Perhaps the gingerly drift by Bill Gates toward climate pragmatism indicates that the tide really is turning. Including that thanks to Blacklock’s Reporter we learn that the Canada Energy Regulator, né the National Energy Board, just put out a commentary Ensuring Future Power Grid Reliability that offered up some welcome sanity: “Trends driving increased demand include electricity’s projected role in decarbonization efforts with growing electrification of end-uses like increased electric vehicle use and heat pump adoption. Meeting this rising electricity demand could be a reliability challenge.” While it’s sad that a small amount of common sense from a government agency is cause for such celebration, and despite the bureaucratese, we’ll take it: “Higher electricity consumption could make it difficult for grid operators to reliably provide sufficient power during peak periods.” Aka green power equals blackouts, including a mid-winter near-disaster in Alberta last year that the report commendably does cite. Told you so.

Weirdly, so did the BBC, which is unusual and another possibly hopeful sign of the times. In the Netherlands, it reports:

“In a Dutch government TV campaign called ‘Flip the Switch’ an actress warns viewers about their electricity usage. ‘When we all use electricity at the same time, our power grid gets overloaded,’ she says. ‘This can cause malfunctions. So, use as little electricity as possible between four and nine.’ It is the sign that, in one of the most-advanced economies in the world, something has gone wrong with the country’s power supply.”

Oh, something has, has it? And whatever can it be? Bearing in mind that we’re told “alternatives” are cheaper and more reliable than fossil fuels, and will enhance rather than disrupting your lifestyle… aside from the bit where you can’t afford your power bill, and have to cook between meals and do laundry in the middle of the night and that kind of thing.

Well um uh that is to say:

“The Netherlands has been an enthusiastic adopter of electric cars. It has the highest number of charging points per capita in Europe. As for electricity production, the Netherlands has replaced gas from its large North Sea reserves with wind and solar. So much so that it leads the way in Europe for the number of solar panels per person. In fact, more than one third of Dutch homes have solar panels fitted. The country is also aiming for offshore wind farms to be its biggest source of energy by 2030. This is all good in environmental terms, but it’s putting the Dutch national electricity grid under enormous stress, and in recent years there have been a number of power cuts.”

Wait, more wind and solar cause stress? It used to be that building a fleet of new generators relieved grid stress. Could it be that these renewables are the problem not the solution? Let’s see if we can make the problem better by giving it a long name:

“The problem is ‘grid congestion’, says Kees-Jan Rameau, chief executive of Dutch energy producer and supplier Eneco, 70% of whose electricity generation is now solar and wind. ‘Grid congestion is like a traffic jam on the power grid. It’s caused by either too much power demand in a certain area, or too much power supply put onto the grid, more than the grid can handle.’”

Not a term we had or needed back when the power was conventional, expensive and unreliable. But then something went wrong…