{"id":41870,"date":"2018-12-21T07:32:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T12:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41870"},"modified":"2018-12-21T07:32:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T12:32:00","slug":"electricity-wont-save-us-from-our-oil-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41870","title":{"rendered":"Electricity won\u2019t save us from our oil\u00a0problems"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2018\/12\/20\/electricity-wont-save-us-from-our-oil-problems\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Electricity won\u2019t save us from our oil\u00a0problems<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Almost everyone seems to believe that our energy problems are primarily oil-related. Electricity will save us.<\/p>\n<p>I recently gave a talk to a group of IEEE\u00a0electricity researchers (primarily engineers) about the current energy situation and how welcoming it is for new technologies. Needless to say, this group did not come with the standard mindset. They wanted to understand what the electricity situation really is. They are very aware that intermittent renewables, including wind and solar, present many challenges. They didn\u2019t come with the preconceived notion that oil is the problem and electricity will save us.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t until I sat down and looked at the electricity situation that I realized how worrying it really is. Intermittent wind and solar cannot stand on their own. They also cannot scale up to the necessary level in the required time period. Instead, the way they are added to the grid artificially depresses wholesale electricity prices, driving other forms of generation out of business.\u00a0<strong>While intermittent wind and solar may <em>sound<\/em>sustainable, the way that they are added to the electric grid tends to push the overall electrical system toward collapse.\u00a0<\/strong>They act like parasites on the system.<\/p>\n<p>We end up with an electricity situation parallel to the chronic low-price problem we have for oil. Prices for producers, all along the electricity supply chain, fall too low. Of course, consumers don\u2019t complain about this problem.\u00a0The electricity system also becomes more fragile, as we depend to an ever greater extent on electricity supplies that may or may not be available at a reasonable price at a given point in time. The full extent of the problem doesn\u2019t become apparent immediately, either. We end up with both the electrical and oil systems speeding in the direction of collapse, while most observers are saying, \u201cBut prices aren\u2019t high. How can there possibly be a problem?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Electricity won\u2019t save us from our oil\u00a0problems Almost everyone seems to believe that our energy problems are primarily oil-related. Electricity will save us. I recently gave a talk to a group of IEEE\u00a0electricity researchers (primarily engineers) about the current energy situation and how welcoming it is for new technologies. Needless to say, this group did [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[1103,1233,588,1232],"class_list":["post-41870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-survival-2","tag-electricity","tag-gail-tverberg","tag-oil","tag-our-finite-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41871,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41870\/revisions\/41871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}