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Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
241–250 of 347 posts
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Renewables are very reliable if you winter-proof them, the same as other sources. The problem at the moment is that none of the sources for Texas was prepared for a cold winter, renewable or otherwise. Quebec is 99% renewable[0] (95% hydro, 4% wind) and runs through the coldest of winter just fine! > With over 40 853 MW of installed capacity, hydroelectric stations generate about 95% of Quebec’s electricity. > Wind i…
> Quebec is 99% renewable[0] (95% hydro, 4% wind) and runs through the coldest of winter just fine! Hydro has huge impacts on the environment and can only be built if you have mountains and large amounts of water. Oh, and it’s one of the dealiest sources of energy. The Banqiao dam disaster in 1975 killed as much as 250.000 people while there are less than 50 deaths attributed to Chernobyl according to UNSCEAR/WHO.
Chernobyl may have less deaths, but it affected the health of hundreds of thousands.
If you think about the danger of renewable sources of energy, know that there is not alternative because we have no alternative planet.
Betwwwn 250,000 accidental deaths and billions of suffering people, I choose the former.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many young people have no memory of Enron. Instead of pointing fingers, it would be better if we presented them with historical facts. Because of fraudulent energy market manipulation, many thousands of people from around the world lost their jobs, homes and savings in the blink of an eye. Hopefully, we are not seeing a repeat of that fiasco, but if we are not vigilant, it could happen again. https://www.youtube.com/…
Indeed, it feels a bit weird getting a warning on my original comment when I remember all the BS we had to put up with from people who were reselling our own power back to us. I don't know for sure but I don't think electricity prices ever came back down from that. Like that comment was dripping with irony and schadenfreude, sure, but is not flamebait! Enron was real, and they fucked things up for good!
People have short memories.
If you remember those days, this should chill your blood. It sounds like a fictional movie, but it was very real.
Tapes: Enron plotted to shut down power plant https://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/enron.tapes/
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#244I need more context. Is that a lot? Is that low? Is it a big change from before? In what direction?
900/Mwh is 90c per kwh. Normal wholesale is about 5-7c. Retail national average is about 14. Higher cost states are around 20c with Hawaii near 30c.
90c per kwh in crunch time is still comparably cheap in comparison with much of the world.
I've been in countries where cooking 1 dish on electric oven will cost you $1.
Much of Europe has price hovering in between 30c to 50c during day hours normal usage, and easily more than double of that during extreme peaks like ones you have in Texas now.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#245Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#246I'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…
What is happening in Texas has very little to do with baseline power generation and more to do with an electricity network not designed to handle cold weather.
In this current Texas disaster those base line thermal generators like coal, gas and nuclear have also fallen victim to these low temperatures.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#247I'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…
I feel like what we need to do is dump $50 to $100 billion per year into nuclear fusion reactor research, then get them online around the world as soon as possible. If the patents are to be believed, then Lockheed-Martin's Skunkworks has developed a portable fusion reactor the size of an intermodal shipping container. I'd like to see those scaled up significantly for usage around the world, for a variety of reasons..…
Even if we already new how to do fusion we couldn't build fusion plants quickly enough to prevent catastrophic warming. Arguably we can't even build fission plants quickly enough for that. The window for fusion has closed, we should've invested forty years ago. Hoping for some breakthrough that allows us to build these fifty times faster than we currently believe we might be able to build them is a very risky maneuver.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#248Earlier 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 heavily depend on the weather. They cannot therefore produce any sufficient amounts of electricity during a blizzard. And the blame doesn’t lie on natural gas but on the idea of shutting down baseload-capable sources like nuclear in favor of renewables.
And the blame doesn’t lie on natural gas but on the idea of shutting down baseload-capable sources like nuclear in favor of renewables.
What nuclear has been shut down in Texas?
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see why we need this so called baseline. It is an outdated concept pushed by the nuclear industry. We need (i) to harness the cheap energy coming from the sun and the wind and (ii) another source of energy to make up shortages when solar and wind are unavailable. The source (ii) should be able to be ramped up and shut down quickly, which is a requirement where nuclear flat out fails. The baseline concept of a…
> I don't see why we need this so called baseline. It is an outdated concept pushed by the nuclear industry. That’s a lie spread by the renewables lobby. Of course, there is always a certain level of electricity generation that is needed as most people like to use their fridges, AC and computers 24/7. And then you have things like traffic infrastructure, hospitals, gas stations which operate 24/7. I don’t know about…
> Of course, there is always a certain level of electricity generation that is needed as most people like to use their fridges, AC and computers 24/7.
This is true but let me summarise my understanding which might be incorrect, and is based off this article and similar ones. I'd like to know where it's wrong?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-ene...
Basically, there is a minimum amount of power a traditional power plant can generate before needing to turn off, which is slow and costly.
"Base load" is this minimum amount that is generated onto the grid and it is priced accordingly at off-peak times so demand will increase and consume it without power stations losing money by burning fuel to waste power, or having to turn off.
With renewables in the picture, they eat into this base load demand. Now when demand is lower, renewables might still be outputting power at little to no marginal cost, and homes are not pulling from the grid. The traditional plants are burning fuel but they have to sell it at a loss or dump the power (maybe batteries can help them here).
This means that, as we get more and more renewable sources online, traditional plants are actually bad for base load (in the modern use of the term) generation. A lot of the time they can't come online fast enough to fill a slump if renewables drop, which means they are idling and losing money the rest of the time when renewables are flourishing. This means we need rapid response sources, like batteries (seconds) or gas (tens of minutes) rather than the traditional sources (coal) which take hours.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
We paid 33 cents / kWh on the bay area last year. Not sure how the rest of CA is doing.
> We paid 33 cents / kWh on the bay area last year. Not sure how the rest of CA is doing. Forget “the rest of California”, that's extremely high for the Bay Area. Last year, SF Area average retail electricity prices by month ranged between 22.9 ¢/kW and 24.0 ¢/kW. https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/averageenergyp...
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...
Most of my usage is in tier 2 at $0.31443/kWh. In practice the actual bill comes out to $0.44/kWh because of all the random other complicated cruft.
Check out slide 28: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUCWebsite/Content/Ne...