EV's, Reliable Power, et al

[DKG]

Ford Motor on Thursday outlined plans to use a Canadian plant it had earmarked for a future electric vehicle to instead build larger, gasoline-powered versions of its flagship F-Series pickup truck.

Ford in April had already delayed the launch of the planned three-row electric SUVs at its Oakville Assembly facility from 2025 to 2027, citing slower than expected growth in EV demand.

[Herman]

This is from the province of Alberta, but it is true of any government that wasted folks money on wind scams.

https://pipelineonline.ca/fool-me-three-times-three-days-in-a-row-albertas/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1ZVKfRU14U9r57Kw9iSoeaxKSu4n0a82KEBiu10gsbYaPx5dnCG3AnPl0_aem_A0SP19IWfu51wQAt2PT5MA#/?playlistId=0&videoId=0
For the third day in a row, Alberta's 4,748 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity was producing effectively nothing, or actually nothing.

At 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, July 21, wind power output fell to zero megawatts. The day before, on Saturday, July 20, just one megawatt was being being sent to grid from 1,568 wind turbines.

One megawatt is 0.02 per cent, or two ten-thousandths of capacity. And zero, of course, is zero.

As the heat wave continued to roast western Canada, almost exactly the same thing happened the day before, at around the same time. Wind power in Alberta yet again flatlined around noon. it hit one megawatt at 10:38 a.m. on July 19.

In addition to those three days of scraping bottom over the weekend, a few days earlier, wind output in Alberta actually hit zero output at 11:38 a.m. on Tuesday, July 16. At that moment, the entire wind fleet, costing billions of dollars, couldn't power a lightbulb.

So that's four days out six that saw wind generation fall to either zero or one megawatts.

On Sunday, natural gas was providing 9,053 megawatts out of the 10,798 being produced to the grid. That's 83 per cent of power generation. The previous evening, natural gas accounted for more than 90 per cent of Alberta's power.

The natural gas fleet saw all the big units producing, and there were several smaller simple cycle units available for peaking generation.

That's significant, as the proposed Clean Electricity Regulations would have all coal and natural gas units in the country shut down by 2035 unless they implement carbon capture units. Without carbon capture, they would only be allowed to operate for 450 hours per year (about five per cent annual capacity) in peaking operations. As Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has noted, that wouldn't get the province through Jan. 19, if you started counting those hours on Jan. 1.

 

[Brent]

Progressives want us to believe corporate welfare will save the planet.

Subsidizing EVs isn't about saving the environment
Electric vehicles were developed to save the auto sector not the planet

With floods and wildfires overwhelming municipal infrastructure across Canada these days, is it really a good idea for federal and provincial governments to have earmarked over $52 billion to subsidize the manufacture of electric vehicles and EV batteries?

According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, that's just the cost taxpayers are facing for developing an EV supply chain across Canada in 13 different project groupings.

It doesn't include such added costs as subsidizing EV sales by the federal government and six provinces, developing a national EV charging network, or strengthening and reconfiguring electricity grids across the country to handle the increased demand for electricity to power EVs.

All of this when federal EV mandates to increase the sale of new EVs to 60% of all new passenger vehicles by 2030 is only expected to lower Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions by 2% to 3% compared to what they would otherwise have been, according to a recent report by the Canadian Climate Institute.

Belgium-based Umicore announced last week that it is delaying construction of its $2.8 billion EV battery materials manufacturing plant near Kingston – to which the federal and Ontario governments have earmarked almost $1 billion in public support – because of slow EV sales.

Ford announced earlier this month that for the same reason, a $1.8 billion retrofit of its Oakville assembly complex to manufacture EVs it announced in 2020 – to which the federal and Ontario government earmarked a total of $590 million – will now manufacture conventionally-powered Super-duty trucks instead.

That followed an earlier announcement by Ford in April that it was going to delay the production of EVs until 2027, instead of the original start-up date of 2025.

To be fair, much of the federal and provincial support aimed at creating an EV supply chain in Canada is tied to the actual production of EVs and EV batteries – meaning the money hasn't yet been spent.

In addition, Canada's auto sector was being subsidized by the federal and provincial governments long before the move toward EVs, ostensibly to protect Canadian jobs both directly and indirectly reliant on the auto sector.

But as an environmental policy, public investments in the EV sector are notoriously inefficient.

A better use of the money would be to shore up Canada's beleaguered public infrastructure sector – roads, bridges, tunnels, public transit, sewers, water treatment plants, as well as our ability to fight wildfires – to make them more resilient to severe weather.

In that context, it's also time to start calling out federal, provincial and municipal politicians who attribute the damage caused by any and all natural disasters these days to "climate change" as an excuse for decades of failures by all levels of government to properly maintain public infrastructure.

As one of countless examples, we saw this excuse at play in the wake of a major flood in Toronto earlier this month that shut down roads, public transit, flooded basements and dumped more than 1.3 billion litres of partially-treated sewage into the city's waterways.

In the real world, Canada has always had severe weather caused by "climate change," regardless of whether it's the result of natural or human-induced factors.

Toronto has been flooding since the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago, not because of human-induced climate change but because of local geography, the water systems that surround it and, in the modern era, urban densification.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-subsidizing-evs-isnt-about-saving-the-environment

[Oliver the Second]

[DKG]

It should not have been on an elevator. That's like taking a jerry can of gasoline on an elevator.

[Oerdin]

Many apartments now ban electric bikes and even electric cars due to the tendency of the batteries to burst I to flames.

[formosan]

Many apartments now ban electric bikes and even electric cars due to the tendency of the batteries to burst I to flames.

In your city or state or across America?

[Oerdin]

In multiple countries now.  In the U.S. insurance companies are demanding these bans or they refuse to renew insurance policies.

[Brent]

In multiple countries now.  In the U.S. insurance companies are demanding these bans or they refuse to renew insurance policies.

I haven't heard about it here yet. But, I'm not looking for an apartment.

[Oerdin]

Me either.  I just read the news.

[Oliver the Second]

[formosan]

Oh my goodness Oliver.....I don't want lithium batteries in my home.

[Oliver the Second]

What customers need to know about SunPower after company files for bankruptcy



A once-mighty-recognized name in the solar business is going under. SunPower Corporation has filed for bankruptcy marking the end of the 39-year-old business.

Nearly half a million customers have a lot of uncertainty about the future of their home solar systems. SunPower Corporation, based in California, filed for bankruptcy in August 2024, in a Delaware court.

The court filing provided insight into the company's situation. Documents revealed at the end of 2023, SunPower had almost as much in debts as it did in assets. SunPower said there was a deal where a company will buy some of its assets but that doesn't include its installation network.

For consumers it means SunPower can't service their systems and they must wait until the company reaches a service agreement. The company said it's working on an agreement with a service provider and SunPower customers should locate their installation paperwork and communications.

The Arizona Attorney General's Office has filed a fraud lawsuit against SunPower Corporation and customers can file a complaint with the attorney.

https://www.abc15.com/news/let-abc15-know/what-customers-need-to-know-about-sunpower-after-company-files-for-bankruptcy

[DKG]

What customers need to know about SunPower after company files for bankruptcy



A once-mighty-recognized name in the solar business is going under. SunPower Corporation has filed for bankruptcy marking the end of the 39-year-old business.

Nearly half a million customers have a lot of uncertainty about the future of their home solar systems. SunPower Corporation, based in California, filed for bankruptcy in August 2024, in a Delaware court.

The court filing provided insight into the company's situation. Documents revealed at the end of 2023, SunPower had almost as much in debts as it did in assets. SunPower said there was a deal where a company will buy some of its assets but that doesn't include its installation network.

For consumers it means SunPower can't service their systems and they must wait until the company reaches a service agreement. The company said it's working on an agreement with a service provider and SunPower customers should locate their installation paperwork and communications.

The Arizona Attorney General's Office has filed a fraud lawsuit against SunPower Corporation and customers can file a complaint with the attorney.

https://www.abc15.com/news/let-abc15-know/what-customers-need-to-know-about-sunpower-after-company-files-for-bankruptcy

Solar and wind cannot compete with concentrated energy sources. Without taxpayer money artificially propping them up, they would all file for banlruptcy.

[formosan]

What customers need to know about SunPower after company files for bankruptcy



A once-mighty-recognized name in the solar business is going under. SunPower Corporation has filed for bankruptcy marking the end of the 39-year-old business.

Nearly half a million customers have a lot of uncertainty about the future of their home solar systems. SunPower Corporation, based in California, filed for bankruptcy in August 2024, in a Delaware court.

The court filing provided insight into the company's situation. Documents revealed at the end of 2023, SunPower had almost as much in debts as it did in assets. SunPower said there was a deal where a company will buy some of its assets but that doesn't include its installation network.

For consumers it means SunPower can't service their systems and they must wait until the company reaches a service agreement. The company said it's working on an agreement with a service provider and SunPower customers should locate their installation paperwork and communications.

The Arizona Attorney General's Office has filed a fraud lawsuit against SunPower Corporation and customers can file a complaint with the attorney.

https://www.abc15.com/news/let-abc15-know/what-customers-need-to-know-about-sunpower-after-company-files-for-bankruptcy

Our province cancelled all coal power plants when the NDP was the government and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on wind turbines..

The result has been power rationing when it gets too cold or too hot and hydro bills four times higher than when we still had coal power.