Fudging the Costs of Diablo

The not impressive ideologically-driven "critics" of Diablo Canyon

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed.”

― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

One can’t expect too much for journalism from San Diego’s NPR affiliate outlet KPBS when it comes to touching on energy issues.

Here’s just one recent example from KPBS’ Thomas Fudge.

The basic claim made in this article is that Diablo Canyon’s electricity produces too much electricity at the expense of hydropower in the spring time and not for an appropriate price.

Hydropower in California is finicky throughout the year and relies on good precipitation years for high output, which last time I checked California’s various droughts over the years along with climate hysterics’ claims that climate change will increase them bodes poorly for the state’s hydroelectric sources.

That’s roughly what one of the drafts for SB 846 too:

The impacts of climate change are occurring sooner and with greater intensity and frequency than anticipated, causing unprecedented stress on California’s energy system. These impacts are simultaneously driving higher demand as more intense and frequent heat waves hit California and the Western region and reducing supply as drought conditions impact hydropower production and fires threaten electrical infrastructure.

Which of course never made it into any of the drafts heard and amended in either chamber of the legislature.

Or to the final version signed by the Governor.

As for the cost claim, readers are not informed of exactly what the “critics” whine is here but one can suspect it has to do with the flawed Lazard Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) metrics which have perpetuated the myth, based on poor math and assumptions, that renewable energy sources are cheaper than nuclear.

Doomberg

summarizes LCOE’s massive shortcomings in the usual Doomberg style in Debunking Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)

Like all great lies that go viral, LCOE is a concept that feels like it could be true. To calculate LCOE, Lazard merely tallies up the expected lifetime electricity generation of proposed power plants and compares them to the costs involved in building and maintaining such facilities. As we’ll demonstrate shortly, this is the intellectual equivalent of judging the efficacy of automotive brakes by first tolerating instances in which they stop too abruptly or not at all, washing away such arbitrariness behind the cloak of the almighty mean. Lazard openly admits that its calculations have limitations, but this does little to stop the report’s widespread misuse.

For those who don’t have access to the Green Chicken’s paywall,

Isaac Orr

and

Mitch Rolling

did their own equally great explanation of the LCOE nonsense.

How to Destroy The Myth of Cheap Wind and Solar

But who are these “critics” and what do they claim?

One is Richard McCann , one of three principles at the consulting company M. Cubed.

McCann insists:

That combination made it so that we had a lot of excess power in the system. It’s not that there was excess solar power. It was excess power. And the bigger culprit for that excess power is Diablo Canyon, which was supposed to be retired.

Another doozie, not a direct quote of McCann’s but instead inserted as copy by Fudge is:

McCann said when the state has too much power, it can either try to sell it to neighboring states, often at rock bottom prices, or it has to just dump the energy, which then goes to waste.

McCann is no stranger to being energy illiterate. He maintains a blog with bangers such as California’s perceived “solar glut” problem is actually a “nuclear glut” problem and Obstacles to nuclear power, but how much do we really need it?.

Reading these two pieces too quickly might result in permanent brain damage. They’re that bad.

In that latter post he writes:

Numerous studies (including for California) show that we can get to a 90% emission free and beyond power grid with current technologies and no nuclear.

One is by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL - no bias there) and the other is a list of 100 abstracts compiled by Stanford Professor, legal bully and embarrassment to the Civil Engineering profession Marc Jacobson.

Jacobson is a master of the “Gish Gallop,” his link is titled obnoxiously, “Abstracts of 100 Peer-Reviewed Published Journal Articles From 42 Independent Research Groups With Over 250 Different Authors Supporting the Result That Energy for Electricity, Transportation, Building Heating/Cooling, and/or Industry can be Supplied Reliably with 100% or Near-100% Renewable Energy at Different Locations Worldwide”

The Science™ is settled.

MCubed’s resume for projects done includes customers such as the Environmental Defense Fund, a “non-profit” notorious for their anti-nuclear activism, scams such as California CCA , and they leech Californian’s hard earned money with projects for the City and County of San Francisco, Imperial Irrigation District, SMUD, the CA Department of Water Resources, and the CA Energy Commission.

Who is the other “critic?” CAISO’s new Director of Operations Brian Murray with a vague quote:

“With the lack of flexibility, and the growth of flexible resources that we have coming on to our system, I just don’t know if there’s going to be value in retaining those resources”

Apparently Murray has no idea of the concept of baseload power, curtailment, pr actual prices. If this is one of the people Californian’s are relying on to keep the lights on, good luck. Long generators and flash lights.

Fudge to some credit did try to reach out to PG&E, the owners and operators of Diablo Canyon who provided something of the typical boiler plate response from the public relations specialists of a utility but apparently he did not reach out to anybody else to provide a counter argument to these “critics.”