This is a wake up call for modernizing the USA grid. Not including Texas of course.
Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
311–320 of 347 posts
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 an…
> Solar photovoltaic and wind are much older technologies than nuclear, to be fair on the "modern" quip. To be completely fair, the development of nuclear power took governments and would have been impossible otherwise. Solar and wind, not so much. The problem with nuclear is only cost, not NIMBY and before it is said so, it certainly is not the regulations jacking the cost of nuclear so high. If nuclear power was ec…
The German government spent like $500B buying expensive solar PV which was instrumental in allowing the manufacturing efficiencies to reduce prices to what we see today in solar.
Similarly, we know that serial construction of standard nuclear is cost effective from the examples cited.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Having lived in UK, France and Spain, I know that there aren't daily variations in consumer electricity prices, as there are in places like California. I don't have data if offices are priced differently.
Which countries in Europe charge their electricity to consumers based on 'extreme peaks' at between 60 to 100 cents? https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#314Earlier 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...
Dutch green energy providers cost around 23c/kWh, so yes, this seems about right.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#315There’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…
Absolutely. And better insulated houses save money on both heating and AC. It's a very obvious way to save a ton of energy.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#316I'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…
Nuclear has killed less people per TWh than any other form of electricity generation, despite Fukushima and Chernobyl.
But it has probably caused more birth defects because of Fukushima and Chernobyl. Death is just one statistic.
Though it wouldn't surprise me if deaths+birth defects+other health problems was still a lot lower for nuclear than for coal and oil.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was under a similar impression, but an independent audit found that while unnecessary staffing (and associated costs) was occurring, it didn't appear that the utility was attempting to sandbag the grid transformation. There's bloat, but also legitimate progress. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/audit-of-hawaiian-electric-... > Contrary to stakeholder criticism, Hawaiian Electric's support of Hawaii's groundbreaking…
2045? A 30 year transition plan (since '15) sounds like doing nothing and branding it.
Only if they aren't making progress towards the goals, but they do seem to be making progress.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Isn't gas also at like 50% production as well? It's also heavily knocked out? Like it's pulling a lot of weight because it's 80% of the capacity if nothing's going wrong! If it was 100% then maybe 40 GW of thermal capacity would _also_ be offline. ERCOT assumed 0% from Wind. Instead we're getting 25% They assumed 100% from gas. Instead we're getting 50% (or 70% or whatever). You look at that and tell me gas is what's…
It is simple to see what energy source is pulling above its weight and what energy source is pulling below its weight.
Go to here: https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-vi... , select "daily" view and put in 60 days to get a more representative sample.
on 12/19/2020 -- looks to be a fairly typical Texas winter day
natural gas production was 331660 megawatthours
wind was 191415 megawatthours
for a ratio of 1.73 gas/wind
this appears to be fairly typical numbers on a daily basis over the winter -- actually on a number of days wind surpasses gas
on 2/16/2021
natural gas 692091
wind 90087
for a ratio of 7.68 gas/wind
natural gas 2/16 vs natural gas 12/19 is ratio 2.09
wind 2/16 vs wind 12/19 is ratio 0.47
so as expected during an inclement weather event natural gas ramped up and wind ramped down. natural gas just didn't ramp up enough to pick up all the slack from increased demand and ramped down renewables.
"I get that wind + solar can't cover everything, but right now what we're seeing is massive failures from gas. In a universe where we had more wind + solar, there could likely be more energy going around right now." -- Wind is failing much worse than gas from an objective power generation standpoint. All wind has going for it is the tyranny of low expectations.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
But no sun or wind gods that we need to worry about?
Probably you don't drill into sun or wind, thus not producingj any unholy disturbance to the relevant deities.
Wind turbines do locally screw with the wind, that's why you can't put them too close to each other. But it's temporary and goes away when the turbine get decommissioned, so maybe that's the difference. Or maybe the wind is traditionally meant to be harnessed (boats) but volcanic energy is not?
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Nuclear power is only expensive to build. To run it's basically free, and unlike solar not limited to 6 hours in the middle of the day.