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Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

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Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#101

Post by acidburnNSA »

epistasis wrote: post #86
PostThisTooFast wrote: post #37

We should be busily building nuclear plants. This isn't going to get better otherwise.

Nuclear plants are the worst possible way to reduce energy costs. They are also incredibly massive single points of failure, so they tend to reduce reliability compared to more distributed smaller generation units. Germany, for example, has seen reliability increase massively as they shift towards more distributed renewables, even though it's not a super high penetration level. As we shift to more renewables and star…

That's really not justifiable unless you assume nuclear construction costs in the out-of-practice west apply everywhere, always and forever. To think this is to completely disregard the amazing nuclear builds in China (see Hualong One), the UAE (3 APR-1400s build by the Koreans), Russia (lots of VVERs), etc. At the costs they're delivering, current low-carbon 24/7 nuclear is a rock-solid choice.

Solar photovoltaic and wind are much older technologies than nuclear, to be fair on the "modern" quip.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#102

Post by mleonhard »

cmdli wrote: post #79
twunde wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directly. In Texas and other deregulated markets, you can be on either a fixed rate for n months or on a variable rate. If you're on a variable rate, the rate will be much higher than normal for the next few months. If you're on a fixed rate you're fine for now, but keep an eye on when your fixed rate expires. This assumes that your supplier is still in business after the next few months (many suppliers will go b…

> If you are in a regulated market or are using the regulated utilities like ConEd in NYC, you'll see limited rate increases to deal with the increased cost to supply. These rate increases need to be approved by the state's Public Utility Commission. If deregulated suppliers are having to raise prices to cover costs, wouldn't that apply to regulated suppliers as well? Unless they have enough cash on hand to ride it o…

Would you like to find out the answers to these questions and post them here?

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#103

Post by wahern »

tt433 wrote: post #77
sremani wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas banned out of state sale of NG, that will have consequence but not sure that is the reason.

How is it legal for them to regulate interstate commerce?

Probably not. But especially in emergencies it's often better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. (Also, domestic in-state political signaling.)

Anyhow, the legal effect may be irrelevant if the gas producers wouldn't bother trying to export. I would imagine that producers are having trouble just delivering on their long-term, fixed-price contracts in Texas. The short-term prices might be so jacked up precisely because there's little to no surplus to export, period.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#104

Post by gothroach »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #85
jeffbee wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average price paid for residential^W power in California last year was 16 cents, not 30, not 40.

We paid 33 cents / kWh on the bay area last year. Not sure how the rest of CA is doing.

I'm on T3 with an excessive use surcharge, so I'm closer to 45 cents here in the North Bay.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#105

Post by TeeMassive »

lsllc wrote: post #71

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthqua…

Hydro is pretty much safe from winter temperatures. Ice will only freeze about 50cm max during a cold winter on a still lake. Source: I'm from Québec, we heat our homes with electricity, our barrage are in the far North.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#106

Post by lsllc »

mnklo wrote: post #83
lsllc wrote: post #71

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthqua…

Renewables are more than capable of supplying "base load". What you're referring to is a fallacy.

All I'm saying is we need a mix of generation, including guaranteed baseline generating capacity. A typical nuclear plant puts out 1GW, that's pretty substantial.

Take a look at France:

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

They generated 71% of their 582 TWh in 2018 from Nuclear, with the bulk of the remainder coming from Hydro (12%) Natural Gas (5%), Wind (5%) ... (solar was only 2%, same as coal).

They are a net exporter of power and that generates about €3 billion/year of revenue.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#107

Post by waiseristy »

epistasis wrote: post #86
PostThisTooFast wrote: post #37

We should be busily building nuclear plants. This isn't going to get better otherwise.

Nuclear plants are the worst possible way to reduce energy costs. They are also incredibly massive single points of failure, so they tend to reduce reliability compared to more distributed smaller generation units. Germany, for example, has seen reliability increase massively as they shift towards more distributed renewables, even though it's not a super high penetration level. As we shift to more renewables and star…

Nuclear is a much more modern, cost effective, and scalable tech today than it was in the 70's as well. France has one of the highest levels of nuclear utilization, and one of the lowest energy costs in europe

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#108

Post by dragonwriter »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #22
bob1029 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 90c/KWh. Arguably very expensive rate for electricity. Not sure if related to the Texas/ERCOT grid situation, as the DC tie-ins are not that substantial.

In California it’s about 30 to 40 cents kWh during normal times.

> In California it’s about 30 to 40 cents kWh during normal times.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

16.89 ¢/kW in 2019. Where did you get 30-40 ¢/kW?

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#109

Post by telchar »

lsllc wrote: post #71

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthqua…

Baseload + peakers is one concept that allows a grid to meet demand. But it's not the only way - decorrelated intermittent generation + peakers could work too. But what doesn't work well so well is baseload + intermittent generation. If you must have baseload (i.e. nuclear) as the foundation of the grid, intermittent renewables (solar/wind) aren't going to have much of a place because you need dispatchable power generation to fill in the demand peaks.

As long as we need peakers or other dispatchable powers supply, I like solar and wind over nuclear to provide the main quantity of generation vs nuclear. I don't see nuclear catching up to renewables on cost terms at this point.

Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now

#110

Post by mrDmrTmrJ »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #84
rtpg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas-based electrical generation is what are failing right now! They are failing left and right! If 100% was gas there would be more problems, not less. Wind and Solar is pulling above planned generation right now. If you believe your logic, time to go all-in on wind + solar.

Wind and solar are above planned generation right now, which was 0. In ERCOT wind has been making less than 6 GW out of 33 GW installed for over 7 days straight [1]. Natural gas is pulling almost all the weight right now, as you can see. So no, not time to go all in on wind + solar. [1] https://i.imgur.com/EEbf5lM.png (screenshot from EIA, original data here: https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard…

You're correct that, "30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out."

I think wind can play a huge role in fixing this. Check out: https://www.windy.com/?37.539,-94.134,4

And you've got plenty of massive offshore wind resources on both sides of the continent that are blowing right now (Feb 17th 7:49pm PDT) if we had installed capacity.

We need to keep our nuclear fleet (20% of electrical generation) and invest in a TON of transmission.

If we had this electrical grid, we'd be doing far better: https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1356442256866037766

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