The future of energy generation and storage

[qldfrog]

Is gas quicker to build?

Yes but more expensive than coal

 

[qldfrog]

Yes but more expensive than coal

To rephrase more expensive as base load, is easier to start stop to follow the wimps of solar/wind erratic production or absence of..
As someone on 100% PV plus batteries, i have a pretty good understanding of panels production

 

[SirRumpole]

1. Engineering and economics has given way to politics and ideology as the basis for decision making.

2. The industry focus has shifted from cost minimisation to revenue maximisation.

That's it really. Fix those two points and the rest just goes away.

What can bring about that change ?

Only disaster I'm afraid as you have previously mentioned.

 

[qldfrog]

What can bring about that change ?

Only disaster I'm afraid as you have previously mentioned.

I think so, i am afraid.and it will hurt for a while as there are no overnight solutions ...

 

[sptrawler]

China has built a 20MW wind turbine, that is amazing IMO.

The largest turbine in history is turned on in China: It shouldn't be causing this

China turns on the biggest turbine in history. This shouldn't be the result of it. It has the potential to generate power for thousands of households.

www.eldiario24.com

On August 28, Mingyang Smart Energy, a maker of wind turbines, installed this 20 MW clean energy source. The turbine from Mingyang has been thoughtfully engineered to resist the wrath of typhoons and flourish at medium-to-high wind speeds. It’s interesting to note that it can tolerate winds of up to 79.8 m/s. It is definitely one of the strongest and best-built wind turbines so far.

Experts, however, are observing unexpected consequences that raise questions about the wider impact of such large installations, even though their capabilities are revolutionary.

The unit’s design is lightweight and versatile. The turbine’s generator, gearbox, and other vital parts are housed in this enormous nacelle. The turbine’s rotor diameter, which ranges from 260 to 292 meters (853 to 958 ft), is interesting. “A maximum swept area equivalent to nine soccer fields” is reportedly covered by this.

Well that didn't last long.

MSN

The world’s largest wind turbine, the MySE18.X-20MW, recently experienced significant damage during testing, raising questions about its durability and design.

 

[sptrawler]

Is gas quicker to build?

Yes gas is a lot quicker to build, but as numb nuts IFocus seems to be forgetting, gas causes emissions and in reality has to be replaced by 2050 also.

The other issue is gas isn't an endless resource, it is fairly limited even at the moment, that is why Kurri Kurri is going to be run on diesel they can't get the gas supply to it yet.

The raving lunatic left wing wally's demanded that the Kurri Kurri be started on gas and hydrogen, now the muppets haven't even got gas to it and hydrogen has gone off the song sheet, as most of their brain farts do.

Snowy Hydro’s Kurri Kurri generator to run on diesel for months

The new 660-megawatt power station will begin operating in December but only switch to gas early next year, with green hydrogen now a long-term option.

www.afr.com

Snowy Hydro will have to run the first unit at its new Kurri Kurri power station in NSW on diesel instead of gas for at least two months once it comes online, and has no schedule for introducing green hydrogen into the fuel mix, despite Labor’s initial stipulation.

As you know the left are fantastic at being talking heads, but are usually heads with sod all in them, as Ifocus keeps displaying.
Focus is the least thing that they are endowed with.

So in the long term it is either renewables and nuclear, or renewables and storage as they are the only viable long term zero emission power sources available at this time.

 

[sptrawler]

I'll try and help you out here... nuclear, gas and renewables... how long did you work in the area?

The nuclear so called plan requires dam near as much gas as just renewables


Meow...

Carry on.

You really are thick, aren't you, you don't seem to understand that gas is a pollutant and seen as a stop gap solution until renewable/storage, or renewable/nuclear give 100% clean energy.

Are you really that dumb, that you haven't noticed the activists taking on Woodside and Santos over emissions? That's gas mate.

You need to stop embarrassing yourself by constantly displaying your ignorance.

Anyway moving on, hopefully with less of the personal attacks, that you seem to favour.

 

[Smurf1976]

The other issue is gas isn't an endless resource

I'll avoid personal comments but this is a key issue.

At the global level about 10% of known gas reserves are in Western countries. As for the rest, the big problem is most of it's in places that could be considered extremely problematic from a Western perspective.

 

[sptrawler]

I'll avoid personal comments but this is a key issue.

At the global level about 10% of known gas reserves are in Western countries. As for the rest, the big problem is most of it's in places that could be considered extremely problematic from a Western perspective.

The other issue is a large portion of the population now have an expectation that fossil fuel is going to be stopped, turning that momentum around wouldn't be easy.
IMO the cat is out of the bag so to speak, the extreme left want gas stopped asap, that momentum will only increase.
Let's be honest 20 years ago, coal was the future, now look at the situation.
2050 is only 35 years away I can't see this push slowing down, so to think gas will be acceptable in 2050 with current sentiment, is wishful thinking.
I'm not a greenie, but I am a realist, this momentum will only increase and the Government is feeding it by demonising fossil fuel.
By demonising fossil fuel and nuclear, they are painting themselves into a corner IMO.
As we say, time will tell.

We must end coal and gas by 2030 and stop pouring fuel on the climate crisis: Greens | The Australian Greens

On the back of the latest alarming IPCC report, the Greens have reiterated their policy platform of no new coal and gas by 2030, a meaningful just transitions’ package for affected workers, as well as a plan to get one million homes off gas and ensure energy efficient rental homes for the tw

greens.org.au

 

[sptrawler]

This mob can be a bit over the top, but this article sums up the situation that is developing and isn't being addressed and it does mention the cost of electricity being central to our future.

The four causes of Australia's productivity decline

Last week, ABC’s Ian Verrender published an article on the “productivity conundrum” preventing the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) from cutting interest rates. “Like many other developed countries, our productivity growth has gone down the shoot”, wrote Verrender. “In many ways, ours has been...

www.macrobusiness.com.au

 

[basilio]

Peter Duttons fantasy story about Nuclear Power being a key part in Australias energy future is being destroyed piece by piece.

One of the main causalities of this proposal will be the millions of housholds and businesses who have invested in solar power. The major beneficiary would be the large power companies selling baseload power. The biggest costs will be incurred by customers paying for super expensive nuclear power and taxpayers funding the nuclear build.

Excellent analysis here by Giles Parkinson. I have edited large slabs of detail. Well worth reading in full.

Solar switch off: Dutton’s nuclear plan amounts to declaration of war against household energy systems​

Solar panels on a house roof

Giles Parkinson
Dec 16, 2024
0


Policy & Planning
Did you notice the headlines when Australia’s energy regulators gave notice of new protocols that would allow rooftop solar systems to be switched off – maybe once a year in an emergency to ensure that the lights stay on?

Imagine, then, the potential response to news that rooftop solar system might have to be switched off, or curtailed, on an almost daily basis – just to accommodate the 14 gigawatts of nuclear power that the Coalition says it intends to jam into the Australian grid should it be returned to government.

That is the reality from Peter Dutton’s focus on large centralised, baseload power systems, which, to be successful, must put a stop of the switch towards distributed and flexible consumer energy resources, much of it owned and operated by households and small businesses.

The Dutton nuclear plan has already shocked many with its cavalier disregard for climate science, grid engineering, energy reliability, and the costs to the country and consumers.

It says it is unable to say if or when its power plan might deliver a reduction in energy prices, but the biggest shock of all might be what it means for households, and the consumer energy resources (CER) that they might want to own – rooftop PV, home batteries and electric vehicles.

The dominance of the grid is retained, initially by the big utilities who have so comprehensively screwed consumers in recent years, and then by big government, who will have to be the owners of the nuclear plants because no private investor will risk its money on the technology.

But its own modelling depicts a dystopian future that should concern all households. It assumes significantly less electricity production, suggests a much smaller economy and a slow take up of electrification and electric vehicles.

This is critically important. Almost every energy expert in the country predicts that more than half of all electricity production by the 2040s will come from consumers themselves – through rooftop solar, smart appliances and supported by household batteries and EVs that will provide crucial support for the grid.

In the Coalition’s plan, this does not exist.

And the reason for that is quire simple: If the Coalition’s fleet of nuclear power plants are to deliver the modelled 38 per cent of all power generation, they will need to be operating at very high capacity factors, meaning they will seek to be “always on”.

That means generating at or near 13 GW at all times. Even in the middle of the day, when rooftop solar has been eating into demand to such an extent that minimum “operating” demand levels – the demand that must be met by large scale energy sources – has already fallen to 10 GW.

Another 50 GW of rooftop solar is predicted by the time that the Coalition’s nuclear power plants are built.

Federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen says this would result in rooftop solar being curtailed about 67 per cent of the time – or several hours a day, every day, on average, and a lot not being installed.

“What we would see is solar, Australia’s booming solar industry stopped in its tracks,” Bowen said.

“Analysis shows that more than 60% of the rooftop solar operating during the day would have to be switched off in that circumstance, couldn’t feed into the grid.

“More than 60% on a regular basis, would just not be able to operate and feed into the grid at any particular time.

“Now that undermines the fundamental economics of the rooftop solar industry, which is developed in Australia in no small part due to the Renewable Energy Target the previous Labor government put in place, which the Liberal Party opposed, which Tony Abbott tried to abolish, and which they still don’t believe in.”

SEC chief executive John Grimes agreed, noting that there are 4 million households and small business owners saving money with rooftop

...... Dutton’s obsession with baseload, and his failure to understand the flexibility and advantages of consumer resources and new technologies, was revealed on Friday when he sought to demonise rooftop solar by claiming it could not charge an EV and a household battery at the same time.

Clean Energy Council chief Kane Thornton says Dutton’s plan will be a massive shock and concern to investors who have invested $40 billion into large-sale renewable energy in Australia since 2020.

“A nuclear-powered energy grid would also be a disaster for the four million Australian homes that have already installed a rooftop solar system as a way to lower their power bills,” Thornton said in a statement.

“These systems would have to be switched off regularly if Australia was to move to inflexible nuclear power.

“This would be absurd, forcing the cheapest form of generation on people’s homes to turn off so that the most expensive could continue to operate around the clock.”
See also:
Tesla says Dutton’s nuclear plan will result in “severe” curtailment of household rooftop solar
“You can’t charge your battery and your car at same time:” Dutton does not have a clue about energy
Biggest losers from Coalition’s nuclear plan will be Australia’s 4 million solar households, industry says
Energy Insiders Podcast: Dutton’s high stakes, low sense nuclear plan
With the election of Donald Trump in the US, the misinformation on social media, and an election to be held in Australia next year, the zone – to borrow an expression from one of the US president elect’s former advisors – is going to be “flooded with ****.” If you wish to support independent media, and accurate information, please consider supporting Renew Economy by going to this page.

Giles Parkinson
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of Renew Economy, and of its sister sites One Step Off The Grid and the EV-focused The Driven. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast. Giles has been a journalist for more than 40 years and is a former deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review. You can find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

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[basilio]

This is Teslas take on the Peter Dutton Nuclear Fantasy proposal.

Tesla says Dutton’s nuclear plan will result in “severe” curtailment of household rooftop solar​

Australian Opposition Leader Peter Dutton speaks to shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien during House of Representatives Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra, Monday, September 9, 2024. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch) NO ARCHIVING

Giles Parkinson
Dec 16, 2024

Nuclear Policy & Planning Rooftop PV Solar

Tesla, the world’s biggest electric car maker and leading supplier of utility scale and household batteries, has warned that Australian households face “severe curtailment” of their rooftop solar PV systems under the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plan.

The warning comes in Tesla’s late submission to the select committee on nuclear energy, where it says there is no room for both technologies to operate at the same time.

Tesla says there will be no room in the grid for more than 2 gigawatts of baseload. The federal Coalition announced on Friday that it wants to build 14 gigawatts of “always on” nuclear.

“Nuclear is a complex technology to integrate into the power system, with constraints around ramping and load following (e.g. oscillating the pressurized reactor core) meaning it acts as a traditional baseload supply,” Tesla writes.

“Any large-scale build out of this type of inflexible baseload supply will therefore be impacted by minimum generation levels, resulting in either low-capacity factors for the nuclear plants and/or unit decommitment (bidding out of the market), or severe curtailment of cheaper rooftop solar and renewables.”

Tesla says Dutton’s nuclear plan will result in “severe” curtailment of household rooftop solar

Tesla says Dutton’s nuclear plan would result in “severe” curtailment of household rooftop PV, and argues there is little room for any “baseload” on Australia’s …

reneweconomy.com.au

 

[sptrawler]

This is Teslas take on the Peter Dutton Nuclear Fantasy proposal.

Tesla says Dutton’s nuclear plan will result in “severe” curtailment of household rooftop solar​

View attachment 189593Australian Opposition Leader Peter Dutton speaks to shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien during House of Representatives Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra, Monday, September 9, 2024. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch) NO ARCHIVING

Giles Parkinson
Dec 16, 2024

Nuclear Policy & Planning Rooftop PV Solar

Tesla, the world’s biggest electric car maker and leading supplier of utility scale and household batteries, has warned that Australian households face “severe curtailment” of their rooftop solar PV systems under the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plan.

The warning comes in Tesla’s late submission to the select committee on nuclear energy, where it says there is no room for both technologies to operate at the same time.

Tesla says there will be no room in the grid for more than 2 gigawatts of baseload. The federal Coalition announced on Friday that it wants to build 14 gigawatts of “always on” nuclear.

“Nuclear is a complex technology to integrate into the power system, with constraints around ramping and load following (e.g. oscillating the pressurized reactor core) meaning it acts as a traditional baseload supply,” Tesla writes.

“Any large-scale build out of this type of inflexible baseload supply will therefore be impacted by minimum generation levels, resulting in either low-capacity factors for the nuclear plants and/or unit decommitment (bidding out of the market), or severe curtailment of cheaper rooftop solar and renewables.”

Tesla says Dutton’s nuclear plan will result in “severe” curtailment of household rooftop solar

Tesla says Dutton’s nuclear plan would result in “severe” curtailment of household rooftop PV, and argues there is little room for any “baseload” on Australia’s …

reneweconomy.com.au

Not that I'm a fan of nuclear, but if the rooftop generation is surplus to demand, it could be used to charge storage, which then could be onsold to business.
Curtailment is only required when generation exceeds demand and there is no storage to soak up the excess generation.
Therfore it would make sense to just add more storage and onsell the power to business at a competitive price, that encourages more business investment.
The other obvious benefit for Tesla would be, if households are getting curtailed, a Tesla powerwall battery on the house would become a more attractive proposition.
The flip side of the argument is, if rooftop solar isn't being curtailed at peak generation times, it is therefore required and would indicate you don't have a lot of surplus generation.
Using their statement there will only be enough room for 2GW of baseload, is that in summer, winter, spring? because demand changes dependant on seasons.
Like I keep saying, it is a complex issue and the end game is to have 100% clean energy.

 

[basilio]

Not that I'm a fan of nuclear, but if the rooftop generation is surplus to demand, it could be used to charge storage, which then could be onsold to business.
Curtailment is only required when generation exceeds demand and there is no storage to soak up the excess generation.
Therfore it would make sense to just add more storage and onsell the power to business at a competitive price, that encourages more business investment.
The other obvious benefit for Tesla would be, if households are getting curtailed, a Tesla powerwall battery on the house would become a more attractive proposition.
The flip side of the argument is, if rooftop solar isn't being curtailed at peak generation times, it is therefore required and would indicate you don't have a lot of surplus generation.
Like I keep saying it is a complex issue.

Hang on SP. What is currently happening is that rooftop solar power plus wind is effectively supplying the vast bulk of daytime energy requirements. That is why coal fired power stations are financially struggling.

The Coalition proposal would prioritise energy supply from nuclear power over energy supplied by millions of solar rooftops. Rooftop Solar power costs very little. in fact power companies pay 4.5c PkWH for it. Nuclear power on the other hand will cost far, far more than that.

The shutting down of roof top solar would be required to ensure millions of homes use nuclear powered electricity rather than what is being produced on site.

 

[sptrawler]

Hang on SP. What is currently happening is that rooftop solar power plus wind is effectively supplying the vast bulk of daytime energy requirements. That is why coal fired power stations are financially struggling.

The Coalition proposal would prioritise energy supply from nuclear power over energy supplied by millions of solar rooftops. Rooftop Solar power costs very little. in fact power companies pay 4.5c PkWH for it. Nuclear power on the other hand will cost far, far more than that.

The shutting down of roof top solar would be required to ensure millions of homes use nuclear powered electricity rather than what is being produced on site.

Like I said I'm not a great fan of nuclear, however if you are shutting down rooftop solar that would indicate you haven't installed enough storage, at the end of the day if you can onsell electricity cheaply it will encourage business to grow, as per Twiggy and most other hydrogen plans being abandoned due to high energy costs.
If there is 2GW of base load that can be supplied 24/7 by a reactor, it allows that 2GW of renewable generation to be onsold to stimulate growth.
The downside of using the renewables to supply that 2GW of base load is it will require 4GW of renewables and 6GW of storage to supply it 24/7, just another way of looking at the same issue.
The other issue is the rooftop solar is curtailed a few times a year, how many times a year does that same rooftop not generate enough to export any?
I'm on my second lot of solar panels and I love them, but I know there are a lot more times I import power, than export it.
I export during the day often, I import overnight always.
IMO there isn't a right or wrong in this, the answer will probably be a mix of technologies, but at the moment all plans are political and a lot centres around point scoring.
If there is 2GW of baseload, that is where the discussion should be, Duttons point scoring and so is Bowen, that's politics.

On a side note Bas, in W.A I'm pretty sure any new rooftop solar installations don't get any feed in tarrif payment. I don't know about over East.

 

[SirRumpole]

I'm on my second lot of solar panels and I love them, but I know there are a lot more times I import power, than export it.
I export during the day often, I import overnight always.

Don't have batteries?

Did you check out that possibility?

 

[sptrawler]

Don't have batteries?

Did you check out that possibility?

It isn't worth it yet, too costly and too long a payback time.
I'm hoping on the vehicle to grid, vehicle to home situation to improve, then get the car and battery together.

 

[basilio]

It isn't worth it yet, too costly and too long a payback time.
I'm hoping on the vehicle to grid, vehicle to home situation to improve, then get the car and battery together.

That is the best idea and in fact should be quite close to technical/financial reality .

 

[moXJO]

Thanks for the replies all. Having worked on large projects and interacted from tradesmen to the politicians. I have zero faith in our ability to get this right.

 

[finicky]

How to stop the renewables juggernaut​

Share
By Nick Hubble, Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Sweden and Norway are threatening to give Europe’s electricity market the snip. But they might cut down renewable energy globally instead.

You’ve got to admire our government’s ability to ignore the obvious. It’s clearly not in their own interest. Nor anybody else’s for that matter. And yet they stick to their guns on renewable energy regardless.

How far can politicians go in their green dream delusions? How long until they hit a wall built by physics, reality and power bills?

Actually, the reckoning may pop up somewhere surprising. And long before the lights go out too.

It’s state governments that are leading the fight back against renewables. That’s how the renewables transition is falling apart in the US. It’s how things are falling apart in the EU now too.

I wonder if we might learn from this Down Under?

The good news is that it’s a highly entertaining process. The Financial Times had me spraying coffee all over my keyboard last week:

‘Norway campaigns to cut energy links to Europe as power prices soar
‘Country’s energy minister describes “**** situation” as domestic prices hit highest level since 2009
‘Norway’s two governing parties want to scrap an electricity interconnector to Denmark, with the junior coalition partner also calling for a renegotiation of power links to the UK and Germany, as sky-high prices trigger panic in the rich Nordic country. A lack of wind in Germany and the North Sea will push electricity prices in southern Norway to NKr13.16 ($1.18) per kilowatt hour on
Thursday afternoon, their highest level since 2009 and almost 20 times their level just last week. “It’s an absolutely **** situation,” said Norway’s energy minister Terje Aasland.’

To be clear, cutting power links is direct sabotage of the EU’s energy policy. It relies on Nordic electricity getting shuffled around central Europe to function.

Swedes don’t like being outdone by Norwegians. And they also know who to blame for their own power chaos. At one point, electricity prices in southern Sweden were 18,000% higher than in central Sweden!

The Swedish Prime Minister gave the German energy policy an absolute pasting as a result:

‘I realise that nobody is happy when I say that “if we hadn’t shut down half of nuclear power, we wouldn’t have these problems”. But it’s true and it needs to be said.’

‘I’m furious with the Germans’, the government’s energy minister added. Just in case the Germans didn’t know who the Swedish PM was referring to.

The Swedes aren’t just hurling insults though. And they didn’t just have the foresight to stick with and expand their own nuclear power while the Germans shut down theirs.

Sweden also rejected a new power interconnector cable with Germany in June. Specifically, because the German electricity market is a mess thanks to renewables.

No doubt the Swedes are laughing about the Norwegians’ delayed realisation as much as me. But now that Norway is considering giving Europe the snip on its highly reliable hydropower too, what happens to the countries relying on it?

They may find out the hard way.

And the same chaos may be coming our way here in Australia too.

Our own politicians are busy building interconnector grids across the country.

But some states are pursuing the renewable energy transition a lot faster than others. Power bills and reliability are diverging as a result.

As H.L. Mencken said, ‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard’.

But thanks to the vast transmission grid rollout, the incentives and consequences might not be so aligned much longer. Eventually the renewable energy chaos of South Australia threatens to hammer into my power bill in Queensland too.

Will Australian voters put up with it? Will Queensland power bill payers be willing to shuffle their power south when it’s cloudy? Will they be happy to pay for other states’ green dreams on their own power bills? While being lambasted in the press and national parliament for their fossil fuel heavy grid?

Or will they behave like the Vikings and give southerners the snip?

Nuclear and renewables don’t mix​

Some of you are hoping the Coalition’s nuclear plans will fix all this. But Sweden’s experience makes the precise point I’ve been trying to articulate for months now. Attach some nuclear power plants to an interconnected grid that is dominated by renewables, and you still get plenty of chaos.

Nuclear is a solution that doesn’t fit the problem which renewables create. I compared it to bullets that don’t fit into a barrel — a very embarrassing historical experience for the Irish.

The instability of renewables is not well countered by nuclear because of its high fixed costs. Nuclear is only cost efficient if it’s running at full capacity. But renewables are built to the point of overcapacity. This means everything else on the grid must cycle up and down to adjust for renewables’ perfidious nature.

There’s been a lot of controversy about models that assume Australia’s potential nuclear power plants will only run at 60% of their capacity. 90% would be fairer.

But if you are planning on adjusting nuclear output for the intermittency of renewables, who knows what capacity nuclear will run at?

You’d have to ask the weatherman. And he gets enough blame as it is.

In addition to this, the key benefit of nuclear is that it doesn’t need the absurdly large grid and transmission infrastructure projects that a renewables-based grid does.

But if we are going to build a lot of renewables and we’re going to build grid infrastructure for them anyway, then what’s the point?

That’s what the Swedes and Norwegians must be asking themselves now. They got their own energy policy more or less right. And built vastly expensive interconnections to other countries. But now Germany’s ridiculous decisions are blowing up Scandinavian electricity bills as a result.

The political incentives which interconnectors create are wacko.

Some states in Australia must be looking at certain other ones and wondering why they’d want interconnector cable links to those places. Why allow some states to import your on-demand power and export the costs of their bad energy policy? Why should some states pay for the green dream delusions of others?

Because that’s how the green dream works at its very core. It reshuffles problems around to places that aren’t included in the modelling, so they don’t exist.

Everyone presumed they can import clean renewables from somewhere else whenever needed. You just assume away the challenge of intermittency by moving it outside your model’s remit. Now Europeans are discovering where this leaves them as a whole: in a hole.

It seems to me that moving to a nuclear dominated system makes sense. Then you don’t need batteries, renewables or an electricity grid that amounts to the largest infrastructure project in history by a large order of magnitude. There are no unpredictable swings in power supply and costs are stable.

But nobody is proposing that. It’s bizarrely fashionable to declare that the energy transition needs to feature a diversified mix of power sources.

If diversified energy sources are great, then why not add wind, solar, hydrogen and hydro power to your car?

Because the costs are too high.

It’s as if our politics are controlled by financial interests in a long list of power industries that all want a cut. The rent-seekers are all going to get a piece of the taxpayer’s pie.

We’re all too busy thinking about subsidies, projects and jobs to acknowledge the French elephant in the room. A nuclear based grid that performs well.

Anyway, if you believe politics has some hope of stopping the renewable energy juggernaut, you now know where to look. In coming years it’ll be up to state governments trying to protect their voters from the consequences of other state governments’ energy policy to do the job.

Democracy works by competition between governments, not within governments. And it’s going to be hilarious to watch that play out.

Unfortunately, it’ll be an expensive form of entertainment for all of us. Which means you’ll be needing the money to afford it.