Teabagger Whacktard Michelle Bachmann Promises $2 Gas

[Dog Town]

The point being, my house where it is, is only one grid. Exactly one. Most people are in the same boat in that regard.

Cool, I get what you mean. It read awkward the first time.

 

[Travis]

Do you think Obama favors "free market" policies regarding oil production in the United States?

Wouldn't want that...

As I've said before, Democratic policy is high gas prices. Apparently it is your preference also.

http://www.GasBuddy.com/gb_retail_p...Average&city2=&city3=&crude=n&tme=48&units=us

If history here repeats, which it certainly could, with no other equally dominant and influential economic change and current conditions, prices could again quickly plummet, which would, in-turn, alone, encourage significant economic growth, and remove high gas prices from the table of political issues and concern, and work out, temporarily, to Obama's great benefit. Which is why I consider it a real possibility, and yet another card which can be played by Them. And no one here would complain a word, despite all their previous words here...

I miss him. His first two here are totally wrong. The last actually has a lot right except that he expects low prices to cause "significant economic growth" while we've actually seen that low prices have devastated the economies of many oil producing areas of the USA.

Actually maybe we should talk about that. Didn't the people that constantly whined about wanting low prices realize what those low prices would do to domestic oil production which was largely only economical when prices were high?

 

[spin0]

Um, everyone here is on exactly the same grid. Exactly the same. We have a choice of paying a premium to be "100% renewable" but this is an accounting trick, nothing more. I suspect it is the same where you have the "choice" to buy from nukes, renewables, etc.

Of course you are on the same grid.

That is the purpose of having a grid in the first place: to have the ability to transfer power nationwide, and even across the borders.

Yet producing power, transferring power and consuming power are different things. Producing power and transferring power are separate services - just as producing content and transferring bits to your house are.

For example, the Financial Times writes paywalled articles or the Netflix sells you access to their services and you pay for that service. Yet it does not matter what part of the internet you're on, you pay them for the content and then you pay other companies for the service of transferring those bits into your home. And in that we're all in the same grid.

It's the same thing with electricity. Power companies produce power. Power transfer companies provide a separate service of transferring power to you. It's two different services just as taxi and road are different.

It only makes sense it all works on the same grid. All power transfer companies run their parts, and the parts are interconnected which forms the grid. Just as thousands of networks run by different companies and other players are interconnected and make the internet, or the roads are in the same grid for the taxi you for to drive on.

The product you pay the power transfer companies is the power transfer service. They bring the power into your house. Just as you pay your ISP for the service of transferring bits into your house.

And then there's power companies producing content into that grid: their product is the electric power they produce.

Someone somewhere is producing power into the grid. You make a deal with that company how much and at what price you buy the power they produce. The beaty of the grid is that it does not really matter where that company is as long as it's in the same grid: if there are no artificial market barriers then you can just call any power company anywhere and say "turn up the power I wanna buy 1000 kwh more from you".

And if someone is out there producing electric power with a windfarm, or a nuclear plant or whatever you can simply make a deal with that power company.

It does not matter where the electrons your household deals with originally came from. All that matters is that someone somewhere produces the amount of power you consume, and as long you are in the same grid you pay the company for doing that.

Then you have competition and different offers from power companies. Some power companies sell their power at a lower price than others. Or with different terms. Or with different methods such as 100% biofuel or 100% nuke. Or with different pricing schemes such as electricity spot price (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Pool_Spot) set by short term supply/demand.

Then you have to make a separate deal with another company for the power transfer service. Just as you have to make a deal with your ISP to transfer those bits from NYT or Netflix to you. It's a separate service: transferring/transporting things is different from producing things.

And that is where it gets tricky because often the power transfer company has a local monopoly in your area. And if they have a monopoly they're able to charge whatever they like for their service of transferring power in that area. And that is bad because it has the potential to hurt the consumers, and could lead to less secure power transfer as a transfer company could transfer its profits as short term dividends to shareholders instead of long term investements into the power grid.

And because of that you have to figure out a way to prevent the power transfer companies from abusing their local monopolies while keeping their business profitable. Not a simple task, but not impossible either.

Sorry for the long post,
TL;DR

Power generation and power transfer are separate services. Treat them as such. That will give the consumer more choise even in the case that power transfer is a local monopoly.

 

[spin0]

I remember another thread that went into how UK energy is done. It would take a nationalization of our power grid to make something similar happen in the US.

Not sure why would anyone want to mimic the UK when there are other options. I'm not saying their thing is bad but it isn't the only way.

Nationalization of power grid would be an uncertain policy: does not guarantee a better power transfer service at better price, often to the contrary. Yet it is not a totally insane policy per se as it is possible it might work in some conditions. But I believe there are other options before resorting to that most extreme one with uncertain outcomes, and it's diffucult for me to see how nationalization would be an improvement.

 

[sunmaster14]

Of course you are on the same grid.

That is the purpose of having a grid in the first place: to have the ability to transfer power nationwide, and even across the borders.

Yet producing power, transferring power and consuming power are different things. Producing power and transferring power are separate services - just as producing content and transferring bits to your house are.

I like your analogy to the internet, but I don't think it's correct. The current flowing through electrical grids follow Kirchhoff's Laws. Unlike data packets, power can't be directed precisely where you want it to go. Transmission constraints cause all kinds of complexities, and most grids now rely on Locational Marginal Pricing. I'm not completely sure what the companies selling power are actually doing, but I'm guessing they're really just purchasing and scheduling generation days or weeks or months in advance, from both generators they own and generators they don't, and using complex models to try to minimize what they pay to satisfy the load at various nodes, at various points in time, which the grid operator tells them they're responsible for.

In any case, I doubt very much that somebody can guarantee that a certain percentage of your power is coming from a particular source. I bet that if you have a "green" energy operator who buys 50% of its power from solar/wind/hydro, and then you sign up to buy power from it, you may very well be getting 100% of your power from coal, and end up reducing the "green" energy operator's ratio of green power to total power from 50% to 49.99%. That is, you may end up accomplishing nothing more than putting a little bit of extra profit in the green energy operator's pocket.

 

[ZiprHead]

xxx

 

[ZiprHead]

Thirty cent jump this afternoon. What happened?

That happens here every week, Thursday afternoon to early Friday morning. Gas stations do it, I assume, because that's when most people get paid and are most likely to fill their tanks.

 

[portlandatheist]

Of course you are on the same grid.

That is the purpose of having a grid in the first place: to have the ability to transfer power nationwide, and even across the borders.

Yet producing power, transferring power and consuming power are different things. Producing power and transferring power are separate services - just as producing content and transferring bits to your house are.

For example, the Financial Times writes paywalled articles or the Netflix sells you access to their services and you pay for that service. Yet it does not matter what part of the internet you're on, you pay them for the content and then you pay other companies for the service of transferring those bits into your home. And in that we're all in the same grid.

It's the same thing with electricity. Power companies produce power. Power transfer companies provide a separate service of transferring power to you. It's two different services just as taxi and road are different.

It only makes sense it all works on the same grid. All power transfer companies run their parts, and the parts are interconnected which forms the grid. Just as thousands of networks run by different companies and other players are interconnected and make the internet, or the roads are in the same grid for the taxi you for to drive on.

The product you pay the power transfer companies is the power transfer service. They bring the power into your house. Just as you pay your ISP for the service of transferring bits into your house.

And then there's power companies producing content into that grid: their product is the electric power they produce.

Someone somewhere is producing power into the grid. You make a deal with that company how much and at what price you buy the power they produce. The beaty of the grid is that it does not really matter where that company is as long as it's in the same grid: if there are no artificial market barriers then you can just call any power company anywhere and say "turn up the power I wanna buy 1000 kwh more from you".

And if someone is out there producing electric power with a windfarm, or a nuclear plant or whatever you can simply make a deal with that power company.

It does not matter where the electrons your household deals with originally came from. All that matters is that someone somewhere produces the amount of power you consume, and as long you are in the same grid you pay the company for doing that.

Then you have competition and different offers from power companies. Some power companies sell their power at a lower price than others. Or with different terms. Or with different methods such as 100% biofuel or 100% nuke. Or with different pricing schemes such as electricity spot price (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Pool_Spot) set by short term supply/demand.

Then you have to make a separate deal with another company for the power transfer service. Just as you have to make a deal with your ISP to transfer those bits from NYT or Netflix to you. It's a separate service: transferring/transporting things is different from producing things.

And that is where it gets tricky because often the power transfer company has a local monopoly in your area. And if they have a monopoly they're able to charge whatever they like for their service of transferring power in that area. And that is bad because it has the potential to hurt the consumers, and could lead to less secure power transfer as a transfer company could transfer its profits as short term dividends to shareholders instead of long term investements into the power grid.

And because of that you have to figure out a way to prevent the power transfer companies from abusing their local monopolies while keeping their business profitable. Not a simple task, but not impossible either.

Sorry for the long post,
TL;DR

Power generation and power transfer are separate services. Treat them as such. That will give the consumer more choise even in the case that power transfer is a local monopoly.

I understand your analogy of the roadway and cab and the internet and netflix but unlike a physical cab or a data packet, the electricity I receive only comes from a specific place only in the very abstract meaning or in terms of energy accounting, nothing actually changes on the physical grid. I suppose it would show my support for renewable energy but it really wouldn't change the fact that my power supply would still be coming from a mix of hydro, coal, etc.

 

[spin0]

I like your analogy to the internet, but I don't think it's correct..

Analogy is just an analogy and there's that. At best it may illustrate something.

The obvious diffrence in that analogy is that every single bit is an individual and you need every one of them to have a correct message, while the electrons or differences in the electric potential are not individuals - they're all just the same and measured merely as a statistic.

The current flowing through electrical grids follow Kirchhoff's Laws. Unlike data packets, power can't be directed precisely where you want it to go.

Which is a good thing as that does not matter as it comes to electric power. What matters is:

1.Someone produces power.

2.Someone transfers power.

3.Someone consumes power, and pays for services 1 and 2.

It does not matter where the actual single electrons, or units of energy differential or whatever way one wants to put it, originated from as you cannot tell them from each other anyway. If you're on the same grid then they're all just bulk power.

Transmission constraints cause all kinds of complexities, and most grids now rely on Locational Marginal Pricing. I'm not completely sure what the companies selling power are actually doing, but I'm guessing they're really just purchasing and scheduling generation days or weeks or months in advance, from both generators they own and generators they don't, and using complex models to try to minimize what they pay to satisfy the load at various nodes, at various points in time, which the grid operator tells them they're responsible for.

I'm not completely sure what the power companies are doing either as I have never audited a single power company. What I do know is they're selling the power they produce.

In any case, I doubt very much that somebody can guarantee that a certain percentage of your power is coming from a particular source.

No-one can guarantee that as the power is all in the same grid. The only way to guarantee that is to build separate grids for separate power sources. So, if you build a windmill grid for windmill power only then the grid would have only windmill power.

But that's about the least efficient way to do it.

Instead of building a separate grid for every power plant it is far more efficient to have an interconnected power grid transferring power from all power plants to all consumers.

In the interconnected power grid no-one can guarantee where the potential difference you just paid for originated from. Could have been from any numerous of the power sources.

What matters is who did you pay and why. You have to pay for the power you consume, right?

So you pay to the power company producing power to the grid. And as the grid is interconnected you can buy electric power from anywhere in that grid.

And to the grid operator you pay for the service of transferring that power to you.

Two separate things: producing something, bringing that something to you.

I bet that if you have a "green" energy operator who buys 50% of its power from solar/wind/hydro, and then you sign up to buy power from it, you may very well be getting 100% of your power from coal, and end up reducing the "green" energy operator's ratio of green power to total power from 50% to 49.99%. That is, you may end up accomplishing nothing more than putting a little bit of extra profit in the green energy operator's pocket.

I don't know where you got your figures from, and I have nothing to say about them. But if I had say a dozen windmills producing electricity then I would probably sell what they produce as wind energy. Or if I owned a nuclear plant then I would sell nuclear energy. And if my company owned a mix of power plants then I could sell deals on mixed energy while pricing it based on the mixture I'm selling.

The consumer can choose. Does not mean every single millisecond of potential difference in their household is from that exact source.

And I honestly cannot even begin to guess why would that be relevant to anyone. If it is then it's better to build separate grids for each of those different potential differences which othervise are indiscernible from each other.

 

[Trebuchet]

I filled a car yesterday at a Safeway station for $2.09. Today we drove to another town 30 miles away and their Safeway had it for $1.69! Wow.

 

[davefoc]

Perhaps this thread has been unfair to Michelle Bachmann. At the time she made her promise gas was selling at about $4 a gallon. That means she was promising to reduce the cost of gas by about $2. So maybe if the electorate had not foolishly failed to elect Bachman, the government would now be paying people to drive their cars. (Alas not in Southern California where gas is still somewhat above $2 a gallon).

 

[Dog Town]

I filled a car yesterday at a Safeway station for $2.09. Today we drove to another town 30 miles away and their Safeway had it for $1.69! Wow.

There is a Smiths grocer by me, that is always .20 higher than a Smiths less than two miles away.

 

[Trebuchet]

There is a Smiths grocer by me, that is always .20 higher than a Smiths less than two miles away.

Yeah, a lot of it's about nearby competition. The number of gas stations in downtown Port Townsend (defined as below the hill) is one. But they've been pretty good on price before.

That particular station was also the first ever Safeway mini-market/convenience store in the world. Because there wasn't a place to put the station by the main store and it's a couple of blocks away

 

[Tony Stark]

But didn't Newt Gingrich promise that he would reduce gas to $2.50 and that Obama would increase it to $10?

Are you telling me that Republicans are full of crap? No way!

 

[Puppycow]

Thanks Obama!!!

 

[The Don]

Thanks Obama!!!

tbh many of those people losing their jobs in oil and gas exploration and production because of the low crude oil prices are probably blaming Obama

 

[Beerina]

But didn't Newt Gingrich promise that he would reduce gas to $2.50 and that Obama would increase it to $10?

Are you telling me that Republicans are full of crap? No way!

Would you have a problem with government slapping a dollar or five tax per gallon on gas, with the nominal reason to reduce greenhouse gas burning?

 

[DavidJames]

Would you have a problem with government slapping a dollar or five tax per gallon on gas, with the nominal reason to reduce greenhouse gas burning?

Depending on how much and where the money goes, yes sir. For example, if the money goes towards rebuilding out infrastructure, I would highly approve.

 

[sunmaster14]

I would support a $1 per gallon federal tax on gasoline if it were rebated to reduce the social security wage tax. It should be coupled with the elimination of all federal subsidies for electric cars.

 

[portlandatheist]

Would you have a problem with government slapping a dollar or five tax per gallon on gas, with the nominal reason to reduce greenhouse gas burning?

I would support it only if it were 100% revenue neutral (fee and dividend) but not if it were slated for any other purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_and_dividend