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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

#281

Post by imtringued »

chmod775 wrote: post #265
baybal2 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great! Now go tear down the entire housing stock so we can rebuild it better. Unfortunately, as a society we're already under-building, so we can't really afford to tear down what we've already got. Well, why not? Japan effectively rebuilt its entire housing stock few times over since WW2, and so did Britain, Germany, and ex-Union countries. I believe USA has more money than the broke USSR did 20 year timelines is…

>I believe USA has more money than the broke USSR did Note that this doesn't really matter. It especially didn't matter back then in a less globalized economy. The USSR being poor doesn't change anything about their domestic labor pool, which is what is relevant for construction work. The laborers simply charge less. This is same fallacy that leads people to believe we'd magically have more of everything if money hoa…

>The first can be achieved by diverting money and making the job more attractive

You mean... like the central bank dropping interest rates to an all time low?

The low CPI inflation also suggests an underutilized labor force.

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

#282

Post by imtringued »

konjin wrote: post #209
akamaka wrote: post #203

There’s an elegant solution to all this: better energy efficiency for buildings. It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and suggesting elaborate solutions like nuclear power. And before you say it’s not feasible to upgrade hundreds of millions of buildings in the USA, you should be aware that upgrading homes to be more energy efficient actually pays for itself (albeit in the long ru…

>It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and suggesting elaborate solutions like nuclear power. The root cause is extreme weather events which will will get more of. Non-renewables are not affected by the wind and sun. Since we don't want to go extinct by pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere we are left with nuclear. I don't understand how people can want to return to feudalism where…

The evidence is stacked against centralized power production. Centralized power production is highly unreliable. Nuclear power stops working during freezing weather and very hot weather where flow rates in rivers drop. Gas stops working when pipelines freeze. Coal plants are the primary cause of death via power generation because their pollution is worse than just CO2.

Meanwhile people spend a lot of effort on predicting Solar and Wind and yet their expectations were more pessimistic compared to the actual energy production capacity that is online.

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

#283

Post by baybal2 »

apexalpha wrote: post #276
baybal2 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure? Because 30c seems to be the absolute highest in Europe, which is Germany. [0] With the average being 0,21c. This is residential pricing though, so it includes a lot of taxes. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

https://www.smard.de/page/en/marktdaten/78?marketDataAttribu...

Again, I specifically mean day time office, and residential "retail" price, which is 2-3 times bigger than wholesale.

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

#285

Post by dmurray »

apexalpha wrote: post #274
panarky wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like a car load of hard disks driven 2000 miles has greater bandwidth than transmitting that same data over the internet, I wonder if you could arbitrage Texas electric costs by driving a semi-truck full of Tesla Powerwall batteries from Florida.

Congratz, you just invented the possibly least energy efficient way to construct interconnected grids. But in all seriousness, this is why the entire world interconnects their grids as much as possible: arbitraging energy needs (/ cost).

It's much more energy-efficient than building pylons and distribution lines, if you only need it once in a lifetime to deal with a hundred-year weather event, and outside that you have a use for the Powerwalls and the truck.

It's not implausible something like this could be economically worthwhile, though as sokoloff points out it's not close to being there at current prices. Trucks full of portable generators and diesel fuel are also a potential competitor.

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

#286

Post by pmiller2 »

jjav wrote: post #275
abandonliberty wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see us start building energy efficient homes. A bit more up front investment would give huge returns.

A problem is that conserving doesn't in the end produce any cost savings, which is a perverse disincentive to conserve. Water during the CA droughts a few years ago is a perfect example. Water agencies asked people to conserve water. So people did. A lot. Water agencies promptly freaked out because their revenue decreased. Of course it did, people were conserving water. So they increased the base rates (the amount th…

How about helping to ensure there's a planet worth living on in 20-50 years? Must it always come down to whatever costs the least money now?

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

#287

Post by imtringued »

konjin wrote: post #223
akamaka wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that one third of US carbon emissions come from buildings? Upgrading buildings would massively reduce emissions, and we’d never have to generate the electricity in the first place. It pays for itself.

Do you know that if electricity generation doesn't produce CO2 then consuming it won't either?

If you are going to deploy an expensive method of power generation you better want to use that expensive power as efficiently as possible. The fact that you don't consider practical reality makes it sound like this is just a Santa wishlist of yours.

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

#288

Post by harg »

protoman3000 wrote: post #284

So how does this work out in the end? Will people suffering in the cold due to outages in the end also get a thousand dollar invoice for the 2h of daily electricity they were given?

I believe most people will be on fixed rate tariffs so it shouldn’t affect their bills (aside from lower usage due to the outages). This will hit the suppliers as they need to buy the energy for their customers on the wholesale market.

I don’t know what the smart meter situation is like in Texas but there might be some people on price-linked tariffs who would be exposed.

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

#290

Post by harg »

panarky wrote: post #269
baybal2 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, daily averages vary wildly in industrialised countries with real time electricity pricing. In much of Europe, residential, and office will pay $0.3-0.5 during normal use in winter, but dramatically less in off-peak hour in countries with "smart meters." This way you get seemingly sensible $0.1-$0.2 per kWh averages , but drop your jaw when you see your electricity bill.

Just like a car load of hard disks driven 2000 miles has greater bandwidth than transmitting that same data over the internet, I wonder if you could arbitrage Texas electric costs by driving a semi-truck full of Tesla Powerwall batteries from Florida.

You’d probably be better bringing a diesel generator and a big tank of fuel.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that isn’t being done by the authorities to help make up the shortfall

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