Did you read the article?
So, what are you contending is not true?
1) Wind farm owners get taxpayer help with constructi0n?
2) Wind farms get forced production credits?
3) Forced production credits at higher rates have greater impact on the market?
They are all quite true, and verifiable. The reason there is surplus power is due to the forced production credits, otherwise they would shut down and not produce during those periods.
Just to enter some real numbers into the discussion, I checked ERCOT annual demand for 2014, Mid to late Sept early mornings show loads to be in the lowest 10% generally, with March and Oct early morning hours really being lower. So you are right, it is not the very lowest, but it is close.
And that market is also heavily impacted by build incentives and production credits. So in that sense it isn't truly free. I'm not suggesting it should be, BTW.
Which is great news! Texas is ahead of the world now in being prepared for the huge increase in electricity usage that good electric cars will cause.
Why? Because for a brief moment when electrical usage was at it very lowest (3 am, September day, little heating or cooling) and wind average is blowing at record highs they can supply 30 of demand? How is that world leading? They did accomplish showing how skewed the market had become, that is a form of leadership.
Wind farm owners get lots of taxpayer help paying for the construction of the wind farm, then forced production credits means they get paid if power is needed or not. Apply this to any generation technology and the result would be pretty much the same.
The model is even worse in place where the grid is forced to purchase power a even higher rates.
The point is that back when nuclear was still 'new', there was a lot of talk about all kinds of uses that could displace oil. There certainly was a reason for big oil to attack nuclear. It matters not how well founded their fears were. I didn't get any sense from your post that you understood that.
You are not viewing through the lens of yesteryear, and are minimizing just how big the market overlap was. I was never even remotely hinting oil would be completely displaced, or even mostly.
Well, I don't agree with the suppositions of the article. And yes you seem reasonably aware that the holy grail of all wind and/or solar just is not feasible. But I'll clarify my position, I am not for the most energy efficient and not necessarily the most cost efficient. I am for the approach that I think gives us the best chance of succeeding in significantly reducing carbon emissions. To give us the best chance, cost factors, social factors, and other challenges must be accounted for all the while not depending on hope for the big breakthrough instead of taking action where more certainly exists.
I agree. And so many are still to willing to accept that Big Oil FUD regarding nuclear, not knowing they are still doing big oil a favor as it grows its natural gas market.
It's not. Almost no one burns oil for electricity. >
To add to my other reply, going back to the days when this propoganda was full force, oil was used heavily for home heating, for trains and ships, for heat in process plants, and as I said for electrical generation where oil generators were used the world over, particularly where coal supply was limited. That combined energy market was absolutely huge.
So yes, nuclear was seen as a big threat to big oil.
Don't just blame the court. In some respect, they are doing their job enforcing an approved patent. The real culprit is the patent office allowing just trivia to be patented. At some level, the courts can overrule, but it is harder than enforcing.
Mid east countries are also investing in nuclear, also leaving us in the dust. They became too dependent on burning oil, so that have some catching up to do first in that regard.
There is no 'remaining 20%", it is being used by the hypothetical fuel production plant.
Forgetting the 'total grid overcapacity' scenario and coming back to where we are today, if a solar panel is in excess of 'grid capacity', society has the choice of using it to offset coal or gas generation, or to apply it in some other means as you suggest. The cost/benefit of choosing to offset coal even if you pay the fixed costs of the coal plant sitting unused is much better than any of the other scenarios if the goal is to offset/reduce carbon emissions. It is not even close.
>Short peaks of overproduction for solar plants tend to run to several hours, which would be fine for a synfuel plant as described in the original article.>
No, solar overproduction may last 5 or 6 hours in the summer, but it drops to one or two in the winter, and practically none on cloudy days. Fuel process plants take time to heat up just to start processing, which can be on the order of hours depending of facility size, unless you have even more capacity to do rapid heatup. Startup cycle increases means efficiency reduction. You really want to run fuel production as close to 24/7 as you can or you are increasing cost significantly.
Overcapacity is the installation of enough solar (or wind) to carry the entire grid demand. This assumes storage capability for solar at least. For wind, it is the 'wind is always blowing somewhere' scenario.
If Grid MWH/day = X, you need enough overcapacity so that on cloudy days in winter, you still get enough energy from the panels or windmills to meet supply. That could mean as much as 15X depending on how you do the math and how much infrastructure you really have. For wind you might get down in the 5 to 10X range.
If you assume a mix with something like nuclear and gas, it gets much easier, much less expensive. That is not the scenario hinted at the post I was responding to. Your individual scenario is a different point altogether, as you are looking at our scenario, not the whole world scenario. Your overcapacity right now is purely incentive driven. And you overcapacity is only available for short periods of time, you can ramp up a fuel production facility for just a few hours a day, not operate it on cloudy days, etc. Its just going to sit there unused over 80% of the time.
And yes, power companies are fighting back due to systemic cost concerns. But mostly to at least recover fixed costs and get the proper value of the backup generation and grid they are supplying to residential solar users. We all pay one way or another, the power companies are just a piece of it. Right now, the market has been skewed by incentives and that includes a tremendous undervaluation of reliable reserve, which has a much higher value in this whole process than many seem to think or at least want to pay for (IMHO). That is a different topic that what I was addressing though.
Their research into where to drill for oil also had great uncertainty, but that didn't stop them.
Lots of companies did research in their own fields to support their industry, so I am not sure of your point? Drilling uncertainty had a known cost/risk associated, they price that into their product.
No, you don't want to go broke installing massive solar capacity. It will take so long and so much money we'll never achieve CO2 reduction goals. Wind is a much better option. The best is a mix of wind, solar, nuclear, varying depending on country, and locale.
You also must consider replacement. If you install 15 times overcapacity of solar, and you replace the entire thing every 30 years, you'll remain under heavy financial burden. That does not even consider the great oversimplification some have in their minds about what it would take to modify the grid to accommodate such a scheme. Costs of adding transmission lines alone would be brutal (not just material cost, but land acquisition, enviro studies, NIMBY and envrio lawsuits and associated delays, etc).
And will all that, you can't just ramp up a 'synfuel' plant for the short peaks of overproduction. You must plan that into your total capacity and multiply it for overcapacity, otherwise you'll have mounting fixed costs on the fuel production equipment even further raising the cost of the produced fuel.
Those are just a few of the cost issues at hand. The world does not have unlimited funding. I think some folks prefer the dream of "all solar/all wind" over actual CO2 reduction progress.
To be fair, there was great uncertainty about those findings at the time. We have struggled to build good models to the day.
OTOH, they certainly were not going to back down and hand things over to nuclear. Their propaganda machine was already in full gear, and these finding would undermine their efforts;
Nuclear power’s main energy competitor is of course Big Oil, which had no problem with nuclear weapons, but was not happy to lose its grip on the world’s major source of energy. Nuclear energy was not under their control, requiring by definition major government involvement and regulation of the industry. Its widespread use would leave Big Oil with falling profits, and would mean the end of Big Oil’s economic hegemony.
This led to a bizarre situation where oil companies both founded and funded ecology-related organisations, including the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and others to protest the peaceful use of nuclear power. These groups have all received backing from the oil industry, notably Atlantic Richfield Oil and BP
$10 is quite optimistic. In fact, they don't even claim it is possible, they cleverly pose a hypothetical question with that stuck in. In fact, the example is really stupid because if they only are supplying a tiny fraction of total energy use, why even bother to begin with?
The thing is, if you're using solar and have no grid use for the generated power at the time of generation, does it really matter how efficient your conversion is?
What matters is overall systemic cost. You should not install massive overcapacity of solar. It would be tremendously expensive, then you'd have to pay even more for inefficient recovery of some of the overcapacity. If we want to make real progress offsetting CO2, we can't waste our money like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you read the article?
So, what are you contending is not true?
1) Wind farm owners get taxpayer help with constructi0n?
2) Wind farms get forced production credits?
3) Forced production credits at higher rates have greater impact on the market?
They are all quite true, and verifiable. The reason there is surplus power is due to the forced production credits, otherwise they would shut down and not produce during those periods.
Just to enter some real numbers into the discussion, I checked ERCOT annual demand for 2014, Mid to late Sept early mornings show loads to be in the lowest 10% generally, with March and Oct early morning hours really being lower. So you are right, it is not the very lowest, but it is close.
Can you name a time when you expect much lower demand overall?
And that market is also heavily impacted by build incentives and production credits. So in that sense it isn't truly free. I'm not suggesting it should be, BTW.
Which is great news! Texas is ahead of the world now in being prepared for the huge increase in electricity usage that good electric cars will cause.
Why? Because for a brief moment when electrical usage was at it very lowest (3 am, September day, little heating or cooling) and wind average is blowing at record highs they can supply 30 of demand? How is that world leading? They did accomplish showing how skewed the market had become, that is a form of leadership.
Wind farm owners get lots of taxpayer help paying for the construction of the wind farm, then forced production credits means they get paid if power is needed or not. Apply this to any generation technology and the result would be pretty much the same.
The model is even worse in place where the grid is forced to purchase power a even higher rates.
In this model, who pays for the reliable backup?
The point is that back when nuclear was still 'new', there was a lot of talk about all kinds of uses that could displace oil. There certainly was a reason for big oil to attack nuclear. It matters not how well founded their fears were. I didn't get any sense from your post that you understood that.
You are not viewing through the lens of yesteryear, and are minimizing just how big the market overlap was. I was never even remotely hinting oil would be completely displaced, or even mostly.
Well, I don't agree with the suppositions of the article. And yes you seem reasonably aware that the holy grail of all wind and/or solar just is not feasible. But I'll clarify my position, I am not for the most energy efficient and not necessarily the most cost efficient. I am for the approach that I think gives us the best chance of succeeding in significantly reducing carbon emissions. To give us the best chance, cost factors, social factors, and other challenges must be accounted for all the while not depending on hope for the big breakthrough instead of taking action where more certainly exists.
I agree. And so many are still to willing to accept that Big Oil FUD regarding nuclear, not knowing they are still doing big oil a favor as it grows its natural gas market.
It's not. Almost no one burns oil for electricity. >
To add to my other reply, going back to the days when this propoganda was full force, oil was used heavily for home heating, for trains and ships, for heat in process plants, and as I said for electrical generation where oil generators were used the world over, particularly where coal supply was limited. That combined energy market was absolutely huge.
So yes, nuclear was seen as a big threat to big oil.
Don't just blame the court. In some respect, they are doing their job enforcing an approved patent. The real culprit is the patent office allowing just trivia to be patented. At some level, the courts can overrule, but it is harder than enforcing.
Mid east countries are also investing in nuclear, also leaving us in the dust. They became too dependent on burning oil, so that have some catching up to do first in that regard.
And we, as humans, must also accept risks and trade-offs, and objectively assess them, and not spread FUD.
There is no 'remaining 20%", it is being used by the hypothetical fuel production plant.
Forgetting the 'total grid overcapacity' scenario and coming back to where we are today, if a solar panel is in excess of 'grid capacity', society has the choice of using it to offset coal or gas generation, or to apply it in some other means as you suggest. The cost/benefit of choosing to offset coal even if you pay the fixed costs of the coal plant sitting unused is much better than any of the other scenarios if the goal is to offset/reduce carbon emissions. It is not even close.
>Short peaks of overproduction for solar plants tend to run to several hours, which would be fine for a synfuel plant as described in the original article.>
No, solar overproduction may last 5 or 6 hours in the summer, but it drops to one or two in the winter, and practically none on cloudy days. Fuel process plants take time to heat up just to start processing, which can be on the order of hours depending of facility size, unless you have even more capacity to do rapid heatup. Startup cycle increases means efficiency reduction. You really want to run fuel production as close to 24/7 as you can or you are increasing cost significantly.
That is not a comparable cost unit. Try MWHrs/Year.
Overcapacity is the installation of enough solar (or wind) to carry the entire grid demand. This assumes storage capability for solar at least. For wind, it is the 'wind is always blowing somewhere' scenario.
If Grid MWH/day = X, you need enough overcapacity so that on cloudy days in winter, you still get enough energy from the panels or windmills to meet supply. That could mean as much as 15X depending on how you do the math and how much infrastructure you really have. For wind you might get down in the 5 to 10X range.
If you assume a mix with something like nuclear and gas, it gets much easier, much less expensive. That is not the scenario hinted at the post I was responding to. Your individual scenario is a different point altogether, as you are looking at our scenario, not the whole world scenario. Your overcapacity right now is purely incentive driven. And you overcapacity is only available for short periods of time, you can ramp up a fuel production facility for just a few hours a day, not operate it on cloudy days, etc. Its just going to sit there unused over 80% of the time.
And yes, power companies are fighting back due to systemic cost concerns. But mostly to at least recover fixed costs and get the proper value of the backup generation and grid they are supplying to residential solar users. We all pay one way or another, the power companies are just a piece of it. Right now, the market has been skewed by incentives and that includes a tremendous undervaluation of reliable reserve, which has a much higher value in this whole process than many seem to think or at least want to pay for (IMHO). That is a different topic that what I was addressing though.
At the time, oil was used much more in electrical generation. Also, oil had a big stake in coal. They worked hand in hand.
Their research into where to drill for oil also had great uncertainty, but that didn't stop them.
Lots of companies did research in their own fields to support their industry, so I am not sure of your point? Drilling uncertainty had a known cost/risk associated, they price that into their product.
No, you don't want to go broke installing massive solar capacity. It will take so long and so much money we'll never achieve CO2 reduction goals. Wind is a much better option. The best is a mix of wind, solar, nuclear, varying depending on country, and locale.
You also must consider replacement. If you install 15 times overcapacity of solar, and you replace the entire thing every 30 years, you'll remain under heavy financial burden. That does not even consider the great oversimplification some have in their minds about what it would take to modify the grid to accommodate such a scheme. Costs of adding transmission lines alone would be brutal (not just material cost, but land acquisition, enviro studies, NIMBY and envrio lawsuits and associated delays, etc).
And will all that, you can't just ramp up a 'synfuel' plant for the short peaks of overproduction. You must plan that into your total capacity and multiply it for overcapacity, otherwise you'll have mounting fixed costs on the fuel production equipment even further raising the cost of the produced fuel.
Those are just a few of the cost issues at hand. The world does not have unlimited funding. I think some folks prefer the dream of "all solar/all wind" over actual CO2 reduction progress.
OTOH, they certainly were not going to back down and hand things over to nuclear. Their propaganda machine was already in full gear, and these finding would undermine their efforts;
Nuclear power’s main energy competitor is of course Big Oil, which had no problem with nuclear weapons, but was not happy to lose its grip on the world’s major source of energy. Nuclear energy was not under their control, requiring by definition major government involvement and regulation of the industry. Its widespread use would leave Big Oil with falling profits, and would mean the end of Big Oil’s economic hegemony.
This led to a bizarre situation where oil companies both founded and funded ecology-related organisations, including the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and others to protest the peaceful use of nuclear power. These groups have all received backing from the oil industry, notably Atlantic Richfield Oil and BP
http://www.globalresearch.ca/b...
Of course, many still choose to believe and support big oil's agenda to the day.
$10 is quite optimistic. In fact, they don't even claim it is possible, they cleverly pose a hypothetical question with that stuck in. In fact, the example is really stupid because if they only are supplying a tiny fraction of total energy use, why even bother to begin with?
add to that the need to transport hydrogen to vs electrical distribution via the grid. We have infrastructure already for the latter.
The thing is, if you're using solar and have no grid use for the generated power at the time of generation, does it really matter how efficient your conversion is?
What matters is overall systemic cost. You should not install massive overcapacity of solar. It would be tremendously expensive, then you'd have to pay even more for inefficient recovery of some of the overcapacity. If we want to make real progress offsetting CO2, we can't waste our money like that.