Solar and Wind

[Wolverine]

3kW/$13k = 1MW/$4.3M

Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.

 

[Guest]

That cost seems a little low. A quick Google puts it at more like 1 million per MW. Maybe that should be 3kW/$13k (not that I EVER mix up kW/MW )

My quote is supposed to be 3 kW - leave it to the civil environmental to screw up the units! :rotflmao:

Here is some more random data for you:Fuel costs in cents per kwH

Oil & Gas ~ 7

Coal ~ 3.5

Nukular ~ 0.5

Add to that a few cents for operating costs and you and I get similar cost/MW for coal, and can then extrapolate natural gas costs at around 8-9 cents/kWh. That sounds about right to me. Then Wind is about double the cost of coal and solar is 10X. Nuclear is half price.

In round terms, those numbers sound right to me. Interestingly, the market for natural gas has been way down as to make it more affordable but I suspect that is a random market fluctuation rather than a true trend.

Critics will cry about factoring in construction costs, but if you also factor in availability & reliability, fossil wins again, with nukes placing nicely.

Construction costs and rise in cost for materials (e.g. steel, concrete) factor in heavily but actually the larger 'constraint' on the pricing models regards the cost/uncertainty of regulation. I have looked at some strategy plans and was surprised at how other interests began to compete when you factor in the cost of regulation, hence my earlier comments.

3kW/$13k = 1MW/$4.3M

Yep - that's it.

I don't know anything about these cost numbers, but this discrepancy could be explained by economies of scale. It's more expensive to build a big windmill than a little one, but maybe less expensive proportionally. Also, once you start up the windfarm, it may not be equally expensive to add more windmills. Just an idea (guess).

There's some truth to that but here's the real kicker benbo ...

For Michigan, the real 'escalation' in the price for wind generation comes from TRANSMISSION because the locations most viable for sustainable wind fields happen to coincide with the least populated areas hence little to no infrastructure to trasmit the electricity once it is generated.

Makes a lot of sense eh?

JR

 

[Capt Worley PE]

http://www.thestate.com/breaking/story/956637.html

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The Obama administration must juggle competing interests surrounding offshore wind farms proposed for the East Coast as it decides how the nation's ocean waters can be used, officials said Thursday.
Wind power was among several concerns Obama's Ocean Policy Task Force heard during a public meeting in Providence, its only stop on the wind-rich East Coast. The meeting came a week after the task force recommended creating a National Ocean Council to coordinate and hold accountable a hodgepodge of federal agencies responsible for conservation and marine planning.

The task force's next job is figuring out what uses the country should allow in its waters and where. Three states - Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine - are already creating their own management plans, in part to decide where offshore wind turbines could be placed.

"Offshore of the northeastern states is the most wind-rich area of the country," said Melville Cote Jr., manager of the ocean and coastal protection unit of the New England region of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Speakers who addressed the task force repeatedly asked the group to keep local concerns in mind when considering ocean uses.

No offshore wind farms have been constructed in the United States, but projects have been proposed in waters off states including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware and New Jersey.

Peter Mandelstam, president of Bluewater Wind LLC, said wind projects that are in development should be allowed to proceed while the task force simultaneously works out its rules for the use of coastal and ocean waters.

The eastern market offers natural advantages for the wind power industry, including a long, shallow coastal shelf that makes building wind turbines cheaper and easier than in deeper waters, said Mandelstam, who serves as chairman of the American Wind Energy Association's Offshore Wind Working Group.

Those wind turbines would also serve a market that already faces some of the highest electricity prices in the country because of its reliance on fossil fuels.

When setting rules on wind turbines, the task force should also consider the needs of passenger vessels, said Beth Gedney, director of safety, security and risk management for the Passenger Vessel Association. Gedney said more attention should have been paid to the needs of ferries shuttling passengers to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket as regulators considered a plan to build 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts.

 

[Supe]

Those wind turbines would also serve a market that already faces some of the highest electricity prices in the country because of its reliance on fossil fuels.

Uhhhh, the rest of the country also relies on fossil fuels for its electricity, so how does that factor in whatsoever?

 

[Guest]

You are trying to bait me on a Friday ... you can't do it!!

Uhhhh, the rest of the country also relies on fossil fuels for its electricity, so how does that factor in whatsoever?

You know it's funny how things get reported ...

Ironically, and someone correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding was that any wind turbine projects would not be used for baseload, meaning, they would be used to supplement existing load during peaking operations due to ongoing reliability concerns.

As an aside, what makes it even funnier ...

One of the largest stressors (if not the largest stressor) on the peaking demand is hot weather because that's when people crank-up the air conditioning, thus driving up the need for more power. Guess what happens during 'hotter' weather ... there's less wind. Studies show where the releationship between wind and 'hot' weather is inversely proportional. Brilliant!!

Or, how about the infrastructure necessary to distribute this power that will be generated. I don't think they have that in place off the eastern seaboard ... but then I am just an environmental engineer .. what do I know?

Or how about the environmental impact studies that will demonstrate the vast acreage that will be disturbed to construct these behemoth windmills and the associated ancillary facilities that will be needed to support not only the power generation but the transmission and distribution as well.

Or how about wind corridors that will be disturbed to all of our avian friends? Or the sea turtles that are already confused by light interferences, now they will have additional out-of-synch resonances from the machinery to further confuse them as to which direction they should be heading.

Or how about ... Damn ... I got baited!

[/rant]

JR

 

[benbo]

Ironically, and someone correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding was that any wind turbine projects would not be used for baseload, meaning, they would be used to supplement existing load during peaking operations due to ongoing reliability concerns.

Sort of true, but not exactly. It’s used to supplement but it is the first thing used, if that makes any sense.

Obviously, you can’t turn wind on and off like a peaker, and as you say, there is statistically less wind on hot days. It is all pretty complicated because there can also be such a thing as too much wind (but that’s another tangent).

I can tell you how it works in California. Consider the power supply as a pyramid with the stuff they will use first at the bottom. At the bottom are the nuclear plants, which they always run at nearly full load. After that comes all the renewables - including wind (QFs), cogens, and other small power producers, which they are forced to use because of governmental regulations. So even though these things provide extremely variable and difficult to predict power, they are used a lot, and whatever they produce gets purchased first.

To make up for the fluctuating load off these generators, you have all the fossil fueled plants up at the top. In California they will dispatch them based on a lot of different variables (contract, location on the grid, etc.), but all things being equal they try to dispatch the units with the lowest heat rates first. That means that all the new combined cycle plants are running at near baseload. Then you have the peakers.

Now for the really stupid part. Up at the top, providing peaking or load following, are not only real peakers (gas turbines), but 50 year old steam plants. The reason for this is that they are so inefficient they don’t want to use them unless they have to. So you have them cycling these dinosaurs all over the place, which in turn makes them break down.

 

[Guest]

At the most recent meeting for the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), Matt Hale, EPA Director for the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery included a discussion regarding one of EPA's primary objectives in the rulemaking continues to be to ensure that the Agency has direct federal enforcement authority over the final regulations. EPA lawyers reportedly are advising EPA management that the only option for obtaining this authority is to regulate coal combustion by-products (CCBs) as a hazardous waste under RCRA Subtitle C. While Matt Hale conceded at last month's ECOS meeting that Subtitle D non-hazardous waste rules for CCBs can be fully protective of human health and the environment (noting that EPA is sending ash from the Kingston release to a Subtitle D landfill), he advised that EPA is still leaning strongly towards proposing to regulate CCBs as hazardous waste to ensure federal enforceability. Therefore, while the proposal will contain a range of options for regulation of CCBs, including under Subtitle D, we expect that the Agency’s favored option will be regulation of CCBs as hazardous waste under Subtitle C, with an exclusion for qualified CCB beneficial uses.

Translation:

We don't care that the science supports EXISTING solid waste disposal and beneficial reuse regulations as protective of human health and the environment; we must use all means at our discretion to ensure that the cost of producing electricity via coal-fired means escalates to the point to where it is no longer cost-competitive as a fuel source. We will not be satisfied until our will is forced upon the public because we must have separate, enforceable authorities even though we are crying like babies because we don't have the funding to accomodate the increased paperwork and reporting required under Subtitle C regulation.

:violin:

JR

 

[Capt Worley PE]

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10713041/1/...olar-plant.html

FREDERICK, MD. (TheStreet) -- BP Solar, the solar panel manufacturing subsidiary of British petroleum giant BP(BP), is shutting its solar panel plant in Frederick, Maryland and laying off 320 plant employees.
BP's move is another sign of the disconnect that exists between the political rhetoric in Washington D.C. to link green energy's development to U.S. job growth, and the reality of globalized manufacturing and, in particular, the drastic reductions in solar module prices in the past year.

Even Evergreen Solar(ESLR), which received a big paycheck from the state of Massachusetts to set up a plant in the state, has since capitulated to the reality of globalization and Evergreen Solar is moving a large portion of its manufacturing to China.
The Evergreen example, in fact, may be the starkest example in the reality of manufacturing trends: it costs Evergreen less to pay workers in China to manufacture solar components and ship those components back to the U.S., then to have a state-of-the-art robotic assembly line in Massachusetts complete the brunt of the manufacturing.

It was a little over three years ago that BP and Maryland state officials hailed the $70 million plant as a green-jobs winner. Last Friday, BP said it would save up to 45% in costs by closing the plant.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

Article about solar plant in Michigan.

The thing that struck me as funny is the [part] owner's fancy math to try to make it look like the government is anti-Solar when, in fact, his business simply isn't profitable.

The $27,689 tax bill for the Charleston Township prop­erty means that the owners are losing money, even when being paid a premium price of 45 cents a kilowatt hour by Consumers Energy, he said.
“That Michigan property tax burden works out to a cost of 12.3 cents per kilowatt hour,” Field said. “That amount is more than the retail value of the electricity.”

For comparison, Field re­searched the property tax for the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert Township along Lake Michigan. He found that the annual real and personal property taxes for Palisades are just over $12 million or .2 cents per kilowatt hour.

“The property tax burden on our solar project is 60 times as much as the property tax burden on the nuclear power plant when calculated on a per kilowatt hour basis,” he said.

That solar farm is 1.5 acres, so they are paying about $18,500/acre. The Palisades Nuclear Plant is 432 acres, so they are paying about $27,800/acre. If you actually look at the property taxes in relation to the SIZE OF THE PROPERTY, the solar farm is getting a deal. Who the hell calculates property taxes on a "per kilowatt hour basis"?

 

[Capt Worley PE]

The comments section was pretty good.

Those are some pretty high taxes...no wonder people are leaving MI.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Interesting site if you want to price out building your own solar PV system:

http://www.windsun.com/

 

[Exception Collection]

Interesting site if you want to price out building your own solar PV system:
http://www.windsun.com/

Reading that site name, all I can think of is "You windsun, you lose sun."

 

[Wolverine]

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/08/f...sy-of-wind.html

Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes on the "wind myth". Texas, he says, has 10GW of installed wind-generation capacity - nearly three times as much as any other state. But during three sweltering days last week, when the state set new records for electricity demand, this "vast herd of turbines" proved incapable of producing any serious amount of power.
On 2 August, when electricity demand hit 68GW, output was just 1.5GW, or about 15 percent of installed capacity – equivalent to 2.2 percent of the total power demand. And this was no anomaly. On four days in August 2010, when electricity demand set records, wind energy was able to contribute just one, two, one, and one percent, respectively, of total demand.

Over the past few years, about $17 billion has been spent installing wind turbines in Texas. Another $8 billion has been allocated for transmission, bringing the total to $25 billion. That sum could have bought 5GW of nuclear or as much as 25GW of natural-gas-fired capacity.

The wind-energy lobby has been masterly at garnering huge subsidies and mandates by claiming that its product is a "green" alternative to conventional electricity. But the hype has obscured a dirty little secret: When power demand is highest, wind energy output is generally low. The reverse is also true: Wind-energy production is usually highest during the middle of the night, when electricity use is lowest.

Yet, in the UK, we are going down the same ridiculous path. It cannot be a surprise, though, that the three people whose judgement is lacking in other matters, are most supporting of renewable energy: Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Huhne.

In their profligate waste of our money, these three are collectively doing far more damage to our economy than a month of rioting, while they are enforcing real cuts on the national hospital system, which will have real effects on the lives (and deaths) of many people.

It is hard to think of a clearer example of political stupidity, or of three men who are least suited to be in a position of responsibility, much less power. Yet these are the fools who sit on top of the manure pile and crow. That we let them is our own shame.

Found my new tagline: "Yet these are the fools who sit on top of the manure pile and crow"

 

[csb]

How have I never commented in this thread?

When oil and gas come into our state, we end up trying to back money for some of the damage they do to our infrastructure while putting in the wells/camps/etc. No one squawks, because they are the big bad energy industry. Plus, well, they should pay for that damage done to the infrastructure.

On the same note, we have quite the wind industry in the state. In case you've never seen a windmill, they are HUGE. The blades are on a huge extended trailer and it's an oversize load for sure. However, we can't touch them, because they are "green" and apparently non-accountable. Meanwhile, we keep trying to fix roads destroyed by their construction.

Plus, they kinda kill the scenery. There's my NIMBY statement for the thread.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

Windmills belong on a mini-golf course.

There was some controversy here a while back when a plan was passed to build a bunch of windmills off Cape Cod. Two watermelons here were gushing over it. I thought, wow, way to ruin the scenery.

Plus there's the issue of screwing with the equilibirum of people that live near them that has never really been addressed.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

There was some controversy here a while back when a plan was passed to build a bunch of windmills off Cape Cod. Two watermelons here were gushing over it. I thought, wow, way to ruin the scenery.

I thought they were supposed to be over the horizon from the beach.

A rogue ship would play hell on an offshore farm, methinks.

 

[csb]

They also destroy migration paths, but they seem to get around that, and they can be pretty disruptive to a light aircraft.

 

[Flyer_PE]

All those blinking red lights. At least they synchronize them around here so you know you're looking down at a wind farm.

 

[snickerd3]

^driving up I-55 at night is sort of creepy with all the blinking redlights.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

^driving up I-55 at night is sort of creepy with all the blinking redlights.

You sure that isn't Mothman?