Oilpan4 said:How competitive is wind by its self once you add a battery and remove natural gas?
Wind and solar is so cheap because it rides on the backs of fossil and fissile fuel.
0% renewable Power rate will be $0.090 per kWh
10% renewable costs $0.045 per kWh Power rate will be $0.086 per kWh
20% renewable costs $0.061 per kWh Power rate will be $0.084 per kWh
30% renewable costs $0.073 per kWh Power rate will be $0.085 per kWh
80% renewable costs $0.153 per kWh Power rate will be $0.140 per kWh
It does not work that way.Oilpan4 said:How competitive is wind by its self once you add a battery and remove natural gas?
You may not have noticed, but as wind and solar are adopted the fossils are going bankrupt from lack of customers.Oilpan4 said:I agree that as long as wind and solar ride on the back of fossil fuels they will be cheaper.
.Oilpan4 said:Big difference between 100% and "near 100%".
Trumpers beg to differ ... at least if the plant is burning coalOilpan4 said:A 7.5 cent per kwh plant couldn't stay open
SageBrush said:.Oilpan4 said:Big difference between 100% and "near 100%".
What is the "big" difference ?
I agree that the increase in coal use was due to the IMO stupid decision to shut down the nukes early (the decrease in NG usage was due to it being imported and expensive, while the coal was indigenous and cheap), but backup plants have to be manned, and someone (the customers) has to pay for it. Alternatively, they can accept that the electricity will be off fairly regularly for periods that may extend from several days to a week or more, and that's not going to fly. Building interconnects will help, but that only reduces the problem rather than solving it.SageBrush said:^^ The German experience is a straw man argument because the causes for keeping the fossils open was mostly related to shuttering the nuclear plants.
You are correct that reserves have maintenance costs but the actual costs are hard to pin down. Mostly what you hear are plant owners trying to guarantee a nice ROI.
It is nothing new about having power plants in reserve. All through the 100% fossil era a whole fleet of plants were kept that had capacity factors in the 5% range.GRA said:backup plants have to be manned, and someone (the customers) has to pay for it.
iPlug said:California is a much better example than Germany. No coal, lots of renewables, nuclear mostly gone and forecast completely gone in 2025, and becoming less and less reliant on natural gas.
Here is the largest utility in California (PG&E-owned generation and power purchases):
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/comm...bill/bill-inserts/2018/10-18_PowerContent.pdf
I've started a thread on the next phase, a harbinger of the future, with what Berkeley is up to.
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