Nuclear Power Balls

[Sig]

If you knew anything about WECC, SPP, and ERCOT you'd know how flimsy that statement is. We have disparate grids with weak interconnections. California, New England, and Texas all have had at some points in time negative pricing in the wholesale markets. It's somewhat rare but not unusual. Which should never happen.

I agree that we do have weak intergrid connections, but we don't have to and in the grand scheme of things making that work isn't unsurmountable at least technically.

I actually think the future will involve a lot of negative pricing/curtailment. As renewables and potentially nuclear get cheaper and cheaper at some point the optimal solution will be to purposely overbuild significantly and just curtail most of the time. Deal with demand intermittency by taking your reserve generation off curtailment, which you can do almost instantaneously with solar. Alternately you can sink that extra power into something that's energy intensive but not time critical like massive desalination plants. If we actually priced water at market rates....whole other discussion though.

 

[bone]

Legislation also goes a long way in "readjusting" people's attitudes.

Probably not. Virginia has the "Clean Economy Act". Complete legislative and executive approval. Which puts pretty much the entire onus on the utilities to provide "clean" energy. Fantastic. And what happens when Dominion or Appalachian Power try to build a project or they contract with a developer to buy firm power from a project? A proposed 500 MW solar farm on 6,300 acres in Spotsylvania County is encountering fierce resistance from residents and environmentalists. The State Corporate Commission approved it, but the County Planning Commission denied most of it.

The District of Columbia also has green regulations in place for power. Also with complete legislative and executive approval. Origis Energy wants to chop down 210 acres of trees for a solar panel project. The environmentalists are going nuts - the Audubon Society especially. They are fighting the County and the State over the sale of the land and for the project permitting. And there is no plan "B" if either the County or the District refuses.

Both of these are examples of strong, overwhelmingly passed Democratic legislation in Red States with strong environmentalist empathy that never accounted for unforeseen opposition from local communities and environmentalists.

Rooftops? Definitely. Brown Fields and toxic waste sites? Go for it. Big projects - that's not a given. Anywhere.

 

[BeautifulStranger]

I agree that we do have weak intergrid connections, but we don't have to and in the grand scheme of things making that work isn't unsurmountable at least technically.

I actually think the future will involve a lot of negative pricing/curtailment. As renewables and potentially nuclear get cheaper and cheaper at some point the optimal solution will be to purposely overbuild significantly and just curtail most of the time. Deal with demand intermittency by taking your reserve generation off curtailment, which you can do almost instantaneously with solar. Alternately you can sink that extra power into something that's energy intensive but not time critical like massive desalination plants. If we actually priced water at market rates....whole other discussion though.

I now see where our opinions differ on the cost of solar. It is a matter of scale. You are focused on large projects, I am focused on smaller projects with a consideration for consumers use such as rooftop.

Of note, the production and eventual disposal of solar cells results in significant environmental challenges in Third World countries. Although a cost for these environmental challenges do not appear fully accounted for in the total cost of solar energy, fossil fuels production and domestic use have associated environmental risk costs to pay.

Even though the cost of solar dropped in a big way in 2019, I personally don’t see solar as a viable business opportunity on a moderate scale without some sort of guarenteed subsidy.

 

[Sig]

I now see where our opinions differ on the cost of solar. It is a matter of scale. You are focused on large projects, I am focused on smaller projects with a consideration for consumers use such as rooftop.

Of note, the production and eventual disposal of solar cells results in significant environmental challenges in Third World countries. Although a cost for these environmental challenges do not appear fully accounted for in the total cost of solar energy, fossil fuels production and domestic use have associated environmental risk costs to pay.

Even though the cost of solar dropped in a big way in 2019, I personally don’t see solar as a viable business opportunity on a moderate scale without some sort of guarenteed subsidy.

That's funny, I could have sworn my entire response was to your post saying

I question the value of solar farms at current efficiency rates except perhaps in the most specialized applications.

Can you find it in yourself to no longer "question the value of solar farms at current efficiency rates"? I'd call that a minor win for knowledge and facts, wouldn't you?

And if your 10 year old information on large scale solar costs were off by that much, is it just a tiny, tiny bit possible that your information on small scale solar costs are also hopelessly outdated? If you're really interested in a business in rooftop solar I'd be the first to encourage you to run the numbers again with today's prices and an open mind realizing that your preconceived ideas on this have already been shown to be incorrect. I think you'll be surprised at what you find, if you really are able to open your eyes and look at it in an unbiased way, which I sadly feel isn't possible for you given the experience of this conversation. Unsubsidized residential solar is a thing in a lot of areas already, in fact subsidies are far less important that financially stable offtakers for long term contracts. And as I've said before in this thread, I'd love to get rid of all subsidies, implicit and explicit, for all energy in the U.S. at which point solar would compete quite well at both the residential rooftop and solar farm level.

 

[bone]

I'm not arguing, Sig, because as usual you make excellent, well thought out points. I personally believe that the US should be subsidizing renewables in a big way. But I would hesitate to say that renewables could compete with Natural Gas present day without subsidies.

The Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) is not by any stretch of the imagination pro-fossil fuels; if anything, they tend to favor PV's. [Of course any Electrical Engineer worth his or her salt is going to love a nice PV.] Anyways - IMO they would be about as neutral of a technical arbiter as you could find.

A few years ago, they published a well researched piece on the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). The researchers ignored everything from the American Petroleum Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and their researchers did an expansive 'clean sheet' interdisciplinary research project using University of Texas faculty and assistants to gather their own data. They call their work the Full Cost of Electricity Project.

The bottom line of their research is: In total dollars, the fossil fuel industry receives benefits comparable to that for the renewables industry, but when considering only the portion of fossil fuel support that relates to electric power, renewables receive far more support.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywis...subsidize-electricity-generating-technologies

UT Austin

IMO, there will come a time (hopefully soon) when solar translates into statistically meaningful automobile energy transfer.

Illinois subsidizes nuclear power to the tune of $236M per year. For 11.6 GigaWatts of carbon-free electricity generation (and 54% of Illinois' electrical power) two dollars per month tacked onto each resident's power bill is a good deal for them. Last Fall was a record-breaker for low temps in Northern Illinois, and 10 of the 11 reactors ran at 100%. The Illinois legislature approved the subsidies because they want two plant sites to run for a decade beyond their original nameplate retirement dates. Illinois currently ranks sixth in Wind Power - and it's a great place for wind power, and they wanted to inexpensively buy some time to bring more wind capacity online. And paying farmers considerably more for Wind Turbine sites as compared to the crops they could grow is smart.

And as I've said before in this thread, I'd love to get rid of all subsidies, implicit and explicit, for all energy in the U.S. at which point solar would compete quite well at both the residential rooftop and solar farm level.

 

[bone]

Texas added almost 4,000 MW of Wind Power online in 2019. Which is very impressive.

Paying farmers and ranchers considerably more for wind turbine site leases as compared to the crops or livestock alternative is smart.

 

[Cuddles]

Texas added almost 4,000 MW of Wind Power online in 2019. Which is very impressive.

Paying farmers and ranchers considerably more for wind turbine site leases as compared to the crops or livestock alternative is smart.

Not really, since their land isn't compromised with wind as it's with solar. Fair compensation? Sure, much like it's done with power lines or oil well heads

 

[bone]

LOL, "not really"? Any wind project using farmland is going to have to pay well above cropland or pasture rates-of-return for the hailstorm of shit that farmer will have to endure from his neighbors and his community. For decades. These are small communities where everyone knows each other.

Here's a quote from an Indiana farmer about wind turbines:

"He noted that there “are still a very passionate and very vocal group of folks” who oppose the wind farm, even a “barrage of negativity.”" (May, 2020 Energy News Network)

If this farmer has guaranteed cash flows well above farming rates for that area of land, then that goes a long way. It might even incentivize other farmers to do the same.

Not really, since their land isn't compromised with wind as it's with solar. Fair compensation? Sure, much like it's done with power lines or oil well heads

 

[Sig]

LOL, "not really"? Any wind project using farmland is going to have to pay well above cropland or pasture rates-of-return for the hailstorm of shit that farmer will have to endure from his neighbors and his community. For decades. These are small communities where everyone knows each other.

Here's a quote from an Indiana farmer about wind turbines:

"He noted that there “are still a very passionate and very vocal group of folks” who oppose the wind farm, even a “barrage of negativity.”" (May, 2020 Energy News Network)

If this farmer has guaranteed cash flows well above farming rates for that area of land, then that goes a long way. It might even incentivize other farmers to do the same.

Something to think about is that some of the problem is the fact that at the end of the day one or two farmers get a windfall (pun intended) profit and none of their neighbors do, so base emotions like jealousy are manifest as opposition to wind in general. It's possible that increasing payments just makes that worse. If I was a wind developer I'd be looking at what kind of community benefits I could provide that would make everyone feel like they got a little of the money falling from the sky rather than just the one lucky guy. As I said earlier, they're getting better at getting us engineers out of this part of the equation, but they can definitely still do better.

 

[Cuddles]

LOL, "not really"? Any wind project using farmland is going to have to pay well above cropland or pasture rates-of-return for the hailstorm of shit that farmer will have to endure from his neighbors and his community. For decades. These are small communities where everyone knows each other.

Here's a quote from an Indiana farmer about wind turbines:

"He noted that there “are still a very passionate and very vocal group of folks” who oppose the wind farm, even a “barrage of negativity.”" (May, 2020 Energy News Network)

If this farmer has guaranteed cash flows well above farming rates for that area of land, then that goes a long way. It might even incentivize other farmers to do the same.

I didn't take into account wind developers paying someone for emotional support. Even less so the type of people that take pride in their "bootstraps".