[ExI] Where's the electricity power coming from?

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] Where's the electricity power coming from?

 

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025, 12:59 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

I see nothing in the constitution which empowers POTUS to cancel a power-generation project

>… or (more likely) federal funding (in which he has been riding roughshod over Congress's authority anyway - see discussions about "recissions" - …

 

Ja that is what I suspect: federal funding was involved, and that funding was tossed into disarray or was frozen.  If it is that, oh there is money to be made here.  If it is true that the project is 80% complete, the way I interpret that comment is that 80% of the cost to build it is spent, with the project on-budget and on-schedule (until it was stopped by federal funding cuts.)  If that is the case… GOOD!  It is GREAT opportunity for private investors all over the globe to step in, finish the job, pump the 704 MW and make a buttload.

 

But I haven’t jumped into that or even tried, for a reason.  I am seeing a discrepancy between the advertised capability and reality as I understand it.  We are told this the Revolution Wind Project out at sea will produce 704 MW of power, enough to power 350,000 homes.  But… windfarms produce power intermittently and unpredictably.  So… why are we advertising three significant digits on the output of a facility where we are lucky if we can hit it to within 10%?  

 

Revolution Power cheerfully advertises the number of homes it will provide clean electricity, to two significant digits.  But… wind farms are notoriously unpredictable.

 

For the time being, I am a RevPower watcher, ready to go if they give up and sell that 80% complete facility to investors.  However… there is more to the story, much more.  Once one starts learning about the nuances of power generation and distribution, it is easy to spot oversimplified voter-facing claims, such as the business about that 704 MW of clean energy powering 350,000 homes.  Eh… it isn’t that simple.  Power generation and distribution is so damn complex, even really smart engineers don’t really know how everything works.  But that’s why we have armies of them working together, for collectively they know how everything works.

 

Adrian you are from California.  You may recall from about 15 years ago the furious debate over Proposition H and its counter-proposals, Prop 16 the power company was pushing.  I read over the stuff, back when I really was getting interested in the field of power generation and distribution (the investment end of it (not to take a job in it (for I realized how pathetically underqualified I would be (I was offered a job in that industry (turned it down.)))))

 

The big evil power company was telling us how H would run up the prices of power, would reduce grid reliability, etc, that bad old evil rich capitalist power company.  The politicians were telling us how much clean energy this and green power that, unicorns and pixie dust, yakkity yak and bla bla.

 

Well.  Here we are fifteen years down the road… we are shocked SHOCKED! to find out what I already knew back then from studying the literature: the big evil capitalist-tool power company was telling the truth the whole time.  Everything they said turned out to be pretty much true, and they hadn’t exaggerated.  Our politicians misled us (well, misled THEM, for I damn sure didn’t vote for this mess.)

 

The cost of power in California is absurd.  The grid is straining and we STILL haven’t really upgraded it much, when we DAMN WELL NEED more and better power infrastructure now, with the Muskmobiles whirring around and the AI gobbling up megawatts of expensive green power, we need more and better everything and we need it by about a decade ago.  Did we build it?  NO!  We fell for those wind farms and solar installations, rather than upgrading and expanding the power grid.

 

Damn.

 

spike

 

 

 

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