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Jeff Flake Doesn’t Understand Baseload Power

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: People, I know he’s darn purty, but seriously, if you care about the future of energy in this country DO NOT think Jeff Flake is a 2020 savior, no matter what Sean Penn tells you. He doesn’t even understand the basics of energy baseload.

In a recent speech at St. Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, in what was widely reported as the first speech of the 2020 Presidential campaign, Arizona (Short-Time) Senator Jeff Flake said that maybe, just MAYBE, the Republican Party should consider accepting climate change science and consider doing something about it.
But before you give him a standing ovation, in literally the next breath – the next breath – Flake insisted, all evidence to the contrary, that the country needs more nuclear power as “baseload” power if we’re going to have more renewables added to the grid.
(*Ring, ring* Senator Flake? It’s Germany. They’d like to explain how they were able to add wind and solar and still commit to shutting down all their nuclear plants by 2022.)
(On the plus side, he pronounced nuclear right.)

SolarWakeup’s View: So Senator Jeff Flake, who is leaving the Senate in November because of the “divisiveness” of Washington politics in the age of President Donald J. Trump, went up to New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College last Friday to discuss said divisiveness and, as mentioned above, reportedly launch a 2020 Presidential campaign.

That would have been largely unremarkable, even for a political junkie like me. But then a woman, in the last question of the session, asked this:

“Do you see a path forward on climate change?”

And at that moment, Flake would have done well to heed Mark Twain and kept his mouth shut. But he just had to weigh in.

He started off OK, talking about how great solar has been in Arizona and how increased energy storage (particularly utility-scale storage) is offering market-based opportunities that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. He added that it might also be a nice change for the Republican Party to accept that climate change is real and maybe try to do something about it. And if he’d just stopped there…..but, well, he just couldn’t.

Democrats, he says, need to accept that the United States needs a carbon-free baseload power source and – wait for it – nuclear power is the answer.

Oh, Jeff – you were this close.

See, here’s the thing: Not only is “baseload” an increasingly irrelevant term in a world of electricity storage – something you had just praised seconds ago – but even if that were a true thing, nuclear is definitively not the answer (at least not new nuclear power plants).

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I live in Ohio, and I am still paying for the Perry and the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plants built around 30 years ago through my electricity rates – and that’s after Davis-Besse’s containment cap started to rust away, forcing the plant to shut down for a year to get it fixed. They are expensive, they take a long time to build and they are dangerous.

(Ask me sometime about the story I once wrote about Davis-Besse’s advice to its neighbors in case of a meltdown – advice that included long sleeves, sunglasses and a hat).

And sometimes, even when you throw billions of dollars at these plants, they still don’t get built (South Carolina anyone?).

Look, I know Jeff Flake looks the part, but if he thinks nuclear power is the answer to bringing more renewables like solar on to the grid, then I’m sorry – he won’t get my vote. He shouldn’t get yours either.

More:

Jeff Flake: The Key To Solar Power Is More Nuclear Power (Sam Seder Podcast)

Jeff Flake delivers ‘Politics and Eggs’ speech (full video of speech; question comes at 45:26) (WMUR 9, Manchester, New Hampshire)

South Carolina Spent $9 Billion on Nuclear Reactors That Will Never Run. Now What? (Governing)

Germany’s nuclear phase-out explained (Deutsche Welle)

APS Is Trying To Kill Steyer-Backed RPS Initiative

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, is again trying to stifle solar development in the state that has the most insolation in the country, because reasons.

The utility behemoth, which wields enormous power in the state’s politics, is trying to kill a ballot initiative backed by progressive billionaire Tom Steyer that would raise the state’s RPS to 50% by 2030.
To counter the measure, APS is pushing hard for a bill in the legislature that would make the penalty for not making the RPS goals almost laughably negligible – $1,000-$5000, a penalty APS could pay with the change they find in their couch cushions.
Arizona is the third known Steyer-backed RPS initiative that is being considered for November’s elections. The other two initiatives are in Michigan and Nevada.

SolarWakeup’s View: I was once at a meeting in Arizona where there was a panel discussing the relationship between utilities and the solar industry, which I missed because of a bad burrito the night before. And what I heard about it afterward made me so sorry I’d missed it.

Apparently, a representative from Arizona Public Service (APS) – the state’s largest utility – nearly got into a fistfight with another panelist who dared criticize their solar policies. There was most certainly shouting and (allegedly) some shoving, which gives you a sense of the lengths APS will go to protect its electricity-production monopoly from an ever-increasingly powerful solar industry.

I use that story as a backdrop to the current attempt by the utility to beat the state’s solar industry into submission. This time, they are trying to stop a ballot initiative that would amend the state’s constitution to increase the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to 50% by 2030.

The initiative is the third known attempt by progressive billionaire Tom Steyer to get such an issue on the ballot (right now, attempts are being made in Michigan and Nevada). What’s interesting is that APS’ attempts to use a sledgehammer to kill a flea are happening before the ballot initiative even has enough signatures to get on the ballot – which may indicate how frightened they are that it just might pass.

The counter to the initiative that APS has concocted is a breathtaking display of the terrifying power they have in the state’s political structure and the shamelessness they have about wielding it so publicly. They have, through the legislature, introduced a bill that would limit the fines the state could levy on it for not making the modest RPS increase in time would be somewhere between $1,000 and $5,000.

Hell, those are fines that, in a pinch, I could pay (not that I’m offering). The idea that they would be an incentive for APS to increase its renewable energy production to meet the RPS requirements is laugh-out-loud ridiculous.

This is another attempt by APS to destroy the solar industry in Arizona before it can even get started. It cannot stand.

More:

Why APS Is Squashing The Clean Energy Vote (NBC 12 News)*

*Hearing Ryan Randazzo of The Arizona Republic compare APS to a lazy teenager is worth clicking on the link alone.

South Carolina Solar Soul Under Attack

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: The burgeoning South Carolina solar industry is being debated in the state’s legislature, with two conflicting bills offering significantly different visions of its future.

The utilities are at again (by which I mean lying) about a cost-shift to reduce how much the utilities pay solar customers under net metering
A second bill would remove a 2% cap on how much solar utilities have to accept, a measure designed to expand the industry”
Meanwhile, solar advocates worry that Dominion Energy’s attempt to buy the parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCEG) could damage solar’s prospects in the state

SolarWakeup’s View: All I can tell you is that I shook my head in disbelief as I perused all the South Carolina solar news lately.

I’ve seen this lunacy before, where a state is caught between a voracious anti-solar utility and, you know, its citizens. But some legislators in South Carolina, whose solar industry has only been growing since former Governor Nikki Haley signed net metering legislation into law in 2014, are trying to undo all the progress the state has made by essentially dismantling the work Haley began.

For reals. And this misguided attempt to kill the South Carolina solar industry is based on the same lie the utilities are telling Kentucky lawmakers to undermine the solar industry there, to wit: Solar customers are shifting costs to non-solar customers, a lie I have debunked so many times I’ve lost count.

To those of you new to this zombie lie, a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has said that though a miniscule cost shift happens, it only happens when a state reaches 10% solar penetration.

Wanna guess how much electricity South Carolina produces from solar? According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, 0.21%. So, yeah, the cost shift is a lie here just as much as it is in Kentucky.

Here, let’s let a South Carolina backer of the net metering destruction bill explain himself, courtesy of Sammy Fretwell of The State:

State Rep. Bill Sandifer, R-Oconee, said he is not opposed to solar power but the existing system is unfair to power companies and customers who don’t use solar energy.

Utilities say non-solar customers are paying to subsidize solar customers – a point sun-power advocates sharply dispute.

That is akin to socialism, Sandifer said. “It is totally wrong for customers, or ratepayers who are not utilizing solar, to be paying for the people who are utilizing it. This prevents that.’’

Aside from the mislabeling of net metering as a “subsidy” – it’s actually a free-market way of compensating solar users for the excess electricity produced (even Ayn Rand would be happy with this arrangement), Sandifer’s argument might as well have come from a SCEG spokesperson. (And as another aside, does the word “socialism” scare anyone under the age of 60 anymore? Lordy….)

Meanwhile, SCANA Corp., the parent company of SCEG, is up for sale, and Dominion Energy of Virginia is the buyer of choice for many. But solar advocates worry that such a purchase would further damage the industry because of Dominion’s lobbying might. I have no idea whether those concerns are real, but I tend to trust solar advocates of utility ones.

Opposing this idiotic bill are efforts to remove a 2% cap on solar capacity that most observers expect to be hit by the utilities this year. If that happens, the solar industry could stop growing and could well freeze in place.

So there you have it – the battle over the future of South Carolina solar is set – and now it’s up to the solar customers in the state to keep the worst-case scenario from happening. Let’s raise the cap and keep net metering – it’s really the best solution for everyone.

More:
Utility friendly politicians take aim at solar expansion in SC

South Carolina solar advocates worry Dominion-Scana deal will stall industry

Zombie Lie Informs Kentucky’s Attempt To Kill Its Solar Industry

Microsoft Turns Singapore Into Its Own Solar Central

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: Microsoft, in an interview with Greentech Media, explained why it was turning to approximately 60 MW of distributed solar to power its data centers in Singapore. Essentially:

The company said it had been burned before when it tried to build utility-scale solar projects in other countries, thanks to permitting issues and other local constrictions.
The limited land in Singapore to build a large-scale solar plant left them with one option that the city-state has in abundance: rooftop space.

Singapore’s skyline will have more rooftop distributed solar to power Microsoft’s data centers in the city-state.

SolarWakeup’s View: Microsoft, which doesn’t even appear on the Top 10 Businesses for solar in the United States, has decided to make a splash in Singapore by commissioning 60 MW of rooftop solar to power its data centers, Greentech Media reports.

Why distributed solar instead of the typical utility-scale solar plants it would fund? Well, the answer to that is simple – there’s just not enough land to do it properly.

After all, the city-state is only 277 square miles, total. And what land area it does have is densely packed with skyscrapers. Even if it wanted to do so, Microsoft would find it difficult to find enough open land to build a solar farm big enough to keep up with their data centers’ rapacious demand for energy.

Secondly, with distributed solar on the rooftops of downtown buildings, Microsoft runs less risk of the entire project going belly-up as they have seen in other countries in which they do business. This gives the massive software conglomerate the ability to control its own electrical future.

Microsoft’s solution to its land problem should hearten U.S. business that want to go solar but don’t feel as if they could find the space to build a solar project big enough to power their operations. New York City is already figuring this out, and maybe Microsoft can set the example other large corporations in the United States can follow to make their own solar dreams come true.

More:

Why Is Microsoft Getting Into Rooftop Solar?