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Renewable Energy Reduces the Highest Electric Rates In the Nation (phys.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Coal is the primary fuel source for Midwest electric utilities. Michigan Technological University researchers found that increasing renewable and distributed generation energy sources can save Michigan electric consumers money. As renewable energy technologies and access to distributed generation like residential solar panels improve, consumer costs for electricity decrease. Making electricity for yourself with solar has become more affordable than traditional electricity fuel sources like coal. However, as three Michigan Tech researchers contend in a new study, while utility fuel mixes are slowly shifting away from fossil fuels toward renewable sources, Michigan utilities, and U.S. utilities broadly, continue a relationship with fossil fuels that is detrimental to their customers.
In the paper, Prehoda and co-authors Joshua M. Pearce, Richard Witte Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Chelsea Schelly, associate professor of sociology, note that in the U.S., "70 percent of coal plants run at a higher cost than new renewable energy and by 2030 all of them will." The researchers provide a breakdown of savings per kilowatt hour by county that Michigan residents could achieve if they produce their own electricity with solar photovoltaic panels. The most significant impacts of distributed generation with solar are in the Upper Peninsula, where residential customers could see savings of approximately 7 cents per kilowatt hour. Assuming the average residential consumer uses 600 kilowatt hours of electricity monthly, this is a savings of $42 per utility bill. Downstate, the average savings per utility bill under the researchers' model is approximately $30 monthly. However, not all Michigan consumers can take advantage of the opportunity to self-generate, as some utilities are blocking additional net-metered distributed generation in their areas. The study has been published in the journal Energies.
In the paper, Prehoda and co-authors Joshua M. Pearce, Richard Witte Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Chelsea Schelly, associate professor of sociology, note that in the U.S., "70 percent of coal plants run at a higher cost than new renewable energy and by 2030 all of them will." The researchers provide a breakdown of savings per kilowatt hour by county that Michigan residents could achieve if they produce their own electricity with solar photovoltaic panels. The most significant impacts of distributed generation with solar are in the Upper Peninsula, where residential customers could see savings of approximately 7 cents per kilowatt hour. Assuming the average residential consumer uses 600 kilowatt hours of electricity monthly, this is a savings of $42 per utility bill. Downstate, the average savings per utility bill under the researchers' model is approximately $30 monthly. However, not all Michigan consumers can take advantage of the opportunity to self-generate, as some utilities are blocking additional net-metered distributed generation in their areas. The study has been published in the journal Energies.
is to use less energy... Nicole Foss on renewables @AutomaticEarth http://bit.ly/2rzS5Pq
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
How does one get power at night? Wind you say? How about at night with no wind. yes that happens.
Coal has a bit of an advantage then. There is always natural gas I guess.
The problem with the present developments is that the network infrastructure and baseline power sources have to remain in place to provide electricity when the sun isn't shining etc. There's going to be a lot of bankruptcies out there.
Comparing PV kWh cost to current mains kWh cost doesn't tell the whole story. Currently the upkeep costs for the coal power plants is calculated into those prices. When enough people go PV, the upkeep costs will have to go into the connection costs instead ... whether you'll still be able to come out ahead then is questionable with current PV prices.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't be a free rider and fuck the poor with higher electricity prices in the mean time of course, gotta look out for number one ... and you get to pretend you're doing it for CO2 too.
in the "greenest" areas are among the highest. Cal is quite high and rates in austin have been rising quickly. Then you have Hawaii and they got hammered again when their green geothermal got lava'ed.
By having energy production only when the sun is usable? When the wind in not too slow, not too fast?
Productive export jobs need 24/7 low cost energy all year.
No stopping and starting production lines due to the cost over power every day.
Not strange new energy cost for a few hours every day.
With new changes to energy prices at night.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
How did they break the trend of electricity costs increasing with deployed renewables that has struck all other nations?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
From the article:
It should also be pointed out that no incentives of any kind were assumed (e.g. current 30% federal investment tax credit), so the PV savings are an extremely conservative estimate.
It is interesting that the LCOE does not include incentives. But I could not find if they are including costs of CO2 in the LCOE for coal. I would assume so given CO2 will be taxed at some point, or regulated in some fashion.
Still, there is a reason why utilities are shutting down coal plants. Natural gas combined cycle is the way to go for low cost and flexible operation. PV and wind are adequate for certain install areas, but cannot compete with NG at this time.
I'm just sensing more than a wee bit of bias. To be honest I can't be bothered to check his sources in detail for a /. post. Next time find better base sources.
Anyway, as for why it works, I can't speak to Australian but here in the States we've been pulling subsidies to Coal mining and plants while simultaneously making them clean up their messes. We've also allowed lawsuits to go forward when their poison rivers with sludge and poison miners with poor dust control. We even put one of their CEOs in jail for unsafe mines just because he knew they were unsafe (go figure).
Basically, when the cost of coal isn't pushed off to the workers and the people living near the plant and mines it's not nearly as economical. Add to that Natural Gas taking over coal's niche in making electricity on a cloudy days in December and it's kind of a no brainer. Eventually nuke will probably take over Gas (there are zero emissions gas plants though, so that might take a while) too.
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The article doesn't explain how the monthly savings are calculated. The dollar amounts they quote certainly wouldn't cover the installation cost of solar panels (before subsides of course, since they don't change the cost of the installation).
Funny how these studies only apply if you use 2,000 KWh per month. We use less than 700 KWh in the hottest months and solar would save us $10 a month which would take decades to pay itself off on a $10,000 up front cost to install a new solar panel system.
A simple equation, spend thousands with the hope of saving a few pennies a day vs just investing $10,000 in middle of the road 10 year tax free bonds yielding $2.5% producing $20 per month income.
Solar makes sense only if it can be fully paid back in 7 or less years. That's total cost of solar including batteries installation and expected maintenance costs over 10 years.
Didn't Tesla discuss PV roof tiles some time back? What happened to it?
And it was provided by Mother Earth. It's called coal. Nature sequestered energy in those sweet, clean chunks of coal.
The sun us nit renewable.
The correct term is non-carbon energy
It's not about 'preserving profits', it's about ensuring that there's money to keep the service alive at all. If we reduce the demand for baseload provision to the point where it's no longer rational for companies to provide it, there will be times when the electricity supply fails. Yes, for a period it will be profitable for existing power stations to carry on rather than close, but they will wear out and not be replaced. Perhaps forms of storage will save us - but it's not inevitable.
" Data is data - if you don't like it, you don't get to ignore it. Unless you want to be unscientific?" 99% of climate and related science agrees, warming is at least partially manmade and occurring out of control.
You're the unscientific idiot here. Go figure, outspoken denialist republican doesn't actually have a science background!
You don't decide, bitch. You Republican faggots don't want to pay for anything, you don't get a say. Fuck you. We'll do whatever we want and your orange traitor hero hangs either way, suck it faggot punkass bitch, lol.
Our tax dollars built the grid, you stayed home and whined. Fuck you punk.
You're a sexless moron Chas.
The greener the state goes, the higher the electricity rates get.
The state is also allowing the utilities to go back on the solar power deals now too - if you put up residential solar and you generate enough that you can pump the excess back to the grid, the utilities pay you less now per kilowatthour (justified by claiming there is a glut of electricity). At the same time, they are gradually shifting people to new time-of-day rates, so they can get milked dry paying premium rates for electricity at times when people most need it (justified by claiming there is a shortage of electricity).
With capitalism, you get competition and freedom to choose when and what you consume, and you get quantity discounts as the benefits of mass production are passed-along to the consumers.
With Marxism. you get top-down management with some bureaucrat ot regulation telling you when and what you consume, and you get "progressive" rates where price-per-unit ramps up as you consume more The is done as a way to camoflage the rationing that alaways happens in managed economies, particularly as bad policies eliminate incentives for production and delivery.
At day you pump water uphill, at night you let it flow down again. Easy, cheap, eco-friendly.
And in the city, add a water tank to your building's top floor, if the building can handle it.
Or a tank in the basement for compressed air. Or molten salt. Or even easier:
A flywheel!
No problem getting through winter nights.
Only in places with forever-overcast 4h of daylight, like near the arctic circle, you need some bigger government solution for getting through the winter.
Are you all retarded or what??
Get a fucking flywheel!
Or pump water uphill!
Or melt salt!
Or sell half back into the grid, and buy it back at night, and let them solve the storage on a larger scale.
Or use batteries if there is no sensible way? (Battery energy density still is horribly bad.)
And there is a nice rule of thumb: Where there is no sun, there is wind. Where there is no wind, there is sun.
So storage is only for the bad times. Esp. half-year storage. Which is better solved with a large covered pumped-storage lake and hydroelectricity.
The Earth is constantly producing wood, coal, and oil. New feeder material is constantly being fed into the production of same. The fact that it takes a lot of time to "renew" these fuels does not mean they are not renewable fuels.
How are solar panels renewable? Left in their natural state, they will eventually stop producing energy, permanently. Solar panels must constantly be maintained, replaced, upgraded, etc.. Same thing for wind. These are NOT renewable sources of energy because they require constant, unnatural renewing by human activity.
No human activity is required for the Earth to produce coal, wood, and oil.
Stop buying into the lies, people.
is coal getting more expensive because of technology or regulation? it seems dishonest to compare technologies using modified numbers.
You just sneered. That isn't pointing out ANYTHING with "math". Prove your claim "debatable" if its battery backup plus solar. All you have are the pro-nuke shills and anti-green polemics. GET SOME FACTS.
Plus extra generation is 100% viable backup and, since it uses no fuel, can be run even in oversupply and used for "wasteful" things like high temp incineration of refuse to remove CO2 and methane output.
I know that someone who deliberately cut out parts of their brain so they could continue to vote republican or libertarian would likely no longer remember, but blackouts, where electricity supply failed because of insufficient generation, have occurred before, long before any renewable power was on the grid.
Coal powerplants need backup, and you never hear about that from the anti-green shills like yourself. Nuclear power needs new grid connections and MASSIVE backup sources that react EXTREMELY quickly, but that is never mentioned by nuke fluffers like yourself.
None of the costs of an unreliable network of non-rewnewable power sources is EVER mentioned, which would be fine if it weren't for the fact that you morons insist on caterwauling about how the cost of backup for renewables is never mentioned.
You're utterly wrong, by the way. The proposals submitted to governments for a 100% renewable network DO include all of that. And show that there's fuck all technically wrong about being 100% renewable powered, no matter what you ignorant luddites screech.
you get to pretend you're doing it for CO2 too.
Why, because nobody really cares about CO2? Just because you're a selfish, cynical asshole, doesn't mean that everybody else is. I'd be happy to pay a lot more for power if I could get it from solar or wind.
I don't respond to AC's.
Get out of your anti-green hoodie and look at the world without your ideological peril sunglasses on. And it is HIGHLY ironic you whinge "But where does this come from...???" when you follow it up with a load of hogwash assertions.
I don't see how solar works very well in the UP? Always cloudy and 300+ inches of snow every winter. I think the MTU researchers are spending too much time in the sauna.
If A is correlated with B then it either means A causes B, or B causes A, or C causes both A & B.
So if a study shows that people who drink diet sodas are fatter it either means that diet soda makes people fat, or being fat makes people start drinking diet soda, or some third thing causes people to both be fat and drink diet soda.
The correlation your study is pointing out is that countries with higher energy costs have a higher proportion of renewables. This either means that renewables raise energy costs, or countries with high energy costs are more likely to invest in renewables, or some third thing causes both (i.e., in first world countries everything costs more, and they're more likely to be leading the way on renewables).
How's that for scientific?
Do you honestly think you're going to change the common usage of that word?
It's renewable unless you bring in billion-year timescales which are simply not relevant in this context.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
You can't have the electricity from the PV make it to the wall outlets without having a grid-tied system. If you want to PV to battery, you have to use totally separate plugs.
WTF are you smoking?
by mass anyway.