You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

The cold weather drove residents to crank up the heat, but the lack of wind to turn turbines pushed the state’s electric grid into emergency mode. On Tuesday night, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas cut off power for 90 minutes to those customers who had agreed to accept power interruptions. And it was a full three hours before everything was back to normal.

All of which proves that while, cheap, clean and renewable, it’s pretty hard to know which way the wind will blow.

Or, if the sun will shine etc. The CO2 to liquid fuel conversions discussed in Mutant Tupperware, which need added energy to function, seem a better way to use intermittent power sources than connecting them to the grid. When the grid gets starved all sorts of havoc ensues. It may be that the CO2 to liquid systems can't tolerate interruption well either, I don't know. There are other ways to store intermittent energy, such as hydrogen production, and synthesis of other commodities such as ammonia from the hydrogen. It's much easier to store chemicals and gasses synthesized by intermittent energy sources than it is to store electricity.

Nukes make far more sense for baseload power.

Update:

Air capture is coming . . . whether you like it or not.