One of my favorite blogs, Not a Lot of People Know That, never fails to bring some sanity to the Climate Change Debate. Today it carries a cautionary tale entitled ‘Unprecedented’: Energy operator in daily fight to keep lights on in Australia. It describes that the problems caused by an increasing level of wind and solar power have forced the power system to change faster than expected and that it was failing to keep up. Apparently, the grid is holding up but only because the energy market operator is intervening on a daily basis to keep the lights on.
This is one of the problems with relying too heavily on one source of energy, especially when that form of energy (renewables like wind and solar) only generates electricity intermittently. Wind and solar are becoming a more important part of our energy mix, but moving too fast, too soon is a recipe for disaster. It’s much better to have an “all of the above” strategy when is comes to energy policy in the United States.