Well new mexico governor decided to make electricity unaffordable

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2018 LCOE for NG , PV and wind at Utility Scale

Translated for bozos: NG is uncompetitive

Figure from ArsTechnica
Screen-Shot-2019-08-16-at-3.50.17-PM.png
 
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.

Natural gas works when you need it, that's why it's competitive and will continue to be used for at least another 40 years for power generation and much long for home heating.
 
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.

Some renewable without storage reduces the total cost.
From https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15162

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

If your power system doesn't have ~30% wind and solar, you are likely paying too much. Looking forwards, solar and batteries are going to get cheaper, and natural gas is going to get more expensive.
 
I chatted with an engineer from PNM today who said the company views wind+PV as the route to cleaner and cheaper electricity for NM. PNM has *always* been the laggard, so OIl-y is even more reactionary than PNM.

That is saying something
 
I agree that as long as wind and solar ride on the back of fossil fuels they will be cheaper.
 
Oilpan4 said:
I agree that as long as wind and solar ride on the back of fossil fuels they will be cheaper.
You may not have noticed, but as wind and solar are adopted the fossils are going bankrupt from lack of customers.
PNM is a typical story: as they build transmission to take advantage of the wind in the SE of the state to complement PV elsewhere, they want to shut down fossils.

Even a Trump bozo should be able to grasp that wind+PV+4 hour battery storage is approaching 100% replacement and is cheaper than fossils.
Here is a 2018 NREL cost study for PV+4 hour wind: less than $2 a watt.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/71714.pdf
Add to that wind at ~ $1.5 a watt and routine use of the grid 24/7 costs ~ $1.75 a watt, or about 3 cents a kWh wholesale. Compare that to utility NG

What say you, Oil-y: is 3 cents a kWh for clean energy less than dirty NG ?
 
Big difference between 100% and "near 100%".

If it works at night during winter I will gladly pay 7.5 cents when the solar is non functional, wind works if it wants to and the 4hr battery isn't going to make it till day light.
Plus the base rate for consumption here is just shy of 7 cents per kwh, surcharge plus base consumption averages to around 9 to 10 cents for most people.
Their generation rate pay out is 3 cents.
A 7.5 cent per kwh plant couldn't stay open

Using less natural gas is good, need to save it to make glass and concrete, emergency power and home heating for some people.
There is no reason to use fossil fuel to cover all the base load.
 
SageBrush said:
Oilpan4 said:
Big difference between 100% and "near 100%".
.
What is the "big" difference ?


That you've got to keep the fossil fuel plants around, man and maintain them even though it gets little use, which boosts the system costs well above what the PV/Wind/Battery electricity alone costs. Working from memory so don't hold me to exact values, but as part of the Energiewende Germany added something like 60 GW of renewable generating capacity over about 10 years (IIRR 80-90% increase over their existing capacity at the time), but decreased their fossil fuel capacity essentially not at all - IIRR, they actually decreased the % of NG generation and boosted their coal generation, in particular their brown coal (lignite), the dirtiest coal there is. Actual generation only increased by around 9% over that period - all the renewables still had to be backed up by fossil fuels when the sun didn't shine and the wind didn't blow. which is the main reason why the average German household paid 29.16 Eurocents/kWh in 2018 (some of that due to excessive renewable feed-in tariffs that have since been reduced for new construction). And Germany has excellent interconnections already, something that the U.S. lacks and will have to pay for.

So, until renewables can cover 100% of the demand 100% of the time, which will require cheap mass storage, you've still got to keep the dirty plants around (and pay to keep them operable). We can certainly reduce the amount of time they're operating and reduce emissions, but as long as they're needed for backup we've still got to pay for them, and the less they're used the more each kWh they generate costs. We still want to get rid of them, but it won't be cheaper, until mass storage is.
 
^^ 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.
 
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.
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.
 
GRA said:
backup plants have to be manned, and someone (the customers) has to pay for it.
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.

While most fossils will shut down now, for all I know the ones that remain will end up being more profitable than before. The smart game plan is to shut 50% - 90% of fossils in the next couple of years so that enough carbon budget remains to run what is left until cheaper clean alternatives for the last fraction are available.
 
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):

powermix-pie-chart-desktop.png


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.
 
Right now we have effectively 100% power grid reliably. Maybe something like 99.99% reliably where over the course of a year the power is out for around an hour on average.
If it drops to say 99.9 then it's a lot closer to an hour per month.
I have a whole home generator setup and the coal furnace will run for 2 or 3 hours off the UPS so I won't get really annoyed until it hits 99% or so.

I'm good with shutting down 90% of fossil fuel as long as it doesn't cost more.
 
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):

powermix-pie-chart-desktop.png


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.

You’re right about PG&E, but incorrect about California. Non-PG&E customers (PacificCorp) get power purchased from states that generate from coal power.
 
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