California Poised To Hit 50 Percent Renewable Target a Full Decade Ahead of Schedule (cleantechnica.com)

Do as the French do... by b0s0z0ku · 2017-12-21 15:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

Run nuclear plants as peakers -- yes, it can be done with the right design.

Nuclear isn't renewable, but it's a hell of a lot cleaner than fossil fools.

Re:Do as the French do... by b0s0z0ku · 2017-12-21 15:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

(and use pumped-storage hydro -- when water is available -- for load leveling as well)
Re:Do as the French do... by b0s0z0ku · 2017-12-21 15:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes. Because Americans are scientifically ignorant cowards.
Re:Do as the French do... by PopeRatzo · 2017-12-21 15:56 · Score: 4, Funny

Yes. Because Americans are scientifically ignorant cowards.
Before Donald Trump was elected, I might have argued with you about that. Now I'm not so sure.

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You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:Do as the French do... by hawguy · 2017-12-21 18:14 · Score: 2

The US President has zero impact on moving technologies from the white board to real products and services. It is the legislative branch that create regulations or intrusive government meddling in technological advancements. If people would only redirect their complaints from the President towards Congress they my see some problems solved.

So many people complained to their GOPcongressmen that they've cancelled town hall meetings to avoid meeting with their constituents.
Complaining to congress has as much effect as as complaining about the president.

One example of Congressional maleficence and public idiocy would be the DACA program. The DACA program was created by the previous administration by executive order. There is some controversy about the legality of the executive order that created the DACA program . Trump didn't cancel the program. He just sent the entire matter to Congress to be approve and codify by into law. But all you hear are people telling sob stories about being deported because of Trumps decision.
While democrats overwhelmingly support the DACA program, even 40% of republicans don't believe it should be disbanded. Only 15% of the country thinks the DACA immigrants should be deported.
And really how callous do you have to be to think that the right thing to do is to deport children that had no choice in the matter and were illegally brought to this country by their parents -- some have lived in the USA their entire lives and have no friends/family back in their home country, yet people still want to send them back "home". It seems akin to putting a child in jail because he was in the back seat of the getaway car when his dad robbed a bank.
Re:Do as the French do... by blindseer · 2017-12-21 21:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

Run nuclear plants as peakers -- yes, it can be done with the right design.
Yes it can, but why bother? I get to this in a bit.

Nuclear isn't renewable, but it's a hell of a lot cleaner than fossil fools.
True, just the radioactive material in coal ash should be enough to get coal plants shut down. That's if coal had to meet the same standards as nuclear for disposing of the naturally occurring uranium in the ash. But if it's safe for them to toss it in a ditch then certainly nuclear reactors can do the same?
So, why bother with nuclear as a supplier of peak demand? Let's consider that Germany discovered that for every 4 MW of wind power they need 3 MW of ready backup power. Let's be honest here and note that this is Russian natural gas for the most part. We don't have the same political ramifications for foreign natural gas in the USA as we produce sufficient quantities of it ourselves.
We use natural gas because the capital expense is relatively low, about $30/MWh installed, but the fuel costs are relatively high, but still low enough that with a 30% capacity factor it's $105/MWh. Wind and nuclear are not too far apart in capital expense, wind at $70 and nuclear at $83. Wind though has a capacity factor of about 35% and nuclear at 90%.
What happens though is that the costs for nuclear and wind do not rely on fuel, there's no fuel cost for wind and nuclear fuel cast is so small that it can realistically be ignored in the grand scheme. What keeps nuclear costs low is that this very high capital expense is offset by it's high capacity factor. I saw the math once and I forget the details on this output to cost curve but what was obvious is the less the nuclear power plant output the higher the cost.
We can run nuclear at a 30% capacity factor like natural gas but then the cost to run it isn't $100/MWh anymore, it would at least triple. Much of the costs on a nuclear power plant exist whether it runs or not, so you run it as much as is possible to make back the investment in capital as quickly as possible.
If you've got 4 GW of wind capacity, and 3 GW of natural gas capacity, then you can expect an average output of 2.5 GW or so. This works well so far because the costs average out to about $100/MWh. If you've got 4 GW of wind capacity, and 3 GW of nuclear to back it up, then try to run that at the same 2.5 GW average output to maximize wind usage, then your costs just went to $300/MWh.
Here's a more realistic outcome, you dump your capital into all nuclear. The capital costs will actually be lower than then combined wind and natural gas, but the maximum load it can support would be greater. If you have a 2.5 GW average demand then install 4 GW of nuclear and be done. This would be met with 3, 4, or 5 common reactors on the same site, or spread out to 2 or 3 sites, each backing up the other. Getting more realistic there would probably be 3 GW of nuclear and 1 GW of natural gas so that if there was a major problem with the nuclear reactors then the natural gas could be used to shutdown, cool, and monitor the reactor. This could be blackout or brownout territory but highly rare, about as common as peak demand meeting a no wind situation if there was a reliance on windmills.
Right now wind costs about 90% of nuclear power but it is unreliable. Even by spreading out the windmills and a "smart grid" wind will only produce 35% of it's installed capacity. Batteries don't change this, it only adds to the cost to gain back some reliability. The math gets complicated real quick on trying the right balance but it seems quite apparent that if there is a combination where we use current costs to compute this balance with wind and nuclear providing a majority of our electricity then wind is going to make almost non-existent contributions to keep costs low.
I probably did a real shitty job explaining this. I've seen people that studied this do a presentation and the math looks real bad for wind

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I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Re:Do as the French do... by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 00:26 · Score: 4, Informative

Nuclear isn't renewable, but it's a hell of a lot cleaner than fossil fools.
Yes nuclear doesn't release CO2, but >>>
1. California's geology is not well suited to nuclear -- a patchwork of fault lines. At this time, no one knows where they all are, much less which are active. No one wants to build a multibillion dollar nuclear facility, then find out they've built on top of a blind thrust fault. (i.e. a fault with no surface indication).
2. Current, proven designs are steam boilers that need lots of water. For the most part, California doesn't have lots of long term reliable water inland. There's lots of coastline of course, but virtually none of it looks to be guaranteed to be stable.
3. The California culture is strongly antinuclear and costs will surely be exacerbated by endless lawsuits.
4. Recent nuclear plants in the developed world have had MAJOR problems with cost and schedule.
5. If you look at the historical costs of nuclear accidents, they show signs of having a highly skewed ("paretto" / "power-law") distribution. i.e. occasional industrial accidents whose costs can sanely be covered by an insurance pool ... and occasional catastrophic accidents with costs comparable to a war.
My feeling, and you're surely free to disagree. The world can be powered by wind. solar and nuclear. But the nuclear part may genuinely be risky.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Re:Do as the French do... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-22 00:27 · Score: 3, Informative

All this rationalization. Lets just take the real world examples;
Germany 19% nuclear, 20% wind+solar.
France, 70% nuclear, 5% wind+solar
France CO2 emissions per capita and per Kwh are about 1/2 of Germany
France's electricity costs are 0.169/kWh, Germany 0.306/kWh
Case closed.
Re:Do as the French do... by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 00:53 · Score: 1

Pumped storage is a proven technology. BUT ...
1. It has good points -- It's only mildly ecologically disastrous. Unlike batteries, it doesn't require nasty chemicals, self-immolate, lose capacity over time, etc. If nothing else, folks can probably fish, swim, and water ski in the pools.
2. It needs lots of water. California doesn't always HAVE lots of water. It's possible to use salt water of course, but that would suggest siting close to the coast.
3. It's surprisingly hard to find good sites for pumped storage. Typically you need to find two large basins close to each other and separated vertically by several hundred meters.
4. It's not very efficient. 70-75% round trip efficiency seems typical in practice. That's put 400MwHr in, get 300MwHr back.
5. It's cheap. It wouldn't be used if it weren't. But in order for it to be cheap, you need to feed it cheap electricity and use it a lot -- typically daily. If you try to use it with power that cycles with weather patterns that repeat every three days, costs will go up substantially

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Re:Do as the French do... by Bearhouse · 2017-12-22 01:00 · Score: 1

The water is not lost; it's pumped back up the hill after being run down through turbines during peak load. Large lakes do of course suffer from evaporation loss.
Re:Do as the French do... by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 01:13 · Score: 2

"And I don't like any nuclear design that can serve more than 5,000 houses."
I think there's a subtle logical flaw there. There's not a lot of data, but what I've seen suggests that nuclear plant power output won't be a major variable in accident magnitude -- which is to say that a 30Mw facility supplying 5,000 houses (Numbers I got off the the Internet without a lot of checking) is about as likely to have a huge accident as a 1Gw power plant. If that's true, we'd want a few BIG power plants, not a lot of small ones.
It'd be interesting to know. But maybe, it'd be better not to find out by the let's_try_it_and_see_what_happens method.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Re:Do as the French do... by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 01:19 · Score: 1

If I read that right, you're suggesting that once you commit to building nuclear power plants with sufficient capacity to cover a bad wind/sun day, there's no point in cluttering up the landscape with wind turbines? Interesting. I'm not a big fan of nuclear, but I'll go off and think about it.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Re:Do as the French do... by KiloByte · 2017-12-22 01:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

Humans + Nuclear power is just bad news.
You mean, beside being the safest source of energy, even including those 1960s reactors still in use? And that's by quite a margin above renewables.
If you count in the cost of externalities, it's also among the cheapest. For an iBooks-to-OPiPCs comparison, put a condom on every coal chimney and store both pollutants and CO2 forever (they don't decay with time like nuclear waste does) -- and only then we can talk about being fair.

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The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Re:Do as the French do... by upuv · 2017-12-22 01:35 · Score: 2

No they can't. A nuke plant takes days to ramp up electricity production. A nuke plant is not an instant on by any means.
A Nuke plant is a base load provider not a peak provider. It is near impossible to design a fast ramp up nuke plant. As in with in 30 minutes.
Gas and Hydro are near instantaneous power providers. Hydro being the fastest to provide power.
Re:Do as the French do... by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 01:56 · Score: 1

No they can't. A nuke plant takes days to ramp up electricity production. A nuke plant is not an instant on by any means.
That's true. But I've read posts elsewhere that sounded sane that argue that the inability to quickly fire up current reactors is an arbitrary design decision, not a fundamental property of fission power. And certainly there's nothing in the basics of fission that prevents ramping up heat pretty quickly. However, IANANE (I am NOT a nuclear engineer). For all I know, the thermal stresses from rapid warm up would distribute the reactor core over an area the size of Guatemala.
Also, there are posts in this thread that suggest that if one decides to use nuclear to back up intermittent renewables, the cost of nuclear fuel is so low that there is no need for the wind turbines and solar panels.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Re:Do as the French do... by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 02:11 · Score: 1

"Case closed."
Not hardly. Germany is trying to shut down its nuclear reactors without increasing dependence on Russian natural gas. As a result they are burning a lot of coal and therefore releasing a lot of CO2. France has virtually no fossil fuels, so they built a lot of nukes.
Their energy mixes are NOT comparable.
Personally, I think that Germany's priorities (other than not depending on Russia to stay warm in Winter) are kind of odd. But that's none of my business

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Re:Do as the French do... by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 02:52 · Score: 1

Electrolysis is about 65 to 70% efficient, and a fuel cell is about 50%. Thus the round-trip efficiency is around 35%.
This significantly less than a battery, where the round trip efficiency is about 70%.
So no, we won't be doing this.
http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technologies/hydrogen-energy-storage
Re:Do as the French do... by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 03:05 · Score: 1

> Wind and nuclear are not too far apart in capital expense, wind at $70 and nuclear at $83.
I'm not sure what units you're using, you didn't post them. However, in $/Wp, wind is about $1.25 and nuclear is around $10.00. So, I disagree.
> Nuclear can load follow fairly well as it is right now.
No, it can't. The vast majority of plants in service around the world have about 25% throttling capability per 24 hours. There are a minority of designs that do much better than that, closer to 50%, which is what you want.
The French get around this by having lots of reactors on a single grid so they can throttle the freshly loaded ones. That's a good idea that everyone should do, but few others places have the political or geographical capability. We can't do it here in Ontario, for instance, so we sell off our nighttime excess for something like 0.5 c/kWh or even negative from time to time.
> The problem is that the load
> following needs delays between rapid changes to avoid wear and damage to the fuel
Which sounds like the definition of "can't".
Re:Do as the French do... by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 03:16 · Score: 1

> certainly there's nothing in the basics of fission that prevents ramping up heat pretty quickly
No. Read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_neutron
Reactors often get a safety margin by operating slightly below the conditions needed for a chain reaction and then using the extra neutrons provided by fission products to make up the difference. Since these are generated over a period of minutes, there is a slow-following curve which makes it much easier to control. You can operate without this consideration, but then even small transients can make your reactor runaway. Quickly.
Additionally, due to the geometry needed to maintain a chain reaction, you have to load the fuel in a certain way. In most designs, this means there are hot spots in the reactor, typically in the center, because they respond more rapidly to control inputs because their neutron flux is higher. This is what caused Chernobyl to blow. You *can* design around this, but only at the cost of decreased efficiency or requiring more fuel changes, and the economics are far too bad to consider these days.
Re:Do as the French do... by Uecker · 2017-12-22 03:22 · Score: 1

Nuclear is already far too expensive. Running nuclear plants as peakers makes this even worse.
BTW: nice article in the guardian on nuclear power and its economics (and where the myh its economical comes from):
https://www.theguardian.com/ne...
Re:Do as the French do... by Billy+the+Mountain · 2017-12-22 03:31 · Score: 1

With nuclear, they don't use electrolysis to split water, they use heat. Not sure what efficiency but much better than electrolysis. Process is called thermochemical water splitting. It's efficient because it doesn't require generating electricity as a step in the process, rather it uses the reactors own heat directly to fuel the operation.

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That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Re:Do as the French do... by KiloByte · 2017-12-22 03:45 · Score: 2, Informative

Costs you quoted include all the externalities that other sources of energy get to offload to human health, animal health and so on. Nuclear is the only one that is required to cover anything that could possibly have resulted from it, including a good heap of nuke-haters' paranoia.
Wind doesn't require fuel (besides inefficiently mooching from a fusion reactor a few light minutes away), but requires maintenance (each turbine generates little power) and a lot of land. It also causes a lot of bird deaths and so on.

And that is the reason people are building wind and not nuclear.
Funny that -- after subsidies were lowered, suddenly 70% of wind generators in Poland produce a net loss, and that's just ongoing costs for already constructed turbines.

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The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Re:Do as the French do... by dryeo · 2017-12-22 03:53 · Score: 1

It would be nice to see an unbiased study on nuclear safety vs everything else. The studies I've seen have been very biased. They count construction deaths in wind and solar but not nuclear (I'd assume there's been a few construction worker deaths in construction of nuclear plants rather then zero), they count mining deaths in coal mining without counting deaths in uranium mining and count dams built for flood protection that failed as hydro failures.
Now I'm willing to believe that currently nuclear is safer, if only due to less construction and fewer miners but such biased studies reflect badly on the studies that people always cite.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Re:Do as the French do... by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 04:05 · Score: 1

Interesting data on existing nuclear, solar and wind. Existing nuclear is actually quite cheap. And one thing almost always overlooked for the wind/solar generation is the required gas/coal backup. The US is dark for a large portion of each rotation, which does not help solar. I guess you could do pumped storage - but we'd need to increase the number of flooded valleys in the US by a factor of 40. Right now, nuclear - when solar/wind are required to provide base-load capability - is quite price competitive.

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Re:Do as the French do... by vakuona · 2017-12-22 04:16 · Score: 1

That chart only takes into account total energy generation. It doesn't account for the "quality" of the generation. For example, with a thermal power station, you can generate a known amount of electricity 24/7 with minimal investment in load balancing.
And the report states that they haven't considered any costs to deal with intermittency at all. All costs to deal with intermittency should be borne by renewables. In effect, we should match renewable capacity with some on-demand capacity. So, for example, the cost of putting together 1GW of solar should be 1GW of solar + 1GW of CCGT backup.
So the costs in there are misleading.
Re:Do as the French do... by sheph · 2017-12-22 04:17 · Score: 1

You still have the problem of waste though. The cost of storing it, the cost of lawsuits if it leaks, the cost of regulatory compliance, all of which is perpetual after it's been used. How does that factor into your cost analysis? I work for a power company. Wind is a challenge and we have no nuclear. It's usually there when we need it the least. Our system is mostly hydro with federally mandated river flows. So, when we are forced by law to purchase wind being generated (which is heavily subsidized by tax dollars) and back our hydro units down we still end up having to spill water to maintain river flows. It sucks for us as a company because we have to waste the resources we have which are also green and renewable. It sucks for our customers because they ultimately pay more for electricity. Both in taxes as well as increased rates to compensate for what we have to put out. Our residential rates have been going up 2-3% every year for the last 10 years.

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I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Re:Do as the French do... by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 04:18 · Score: 1

Anyone who has been on a floating nuclear power plant - a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, for example - would love to disabuse you of the notion that nuclear power cannot ramp up and down quickly. Yes, it's only 550 MW output (officially; I suspect it's closer to somewhere around 700 MW), but that is 40% more than the Ivanpah solar thermal generator outside of Las Vegas...

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Re:Do as the French do... by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 05:13 · Score: 1

Hmmm. How fast can you bring up a sanely designed nuclear plant? Keep in mind that all thermal power plants take a while -- minutes, hours, days -- to get up to speed. That seems to be a real problem when trying to back up solar or wind. I think that the only backups that can act in tens of seconds are hydro and batteries. And I have my doubts about the latter. Not that one can't (probably) design a battery bank with a good backup profile for grid level wind. But I'm far from convinced that the Lion stuff Elon Musk is peddling is ideal for the application of grid level backup. Musk tends to be big on vision but a little hazy on details.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Re:Do as the French do... by Christian+Smith · 2017-12-22 05:37 · Score: 1

With nuclear, they don't use electrolysis to split water, they use heat. Not sure what efficiency but much better than electrolysis. Process is called thermochemical water splitting. It's efficient because it doesn't require generating electricity as a step in the process, rather it uses the reactors own heat directly to fuel the operation.
I heard they tried that in Japan at Fukushima, it didn't end well.
Of course, there are more options about what to do with excess power. One option touted is compressing air into underground caves, or liquefying the compressed air into cryogenic tanks, then using the expansion of that air at times of peak load to drive turbines.
But I'm of the opinion that district level storage using chemical batteries (flow batteries seem promising) will provide the best value for money. That will allow the existing grids to continue with minimal changes, allow the storage of domestic micro-generation (Solar PV, combined heat and power) and keep the storage close to the consumers.
Re: Do as the French do... by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 06:31 · Score: 1

Really? The manual says you're wrong. From page 6:

The control system allows the plant to accept step load increases of 10 percent and ramp load increases of 5 percent per minute over the load range of 15 to 100 percent of full power subject to xenon limitations. Equal step and ramp load reductions are possible over the range of 100 to 15 percent of full power. Losses of reactor load up to 100 percent of rated power without reactor trip can be accommodated by steam dump to the condenser conjunct with the control system.
Hmmm, 5 percent per minute, from 15 to 100 percent? That would mean 17 minutes to ramp up or down between full-throttle and idle. Quite flexible, and quite quick! Most peaker plants take between 10 to 30 minutes to ramp up to rated output, so the nuclear plant - with power equal or greater than most natural gas peakers - responds as fast as the natural gas peakers. Imagine that!

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Re:Do as the French do... by ravenshrike · 2017-12-22 06:36 · Score: 1

If the US pulled its head out of its ass and went full reprocessing with breeder reactors until thorium tech was available there would be little to no waste issue, and what issue there was could be vitrified, encased in lead, and dumped in the Marianas Trench.
Re:Do as the French do... by HiThere · 2017-12-22 07:49 · Score: 1

He did say "when this was available". The available amount varies from year to year, and using it for hydro doesn't prevent using it also for drinking and irrigation...though storage can be a problem.
But the real problem is it varies from year to year. Some years it would be a reasonable approach.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:Do as the French do... by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 10:47 · Score: 1

> With nuclear, they don't use electrolysis to split water, they use heat
Nope. They've been plans to do this, but the reactors we use can't do it. You need to use something gas cooled, typically CO2 or He, but no one is building them anymore. They suck, economically. Just as the Brits about the AGR.
Re:Do as the French do... by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 11:03 · Score: 2

> How fast can you bring up a sanely designed nuclear plant?
From zero takes days and days. From 75% takes about 24 hours, at least for common designs like PWR.
> s of seconds are hydro and batteries. And I have my doubts about the
Don't. There was a recent brownout sequence in Austrailia that just happened to occur days after the Tesla pack went online. It managed to stabilize the frequency in real time.
The entire power industry is talking about this. They're using terms like "game changer" and "never the same again".
Re:Do as the French do... by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 11:08 · Score: 1

> a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, for example - would love to disabuse you of the notion that
> nuclear power cannot ramp up and down quickly
Sure, which you can do with 95% enrichment. That results in a tiny core, which has fewer problems with hot spots and less reliance on delayed neutrons.
Of course, it also costs so much money to reach that level of enrichment that it's many times greater than the commercial value of the electricity it could produce, so it offers nothing to the civilian fleet.
Surely as someone that professes such expertise on such matters would be aware of this, and mention it for the sake of clarity. Right?
Re:Do as the French do... by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 11:34 · Score: 1

> Costs you quoted include all the externalities that other sources of energy get to offload to human health, animal health and so on
No, they don't. In fact, the report clearly states:
"does not take into account potential social and environmental externalities"
So, I'm not sure how you came up with that.
> Nuclear is the only one that is required to cover anything that could possibly
Nuclear is the only one that *doesn't*. The government covers the insurance. If they didn't, no one would have ever built one.
Look at Fukishima. Current estimates are that the physical cleanup will be something like $20 billion, while moving all the people out and buying their houses could be anywhere between $200 and $400 billion. Let's take the low side, and note that Japan has 50 reactors, which means that if they had to cover this it would be another $4 billion PER REACTOR, which is *more than the cost of the rector*, by about two times. Had they been required to cover this eventuality, none of them would have been built, they could never cover their costs.
> Funny that -- after subsidies were lowered
Got a translation?
Re:Do as the French do... by Maxo-Texas · 2017-12-22 18:03 · Score: 1

As I said,
I don't like any nuclear design that relies on human maintenance or intervention.
And I don't like any nuclear design that can serve more than 5,000 houses.
Humans + Nuclear power is just bad news.
It starts out okay and then after a couple decades humans get overconfident or start cost cutting (doesn't matter if private business or government.)
Finally, I don't like any nuclear plant that doesn't have a permanent home for it's nuclear waste before the day it comes online.

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She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Do as the French do... by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-23 01:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

> Color me unimpressed. It kicked in a few MW for a short period of time.
You obviously don't work in the power industry.
I assure you, this is *very* impressive. People have been talking about solutions to this problem since I was a kid. When they were still working on Shiva. Before I bought my Atari 400.
> The question is whether Lion batteries can stabilize the South Australian grid for years on end without losing too much capacity
LiIon, like most batteries, loses capacity when you have wild swings in stored energy. Going from 100% to 40% once is orders of magnitude worse than going from 80% to 60% three times, in spite of both examples using the same amount of energy.
For uplift purposes you have rapid cycling around maybe 10% of capacity (the recent example was 1.5% IIRC), so the pack should last until we're all long dead.
> convinced that if one were designing batteries for grid storage that Lithium-ion would be the technology you'd choose
Holy, have you read *anything* about this?!
The batteries in the SA system are NOT the same ones as the cars. They're a completely different chemistry designed specifically for cycling.
> Sodium-Sulfur (NaS) batteries
Ugh.
NaS batteries will not happen. Ever. Its a terrible technology. Boiling sulphur is the description of Hell, not the description of a useful battery chemistry. No one is really working on it, nor ZEBRA, and even the flow batteries that people periodically raise are dead from any practical definition.
This very second, the amount of money being spent on LiIon tech is something like 1000x the amount on all the others put together. There is no way any of those technologies will ever be able to compete.
Re: Do as the French do... by Uecker · 2017-12-24 01:14 · Score: 1

... "subject to xenon limitations." ...
Re:Do as the French do... by Bengie · 2017-12-24 09:08 · Score: 1

How long until the battery has to be rebuilt/replaced?
They over-speced the install to accommodate for battery storage loss. The Tesla li-ion batteries already have +20% over their spec so 100% and 0% aren't actually 0% and 100%, so the battery lasts longer, then the 100MW install they did in Australia is actually a ~120MW install officially rated for 100MW. In 10 years from now, assuming a norm worst case every day, which is statistically unlikely, will be down to ~100MW effective, while still having ~120MW of remaining raw capacity.

The 10 year life time assumes 1 full cycle per day. Most of the cycles that I see are more like 50% daily than 100%. This will cause the batteries to last much longer. I assume the batteries can be replaced on bank at a time, which will make it very convenient and easy to plan.

From what I've read, but not validated, is that li-ion is very recyclable. New packs for new demand will be more expensive than existing recycled packs once the industry matures. Prices are plummeting year after year. Once we start getting the first round of recycled batteries, we'll see prices fall further.

Re:At what cost? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 15:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

Renewables get more than the ~$500bil coal gets every year from externalized healthcare costs?

Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by Fly+Swatter · 2017-12-21 16:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

From Forbes: California's Growing Imported Electricity Problem "California now imports 33% of its electricity supply from fast growing neighbors". Looks like a numbers game to me, but what do I know.

Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by homer1972 · 2017-12-21 16:08 · Score: 2, Funny

Smoke and mirrors. I generate 100% of my energy for my house by shuffling my feet for static charge, where's my headline? (The other 99.9999999999999%) is imported)
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by whoever57 · 2017-12-21 16:21 · Score: 1

Are there people who really believe Forbes?
http://www.latimes.com/project...

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Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by interkin3tic · 2017-12-21 16:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

Renewable energy is renewable energy whether it's in one state or another.

One op-ed from a guy who is a professional promoter of natural gas says "California should really buy more natural gas," and you're willing to conclude California is running a gigantic scam?

It's not like the source of the power is untraceable once it goes over the border, or CA is claiming the source of the power is a national security secret and just trust us it's much more expensive solar power, ignore that the power lines are running to coal fired power plants just over the border.
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by interkin3tic · 2017-12-21 17:29 · Score: 1

What reality? What's the conspiracy theory here?
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-21 18:11 · Score: 1, Informative

How about the US Government which states that "California imports about a quarter of its electricity on average"? Do they count? Reading the article you linked, it is clear the LA Times "cherry picked" specific narrow dates to make their claim. On average, CA imports a full 25% of its power needs.
Seems you're a lot better off believing Forbes rather than the LA Times... At least when it comes to truthiness about power imports to California.

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Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by hawguy · 2017-12-21 18:49 · Score: 1

From Forbes: California's Growing Imported Electricity Problem "California now imports 33% of its electricity supply from fast growing neighbors". Looks like a numbers game to me, but what do I know.
About 22% of California's imported power comes from renewables
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by Narcocide · 2017-12-21 20:16 · Score: 1

Due to malicious legislation in Arizona it's actually cheaper for them to sell renewable electricity to neighboring states than to their own citizens.
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 20:30 · Score: 1

Renewable energy is renewable energy whether it's in one state or another. One op-ed from a guy who is a professional promoter of natural gas says "California should really buy more natural gas," and you're willing to conclude California is running a gigantic scam? It's not like the source of the power is untraceable once it goes over the border, or CA is claiming the source of the power is a national security secret and just trust us it's much more expensive solar power, ignore that the power lines are running to coal fired power plants just over the border.
I just watched a bemused CEO of a clean energy company in Oman observe that in the Persian gulf they are already running solar plants that can beat natural gas on the price per Kwh so badly that the Arabs are phasing out natural gas electricity generation and replacing it with solar because it is simply so much cheaper. This means that they are actually pumping their oil and gas around with solar energy instead of burning it themselves and then selling the gas to people who are still ideologically married to the idea of generating electricity with natural gas while they themselves pocket the difference. If that is not some kind of writing on somebody's wall somewhere I don't know what it is. An excellent counter example to California is Florida in that they are rigidly goring the diametrically opposite way. A huge portion of Florida's electricity consumption is due to air conditioning, they are powering that consumption with coal and (mostly) gas plants. They have something like 250 days with sunshine per year. On what level does it make sense to stick with coal and gas instead of just encouraging the citizenry to put sun panels on their roofs? ... conservative ideology? ... 'we don't do what tree-huggers do, using coal and oil is patriotic, now get off my lawn'? You'd think they'd at least be open to the economic reality of using wind/solar/battery solutions and the elegance of putting solar panels on your roof and using the solar energy you are trying to escape to power the air conditioning you are using to that end? The extraction costs of coal/oil/gas are only going to go up, the price of solar/wind/batteries will only go down as more people adopt this technology through economy of scale. Those are two lines on a graph that have been approaching each other for decades and now they have crossed. Anybody with smart money is now investing in wind/solar/batteries and for the long term in emerging energy technologies.
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by Miles_O'Toole · 2017-12-21 20:56 · Score: 1

This is excellent news. It means California's economic might is forcing states that want to sell power to them to clean up their act, too.

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Re: Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by Barsteward · 2017-12-21 21:50 · Score: 1

[citation needed] was a request for the "facts" the AC was basing their "opinion" on.

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"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by blindseer · 2017-12-21 22:08 · Score: 2

About 22% of California's imported power comes from renewables
Right, California buys expensive renewable energy which reduces it's availability from the open market. They can make this claim only because they paid above market rates. Which is fine by me, I don't live in California and so their buying of renewable energy means more cheap natural gas, hydro, and nuclear energy for me. This is especially insane since if the goal is to reduce CO2 output they'd consider hydro and nuclear as "green" energy too. Solar produces more CO2 per energy output than nuclear and hydro.
How is that possible? How can solar have a larger carbon footprint than nuclear and hydro? This is because of things like the concrete anchors the solar panels sit on to keep from blowing away. Nuclear and hydro have a much larger CO2 impact from their much greater mass of concrete but they produce power day and night to offset this. Can this be improved in the future? Perhaps with lowering the CO2 released to produce concrete but then this process would also reduce the CO2 released in the concrete for the nuclear and hydro industry too. It will be hard for solar to come ahead on this.
Running the state on wind and solar power will only be possible if they keep paying a premium to buy "green" energy from other states as they use cheaper nuclear, hydro, and natural gas, to meet their needs. This might make California feel good but if the rest of the nation is using hydro, nuclear, natural gas, and probably some wind that California didn't buy then we could have lower prices AND a lower CO2 output.

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Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by interkin3tic · 2017-12-22 03:22 · Score: 1

I mean, it's NO different than you saying 'My water bill is down to half!! Look how good I am at water conservation!!!
That's not at all what it's like. Renewable energy sourced from the neighboring state doesn't run up the carbon in the atmosphere.

a LOT of that is coming from OTHER states is horse shit. So those states are at negative what?
Well, one, that's not how economics work. CA buying renewable energy and making it known well in advance that they're going to be increasing renewable energy doesn't mean all the renewable energy gets used up, it means people start building up renewable energy.

For another they're rapidly increasing their in-state renewable energy

As much as CA wishes it were not part of the US, the only relevant number is how much energy in the US is renewable. Despite what people in CA think, CA cannot survive on it's own.
It seems to boil down to "I DON'T LIKE CALIFORNIA AND WILL FIND A WAY TO MOCK IT!" Did California beat you up and take your lunch money in grade school?

I mean you acknowledge that Cali is part of the country. Then make fun of it for doing interstate commerce which is something that states do. Then point out it can't survive separate from the country (is there any part of the lower 48 that could?). All this from a statement that CA wants to be separate from the US based on... what exactly? I'm sure they dislike the government behavior right now as do most Americans, but I haven't seen any serious proposals to break away. Puerto Rico has a big independence movement and got shafted by the government during the hurricane. If anyone is going to break away, it's going to be PR, and they're not. So seriously, what are you on about?
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 03:41 · Score: 1

> replacing it with solar because it is simply so much cheaper
I've seen PPAs in the gulf at 2.2 cents/kWh.
> There's a difference between running solar power plants in the Persian Gulf
> and running them near Seattle. It's not a small one.
But there's basically zero difference between Seattle and Mohave. And not that much difference between Mohave and Idaho. And, of course, Seattle's offshore wind resource is amazing.
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by HiThere · 2017-12-22 08:33 · Score: 1

It may not be literally true, and even if so probably varies a lot from time to time, but California *does* import a lot of both electricity and water. This is a problem that needs to be addressed, as the Hoover Dam, e.g., doesn't have an infinite lifetime, and these days California couldn't negotiate a deal that was anywhere near a favorable as it could back then. Back then the deal for the other states provided them more than they could use...that wouldn't be true now.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). by HiThere · 2017-12-22 08:37 · Score: 1

I basically agree with you, but solar panels designed to withstand hurricanes would require a substantial redesign. Of course, you could just plan to replace them after every really high wind, but I think a redesign might be better.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re:Price by PopeRatzo · 2017-12-21 16:03 · Score: 1, Interesting

Average residential rate in California is 50% higher than in Texas.

That is not true. I just moved from Houston, Texas, the "energy corridor" to the Central Coast of California. I know it's not true because I have first-hand experience paying the bills in both places.

Gasoline is high at the pump, but electricity and natural gas don't work out to be much higher than in Houston. Plus, living here is worth every penny.

Also, food is more expensive in Houston - even meat, and property taxes are lower. Schools are better by a long shot, the air is cleaner, the streets are cleaner, the girls are prettier and there's surfing.

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You are welcome on my lawn.

Made in UTAH. by Templer421 · 2017-12-21 16:04 · Score: 4, Informative

California Electricity that is.

There are several plants in the state that do nothing but make electricity for California.

Re:Made in UTAH. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 17:51 · Score: 2

> California Electricity is [made in Utah].
So?
California utilities still have to account for the source of the electricity that they use. If Utah sells PG&E power that comes from sources that are 50% coal-fired, then that impacts PG&E's EnviroScore or whatever.
Re:Made in UTAH. by Applehu+Akbar · 2017-12-21 23:03 · Score: 1

California Electricity that is.
There are several plants in the state that do nothing but make electricity for California.
Arizona is also heavily into the business of generating the power that California won't:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Look at the list of "Owners"
And this project is a large renewable but not renewable by the fake California definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Under "Distribution of power" note that the city of Los Angeles alone gets almost as much of the output as all of Arizona.

Improper use of hydro by Latent+Heat · 2017-12-21 16:04 · Score: 2

Hydro needs to be used as a "peaker" to balance wind and solar. Using it for baseload let alone 100% is being anti-social.

Re:At what cost? by Dutchmaan · 2017-12-21 16:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Subsidies for renewables, which far exceed those of fossil fuels, are used to make them appear cost effective."

No, they are used so that people will have an incentive to adopt renewables, thus creating an economy of scale whereas renewables become commonplace. It's not just "for looks"

Re: Price by jroysdon · 2017-12-21 16:17 · Score: 1

Hydro isn't "green" or "renewable" energy by California's law.

Re:Generate as much clean energy as you can by jroysdon · 2017-12-21 16:22 · Score: 1

All those "save the earth" coastal cities with money should be required to obtain all of their water from desal. Stop taking it from those who can't afford to buy water and don't have an ocean to obtain it from. Ag needs the water anyway, especially in drought years.

TX vs CA by mbkennel · 2017-12-21 16:43 · Score: 1

In significant measure, because of fixed distribution costs which need to be recouped from a low per-capita consumption of electricity. Party climate, and party attitudes and renewables.

Now, solar and wind make electricity and competitive commodity prices.

The private utilities are expensive and partly because of cost padding and profits, but the socialized municipal utilities in Los Angeles and Sacramento are quite cheap and also run on clean energy.

Re:At what cost? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 16:50 · Score: 3, Informative

Renewables are about 20% cheaper in the Middle East than natural gas, with zero subsidies. In certain parts of the USA, they are cheaper than fossil fuel, but most of the USA still needs subsidies, but it's estimated they won't be needed is 3-5 years. The cost per unit of generation for solar and wind is dropping about 10% per year.

Re:Generate as much clean energy as you can by psycho12345 · 2017-12-21 17:07 · Score: 1

We already have. Residential water use is a minor part of water use. Bulk is agriculture, followed by industrial. Most of the things to save on the residential side have already been put in place (primarily low flow shower and toilets, and xeriscaping).

So on that front we are simply using not that much. On the desal front, new one opened in Carlsbad just 2 years ago.

Re: Renewables? by Ken_g6 · 2017-12-21 17:09 · Score: 1

That's called biomass. But to use it usefully requires logging, something environmentalists hate.

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(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)

Re: At what cost? by Ichijo · 2017-12-21 17:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

The incentive to adopt renewable technologies should come from them naturally being better from an economic standpoint (which they obviously aren't, in reality, thus the need for subsidies).

Did you know that air pollution costs us up to $1,000 per person per year? Are you factoring that into the economics of renewables versus fossil fuels? (Probably not.)

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Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.

Re: Renewables are free by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 17:25 · Score: 1

So-called 'renewables' have serious opex associated with them. Anything with moving parts, especially turbines and generators, will require significant and frequent maintenance. Even solar panels require ongoing maintenance. Yeah, you can skimp on such maintenance, but then the lifetime of the investment will be measured in terms of months. Anyone who claims that 'renewables are free after the capital cost' is utterly clueless about the actual costs involved.

Re:Generate as much clean energy as you can by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 17:34 · Score: 1

"Ag" can kiss my hairy renewable ass. "Ag" sucks up as much water as possible to flood Rice and Cotton fields in Desert areas, mostly for export. The whole Central Valley gets Federally subsidized Legislation-proof/Lawsuit-proof Water under Century or longer contracts. Until very recently, they had zero incentive to manage Water Resources- They just yell "Southern California Swimming Pools!" and everybody goes Squirrel.
"Ag" consumes about 80-85% of California's Water, with the rest divided about equally between Industry and Residential, and until very recently, they were the only ones doing any Water Conservation.
Note, I'm fine with Desalinization for Potable Water for the Coasts... as long as the Central Valley goes back to being a Desert, or the Watersuckers there pay Market-Rates for Water... which ain't ever going to happen.

"Stop taking it from those who can't afford to buy water..."
Like the fucking Millionaire Central Valley Ag-Businesses? Cry me literally a fucking river, you deliberately ignorant Gombeen.
And have a nice day.

Re: Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-21 17:50 · Score: 2

The State of California does not consider hydro as a renewable resource:

California, the second-largest U.S. hydroelectric producer, set goals for renewable energy sources in 2002 and 2011... But the state set a limit on the inclusion of hydropower. It allows utilities to count only the hydropower produced by smaller hydropower projects—those capable of producing 30 megawatts or less—toward the renewable mandate.

Yep, only tiny hydro installs (typically private, on private land - good luck getting a permit to make your own hydro plant and flood some land deemed valuable to someone) count. The big hydro we have installed in California - about 99% of all of it - is NOT renewable per the State. So yeah - no hydro for us!

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Re: Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-21 17:51 · Score: 1, Troll

Solar and wind plants do not last 100 years, and they also have a significant environmental impact on the land they use and, in the case of wind turbines, down-wind.

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!

Re:Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-21 18:06 · Score: 5, Informative

I call BS. Houston power starts at $0.087 per kWh. And power from PG&E for the Paso Robles area (central coast) start at $0.199 per kWh and go up. That's over twice as much. Using GasBuddy.com, gas in CA averages $3.07 per gallon, and in TX it is around $2.12 per gallon.

Paso Robles, CA is around 1.44 times the national average for cost of living, Houston is at 1.02 - just about average for the US.

Property tax rates in CA are fairly low compared to TX, but the average home in Houston is around $220,000. In Paso Robles, houses are twice that price. Sure, property taxes are a bit lower in CA, but we also have a 13.3% income tax compared to 0% for TX. If you make just about anything more than $10,000 per year, your property tax "savings" in CA are swallowed up by State income tax.

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!

Re:At what cost? by hawguy · 2017-12-21 18:17 · Score: 3, Interesting

Keep in mind that medicine in the US is another industry that suffers from extreme price distortion due to various sorts of government intervention (such as excessive regulation, excessive education requirements, an artificially limited supply of practitioners, mandatory insurance that encourages excessive billing, and so on).

So you agree that coal leads to health problems, and you don't have a problem with that, you only have a problem with the way health costs are accounted? A 6 year with asthma is fine as long as the cost to treat him is accounted for properly?

Re:Generate as much clean energy as you can by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-21 18:17 · Score: 2

Actually, Statewide, average water use is roughly 50% environmental, 40% agricultural, and 10% urban. It's environmental concerns, like delta smelt and trying to maintain scenic rivers, that suck up half our State's fresh water supply.

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!

Re: Price by hawguy · 2017-12-21 18:23 · Score: 4, Informative

The State of California does not consider hydro as a renewable resource:

California, the second-largest U.S. hydroelectric producer, set goals for renewable energy sources in 2002 and 2011... But the state set a limit on the inclusion of hydropower. It allows utilities to count only the hydropower produced by smaller hydropower projects—those capable of producing 30 megawatts or less—toward the renewable mandate.

Yep, only tiny hydro installs (typically private, on private land - good luck getting a permit to make your own hydro plant and flood some land deemed valuable to someone) count. The big hydro we have installed in California - about 99% of all of it - is NOT renewable per the State. So yeah - no hydro for us!

Large hydro plants typically come with huge amounts of environmental destruction - while today it would be unthinkable to flood Yosemite valley to use as a source of water and electricity, Hetch Hetchy Valley is said to rival Yosemite in beauty, yet it was flooded 100 years to to build O’Shaughnessy Dam.

Smaller hydro projects can be built with less (or no) environmental destruction.

Re: Nuclear is stupid. why can't people learn?m by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 18:35 · Score: 1

Skipping meds is really bad.

Re:Price by hawguy · 2017-12-21 18:46 · Score: 1

I call BS. Houston power starts at $0.087 per kWh.

Those rates assume 2000KWh of energy use/month - which is 6 months of my power usage in California since the climate is mild enough to need little heating or cooling.

Plus they don't include TDSP delivery charges (which vary between 3.6 and 7.6 cents/KWh (plus $3.50 - $10/month)) depending on your energy provider. So the true cost is somewhere between 12.3 - 16.3 cents/KWh.

and power from PG&E for the Paso Robles area (central coast) start at $0.199 per kWh and go up.

Those prices don't include any credits, the true cost ends up being around 15.6 cents/KWh

Though if you're going to look at prices for living on California's central coast, you ought to pick a town that's actually on the coast, not 45 minutes inland.

Re: Nuclear is stupid. why can't people learn?m by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 18:49 · Score: 1

mdsolar remains undiagnosed to this day.

Re: Price by Narcocide · 2017-12-21 19:02 · Score: 1

Yea but in the desert, the environmental side-effects of solar and wind power installations (increased shade and reduced erosion) are both considered basically beneficial or at least harmless. You can't say the same for a hydroelectric dam even on a good day when it's not drowning 150,000 people.

Re:Price by PopeRatzo · 2017-12-21 19:12 · Score: 2, Informative

Those rates assume 2000KWh of energy use/month - which is 6 months of my power usage in California since the climate is mild enough to need little heating or cooling.

I haven't turned on heat or A/C since I've been here. Tonight's supposed to get chilly though, so I might relent. My utilities for the year project to be less than 20% of that in Houston, where you need A/C 10 months out of the year. Hell, the new houses going up in Houston don't even have windows that open.

The main difference though is that when I woke up in the morning in Houston, and I walked out the door, I was in Houston. When I walk out the door here, I'm in paradise. I do miss two things from Houston though: barbecue and Christmas tamales.

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You are welcome on my lawn.

Re:At what cost? by AmiMoJo · 2017-12-21 19:28 · Score: 1

The subsidies for renewables are tiny compared to fossil and nuclear anyway. And renewables are now profitable without subsidy in some cases. As far as I'm aware no major fossil fuel plant has ever been profitable subsidy free.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Re:Generate as much clean energy as you can by Narcocide · 2017-12-21 20:20 · Score: 1

Oh, I'm with you, but the ostensible reason is that it's not guaranteed to be drinkable because of air pollution. Also, the same concrete river in question channeling all that flood water to the ocean also is used by numerous factories for dumping gray water.

Re: Renewables are free by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 20:21 · Score: 1

Fossil fuel plants and nuclear also have moving parts. In a wind farm the number of moving parts is higher, but the failure of a unit is smaller fraction of the overall output, which changes the dynamic of maintenance required, and you can even let a unit fail if you want to batch maintenance with one or more other units that are nearing failure. With steam or gas turbines you have fewer, so you have to be more proactive with maintenance, as each one is a very significant portion of your revenue stream.

I worked on mechanisms for predicting failure in those moving parts across a range of power generation.

Re:At what cost? by Kiuas · 2017-12-21 21:21 · Score: 5, Informative

Keep in mind that medicine in the US is another industry that suffers from extreme price distortion due to various sorts of government intervention (such as excessive regulation, excessive education requirements, an artificially limited supply of practitioners, mandatory insurance that encourages excessive billing, and so on).

Your entire post represents perhaps the most gigantic misunderstanding an/or willful misrepresentation of facts about health care I have ever read, and I've been discussing the matter for several years with people here and elsewhere as someone who works for the public health care sector of Finland.

Let's get something clear:
1. The US health care system is the most privatized model in advanced economies, you're the only OECD member state that still doesn't have universal coverage
2. The US model is the most expensive model on the planet per capita, The combined tax+private spending is about 2-3 times that of most western economies, and even that's an understatement, because the per capita cost in your case divides the sum of total costs with all Americans, that is, including those who do not in fact have coverage. Therefore the total cost per citizen actually covered is even higher.

We can, however, look at how pricing in these industries would react if the government intervention causing the current pricing distortions was to be removed. Healthcare costs would drop significantly due to increased competition and decreased overhead.

You have it entirely backwards. It is the lack of universal public insurance model that's causing the costs to skyrocket. In here, the government has a vested interest in making sure the system is cost-effective, because it ends up being paid for by the tax payer in most cases (well, we do have private clinics and insurances but those are used only by a tiny fraction of the wealthy for mainly non-urgent procedures). For the government, health care is a cost, like the police and the fire department. The government also suffers if people are not treated, because high levels of untreated people lead to increased unemployment, loss of productivity and tax income.

The current center-right government has been trying to open up our model and move it more towards the direction of an american model but maintain the universal nature, so that private hospitals could provide basic healthcare and the cost would be paid by the tax payer as it is now. The claim is that increasing private presence on the production side would increase efficiency and hence decrease cost, but this is blatantly false, which is why the bill has been slammed by every single expert analysis because data from the world, especially the US is clear that such a change will only increase costs as the private chains will start to charge overheads, which the public system obviously does not do, and because health care demand is inelastic. That is, increasing supply will not affect the demand, so building more (private) infrastructure to partially compete with the public one will only raise the costs for both the private and the public side, as each instance now treats only a part of the patients while having equal fixed costs. I wrote more about this and gave an actual example of how the inelasticity makes an entirely private market highly inefficient in keeping costs down for example here.

Healthcare is one of those subjects in which the political discussion is often entirely detached from the scientific data we have on performance and cost-effectiveness. Again, all western nations besides the US have been running universal models - some based on a single payer model like here in the Nordics, others based on a mix of public and private insurance like in Germany - for over half a century and we've been doing so consistently with lower costs and equal or better treatment outcomes to that of the US. People live lon

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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead

Re: At what cost? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-21 21:33 · Score: 1

The incentive to adopt renewable technologies should come from them naturally being better from an economic standpoint

Capitalism doesn't care about what is good for mankind. The market doesn't necessarily provide the best solution.

Maybe these economic forces can be manipulated in the short term, but in the long term they win out, even if the repercussions are disastrous.

Disastrous how?
Like causing an extinction level event?
We can survive a couple of more depressions.

Re: At what cost? by thegarbz · 2017-12-21 21:38 · Score: 1

The incentive to adopt renewable technologies should come from them naturally being better from an economic standpoint (which they obviously aren't, in reality, thus the need for subsidies).

You're presenting a circular chicken and egg argument. The point of a subsidy is to kick-start an industry and create economies of scale. The end goal is to have all subsidies removed once it has reached a self sustaining level.

Although as evidence with coal and oil it would seem that nothing can ever self-sustain.

Re: At what cost? by Barsteward · 2017-12-21 21:44 · Score: 2

subsidies worked well for the fossil industry and they are still getting subsidies after 100 years of market development...

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"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)

Re:Price by drinkypoo · 2017-12-21 21:59 · Score: 1

I do miss two things from Houston though: barbecue and Christmas tamales.

If you haven't already, you'll find tamale ladies around. They are literally everywhere in California. However, most of them try to murder you with masa. A little meat, please.

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

Re:At what cost? by Freischutz · 2017-12-21 22:01 · Score: 2

"Subsidies for renewables, which far exceed those of fossil fuels, are used to make them appear cost effective."

No, they are used so that people will have an incentive to adopt renewables, thus creating an economy of scale whereas renewables become commonplace. It's not just "for looks"

That statement should be in the past tense. Fossil fuel extraction costs are an upward trending proposition because of increasing extraction costs. Once in a while you get dips like you got with the shale bubble but on the whole the trend is upward. The price of renewable energy technology is on on a downward trend due to economy of scale, you don't have do drill through the earth's crust or dig away mountains to get sun and wind. We are now at a place where renewables are getting cheaper than coal and gas without subsidies. With battery technology undergoing an economy of scale and engineering revolution things do not look good for fossil fuels. Anybody buying a coal or gas fired power plant these days is being sold a pup.

Re: Renewables? by drinkypoo · 2017-12-21 22:04 · Score: 2

That's called biomass. But to use it usefully requires logging, something environmentalists hate.

Logging is a big part of how we got into this mess regarding fires in California. First, logging the whole state. Then, treating the whole state as a tree farm, instead of letting some growth get old and fire resistant. The entire california coast from a place south of point sur is meant to be covered in redwoods, for example — they should be a thick, unbroken strip along the coast all the way up into Canada. The fact that we have removed that contiguous forest of old giants has actually altered the weather along the entire coastline. Redwoods actually trap fog on their leaf-like needles (or is that needle-like leaves?) which causes it to effectively rain beneath them. This not only provides water needed by the redwoods, but it has a significant effect on weather patterns in general. And hey, water vapor is a greenhouse gas...

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

Re: At what cost? by orlanz · 2017-12-21 22:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

excessive regulation, excessive education requirements, an artificially limited supply of practitioners, mandatory insurance that encourages excessive billing

This is very misleading and also wrong. The regulations and education requirements do bring up the price of healthcare but account for a very small part of the increase. Do you honestly think regulations are why those general drug makers are increasing prices by 500% in a short time?

As for excessive billing... have you ever been billed for healthcare? Regulations have little to do if it. An uninsured person will get billed 4-5x the rate of an In Network insured patient. This was true before Obamacare. The insurance companies negotiated low rates but the end effect was to just raise prices on those without insurance.... the ones who can not afford the lower rate in the first place.

Additionally billing for a overnight stay at a hospital is horrendous. No one can give you an estimate for costs without a 20% margin! They can give you a rough likely price but say you could see additional billings from other providers?!? You will get a heavily discounted bill for the room that you do not need to pay until the insurance partially covers it. Then the rest is on you. And that might be corrected again later ending in a credit or additional billing.

Of course that is just the hospital. You came in through ER, another bill. Did the hospital use an external anesthesiologist, another bill. Did they use an external lab, another bill. Did you use an ambulance, another bill. Did your primary care physician come to check on you, another bill. Did a specialist come to check on you, another bill. Did they order special medication for you, another bill.

Each of these bills go through the back and forth discount, partial payment , review, adjustment, invoice, etc process. Many times people do not know their bill for 3-5 months! None of this is regulations based. Because the system charges those who can not pay more, there is a lot of unpaid bills. No one wants to be the bill collector and aggregate/bundle the costs. So each spends resources billing and negotiating their part of the equation.

Most readers are thinking that they do not see this complexity. You have the standard old plan of paying just the deductible. But this all happens in the background even for you and is handled by a complex network of healthcare payers and payees. People with HSAs will see a little behind the curtain. Those without proper insurance will see more and also deal with debt collectors who might contact them 6-12 months after service!

That horrible inefficient system is further burdened by arcane IT systems. Each provider has different ways to collect. Some only accept bank draft, others mailed/called CC info, others will have a website with disfunctional forms, etc. The reference that they provided you to tie back to the service is the cryptic procedure/medicine, its provider ID code, your name, date of procedure, billing company name, date of bill. That is it, good luck keeping track of all the bills if you visit an ER 2x in one year.

All these costs bundle into the cost of healthcare. And there is no incentive to reduce the complexity because you, the patient, do not get to choose the service nor provider nor know the bill up front. You are a captive customer.

Imagine going into a Kroger (grocery store) and walking out, not getting billed. Then a month later the bill arrives. Then another for each of the non-Kroger brands you bought. And you get a 70% discount if you are a member. No other industry is this absolutely stupid in IT and billing.

The industry has created a massive price distortion all by itself over the last 40 years. Congress knew about it and has been incompetent it addressing it for that long! Regulations have not really helped, but they are hardly a quarter of the pie. Insurance for all partially helps because you do not bill people for what they can not pay and avoid the resource wastage of that whole process!

Re:At what cost? by Applehu+Akbar · 2017-12-21 22:36 · Score: 1

"Subsidies for renewables... are used so that people will have an incentive to adopt renewables, thus creating an economy of scale whereas renewables become commonplace. It's not just "for looks"

If the subsidy doesn't automatically come off as the amount of subsidized construction reaches specified goals, then it's for looks.

Re:At what cost? by Maxo-Texas · 2017-12-21 22:46 · Score: 1

Also "baked in subsidies for the oil and coal business" total in the trillions of dollars. And that's ignoring the 2 trillion dollars and 4,000 lives the u.s. spent fighting for oil in Iraq.

Google the quote above and you'll get multiple examples of the many kinds of subsidies the fossil fuel industry receives.

It includes things like special accounting methods which save them billions in taxes, low cost mining and drilling on federal lands at no where near the cost they would pay privately, and so on.

And despite those subsidies, alternative energies are already competitive with everything except nuclear and natural gas. And- when you include the *real* decommissioning cost for nuclear plants ( eg: one estimated to cost $39 million is over $600 million and counting ) and the fact that even when decommissioned they have no place to put the nuclear waste, natural gas is the only genuinely lower cost solution.

But it produces co2.

And we are are already are past the budget for a 1C increase by 2100. We blow out the carbon budget for a 1.5C temperature increase by 2025.

We produce 37 gigatons of carbon a year now (down from 50 gigatons in 2004).

But the budget to stay below a 2.0C temperature increase by 2100 is a total of about 880 gigatons of carbon. That's about 11 Gigatons per year between now and 2100.

We are going over budget 26 gigatons of carbon per year. So basically, we are already certain to increase at least 2.0C degrees.

So we really need to get off natural gas as much as possible as soon as possible.

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She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.

Re: Price by Applehu+Akbar · 2017-12-21 22:47 · Score: 1

Yet when you look at power generation around the world, hydro is the king of renewables. All the other renewables are a rounding error compared to hydro. In California political correctness trumps (sorry!) mere science and engineering.

Re:At what cost? by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 01:34 · Score: 1

You're absolutely correct of course. The evidence is overwhelming. Privatized healthcare works only a few limited domains -- dentistry, optometry, cosmetic surgery. For most things, governments consistently deliver healthcare comparable to the US with costs between half and two thirds those of the US.

Go with what works. Governments should run healthcare. Capitalists should run department stores.

However, I should warn you, that logic and data have no affect on Americans at either political extreme -- either conservative or liberal. They are just as impervious to both as are the inhabitants of the Middle East.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey

Re: At what cost? by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 03:28 · Score: 1

"Subsidies for renewables, which far exceed those of fossil fuels."

That statement is patently false. Renewables receive about 1/10th the annual subsidy of oil and gas alone. Nuclear previously dwarfed even O&G, but that is winding down.

http://i.bnet.com/blogs/dbl_energy_subsidies_paper.pdf

> The incentive to adopt renewable technologies should come from them naturally
> being better from an economic standpoint

Absolutely!

> (which they obviously aren't

Renewables are dramatically less better from an economic standpoint without any subsidies.

For PPAs signed today in the US, wind is an average of 4.5 cents/kWh, PV is about the same, and natural gas CS is about 5.5. Nuclear averages about 15 cents, and cola is about 8.5.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/

So, then, you fully support renewables. Good!

Re:At what cost? by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 03:29 · Score: 1

> Citation for what renewable energy is profitable without a subsidy or some other form of crutch?

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/

Citation provided. You can find hundreds more by googling "lcoe renewables"

Re: Renewables are free by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 03:35 · Score: 1

> So-called 'renewables' have serious opex associated with them

They are among the cheapest forms of power in OPEX terms:

http://www.power-technology.com/features/featurepower-plant-om-how-does-the-industry-stack-up-on-cost-4417756/

> Anything with moving parts

PV has no moving parts, so there's that.
Beyond that, it's also the *number* of moving parts that has an effect; more complex systems are generally more expensive to operate. And as you'll see at that source, this is clearly seen in the data - a NG plant, which basically has two moving parts, costs much less to run that a coal plant, which has many moving parts (the cooling loops) which costs a lot less than a reactor which has both many more parts as well as radiation to deal with.

> Anyone who claims that 'renewables are free after the capital cost' is utterly clueless about the actual costs involved

I have a dozen panels on my roof and worked for a company that did maybe 100 MWp of installs. So Mr Anonymous Coward, why don't you go ahead and tell me why I, and the entire power industry, is "utterly clueless"?

Re:At what cost? by whoever57 · 2017-12-22 03:42 · Score: 1

Idiots like the GP poster seem to think that someone in an ambulance suffering a heart attack will engage in negotiations with hospitals to find the cheapest treatment for their ER treatment.

Even if that were true, this administration is making price comparison far more difficult by removing regulations that require accurate price quotes (including taxes, fees, etc.).

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The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!

Re:At what cost? by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 04:07 · Score: 1

At what cost? Subsidies for renewables, which far exceed those of fossil fuels, are used to make them appear cost effective.

If you want to end up totally baffled about costs, let me recommend that ultimate source for most of the numbers being batted around. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/a... Wonderful document. You can cherry pick just about any answer you want from one or another of the tables. The exception being that there is probably not enough lipstick in the world to make Coal with CCS, Solar-Thermal or offshore Wind look attractive.

I'd also point out that the numbers for non-dispatchable sources -- wind, solar, hydro(as they model it) do NOT include the affect on backup facilities operating costs. I'm pretty sure that's not because the affect on backup costs is unimportant. It's because it's too difficult to calculate in a general manner.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey

Re: Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 04:21 · Score: 1

So - how about the environmental destruction of hundreds of acres of solar panels covering the Earth? Or thousands of wind turbines on the ridge of a mountain? Does that count as well? Or is it just the change from a valley to a lake which is bad?

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Re: Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 04:22 · Score: 1

Lots of coal plants reached 60+ years old, will wind farms last that long?

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Re: Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 04:23 · Score: 1

Which do you prefer to look at/use/enjoy: Lake Mead (hydro), or Ivanpah (solar)?

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Re:Generate as much clean energy as you can by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 04:26 · Score: 1

Ahh, I see! So when we regulate and release water for delta smelt and to keep a river looking nice - it's not human use. When we regulate and release water for drinking or growing food - it's human use. Got it! Thanks AC for showing us the way to be TRUE hypocrites!

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!

Re: At what cost? by dryeo · 2017-12-22 04:37 · Score: 1

Meanwhile, here in BC, I took a friend to emergency last week as he was puking and shitting blood. It was slow, at least 20 minutes to get in and almost an hour before he was in a bed in a room though most of that time was spent trying to get an IV into him. He just got out, after a week and surgery, total cost to him, zero, without hassle.
There were clear signs that without coverage, it was about $350 for Canadian residents and $750 for non-residents for an emergency room visit. When I go to the doctors, there are clear signs how much certain things cost such as about a $100 for a full exam (not covered when it is for work related stuff, like truck drivers or airplane pilots who need regular exams). Everything is transparent and the only shocks are the prices of medications, which are high in Canada and only covered in some cases (varies by Province as medical is a Provincial responsibility with the Feds just setting minimal care levels).

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Re:At what cost? by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 04:46 · Score: 1

Actually, the biggest problem with the US's insane healthcare system is probably institutionalized cost shifting. Everybody routinely tries to shift their costs off onto somebody else. Furthermore, the rules of cost shifting are complex and truly archane. For the most part, individuals can't shift costs. They must sign up ahead of time with a player (i.e. an "insurer") who will try to shift their costs to other players who have no desire to pay those costs. Why anyone thinks this makes sense or could possibly work eludes me.

There are many other problems of course. For example, the extremely high costs of medical training in the US means that services must be costly in order for the practicioners to pay off the loans they took out to finance their education.

And the predatory legal system ... The US has roughly 1 lawyer for every 300 inhabitants. Japan has 1 lawyer for ever 12,000 inhabitants. Some of those lawyers make a living suing doctors, hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, drug companies, and anything else who might have deep pockets. Who pays? Ultimately the patients.

The notion that even a government could come up with a worse "system" strikes me as being delusional.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey

Re: At what cost? by painandgreed · 2017-12-22 04:48 · Score: 1

As for excessive billing... have you ever been billed for healthcare? Regulations have little to do if it. An uninsured person will get billed 4-5x the rate of an In Network insured patient. This was true before Obamacare. The insurance companies negotiated low rates but the end effect was to just raise prices on those without insurance.... the ones who can not afford the lower rate in the first place.

I work at a hospital. I'll recount what our billing people have told our management people in meetings. Insurance pays out a percentage based on the hospital's MCR (Master Charge Record) which is what they charge the patient. Medicare/Caid pay about 33% along with most others and even the best insurance (from the hospital side) pay only 66%. So, of course, the hospital has to up the stated charge for care, and what is charged to those without insurance, so they can actually make the real cost of care at 33%. Hospitals can't lower costs because then they would get less, and the insurance companies won't negotiate other methods of payment with them.

However, they will negotiate other methods with clinics and imaging centers by offering set amounts for certain procedures. This allows for them to undercut the hospitals for treatment. This is causing issues for the hospitals because not only are they missing out on the procedure costs, but diagnosis is often treated as a loss leader because they are expecting to do the procedure. Now hospitals are having to up their diagnosis costs because the procedure centers are using the hospitals as free diagnosis centers and then getting insurance companies to route patients to them for treatment.

Re:At what cost? by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 05:24 · Score: 1

You mean everyone doesn't haul out their cell phone and get three bids for emergency room treatment while the paramedics are trying to staunch the bleeding and stabilize their blood pressure? With consumers like that, how can any healthcare system work?

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey

Re: At what cost? by Green+Mountain+Bot · 2017-12-22 05:37 · Score: 2

20 minutes to get in and an hour for a bed - that's the long wait times that are the supposed downfall of the Canadian system? You're lucky to get in within an hour here, and it could be hours before you get a bed - if they don't "stabilize" you and kick you out first, leaving you thousands of dollars in debt for your trouble.

Fun Fact: 100 percent Renewables by 2025 by WillAffleckUW · 2017-12-22 05:50 · Score: 1

The cold hard truth is that all US states could easily meet 100 percent Renewable Energy and cut the hands off of Russia and the Middle East by 2025.

You just have to build and install a mix of modern solar, wind, and biofuels (like the ones the UW invented) to operate at a 120 percent peak load, with 10 percent storage (hydro, compressed air, batteries, modern appliances and cars which moderate usage depending on microgrid signals).

Easy.

Way cheaper than our current energy sources. Much much much cheaper. More reliable (I know that shocks you, but the EPA reports actually admit that, if you read the technical ones).

But fossil fuels want their tax subsidies, tax exemptions, and subsidized foreign shareowner lifestyles.

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-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --

Re:Renewable by WillAffleckUW · 2017-12-22 05:52 · Score: 1

Not really, we have this thing called interstate utility sharing. We send energy to them, they send energy to us, helps us all manage loads, makes it cheaper.

It's 2017, not 1999.

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-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --

Re:At what cost? by ravenshrike · 2017-12-22 06:39 · Score: 1

That would be because there is no reliable refining capacity in the ME which means they have to export their oil and import their gas.

Re:At what cost? by Dragonslicer · 2017-12-22 06:45 · Score: 1

Even if that were true, this administration is making price comparison far more difficult by removing regulations that require accurate price quotes (including taxes, fees, etc.).

I don't see anything wrong with that. I mean, it's not like having informed consumers was ever a basic axiom of a free-market economy.

Re: At what cost? by orlanz · 2017-12-22 06:45 · Score: 2

20 minutes is NOTHING compared to the US. My dad, a friend, and I have been to the ER once over the last 5 years.

-Dad: The forms took 30 minutes to fill out. We spent 6 hours going to different rooms getting checked out (4 tests). The nurses didn't know what test was already done and what he was waiting on. The only people who knew the status, was the front RECEPTIONISTS who were already busy accepting walkins. Half the testing stations asked & took down the same damn information over and over again. Everything was put into computers & tablets with complex forms. Every single thing was scanned in followed by scanning his wrist band.

-Friend: Had a bad bike fall & minor cut that wouldn't stop bleeding. They checked him all in within 30 minutes. Bandaged him up and put cold press on it while he was waiting for stitches. After waiting 2 hours on a bed in a cold hallway, he stopped one of the nurses to get an ETA. Another hour later, he just left and went to another ER further away where they fixed him up in 2 hours. He still got a huge bill from the first ER that equated to $250/hour.

-Me: I had a nose bleed that wouldn't stop. Clinic said to go to ER. I knew one a bit further away but was rarely packed. Took 30 minutes to get a bed. There were maybe two other patients. Got pretty good service compared to most places. Released me after IVs and 4 hours of monitoring and a small prescription. Bill was roughly $300/hour. The clinic was $155 for the entire checkup.

ER is very fast if you have a life threatening emergency. But once you are stable (ie: still have that bullet in you), you might as well use your cell to find a doctor who will take care of you and walk out. The ER will just forget about you.

And honestly, it is not the ER's fault. I don't blame them. All the specialists I saw, knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the machines, and got people out very quickly. It was the receiving, discharge, and waiting overhead between tests that was unbearable. They are just busy. Everything in the US gets sent to ER. None of the above would need an ER in other countries. About 1/3 of what clinics do can be done at home via first aid. After the xrays and basic prescription stuff, they pretty much tell you to go to ER unless you can wait 1-2 weeks for a doctor or a referral to go to a specialist in 2-4 weeks.

And all the IT systems seemed geared toward billing. Or more accurately, provide all the reasoning, time, cost, and usage of everything so that the evidence speaks for itself when someone disputes. Its a colossal waste of resources. It hardly seems to help the doctors or nurses. They just tab or scroll over to the memo section and see the comments & actions taken thus far and add their own.

Re: Renewables? by ravenshrike · 2017-12-22 07:01 · Score: 1

No, California's big problem is that the 20th century was geologically speaking really fucking wet for California and it's now going into what looks like a dorught period, which again geologically speaking, happen very often and some are in the century plus range. Redwoods on the coastline won't help the inland areas from catching on fire in drought conditions.

Re: At what cost? by dryeo · 2017-12-22 07:11 · Score: 1

It was partially luck, a quiet night, would have been worse on the weekend or on welfare day and partially the triaging. Last time I went, for a nasty cut, it took a while due to a stream of people showing up in worse shape.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Re: At what cost? by dryeo · 2017-12-22 07:23 · Score: 1

Much is similar here, my friend got in quick as he had lost a lot of blood, so was triaged quick, it was a quiet night which really helped. Go to some hospitals on the weekend and they're busy and if you have a minor problem , the wait can be long.
The part we don't have is the bullshit about billing. Give them your health card (looks like a drivers license now as we've had a lot of problems with Americans faking being Canadians and you used to just need your number), put some stuff in the computer, mostly just double checking in my friends case as he'd been there before and you're' in.
We do have problems with people going to emergency who shouldn't and the government has been expanding the number of clinics to combat it but every time I've been in emergency, there always seems to be people there who should have just seen a doctor. In a way a small user fee, perhaps $10, would help there as when stuff seems to be free, some people take advantage of it.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Re:At what cost? by HiThere · 2017-12-22 07:59 · Score: 1

The middle east is a lot closer to the equator, which improves solar efficiency remarkably. A more reasonably comparison would be Denmark or Germany, which also do a lot of solar, though I don't know the cost figures.

OTOH, if you're comparing the LA area, Texas, or Florida, that swath, then the middle east is a much more reasonable comparison. I believe that LA is about the same latitude as Israel.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re: Price by vtcodger · 2017-12-22 08:01 · Score: 1

You're correct that large scale hydro (30Mw generating capacity and up) are not counted as renewable by California in it's progress toward its energy goals. However, it sure looks to me like SDG&E at least is probably counting all hydro including out of state hydro (Hoover Dam) as "renewable" in its press releases. Not entirely sure as I found myself drowning in fluff reading their stuff and gave up.

BTW the big dams are used for irrigation water, domestic water, and flood control as well as power generation, so using them only for peak power and renewable backup, attractive as the idea is, probably isn't feasible.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey

Re:At what cost? by Dutchmaan · 2017-12-22 08:03 · Score: 1

Then the question becomes, what is the specified goal and has it been reached yet? If the goal has not been reached yet.. then it's still valid.

While we're at it, what exactly is the incentive for fossil fuel subsidies and has that goal been reached?

Re:At what cost? by HiThere · 2017-12-22 08:10 · Score: 1

O, a government clearly *could* come up with a worse system, it just didn't. (You don't think the current system wasn't crafted by government, do you?)

That said, the accounting games played in the US system add substantially to the cost. And the rake-off that the "insurers" get is substantial. They're playing the part of "the house" in a casino, with the advantage that they can often find ways to avoid paying off the bet. But the entire system is not only facilitated, but ensured by various pieces of legislation, some of it well intentioned.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re: At what cost? by HiThere · 2017-12-22 08:16 · Score: 1

You underestimate the time delays. I've gotten a bill for something that happened two years ago, and what it was was only identified by a code number. How the fuck am I supposed to know whether that's valid or not, much less whether the price is reasonable.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re: Renewables are free by HiThere · 2017-12-22 08:22 · Score: 1

I don't know about current panels, but it's not just the panels. Our solar panels were purchased over a decade ago (I'd need to look it up) but the regulations for how they are mounted have been changed, so now that the roof need to be replaced there's a whole new expense, because the solar panels can't just be dismounted and then replaced, they need an entirely new set of mounts. And, AFAIKT, this is purely because the regulations have changed.

Now the panels still work, but the remounting costs are sufficient that it makes more sense to replace them with an entirely new system. So make that lifetime 15-20 years.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re: Renewables are free by HiThere · 2017-12-22 08:28 · Score: 1

As you appear knowledgeable in the field, what do you think of PG&E's molten salt solar plant in the Mojave?

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re: At what cost? by MattskEE · 2017-12-22 08:34 · Score: 1

What regulations do you think impact the specific problems outlined in the post you're replying to?

Because it sounds like it's just an inefficient way of doing business due to the obfuscation enabled by employer-funded health insurance.

Re: Generate as much clean energy as you can by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 09:57 · Score: 1

As long as we agree that we're letting 50% (or maybe more?) of our water rush out without any utilization for humans. But apparently you believe we're worth a little less than the delta smelt, or the way a wave breaks on a rock in a river...

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!

Re: Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 09:59 · Score: 1

ACs - classy since 1997!

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!

Re: Renewables are free by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-12-22 11:23 · Score: 1

> what do you think of PG&E's molten salt solar plant in the Mojave?

I think it has moving parts. I think that's bad.

There is an inherent problem with these machines in that they depend on Carnot, and thus need to operate as hot as possible. This limits them to places where they get really great sunlight, even a little cloud and your CF dies. Mohave is certainly the right place to try it.

The problem is that you can do PV just about anywhere - from my garage roof to a billion panels in farmers fields. And it's output is pretty linear with insolation, so 10% cloud is 10% less power, not 50% less. Lots of PV means there's a *whole lot* of demand for storage, but in most cases that won't be salt, it will have to be something else.

And that's a deadly combo. On one side we have a tech that only works in a couple of places and costs a lot up front. On the other we have a tech that costs a couple of hundred bucks to start with, works everywhere, and they all want storage. I don't think it's a mystery where this is going...

Re: Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 11:50 · Score: 1

Who said anything about coal? Ahh ACs, non-sequiturs and straw men as far as the eye can see!

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!

Re: Renewables? by drinkypoo · 2017-12-22 13:32 · Score: 1

Redwoods on the coastline won't help the inland areas from catching on fire in drought conditions.

They actually will, because the redwoods actually crossed not just the first mountain range, but up here in nocal, the second as well. That brings water into the inland valleys. Nice try, though.

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

Re: Price by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-22 14:25 · Score: 1

Yes, when you were praising the effects of mountaintop removal and praising the glory of it all, you were totally talking about some other mining concern in Coal Country. Gee, what else can you pretend to us about?

I was? Where? Oh ACs, making shit up so they can argue anyway...

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!

Re: At what cost? by Barsteward · 2017-12-22 21:15 · Score: 1

LOL.... google US military renewables

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"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)

Re:At what cost? by volmtech · 2017-12-23 06:56 · Score: 1

US healthcare is far from a free market, laws and regulations greatly restrict availability and inflate costs. Healthcare providers must obtain an expensive education but admissions to medical schools are capped. The ability to practice is dependent on difficult to obtain licenses. I wouldn't say the government awarding patents to corporations for drugs and medical devices could be called a free market.

We already have single payer for part of the population. My wife went to nursing school for free at a state tech school. She also got $2400 cash for expenses. She is a home care provider for severely disabled children. Her employer is funded by Medicaid. I am retired and on Medicare. In my opinion all healthcare providers should get free education and be employed by the government and all citizens should be on Medicare. Might as well wish for peace in the Middle East, never happen.

Re: At what cost? by Bengie · 2017-12-25 07:28 · Score: 1

I local dentist will cut your bill in half if you don't use insurance. Says dealing with insurance increases their costs nearly 100%.

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