Would that be the graph that you said was so old as to be useless or the other graphs that you have ignored? Did you ignore the other graphs because they show a peak at 6PM as I stated it would be found?

I'm not even sure what you claim that you see any more, all I see is peak electric demand at around 6PM.

Still you provide no data to support your position.

The linked image clearly shows a peak load at 6PM. I even used a ruler.

All you've done is say that I lied but provided nothing to show what you said is true. So what if the peak demand is at 3PM instead of 6PM. Unless solar power output coincides with demand its worthless for anything other than a nuisance or curiosity.

If the peak demand for electric power was at 3PM instead of 6PM that only means that solar power is mostly worthless instead of completely worthless. So, do you still want to claim the peak demand is at 3PM?

The sooner people realize how worthless solar power is the sooner we can move on to something that actually works, like nuclear power.

Perhaps I'm wrong, I was going by memory from the reactions from the nuclear power incidents in Japan. I remember all those nations having decided to shutdown all nuclear power by some future date to prevent what happened in Japan. Quite likely most if not all changed their mind since.

Germany seems to want to replace nuclear with wind and solar, good luck with that. UK and France have not built a new nuclear plant in decades. Either way the USA has plenty of oil, coal, and natural gas to sell them if they need it. If the USA builds more nuclear power then we'd have even more to sell.

Where's your data that shows I've lied?

I thought killing endangered species was a bad thing. I believe in conservation. We should conserve our resources so future generations have places to hunt, farm, and ranch. Can't do that if productive land is covered with solar panels. Won't have crops and forests if windmills break up and burn from high winds or lightning strikes.

If you want to see an environmental disaster then lets keep burning "crop waste" instead of tilling it into the soil for fertilizer and erosion control.

Like I said, I did the math. Much of the so called "green energy" sources will end up turning forests and crop land into a dust bowl. We need crop rotations, not corn, corn, and more corn. We need large grazing animals to complete the carbon cycle. That means eating meat. We need to control predators, that means hunting.

We are part of the environment, not separate from it. We need to act like it or we won't have anything "green" to worry about.

In other words you have no data to support your claim.

Peak electric load does not coincide with peak solar power production. Even if it did there is still the matter of cost. Wind and natural gas are still cheaper.

If the federal government ever gets up off their thumbs then maybe we'll see cheap nuclear power. Nuclear power that burns the waste from the old inefficient reactors. Then we'd get somewhere. No carbon, no foreign energy, and no more windmills killing our national bird.

It amazes me how many people in the survey doubt that human activity is causing climate change. We have big corporate conglomerates that conveniently own both wind and solar companies as well as big TV broadcasters and newspapers. These people have "green week" once a month to show just how badly we are ruining the environment with our air conditioning, fast food, SUVs, and "throw away" lifestyle. All this bombardment of AGW and 37% of people are doubters. How can this be?

I have an idea. The scientists that have shown support for AGW have been caught cooking the numbers. We've just come out of an extended winter, one of many in the last decade or so. Every tornado, hurricane, earthquake, disease outbreak, or lightning strike is blamed on AGW. The "scientists" that support AGW are a bunch of cheaters and quacks.

Despite this overload of AGW hysteria from every news outlet the world around us does not reflect the hysteria. Things are pretty much like they were since the AGW "pause" that began in 1998. How long is a "pause" a "pause" and not a "stop"? AGW stopped being anthropogenic global warming when the globe stopped warming. It's rather difficult to claim we're warming the globe if there is no warming to show for it.

I've been playing along with the AGW thing so long as it supports my cause of an energy independent USA. It's hard to make that case when recent climate data does not show warming. This means I have to make my case for nuclear power by other means. I propose we use nuclear power to drill for natural gas and oil, and mine coal, so that we can sell it to other nations that lack the means to build up a nuclear power infrastructure.

Germany, France, and the UK all decided they would do away with nuclear power. It's going to get real cold and dark there this winter with no nuclear and no Russian natural gas. I say the USA can provide their power cheaper and without the guilt of supporting communists and dictators. Well, we'll get rid of the communists in November. The dictators will be gone in 2016.

Not only would the USA be producing cheap energy for the world with nuclear power we can burn up their nuclear waste in our waste annihilating molten salt reactors. Go shut down those nuclear power plants in Europe. The USA will buy your nuclear waste and sell you energy.

Where's your data? You gripe about the quality of what I gave you but you gave me nothing.

I could ask you the same thing. You said power load peaks coincide with solar power production. I called out your lie with data but you didn't even have the courtesy to provide where you get your data.

What politics am I pushing? I've made no mention of elected officials, political parties, or candidates. I did mention disagreement with policies that subsidize any energy sources. What does that make me then?

Here's some other images then:
http://www.mpoweruk.com/electr...
California 1999, peak load at 6PM.

http://www.hawaiianelectric.co...
Hawaii, peak load at 7PM. Also shows insolation, which shows the sun has set by 7PM.

There's all kinds of data on the internet showing load profiles, it's just that most of it is in Excel spreadsheets. I'm not in the mood to download them to see what I already know. If you have data that shows otherwise then please share rather than make unsubstantiated claims.

Solar power is a boondoggle. It produces no real power since it requires backups for when the sun does not shine. If we have to build the backups for solar power then why not just run the backups all the time? Given that natural gas is cheaper than solar that is precisely what the utilities are doing.

Even if solar power were free it is still worthless since we do not have the means to store that electricity for a price cheaper than producing it from natural gas, wind, coal, and nuclear. Running power lines to where the sun is shining won't help either since I2R losses would be huge, as would be the cost to build and maintain those lines.

I'm not "green bashing", I just did the math. Solar power is worthless for grid power. If you are off the grid then the math changes but that is not what is being discussed here. The only reason anyone buys solar panels when grid power is available is because the government paid them to. That means the government took my money to give to some wealthy person with a big house so they can buy solar panels, then they take more of my money through more solar power subsidies because they have the solar panels on their roof.

If you think "big oil" is some evil lobby then what about "big solar"? The solar power business model is based on continued government subsidies. Without the government propping them up none of them would be in business. "Big oil" and "big coal" would still be around without government money because they actually produce something useful.

Does "big oil" make a lot of money? Yep, that's because you and I gave it to them. We got energy in return but we still gave them that money without a gun to our head. Does "big solar" make a lot of money? Yep, but they do it with the threat of government force.

A picture of the load profile from the US government -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

There is a peak in usage at about 8:00AM, another peak at about 6:00PM, a valley at about noon, and power use hits its lowest at about 3:00AM.

I searched for the video I saw on that explained power usage peaks and solar power production and I could not find it again. The link above shows an image from the USGS and the talk I saw was based on data from the Texas power grid. The guy went into depth about how the peak of power usage is about when solar power is unavailable for the rest of the day, and that solar power peaks right when usage hits the lunch time valley.

The difference between peak power use and peak solar power output makes solar power a very low value power source. This means that solar power has to be cheaper than its competitors to be of value to utilities, which it is not. Solar power is not profitable to utilities. Solar power will not be profitable until we get a means to store or transport that power cheap enough to compete with its lowest fruit competitor, wind.

I will admit that I'm no expert on electric power production but don't tell me I didn't see what I saw. The electric power profiles I saw were from the federal government and from American utilities, I would consider those trustworthy sources.

I was surprised when I was shown that peak power happened in the late afternoon or early evening. One would think that power consumption should taper off at 5:00 as factories shut down but it doesn't. Why this peak happens later in the day has a lot to do with our everyday habits, not something that can be summarized here.

What surprised me about one of the YouTube talks I saw was that even if solar power were free it would not make economic sense to have more than 20% solar on the grid. He had charts and a lengthy explanation as to why. It comes down to that we do not have a cheap way to store electricity. If we cannot consume it as we need it then it gets thrown away. Electric capacity that is unused costs the utility money.

Solar power that is free at noon means throttling back cheap base load power. That base load power cannot be brought back up to speed in time the evening peak arrives, so the more expensive peak power generators would have to be used. Averaged out over the day and that means the price of electricity goes up.

But solar power is not free. Solar power is very expensive except in the most ideal locations. That is why solar power makes up less than 1% of the electricity produced in the USA. Solar power and the electric storage capacity to go with it will have to come down in price by orders of magnitude before utilities will consider it anything other than a nuisance or curiosity.

That's not what I was told. Peak power consumption typically happens shortly after sunset as people turn on lights, TVs, ovens, and so forth. Business and factory loads are winding down at that point but residential loads are winding up at the same time and overlap.

Solar power not only does not help in this case it hurts. There's all kinds of good information on this if you take off your solar powered blinders long enough to read some of it.

Solar is winning? If that was the case then why are these people have a connection to the largely coal powered grid at all? Or, why doesn't the utility just put up their own solar panels then?

Solar power is not winning. If these homeowners with the solar panels on their roof had to pay the real unsubsidized cost of solar power they'd be paying about ten times what coal power costs. After decades of solar power research it still makes up less than 1% of the total electric power produced in the USA. That's not even close to "winning".

Natural gas is winning. Nuclear power is winning. Coal is losing. Wind power is in the race but its still too early to tell if it can win. If the government money dried up for solar power today then all the solar panel makers would not open up tomorrow.

Does coal get a lot of government money too? Yes they do. That just means they should stop getting government money as well as solar.

Solar winning in a "free market"? Not likely. I would like to see a free market though. We used to have one in the USA, I'd like to see it return.