Interior Sec. Doug Burgum: When the sun goes down, solar produces zero electricity.

[akasci@fosstodon.org]

Interior Sec. Doug Burgum: When the sun goes down, solar produces zero electricity. The whole machine doesn't work when the sun goes down. And there's examples from around the world of this happening.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA): Chairman, I request unanimous consent to enter into the record, this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of, it's a battery.

China's figured it out. That's why they're cleaning our clock on clean energy.

https://www.rawstory.com/burgum-solar-battery-hearing-new/
#UsPol
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[urwumpe@hessen.social]

@AkaSci And even without batteries, solar can produce electricity at night. For example the solar thermal generators that Spain has.

Burgum shouldn't talk about things he doesn't understand.

[nead@social.vivaldi.net]

@AkaSci Let me know when we get to the part where 'windmills' cause cancer.

[guidojansen6@mastodon.social]

@AkaSci hmm there’s examples of this from all around the world? Just not at the same time? ‍️

[bzdev@fosstodon.org]

@AkaSci Once, on some on-line discussion, I mentioned systems that pump water to a higher reservoir to provide power at night. An anti-solar guy said it violates energy conservation. I then explained why not, giving an estimated efficiency of 70% (motors/generators are at best 90% efficient, put there's also frictional loses in the pipes). He then said I copied the 70%, not realizing that these estimates are to 1 significant figure, so it is hardly surprising that two estimates agree.

[em_and_future_cats@mastodon.social]

@AkaSci favoriting the last statement… “I want to bring to the record… an amazing piece of technology… it’s called a BATTERY .”
For the record, and all the history nerds here and secretly about.. batteries have been around since before we understood there was an actual thing called “electricity” WAY before Benjamin Franklin and ohh heck please just go look it up

[justinderrick@mstdn.ca]

@AkaSci This must be the idiot my mother was listening to when she said to me "Germany doesn't have electricity at night, because they're too reliant on solar panels."

Even when I sent her a chart of the power generation mix (showing that Germany's solar production represented less than 10% of total production capacity) she refused to believe me.

I never got to the point of telling her to call her cousins who live in Germany, she was furious that I would dare to contradict her, so she hung up. I think it was the second-to-last conversation I had with her before I had to go zero-contact.

[huntingdon@mstdn.social]

@AkaSci

Note to Interior Sec'y Doug Burgum, who seems to have discovered that solar power is generated only between sunup and sundown:

When the gauge is on E, the gas tank is empty, the motor stops. All the motors stop.

[akasci@fosstodon.org]

Interior Sec. Doug Burgum: I am not lying. The data is lying. Yeah, that's the ticket.

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[tk@f.kawa-kun.com]

@AkaSci The hilarious part is that batteries actually predate electric generators.

[photo55@mastodon.social]

@AkaSci as I understand it, baseload is the minimum generation of a powerplant, IE that which can't be shut down, without turning off the whole station.

Demand from the Grid is different.

[davidbcohen@twit.social]

@AkaSci @Guillotine_Jones Conservatives don’t like the idea of free energy from the sky. Far too socialist for them.

[akasci@fosstodon.org]

Rep. David Min (D-CA): Do you know how much new energy China put online last year?

Interior Sec. Doug Burgum: Intermittent or base load?

Min: All energy. 543 GW. How much was renewable? 434 GW.

Burgum: But only when the wind is blowing and sun is shining.

When all you have are talking points from the oil-industry and the loony-right.

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