You're picking the wrong times by using 7AM times in the early morning when it's cooler and nobody's at work yet.
I was merely giving an example of the fluctuation in electricity demand across large areas which have different time zones.
Change that to the worse time for electricity needs. When it's noon in California on the west coast, it's 3pm on the East Coast. That's the hottest parts of the day when air conditioners will be maxed out.
Okay, I will. Give or take up to 3 hours difference, the greatest demand for electricity occurs during the main part of the day when most people are sitting in air-conditioned office, or retirement homes, or working in factories.
To meet this demand in a reliable way, one builds hundreds of baseload coal-fired, gas-fired, or nuclear power plants. Unfortunately, during the night very little power is needed. Gas-fired power plants can more easily be switched on and off according to demand for electricity, but coal-fired and nuclear can't. The power output can be scaled down, but the plants are still running.
My impression is, from various reports I've read, most coal-fired and nuclear power plants tend to run at an average of 50% capacity during each 24 hour period. What a waste! You complain about the necessity to have double the quantity of solar panels to meet peak demand, yet ignore the inefficient idleness of baseload power plants during the night.
The way forward is to develop an integrated grid system across the country and into other countries, which is regulated by modern communication technology. This is sometimes referred to as a 'smart grid'. From Wikipedia:
"A smart grid is an electrical grid which includes a variety of operation and energy measures including smart meters, smart appliances, renewable energy resources, and energy efficient resources."As you know, I'm not concerned about the effects of rising CO2 levels on climate. I suspect that any negative effects, which cannot be accurately quantified because of the chaotic nature of climate, are outweighed by the positive effects which can be quantified, such as the greening of the planet.
However, I am very concerned about pollution in general and the degradation of the environment. The energy from the sun is totally free. Call it a gift from God, if you like.
How we harness and use that energy is up to us. We can apply modern research techniques and technology to harness and distribute that energy from the sun and wind more efficiently, or we can remain stuck in our old ways, relying upon the limited resources of coal and oil until the entire world economy begins to collapse due to a lack of energy supplies.
There's no reserve. Look at California now. They're having blackouts because it's so hot. Because they've shut down many fossil fuel plants in an ill advised action to go green, they've starved their own grid. Where would the energy come for them to ship electricity to the East Coast when they don't even have enough for their own use?
You're confusing political and administrative incompetence with rational, scientific arguments. If they can't ship energy to the East coast, then other areas will ship energy to California. That is the purpose of an integrated, 'Smart' grid system.
Fires in California are not a new phenomenom. Haven't they always occurred in the past? They certainly have in Australia.
This is the major problem as I see it. In order to persuade people to change their old-fashioned habits, and progress towards developing new, cleaner, and unlimited supplies of energy, one has to create the maximum scare about the harmful effects of the old technology. This appears to be working, in the sense that solar energy is becoming cheaper by the decade.
However, in order to create this scare, a lot of misinformation has to be broadcast through the media, such as attributing every extreme weather event, and every major forest fire, to global warming due to anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
One can't have it both ways. A government can't, on the one hand, create a scare about the adverse effects of CO2 on climate, and on the other hand, point out that extreme weather events in the past have been just as severe, when CO2 levels were lower, and that we should spend more money in preparing for a recurrence of such events which are completely natural.