This article and blog series appears to primarily focus on fossil fuel plants failing in extreme weather events (which are growing more frequent). This is an important dimension to track, but isn't directly comparable to "normal" reliability - ie, how much storage do you need to keep your 100% wind+solar+hydro mix providing all your typical energy needs through a typical night (for example).

Also, I don't particularly think these articles make great arguments. For example, "Similarly, 56% of the generating capacity knocked offline came from gas plants during Winter Storm Uri". Texas' overall energy capacity mix is ~40% gas. So while yes, it is disproportionate, I don't think it's hugely so, especially without taking into account other factors - for example, typical solar capacity in winter.

The blog post that actually starts digging at some numbers (https://blog.ucsusa.org/mark-specht/how-reliable-are-gas-pow...) indicates that we might expect gas plants to have a reliability of ~70-80%.

From another blogpost from them, we can find a very rough estimate of solar/onland wind reliability of ~30-40% (measured in ELCC, same as the 70-80% figure above) https://blog.ucsusa.org/mark-specht/elcc-explained-the-criti...

So it's important to take into account the reliability derating of gas plants, but it doesn't really change the fact that solar/wind are in a significantly different class of reliability compared to gas plants.

> So while yes, it is disproportionate, I don't think it's hugely so, especially without taking into account other factors - for example, typical solar capacity in winter.

I would say that it is an important point, don't know if I'd go so far as to say huge. The argument that gas plants are a stable baseload which cannot be supplanted by renewables is undermined if they're disproportionately affected by such events.

I agree that they're in a different class, but I don't think that reliability is the right word. I think dispatchable is much closer to the way I understand you using it. Solar and wind don't have a capacity factor of 100% since they harvest energy rather than produce it from fuel, so as the trite meme goes "the sun doesn't shine at night" so you'll need some sort of plan for how to handle the lower output during the winter and at night (i.e. storage, overbuilding, larger grids).

Fossil fuel plants for the most part (they can become bottelnecked by gas pipeline capacity if all your heating is all off natural gas) has a lower capacity factor due to malfunctions or maintenance.

All that to say, I agree with you that wind and solar are not a 1-1 replacement for fossil fuels. I believe that the future is going to leverage their cheap costs when their available[0] rather than try to re-create the current system which evolved due to different constraints.

[0]: Different time of using pricing, larger and more responsive grids, and energy/heat storage (Rondo Energy).

I've lived in California for my whole life. A blackout in the 80's was an anomaly. They were so rare that I remember them as being fun, a little adventure, because they were very rare.

In current year California I experience them on a regular enough basis that they are an genuine annoyance, especially because they are most common in the high heat of Summer. It's bad enough that I have invested in backup batteries for my home so I don't lose my refridgerated food and other essentials.

One can blame PG&E, Wall Street, whomever, and they certainly bear fault, but what's changed is the Federal and California energy policy. They shut down the nuclear pathway and pushed "renewables". It became a religious issue in which simply questioning the notion that we can derive all our energy needs from "clean energy" makes you a bad person.

So now California has extremely expensive energy and poor reliability. It's a mess. But you don't live in California so it's OK right, no, not really, California is where they prototype these policies and you can see them being pushed to other countries and the rest of the US.

It really comes down to the old saw that doing dumb things is ultimately bad for you, no matter how good the intentions. Now we're in the retcon phase of this process where the apologists and beneficiaries of these policies try to gaslight us into believing that it was always this bad, and that things are actually getting better instead of worse.

California has a very high electricity costs, but it isn't because of renewables. There are many states which have much higher renewables penetration than California, but do not have its high prices [0].

> They shut down the nuclear pathway and pushed "renewables".

Part of it is due to Diablo Canyon. And I agree that shutting down existing nuclear is a questionable idea given that the majority of the cost is upfront. As for why it wasn't pursued further, one only has to look at the absolute bungling of Vogtl or Hinkley point.

Part is due to forest fire measures (as are the blackouts) [1].

They also still use a large amount of natural gas[2], which is particularly expensive in the state.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_renewab... [1]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/california-regul... [2]: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply#section-supply-t...

Diablo Canyon was a Gen I/II design from the 1950's/60's. Gen IV designs are far safer and cleaner, Thorium designs in particular, however they don't generate byproducts for nuclear weapons (boohoo), which is why the Thorium pathway was not taken.

If electricity was cheap it would give people inducements to use electric vehicles and appliances. It would be a market driven transition to these things instead of a policy driven one, which is doomed to fail as soon as the subsidies end.

> Gen IV designs are far safer and cleaner

Gen IV reactors are, for the most part, somewhere between a pipe dream and a spreadsheet. China is the only country to have built one, and we don't have clear view at its cost.

> Thorium ... which is why the Thorium pathway was not taken.

Pipe dream + tin foil hat thinking

> If electricity was cheap it would give people inducements to use electric vehicles

Electric cars are cheaper per mile driven in most places, especially if you charge at home.

> It would be a market driven transition to these things instead of a policy driven one

Policies create all markets. See for example the implicit subsidies granted to ICE cars by a either a total lack of carbon price (or outright ban on their pollution like that on leaded gasoline).

UK has similar share of renewables as California, yet no such regular blackouts. So now who is retconning what here :D

Just wait. California is where they start this stuff. California was an amazing place to live not too long ago. Good schools, affordable housing, (so) no major homeless issues, one of the most innovative and productive places in the entire world.

But thanks to the policies we're now on our way down. Human degradation is the norm here in our cities. Take a walk through any of California's major city downtowns. They're broken. The suburbs can still sort of pretend it's all fine though.

Don't say California voted for this, because in fact California has voted against the worst of these policies when they had the chance, only to be overturned by judges. Prop 187, which excluded undocumented people from the public benefits system is a prime example. Californians, probably wisely, decided they didn't want to create an incentive system for undocumented persons to come, and federal courts overturned it. It was one of many moves that changed the face of California and led us into a general decline.

Now entire nations have taken to non-prosecution and even incentivization of extra-legal immigration that they have not proven ready to absorb, including the USA itself. UK is now experiencing some political turmoil around unrestricted immigration, as are many other European countries (note that unrestricted immigration is most harmful to marginalized communities including POC, LGTBQ, and women).

So if the UK isn't getting as many blackouts as California is now, you just give need to give it a little more time. /rant

California blackouts have very little to do with supply, nuclear or renewables. It’s distribution. Poorly maintained transmission lines that blow down in storms or have to be shut down in wind to avoid fires. It’s infuriating I agree, but it’s not to do with renewables.

If they didn't spend so much money on renewables they could have used it on the grid.

Some of the dumb enviromental laws didn't help either. It could be pretty hard to clear trees from a legal perspective, which made maintenance more expensive and time consuming, leading to grid degradation.

> If they didn't spend so much money on renewables they could have used it on the grid.

Even if thats true, they wouldn't have though. The neglect of infrastructure by pg&e is pretty much classic corruption and profit extraction. In a different universe where pg&e isnt a terrible organization protected by political corruption, sure maybe but we don't live in that world sadly.

tree clearing regs are true but irrelevant to OPs point about renewables.