No. But regardless of the the reason, there was no load from batteries at 3:00. And that is just as meaningless to the discussion as the claim there was a large load from batteries 12 hours earlier.

Is there any evidence to show the batteries are being solely charged by solar power? No. Batteries can be used to store cheap coal power to use when they would otherwise need to fire up an expensive natural gas plant.

Which is also irrelevant to the discussion of whether solar and batteries can replace all of the current fossil fuel load. In theory, they can. But in many cases it will require very large investments to deliver that power to where it is needed.

Very little is very strongly correlated to IQ. Its not that there aren't any, its that they are mostly not all that important.

You are right the batteries weren't fully discharged until around 2:40 AM this morning. Then they started being charged again - before the sun went up. There was a slight usage between 5 and 7 and since then they are being charged.

And you are also right, I pay very little attention to the specifics of the California grid since it is an anomaly in a lot of ways. My original point was that the GW they produce from batteries at a specific point in time is not really relevant. As I said:

That would have still been true if I had posted at 3:00 am when my statement would have been accurate. Perhaps you need to read more carefully.

So discussing industry financial interests and their intersection with political decisions is now a conspiracy theory? Let me tell you, there are a lot of businesses "conspiring" to make a profit and to have public policies that support that "conspiracy".

Perhaps the problem is that falling for phishing schemes isn't really preventable. The folks creating these schemes are mostly professionals who use time-tested techniques to trap people. Whatever techniques you train people to avoid, they quickly adapt and avoid using.

Of course not, the utility industry is built around large centralized industrial facilities. The idea of dispersed generation is completely foreign to their understanding of the problem. And a threat to large parts of the industry.

The entire industrial solar industry is built around government structures to promote it, from tax credits for investors to renewable energy credits that they sell to fossil fuel producers. The same level of promotion for dispersed solar would produce more power at lower cost closer to the demand. But it would also disperse the large individual profits from the various campaign contributors coffers to quite small individual savings to people who own the rooftops.

A dispersed system would be more resilient and would reduce the need for power lines and the associated costs and demands for right-of-way. It would also reduce the conversion of farm land for solar. Lets be clear, its not going to eliminate the need for large industrial power sources or a grid. But it would reduce the demand for both,

That is not what the CASIO web site reported at the time I posted. And it is doubtful that they were using any battery power at that time, They would likely have used it (or be saving to use it) during peak demand when power is most expensive.

As I write this CASIO reports none of California's load is being served by solar.

Neither of those statements tell us much about the ability of renewables to provide all our electric power. The real problem is that our use of electricity is not a fixed amount. It is increasing over time and much of that increase is being provided by new natural gas plants.

Renewables are not even keeping up with the increased demand at this point. And a large part of the reason can be found in this article. We are failing to provide the financial capital needed for individual home owners to install solar. Instead we are building large solar farms and adding new power lines to move the power from those often remote solar farms to where it is needed. The financing of those large solar farms is underwriten by huge tax credits for the wealthy investors and venture capitalists who provided the capital. Providing subsidies to home solar/battery would get better results, but as homeowners we aren't at the table when congress discusses tax credits. The finance industry is all over it since they also finance the campaigns that get people elected.

I think its a mistake to think Trump matters much in this discussion. The real barriers to stopping global warming are far more formidable. The real barrier is that people are unwilling to change their living standard to limit emissions to a sustainable level. So our solutions are largely limited to replacing high emission sources with marginally lower ones. And in many cases ADDING new lower emission sources without actually replacing any higher emission source at all.

People buy a new electric car and solar panels to charge it and pretend that somehow they are reducing emissions. But they are really just comparing the added emissions from their electric car to the emissions they would have added it they bought a new ICE vehicle. The alternative of continuing to drive their old car into the ground is not acceptable So they will let someone else drive it into the ground creating exactly the same amount of emissions, while they are driving their new electric car.

On a broader level you might ask why we continue to allow people to fly, much less fly in their own private jet. Or heat their swimming pool. Or ... The reality is that if they can afford it, they are entitled to do it. Regardless of the impact on climate change. And there is little hope that the wealthy and powerful are going to agree to end that entitlement.

You certainly notice the temp at first. But that 100 watts of body heat quickly warms the water anyway. I think it takes 2260 jewels to vaporize 1 gram of water compared to 1 jewel to raise its temperature 1 degree. So the real heat loss is from evaporation, not the temperature of the water.

Of course they are. There is money to be made. Much of the climate change messaging is driven by people with a financial interest in a particular "solution". There was a time when solar energy was driven by idealists trying to save the planet, its now driven by wall street investors trying to make a buck. AI is good because it means more demand for electricity, which means they can make more money. It makes no difference to them whether their solar investments replace fossil fuels or just supplement them. They understand global warming is a great marketing hook and they are willing to fund staff for organizations promoting "electrification" as the solution.

That doesn't mean solar isn't an important part of the solution. But it does mean you need to be careful that you aren't simply adding more emissions in the guise of working toward a solution.

No we won't, but that isn't because we can't. Its because we don't want to and there is no money to be made getting people to stop doing the things that create emissions. We could stop drilling for oil, but we won't. We could turn off the air-conditioning instead of firing up the power plant to produce more power. But we won't. We could take fewer trips, but we won't. We could stop letting people fly around in private jets. But we won't. We could stop flying around in any jet, but we won't. We could reduce our electrical consumption to the amount we can produce without creating emissions, but we won't. We could prevent the climate from spiraling out of control, but we won't. We are humans and like every species before us we will eventually go extinct because we can't adapt.

People drove much fewer and smaller vehicles in the last century. All those monster trucks have replaced sedate sedans. And people in the last century didn't fly around the world like it was a trip next door. And we are now adding carbon to the atmosphere at a record rate, much faster than the last century. So look in the mirror.

The water doesn't need to be cold, most of the heat loss is from the water evaporating. Even a damp neck gator will help cool you off. Human beings will deal with the heat. Its the other stuff that's happening that may kill us off by making the planet uninhabitable.

Of course, that implies that a district drawn to allow the election from a particular minority or other common interest is "gerrymandering". The usual use of the term implies manipulating districts to optimize the people elected from one party. And frankly the idea that practice is limited to one party or state is naive. Its really the exaggerated use of the practice that allows the election of a majority of representatives by a small minority of voters that is the problem.

If Fox News and the conservative influencers backed it, no progressives would. The reality is that the current political divide was created to allow those in power to continue in power, everyone else is cancelling each other out arguing over trivia. While we have a whole set of broken systems whose only real purpose it to empower and enrich a narrow group.

Throwing out the existing structure is only a start, we have to create an alternative that really restores the power of self-government. We need a revolution, but its not going to be easy to win one. It never is. But the existence of an amendment that no longer can be controlled by the power cliques in Washington is possible hook. Fox and company will hate it. So will the Clintons. That's a start.

No, it wouldn't. It has zero effect on the concentration of power in real terms. As far as I know, there is no requirement that house districts be divided by any geographic boundaries. So a 6000 member house could all be elected at large from the various states using ranked choice voting. Not that I like that idea, but the assumption that nothing else would change is wrong I think. There would be a lot of things that change beyond the sheer number of people involved.