Look toward gasoline prices (and a few other things).

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Figure 1: Gasoline price through week ending August 1 (blue, left log scale), price of oil, Brent, through August 1 (red, right log scale). Source: EIA via FRED. 

That’s a 15.5% decline since the week ending June 20.

In response to the post on the causes of the Winter 2021 energy debacle in Texas, reader Corev confidently asserts:

Solar can never supply the power needed during peak demand. Peak demand occurs as the Sun diminishes.

Always useful to look at actual data. Here is a picture of peak load use in Texas on June 13th, 2022:

Source: Fox7Austin.

Peak use was at 6pm CST.

Sunset in Houston on June 13th was 8:23pm CST.

Of course, the entire point of the post was how renewables (including wind) were mitigating, not exacerbating, the difficulties Texas was encountering in meeting demand. Renewables includes wind, and wind accounts the great bulk of renewables energy production in Texas.

This is not to say that there are no problems with reliance on renewables; as pointed out in the Dallas Fed article, greater ability to transmit electricity (i.e., making the electricity generation more tradable, in essence) and greater battery storage capacity (which is coming) are going to be essential to meeting greater and more variable demand as climate change continues.

In the meantime, keep a watch out for utter failures of fact peddled by purveyors of disinformation.

From Dan Soloman at Texas Monthly:

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Using core CPI, Cleveland Fed nowcasts for June, July, as of 7/7.

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