“Until the Whistle Blows!”

I can still hear Coach Hoffman yelling on the football field at Walnut Hill, where I was a lineman and played offense and defense. He always encouraged us to maintain our block or pursue the ball.

"Until the whistle blows!"

No letting up, no loafing, no quitting.

If you've ever played a sport or pursued a dream, you've learned similar. If you want to win-to succeed-you must work, push through pain, endure hardship, and stay alert and engaged until the workday is done, until the final bell sounds, until the checkered flag, or, as it was in my case, until the whistle blows.

As much as we might like to soften this for our children by giving everyone a trophy, life inevitably teaches us that success comes to those who give 100%. Giving 30% effort just doesn't make the grade. It's one thing to give all the players on the Little League team a trophy, even if they did not give the same effort, but it's entirely another thing to be on the battlefield surrounded by thirty percenters, putting your life in their hands. It would not be very comforting to know the safety and operation of your automobile depended on a bunch of thirty percenters. I imagine also that none of us would sign up to go bungee jumping at the Thirty Percent Leap of Faith Club.

Generating electric power is no different. It is a 24/7/365 job. People like to walk into a room, flip a switch and see the lights come on without having to check if the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Folks like to set their thermostat and have their HVAC system come on and off as needed without having to check the weather. If people need to wash clothes at night, or if a medical procedure must be done, we demand that the power be available and not subject to weather.

Yet, in the name of global climate change, the U.S. has been on a push to shut down dispatchable fossil fuel plants and instead build out solar and wind power that barely can operate 30% of the time.

Wind and solar are intermittent. They have a low capacity factor. In 2025, utility scale solar operated at a capacity factor of 24.4% in the United States. Wind power made a capacity factor of 34.2%. Capacity factor is a ratio of how much energy a generating asset actually produces over a set time to how much it should be capable of producing. Imagine a 100-megawatt solar facility. If it operated at full 100-megawatt capacity every hour, its capacity factor would be 100%. But, in reality, solar can only produce when the sun is shining-and it produces less when it's cloudy. So with those constraints, the best it could do in 2025 was 24%.

Since these resources depend on environmental factors, their performance will not significantly improve. Again, if it is dark or cloudy, there is no solar power. If the wind dies down, there is no wind power. Renewables will always be thirty percenters.

Natural gas, nuclear, and coal power plants, on the other hand, are dispatchable and can operate 24/7. They can ramp up and down as the electric load dictates within the day. They operate until the whistle blows.

The greatest strain on our system occurs at 6 a.m. on the coldest day of the year. It is dark outside (no solar), and the wind in our area is not sufficient to support wind development. At 6 a.m., real power plants must be online, or the lights will go out. Solar and wind generate when they feel like it, and they want a trophy.

I'm not saying renewable energy is useless. When it runs, it displaces the natural gas we have to burn in our plants, and that does save money. But it cannot meet the timing required by today's consumers, unless we want to wash our clothes, schedule our medical procedures, or operate our sewage systems during sunshine daylight hours only.

But playing til' the whistle blows is a concept that carries with it a higher application. I encourage you to be a 100 percenter in everything you do. If you see the ball on the ground, pick it up and run with it. If you see someone that is hurting, step in and be a blessing. If you see a need, fill the gap-until the whistle blows or the trumpet sounds.

Until next month, I hope the Lord blesses you real good!