I’m going to start this off with “The Big Myth”. I call it the big myth because everyone seems to believe it, at least everyone who doesn’t work in the electricity business. But I blame The Big Myth for a lot of the problems that the wacko environmentalists have gotten the rest of us into. The Big Myth is simply this:

Electricity is stored somewhere when we aren’t using it.

This is simply not true. Or to put it more harshly, it’s a fucking lie. It’s a nice lie. It’s an easily believable lie, especially for those who don’t know much about electricity. It’s a fun lie, because it makes all kinds of crazy wacko ideas possible. But ultimately it’s a lie.

Electricity is not stored.

The electricity that you are using right now in your computer that is allowing you to read this rant is not coming from a storage location. “Oh, but I’m using a laptop with a battery.” you say, well fucking bravo to you for throwing my argument off track for your little snippy remark. For the rest of us who are using desktop computers plugged into the wall, the electricity that is coming from the wall is being supplied by a series of wires and cables that eventually reach all the way back to the power plant’s generator. Notice the lack of storage device between the generator and your wall socket. That’s because there is no storage device. Literally, the electricity that is being generated from the power plant’s generator is traveling through a series of cables, wires, and transformers (Not a storage device) and into your appliances in a matter of seconds, cause electricity moves really fast, at least in America where we use AC power.

Why is this important? Because if you can’t store electricity that means you have to be generating electricity when you use electricity. Which means, boys and girls, that solar power doesn’t work during the night time, or when it’s cloudy, and wind power doesn’t work when the weather is calm. For some places this would mean no electricity almost ever.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for moving away from traditional fossil fuels for base load electrical power production, but trying to move to solar or wind doesn’t work because we don’t store energy, and what’s more we can’t. Which is really to say that we can’t without some amazing breakthroughs in battery technology (’cause batteries suck the larger you build them) or by embracing some of Tesla’s crazier ideas. Not that I have anything against Tesla’s crazy ideas, I’m just a little unsure about utilizing them for the safe, reliable, and affordable production of electricity.

But just so you get the point of this rant: Electricity comes out of a power plant’s generator, into a series of wires, cables, and transformers, and into your house without being stored, hence solar and wind power have some serious problems.