Weird. Suddenly it matters whether or not a source is dispatchable.
Utility Dive (1/27/20) reports: "Surprisingly, the plunging cost of some renewables could keep states from reaching ambitious climate goals if planners fail to recognize the higher value in some higher cost renewables. States like New York, Massachusetts and California with ambitious 2030 renewables and 2045 emissions reduction mandates are starting to find a tension between cost and value. Offshore wind's reliability and emissions reduction values have raised its profile, though it remains more expensive than onshore wind. Now California policymakers are beginning to see the potentially extraordinary, but so far unrecognized value of its geothermal resources...Unlike solar and wind, geothermal is fully dispatchable. Like offshore wind in New England, it is abundant in the West but has gone underused because of development costs. Those costs, though, may be outweighed by a high capacity factor that can allow it to provide a wide range of grid services, and its brine's potential, being pursued by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy and others, to be an unmatched source of lithium for batteries...California’s grid operator is concerned about meeting the state’s growing early evening peak demand when solar generation is diminishing, Olsen said. The CPUC 'is directing the addition of low cost solar, which has almost no value when the grid needs it most'."
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" Trump threw down the gauntlet before Europe’s governing classes, standing up for free enterprise, limited government, and an administration that cares about all of its citizens, not just plutocrats and bureaucrats."
– John Hinderaker, Power Line
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