Inside a Berkley editorial board: The problem with renewables

When Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas, sat down for an editorial board covering far-ranging topics, the conversation was bound to eventually touch on the topic of energy independence. (View video)

Like everyone else, Berkley is an advocate of wind and solar power as a means of achieving this independence and having a greener environment.

But when I suggested that solar and wind don’t work when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow — meaning every single kilowatt-hour of peak capacity must be offset by some form of reliable power generation, be that gas, coal or nuclear (Oh no, not nuclear, Berkley says. Can’t have the waste.) — she would not be swayed and seemed to dismiss the matter as irrelevant when we can just keep subsidizing renewables with your tax dollars.

The greens don’t seem to realize that all solar and wind can do, in the macro sense, is idle cheaper generation that must to be built or maintained to fill in during times when those renewables are idle. It might make sense for a business or home to put up a windmill or install solar panels to mitigate the power bill, but gridwide it is simply redundant.

Redundancy is expensive.