This is Not Cool

I used this graph in a presentation this week.
It’s a demonstration of what cheap batteries are doing, and why the gas magnates are so freaked out about the energy transition.

Two days, separated by 5 years of battery deployment, are represented here. What you can see is that in 2021, while a considerable amount of solar was being generated, there was an issue at sundown, during the part of the day when workers come home and fire up appliances, AC and the like, when fast ramping gas generators had to come online and bridge the gap between falling solar generation and peaking demand.
Fast forward to this year, and look what batteries, and increased imports of wind energy, have done to that ramping period, and gas demand in general.
You can understand why fracking baron and Energy Secretary Chris Wright is doing his best to sabotage clean energy.

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis:

Natural gas’ share of electricity generation in the market run by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) fell to a record low on May 16, dropping to just 3.1% of total generation. That day was not an outlier either; from May 13-17, gas’ share of daily CAISO output was less than 10%.

May is a relatively low-demand period in CAISO, which accounts for about 80% of the California electricity market. But comparing 2026 generation data through May 15 with previous years (2021and 2025) shows that the state’s long-running efforts to cut its reliance on gas-fired generation are paying off. California eliminated in-state coal generation more than a decade ago; a power plant in Utah supplying Los Angeles ended its coal use late last year.

In 2021, gas’ generation share never fell below 20% and was 40% or higher on 99 of those 135 days. In 2025, the number of high-market-share days (more than 40%) dropped sharply, to 56, but gas’ minimum daily share still never fell below 20%. This year has been a different story. There have been 68 days already when gas’ market share fell below 20%, and there has not been a single day when gas accounted for more than 50% of CAISO generation.

Continue reading “How Batteries, Wind and Solar are Pushing Gas out in California”

Interview with Heather Reams, President and CEO of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a clean energy group aimed at Republicans.

Exact Solar on Substack:

What’s New: 

Four GOP House members have introduced the American Energy Dominance Act, a bill designed to revive renewable energy and efficiency tax incentives that were phased out by 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

Why it matters:

The OBBBA’s jarring rollback of federal tax credits created market uncertainty in clean energy industries, stalled projects across the country, and forced almost $35 billion in in-progress projects to be cancelled. 

Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Lawler, Max Miller, and Mike Carey partnered with North America’s Building Trades Unions to draft the legislation.

The bill removes accelerated expiration dates for commercial solar, clean hydrogen, and building efficiency tax credits to secure domestic supply chains and protect union jobs.

Unfortunately, the bill does nothing to extend or reinstate 25D, the tax credit for residential solar installations.
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Unlikely this effort will succeed, but an election is coming.

Townhall:

As energy demand grows and costs continue to climb, many red states are adopting solar and energy storage as a practical way to lower utility costs and boost domestic manufacturing.

Continue reading “The Republican Reset on Solar”

“A challenge we thought we had beaten in the 1960s.”

Yeah, sort of like Measles, you dolt.

Weather Channel:

A flesh-eating New World screwworm was confirmed in a calf in Texas this week, news that could seriously damage the U.S. livestock industry and raise already high beef prices.

The parasitic larvae of the screwworm fly typically enter an animal through an open wound and feed on their flesh, eventually killing the animal if left untreated, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is rare for people to contract screwworm, and they do not pose any food safety issues.

Weather and climate have kept screwworms from entering the U.S., but climate change is extending its range northward, according to the National Institutes of Health. Warmer climates would also increase cattle tick populations and their range, which would also increase the outbreak potential for screwworm.

The parasite’s presence in the U.S. could be the result of a warming climate. Screwworms are cold-sensitive — they can’t survive unless low temperatures are regularly above freezing, year-round, according to Drovers, the oldest livestock publication in the U.S. Ideal conditions for adult flies are temperatures between 77 and 86, with relative humidity between 30-70%.

Continue reading “Are We Screw (Wormed)?”

Thank you sir.

Appearing on the Shannon Sharp podcast.

UPS has ordered 150 0f them.
Charging network building out.

They hate knowledge. They promote ignorance.
The whole premise of science is that there are facts – facts and physics that are not amenable to human whims. Nature does not respond to the Republican Party Platform.
Authoritarians find this threatening – they cannot mold science with a tweet.

New York Times:

The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate.

The National Science Foundation said it would send ships in June to begin removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.

Scientists have used data from the system to understand how the ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, how changes in ocean temperature such as marine heat waves might affect fisheries or signal bigger shifts in the climate, and coastal flooding along the East Coast.

Continue reading “Trump Admin Moves to Dismantle Key Ocean Sensor System”

“Yes, for now.”
Marco Rubio questioned by Rep. Sarah McBride.

As I’ve said before, the very first Dane I met on my first trip to Copenhagen was a soldier who had just demobilized from Afghanistan.
This colossal asshole Rubio devalues their lives and their loyalty to a democratic ideal.

Eye popping footage here of a solar thermal site in the Chinese desert.
I’m not a fan of thermal, which can have the advantage of energy storage with molten salt add-ons. But the low price of battery tech will probably limit the number of these that get built.

I was able to tour the site of Oracle’s new Stargate Data Center in Saline Township, Michigan yesterday.
Couple of observations.
The site is big, but worth noting as the video above does, there is a thousand acres of land in this parcel, and the actual build is 250 acres. The rest is being left as is – some of which will continue to be farmed, I assume as rented land, and some will be left as wetland and wooded land.

“Leave it all as farmland” was not on the table here. The former owners of the site made it clear they were not going to continue farming. This area, close to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, and squarely in the southeast Michigan Detroit Metro area, is under immense development pressure, and sprawl is rampant. The other option would very likely be to become a subdivided landscape of boxy MacMansions and concrete, which very often put greater pressure on local services without a commensurate increase in revenues.
Stargate will be paying the full cost for the wires and substations that will connect it to the larger grid. In addition, the project will be purchasing 1.4 gigawatts of battery storage that will be sited around the state, operated by the major utility DTE, and belong to the system and the ratepayer. That spend will provide more than half of the 2500 MW of storage mandated in the State’s climate legislation.

The project will be connected to the grid. On average, systems like DTE’s are utilizing about half of their built generation resources on any given day – the rest is overhead, that ratepayers are paying for, but only maxed out a few hours of the year, generally during the peak times in the hottest days of August.
Bringing in big new users who will soak up that excess capacity during the rest of the year helps amortize the system, and can be a downward pressure on electric rates. DTE has committed to foregoing any new rate requests for at least 2 years.

Continue reading “Can Data Centers be Done Right? Is Michigan’s Stargate a Model?”