alt Hacker NewsWrong because the underlying assumption is that we are moving from a system where energy can be brought on as required to an equivalent system.
One of the big issues with renewables that the author is, I can only assume, is deliberately eliding is that energy cannot be brought on as required. Even in Texas, you still need non-renewables to fill the gap and you still need to recover the costs of running those assets in the price...Texas is the absolute best case scenario, and it isn't working (as the comments show, it is quite easy to see why: people are obsessed with politics and reality matters less than your political enemies being wrong, companies have also realized that the subsidies in this area are incredible if you tell politicians they are right). The same thing is happening with battery operators.
You also see the same thing in other countries that invested heavily in renewables (UK is one example, they are mothballed a lot of non-renewable sources ten years ago, the government had to introduce massive subsidies for retail consumers because electricity prices are so high due to the need to recover costs of the remaining non-renewable sources when the wind happens to stop blowing): it has to increase the cost of energy because you have to pay for renewables and pay for the battery operators to do nothing and pay for the gas operators to do nothing.
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This has been a reasonable point to bring up. Renewables when they are first coming into the system represent only a small part of the energy supply. But as they get bigger, the swings in availability end up swinging the entire system around to a larger degree. This is usually where Gas plants take up the slack trying to balance out the system. Storage is the key.
I suspect this is an issue that looks worse in 'intuitive' foresight but not so bad in educated retrospective but we will not know until we pass through that point. I am but an armchair "expert" on this. Usually when something like this comes up, 15 people who know better than me will highlight something I was not aware of.
The issues with Texas and the UK are that their grids are relatively isolated. Like here in Finland, we have a bigger share of renewables than the UK or Texas, but electricity is still cheaper than UK and pretty much the same as in Texas.
> Texas is the absolute best case scenario,
Better examples around the globe and within North America are non isolated grids - Texas is in a weak position to share it's excess and to get back energy from wind blowing in other states.
> it has to increase the cost of energy because you have to pay for renewables and pay for the battery operators to do nothing and pay for the gas operators to do nothing.
No, it doesn't have to increase the cost.
If you have a town powered by gas, the cost of maintaining and staffing the gas plant is locked in.
But most of the cost of that gas plant is the fuel.
If the total cost per kWh of a solar or solar+battery installation is lower than the fuel cost of the gas plant, then you build it. It saves you money even though you're paying the gas operators to do nothing part of the time.
If it's not cheaper than fuel, you don't build it. No harm no foul.
Follow that strategy and you'll end up with lots of renewables without wasting a penny.
Though honestly some idle gas plants don't cost that much. How many kilowatts do you need? 4? Okay, the fixed costs for 4 kilowatts of combined cycle gas power are $50 per year. That's all it takes to have backup production for the entire grid, even with no base load plants anywhere.