You're not defending: 'Bush and co were a morons, look at the mess'?
All I'm saying is that this is right at the top of their playbook. Your hate is blinding you to the possibility that this isn't the calamity 'they' say it is.
No healthy power market (which is to say, no pool more than a few years old) has 'dominant suppliers'.
'Dominant suppliers' is the problem power pools solve, history says quite nicely. They are also frequently being used to fix incredibly fucked and undercapitalized socialist grids, like the ones you appear to dream of. Of course you have to throw the socialist out and hire engineers first.
It will take longer to break-up some of the transmission chokeholds (e.g. PG&E owns the SF bay area because of its transmission. SFMUD etc wouldn't change a thing until the transmission constraint is fixed.) but that will happen too.
The whole point of a power pool is to decrease barriers to entry. If the existing players are happy with their profits, it will take new market entrants to drive down the cost curves. You are pointing out a big problem with rate base.
Which greenies will take as an excuse to spend more on uneconomical and unhelpful renewable peakers.
CA central valley grows a ton of vegetables etc. But those farms are big businesses.
The farmers markets here are almost all people hustling up some cash. Not actual farmers.
If you're willing to pay, you can get heirloom tomatoes at the store. But they taste like ass as they were also picked green.
I don't grow anything in the garden unless I just can't get equivalents. It's mostly Tomatoes and Trainwreck. A few beans and corn. Fruit trees are another issue, there is nothing like a really ripe plum.
Ca was not the first power pool and operates under fairly normal pool rules. Basically the same as Ireland, England and wales, New England, Texas, Australia, Alberta etc etc.
It is how electric grids are being run world wide. Sorry.
CAs pool was ripe for market manipulation because rate base had badly underbuilt generation. PG&E and S. Cal Edison are most to blame for the first summers mess. They were told to divest from generation, with the expectation that the legal process would take years and the market would be operating before the generators were sold. The executives (who held options, not stock) realized they had just been ordered to 'bet the company' and agreed to do it immediately. Knowing the odds were about 50/50. Ether they: a) bankrupted their employer or b) their options turn to gold. It was 'a'.
The 'stupid spot pricing network' is everywhere. They are called power pools. Should I start listing them? (California, Alberta, England and Wales, Ireland, Australia, Malaysia, Western Europe...etc etc) If you aren't living in one now, you will be soon.
How else to you attract investment without price signals? Rate base clearly was _not_ working (Don't get me started, with no competition and guaranteed rate of return utilities run old equipment until it falls over, way past its economic life. While spending money remodelling the president's office every other year and getting a guaranteed profit on that cost.)
Bid based pools are the present. If you have a pool, you have a spot market.
What? I bet you are operating in a wholesale bid based power pool. Germany right? Do I have to bring up spot pricing data at various European interchange points?
Ratebase (what you apparently like) is going away everywhere. It's just a mess. Many utilities are dragging it out in their service areas while participating in neighbors pools, but regulatory capture has limits. This process is 20 years on now.
The law can't do a damn thing but fine the load serving entity when they fail to maintain reserves. Laws don't demand violations of the laws of physics, at least not good laws.
Keeping grids running is difficult. There are already financial incentives to keep the grid stable and FERC rules that will put anybody who 'deliberately takes actions to compromise system stability' out of the market (which forces them to sell all assets).
Electric markets are highly regulated and transparent (in the case of power pools anyhow), but you can't do much beyond making it cost the load serving entity money when they don't maintain adequate reserves. What are you going to do, put someone in jail because they couldn't buy enough power?
Rate base is going away and being replaced by power pools _everywhere_. America, Europe, Australia, Malaysia, Canada etc etc.
Even when it's manipulated and gamed, it's still better than rate base.
Most of the real messes where made under rate base, but revealed by price blowups after pools start operating. e.g. CA was gamed, but the reason it could be gamed was rate base badly underbuilt generation.
S. Australia clearly misallocated construction funds due to public pressure. It's the cost of being a publicly owned utility and now they get financially sodomized for a while. That's how it's supposed to work.
I don't think you understand how power markets work.
What monopoly? ETSA (Electric Trust of South Australia) is a load serving monopoly in S. Australia operating in a power pool. It is not a monopoly over all Australia.
It's also the place I saw the single most mismanaged, slowest network in my entire consulting carrier. Granting 20 years ago now. Nice folks, but what a fucked mess. Made doing anything very difficult.
That and there are no farmers at the farmers market. Just people with pickups that buy a load of vegetables at the same wholesaler that supplies your grocery.
American cars have also gotten heavier since about 90.
Mostly from rollover crash standards for the pillars and roof. It's also why you can't see around the a-pillars anymore. Congress might have expected the car companies to use stronger steel structures, but they used more of the folded sheet metal instead. The a-pillars used to be called 'invisible' as they were narrower than the distance between most people's eyes.
Your argument is based on a false premise. Fuel is not the only product of corn grown for fuel. High protein feed is what's left of grain after you extract the carbs for alcohol.
Bush's cabinet was made up of the same people that managed the Iran/Iraq war under Reagan.
If you think they never thought of stalemating Sunni/Shia, you are deluded. Of course they couldn't talk openly about such plans, then or now.
Why would we want to stop it? When two of your enemies are fighting the last thing you want to do is stop it. You help whoever is losing just enough to restore balance. If you can't stomach helping one side, when 'your'* side starts to close in on the win, cut their support.
* the side you picked, obviously neither side is your ally.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not defending: 'Bush and co were a morons, look at the mess'?
All I'm saying is that this is right at the top of their playbook. Your hate is blinding you to the possibility that this isn't the calamity 'they' say it is.
No healthy power market (which is to say, no pool more than a few years old) has 'dominant suppliers'.
'Dominant suppliers' is the problem power pools solve, history says quite nicely. They are also frequently being used to fix incredibly fucked and undercapitalized socialist grids, like the ones you appear to dream of. Of course you have to throw the socialist out and hire engineers first.
It will take longer to break-up some of the transmission chokeholds (e.g. PG&E owns the SF bay area because of its transmission. SFMUD etc wouldn't change a thing until the transmission constraint is fixed.) but that will happen too.
The whole point of a power pool is to decrease barriers to entry. If the existing players are happy with their profits, it will take new market entrants to drive down the cost curves. You are pointing out a big problem with rate base.
Which greenies will take as an excuse to spend more on uneconomical and unhelpful renewable peakers.
Non-irrigated land in western Nebraska is pasture land at best.
You can get 730 acres for $550,000 today. http://www.landwatch.com/Nebra...
Nobody is growing corn for ethanol on that land. I think that price shift is money looking for a safe place to park.
Shifting goalposts I see.
Corn ethanol is _not_ net negative energy.
Any demand increase will raise prices. You clearly don't understand the argument though, your yes/no test is just stupid.
CA central valley grows a ton of vegetables etc. But those farms are big businesses.
The farmers markets here are almost all people hustling up some cash. Not actual farmers.
If you're willing to pay, you can get heirloom tomatoes at the store. But they taste like ass as they were also picked green.
I don't grow anything in the garden unless I just can't get equivalents. It's mostly Tomatoes and Trainwreck. A few beans and corn. Fruit trees are another issue, there is nothing like a really ripe plum.
Ca was not the first power pool and operates under fairly normal pool rules. Basically the same as Ireland, England and wales, New England, Texas, Australia, Alberta etc etc.
It is how electric grids are being run world wide. Sorry.
CAs pool was ripe for market manipulation because rate base had badly underbuilt generation. PG&E and S. Cal Edison are most to blame for the first summers mess. They were told to divest from generation, with the expectation that the legal process would take years and the market would be operating before the generators were sold. The executives (who held options, not stock) realized they had just been ordered to 'bet the company' and agreed to do it immediately. Knowing the odds were about 50/50. Ether they: a) bankrupted their employer or b) their options turn to gold. It was 'a'.
You don't like power pools? The price cap?
The 'stupid spot pricing network' is everywhere. They are called power pools. Should I start listing them? (California, Alberta, England and Wales, Ireland, Australia, Malaysia, Western Europe...etc etc) If you aren't living in one now, you will be soon.
How else to you attract investment without price signals? Rate base clearly was _not_ working (Don't get me started, with no competition and guaranteed rate of return utilities run old equipment until it falls over, way past its economic life. While spending money remodelling the president's office every other year and getting a guaranteed profit on that cost.)
Bid based pools are the present. If you have a pool, you have a spot market.
What? I bet you are operating in a wholesale bid based power pool. Germany right? Do I have to bring up spot pricing data at various European interchange points?
Ratebase (what you apparently like) is going away everywhere. It's just a mess. Many utilities are dragging it out in their service areas while participating in neighbors pools, but regulatory capture has limits. This process is 20 years on now.
The law can't do a damn thing but fine the load serving entity when they fail to maintain reserves. Laws don't demand violations of the laws of physics, at least not good laws.
You can pass a law that says 1+1=3. Won't help.
Keeping grids running is difficult. There are already financial incentives to keep the grid stable and FERC rules that will put anybody who 'deliberately takes actions to compromise system stability' out of the market (which forces them to sell all assets).
Electric markets are highly regulated and transparent (in the case of power pools anyhow), but you can't do much beyond making it cost the load serving entity money when they don't maintain adequate reserves. What are you going to do, put someone in jail because they couldn't buy enough power?
Europe let all of it's energy intensive industry leave. America still has some.
Rate base is going away and being replaced by power pools _everywhere_. America, Europe, Australia, Malaysia, Canada etc etc.
Even when it's manipulated and gamed, it's still better than rate base.
Most of the real messes where made under rate base, but revealed by price blowups after pools start operating. e.g. CA was gamed, but the reason it could be gamed was rate base badly underbuilt generation.
S. Australia clearly misallocated construction funds due to public pressure. It's the cost of being a publicly owned utility and now they get financially sodomized for a while. That's how it's supposed to work.
It's always dams vs fish.
No nation can dam up it entire watershed without wiping out many fisheries.
Not sure how many Salmon runs are in Iceland, I assume it's 'many'.
I did some consulting for ETSA when they were first setting up their power pool.
S. Australia is very much link constrained. This problem occurred when the S. Australia Victoria link was down.
At that price, the links were saturated, guaranteed. Unless the neighboring regions were also in spinning reserve violation and not allowed to export.
I don't think you understand how power markets work.
What monopoly? ETSA (Electric Trust of South Australia) is a load serving monopoly in S. Australia operating in a power pool. It is not a monopoly over all Australia.
It's also the place I saw the single most mismanaged, slowest network in my entire consulting carrier. Granting 20 years ago now. Nice folks, but what a fucked mess. Made doing anything very difficult.
That and there are no farmers at the farmers market. Just people with pickups that buy a load of vegetables at the same wholesaler that supplies your grocery.
No meat there so no problem.
I hope if there is a famine, all the remaining food is GMO.
American cars have also gotten heavier since about 90.
Mostly from rollover crash standards for the pillars and roof. It's also why you can't see around the a-pillars anymore. Congress might have expected the car companies to use stronger steel structures, but they used more of the folded sheet metal instead. The a-pillars used to be called 'invisible' as they were narrower than the distance between most people's eyes.
You're doing steak tartar wrong.
No big chunks of fat, but use the most marbled cut you can get.
Your argument is based on a false premise. Fuel is not the only product of corn grown for fuel. High protein feed is what's left of grain after you extract the carbs for alcohol.
Can't compete with cane sugar without subsidies or import duties.
If you see sugar beats being grown, you have a government supported industry. Yes that includes Germany and their sugar beats.
Sugar cane grows on marginal land, planting beats ties up good land.
The old school price for productive farmland was $1k/acre. For decades.
Show me an area in the USA where productive farmland was $250/acre after 1985. Not the bottom of a downspike, a steady price.
That's how science works.
Bush's cabinet was made up of the same people that managed the Iran/Iraq war under Reagan.
If you think they never thought of stalemating Sunni/Shia, you are deluded. Of course they couldn't talk openly about such plans, then or now.
Why would we want to stop it? When two of your enemies are fighting the last thing you want to do is stop it. You help whoever is losing just enough to restore balance. If you can't stomach helping one side, when 'your'* side starts to close in on the win, cut their support.
* the side you picked, obviously neither side is your ally.