Slashdot Mirror
Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit
Lucas123 writes A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory predicts that distributed rooftop solar panel installations will grow from 0.2% market penetration today to 10% by 2022, during which time they're likely to cut utility profits from 8% to 41%. Using those same metrics, electricity rates for utility customers will grow only by as much as 2.7% over the next eight years. By comparison, the cost of electricity on average rose 3.1% from 2013 to 2014. The study was performed for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under the U.S. Department of Energy. One of the main purposes of the study was to evaluate measures that could be pursued by utilities and regulators to reduce the financial impacts of distributed photovoltaics.
And you think the utilities will suffer because of this? Here in Australia power companies have just started bringing in (opt-in for now) billing at different rates for different times of the day for all a house's power. They will simply make day-time power prices stay the same and increase prices for night-time usage, passing the loss on to customers as they always have.
Quite naive to think a company would accept the losses themselves.
...
One of the main purposes of the study was to evaluate measures that could be pursued by utilities and regulators to reduce the financial impacts of distributed photovoltaics
Another effort by the government to prop up an industry that could be be obsoleted, or at least significantly diminished, by technology.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They treat you like slave who should not ask for anything. Just work for nothing, pay monthly fees to your lords and STFU.
Utilities are boring because they do a simple job which generates small but predictable profits. Therefore investors put their money into them in the expectation that they will remain boring.
When a new development comes along that destroys their business model, one of two things will happen; they will increase their prices, or they will go out of business. Note that 'the government taking them over' is a subset of 'they will increase their prices'. The service that they provide; a reliable baseload supply and a safe network to distribute electricity HAVE TO BE PAID FOR. At the moment those costs are hidden in the average cost of a kWh. If private solar power reduces the average demand some of the time, the average cost of a kWh will have to be increased, or the other features be recognised and paid for.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is no such thing as a free lunch, despite politicians pretending otherwise for several thousand years.
Subsidy of solar tends to pay for itself. In the end we all have to pay for new capacity, be out through energy bills or taxes. Solar more than pays for itself, reduces pollution and tends to encourage the owner to be more efficient.
Also, often the subsidy is actually a loan.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
cost to install 600,000 homes - about 3.4 billion per year
emplyment to install 74,000 workers at 20 dollars a hour - tax about 45%+hst ( 13 more percent )
3 billion of the 3.4 billion of course ( of which the above taxes are extracted ) 1.4billion +hst (200 mill more)=1.6 billion
so above 3.4 billion -1.6 billion cost = 1.8 billion 1st year
600,000 homes not paying electricity save 10000 dollars and that equates to 1300 ( HST ) x 600,000
780 million per year
cost first year about 1.1 billion
NEXT year think 1.2 million homes and that 780 million X2
so inside 2 years the govt is gaining in taxes and the people have begun gaining but at a sustained rate new wealth....
this goes on 20 years and cause they last 20 years you have a perpetuating industry
YET NOT ONE OF THE TOP 3 PARTIES WANTS THIS FOR ITS PEOPLE.
AND yes the math is not exact here this is a quick example, now imagine the usa and germany doing this
imagine china and india
I have read TFA.
The assumption for reduced profit due to increased PV usage was 8% for a specific northeastern utility company, 15% for a specific southwestern one.
That "up to 41%" number came from "using certain other assumptions" for the southwestern utility.
In other words, TFS is, at best, misleading as hell.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
A whopping 10% of new buildings will have had their shingles replaced by 'smart' shingles which incorporate solar cells. Freakin' solar roofs! Then in a devastating flurry of bank foreclosures, rent-to-own house flippees and general financial ruin, leaks, hazardous conditions and owner angst, replaced again with... shingles. There will be at least one (1) closet full of corroded electronics, taped off wires in the main panel that used to go to "that thing". And in the kids' bedroom a silent panel on the wall that becomes the instrument panel of a spaceship.
If the presence of that silent panel helps kids to dream of going into space again, it will all be worth it.
So carry on. It's just that as a renter with no savings who would have been tapping at the middle class by now if it were not for the general economic outlook, who had to help the landlord dig up the sewer tap and re-plumb the bathroom to reduce the rent... all this hoo-hah to replace reliable wire-delivered base load energy with... toys that add complexity to a simple energy equation... seems outlandish.
I'm a techie and love science but also a realist.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
As the Economist notes, due to German and other European solar government incentives, European utilities face an existential threat to their investment future and business model. Utility giants the world over have seen this and decided to fight back against Net Metering and other means whereby homeowners can feed back into the electric grid excess energy production from rooftop solar. Barclays, the British multinational banking giant, agrees that rooftop solar and net metering represent a threat to centralized electric production utilities.
The problem utilities face is that solar tends to maximize output at mid-afternoon, exactly the same time spot prices have traditionally been at maximum. So their solution is to lobby government the world over to reverse net metering laws and end solar subsidies.
OK, time for me to get on a soapbox. I think this is shortsighted. The real problem here is that government and electric utilities have agreed on a price structure and investment plan to build out gas powered and coal powered plants that now appear to be unsustainable due to disruptive shifts in the market from technical innovation in the renewable field. As is noted in TFA, solar is - or will soon be - already cost competitive even without government subsidy.
Market fundamentalists would argue, 'let the utilities die. Their investors bought into a dying technology, the market will decide their fate.' Except that they have an endless stream of money to buy lobbyists and legislators to warp law in their favor. Further, they have a good argument that intermittent renewables will only meet partial demand. You still need baseline generation capacity from central utilities. So the problem - from their perspective - is excess production by renewables.
Except: when has excess energy production ever been a problem?
The real problem is twofold: We want to move off of fossil fuels due to global climate change and they want to maximize their vast infrastructure investments. A real policy solution would meet both needs.
Rooftop solar should be maximized. During periods of excess, gas powered plants should funnel their energy to local raw materials ore processing facilities and manufacturing. This has the benefit of distributing labor where it's needed near mining sites, rather than shipping raw materials where labor is cheapest for exploitation as well. And it keeps utilities running for the next thirty years to generate a viable expected ROI. And government policymakers could then plan a rational transition period away from fossil fuels without the economic dislocation of utility giants imploding worldwide.
Thoughts?
The power companies always win this game. They'll find reasons to increase rates even with demand down. Even more so, as the global population increases, fewer people will be living in their own houses - and fewer will have roofs to install rooftop solar on to.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I know that the idea of cooperation makes the Slashdot libertards brains hurt, but society rarely prospers when entrenched special interests dictate the rules so they gain more power and money. This can happen on the left (see the current mess in Argentina), but in the US the problem is on the right. All the major players (banks, big pharma, aerospace, telecom, entertainment/media) use regulation to create captive markets and guaranteed profit. No capitalism in sight.
So the challenge is to take a highly regulated critical infrastructure sector and make it transition to a different energy generation model that includes renewables like wind and solar, as well as local generation. Unfortunately, the current campaign contribution driven hyper partisan political landscape makes this highly unlikely. When you see an energy sector dancing to the tune of the Koch brothers, it's hard to be positive about the future.
Why is Snark Required?
A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory predicts that distributed rooftop solar panel installations will grow from 0.2% market penetration today to 10% by 2022
That is not what the study shows at all. They did an analysis of what the revenue impact on utility companies would be at various hypothetical levels of PV installation between 0.2% and 10%. It ignored total costs of PV (including installation and maintenance).
Most importantly, the study does not predict that PV installations will grow to 10% or any other level. It is just a "what if" analysis.
No, solar does not pay for itself. People who install solar, get huge tax gifts, and get to force their sales at retail rates in competition with others plants that sell at wholesale rates, do make THEIR money back, but the taxpayers never will. Prices don't matter in this context, its cost, and cost of solar remains very high. And of course, what every solar fan like to ignore, is the cost of backup up all that solar. Very conveniently ignored.
Utilities actually have two businesses: Generation and distribution. We pay one bill and conflate the two. Solar just makes it clear they are different.
With home solar increasing, utilities will just invest less and less in generation. The transition is pretty gradual, so they can adapt just fine. Profits from generation will decline ... life will go on. But only if we accept that distribution also needs to be paid for.
If and until home power storage also becomes economical, homes are still going to need to connect to the grid. That infrastructure will need to be paid for. It's going to be tacked onto the utility bill. In the past, we subsidized small users by paying by the kwh. Now we have to decide if connection fees are more appropriate. That's what the debate is going to turn into.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
They just approved a 37% electricity rate increase here in Massachusetts... The utility companies will get their money until people can go off the grid completely: http://www.masslive.com/busine...
In any case, the incumbents are clearly show massive inefficiencies. In locations where electricity is sold competitively, prices can vary by 25% or more. This indicates that there is quite a bit of wiggle room in pricing. However, what we are really talking about here is volume. Without volume the incumbents firms that sell power, not produce it, are going to get squeezed out. Producers will shut down plants, and that may have long term effects in energy security.
What is really an issue is the grid. There is at some point going to have to be a charge for hooking up to the grid. Already people on low cost plans that do not use enough electricity pay an extra fee for administrative and grid costs. This is where legislation will come in. Are we going to require a house that is self sufficient to be connected to the grid? Are we going to allow houses in more expensive locations, be it rural or more prone to damage, to be charged more to be connected to the grid?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
...even if you produce it yourself.
I too have off-the-grid dreams as a house-owner, but the power companies always find a way, same thing with the electrical car that could run on water. Lobbyist will manipulate (read: FORCE) politicians into their direction, so you'll be depending on them one way or the other. The Politicians won't have a hard time accepting this as they need their energy tax income.
Taxes are like drugs, once you're hooked - it's very hard to get off, like addicts...politicians will find a way to make you pay either way. It's now getting to be environmentally sound? Fine...that's part of what I wish for too, but even though - we won't be off the hook that easily, government and companies that had enjoyed family power for centuries won't give up without a bloody fight, that I can pretty much guarantee you.
The general customer isn't that wise, they have no clue how anything affect our environment and politicians can pretty much tell them any half-truth to make them believe the complete lie. Half-truth is a classic, and widely used within leadership: Say...you purchase a new and better battery, but the management is taking losses on that purchase, it's environmentally sound - but they want the less eco-friendly solution because it earns them MONEY (and government profits on higher taxes as well), so they will tell you that YOUR SOLUTION isn't any good because of "insert-some-dubious-chemical-and-its-production-environment-here" and use that as a legitimate excuse. Nevermind the fact that it's actually a LOT more eco-friendly than the previous product, half-truth folks, it's a winner every time.
You as the consumer just need to educate yourselves a little bit more, stop accepting every thing imposed onto your lives by your elected politicians, demand scrutiny and don't just trust everything you hear. Be skeptical.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
In some areas of the US (especially the south eastern states where cheap dirty coal rains supreme) state governments have banned the kind of solar fiance schemes and loans that have allowed people in the west or in the north east to get solar panels on their home without the huge up-front cost. Yes the solar company makes money from the deal but the home owner still comes out on top in that they aren't paying anywhere near as much in power bills.
Also utilities have attempted to restrict (and in numerous cases succeeded in restricting) the amount of power allowed into the grid from small scale generation (including grid-tie solar) or have reduced or eliminated feed-in tariffs in way that make solar less viable.
Plus there are cases of outright bans on some kinds of solar setups (I cant find a cite right now but there have been cases where people have wanted to install solar panels and a battery bank or whatever and completly disconnect from grid power but have been prohibited from doing so by state and local laws)
The TFA uses a false model for computing profits. In the USA nearly all electric utilities are regulated monopolies. The government grants them a monopoply for a particular service area. The utility fronts the capital investment (historically up to 20% of all capital investment in the whole country!!! They must raise the capital in the private markets and convince investors to invest in utilites instead of Apple or Alibaba. High returns are needed to attract that money.). The pubic service commission is obligated to allow rates that guarantee the utility a defined return on investment profit. In real life, there is a lot of wiggle room and lots of politics in rate setting, but competitive pressure is not a factor. TFA ignores this.
We could, as a matter of public policy, decide to revoke the monopoly. That would open the door to any competitor, but it would also allow the utility to charge any rate they like without asking permission, and would remove any obligations regarding reliability and quality of service. (Think daily brownouts for anyone who doesn't pay for "premium service" on the hottest day of the year.) It would also open the door for another set of poles and another set of wires running down every street; one set per competitor. NYC was like that in the 1890s, and some places in Asia are like that today with hundreds of wires on every pole and laying over every rooftop.
But a death spiral in which rising rates paid by the remaining non-solar customers drive more and more customers to generate their own power could still be possible. But it would not directly affect utility profits as the TFA claims. The regulated utility business model would be challenged, not the profits of utilities that remain regulated. Those profits are guaranteed by law.
We should also recognize that lots of the population lives in high rise apartments and do not own enough rooftop or yard square feet to use solar panels.
Yes the regulations you environmentalists have placed strangling the energy industry do increase costs. Obama promised that your electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket and they have. It's one of the few campaign promises he actually kept. But you continue to blame the evil capitalistic energy companies for a problem your own laws and policies have created!
Actually, the cost of subsidizing solar and wind has doubled the cost of power in Germany. Not only is that inflicting pain on consumers, German manufacturing is finding it hard to compete with countries where energy is cheaper. Politicians are quickly backtracking.
And Germany's power industry is increasing the amount of energy generated with coal. That's because coal power is the cheapest and they need some way to keep down those skyrocketing prices. Absent the need for that, many of those companies could afford more expensive but cleaner sources such as natural gas, using gas either from Russia or from fracking to create a domestic supply.
Mandating expensive and unpredictable power sources such as solar and wind, is making German power generation more coal-based and thus dirtier. Closing nuclear plants is having a similar impact on the more stable sources of power.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-14/coal-rises-vampire-like-as-german-utilities-seek-survival.html
Note this:
"The result: RWE now generates 52 percent of its power in Germany from lignite, up from 45 percent in 2011. And RWE isnÃ(TM)t alone. Utilities all over Germany have ramped up coal use as the nation has watched the mix of coal-generated electricity rise to 45 percent last year, the highest level since 2007."
or 6.6 cents per kwh, from my utility's suppliers. I'm hoping this will encourage more rooftop and community solar.
Isn't that just shifting the depreciation advantage with the hardware?
I don't know why you've been downmodded. This is for real.
Natural gas does not seem to do all that well below $3/MMBTU so utilities will have to find less costly generation and lower prices if they want to retain their market share. Wind, and soon solar, could pin natural gas down to $3/MMBTU and start to cut its share, so utilities should be looking at these forms of generation to avoid losing custom to DIY.
I wonder what will happen when some big volcanoes spew ash over most of the planet and solar energy production can't keep up with demand and the old, reliable energy production is gone? It's not like that has every happened, well 1816 sure, but it won't happen again.
Funny how power utilities are all for free market capitalism until the consumers get to play.
Increasing price gouging has driven fees up while the capitial costs for consumers to generate their own electricity has gone down, with obvious results at the crossover point.
This keeps on coming up, and I get the feeling that Luckyo is a repeat offender despite knowing better, however I ask him to correct me if I'm wrong and he doesn't actually know better.
The thing with wind, as any child who watches the TV weather knows, is that it is always blowing somewhere. It's never calm on the whole planet or even an entire country bigger than Monaco. Windmills are not just in one spot but spread around countries especially now that they've been adopted by electricity generators for a few years - thus there's always at least some wind power available when you want to bring a few more MW online. They may cost a shitload per MW but for when you just want a little bit more power that's a lot cheaper than warming up 500MW worth of coal, which comes in big packages or not at all.
I think what we are seeing here is pointless tilting at windmills by armchair knights who see the windmills as evil giants (or green commie democrat lesbians, pick your fantasy opponent) instead of just a tool of the modern world that even Republicans are making money from.
There may be some points of value in the rest of the post but such cretinism, either real or most likely feigned, makes the rest appear of no value due to proximity.
It's energy and there are pockets to be filled in Washington - of course there are subsidies.
Most people have this preconceived notion of 'what we need' and we in the first world are all in reality 'rich'. I live on less than minimum wage in a cold climate, and built a 750+- square foot home, off-grid with a design based on 2KWh/day but can generate 4+ most sunny days... With exception to some industrial/manufacturing facilities, if you have some southern exposure you can live off-grid and it be very affordable, it's just a question of changing our wasteful power consumption habits or paying more in solar setup.
Stuff I run, Fridge, laptop, inet, security cameras, microwave, digital pressure cooker, washer, well pump, dishwasher(no heat cycle), typical household tools... $150 backup gas generator if it's necessary(hasn't been). Wood stove for heat, cooking.
Oh, also I have a utility pole 20 feet away, but SKIPPING the required taxes/connect fees and forced 'certified labor' to actually get electricity paid for more than half my solar setup...
If the general home owning public ever 'wakes up', utilities should fear for their profits, tho. I think most people are imprisoned in condo/apts and city life, so it's not like they are going to go out of business.
Rooftop solar flattens the daytime peak and cuts down on the maximum capacity needed to be produced and transmitted (along wires of course, but that's the word) from other places, so it does eventually pay for itself even when the money thrown at it is excessive. A bit of a problem is that throwing excessive amounts of money around builds political influence, but that's not a solar problem per se. Stop throwing money at it and they'll still be some takeup, especially in areas where utilities are indulging in excessive price gouging.
In a pure capitalist system, a utility would have to negotiate with the private owner of each plot of land that the utility lines cross in order to pull the utility's conduit across that plot of land. Eminent domain is socialist.
It's not that far off for city dwellers since batteries suck less with every passing year. In areas just off the grid the dream was real in the 1990s - some people I know were told it would be $100k to get a line in for them and their neighbours so they went solar plus mini-hydro.
I too have off-the-grid dreams as a house-owner, but the power companies always find a way, same thing with the electrical car that could run on water. Lobbyist will manipulate (read: FORCE) politicians into their direction, so you'll be depending on them one way or the other.
Huh? I guess there are places where you are required by law to hook up your house to the power grid, but nobody can force you to USE electricity. What's to stop you from just keeping the main breaker switched off?
I've actually known more than one person who didn't have utility power to their house, and they made it just fine. One of them engineered a small hydroelectric turbine system using a small creek that flowed across their land (they had several hundred acres in the North Carolina mountains) which they used to power a small refrigerator and occasionally a computer. The other used a collection of lead-acid car batteries which they charged up using a solar panel, then could hook up to an inverter as they needed.
Currently, of course the government is actually heavily subsidizing solar power for the home. Not taxing it out of existence.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
In Georgia both the PSC and the legislature is being lobbied hard to effectively outlaw private solar installations at the same time that the utilities are running a PR Blitz about how much they are working on solar energy. Having the most corrupt governor in the country doesn't help things here either
they ran scary commercials targeted at clueless old people about the dangers of over regulation so they could pass laws that let them stop paying people for the power they generated and bill them a fee for having solar connected to the grid. I'm genuinely embarrassed to say it worked...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Makes hippy girls puddle. And who can put a price on that!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The self generating community will create a hop scotch issue for power delivery. You might be the only one on your block that needs power from the grid. So power delivery will rise in cost rather sharply while power delivery is required for less and less homes. Power companies will have their backs to the wall as any raise in costs will bring on an even faster trend of homes to be self supplying. Ultimately power companies will go out of business as far as home supply is concerned. But the catch is that large industrial plants will want power from a central supply vendor. So we will probably see some type of power companies formed to supply large factories or factories that need huge power to operate such as steel mills. Change will always bring pain and suffering to someone. It will be a sort of war for a while not unlike what the railroads faced back in 1850 when land was usurped to make rails possible.
First off, the current system of forcing utilities to buy excess electricity generated by distributed photovoltaic cells at a premium is the one thing that likely will impact power company PROFITS. For those not familiar with this, in the US (at least, not sure of other markets) power companies buy your unused power you put on to the grid at a price that is above the retail price your neighbors will pay for their electricity from the utility. THAT policy, coupled with extremely generous incentives from the government is what makes photovoltaic cells an 'affordable' power source.
Second, utility company profit is typically regulated to be a percentage of revenues, and reduced sales (because of conservation, self-generation, or whatever) will reduce power company revenue, but profits will remain at the regulated percentage of revenue. (Back when AT&T was *the* phone company, they enjoyed a federally guaranteed profit of around 6% of revenue. They couldn't make more than 6% profit on phone service, but they could keep raising rates until they hit 6% profit. Six percent isn't an unreasonable profit, but when it is guaranteed, it is great. This helps explain why the phone company did so much research and paid such high salaries - these increased costs required increases in revenue, which increased profits.)
The thing that hurts the power company are the regulations, not the lost sales:
Install solar panels on your roof, gov't covers half of the cost (50% discount)
Generate electricity with those solar panels, sell the excess to power company at premium (retail plus) price.
Forcing the power company to buy electricity it doesn't want when it doesn't need it and can't predict or rely on it is what will kill their profits, not you buying less electricity on sunny days with your federally discounted solar panel array on the roof.
Ken
The fact that the UK's gas and electricity prices are among the cheaper in the EU is a hint that there's not a lot of price gouging going on, as does the relative failure of the cooperative buying efforts local authorities have organised. Of course it's attractive to blame the providers when price rises happen, and there IS a suggestion that they don't lower prices as rapidly as they might when wholesale prices fall. but I'm less than convinced that the CEGB and the regional electricity boards would have been any better.Yes Labour got itself a nice little bounce at the polls by proposing a price freeze when in its manifesto for the next election; the most probable effect of that is that all the companies increase their prices beforehand
Solar can fill part of the daytime peak, but other source are required to step in when solar wanes in late afternoon or on cloudy days. Then, of course, gas, coal, or nuclear are there to save the day. That is just fine as long as folks don't ignore the associated cost factors. But, I agree the way money gets thrown around distorts the market, invites mis-use, and political influence. Our energy policy should be fact based; cost, risk, reliability, diversity, environmental impact all need to be considered, but unfortunately the US hasn't had a energy policy based on those factors for over 25 years (if every).
Bull shit. ...Hippy girls....
I am damn tired of the unreliability of our current grid. I am in central Ohio: our power blinks at least once/month, and every few months it's out for hours. After any real storm, it's a week or more.
If my house weren't surrounded by trees, I would have solar to offset/augment in normal times, and to work when the local power providers fail to deliver service.
Yes, but the peak determines network design and the capacity you plan for. Cutting that peak back does save money in a "fact based" way if you want to use such language.
I don't know what's going on in Germany now. Thirty years ago, according to a German I knew, you had to pay for the power you didn't use if you generated your own.
But bringing up spinning reserve and dispatch issues is helpful. The research paper from LBL that spawned the Cmputer world article has the title "Financial Impacts of Net-Metered PV on Utilities and Ratepayers: A Scoping Study of Two Prototypical U.S. Utilities". The key is "Net-Metered". In the two locations that I know about, customers are paid at least the same price per kilowatt-hour for energy that they provide as they pay for energy that they consume regardless of time. Since the cost of energy in electrical power girds changes over time, such pricing is not appropriate. Also as Luckyo points out, there is a cost for providing "spinning reserve" which is the capability of providing additional power on a fraction of a second's notice. Such reserve is necessary in order to have reliable power delivered to variable loads.
Examples are examples. Why are mine, tested by the courts, invalid, but your untested ones somehow are?
With respect, take a look at a chart showing air pressure across your continent. Consider what it means in terms of wind, especially since windmills are spread out quite a bit now. The "wind is always blowing" thing is reality on the scale of a continental grid, even an electricity grid in Europe since there are such large interconnections between countries. If you look at a North American air pressure chart and the size of the US+Canada grid it's even more obvious.
I've never had anything to do with windmills and don't even like them much but I'm sick of all the politically motivated bullshit attacking anything in power generation that is seen as remotely "green", and that's why I called the GP poster to task for his bullshit.
So you are arguing against widely distributed small generators on that basis? They provide LOCALIZATION OF PRODUCTION by their very nature, so I suggest you be a bit more honest about your reason for objecting to them.
It's a base load solution with a large capacity and is very expensive to turn off and on for peaks where you need a bit more capacity. Anybody who raves on about "one true energy" whether it is solar, wind, nuclear or coal is either selling something or has been conned - the answer is a mix of energy sources. It's cheaper to fire up a gas turbine (or several) than an entire coal or nuclear base load unit if you don't need the full capacity of a base load unit. Although wind has a lot of drawbacks it has a niche. Although photovoltaics are very expensive they now also have a place and are making a positive impact.
Local governments (under pressure their utilities) will pass some 'neighborhood improvement act'. It will say something like to prevent eyesores solar and wind installs must not be visible, need special permits, will be taxed to prevent their users from getting power at a lower rate than everyone else. Just like how some states have extra tax on hybrid and EV vehicles, because they dont pay their fair share of fuel taxes.
The thing about peak power sources is they are used when the demand is higher than the base load can provide. You don't use them all the time. Now do you understand how it is possible that you can get a zero in wind produced energy when the wind is blowing? It's not that there is no wind, it's that there is no need to bring the windmills online.
So I'm not arguing against real numbers, I'm pointing out what they actually signify.
Please consider that and look at the page again, perhaps mentally adding in the conventional chart to get a chart for total consumption. Take note that the axis on one chart is three times that of another. Do you see that now - it's just filling in the peaks.
I think in general people here are not grasping the concept that windmills are very small generating units that are brought online as required instead of connected 24/7/365 like large thermal generators.
Sounds like your local utility is skimping on tree trimming. Seriously, that's a local distribution issue, not a grid issue. The midwest's grid does not blink once a month.
Every blink is a piece of local infrastructure failing and the backup kicking in. The real cute ones are fail, power for about half a second, second fail. It's simple probability, your primaries should not be failing once a month. The local utility is likely just running in 'never replace anything not on fire' mode.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
True for definitions of 'not exact' that equal 'fantasy pulled from a dark stinky place'.
A $6000 solar system produces $10000 per year? In Canada? Fucking idiot AC! Don't post again.
Canada is paying ridiculously large subsidies to solar operations, something like $0.88/KWh/yr, if I remember correctly. Meanwhile their actual power rates are very high and, in Ontario at least, are incredibly poorly managed (e.g. not sending a bill for eight months because they can't run their own electronic billing systems properly, making all kinds of manual changes to all of the bills, and paying a fortune on the Utility's debt service from another instance of gross mismanagement years ago.)
Can we stop quoting articles by Computerworld's idiot writer, Lucas Mearian, and rewarding such a shitty journalist with more airtime?
Gems like this shouldn't be allowed to see the light of day: "For the SW Utility, the all in average retail rate at 10% PV penetration is 23 cents/kWh (1.8%) higher over the first 10 years of the analysis period (i.e., from 2013 to 2022) than it is without PV."
$0.23 is the rate, not the difference in rate. For fuck's sake.
This is the same "journalist" that just the other day was posted here, talking about "The system is capable of producing up to 1,600 cubic liters of water per day"... http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
Canada has winter for 7 months of the year or more. Snow covers PV panels. So does frost. Shorter daylight hours occur just as demand peaks due to heating demand. We also have cloudy days, rainy days, foggy days.
And how does this work for tenants in apartment buildings? Or co-op owners in a high-rise? Roof space per occupant is a lot lower.
YET NOT ONE OF THE TOP 3 PARTIES WANTS THIS FOR ITS PEOPLE
AND yes the math is not exact here this is a quick example, now imagine the usa and germany doing this
Of course none of the parties want this - your numbers don't add up, and you ignore the reality that the backup storage costs and days/weeks/months when power can't be generated render this scheme really stupid, eh?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I guess the question that springs to mind is whether that covers ALL network costs, including the high voltage lines from the power station to the sub station. I'm also wondering whether the rural nature of your area doesn't provide a degree of latency and resilience that may be more absent in an urban environment. But I'm guessing there. But yes, you do make an interesting point; thanks.
I guess the other question about costings is about baseload; the issues are spelt out here:
http://www.economist.com/news/...
not quite sure how that translates to the western side of the Pond.
What's about the only time solar generates much electricity? On bright, sunny summer days. And when do power companies have the most trouble keeping up with demands On those same bright, summer days.
That depends on where you live. And what about those hot humid days with rain pouring down and the sun is nowhere to be seen? And hot nights when solar is generating zero?
Wind at least has the advantage of working at night, and all four seasons (solar panels get covered with snow, frost and ice).
For many areas, solar is better to use for things like direct hot-water heating, rather than converting it to electricity.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Because of protectionism cheap solar panels have been taxed until they become so much more expensive by the time they got to the consumers
A calculation I read somewhere - sorry, I lost the link - that if there was none of those stupid taxes the solar panels could have been gotten for almost _half_ of the current prices
Can you imagine the impact of consumers getting _twice_ as many solar panels installed on their roofs?
Can you imagine how much more clean power that gonna generate ... and how many more gigatons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that didn't have to be spewed into the atmosphere because of the clean power generated by those extra solar panels?
If we truly want to save the planet earth, we must insist that all the stupid protectionism practices be stopped !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
See http://www.carbon49.com/2010/0... for some details of of how everybody else is being ripped off to make solar "profitable" in the pronce of Ontario in Canada...
> Ontario Hydro One will buy the clean energy generated from the program
> participants at rates of up to 80 cents/kWh. This is much higher than the
> rates Ontario Hydro One sell their energy to the public at approximately
> 9 cents/kWh. The idea is to provide financial incentives for private
> businesses and communities to invest in renewable energy generation
Yes, that's right. The provincial power utility is paying almost 9 times as much for unreliable solar (and wind) power as it charges the public. Damn well right it's a money-loser. This works like something invented by the "creative accounting" minds at Enron. Imagine 3 neighbours living next door to each other....
Neighbour A) pays 9.3 cents per KWH for his usage
Neighbour B) generates 12% of his usage, and feeds it to his fridge/computers/swimming-pool/whatever. He only has to pay for the remaining 88% of his usage
Neighbour C) generates 12% of his usage and sells it to Ontario Hydro at the super-inflated rate. He then buys back 100% of his usage at the regular retail rate. He effectively pays zero for his electricity, even though he only generates 12% of what he's using.
This is legislated robbery.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Despite what some supporters think, solar power in order to be really viable have to be located in parts of the world where there are a lot of sunny days. For example, the southwestern USA has some of the best daylight conditions in the world for solar power--and the same can be said for southern Europe. Indeed, the country of Greece should have rooftop solar power everywhere, given the number of sunny days in that part of the world.
Here in California, rooftop solar power has really taken off because there are enough sunny days to justify the cost of installation. Imagine generating 15 to 30 kW of power during daytime--more than enough to run a single-family home, including air conditioning.
I'll invest in the now lucrative broom market and make a fortune.
Requiring new city construction where feasible orienting the rooftops to a East to West run with a 45 degree slope. This wouldn't require building PV panels onto the building during construction. It could be added on later by the owner. Having the option of generating part of your own power needs should be a factor for large apartment complexes receiving a permit. Having roofs oriented north to south severely limits power generation.
While it is a wind power suppliers wet dream and some rent seekers are pushing for such a thing it is not reality. WTF did you get such bullshit from? It's a peak source, and wishful thinking is not going to make distributors treat it as anything else.
Once again - that weather chart - you'll find those periods of zero wind generation do not match periods where there was magically a calm over an entire country but instead match when electricity consumption could be supplied entirely by base load. You cannot manage a large coal fired or other thermal unit for wildly variable load and the time taken to fire them up is hours or days - that's the reality, base load is run as base load.. You don't keep a lot of thermal power units running as spinning reserve either, they still need to consume fuel when operated that way.
It appears that you have a major assumption here that is frankly utter bullshit. I'm not blaming you for it sticking, but who threw it in your direction?
However since I've had the boots on that ground and you have not then where is the misunderstanding likely to be? Give up on the petty bullying in the hope that I have low self esteem. I brought up that background simply to indicate that I can tell the difference between your silly nuclear fanboy propaganda and reality.
A lot of work has gone into making sure that such things do not have to bother you in your armchair and it works better with solar, wind, gas turbines and other peak power sources than without.
Oh yes, that thick cloud extending from Los Angeles to New York that we never saw coming. Distributed power sources increase grid stability instead of what you are suggesting.
Do not not grasp the concept of very rapidly disconnecting a power source in the event of overload? Your comment about seems to imply that you don't think something so fundamental was thought of and designed for back in Edison's day.
One must look at solar rooftop not as an isolated technology but coupled with energy storage.
Even today its already economical to use rooftop solar + storage to avoid demand charges slapped on commercial customers that follow the demand increase in peak hours (like residential customers). It doesn't mean being energy independent at peak demand hours, but rather just flattening out a business energy demand curve.
Of course it starts with having rooftop PV.
Li-Ion battery cells are slated to drop significantly in price until 2020 due to Tesla's Giga factory.
At that point it will be economical to be energy independent in the 3-5 hours after sunset.
In the winter, energy storage will be used to buy the cheapest electricity (midnight-6AM), and use it when energy costs the most during the day.
If energy storage prices drop enough, many consumers will use energy storage to flatten out their demand, which would help increase baseload production demand (by buying more electricity in low demand hours).
But still, long term trend is shifting low demand hours to daylight hours, with storage consumers will be able to adjust and adapt.
When todays outmoded segments of the power grid cause brownouts during peak service hours, rooftop panels help relieve the problem and save the power companies lots of money...
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
.
From what I have seen, the power companies are doing their best to keep down the move to self generated power, except for keeping their cost to the customer lower than what the customer can generate it themselves. Even doing their best to have private generation taxed by governments (that want the revenue) rather than become more efficient and reliable. They are also clinging to old technologies for generation rather than trying to address better, safer, greener, sources.
They seem to be fighting becoming a common carrier and accepting power from 'anyone' and reselling it (with a reasonable markup for selling and accepting generation capacity).
The more we can become self powered, without the need for the 'power company' the better off we all are. It is a protection against inflation and 'grid fault' power outages. The companies don't need (or apparently want) to expand capacity with better / cleaner technologies. Once installed solar can be close to zero impact. (Using lead acid batteries for storage need replacing in about 5 years. NiFe batteries cost about 3x as much, but never must be replaced (people are still using some Thomas Edison made about a century ago - no, that is real - they were used by utilities for peaking, farms for storing self generated power (from windmills), in train switch engines, even in trucks. The Baker Electric sold it in their cars close to 1900 for an extra fee.).
I am not against wind power, but it doesn't work easily 'everywhere'. Hydroelectric even micro-hydro generators are great, but more dams are being removed than being built due to environmental concerns. The Power Towers and wind generators both seem to have issues with causing problems with migrating birds (killing them, or near the power towers they 'flame out' when flying through the concentrated solar beam they are attracted to. Nuclear fusion isn't near being production ready, and fission using radium based technology has problems with massive amounts of long term 'hot waste' that we have not found how to recycle or re-use, or even store in inactive storage, so most stays in storage pools near the reactors where it was used. (Thorium based 'LFTR' reactors show promise, but it appears that China and India will have working ones before we do. In the '60s we turned off for the last time the only Thorium reactor we had in use (safely) at Oak Ridge National Labs in TN. - And these reactors CAN consume plutonium and some of the uranium waste as PART of its fuel stream, reducing need for other fuels and getting rid of what is otherwise waste. We currently have no active program in the US. Canada is moving ahead, but still India and China will beat them to market given current trajectories.)
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
WTF?
You've really hit the bottom of the barrel when you are putting words in my mouth and pretending they are a quote. You've really let down whoever educated and trained you with such behaviour. What a disgusting little political animal you are.
Interesting opinion from a "think tank" run by economists at best but I don't see where it cites an actual law - although it does cite a few newspaper articles! That's high school homework stuff. I suggest you attempt to find evidence of such a thing and then perhaps you'll understand the issue in greater depth, most likely in greater depth than a "think tank" without a single technically oriented person listed on their page!
Even if such a law actually does exist, which I doubt even if rent seekers with windmills are pushing hard for it, wind has a lot of downtime for maintanance so is rarely fully utilised anyway.
This discussion is really about wind blowing or not anyway. Imagined patterns in graphs from a portion of a continental grid which may have a policy promoting the use of wind really do not address the core issue of there always being some wind somewhere in a large enough distributed network. I'm not a big fan of wind power but it does have a place in an energy mix. Monocultures suck in generation. You end up one drought, miners strike or major transport blockage incident away from blackouts.
Since I've only been asserting that the wind is always blowing somewhere, the daily weather map in your newspaper will do or on television. For the rest I've been asking you to justify your own statements and attempting to explain very simple things about distributed power networks and a variety of different types of generators.
Without base load, typically sold in 1GW+ chunks, you have nothing. That law appears to be a priority queue for the scraps.
I wish you would have actually quoted the bit that supposedly proves something you are asserting and saved me the time.
All the wind all the time - what rubbish - it's not implemented and it would be stupid if it was.
Get it now?
Your trying to relate secondary information from graphs that depend on several different conditions to whether there is wind or not is inferior to just seeing if the wind is blowing or not. Detours into misinterpretations of laws about priority of minor contributors to the grid were a bit strange - your angry reaction to being informed about the existence of gas turbines as conventional peak generation sources disturbing.
This has been a rather odd experience but has given me a bit of an insight into situations where politics is seen to trump reality.
Meant to be "not actually insane". I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt on so many things so long despite such a juvenile method of feigned mental illness to attack instead of discuss.
You don't have such an excuse for tilting at windmills. You are merely a well behaved sheep willing to deny reality for The Party like a good little useful idiot for Stalin. Truly pathetic, but you've certainly kept me feeling smug and superior for a few days now, so it was worth remaining polite. Did you really think your cut and paste tantrums would have any other effect other than to make others think you are worthless?
"And yet it moves" is a good little quote to apply to your silly idea that the wind stops on a continent wide basis. Blind ideology does not trump reality and only provides the illusion of doing so when authoritarian politics is in play. This is supposed to be a technical site and not a wacko politics site that goes so far round the bend that it comes back around the corner as Stalinism, I suggest you continue pushing your devotional delusions among like minded people on a political site that caters to that.
Come on now - you've had the graph you don't understand, the law that does not say what you pretend it does and despite thus not having a source that confirms your silly assertion you keep bleating for one from me - despite a wind chart effectively doing the job of indicating if there is wind or not. It is very clear where the bullshit is being sprayed from.
Save me from utter losers that think politics trumps reality.
Thank you for clearly outlining your method of attempting to refute my statement that the wind does not stop - goalpost moving. After all, what you were objecting to was my "The thing with wind, as any child who watches the TV weather knows, is that it is always blowing somewhere" comment. Why object to obvious reality in such a way?
That's why I've been laughing at you all this time while trying to keep relatively polite and merely treat you like a very slow and disruptive student that should never have enroled.
Here in Wisconsin, USA we have only one electricity provider WE- Energies. There policy is if a customer installs solar and is connected to their grid they charge you a higher rate. That's totally fucked up. Their a damn monopoly. Meanwhile their monthly rate for using their service always increases. There was a protest across from their headquarters in Milwaukee lately how much good it did? Probably none. I barrage them with petitions and encourage everyone else to do the same via social media we'll see what happen's. I'm sure though there lobbying prettily heavily to keep things the same as in the good old day's. Wake up to new technology, Germany is the prime example.
Look at my post immediately before your first reply - OBVIOUS ISN'T IT? Why pretend otherwise. You did a goalpost shift in some silly attempt to "blind me with science", yet for some reason you have less than the average general knowledge on the topic you did the goalpost shift into - and took it upon yourself to attack a former power industry engineer while so disarmed!
What an utterly pathetic performance and a example to hold up as how stupid someone can look why they put blind ideology before really obvious reality.
No wind? Anywhere? How fucking stupid? Oh it's not stupid you say, I have this graph that if you squint at just in the right way you can see some sort of pattern. What's the graph of I ask? Some sort of power shit that is beneath your dignity to understand you say.
What an utterly pathetic performance. Especially all that juvenile shouting to a crowd that isn't there. Whoever trained you for your role in society would be ashamed of you looking at all that drivel you have expelled onto the page above. All presumably so you can be a good comrade and attack an industry that your personal little Stalin dislikes, maybe so you can be promoted to commissar or blackboard monitor or something. What a pathetic weak willed creature you are. I taught at University for a while and was exposed to the losers in the political clubs and you remind me very much of the ones that devoted far too much effort to bullshit and did not pass their degrees.
I see you can write a lot of bullshit, but not admit to your fabrication. I showed you real data, you are the one that had a problem with it. YOu even put words in my mouth, as i never said the wind stops. Interpret as you like. In the end, we both know you fabricated your contention about German windmills being used for peaking because you didn't like the real world data. That you make stuff up and think it is justified is very telling about you as a person.
That pre-emptive bullshit of assigning your own actions to others is especially juvenile. What a truly pathetic creature you are. So much time waving something around as a prop when you could have learned a thing or two about it instead.
Learned from a bullshitter?
You are the bait and switch loser and not me. I've got no idea why you thought that would work since you appear to have far less than normal general knowledge about electricity generation and distribution.
Spoken by one who contends that German windmills are used for peaking. One of the stupidest things I've ever heard, and a clear act of desperation to explain real world results that don't match your theoretical wind scenarios.
They are not base load and more of them are brought online when base load is not enough - fits the definition perfectly. As I wrote above you appear to have far less than what would be expected for general knowledge on the topic so it was a very poor choice for your bait and switch. Perhaps you should limit your very long and repetitive misdirections to something related to your competency?
A weather map is not theoretical. Imagined patterns in a graph that depends on a lot of secondary factors is theoretical at best. Yet another utterly pathetic act of attempting to displace your own bad behaviour onto others.
Still no source for your fabricated contentions regarding windmill usage in Germany, I see.
It's extremely clear in that graph you provided where all but one of the peaks shown displays a much larger supply of wind power than off the peak, but that's not the point, that's just where you shifted the goalposts too and failed with your silly little bluff. Your own source disproves your statement instead of reinforcing it, and it in no way addresses the obvious reality you objected to of there being wind blowing somewhere so long as you have a big enough electricity network. Europe is certainly big enough. North America - making such an objection as yours does not appear to be sane when considering such a scale. That's where reality denial for the sake of politics gets you. The Berlin wall fell years ago and people are going to make money out of windmills whether you hate the idea of such capitalism or not.
More unsubstantiated bullshit. IT WAS YOU that tried to rationalize the real world variability of Germany's wind output with fabricated contentions. I am no longer reading any post from you in this thread that does not contain a link to a credible source that describes windmill operation in the manner you suggest. If I don't see that link, post ignored. You wasted enough of my time.
You brought up your report from Germany - maybe you should have read it and gained some understanding of what the graphs meant first before your pathetic goalpost shift and ridiculous cut and paste repetition. Why did you bother to waste so much time when you had nothing to say apart from from a bait and switch bluff?