How 'bout a Union of Concerned Systems Engineers?

This CNBC article is reasonably accurate, but in reading it again I wondered who, besides a handful of systems engineers and others who understand how power grids work, could spot the absolutely ridiculous lies that are parroted millions of times over as truth?

SOURCE

The setup goes like this:

Meanwhile, legislators were anxious to pass a comprehensive energy bill that moves the state toward 100% clean energy by 2050. The two nuclear plants at issue provided nearly 4,200 megawatts of power, while two others on the edge of viability, Braidwood and LeSalle, provided another 4,700. For reference, 1,000 megawatts of energy will power a mid-size city, according to Bill Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

Now for the absurd comparisons that nobody seems to challenge anymore:

To replace that much power with renewables would have required a tremendous amount of new wind and solar construction in the state. The current capacity-weighted average size of a solar farm is 105 megawatts, and for wind it is 188 megawatts, Jason Ryan, spokesperson for American Clean Power, a membership organization representing the renewable industry, told CNBC.

Stated differently:

That means the state would’ve had to construct about 85 solar farms, or more than 47 wind farms.

The truth is that no volume of new wind and solar could replace 4,200 or 4,700 MW of nuclear power. Under no engineering analysis would 85 or 185 or 5,678 solar farms, or more than 47, or 89, or even all the wind farms in Europe put together at the same time—replace even one nuclear reactor. Not even one. Behold all the wind generation in Europe - representing maybe a trillion euros.

Nobody knows more about this problem than practicing system and power engineers. Yet, nobody wants to listen to them. They've been muzzled like a yappy dog whose owners are weary of the noise, without realizing (or maybe knowing) that the dog is warning them of serious danger.

In the old days of integrated resource planning for vertically-integrated resources, the power and system engineers had a stronger voice but politicians mandating wind-solar-batteries have muzzled them.

Fred Stafford recently posted something that got me thinking about this and made me grumpy at the absurdity of it. When objective resource planning occurs, as is sometimes the case with TVA, wind-solar-battery Rube Goldberg Machines are easily eliminated (see below).

Mark Nelson has spoken and written extensively on the problems with the maintenance-upgrade problems with the French nuclear power fleet. He uses a wonderful analogy from The Giving Tree—the story of the tree that gave itself away till it was a stump. Many in North America pity France’s problems. We do it so much better here.

Imagine my surprise when I got this message from a legitimate, practicing electrical power systems engineer, askimg me (a lawyer) to let people know that we have a France problem—we just don’t know it yet:

Hello Mr. Randall. Thanks for your efforts to educate the public about energy policy. I have worked in the US electric utility industry for thirty years. One consequence of mandating adoption of renewable power generation on one hand and closing base load operating nuclear, coal and natural gas fired power plants on the other hand is that the remaining pool of dispatchable electric power plants become critical must run units in regional ISO power pools. As a result, ISO frequently deny permission to schedule an outage to remove a unit from service to perform routine maintenance. The economics of today's energy deregulation are so tight that some Utilities accept the ISO decision to disallow a scheduled maintenance outage. As you have pointed out, entropy is always active. Political green energy policy coupled with deregulation have created a situation where the pool of critical must run generating units will become much more unreliable in the near future.

May I suggest that you read that a few times. For all of the political lip service given to reliability—and despite multiple deaths in Texas—nothing is changing. And this engineer is not the only one who has contacted me.

Meredith Angwin deserves great credit for bringing this topic to the surface yet there does not seem to be much that’s being done to improve the situation except talk.

One of the most absurd pseudo-scientific groups in the USA—at least as to nuclear power and power systems—is the so-called “Union of Concerned Scientists.” In my view, they're tied with the Natural Resources Defense Council for lack of legitimacy.

Union of Concerned Systems Engineers?

How much better off would Civilization be if we could form a Union of Concerned Systems Engineers to remove their muzzle, give them a voice, and help warn the average voter of the serious risks we face? Some would need anonymity and protection. How many times do we read stories about would-be whistleblowers—with inside information—who were either silenced or who just did not have a way to get the word out about lurking dangers and defects, bad practices, and the proverbial:

It seems like we would all be a lot better off if we listened a lot more to systems engineers and a lot less to special interest groups and the politicians they support. But that’s where this idea will end unless some person or two or three takes this up. The “system” is far too dysfunctional to fix itself.