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November 30, 2023 at 02:09AM

Sometime soon there will be a major power cut in a large part of the country and we will see the debate played out in the mainstream media. The link below shows a near miss in New York.  

New York narrowly missed a disaster last Christmas Eve: gas pipes froze and 127GW of electricity vanished « JoNova (joannenova.com.au)

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November 30, 2023 at 01:52AM

By Paul Homewood

 

This caught my eye:

 

 

Germany’s residential grid operators will be empowered to restrict the flow of power to heat pumps and electric vehicle (EV) chargers from 2024 in order to preserve the stability of the grid, which is suffering from chronic underinvestment.

Across Europe, investments into grids are lagging behind what’s needed as the continent embraces heat pumps and electric vehicles.

“Waiting time for permits for grid reinforcements are between 4-10 years, and 8-10 years for high voltages,” the European Commission said on Tuesday (28 November) as it unveiled a new Action Plan to accelerate the deployment of electricity grids.

“Grids need to be an enabler, not a bottleneck in the clean energy transition,” said Kadri Simson, the EU’s energy commissioner.

In Germany, the network regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur, is now taking steps to throttle the electricity delivered to EVs and heat pumps to alleviate pressure on the grid.

“We are taking precautions today to ensure that heat pumps and charging facilities for electric cars can be connected quickly and operated safely,” said Klaus Müller, president of the federal grid agency on Monday (27 November).

Throttling the devices

Müller is walking a tightrope: keeping the lights on while integrating 500,000 new heat pumps every year and 15 million EVs by 2030. But he also has new powers to do this, thanks to a recent ruling by the EU court of justice which boosted its independence.

Going forward, the country’s 880 local grid operators won’t be able to block new heat pumps or wall-chargers for EVs in their service areas.

In exchange, they get to throttle the devices when power demand threatens “acute damage or overloading of the network”.

For that duration, devices will receive a trickle of 4.2 kilowatts per hour – on which heat pumps can continue running, and EVs can be charged for a 50-kilometre ride within two hours, the regulator says. Other household devices won’t be affected.

Even that figure is too high for the companies addressed. “We criticise the fact that the [regulator] BNetzA has raised the minimum guaranteed output even further from 3.7 KW to 4.2 KW,” stressed the municipal utility association VKU, who said the “practicality of the very generous guarantee” has yet to be proven.

Müller says he expects “interventions by the grid operator to remain the exception.”

When DSOs curtail devices, they must expand the affected grid service area. “However, the distribution system operators are not threatened with penalties if the grids are not expanded in line with demand,” said industry association bne.

The rules come into effect on 1 January 2024, with a two-year grace period. From 2025, Germany wants to take time-variable consumption tariffs seriously and reward consumers at times of the day when cheap solar or wind electricity are abundant.

Until then, owners of heat pumps and EV charging stations at home have the option of slashing their bills by €110 to €190 by allowing local grid operators to reduce power supplies when needed. If devices are connected to a dedicated meter, power prices could even be slashed by 60%.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/ev-chargers-heat-pumps-may-be-curtailed-in-germany-as-of-2024/?utm_source=website&utm_campaign=popular

I presume that heat pumps and EV chargers must be directly controlled via some sort of smart meter. This is of course just the beginning of the problem, which will become much more acute as coal power is phased out and demand from heating and cars increases.

What may start as the “exception” will quickly become the norm.

So if you want to heat your home in winter, or charge your car to get to work the next day, tough luck.

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November 30, 2023 at 01:12AM

“The case of Guillermo Yeatts for subsoil privatization should eclipse ‘climate change’ as the number one policy initiative of the 21st century. This friend of private property, free markets, the rule of law, and civil society, a successful entrepreneur in his own right, a thinker and doer, has set up an excellent opportunity for a new political era in his beloved Argentina.”

Give me liberty, not corruption and poverty! The recent election of Javier Milei of La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances) in Argentina was a resounding vote for freedom and prosperity. And don’t let the mainstream media marginalize him (“frequent conservative provocateur” … “far-right libertarian rants” ….). He has a grand opportunity to enact a national “social justice” that could be a model for many other nations in Latin and South America and in other regions of the world.

Background

Milton Friedman, while warning against “a tyranny of the status quo,” noted:

Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.

And Argentinian voters have responded with a libertarian of promise. As Wiki describes the country’s new leader:

… Milei gained notability as an economist, as the author of multiple books on economics and politics, and for his distinct political philosophy as a vocal proponent of the Austrian School. He critiqued the fiscal policies of various Argentine administrations and advocates reduced government spending.

As a university professor, he taught courses in macroeconomics, economic growth, microeconomics, and mathematics for economists.^[1] Milei also authored numerous books and hosted radio programs…. As a national deputy, he … critiqu[ed] what he calls Argentina’s political elite and its propensity for high government spending. Milei has pledged not to raise taxes…. He defeated economy minister Sergio Massa … on a platform that held the ideological dominance of Peronism responsible for the ongoing Argentine economic crisis.

Javier Milei, Meet G. Yeatts

Javier Milei has an opportunity to channel a great, late Argentinian, Guillermo Yeatts (1937–2018), champion of privatizing the subsoil. I have written “Mineral Privatization for the Masses: Remembering Guillermo Yeatts (1937–2018) in regard to his primer, Subsurface Wealth: The Struggle for Privatization in Argentina (Foundation for Economic Education: 1997), a translation of El Robo del Subsuelo (Theft of the Subsoil).

Here are some quotations from Yeatts’ book (pp. 161, 167, 168, 171–2).

“The history of oil production in Argentina has been characterized by a continuing tug-of-war between the state as owner of the subsurface and private producers in the pursuit of profitable production of the resource. Private participation in the industry was limited to brief periods of time and restricted to specific phases of oil production.”

“The effectively monopolistic position of the federal oil corporation displaced the private sector to certain segments (such as refining) or to participation in peripheral activities …. In the strictly oil activities of exploration and production, YPF remained the sole and monopolistic player.”

“In Argentina, public ownership of the subsurface has been the foundation of a model of forced redistribution of rent in the oil industry. [Government] institutions are the royalties system, public oil production, and the establishment of reserves, quotas, regulations, registries, permits, etc. They have also caused stagnation in the industry and relegated the country’s oil resources to oblivion.”

“Privatization … is the institutional change required to reduce risk and allow internalization of externalities through private, voluntary, and mutually beneficial agreements. Privatization of the subsurface will complete the deregulation of the market, and, more importantly, encourage innovation among surface owners and oil prospectors.”

“The new oil market … only presents individuals with the incentives to embark on efforts to bring about growth and increased productivity. This change is about unobstructing minds and freeing them from restrictions. It appeals to the initiative of thousands of surface owners who will discover new business opportunities and new means to obtain profits.”

I summarized Yeatts’s major theme in my guest preface to this book (pp. xv–xvi):

[There is] a general economic maxim: public [government] resources are really private, owned and exploited by a political elite, while private resources are really public, owned and managed by a multitude. Government-owned resources do not ‘belong to all of the people’ and allow ‘self determination;’ they belong to none or a very few.”

Conclusion

The case of Guillermo Yeatts for subsoil privatization should eclipse “climate change” as the number one policy initiative of the 21st century. This friend of private property, free markets, the rule of law, and civil society, a successful entrepreneur in his own right, a thinker and doer, has set up an excellent opportunity for a new political era in his beloved Argentina.

——————

Guillermo M. Yeatts (1937–2018) died five years ago, just short of his 81st birthday.

The post Argentinian Reform: Subsoil Privatization (Javier Milei, meet Guillermo Yeatts) appeared first on Master Resource.

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November 30, 2023 at 01:04AM