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The Battle for Solar Energy in the Country's Sunniest State (newyorker.com)
Carolyn Kormann, writing for The New Yorker: Steyer [billionaire Tom Steyer, who for years has tried to pass Proposition 127, an amendment to Arizona's constitution that would require power companies to generate fifty per cent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030] and his coalition say that the problem is simple: A.P.S. (state's largest utility, Arizona Public Service) is an investor-owned company, motivated primarily by its responsibility to protect profits for its shareholders, many of whom reside out of state. In 2017, the company made four hundred and eighty-eight million dollars, an increase of forty-six million from the previous year. The Arizona Corporation Commission (A.C.C.), a five-member elected "fourth branch" of state government, is supposed to keep the utility's monopoly in check -- setting limits on capital investments and pricing, while guaranteeing a certain margin of profit.
But critics have long argued that the arrangement incentivizes utilities to "gold-plate," or make inessential investments. (The phenomenon even has a name: the Averch-Johnson effect.) For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. "If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants."
But critics have long argued that the arrangement incentivizes utilities to "gold-plate," or make inessential investments. (The phenomenon even has a name: the Averch-Johnson effect.) For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. "If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants."
When you are buying politicians.
https://www.npr.org/sections/m...
Steyer has done uniquely well with it, but if you think he is about clean energy or this proposal is think again
https://www.azcentral.com/stor...
It will force the early shutdown of APS's nuclear power plant and likely boost greenhouse gas emissions.
You don't get efficiency. You get a company skimming 20% off the top of an essential service. This is why you can't pay your power bill with a credit card without a 4% surcharge. The service is essential and (unlike housing) there are no alternatives so they don't have to play nice.
As for me, I'm in a city that saw smog days 80% of the time this summer. Screw the power company and their half a billion in profit. They need to be forced to build out solar so I can breath. Doesn't matter if I don't smoke if every day I go outside I'm getting the equivalent in bad air. I'm still gonna die of lung cancer in my 50s. And I don't get to move out of the city because I need money and like most working class Americans I live where the jobs are.
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$200M seems kinda cheap for a gas plant, can't be very big. Using EIA numbers at around $1000/kW for gas plants that would be a 200MW installation.
200MW is on the small side for large scale solar farms. Okay the cost is higher than gas, but I thought he point here was to spend as much money as possible.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
First off, he does not live in Az.
Secondly, he is working at trying to kill off their nuclear power plant. Right now, Az is a low emitter BECAUSE of their nuclear power. Instead of trying to close nuke plants, the far left should focus on replacing fossil fuel plants. In this case, the bill should require that all utilities have a minimum of 60% clean energy, along with requiring 2/3 of the energy to be base-load (i.e. on-demand).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
From TFA:
"For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. “If they were truly acting in public interest,” Mayes said, “they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants.”
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Maybe you should look at the cost structure of wind and solar and the payback over time.
E.g. larger up front cost - very low operating costs.
At this point in time, its cheaper per MW/h to build solar in a high sun exposure state than it is to build gas or nuclear.
So no, it's more economical to build solar than gas.
The article says
""If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants.""
It serves the public interest to have reliable power 24/7 not dependent on if the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
These eco-nuts don't understand the concept of reliable baseload power, and how essential that is to a modern technological society and industry.
From the ballot description, which was contested:
"irrespective of cost to consumers"
Despite the complaints of the supporters regarding the ballot description, it does appear that the proposition mandates the use of renewable energy sources, as defined in the proposition, without consideration of the cost to ratepayers. This got the attention of many of us in Arizona.
It's a laudable goal to use renewable sources, but somehow I cannot reconcile the complaints of the proponents of this measure against utility company profits with the apparent intention of the measure to mandate these changes no matter the costs. It's as if they don't mind if the utilities double their rates, with the attendant increases in profits, so long as it's renewable energy they are gouging us for. Or something.
I also don't much care for the government being put in charge of determining what energy sources will be installed. If renewable energy is desirable, or in some way 'better', this will become evident soon enough. Leave it alone.
Oh, and then I consider Tom Steyer, a nice enough guy, who lives in San Francisco. Perhaps, tom, you should be working on the problems your home town has, and leave us in Arizona to deal with our problems? Not enough problems in San Francisco? Just go away.
Yes, I've already voted 'no' on this. Not necessary, not helpful, not now.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
When there is a freak cloudy but humid day people still want to run their air-conditioners.
Solar is to save fuel, you still need the gas plants for backup.
"If they were truly acting in public interest..." they would not be a for-profit organization. For-profit is a great model when you are letting companies provide a service at a competitive price and giving them flexibility about how they provide it. But short term market incentives are often not aligned with the long term public interest, so we have complex regulations that are always being gamed for profit. SNAFU. The only real solution is a public that cares about the long term public interest and holds their elected leaders accountable for long term thinking. Go Vote!
It you can't make Solar Power work in Arizona, you can't make it work anywhere. We need to make it work there or see that it can't work. If it can't work there, it can't work anywhere and we can move on to other solutions. If it can work there, we'll have a better idea of how to make it work elsewhere and what the limitations might be.
Stop pussy-footing around. We need a major push. Let's make it happen. Stop spending $$$ on worthless psychology experiments and start funding serious energy independence. It's what a nation like ours should do. Anything else is ceding the future away and selling our progeny into slavery.
Fuck #metoo and SJW's and MAGA-FAGAS and all the other bullshit. Make THIS happen!
Do those cost estimates include unpredictable maintenance costs? Look at nuclear - the first nuclear plant shut down was killed off by repair and maintenance costs. Wind plants seem to be suffering from failures here and there, and the costs have rendered at least one dead. We don't really know how these are going to hold up. Gas turbine plants are fairly well understood.
And solar requires storage or alternative backup sources. That's not part of Prop 127.
Solar will sell itself soon enough. Let it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Only works to the extent that the regulated rate of return is better than market rates on Wall Street. No sane investor is going to dump money into assets when the payback is better elsewhere. The big problem with utilities is that they are usually guaranteed rates of return even on non-performing assets. That is: Build a power plant for $X and the utilities commission will allow you to charge 10% of X per year (or whatever the regulated rate is). Even if it generates no power. If it generates nothing, customers' power rates just go up to cover the capital costs. To be fair, most rate regulation rules include limits on which investments are allowed into the rate base. So if you start building crap, they will just refuse it. And then it comes out of your investors' pockets.
What I'm not seeing here is whether this Proposition 127 would automatically 'bless' solar investments as being in a utilities rate base. That means, once built, the utilities commission is obliged to allow a rate of return regardless of how much or little the solar plants generate. The telling phrase is "require power companies to generate fifty per cent of their electricity". Not invest 50% of their generation capital budget in renewables. Given that renewable generation might be sort of iffy in terms of actual power output per dollar of capital, this could be a bottomless pit for A.P.S. Keep pouring money into plants until the power output hits 50%.
Now if I had to get involved in this deal, I'd like to be a wealthy hedge fund manager with an environmental tilt and a customer on the hook to buy my solar plants, regardless of sound economics.
Have gnu, will travel.
means more electrics. But that's kind of a stretch since the ROI on solar is debatable.
The main thing is that for all the talk of "Clean Coal" and even natural gas those plants still crank out a lot of emissions. Yes, it is possible to build a zero emission coal or gas plant, but it's expensive as hell and you have to change the filters way more than they want to. By the time you're done you could have done solar.
But that's not the point. They want to spew out their particulates while spewing nonsense about Clean Coal and pocket the extra money.
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In California they're busy shutting down all their baseload nuclear and watching Ivanpah save Gaia by cooking birds.
This is why Californians buy so much power from...wait for it...Arizona with all their evil nuclear and CH4 carbon-sinning that also makes Tesla-and-internet feeding electricity on the side.
And Californians will undoubtedly have to buy more because in California they hate electricity except the magical kind that mysteriously is in their house outlets somehow.
This probably explains the big baseload expectations (and profits) by APS, because they're building California's electricity supply; both for California directly and the hundreds-of-thousands of more Californians who will join the already-in-progress exodus to Arizona.
However the Sun seems to shine every day in Arizona, vs. having to transport natural gas to the location.
I am not Anti-Fossil Fuel. It is a high energy density, and easy to transport, this is a good form of energy for energy poor locations, where they can be shipped energy to them to operate. Arizona is rich in solar energy, while not as dense, they have a lot of solar energy beaming down on them, and their dessert climate, and the states large and relatively untouched areas. Means there is a lot of room to collect the energy and counteract the difference in energy density.
For heat in my house I use wood pellets. They are cheaper then Oil for the winter. However I need more space in my garage to hold them then it would take to have an oil tank for the same amount of energy. However this is space in my Garage that I wouldn't be fully utalizing anyway. So the difference in Energy Density isn't a factor, but the cost of fuel, which offsets the opportunity cost of the used space in my Garage.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sure, say after a tropical storm ...
Since when has ANY government shown the ability to EFFICIENTLY run ANYTHING?
It isn't their money, so spending it wisely is inconvenient to maintaining oversized pensions.
As for the surcharge - government agencies do the same thing. There is a "convenience fee" for using a credit or debit card to pay a tax or license fee, because the government agency is not to be deprived of the FULL VALUE of what you are required to pay. Most businesses will negotiate for a lower rate, because it is a fee they pay. AT&T doesn't charge me for paying my bill with a credit card, but my license plate incurs a "2.5% fee, minimum $2.50" if I don't pay with cash or check.
The hedge fund manager who got rich in large part off of energy investments at Farallon before selling out his carbon producing investments and going in on alternative energy is now pushing for the advancement of alternative energy, which will profit him, while criticizing others for being for profit... the irony.
While zero profit would be ideal for utilities like electricity, APS is mandated to only turn a 3% profit (no more). It's not like they're out to perpetually increase shareholder value via increasing net profits.
Also, while opponents to 127 have been putting up "No new taxes! No on 127", signage everywhere, taxes not the real driver among friends I've spoken with. It's the feeling that AZ is already moving in the right direction towards more renewables without the proposition - and that we'll get there soon (enough). And to be fair, they have a point. AZ is moving in the right direction already (albeit too slowly for such a sun-drenched state). Spritz in a little conservative ideology - "I've never seen a regulation that helped companies innovate faster," etc. - and you have a general dislike for the prop.
Finally, the biggest problem with 127, IMO, is that it's a prop in the first place. Too many people don't understand how difficult propositions can be to deal with after they're passed. Undoing bad props in tough times is almost impossible (requires a 2/3rds legislature vote + governor support), and 50% is a really tall order (AZ is still in the single digits.) We'd have to buy some of the power from out-of-state for years.
What happens if there's another recession? "Tough beans - it's a prop. Arizona WILL get to 50% and you will make the sacrifices - or the state will get sued into the ground." One needs to be really careful when modifying the state constitution like that.
So while I agree that APS just doesn't want to have to eat their ignorant decision to go all in on natural gas, and I'm probably going to vote for it (I think we can do it), this prop is likely doomed to fail.
First off, countries like Germany have been working with solar for decades as part of their infrastructure without issue.
The other is that renewables are a multiheaded thing.
E.g. you don't just build solar, you also build wind, you build hydroelectric, you build stored energy plants like water pumps during the night, you interconnect the power grids so a shortfall in one source means drawing on other sources.
e.g. same idea as today, just with more power sources.
And you think that the entire electrical grid for the state should be built around an extreme edge case?
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How well do those in power not in capitalist societies care about anyone else? Actual measurements, please.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> But with climate change, drought and rising temps who's to say we won't be pushing those cooling systems past their limits in 50 years?
Worth noting that there's been a few stories about nuclear plants in Europe having to throttle back because they are unable to reject their process heat, due to warmer surface waters.
This is a very valid concern that's not really come up before, and will get more relevant as time goes by.
=Smidge=
âoeThey are fighting this so hard because they know they will make more money off of natural gas than they will off of renewables,â Mayes said. âoeThatâ(TM)s my viewpoint as a former regulator.â
Greed is human nature, of course they will choose the option that makes them the most money. Humans have survived as long as they have because people are greedy. Nobody can remove greed from the human soul. If you want solar power to succeed then make it cheaper than natural gas.
Carbon taxes won't fix this, that's an artificial cost that not only will be difficult to pass into law but also merely hides the costs in shuffling the numbers about. The true costs will still be reflected upon the consumer in some way, and people will do what they can to lower their costs. As an example of this I ran some numbers for a thought experiment. I computed how much natural gas I'd have to buy to run my own generator to power my house. This was for a common household backup generator, just the average backup generator someone could buy from a local hardware store. If I ignored the cost of the generator then I'd be paying the same for my electricity that I generated myself compared to my utility bill. Now, I'd have to account for the cost of the generator in there somehow so I'd still have to pay for the initial investment of the generator, installation costs, as well as maintenance. If there is a carbon tax then the costs of the electricity and natural gas will shift to account for that tax.
With the cost difference so small it is conceivable for it to be cheaper for people to run natural gas or propane generators in their backyard than buy electricity from the utility if there is a carbon tax on the utility for their burning of coal, natural gas or (primarily for Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico) fuel oil.
People are greedy because that is a very basic survival instinct. Don't try to fight it, make it work for you. You want greedy people to buy solar power? Then make it something that they can make (or save) money on. Trying to force the matter in law will always fail in one way or another, because voters are greedy too.
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I live in Arizona and voted 'no', but my reason is a little different. State constitutions are not the right place for energy policies. The constitution should include things about the structure of government, human rights, who is allowed to vote, powers reserved for the government, and limits to those powers. What kind of ass-hat tries to stick energy policy in a constitution? We have laws for things like that.
When there is a freak cloudy but humid day people still want to run their air-conditioners.
And why would you want to run an AC then? Sorry, that is beyond me.
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They already have more than enough power plants, the goal should be to diversify. Most power usage is during the day, and solar plants could easily cover this peak usage.
But the crux of the problem is not that the utility wants to build this plant in order to generate electricity; they want the more expensive plant because this will result in more profits when they are reimbursed for the costs of the plant.
The snag comes in how the utilities earn money. Ie, they will go where the profit incentive is, as is natural. In the past this meant that selling electricity made them money, and conserving electricity cut into their profits, and building new plants was an an expense that had to be carefully considered. Then many states instituted rules that changed the profit motive. Utilities were given a maximum rate that they could charge customers, which meant that the equation changed and utilities could maximize profits by conserving electricity usage. Ie, convince customer to conserve, as well as going and and upgrading inefficient stations and distribution grid, and so forth.
An analogy would be like paying a contractor based upon how many bugs they fix, which could lead to the contractor adding lots of bugs merely to fix them again, or to claim that a bug is really 13 separate bugs that all need fixing, etc. You have to be careful about defining how you will pay contractors just like you have to be careful about defining how you pay utilities, because both will find loopholes.
and their dessert climate
Well, that explains the obesity problem. ;^) Sorry, couldn't let that typo slide by.
Heating your home with wood pellets is good for you now but what happens when more people also choose to do this? The price of wood pellets is a very simple supply vs. demand scenario. The price of heating oil and wood pellets is relatively stable because both can be tanked up, stored for long periods easily, transported with relative speed and low cost, therefore what you pay for it day to day, hour to hour, and even year to year, is known and doesn't change quickly. Solar power is not like that.
Solar power costs, like electricity costs generally, changes minute by minute. We, as residential consumers, don't see this but utilities and large consumers do. Solar power is not only highly variable in cost but also very difficult to store, not always easily transported elsewhere, and therefore can't simply be dipped into on demand like wood pellets, oil, natural gas, or any other fuel.
It's like that old joke, you have the cook on a cattle drive saying to his fellow cattle drivers when the gather for supper, "Well boys, I have good news and bad news. Bad news is all we have for supper is horse shit. The good news is we have plenty of it." Having plenty of solar power is not always good news if the bad news is that it's expensive to store, expensive to transport, and is not available when you need it.
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lifetime. In good times they'll built it with a 50 year plan then 50 years from now the economy's in the cyclic downturn and it's time to shut down the plant and build a new one but nobody wants to.
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Clouds and humidity in Arizona?
Not all that often I assume, but night happens quite regularly. I haven't lived in Arizona myself but I know people that have, it gets hot even at night and you will need air conditioning after the sun sets. Even if the utility was able to store up the electricity produced during the day a single cloudy day could deplete any stores they might have. This will mean they will have to black out customers or buy electricity from somewhere else at a cost. With people running air conditioning in the early evening, along with other loads, this will be a lot of energy.
The only economical electricity storage we have on a utility scale is hydro, and Arizona doesn't have a lot of water. Shipping the electricity off to a place that can store it, and shipping it back when they need it in Arizona, costs money. An honest calculation of solar energy costs will reflect this cost for storage. If solar was truly cheaper than natural gas then there would not be this resistance from the utilities for more solar power.
If you want the utilities to buy more solar power then find a way to make it truly cheaper than natural gas.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Aren't extreme weather events going to become a lot more common going forward? :)
Seriously though tropical storms aren't that rare even if global warming doesn't increase their frequency and they can put large parts of the US under cloud cover, the best parts for solar power too. I think the grid should be able to deal with it, yes. If you design the grid not to be able to deal with it you better be up front to voters about it, they don't expect rolling blackouts to be part of the equation under circumstances the old grid would have functioned fine.
Unless you want Trump v2.0 electric boogaloo down the line as the lies by omission blow up in people's faces.
First off, countries like Germany have been working with solar for decades as part of their infrastructure without issue.
Sure, that's quite likely true. There's a problem though. It's trivial to go from 0% unreliable energy to 20% unreliable energy. Going from 20% to 40% will be a bit harder but not insurmountable. From 40% to 60% will be very very difficult. Beyond that is effectively impossible.
Hydroelectric power is the only viable means we have of grid scale electric storage. Germany doesn't have a lot of hydro dams, neither does Arizona. That will make deploying wind and solar a problem beyond perhaps 20% or 40%. Germany likes to talk big about how much energy the export, but they can only do so because their neighbors have a lot of coal, nuclear, and hydro. If they keep going like they are, as well as their neighbors deploying more wind and solar, then they will run out of hydro storage, run out of reliable energy sources like coal and nuclear, and generally find themselves in an impossible situation.
Germany is doing fine now with their plan of replacing coal and nuclear with unreliable wind and solar but this will not last. They will have to return to nuclear power or become totally reliant on their neighbors to keep their grid stable, and that is a national security (economically and militarily speaking) problem.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
hmmm.
.10/kwh MINIMUM.
So, solar, which is more expensive than Nuclear, will be pushed with this bill. And yet, you are going to argue economics? Really?
in 2015, the price from APS was $.043 / KWh.
Note that solar or wind, with battery for both, costs a great deal more.
As to the whining about the 'safety issue', I fear AGW far far more (it is HAPPENING NOW), than a supposed possible accident in decent Nukes. Bear in mind that I want to close the older nukes. I think that we are making a mistake keeping them open. BUT, we have NOTHING that can replace nuclear power. Not at this time. Fossil fuel is a joke, and AE, even with batteries, would be over
No, we need to push for multiple new nuclear SMRs and get them GOING NOW. We are losing the battle on AGW.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, in AZ's case, their water is the waste water. Specifically, it comes from the Colorado river, and is processed once and then used in various places.
Az's real problem is that they are apparently playing games with what is considered Colorado river water. It is even now going to court. BUT, because APS is using waste water, they will continue to have PLENTY.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Arizona has the only nuclear power plant far from a major body of water. It already uses reclaimed water from suburbs of Phoenix upstream. What happens when that water is no longer available as the Southwest dries out from climate change? We may very well enter another megadrought forcing most people to leave Arizona in a decade or two. Arizona needs to switch to renewables, increase energy efficiency of buildings (wrap them in thick walls of adobe?), and conserve water, but if the rest of the world doesn't do its part, Arizona is screwed. So Vote Yes on 127 (if you live in the state).
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Energy is going to become more expensive no matter what mix of energy we use. Might as well install as much solar as possible. Arizona is the sunniest state in the Union and installing solar should be a no brainer. We still need a way to store that energy. I hope molten salt batteries, or train car kinetic energy storage or something else will solve that problem. Vote Yes 127
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
When there is a freak cloudy but humid day people still want to run their air-conditioners.
And why would you want to run an AC then? Sorry, that is beyond me.
When the humidity in a house gets above about 50% it can be very uncomfortable at any temperature, the AC will dehumidify as it cools and so people will still want to run the air conditioner even if the thermostat is set to what would otherwise be a comfortable temperature.
If the humidity gets above about 60% then it's not only uncomfortable but also unhealthy. I'm guessing that such high humidity is rare in Arizona but while I lived in Texas that kind of humidity was relatively common. I've been living in the American Midwest for many years now and humidity is always a problem, it will always be too high or too low. Whole house humidifiers are pretty common, and I've had conversations with people considering whole house DE-humidifiers. My guess is that with better insulation on houses today running the air conditioner to dehumidify is not always practical.
If you cannot fathom the idea of running the air conditioner on a cool and humid day then you must live in a very moderate climate, or one so cold that heating will always be enough to dehumidify the house.
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How does this work?
"a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs"
I would think that the utility could charge rates to recoup investment costs of either solar or gas. What am I missing here? I would think that once you have recouped your investment costs, I would assume by charging rates, then it would be mostly profit since you don't have to purchase natural gas.
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Its intentions are laudable: fight carbon warming by promoting carbon-free energy sources. But not only does it leave out nuclear energy, which is already a large fraction of Arizona's baseload generation, but it leaves out the most important renewable, hydro, which happens to be another large fraction of Arizona's power base.
Prop 127 promotes only solar and wind as power sources. To put more of these on the grid would require that APS issue 'smart meters' to all customers that would measure demand load continuously, and which eventually would be able to turn major appliances on and off at strategic times to make the most of sunny afternoons and surges of wind.
And guess what? In my town, a rollout of the first-generation of smart meters was opposed by the same hippie moms who promote Prop 127. By refusing smart meters, they have already negated the whole idea of putting sun and wind on the grid.
Another factor they don't understand is Arizona's role in being a lifeline of baseload power to California, which no longer deigns to generate power of its own. Several California cities have quietly bought fractional shares in Palo Verde, our giant nuclear plant, for this reason.
If we want to move towards carbon-free, if we want California to survive, we should add several new units at Palo Verde.
Water on this planet is not being created or destroyed. it is only being maldistributed.
Vote No on 127 as I did, add more air-cooled nuclear capacity at Palo Verde, and have Los Angeles desalinate its own water supply with the added energy. With LA not sucking water from as far away as Wyoming, there will be plenty left over for inland users.
Think of it as trading Arizona energy for a part of California's allocation of inland water.
Clouds and humidity in Arizona?
During summer monsoon, mid-July to mid-September.
which are batshit crazy. But that said, solar is a completely different ballgame in a place like Az where you've got sun 90% of the time.
Global Warming is a problem that needs solving, but nuclear plants with their 10+ years time to start up aren't going to solve it anyway. Solar can be up and running in 16 weeks (ok, let's be honest , 32, but 8 months is better than 8 years). That's because you don't have to constantly watch every step and every screw. If you cut corners then it costs a bit more in maintenance. Do the same on a nuke plant and you've got a meltdown + dead zone.
And you haven't said what is going to replace those older plants. If it's the same type of plant that's cheaper to run unsafe than safe then Houston, we've got a problem.
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The southwest drying out won't so much be about climate change, I mean it's already dry -- and gets most of its water from elsewhere.
The real problem is allowing a metropolis of nearly 5m people to exist in a fucking desert (phoenix) -- and bleeding the Colorado dry to sustain it. There are some externalities at work here that defy logic, and are absolutely not sustainable.
(Not to mention they actually do grow corn and cotton in the phoenix metro area.. which seems completely god-damn bonkers)
what about solar thermal? That molten sodium stays hot enough to turn a turbine for at least 24 hours, even with no sunlight.
I'd mod you up if I had not started this.
Seriously, this is far more of an issue than the idea of building new ones.
In fact, if we were smart, we would put nuscale in place of coal plants
Then while also developing thorium, we could then put thorium reactors in the old nuke sites, re-use the 'waste' that is sitting on site for driving the thorium, while burning up all the 'waste'. THat would allow all of the utilities to continue making their profits, while we clean up the air, land, and water.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
First off, Solar in AZ is not 90%. It is around 45%.
Again, I agree with your assessment of nukes. That is why we need SMALL NUCLEAR REACTORS that are built offsite and transported there. That would keep the real costs and build time, low. In fact with nuscale, once they are started, once they are going and a site is approved, within 1-2 years, they would be up and running.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ah Germany ... did you know that apart from Energiewende they coined another great term, Dunkelflaute. It means when there is very little solar or wind, which can happen across all of Europe at the same time. Which has happened. The German backup is coal, gas and some French nuclear power. There is no other backup in sight either. Power to gas could work, if we want to multiply our electricity costs by an uncomfortably large amount.
There's a page on the English wikipedia for Energiewende, not for Dunkelflaute though.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't prepare for such a scenario, I'm saying that such a scenario is going to be rare enough in Arizona that it should be treated as an edge case. Edge cases are important, but you don't design the entire system around them. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be backups, but that's the appropriate role for natural gas in this case: as a backup.
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Germany is a good example, but for the problems with trying to go too heavy on renewable energy. They've invested a ton of money into renewables, but still have to burn a lot of coal, while the US is kicking their ass in CO2 emissions reductions because we've switched from coal to cheap and plentiful natural gas.
Solar thermal has limited room for cost reduction, it's expensive and it will stay so IMO.
PV I think can get cheap enough to be worth it simply for fuel saving of traditional plants. You'd still have those plants, you just wouldn't operate them most of the time.
Which is it, want or need?
Also, why can't variable pricing be used in place of gas plants to prevent electrical shortages? Is demand for electricity perfectly inelastic?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
That's.. a disingenuous argument. Fukushima was a very old design; one that relied on external inputs to maintain reaction safely. (For example relying on cooling pumps to keep the reactor from overheating. So if there's a power outage the cooling pumps stop working - and the reactor overheats and melts down)
Modern designs do the opposite -- for example having an ice plug that keeps the fuel in the reactor chamber. The fail-safe being; if the cooling mechanism that maintains the ice plug malfunctions (such as due to power outage) -- the plug will then melt, and the contents of that chamber flow downward due gravity into a larger chamber; halting the reaction as the fuel is no longer in sufficient density to maintain criticality.
But to answer your question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
ran for 30 years, passed a couple of pretty gnarly tests (shut off power for cooling pumps, as well as shutting off of coolant entirely) with no damage whatsoever.
It was designed in the mid 1960's, and probably would have become the norm had the Navy not interfered and pushed for water cooled reactors. =/
The SEER rating for modern AC systems is a joke. It's a well known fact that it takes a lot more energy to de-humidify than simply bring the temperature down. So it's no wonder that with modern AC (single stage) system, having the humidity level above 60% is not uncommon. The only way to truly de-humidify to a comfortable level at the proper temperature is to have a two-stage system. But that involves a variable speed motor and a two-stage compressor to go with it. Easily north of 5 grand on up for installation as the entire heater box has to be replaced as well to accommodate the motor and controls.
Life is not for the lazy.
Over 1/4 of total household power use in AZ is Airconditioning, during the day that is obviously most of the household use. Guess what is not needed after a tropical storm with cloud cover? It also helps the wind and hydro power will then be driven up to take over any excess. Also cloud cover doesn't end solar, still get 25% of the capacity, so when daytime demand is cut in half you will still have 1/4 of the solar power, so not that much makeup would be needed if PV was providing half the power, all is still good.
The Colorado river's drying up. As water gets scarce even waste water becomes valuable. Again, think 20, 30, 40 or 50 years from now. I'll be dead, my kids won't.
Again, if Az would invest in new water infrastructure now it wouldn't be an issue. But it's a red state. They'll just sit around until it's a crisis, blame the poor for not planning and wait for federal dollars to bail them out (or not, and the entire state will collapse). I wish I could say I was exaggerating or trolling...
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especially in a sun state like Az. But there are a lot of vested interests that want profits _now_ and investment when it's somebody else. If I'm a CEO in charge of building a solar plant I just spent several million this quarter that could have gone to shareholders like me (remember most CEOs are paid in stock). Meanwhile those solar farms might be 10, 20 years before they really pay off. I'll be retired by then.
We've created an economic and political system that incentivizes short term profit and incumbent powers. We shouldn't be surprised when the long term results are poor at best and disastrous at worst.
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Re: growing corn and cotton. I agree it is bonkers. The Southwest has experienced natural megadroughts in the past, but it is our overuse and poor water management that is the problem. Global warming is only going to exacerbate it. Last year I read The Water Knife , an interesting near future thriller all about water or lack thereof and the fights over it. Hopefully, it will remain a what if scenario.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
What would actually happen is that, due to the "irrespective of cost" clause in the proposition, they'd simply bleed us dry selling us overpriced solar to make quota. There is a profit motive here, but not the one they allude to. I want to see more solar, but this is a terrible way to manage it and a terribly written proposition. Our nuclear plant is doing just fine, I don't want it to get starved of funds for maintenance and then develop problems because some environmentalists tried to force that into a self-fulfilling prophecy, either.
I sent in an early ballot with a NO on Prop 127 already. I hope the rest of Arizona is smart enough to do the same.
https://www.azfamily.com/news/...
Cloudy, humid AND 107F ... why the fuck do people live in Phoenix?
If you cut corners then it costs a bit more in maintenance. Do the same on a nuke plant and you've got a meltdown + dead zone.
Here's an idea, don't let drunken Soviets design, build, and run your nuclear power plant. That should solve all the problems of a meltdown and dead zone.
It turns out that in the USA there's a shortage of drunken Soviets. I think we'll do just fine on that.
Oh, because I'm expecting someone to prop up another straw man from another nuclear accident, Arizona seems to have a shortage of tsunamis. I'm thinking Arizona is a very good place for some nuclear power, as is much of the USA.
It doesn't have to take 10+ years to build a nuclear power plant, the ones near me were built in less than 5 years. That was 40+ years ago, and our ability to build things since then has improved. There's nothing keeping nuclear power plants getting from breaking ground to producing power in 5 years if we set our minds to it, and chased off the Greenpeace assholes when they show up. We've seen nuclear power plants get built in 3 years before, and I'm guessing that once we got some experience that we'd be able to do that in less than 2 years.
Even if it did take 10+ years to complete a nuclear power plant that still doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. We know we will need the electricity, and large civil projects routinely run longer than that. All that long building time means is that we should stop talking about it and get started building them. I remember having a discussion with a co-worker about drilling for oil in ANWR, it came up because oil prices crept up a bit. He told me that drilling there for oil now because oil prices went up a bit is a stupid idea, it would take 5 years to get any oil from it. Every well takes 5 years to get oil from it, if we made that argument for every well then we'd never have drilled before. Then 5 years after that conversation oil prices hit record highs. I don't know if drilling for oil in ANWR would have done anything meaningful to lower prices but it would not have hurt. Just in general we have large projects planned out years in advance. Given that a nuclear power plant, once online and built to modern specification, is expected to last for 80 years this is just a good idea for the future. Construction on Hoover Dam was started in 1931 but the last generator wasn't installed and running until 1961. That's 30 years. It's been there for a very long time, managing the water flow and generating power. It's expected to continue doing so for a long time yet.
Telling me it takes a long time to build a nuclear power plant is not an argument to not build them, it merely means we need to account for that in the planning. We can build some solar at the same time as the nuclear power plants, perhaps even on the same sites so they can back each other up and share in resources, human resources and power lines.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Another APS employee posts on slashdot.
Logical fallacy: Argumentum ad monsantium.
When you are so corrupt that the ONLY way to do what the majority wants is to let the people vote on it directly--- that is when a constitution amendment is the solution. You can't pass a law because the system is too corrupted and the wealthy elites are too powerful they can hack the system. It's not clean but the system is dirty and polluting your constitution with a few popular amendments gets stuff DONE without waiting for the system to be cleaned... if that is even possible anymore.... you may want a clean simple constitution but that isn't a good enough reason for many of us who are fed up from decades of corruption stopping common sense obvious policy shifts. Sure, we should fix the system but people just are not motivated, informed or smart enough to do that yet. if ever. If that ever does happen, then you can pass laws and undo amendments... the fact you can't undo an amendment that is not relevant also speaks to how broken the system would be.
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So again, show me a reactor that's cheaper to run safely. Oh, and one that's either in active use or can be built. Nothing experimental or "just a few years away". Something that can be built today. Until then the extra cost for solar is worth it.
There's something like 450+ nuclear power plants operating on the planet today, with probably another 50+ under construction. You want an example? Pick one. Chances are with those kinds of odds that if you pick any currently operating power plant you will find one that is exceedingly safe, currently making a profit, and doing so with technology that's been proven itself with decades of quietly keeping the lights on for the world.
I've never heard of a solar power plant turning a city into a dead zone.
Yet. Anytime there's people playing with megawatts of power there's ample opportunity for death and destruction. We just started with solar power, we still don't know where all the gremlins are.
Also, we don't need a city turned into a dead zone for the bodies to pile up. Nuclear power is already safer than solar power.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Fortunately electricity is very fungible
Yes, that is true. Proposition 127 would destroy that fungibility.
People generally don't much care where their electricity comes from so long as when they flip a switch a light comes on. What we see people in Arizona doing is make electricity not fungible, making a distinction between different energy sources "irrespective of cost" based on an arbitrary distinction. This will inherently drive up costs, because there is no fungibility in the electricity any more as different kinds of watt-hours are treated differently. The utilities can't ship in electricity from where they choose, or ship it out as they wish. They are bound by the law to have at least 50% of their electricity from what the law defines as renewable.
The only way for Proposition 127 to not drive up energy costs is if the market prices for wind and solar power naturally become lower than competing sources by 2030. That's not going to happen. If the people writing this proposition had any faith that it would happen naturally then they would not have put this proposition on the ballot. People complain about Big Coal and Big Nuclear being "evil" in their grabbing for profits. Well, here's an example of Big Wind and Big Solar putting a proposition on the ballot that would guarantee themselves a profit for decades.
People are getting all excited to vote in favor of government guaranteed profits for big corporations, with the common middle class wage earner carrying the bulk of this load. The rich don't care, they will move, prop up some solar panels on the roof (and probably get paid for it), or just suck it up and pay the higher rates. The poor probably don't care either, there's lots of government programs to pay the electric bills for them.
Proposition 127 is just the rich getting richer and the middle class being driven to poverty. You disagree? Fine, vote "yes" and see what happens. I'll watch from a safe distance.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
They now want to shut down the coal plants, but just relying on neighbours to make up the difference during a Dunkelflaute. Except the neighbours don't have enough surplus as is and are doing much the same thing, oh and they are also all trying to electrify the heating at the same time because somehow that will rid them of dependency on Putin's gas. This will all end in tears and rolling blackouts, but I'm sure Brussels will stay lit ... and the air-planes for the politicians and their kids to hop around the world will keep flying.
Europe is being led to the slaughter, both demographically and economically.
“You cannot plug an electric car into a coal-fired power plant and think that somehow you’re doing anything environmental.”
Sure you can! While, yes, you're centralizing demand on dirty power, the overall emissions output is STILL lower than if all those cars were gasoline vehicles.
If these people were SERIOUS about either low emissions or greenhouse gas reduction, they'd be going nuclear.
But, yet again, the NIMBY crowd couldn't accept that in a trillion years.
"Nukz iz baaaaaad!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If we're talking about a PV plant and not a solar thermal plant, you're talking about a facility with several tons and tons of panels that are essentially no good after about 40 years. And they normally cannot be recycled. So, tons of landfill...
A gas plant can be refurbished endlessly. And most of the materials used can be recycled after being swapped out.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In 2017, the company made four hundred and eighty-eight million dollars
This is a highly misleading (purposefully misleading?) statement where "made" is pretty ambiguous. I looked up APS's 2017 statement and found the following for Pinnacle West Capital, their parent company:
Pinnacle West Capital Corporation (NYSE: PNW) today reported consolidated net income attributable to common shareholders of $488.5 million
So they had revenue of $488 million. That is not the same as profit even though the article tries to conflate the two. I tried finding a quick link to their 2017 profits and came up empty. However, they did report a Q1 2018 profit of $23.3 million on revenue of nearly $677.7 million. Even assuming a $30 million profit per quarter, that's only $120 million profit per year, far less than the $480 million the article would lead you to believe they "made."
I won't quibble whether or not APS makes "too much" profit. That's not the point. The point is people need to understand the different between revenue and profit when they're griping about "greed." Words matter.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Most power usage is during the day, and solar plants could easily cover this peak usage.
Power consumption peaks at 4-7pm when businesses are still open, but plenty of people are arriving home to warm houses and turning on the AC. By 4pm, solar is producing way less than earlier in the day, and by 7pm it is producing almost none.
When the humidity in a house gets above about 50%
This is Arizona. Unless it's actually raining humidity is almost never above 40%, and during the summer months 20% is more typical. If your house is too humid -- a problem I've never actually heard anyone in Arizona complain about -- just open some windows.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Unfortunately the anti-renewables crew always omit Energy Storage from their arguments as it trashes their argument.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You would have expected them to build their houses etc properly in the first place with proper insulation to keep out extreme weather
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
solar thermal may have an initial upfront cost but once in place, you don't have to keep filling an empty tank
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
About half of the LA water supply comes from the Colorado River:
https://viterbi.usc.edu/water/
Any country/state is in competition, both economically and for brains. If you don't provide reliable power someone else will, so need.
Non industrial demand for electricity is very inelastic, you'd have to hit people very hard in their expenses to convince them otherwise ... if you don't provide cheap power, someone else will.
Great, that would pay for more solar panels! Then muggy, cloudy days wouldn't be so hard on the wallet.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
This behaviour is probably just habit, and in no way related to health or other reasons.
The only point where I consider cooling or reducing humidity is when I'm sweating so much that sweat might drop in my laptop keyboard.
If you cannot fathom the idea of running the air conditioner on a cool and humid day then you must live in a very moderate climate ... albeit my house is built in a way that it is actually to dry inside and I could use an AC to make it more humid:P
I do neither. I neither can fathom it, nor do I live in a cool moderate climate. I live in Germany, France and Thailand. And in Germany my town is one of the most humid ones
While France and Germany can be considered moderate in winter, they are awful hot in summer, particularly my region. While Thailand is considered "hot" it is super humid in the rain season and afterwards super cold at night ...
I simply dress accordingly ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Los Angeles bleeds the Colorado dry; Arizona is far behind in Colorado River water rights (and first to take cuts to its supply).
Phoenix was founded on the Salt River for a reason. The previous Hohokam settlement on the site did indeed succumb to drought (or at least that's the prevailing theory), but they lacked the technology to build damns upstream to manage the water supply over years and decades; the multiple reservoirs that modern Phoenix has are doing very well, even after about a decade of drought, even while Lake Mead dwindles.
Further, I read years ago (sorry, no lmddgtfy.net citation link) that the international agreements were already in place for Arizona to desalt and pipeline from the Gulf of California when the need finally arises. Currently, conservation and reclamation have meant that the Phoenix metro area uses less water today, even with massive population growth, than it did 20 years ago. (Most water use, 69% (http://arizonaexperience.org/people/arizonas-water-uses-and-sources) is still agricultural; when an alfalfa farm becomes 250 single family homes or such, water use actually drops.)
Phoenix's water future is actually pretty well secured; remember years ago when Atlanta was facing a full-on water outage? Non-desert cities naturally don't feel the urgency to plan for water shortages, but Phoenix knows it will always need to carefully manage an eternally thin margin. All the claims of "unsustainable" seem to start from the premise that cities must be sufficiently supplied by the rain that falls on them; Phoenix was always predicated on relying on the rain and snow upstream.
Lake Mead is almost in single-digit feet range now of the level that will automatically trigger cuts. It will likely happen soon, and Arizona will be first in line for those cuts. 39% of Arizona's water currently comes from the Colorado. But do the math; if Arizona cut its farming in half, that would almost cover the loss of ALL Colorado River water, and the cuts don't start with "all".
Never confuse law with justice, nor religion with morality.