Green economy-Aint economical

[Guest Peeves]

I have always said the real subsidies to fossil fuels should be eliminated but they are so small when measured per kWh they will have no effect on consumption. The problem is you insist on claiming that many legimate tax deductions are "subsidies" and are looking to use the tax code to penalize fossil fuels.

Any financial concession that avoids real taxes regardless what program, regardless what it's called is in fact a subsidy is it not?

[dre]

Really? That statement is meaningless if we don't know the cost of their coal-based production. Who says it's cheap? Besides, what about all these reports we keep getting that some European countries are seeing wind farms shut down, due to host countries unable to afford to keep giving those subsidies? It would seem that wind power cannot be competitive on its own.

Even more, how the hell is that relevant to US? Every country's economy is different. We have enjoyed much cheaper power sources than most of Europe all along. If our citizens suddenly had an increase of 10 times in their electricity bill (guesstimated by Dalton McGuinty's MicroFit program payouts) they would immediately revolt and storm Queen's Park or else, (more likely for Canadians)... simply starve!

It would seem that wind power cannot be competitive on its own.

Well if you make that judgement on the basis that they recieve subsidies then the fact is none of the other energy technologies are competitive on their own either.

The bottom line is there has really only been a significant ammount of capital investment in wind R&D for about the last ten years. During that period the prices have come down steadily and the technology has improved.

And while this has been happening the cost of coal fired, nat gas, and nuclear plants has been increasing.

To make the kind conclusion you are making about an emerging technology that is still rapidly changing is pretty unscientific. It sorta like someone in 1874 while the internal combustion engine was still being developed that it could "never work" based on its current state of development.

[Argus]

It's about converting to a green economy and saving the planet. Things you don't believe in. I'm sure you believe in the Rapture so you don't give a crap about the world.

I really don't get how people think that doing something which has failed everywhere it has ever been tried, any time it has ever been tried, will succeed just because the hope really, really hard.

Well it isn't succeeding in doing anything but driving up electricity rates, making poor people unable to afford electricity, and sending manufacturing companies out of the province.

[Argus]

in Germany there has been such a increase in green(wind) power that cost is on par with coal based power sources...

I want a cite for that - in English, please, and not from one of the wild-eyed zealots of the earth first movement.

[Wild Bill]

Well if you make that judgement on the basis that they recieve subsidies then the fact is none of the other energy technologies are competitive on their own either.

The bottom line is there has really only been a significant ammount of capital investment in wind R&D for about the last ten years. During that period the prices have come down steadily and the technology has improved.

And while this has been happening the cost of coal fired, nat gas, and nuclear plants has been increasing.

To make the kind conclusion you are making about an emerging technology that is still rapidly changing is pretty unscientific. It sorta like someone in 1874 while the internal combustion engine was still being developed that it could "never work" based on its current state of development.

You seem to be making a huge assumption. Nobody has said that wind and solar will NEVER be competitive! Especially me, who would dearly love to get off the grid, both for my budget and for my techie pride!

The issue is whether it will be competitive in the future, IN A USEFUL TIME FRAME!

This is the great unknown. The subsidies for these alternatives under McGuinty's MicroFit program are far higher than anything gasoline ever received! I agree there's been corporate welfare to the oil companies for too long but we have to judge both factors in perspective.

So first of all, are the necessary improvements in cost and performance even possible? There is a naive belief among the "technically challenged" to assume that techies can do anything, it's just a matter of will and money. This idea is total crap! Many things have been found to work and others found to never work! Others have take a helluva long time to be discovered. We have no choice but to follow Mother Nature's Laws and SHE tells us what will or will not work! We can be more aggressive in trying to discover what can work but if we assume that we ALWAYS will we will be doomed to constant disappointment!

I still have a Popular Electronics book from the early 1960's making claims that cheap solar power would be available in just a few years. Yes, there have been improvements but not enough yet to make solar competitive and it's been 50 YEARS, not less than 5!

Even assuming that wind and solar CAN reach the necessary performance and cost levels, how long can we afford to keep up the subsidies? A few years? Decades? Centuries? That's a long time to impose painfully high fees on citizens!

So to make YOUR kind of conclusion would be like someone in 1940 saying that at the rate of increase from the time of Christ to 1940 the speed of transportation had increased at such a rate that by extending the curve we should be able to travel faster than light by the year 2000!

Guess what, Dre? That prediction WAS made! What's more, it was WRONG! So far, the speed of light has seemed to be one of Mother Nature's unbreakable Laws. Do you really think that if we throw some major subsidies at the problem that by 2025 we'll be travelling at warp 6?

Meanwhile, some European countries that have invested far more of their citizens' tax money into wind farms and such, with heavy government subsidies, have decided to bail out! From their POV, the rewards are taking too long and they just can't afford to wait.

Why should we repeat their mistakes? Besides, if we stopped the subsidies the R&D would continue! We can see that someday alternatives will be cost-effective. Budgets will still be made to explore the possibilities, just at a more reasonable and affordable rate that doesn't come from the taxpayers. IF there are solutions and a company sees a chance to make a profitable product then and only then should it happen!

Edited November 5, 2011 by Wild Bill

[dre]

You seem to be making a huge assumption. Nobody has said that wind and solar will NEVER be competitive! Especially me, who would dearly love to get off the grid, both for my budget and for my techie pride!

The issue is whether it will be competitive in the future, IN A USEFUL TIME FRAME!

This is the great unknown. The subsidies for these alternatives under McGuinty's MicroFit program are far higher than anything gasoline ever received! I agree there's been corporate welfare to the oil companies for too long but we have to judge both factors in perspective.

So first of all, are the necessary improvements in cost and performance even possible? There is a naive belief among the "technically challenged" to assume that techies can do anything, it's just a matter of will and money. This idea is total crap! Many things have been found to work and others found to never work! Others have take a helluva long time to be discovered. We have no choice but to follow Mother Nature's Laws and SHE tells us what will or will not work! We can be more aggressive in trying to discover what can work but if we assume that we ALWAYS will we will be doomed to constant disappointment!

I still have a Popular Electronics book from the early 1960's making claims that cheap solar power would be available in just a few years. Yes, there have been improvements but not enough yet to make solar competitive and it's been 50 YEARS, not less than 5!

Even assuming that wind and solar CAN reach the necessary performance and cost levels, how long can we afford to keep up the subsidies? A few years? Decades? Centuries? That's a long time to impose painfully high fees on citizens!

So to make YOUR kind of conclusion would be like someone in 1940 saying that at the rate of increase from the time of Christ to 1940 the speed of transportation had increased at such a rate that by extending the curve we should be able to travel faster than light by the year 2000!

Guess what, Dre? That prediction WAS made! What's more, it was WRONG! So far, the speed of light has seemed to be one of Mother Nature's unbreakable Laws. Do you really think that if we throw some major subsidies at the problem that by 2025 we'll be travelling at warp 6?

Meanwhile, some European countries that have invested far more of their citizens' tax money into wind farms and such, with heavy government subsidies, have decided to bail out! From their POV, the rewards are taking too long and they just can't afford to wait.

Why should we repeat their mistakes? Besides, if we stopped the subsidies the R&D would continue! We can see that someday alternatives will be cost-effective. Budgets will still be made to explore the possibilities, just at a more reasonable and affordable rate that doesn't come from the taxpayers. IF there are solutions and a company sees a chance to make a profitable product then and only then should it happen!

Ok WB, maybe I misunderstood you. When I read that quote I thought you were completely dismissing wind energy completely.

As far as its viability today goes its actually pretty close. In the right areas wind turbines can produce power for about the same cost per KWH as coal. Since 1980 the cost has come down from over 40 cents per KWH to well under 10.

As for subsidies I dont like them but the problem is thats just how new technologies are developed today. Gas, Oil, Nuclear, Computers, the Internet, GPS, Lasers, and about a zillion other things. And the problem with not subisidizing emerging technologies is that we ARE subsidizing their conventional competitors.

Anyhow, there isnt gonna be any one size fits all solution. Wind and solar will play a part as will a whole host of other technologies... coal, natgas, hydro, etc.

Even assuming that wind and solar CAN reach the necessary performance and cost levels, how long can we afford to keep up the subsidies? A few years? Decades? Centuries? That's a long time to impose painfully high fees on citizens!

I dunno. Most energy production has been heavily subsidized forever, and maybe it always will be. The energy sector is so saturated with subsidies and politics and government is so cozy with energy producers that it will be hard to drive a wedge between them and get them to stop scratching each others backs.

Edited November 5, 2011 by dre

[dre]

And, given the timeframes associated with developing and deploying the necessary power transmission and energy storage technologies, which are much further from viability than the renewable energy sources themselves, you may as well say that we will solve the clean energy problem by introducing fusion reactors. They'll be around at about the same time as the superconducting transmission lines and nanotech batteries that you look forward to.

And, given the timeframes associated with developing and deploying the necessary power transmission and energy storage technologies, which are much further from viability than the renewable energy sources themselves, you may as well say that we will solve the clean energy problem by introducing fusion reactors.

Thats a REALLY bad comparison.

A highschool student could generate power from the wind, and build a pumped storage system, or kinetic storage system. All the major countries of the world pooling their resources cant get fusion to produce a single watt of energy.

New power transmission technologies are not necessary, and theres already about 140 Gigs of pumped storage in operation around the world today.

But yeah... hooking a windmill up to a pump is definately as bit of a technological challenge as nuclear fussion

Edited November 5, 2011 by dre

[Wild Bill]

New power transmission technologies are not necessary, and theres already about 140 Gigs of pumped storage in operation around the world today.

But yeah... hooking a windmill up to a pump is definately as bit of a technological challenge as nuclear fussion

Funny you should mention pumped storage, Dre. I was listening to a talking head on the radio the other day who mentioned this very thing. I don't know if he's correct or not in what he said - perhaps you've already covered this ground and can tell me. Frankly, he was on the "denier" side and although I guess I am too I found this guy to be a bit of a grandstander.

Anyhow, his claim was that Ontario has almost no pumped storage capacity, since it has virtually no dams involved in its hydro electric generation. The term he used was "stream generation". Apparently we lack suitable dam sites and it has always been FAR cheaper to use flowing water, as we do at Niagara.

If this is true it takes away a cost effective option for us, at least as far as the megaprojects that add oodles to the grid at one blow. No dammed lakes into which to pump water at night! (pardon the pun!) Giant water tanks would be out of the question - they'd be a spit in the ocean.

Of course, there's always the decentralization approach, where we use much smaller, local generation - perhaps even a lot of individual solutions. This has always been my preferred approach but I have to admit it will take a lot longer to fully implement, requiring massive improvements to the grid and a lot more technology development. As I had said, there may be some physical limitations that totally blocks this style of generation. However, it has the advantage that when you go a bit slower things tend to be a LOT cheaper! When you try to do something brand new in a few weekends it always cost you MUCH more! This is what I don't like about the McGuinty approach, shared by most politicians. They want a quick photo-op for the next election so they support what amount to expensive crash programs, not being willing to plan for something that might take a decade or two. They just don't give a damn what it costs the average joe - we've all known that all our lives!

[dre]

Funny you should mention pumped storage, Dre. I was listening to a talking head on the radio the other day who mentioned this very thing. I don't know if he's correct or not in what he said - perhaps you've already covered this ground and can tell me. Frankly, he was on the "denier" side and although I guess I am too I found this guy to be a bit of a grandstander.

Anyhow, his claim was that Ontario has almost no pumped storage capacity, since it has virtually no dams involved in its hydro electric generation. The term he used was "stream generation". Apparently we lack suitable dam sites and it has always been FAR cheaper to use flowing water, as we do at Niagara.

If this is true it takes away a cost effective option for us, at least as far as the megaprojects that add oodles to the grid at one blow. No dammed lakes into which to pump water at night! (pardon the pun!) Giant water tanks would be out of the question - they'd be a spit in the ocean.

Of course, there's always the decentralization approach, where we use much smaller, local generation - perhaps even a lot of individual solutions. This has always been my preferred approach but I have to admit it will take a lot longer to fully implement, requiring massive improvements to the grid and a lot more technology development. As I had said, there may be some physical limitations that totally blocks this style of generation. However, it has the advantage that when you go a bit slower things tend to be a LOT cheaper! When you try to do something brand new in a few weekends it always cost you MUCH more! This is what I don't like about the McGuinty approach, shared by most politicians. They want a quick photo-op for the next election so they support what amount to expensive crash programs, not being willing to plan for something that might take a decade or two. They just don't give a damn what it costs the average joe - we've all known that all our lives!

Anyhow, his claim was that Ontario has almost no pumped storage capacity, since it has virtually no dams involved in its hydro electric generation. The term he used was "stream generation". Apparently we lack suitable dam sites and it has always been FAR cheaper to use flowing water, as we do at Niagara.

http://www.opg.com/power/hydro/evergreen_energy/

That site has a list of some dams. However what the person you referenced said may be be mostly true. I dont know. And like I said in my last post, different technologies make sense for different geographical locations.

Keep in mind you dont need hydroelectric dams for pumped storage. You can use virtually any natural depression in the land that is at a high elevation, where a site at a much lower elvation exists nearby. Obviously hyrdoelectric dams are ideal though because the sites serve 2 purposes.

And yeah youre right. You cant use man made tanks.

Of course, there's always the decentralization approach, where we use much smaller, local generation - perhaps even a lot of individual solutions. This has always been my preferred approach but I have to admit it will take a lot longer to fully implement, requiring massive improvements to the grid and a lot more technology development. As I had said, there may be some physical limitations that totally blocks this style of generation. However, it has the advantage that when you go a bit slower things tend to be a LOT cheaper! When you try to do something brand new in a few weekends it always cost you MUCH more! This is what I don't like about the McGuinty approach, shared by most politicians. They want a quick photo-op for the next election so they support what amount to expensive crash programs, not being willing to plan for something that might take a decade or two. They just don't give a damn what it costs the average joe - we've all known that all our lives!

The problem with megaprojects is that we tend to build them in big clusters. We did all this plant construction in the late 60's and 70's, and they we sat back. So now we have a bit of a crisis coming over the next 20 years because so many plants need to be decommissioned or refurbished at once. We should build infrastructure consistantly and gradually instead of in big spirts... thats basically what you just said I think.

I cant really comment on the wisdom of whats happening in ONtario because I dont know much about it. You obviously need to strike a balance between spending on cutting edge plants, conventional plants, and refurbishing all your existing stuff. Its very possible that Ontario has not struck this balance.

[Wild Bill]

I cant really comment on the wisdom of whats happening in ONtario because I dont know much about it. You obviously need to strike a balance between spending on cutting edge plants, conventional plants, and refurbishing all your existing stuff. Its very possible that Ontario has not struck this balance.

We've made some big mistakes here, Dre. When I was a kid Ontario was known for really cheap power and was a major exporter. Now the cost to the consumer keeps rising and we import so often I'm not sure if we are an exporter or not overall.

We made the choice to go nuclear and from a technical side it was probably a good choice. We had safe and reliable designs that we've sold to other countries and they've worked out well.

Here at home however the politicians couldn't resist meddling to get their snouts in the trough. They appointed their "buddies" to VERY highly paid executive positions. During the years of construction they paid the workers and especially tradesmen extremely well. I had friends from school who worked at the nukes as electricians and they ALL drove very expensive cars!

During the 80's I used to make sales calls at Ontario Hydro's offices in Toronto. Often the buyer would take me down to their cafeteria. I was amazed at the food and the pricing! They always featured at least 2 entrees, like a steak dinner or even lobster! How'd you like to buy a sirloin steak dinner for $2.00?! Even a sandwich was under a dollar! A bottle of Pepsi that might have cost you 75 cents at the time in a store would cost you maybe a quarter in their cafeteria.

So everybody was living high off the hog and everything was subsidized to be cheap for the staff. After years and decades it was pretty obvious what was really happening. Ontario Hydro ended up with a debt load of about 35 BILLION dollars!

Of course, the anti-nuke people seized on this to make the claim that nuclear was too expensive but they were ignoring the "snout" factor. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we could see the real numbers that the actual power generation was cheap! Certainly, none of the other countries running the same reactors seemed to have any complaints! Here in Ontario people should have gone to jail for sucking money out of our nuke budget!

The debt problem had been public knowledge since well before Mike Harris' term but nobody had wanted to tackle it. Politically it would have been suicide to expect the citizens to have to pay huge increases on their bill. Eventually, they pulled some chicanery by splitting the former Ontario Hydro Corp up. Now when I get my bill I see a charge for the usage to go to my local provider, a charge for the transmission lines, a couple of other fixed charges for god knows what and a small charge to go towards retiring that stranded $35 Billion dollar debt. I live by myself in a small house, with gas for my stove, dryer and furnace. My typical bill will be for maybe $40 for what I actually consumed and over $50 for all the other fixed charges! If I successfully managed to consume zero electricity I would still get a bill for over $50!

And forget about putting solar cells on the roof! McGuinty's program is so backed up they've halted letting people hook up, especially in areas where the grid is not advanced enough to handle it. There are companies that will install it all for you and take their cut off the top, amortized over some years but they want to deal with people who have a large amount of roof square footage. Most older homes in the city core are just too small.

The provincial program is deliberately set up so that the power you generate is on a totally separate meter as it feeds the grid. Your own consumption stays the same and you NEVER get any power from your own solar roof! This is totally different from what is done in many American states. They use 2-way meters that do the math and deduct what you gave the grid from what you had taken, giving you a credit or a debit on your bill. With McGuinty's setup, because you still use the traditional system for your own needs you will keep paying all those fixed charges. The last thing the provincial government wants is for too many people to get totally off the grid! By installing systems that are separate that have no battery bank of their own, the homeowner would never have a system practical for his own needs. He would have that large expense of a battery bank to consider.

Worse yet for me, you are not allowed to build or modify any of the equipment yourself. It must be approved equipment installed by approved technicians. No opportunity at all for a do-it-yourselfer to save some money. This forces the creation of those "green jobs" McGuinty kept promising. I'm not at all confident that a system where the pricing is artificially inflated by a government will work well long term. Ontario is already involved in lawsuits from countries with which we have free trade agreements with these installations.

I have a specific wrinkle that most folks don't have, Dre. The inverters that are used in these solar installations generate a great deal of radio noise. I'm a ham radio operator and I've talked with other hams that are too close to one of these systems. The noise is so bad that they can't hear any signals through it! They no longer can pursue their hobby! Hams have coped with noise problems for years and usually have successfully fixed them. A small capacitor across a neighbour's furnace blower motor or light dimmer can work great! Not with the solar equipment, I'm afraid. Only approved equipment with only approved techs, remember? And the techs are not really what I call techs. It's really an honorary title. They know enough to bolt the blocks together. They usually know nothing about what's inside and could never actually work on one of the circuits. If a 10 cent transistor blows on a board they just throw the entire unit away and bolt in a new one! They would not know how to "noise suppress" their units.

I'd just like to see the cost of solar panels drop enough that an average joe like me could afford to put his own installation on his roof, be able to buy an affordable battery bank so I could go off grid and tell my government to get stuffed!

Unfortunately, I don't believe it will be possible before I die.

[dre]

We made the choice to go nuclear and from a technical side it was probably a good choice. We had safe and reliable designs that we've sold to other countries and they've worked out well.

I dont want to turn this into a debate about nuclear plants, but Iv done a lot of reading into all the hidden costs, and if you factor in all the cost involved nuclear does not compare favorably on price points with conventional sources like coal.

Which explains why for the most part the countries that are building them are countries like Japan and France are countries that have very little coal, oil, and natural gas.

And forget about putting solar cells on the roof! McGuinty's program is so backed up they've halted letting people hook up, especially in areas where the grid is not advanced enough to handle it. There are companies that will install it all for you and take their cut off the top, amortized over some years but they want to deal with people who have a large amount of roof square footage. Most older homes in the city core are just too small.

Thats really too bad, because net metering requires very little in the way of technology. The only that the meter installed on your house wont spin backwards if you produce power on it, is because its specifically configured not to. The device that actually monitors flow is totally bi-direction in nature. Net metering is a decades old technology.

I have a specific wrinkle that most folks don't have, Dre. The inverters that are used in these solar installations generate a great deal of radio noise. I'm a ham radio operator and I've talked with other hams that are too close to one of these systems. The noise is so bad that they can't hear any signals through it!

I found this post from an Electrician...

Being a retired licensed Electrician & Radio mechanic , I was able to install a 240v 10A AC common & differential mode filter on the mains feed to the inverter & a similar DC 100v 20A differential & common mode filter to the PV panel feed into the inverter . The overall result is to reduce the inverter noise to an acceptable level.

I'd just like to see the cost of solar panels drop enough that an average joe like me could afford to put his own installation on his roof, be able to buy an affordable battery bank so I could go off grid and tell my government to get stuffed!

We are probably about 10 years out.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/tribalenergy/guide/images/chart3_solar_pv.gif

I've done two of these installations btw. Both a number of years ago. The technology worked really well but it was way to expensive. I just wired my own residential home and hooked it up to the city. The whole thing cost less than 10k. Both the solar homes I set up were in the 50-70k range. However... that was a few years ago, and PV costs are coming down pretty quick.

Edited November 5, 2011 by dre

[Wild Bill]

Thats really too bad, because net metering requires very little in the way of technology. The only that the meter installed on your house wont spin backwards if you produce power on it, is because its specifically configured not to. The device that actually monitors flow is totally bi-direction in nature. Net metering is a decades old technology.

Thanks for the info on the filtering! I didn't realize that a filter on the main lines in and out would be enough. I'll keep that in the back of my mind for when I might need it. Plasma TVs are worse, by the way! Let's hope the LEDs win out in the market.

As for a bi-directional meter, it's never been a technical problem, I agree. It's a political decision not to do it that way. Such a meter means that it's possible to run your own needs from your system and only put excess onto the grid. If it turned out you didn't need the grid anymore you might go off grid. This means no more electric bill and you no longer pay those fixed charges to pay off the debt your goverment had accrued.

As far as the tech level of the grid, that's a separate issue from the meters. Sure it's easy to log the flow of current both ways but the grid still has to be able to react to the power being taken and given to it. You can't just have bi-directional feeds working willy-nilly. The grid has to be able to compensate almost instantaneously for current surges and increased demands at all points along the network. The present system for the most part is just not sophisticated enough. It's not the measurement, it's the control!