Wednesday that, on average, electricity prices were 11% higher now than at the start of 2025, before the changes came in.

The price of tomatoes are getting close to $10/kg

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/360744 ... bills-gone

[AdamB]

How New Zealand...otherwise known as those folks with IQs 50 points higher than the prison colony descendants nearby, obviously got through the power supply threat by a narrow margin that would have killed all of the dunderheads in Australia.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/516 ... row-margin

[AdamB]

The price of tomatoes are getting close to $10/kg, f onily we Aussies knew how to grew stuff, the prices we pay for things wouldn't be so awful.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/360744 ... bills-gone