The Golden State's Progressive Pig Iron Power
“The humble are the cleverest, the privileged are the dumbest.” - Mao Zedong
Turf Removal Programs were all the rage during the 2011-2017 California drought. The basic idea was that homeowners were paid by a government agency subsidized by other taxpayers to remove their water-loving grass lawns and to be replaced by synthetic turf. While indeed fake grass requires no water, mowing, or fertilizing, it does have its own sucky tradeoffs in terms of maintenance.
And few eco-friendly homeowners seem to have to stopped and asked just exactly what this fake turf is made from.
Much to the disappointment of a Bakkan roughneck who likely would get a great laugh knowing he was fracking the future material for the Kardashian’s lawn, this petrograss is no longer an option in most Turf Replacement Programs. They’ve since been revised, usually in favor for xeriscaping or zeroscaping. But nonetheless it’s still subsidized by the taxpayer. And those who do not own homes or have no lawns didn’t get anything out of this program, other than maybe a scolding from a cop or water Karen.
But this fiat scam is like sooooo 2015 and it’s not the only giveaway available to homeowners at the expense of other taxpayers.
Some California homeowners, who happen to also add solar panels, Tesla Powerwall batteries, and purchase a Tesla automobile - all of which have likely been subsidized also by other taxpayers via tax credits (which to no surprise mainly benefits the wealthy) are potentially eligible for Tesla’s “Virtual Power Plant” program. The basic idea is that each homeowner’s Powerwalls are charged by their solar panels (and potentially the standard grid) and during times of high demand or strain on the grid, these Powerwalls can feed juice back into the grid.
Yesterday’s statewide Flex Alert proved to be the first use of the VPP.
According to Electrek, 2342 homes in PG&E’s service territory spit out 16 MW at one point and 268 homes in SCE’s service territory spit out 1.5 MW.
Electrek was quite impressed:
I think we are starting to witness the beginnings of a true smart grid backed by distributed energy assets, which is something that has been talked about as the future of the electric grid for a long time, but it’s finally happening.
Now that Tesla is showing that this is working smoothly on a significant scale, I think we are going to see massive growth of those systems, and the economics of them are just going to get better.
Meredith Angwin, dedicates and entire chapter to this concept, called Distributed Energy, in her book Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of our Electric Grid (discussed here) In the book, she borrows a clever illustration from the US Department of Energy to describe the difference between the consumer, who only receives power one way - from their presumably oppressor patriarchal utility; and the prosumer who is empowered with her rooftop solar system (and maybe battery storage?) which generates its own energy and sometimes sells power back onto the grid in what’s often called net metering. She smiles in joy at this two-way relationship while he hold his electric bill in his hand in frustration.
Angwin notes that in reality, the two individuals in the graphic would most likely be switched around. That is, the White male would most likely be the prosumer while the Black woman would be the consumer. And the former would be in a detached single family home in the suburbs while the latter would be a renter in a multi-family unit.
This is especially true in California where homeownership is the lowest among Black people. It should be noted though that the largest minority population in California are Latinos/Hispanics (roughly 40% of the population or a few million less than the population of Chile) whose rates of homeownership are also quite low. California isn’t exactly a paradise of affordable homes either.
Now just why is the consumer holding his bill with a look of frustration on his face? Because he’s paying in part for the prosumer’s net metering program and his utility’s skyrocketing rates. The greater number of prosumers there are, the more expensive power will be for the consumers because the power company has to purchase that power the moment its needed from the prosumer. This is precisely why net metering programs are capped in many places. Some may accuse the legacy evil power company of trying to maintain their bottom line (again read Shorting the Grid for how they really make their money) and there might be a sliver of truth to that but in all reality even if we suspended the laws of economics, not every person would be able to generate their own community electricity anyways; and even if they did, it would put these companies out of business. These companies also have to maintain their existing transmission and distribution system, in which Californians are blatantly aware is an extremely important endeavor.
So what’s to stop an identical cap on Tesla’s Virtual Powerplant program? After all, participants in this program are paid for this energy (currently $2 per kWh!) from their local utility which makes this scheme incredibly similar to net metering.
We can continue this thought experiment by pointing out that as California continues to “innovate” by relying more and more on weather-dependent, energy-dilute renewables which will further exasperate the grid’s reliability issues (while raising the cost of electricity even more) thus triggering the need for more Flex Alert days. VPP participants and other prosumers will continue “saving the grid” while the consumers will continue to pay ever higher and higher bills although even without the prosumers, these price hikes are still likely to happen. Not to disappoint the cheerleaders over at Electrek, but VPP is not likely to last long or will remain limited to a capped number of homes.
Much like with the petroturf mentioned previously, many Tesla, Powerwall, and solar panel owners likely do not know about the supply and labor chain that went into their planet-savers. Solar panels are made primarily in China using coal power and slave labor. As for those batteries in both the Teslas and the Powerwalls, the large amount of graphite required for the battery’s anode is sourced from crude oil and among other things, the entire supply chain is needless to say, not terribly green.
This is coming at a time of record inflation thanks to a rapid expansion of the money supply and irresponsible spending by the bureaucrats and their parasitic industrial-complex partners-in-crime. Inflation impacts the renting poor the most, many are already behind on their existing power bills and they’re the furthest from the money spigot thanks to the Cantillion Effect. It’s foolish believe the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act would actually reduce inflation and help out these folks too. In between finding ways to stay on top of their bills and put food on the table, they’re more likely to face the wrath of the 80k+ new IRS agents looking for tax cheats too.
As Robert Bryce correctly notes in his seething piece California's Energy War on the Poor, California’s political class and the Green/Progressive Elites continue to push for policies that increase the cost of everyday things supposedly in the effort to save the environment or to uplift marginalized groups in the name of equity only for both the environment and members in these groups to be further kicked back down.
In San Diego whose recently passed Climate Action Plan (discussed here) has a heavy emphasis on equity, the exact people who are supposed to be not only be prioritized but helped the most will continue to fall further.
Mao’s Great Leap Forward where in part every Chinese person (who survived the famines) had to produce, as slaves, home-made steel using backyard furnaces not only resulted in a poor quality substance that barely passed for steel (pig iron) but caused massive damage to the environment as these new poorly skilled steelmakers chopped down entire forests, dismantled wood from buildings for furnace fuel and even threw their pots and pans into the crucibles. Dr. Keefer’s analogy between the China and today isn’t item for item, but if all the previously mentioned constraints were lifted, attempting a Green Leap Forward in part using rooftop “Virtual Powerplants” would likely result in a similarly inferior energy product with a large amount of environmental damage. At least that environmental damage and questionable labor would be thousands of miles away overseas so those most responsible for them didn’t have to directly face the music. The homeowners could sit in their pajamas working from home. Mao’s victims didn’t have such luxuries.
But at least Green Leap Forward folks too can have scapegoats, aka Four Pests, to blame for all their failures: Climate Change, Patriarchy, White Supremacy, and Capitalism.
Until next time.
The power companies pay $2 per kWh from the virtual power plant program? That's the most insane thing I've ever heard.