A week later, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum pushed similar rhetoric during an on-air Fox Business interview.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lvbarqhuvs2s

Link to tweet

.....There’s just one problem: Battery technology exists. As MSNBC host Catherine Rampell explained in a Washington Post column last year:

Growth in clean-electricity generation is a longer-term trend driven largely by technological improvements that have improved solar’s and wind’s cost-competitiveness. But recent policy changes, such Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, have also accelerated development. The same forces are boosting battery development, which is helping solve intermittency problems caused by relying on wind or solar when the weather doesn’t cooperate. The Energy Information Administration recently forecast that U.S. battery storage capacity will nearly double [in 2024] alone.

If the GOP response is that battery storage technology is still in the process of advancing, that’s fine. I’ll gladly concede the point.

But as some Republicans seem inclined to pretend that batteries don’t exist at all, I came across an FAQ that the right should find interesting.

The U.S. power grid consists of a huge number of interconnected transmission lines that connect a variety of generation sources to loads. The wind does not always blow, and the sun does not always shine, which creates additional variability and uncertainty (as nobody can perfectly forecast wind or solar output). But power grid operators have always had to deal with variability. Many forms of power generation can unexpectedly trip offline without notice and some only produce power at certain times. There is also uncertainty due to ever-changing loads (energy demand) that cannot be perfectly predicted.

The same online document added, “Grid operators use the interconnected power system to access other forms of generation when contingencies occur and continually turn generators on and off when needed to meet the overall grid demand. Integrating variable renewable power to the grid does not change how this process of balancing electricity supply and demand works.”