Renewables and California's heat wave

Today, guest author Bernard Chabot takes a look at the statistics on renewable electricity in California in the first six months of 2013 period at the end of his exhaustive list of charts, the homes in on the last few days of June, when the record heat wave started.

The Southwest United States is experiencing its worst heat wave on record, with temperatures approaching the highest ever recorded on Earth. As energy researcher Bernard Chabot shows (PDF), power consumption shot up by a whopping 50 percent in the last few days of June (see his slide 14) from around 250,000 MWh per day to more than 400,000 in the last three days of June – no doubt because every air conditioner available was running around the clock. In contrast, the cool water coming down from Alaska along the coast offsets demand for air conditioning even in cities like Los Angeles for large parts of the year.

Just as power demand is peaking in the area, California is losing its nuclear plants. At the beginning of June, a decision was made not to reopen the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant, and just this week yet another nuclear plant, this time Diablo Canyon, shut down one of its two reactors because of a leak.

Overall, Chabot concludes that "variable but predictable" renewable electricity "combine very well in hot months in California." At the moment, Californians can use all of the electricity they can get. (Craig Morris)