BURGUM: When the sun goes down, solar produces zero electricity HUFFMAN: I want to enter into the record this amazing

[hunter]

26. Batteries are a regressive tax on low income people...

... the sole purpose of which is to assuage the guilt that affluent people feel for their environmentally destructive lifestyles.

Seriously, sometimes fascist Republicans owned by the fossil fuel industry can be right about a single issue for entirely the wrong reasons.

Here in the solar utopia of California we have some of the most expensive electricity in the developed world. Outside the municipal power districts (which historically have first dibs on hydroelectric power and storage) electricity costs 40 to 45 cents a kilowatt hour.

Electricity is similarly expensive in "green" Germany and Denmark.

Adding more batteries to California's electric grid will only increases the cost of our electricity further. Solar and wind power are EXPENSIVE. It's not the cost of solar panels and wind turbines alone, it's the cost of integrating them into a reliable electric grid. And no economically feasible amount of battery storage will eliminate the need for fossil fuel backup power.

Like it or not, solar and wind power cannot displace fossil fuels entirely, which is something we need to do.

Believing that solar and wind power will magically eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels is just an alternative form of climate change denial.

You can watch the behavior of California's electric grid here:

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply

As I write this only 4% of my electricity is being generated by natural gas. Batteries are being charged at a rate of around 9 gigawatts.

The twin nuclear reactors at Diablo Canyon are generating a little over 2 gigawatts and they are running 24 hours a day.

The energy mix will change a lot when the sun goes down. You can check it out yourself.