From Watts Up With That?

By Roger Caiazza

I have long been meaning to address the myth that renewables provide the cheapest electricity. This myth has achieved “everybody knows that” status which means that a rebuttal must have strong supporting arguments.   A series of articles at the Science of Doom blog by Steve Carson explains why this myth is not true.  He sums it up: “We built a lot of cheap intermittent energy, and now the expensive part is making the system work when that energy isn’t there.”

Carson explains why cheap renewables don’t automatically produce cheap electricity in a reading guide to his recent renewables posts.  Fellow traveler Francis Menton and I have long argued that before continuing with New York’s renewable energy madness that a test jurisdiction should implement the transition mandates so we can see what happens.  Carson wrote 14 posts “starting with a broader look (including China and Europe), then drilling into South Australia as the most useful real-world laboratory for high renewables” that examines the reality of other jurisdictions.

I recommend the entire series.  Carson suggests that if you’re new to this series, the best way to read it is in time order. Each post stands alone, but “together they build a clear picture of why “cheap renewables” doesn’t automatically produce cheap electricity, and why the system ends up paying for flexibility, backup, and wiring.”

If you don’t have time to read them all, Carson suggested the following:

• If you only read one: The Pricing Paradox
• If you want the South Austrailia (SA) market story: Pricing Paradox → Batteries in SA → Market Machinery → Negative Price Puzzle → Invisible Renewables Market → Solar Lunch Break
• If you like infrastructure + geography: Germany Keeping the Lights On → 1,500km Relay Race
• If you want “costs to consumers”: Germany/UK/France: Price of Energy Transition

The remainder of this article lists the post in sequential order with a short summary for each.

1) China Renewables and PR

Steve Carson explains how easy it is to tell very different stories using the same data. China’s renewables growth is huge — but so is coal. This post explains which data (energy TWh, percent growth of a cherry-picked year) you use can get your preferred answer

2) Germany and Renewables

This post describes a similar situation for Germany.  Germany’s domestic generation mix has changed since 2015.   There has been a significant drop in demand (due to heavy industry shutting down) and generating sources have changed: “coal down hard, nuclear to zero, wind/solar up massively”.  In this case it does not matter how you choose the data – the answer is always the same.  Carson points out that imports fill the gaps caused by intermittent renewables.  This post is the “big picture” before subsequent posts follow the power across borders.

3) Germany, Renewables & Keeping the Lights On

Green energy proponents often point to the success of the German shift to renewables as proof it can be done.  This article explains how it was done and why it is not transferable.  In short, the German transition to alternative energy often uses Interconnectors as “extended grid storage”: The article describes “Germany’s imports, who supplies them, and why cross-border wiring quietly does three jobs at once — sharing cheap generation, sharing backup, and sharing weather luck.”

4) The 1,500km Relay Race: Why Spanish Wind Struggles to Reach Germany

The assumption buried in academic studies that claim to show that wind, water, and solar zero emissions generating resources can supply the grid effectively without new technology is that the wind is blowing somewhere when it is not blowing at home.  This post takes a deep dive into the unacknowledged physical bottleneck: transmission. Carson explains that Spain can be “anti-Germany” meteorologically, but “moving power across borders is a multi-decade, multi-billion euro relay race.”

5) UK and Renewables

In this post, Carson looks at the United Kingdom situation.  He described UK generation from 2015–2024: “coal collapses, wind surges, nuclear declines, and gas stays central.” His approach uses a simple data-first view that “sets up the follow-up question: what does “renewables success” mean in system terms?”

6) UK and Renewables: How the Magic is Done

The next post digs into the data deeper.  He shows that “the UK is leaning on (imports, gas, biomass accounting, etc.)”.  I believe that marketing is an essential part of the message of green energy proponents and Carson explains how “a high-renewables narrative changes once you include full system constraints.”  That would be all the caveats that those proponents ignore.

7) Germany, UK, and France: The Price of Energy Transition

Carson sums up the previous articles in this one:

Germany increased wind and solar hard — but also saw some de-industrialisation (industry moved) and a big change in how much electricity it traded with neighbours. The UK turned coal off, leaned heavily into offshore wind… and increased the burning of woodchip. Both countries also leaned more on imports — especially French nuclear-dominated exports and Norwegian hydro.

Carson states “The spruikers of the energy transition often promise that because wind and solar have zero fuel cost, electricity prices will inevitably fall.”  I had to look up spruiker – it is an Australian slang term for a barker’s spiel.  Carson examines what consumers actually experience — “the cost stack, the trade-offs, and why ‘more renewables’ doesn’t map neatly to ‘lower bills’ without flexibility and wiring.” I recommend this series because he does an excellent job unpacking the components of electricity costs. In this example, he breaks down the wholesale market price, grid charges, and additional costs like taxes that together make up electric bills, and shows how these factors influenced prices in Germany and England compared to France, which did not pursue renewables as aggressively.

Carson goes on to use the South Australia experience for a deep dive into “the daily price rollercoaster and what it really means” in the remaining seven articles in this series.

8) The 100% Experiment: How a Small State Became the World’s Renewable Laboratory

He argues that South Australia is the most appropriate real-world lab for high renewables because “it has huge rooftop solar, lots of wind, and tight interconnection”. This post sets the stage: what changed from 2015–2025, and why the grid behaves differently from fossil-era intuition.

9) The Pricing Paradox: Why ‘Free’ Solar Leads to $15,000 Energy Rollercoasters

It is New York State doctrine that a renewable system is better than the current system because fossil fuel volatility is high and a wind and solar system eliminates external causes of volatility.  Carson explains why a renewable system has its own volatility problems: “Midday prices go negative and evening prices spike to extreme levels.” This post “explains the “canyon curve” and why wholesale volatility doesn’t translate into cheap household bills.”  The author recommends this as the “best entry point if you only read one South Australia (SA) piece.”

10) Batteries in SA: The Market in Operation

Since I started my blog in 2017, I have discovered that every aspect of the energy transition is a can of worms upon closer inspection.  This is a great example.  Proponents of New York’s Climate Act  position battery storage as a multi‑purpose enabler: shifting surplus wind and solar into peak hours, providing capacity and ancillary services as fossil plants retire, and reducing overall system costs.  In the SA example, “batteries aren’t being built to store “a day” of electricity — they’re being built because the market pays for fast response in the shoulder periods.” This post shows what batteries actually contribute on the grid, by time of day. 

11) Batteries and the Market Machinery — How the Grid’s ‘Invisible Hand’ Rewards Speed

Continuing my argument that every aspect gets more complicated upon closer examination, Carson delves into the NEM market rules.  The National Electricity Market (NEM) is the interconnected wholesale market linking Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania.  Carson explains “how the NEM rewards speed: 5-minute settlement, Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) “twitch” markets, negative price behavior, and why grid-forming inverters matter.”  This is another good example why this series is so useful.  Carson breaks everything down and describes what is happening to describe a very complex situation.

12) The Negative Price Puzzle — Why Generators Pay to Produce Electricity

In the alternate reality of renewable energy negative electricity prices are a feature of a system that has large wind and solar capacity.  Carson explains why “Negative prices aren’t a glitch — they’re how the market clears surplus supply when some generators can’t or won’t stop.”  He delves into “Coal/gas cycling economics, wind/solar incentives, and why negative bids can still be rational.”

13) The Invisible Renewables Market: From LGCs to CIS to REGO

This post explains how renewable subsidies work in SA.  As a result, the jargon will be different for other jurisdictions.  He describes:

The “second market” that helped fund renewables: Lage-Scale Generation Certificates (LGCs). Who pays, how the cost shows up in bills, why LGC values collapsed (because the scheme worked), and what newer mechanisms are trying to do instead.

There are two newer mechanisms.  The Capacity Investment Scheme is a federal program that underwrites new renewable and clean dispatchable capacity, run through competitive tenders in the NEM regions.  Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (often shortened to REGO) are tradable certificates that verify that a given quantity of electricity was generated from renewable sources.  I think but cannot prove that most markets have similar mechanisms.

14) The Solar Lunch Break That Coal Can’t Take (and Gas Only Sort of Can)

This is another example of the hidden complexities of the electric system that insiders understand but renewable spruiker spiels ignore.  It is a more technical post that explains “why thermal plants can’t simply shut down at 8am and restart at 4pm without cost and risk.” This is the “physical side of the negative-price story — ramps, starts, cycling, and why batteries are a useful bridge.”

Discussion

While preparing this summary a few quotes from the articles caught my eye.

Results from Germany, England, and France show that:

• System Costs Overwhelm Commodity Savings: While the “Wholesale” cost of a windy day might be low, the cost of managing that variability (the Blue Layer) and the “legacy” subsidies of the past (the Red Layer) are driving the total price upward.
• Decarbonization via Imports: Both the UK and Germany have “decarbonized” partly by importing French nuclear and Norwegian hydro. They have outsourced their grid stability to neighbors with firmer foundations.
• The Nuclear Dividend: France, despite its 2022 technical crisis, maintains a more stable and lower-priced retail environment by avoiding the massive “Redispatch” and “Capacity” costs that plague its neighbors.

The deep dive into the South Australia test case made the following points:

Data from SA demonstrate  the “Pricing Paradox”: how “free” fuel from the sun and wind has created a market of extreme highs and lows that rarely results in a “cheap” bill for the average household.

An important point – batteries like negative prices because charging becomes cheap (or paid), but batteries are limited by energy capacity and state of charge — they can’t absorb infinite surplus.

That’s the punchline from the earlier articles:

• Midday prices go negative because solar overwhelms demand.
• Evening prices spike because solar vanishes and wind often can’t fully cover the gap.
• The scarcity signal has pulled in batteries — not to “run the state overnight,” but to act as a fast bridge while slower plant and imports ramp.

So the real shift isn’t “renewables are cheap.” The real shift is:

We built a lot of cheap intermittent energy, and now the expensive part is making the system work when that energy isn’t there.

Conclusion

I highly recommend this series of articles as a great source of information about the myth of cheap renewables.

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Steve Carson’s original Science of Doom website addressed climate science.  Now he publishes on a Substack of the same name.

Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.