Are current renewable energy strategies worth it?

[aleCcowaN]

Does someone here think that CNG implies changing the gas container when recharged?

 

[macdoc]

I'd count this one as a win...

Introducing The First-Ever World Cup Stadium Powered By Solar
BY KILEY KROH JUNE 14, 2014 AT 12:40 PM UPDATED: JUNE 14, 2014 AT 4:50 PM

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/14/3449122/solar-powering-world-cup/

this kind of topical high profile project helps.

 

[macdoc]

some progress...

This Island Will Charge Its Lake-Sized Batteries with Wind Power


Written by
BRIAN MERCHANT
@bcmerchant
[email protected]
April 28, 2014 // 02:30 PM EST

Two hundred miles off the coast of Spain, a small island marked by a massive volcanic crater is about to become a case study for an ultramodern, zero impact society.

Over the last twelve years, engineers, researchers, and residents of El Hierro, the smallest of Spain's Canary Islands, have been building one of the world's most interesting living laboratories for sustainable off-grid living. They erected five towering wind turbines, built a huge reservoir that works as a battery, and installed three desalination plants that will let the tiny outpost harvest its drinking water from the sea. Now, the $75 million project is almost ready to be brought online.

The entire pioneering system is slated to begin its stab at modern closed-loop living at the end of June. While there are a number of solar power-reliant island communities, the press has dubbed El Hierro the first to live entirely off of the wind. Its only serious predecessor is Samso, a Danish island that's also powered almost entirely by wind power, but unlike Hierro, it's still wired up to the mainland's coal-fired grid.

more
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/th...teries-with-wind-power?trk_source=recommended

 

[macdoc]

Yes Alec propane containers are swapped empty for full all the time.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Yes Alec propane containers are swapped empty for full all the time.

Not in cars. Hardly ever with methane. It would be preposterous.

"Swapped empty for full" is what is done "all the time" with small butane containers for carvans, households in rural settings, town outskirts or out of the grid because they don't comply with regulations.

Not knowing that is dangerous. In 2000, the first fatalities caused by CNG in Argentina (began in 1987) were a French couple who made the assistants to plug 200-atmosphere CNG to their camper's strange foreigner 80-atmosphere butane container and had the coroners and police working one week to identify them. Touring South America in camper happened to be the ride of their lives. All four employees at the petrol station were charged with manslaughter as they knew quite well they were prohibited to plug the system into any container lacking official plaques and authorizing stickers.

 

[macdoc]

A good step from an unlikely location....
Coal remains the first fossil fuel to limit.

Thanks to new investments in natural gas and utility-scale solar energy, El Paso Electric, a Texas utility with nearly 400,000 customers, announced on Monday that its electricity mix will be free from coal by 2016. Thanks to successive investments in large solar projects, EPE has doubled its utility-scale solar portfolio in less than one year. “Our west Texas and southern New Mexico region has the right kind of sun for optimal solar energy production, making this region the ‘goldilocks’ in terms of climate, humidity and heat characteristics that allow us to expand our renewable portfolio with cost-effective technologies and reliable energy resources,” said Tom Shockley, Chief Executive Officer at El Paso Electric, said in a statement.

The utility signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with the massive Macho Springs solar plant in New Mexico, a 50 megawatt (MW) facility with the capacity to power more than 18,000 homes.

According to the agreement, signed last year, EPE would buy solar power from Macho Springs for 5.79 cents a kilowatt-hour — less than half the 12.8 cents per kilowatt-hour average price for electricity from new coal plants, according to Bloomberg.

In February, EPE signed a 30-year power purchase agreement with Newman Solar to build a 10 MW solar facility in El Paso that is expected to come online by the end of 2014 and power an additional 3,800 homes.
Deciding “it is in the best interest of its 395,000 customers,” EPE plans to sell off its seven percent stake in the Four Corners coal plant, located on Navajo Nation land near Farmington, New Mexico. The plant came in at number 15 on Environment America’s list of the nation’s top 100 dirtiest power plants, emitting 13.8 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

snip

According to the agreement, signed last year, EPE would buy solar power from Macho Springs for 5.79 cents a kilowatt-hour — less than half the 12.8 cents per kilowatt-hour average price for electricity from new coal plants[/HILITE], according to Bloomberg.

wow - that is a stunning figure even without taking coal's environmental damage into account in the cost of power. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/17/3449604/texas-utility-solar/ Just need the storage....almost seems a solar plus gas turbine for dark hours is a decent strategy until storage improves.

 

[macdoc]

And another wind surprise out of Texas..

It turns out wind power isn’t just a source of clean energy — it also helps protect consumers from price volatility. Texas got the benefit of that on Tuesday, when the state’s wind generation kept its electricity spot price down even as heat waves drove it up in other regions of the country.

Spot prices are the cost of any good or service at a particular time and place. And according to Bloomberg, spot prices on the wholesale electricity market jumped drastically on the PJM Interconnection LLC grid yesterday, thanks to a wave of high temperatures. The grid covers 13 states in the mid-Atlantic region, and by 3pm on Tuesday prices on the PJM’s western hub jumped $44.27 per megawatt-hour to land on an average of $84.82. On the eastern hub, prices shot up $26.64 — a 50 percent increase — to land on $79.86 per megawatt-hour.

But down south in Texas, spot power actually fell 48 cents to hit $46.09 per megawatt-hour at the same time. That was despite temperature highs throughout the state that approached or exceeded the sweltering 96°F that Washington, DC saw that day.

Bloomberg reported that the price drop — or more precisely, the lack of a price hike — was accompanied by a level of wind power generation on the Texas grid that topped forecasts. That grid is largely run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. (ERCOT), which reported that “wind turbines produced an average of 7,447 megawatts for the hour ending at 2 p.m. local time, surpassing the day-ahead forecast by 77 percent, or 3,237 megawatts.”

Overall, wind power provided 9.9 percent of the electricity used in the ERCOT region in 2013.
Wind power is already competitive with natural gas and cheaper than coal in many areas of the country, and a recent study by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) — an industry trade group — showed states with the most wind capacity actually saw electricity prices drop slightly from 2008 to 2013. Those prices rose almost 8 percent in other states. The findings are backed up by a host of other studies.

mote
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/18/3450656/texas-wind-prices-heat/


I am not a fan of wind but hard to argue with those numbers..

 

[aleCcowaN]

Overall, wind power provided 9.9 percent of the electricity used in the ERCOT region in 2013.

That's indeed a bigger share than Germany's 9%.

This year, wind power will surpass 4% of global generation.

 

[macdoc]

I'm always suspect of wind power published numbers ( tho the article's numbers were pretty decent).

Installed capacity versus actual performance - reality shows about 22% of capacity is realized.
So Alec ...is that 4% of global generation capacity?? or actual produced power.
A rather larger difference.

 

[aleCcowaN]

I'm always suspect of wind power published numbers ( tho the article's numbers were pretty decent).

Installed capacity versus actual performance - reality shows about 22% of capacity is realized.
So Alec ...is that 4% of global generation capacity?? or actual produced power.
A rather larger difference.

Actually produced. It was just a bit above 1% in 2008. Since then, installed capacity has tripled and most importantly development has moved from countries with low capacity factors, like inland Germany or Spain, to locations with high capacity factors, like offshore farms and region with the adequate climate all over the world.

It is expected to reach 6-7% by 2020. A pity, it could be 9 or 10. Anyway, now solar is expected a more spectacular growth.

 

[macdoc]

That's impressive - we have quite a bit of capacity in Ontario but there is lots of opposition for specious reasons. Our feed in tarrifs were too high and the province did not negotiate all that well with Samsung - still we have eliminated coal from 25% to zero in a decade without adding nukes tho there are some on-call gas turbines.

With low cost hydro from Quebec coming online in the next few years I can see not upgrading the nuclear fleet tho at some point they should add reactors to to existing facilities.

 

[aleCcowaN]

It's a pity. Though Canada -your home and native land- is not a good region for solar, wind power can get impressive yields everywhere there, specially in Newfoundland and Labrador, with its capacity factors up to 62% only matched by Argentine Patagonia. Maybe there're some problems with ice and rain that gets frozen I'm not aware of. Cold climates are hard to imagine to me. This morning there was 28°F here and I was shivering just by looking through the window (now it's 51).

I have to say that regarding windpower, Argentina is one of the most underdeveloped countries. The reason is simple: corruption. There was a plan approved 8 or 9 years ago to let INVAP -a pseudo private company gathering the best scientific crop of the country, currently developing technologies mostly for the Unites States- to develop departing from their small size windmills, similar products than Vesta's, building the factory and placing 50 MW of wind power in some 24-30 months. The cost was peanuts (some 64 millions if I'm not mistaken). It was blocked simply because no backhander is possible to get from INVAP. In the meantime our new nuclear power plant and one of the old ones needing a refit, both using similar technology that CANDU, swallowed two or three thousand million dollars because, guess what. By the way, when the new plant starts operating, the old one will be shut for the refitting, so thousands of millions and still no additional power.

 

[macdoc]

But Labrador has copious untapped hydro and are not near the population centres which negates any potential.

This however off NL is in process.

Corner Brook, NL – Beothuk Energy Inc. (“Beothuk”), an international company headquartered in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, announces its intention to develop large-scale offshore wind farms to meet the energy demands of Atlantic Canada and the North Eastern United States.
Beothuk and the Corner Brook Port Corporation are presently in the evaluation and preplanning stages of identifying a suitable port location for development as a manufacturing facility for offshore wind farm gravity based structures.

some nice jobs for NL as well.

Here is where we are..

The Canadian Wind Energy Market 2013
June 27, 2013 Renewables
Canada: A Growing and Stable Wind Energy Market

By Robert Hornung, PresidentCanadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA)

Eye of the WindWind energy’s growth in Canada continues to defy recessionary forces. Last year, 2012, saw wind energy’s contribution of clean power to Canada’s electricity supply grow by nearly 20 per cent to just over 6,200 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity, maintaining Canada’s position as one of the world’s leading wind energy markets.

Every 1,000 MW of new wind energy drives about $2.5 billion in investment, creates 10,500 person-years of employment, and provides enough clean power every year for over 300,000 Canadian homes.

New wind energy projects were commissioned in 2012 in: British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Northwest Territories and Nova Scotia.

Close to 40 per cent of Canada’s new wind energy capacity in 2012 was installed in Quebec, while Ontario continues to lead the country with over 2,000 MW of total installed wind energy capacity now in place.

This past year also saw some important firsts for wind in Canada. For example, the Diavik Mine began operating the first wind farm in the Northwest Territories – a 9.2 MW wind project that will help significantly reduce its reliance on diesel fuel.

In Ontario, the M’Chigeeng First Nation commissioned the first wind farm in Canada to be 100 per cent community and First Nation owned.

http://www.resourcesquarterly.com/the-canadian-wind-energy-market-2013/

With some storage .....my opinion of wind will rise.

My problem is the question is it best use of public funds.

I have no issue with unsubsidized wind.

 

[aleCcowaN]

It depends on what a subsidy is. I don't know of any underground/metro/subway system that is totally privately both built from 0 and operated. Such systems are so costly that they require the government to capitalize them.

Wind is something similar: it's extremely cheap, except cost of capital. 1 Kw costs 2,000 usd, produces 2,000 to 4,000 kwh a year with maybe a cost of 20 or 30 usd for work, indirect expenses and use of land. You have to add 100 usd of depreciation -not real, but in the books- and capital cost, another 100 usd with a rate of 5%. Subsidies usually are on capital costs, either paying part of it or paying on excess of certain interest rate -so reducing uncertainty and risk-.

Let's charge a modicum tax of 50 usd per ton of carbon dioxide released. That makes electricity generated with fuel oil some 30% more expensive, 70% if its generated with natural gas, and who knows if we used coal. Then any subsidy can be cut including those very easy to get fat subsidies from overseas payable with environmental crisis and granted without even saying "please" and "thank you".

 

[Trakar]

But Labrador has copious untapped hydro and are not near the population centres which negates any potential...

Labrador! I haven't had any Labrador (warning, cheech and chong reference and link) in a long time!

I have to wonder if many of these types of locations (abundant potential renewable energy resources located far away from population and industrial centers) couldn't be developed as industrial locations to take advantage of discounted electrical power for industries which consume vast amounts of electrical power, or even to help produce net zero carbon fuels which could be cheaply transported to population centers or exported.

 

[macdoc]

Certainly aluminum refineries already do.
That's one reason I'm kind of excited about the aluminum/air batteries. Very high energy density and sourcing can be from off peak power and remote plus straight forward recycle into the aluminum stream.
It has the elements of a strong component of sustainable industrial.

 

[Trakar]

It depends on what a subsidy is. I don't know of any underground/metro/subway system that is totally privately both built from 0 and operated. Such systems are so costly that they require the government to capitalize them.

Wind is something similar: it's extremely cheap, except cost of capital. 1 Kw costs 2,000 usd, produces 2,000 to 4,000 kwh a year with maybe a cost of 20 or 30 usd for work, indirect expenses and use of land. You have to add 100 usd of depreciation -not real, but in the books- and capital cost, another 100 usd with a rate of 5%. Subsidies usually are on capital costs, either paying part of it or paying on excess of certain interest rate -so reducing uncertainty and risk-.

Let's charge a modicum tax of 50 usd per ton of carbon dioxide released. That makes electricity generated with fuel oil some 30% more expensive, 70% if its generated with natural gas, and who knows if we used coal. Then any subsidy can be cut including those very easy to get fat subsidies from overseas payable with environmental crisis and granted without even saying "please" and "thank you".

I like the general gist of this proposal, are you proposing a global system or a system that each nation should enact and enforce independently?

 

[Trakar]

Certainly aluminum refineries already do.
That's one reason I'm kind of excited about the aluminum/air batteries. Very high energy density and sourcing can be from off peak power and remote plus straight forward recycle into the aluminum stream.
It has the elements of a strong component of sustainable industrial.

Indeed, as well, there are numerous CO2+electricity ---> net zero carbon fuel schemes that can be used to extend the utility and practical lives of our current existing transportation technologies. In conjunction with Alec's carbon tax, big steps to help cope and deal with the conditions we are already committed to.

 

[macdoc]

Behind a paywall

Energy trilemma: Can power be cheap, clean and secure?

18 June 2014 by Michael Brooks
Magazine issue 2974. Subscribe and save

When it comes to electricity supply, we're caught in a vicious triangle. A bold scheme that pays big business to switch off could be part of the solution

IF YOU have ever played rock-paper-scissors, you'll know the frustration of having no sure winning strategy. Whip out a perfect pair of sharp scissors, and the rock might blunt them. Then again, paper smothers rock, and scissors cut paper. There's no win-win.

So pity those pitting their wits against our energy demands. As consumers, we want energy to be affordable. As a society, we want our supplies to be secure and reliable. And as responsible global citizens, we want power to be clean, green and low-carbon, too. But these demands trump each other in different ways. "It's called the energy trilemma,

http://www.newscientist.com/article...emma-can-power-be-cheap-clean-and-secure.html

ah here we go - looks like some good info

http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/2013/world-energy-trilemma-2013/

 

[aleCcowaN]

I like the general gist of this proposal, are you proposing a global system or a system that each nation should enact and enforce independently?

It's outside the scope of this thread, but I'm thinking in carbon tariffs on every product and service, an exception to the anti-dumping international rules allowing governments to subsidize them, and then, each government doing what they see fits about how to recover the deficit or use the surplus.

Personally I have kind a ban on products from the USA, Australia, Canada, and now I'm partially starting with China. Of course I can't do without "Intel inside", but there's a lot that I could replace or induce others to replace. There are countries generating 1 ton of CO2 per each 400 usd they sell, and other countries generating 1 ton of CO2 per each 3,000 usd. A tariff on carbon emissions will make attractive the products of the second country, no matter those 3,000 may came from coal exports and those 400 from pv panel exports. Each country, from great dane to chihuahua must assume and dispose of its own shinola. All the carbon trade sounds theoretically good and fair, but it is thought as good business combined with the avoidance of national responsibility, or the good o'le "let's make some money while we fail to deliver".