Bazz, "He points out as you demand better reliability it becomes more and more difficult to achieve 100% reliability."

Isn't GC talking about backup (not thermal) to go with wind generation, i.e. gravity, chemical etc. batteries, to guarantee the 35% is met? That leaves 65% from other sources to add.

I'm getting that the stronger the reliability guarantee, the greater must be the battery backup capacity, but I don't get the figurings.

Me "...to guarantee the 35% is met", I meant at ALL times, and at a minimum.

As far as I can tell, this article relies on three errors:
Firstly, although Geoff Carmody refers to "Generation plus storage" his calculations are based on a complete absence of storage.

Secondly, he then flaunts his lack of reasoning by assuming the cost of providing reliable electricity form non dispatchable renewables to be directly proportional to their market share!

Thirdly, he doesn't even understand the meaning of the terms he considers to be buzzwords. So for the benefit of those who failed to spot his errors, 'demand response' doesn't mean "rationing supply because we haven't enough"; it means temporarily reducing demand so we don't need to ration supply. And 'behind the meter adjustments' mean BUYING (rather than simply taking) electricity from those who generate/store their own.

He also seems a bit clueless about alternatives, being needlessly fixated on baseload despite the bases being the times when supply shortages are least likely to occur.

'Tis a bit worrying that someone with a résumé as impressive as his can be so bad at thinking. But he is an economist, so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised.

ALTRAV,
Before taking a page out of China's history book, try reading the chapter!
One lot of politicians organised an astroturfed uprising against their political opponents and those who had the temerity to criticise them. They didn't drain the swamp; they invaded it and set about making it much deeper. The people may have thought they'd put the scum on notice, but they soon found the new scum had put the people on notice.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Bazz,
Aren't California's current blackouts due to the bushfires? I know they had supply problems a few months ago (partly due to one of the generation companies going bust) but AIUI the resultant blackouts weren't anywhere near that long.

There's nothing inevitable about severe blackouts. Anyway, problems are generally better solved by evolution than revolution.

Aidan, no it is a market failure as far as I can tell and it is not
just California. One case that was discussed was Connecticut although
a lot of it was about California.
Trying to remember where I read about it.
It was a link from another article.
It sounded very much like here with some subsidies being involved but
they were paid to the coal stations. Also some stations are shut down
for whole seasons and paid a retainer then contracted to fire up as needed.

Luciferase, the whole storage thing seems to me to fraught with a
particular difficulty which I have raised previously.
How much storage you have depends on how many windless overcast days
you plan to cover.
When you decide to consume the storage and you say 75% exhaust it then
you have to recharge it, possibly overnight in off peak IF the wind blows.
Then you might get it back to 66%, but then what if tomorrow is again
windless and overcast ? Does that mean your storage needs to be twice
the size ? This why Malcolm's Snowy hydro 2.0 is attractive it will
be many days worth of some part of the generation backup.
As far as batteries are concerned I think they might be sucker bait
other than for wind lull filling. The UK would need 14000 like SAs.
Some will argue about that figure but the whole field is subject to
a lot of surmise like on here.
It will not be resolved until someone links a computer to AEMO and
uses a virtual network but with realtime load, wind & sun data.

SA wind at the moment 525 Mwatt.