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Post by anonposter on Jun 2, 2012 9:55:55 GMT 9.5
100% renewable is 100% renewable. So that's the green equivalent of Randroids' "A is A"? a likely scenario looks like this: 100% of "conventional" electricity demand is met by renewables. but x% of real "conventional" electricity demand is actually covered by fossil gas back up. (until wind gas takes over) If any electricity comes from fossil fuels then it is not 100% renewable, no matter what fancy Enron style tricks you may use to cover that fact up. but at the same time, the excess x% renewable electricity goes into the new electricity market, that the surplus had created: mostly fuelling electric cars (and possibly avoiding much more fossil fuel burning than the reserve gas plants actually do) Which would still not give you a 100% renewable electricity grid (it may give you a supplementary sub-grid used for applications which can tolerate unreliable power, there's an island of Scotland which does indeed have two grids one of which is fed only from wind turbines and used when available and the other which also has diesel generators and is actually reliable but there's a limit to how many things can be turned on only when convenient for the grid (for the most part the grid has to adapt to demand, not the demand to supply and the end users aren't going to take much in the way of demanding management well)). and again: what i did was just the same as "... without hot air" did: calculating theoretical possibilities. No you didn't. the outcome is clear: 100% renewables is doable with technology that exists today. Then with the exception of countries which get most of their energy from hydro why hasn't it been done? even a completely inpractical 100% wind is doable in some countries, using the numbers provided by " .. without hot air". (links see above) The energy is there, it's using it that's the problem and wind has serious issues with reliability which are still unsolved.
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Post by davidm on Jun 2, 2012 20:22:06 GMT 9.5
Here is another outfit that is promoting 100% renewable by 2050. This one has lots of pictures and graphs. It appears to be a major production. Again, I have my doubts but it is interesting to follow their thinking and as they say holistic approach to the matter. www.ecofys.com/en/publications/11
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Post by anonposter on Jun 2, 2012 21:19:12 GMT 9.5
Here is another outfit that is promoting 100% renewable by 2050. This one has lots of pictures and graphs. It appears to be a major production. Again, I have my doubts but it is interesting to follow their thinking and as they say holistic approach to the matter. www.ecofys.com/en/publications/11No it isn't, it's the exact same flawed report this thread was originally about (read your first post carefully).
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Post by davidm on Jun 2, 2012 21:39:04 GMT 9.5
Oops, you're right. I was thinking treehugger as the source of the original study.
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Post by sod on Jun 3, 2012 15:26:26 GMT 9.5
Anon, i don t think that our discussion is going anywhere. so just for curiosity, i would like to ask you a simple question: which country is running on 100% nuclear? -------------------------------- coming back to the original article, i have taken a look at the electricity part of the ECOFYS report. (starting on page 146) www.ecofys.com/en/publications/11what i find interesting is, that in contradiction to "..without the hot air", the report shows much higher supply from on-shore wind sources than from off-shore ones. the report also has an interesting graph about the tolerable share of supply-driven electricity generation (basically wind and photovoltaics) on page 149. the percentage starts between 20% and 30% today and reaches as high as 60% in 2050. (the report tries to explain how this change happens) reading the oil drum discussion linked by Anon above, i found a couple of very interesting links: this is a nice article, showing that strong solar can npossibly double the use of pump storage, by giving a second 2reloading2 time in the afternoon. cleantechnica.com/2012/05/29/solar-power-can-double-pumped-hydro-output-nice/this link shows, how solar is driving down the prices in germany. the graphs are seriously impressive. (i couldn t give links for this claim i often made before, so i am happy that now i can..) www.renewablesinternational.net/merit-order-effect-of-pv-in-germany/150/510/33011/and here is daily data of solar nearly completely removing the afternoon peak! it is directly from market data, so this is a very good source! www.transparency.eex.com/de/
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Post by anonposter on Jun 3, 2012 16:32:43 GMT 9.5
Strictly speaking no country is running on 100% nuclear though France is close enough to provide an existence proof that a country can get the majority of its power from nuclear (the characteristics of nuclear power, namely it's reliability and the evidence that France is mostly exporting power and not needing to rely on other countries to stabilise their nuclear majority grid is also evidence that nuclear can scale up).
No one has even come close to that with non-hydro renewables.
On the issue of how much unreliable renewables can be handled by the grid, it is most likely not 20% to 30% today (though small sections of a grid could indeed have that much provided the rest of the grid didn't) and at the very least it has not been shown that anything other than hydro can back up renewables on a large, carbon-neutral scale (gas turbines do work well enough for it, nuclear could technically do the job, but in that case you'd be better off ditching the wind turbines and running the reactors at higher power).
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Post by Graham Palmer on Jun 4, 2012 13:16:50 GMT 9.5
Tim Nelson, Paul Simshauser and James Nelson provide an excellent paper on the merit-order effect of solar, leading to what at face value, appears to be lower short-run energy prices. www.aglblog.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/No-30-QLD-FiT-II-FINAL1.pdfThe paper is long and technical, but worth the read if you have a serious interest in large-scale distributed solar. In summary, they find that the merit-order effect is real, but damaging in the long-run. The notion that suppressing wholesale prices with a sub-economic technology and distorting an otherwise properly functioning competitive market is somehow a desirable outcome is simply not correct, and no policymaker ought to pursue such an option in practice given the long run risks this would inevitably place on the security and cost of electricity supplies.
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Post by anonposter on Jun 4, 2012 16:54:05 GMT 9.5
Figures 3 and 4 from Nelson, et. al. are also worth looking at (Fig. 3 shows bubble like characteristics of solar energy the Feed In Tariffs sod likes so much cause and Fig. 4 shows that solar tends not to actually track peak demand all that well).
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Post by Graham Palmer on Jun 4, 2012 19:08:58 GMT 9.5
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Post by proteos on Jun 4, 2012 21:21:08 GMT 9.5
So just for curiosity, i would like to ask you a simple question: which country is running on 100% nuclear? I do not think the point of 100% renewables scenarios is to get really a 100% renewable based system. In my opinion, the idea is to provide solutions (or at least realistic leads) to the intermittency challenge. If these solutions are workable, it will be possible to have a system that can run overwhelmingly on renewables. That's the scenario of the german government: it does not foresee a 100% renewables system in 2050, as far as I know, but something more like 80-85%. And besides, hydro being the cheapest source of electricity, especially in Europe where all dams are fully amortized, there will always be some energy produced that way, except for flat countries like the Netherlands or Danemark. this link shows, how solar is driving down the prices in germany. the graphs are seriously impressive. (i couldn t give links for this claim i often made before, so i am happy that now i can..) I personnally find this a bit worrying, like the others here. First, it means that solar power will have great difficulties to live without subsidies. If the price is 0 when there's a big solar production, I can't see how the producers will earn money. Second, that means there will be a big split between the big industrial consumers and the retail consumers. The industry can have access to the spot market, the laymen won't. Thus, the laymen will have to pay the full price for the solar panels, as they are right now with the renewable energy taxes (which is very low for big industrial users).
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Post by davidj on Jun 5, 2012 16:39:29 GMT 9.5
For those who demand evidence that renewables can provide real effective grid power, read the report on South Australian wind generation at www.windlab.com/sites/default/files/20110915_SouthAustralianWindPower_DO_LHO.pdfThis details how in 5 years South Australia has gone from 6% to 21% wind as a proportion of installed capacity and now generates 23% of its energy from wind. The change has coincided with a 6% increase in consumption and 13% increase in peak demand, an 18% decrease in CO2 emissions, a 47% reduction in net imports and a 1.2% reduction in energy from OCGT s. In the same period, wholesale electricity cost has marginally declined. I cannot accept the report’s claim that “peaking capacity has not been imported from Victoria” however that does not alter the fact that wind power now provides a significant proportion of South Australia’s electricity needs without rolling blackouts or massive investment in backup generation or huge hydro resources or huge cost increases. In some ways South Australia is in a similar position to Denmark in that it is a semi-independent state within a continental scale union (Australia is a federation as opposed to an economic union) and it is a small generator within a continental scale grid. Neither SA nor Denmark have significant hydro resources but both have reasonable transmission interconnector capacity. One big difference is that the main city in South Australia is 650 km from the nearest neighbouring city – which means very long interconnectors. I live in Victoria; I don’t care whether my electricity comes from Victoria, SA, New South Wales or Tasmania but I do care whether it was generated by wind or by brown coal. Why is Europe different? Australia’s generators are in the process of being privatised and in my state, all of the generation is now owned and operated by private companies. Some of these companies own generation assets in multiple states and some own multiple types of generators; some own both wind and hydro generators. There is nothing stopping these companies combining disparate assets to provide guaranteed supply in the most economical manner. State borders are just imaginary lines; the electrons do not care about them!
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Post by Graham Palmer on Jun 5, 2012 19:46:13 GMT 9.5
davidj, agree, SA is similar to Denmark in having relative low power demand within a much larger grid (Denmark's population is only 4.5 million) and can outsource their backup to neighbours. But what does this tell us? Clearly Victoria and NSW could not emulate SA - who is going to backup for them? According to AEMO, wind provides a "firm" 3.5% of wind nameplate in winter and 5% in summer (see page 76 - www.aemo.com.au/en/Electricity/Planning/2011-South-Australian-Supply-Demand-Outlook/~/media/Files/Other/planning/SASDO2011/documents/SASDO2011%20pdf.ashx , therefore it is obvious the grid cannot run on wind without near 100% backup. Is it 1) better to just install low-emission baseload in the first place, or 2) use wind when it's available plus build backup that operates at lower efficiency and higher emissions, plus additional transmission infrastructure, what is the cost and what is the abatement, and what is the consequences of locking in dependence on gas in the long-term? What do you propose we do in 2030 when we should be winding back gas but cannot because the large wind penetration necessitates ongoing use of gas to maintain grid security and stability?
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Post by sod on Jun 5, 2012 22:33:05 GMT 9.5
while i agree with certain parts of the AGL paper, i have some serious doubts about other parts of it. For a start, i also have issues with feed in tarifs redistributing money to the wealthy. Butother people consider the effect to be less strong than the AGL paper says. reneweconomy.com.au/2012/solar-tariffs-and-the-merit-order-effect-a-response-to-agl-22812But i have serious trouble with Figure 4 on page 18. 8should be the same paper from a different source, the link above doesn t work any longer for me..) www.eap-journal.com/archive/forthcoming/forthcoming_Tim_Nelson_Paul_Simshauser_and_James_Nelson.pdfthe graph shows output at Glenmore Park substation, being 6000 kw Minimum and peaking at 37000 between 17:00 and 18:00. this is a massive difference, and i seriously ask you folks how current nuclear would handle such a situation?!? the graph also shows a small effect of solar on this peak, obviously because of a mismatch of peaking time, but mostly because of a small amount of installed solar. the graph on last page is much better. it shows a much smaller peak/low ratio (50% low) and it also demonstrates how solar could deeply cut into this peak, at least removing half of the additional demand on hot days. (to remove the real peak, solar also only needs a few hours of storage, which is achievable!) (page 33) in other places, solar peak is much closer to demand peak. For example in Germany real market data shows, that solar is completely removing the daily demand peak today! www.transparency.eex.com/de/the merit order effect is marginalised in the paper. the focus is on solar, but in contrast to FiT solar, the merit order effect of price competitive wind power is real. the efffect of solar is obviously not big enough to compensate the full cost of the feed in tariffs. and it is a real problem for FiT, that the merit order effect actually INCREASES the price difference. But the paper excludes an important effect: after the FiT scheme runs out, solar will continue to deliver cheap power and this merit order effect will be real! here is a list of general critisism of the paper: www.sunwiz.com.au/index.php/latest-news/46-press/200-agl-queensland-solar-feed-in-tariff-merit-order-effect-paper-littered-with-errors.html
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Post by davidj on Jun 5, 2012 23:37:55 GMT 9.5
Graham Palmer, the paper is saying that for this level of wind penetration SA has not outsourced backup to Victoria but in fact has decreased their level of import dependence. I don’t think they have proved their argument but at least it makes a good case for quite significant levels of wind penetration having minimal detrimental impact on a grid. For levels of intermittent renewables approaching 80 or 90%, you would need multiple low-correlation sources (say wind and solar) and significant storage. To make such a system economical, you would also need significant OCGT peaking which might have a very low capacity factor of say 2 or 3%. In this sort of scheme the disparate sources, geographical spread, storage and peaking turbines do the job that the interconnectors currently do for Denmark (and I suspect SA). The amount of gas used is trivial in terms of global warming impact and resource depletion. The cost comes down to a tradeoff between the peak output power of the storage (which is expensive if it is pumped hydro say) and the amount of gas used.
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Post by anonposter on Jun 5, 2012 23:47:02 GMT 9.5
For a start, i also have issues with feed in tarifs redistributing money to the wealthy. Well what else do you think raising the price of something used by both wealthy and poor (and by the poor as a much greater proportion of income) and then giving the extra proceeds collected to a subset of the wealthy (and not to any poor people) is going to do? The fact of the matter is that all energy price increases are regressive as they impact the poor worse than the wealthy (who even though they may pay more for energy since they use more they don't use as much more compared to how much more their income is). Then with feed in tariffs for residential solar you're giving those who can afford to buy a solar power system a bit of the money back (and if you can afford to put the solar panels on your roof needed to collect the FiT you almost certainly aren't poor, at the very least you own a home). Look, if you want to subsidise renewable energy (something I wouldn't do) Feed-In Tariffs are the worst way to go about it, both due to be being regressive in nature and due to requiring the grid operators to take the power even if it causes them problems. Direct payments from the general revenue pool (mainly collected by income tax, which has the advantage of being a progressive tax) are a far better way to do it (assuming you actually renewable energy junk). (to remove the real peak, solar also only needs a few hours of storage, which is achievable!) Unless of course it's a cloudy day in which case you may need quite a bit more. the merit order effect is marginalised in the paper. the focus is on solar, but in contrast to FiT solar, the merit order effect of price competitive wind power is real. The merit order effect is real as they note, it just isn't indicative of renewable energy working. But the paper excludes an important effect: after the FiT scheme runs out, solar will continue to deliver cheap power and this merit order effect will be real! Already installed panels will, at least while they last and when they actually can help (though the electricity company would be free not to buy if it it doesn't help them). Of course lowering the wholesale rate of electricity artificially is not a good thing if you're trying to get people to invest in new capacity (and without new capacity, or even merely replacing of aging power plants…).
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Post by sod on Jun 6, 2012 6:10:39 GMT 9.5
i am concerned about the redistribution effect of feed in tariffs. but if you look at the link i gave above, the redistribution is towards middle class. reneweconomy.com.au/2012/solar-tariffs-and-the-merit-order-effect-a-response-to-agl-22812and if you read the Nelson paper, he is seriously concerned about a shift from power producers towards consumers. ("policy-induced wealth transfer from existing electricity producers to electricity consumers." on page 19, sounds like a good thing to me!) www.eap-journal.com/archive/forthcoming/forthcoming_Tim_Nelson_Paul_Simshauser_and_James_Nelson.pdfon a cloudy day, you will actually need about 1/3 less maximum power supply. (page 8) www.aemo.com.au/en/Electricity/Planning/2011-South-Australian-Supply-Demand-Outlook/~/media/Files/Other/planning/SASDO2011/documents/SASDO2011%20pdf.ashx(also note that the daily demand graph given on page 11 looks much more reasonable than the 15% minimum one in the Nelson et al paper!) ps: Anon, please tell me how you would supply such a system with nuclear power! (6000 kw Minimum and peaking at 37000) With the second demand/supply curve graph in Figure 7 on page 21, nelson basically tells us, that the merit order effect is fake, because of the high price of solar. But he forgot to mention that wind power is price competitive, so the merit order effect for wind is real. (and thatfor enhancing welfare, which nelson denies for solar!) i do not understand your final argument. So solar is bad, when it increases the price (cost for customers) and bad when it lowers it (cost for suppliers)? Nelson does an analysis that completely ignores important factors. a rising price of electricity (gas price is often connected to oil price..) will significantly lower the cost of feed in tariffs. The electricity production by the solar panels after the end of the FiT has to be factored into the cost of solar power (and will reduce it significantly), for a comparison with the merit order effect!
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Post by anonposter on Jun 6, 2012 15:26:29 GMT 9.5
i am concerned about the redistribution effect of feed in tariffs. but if you look at the link i gave above, the redistribution is towards middle class. Because the really wealthy see it as too trivial to bother with, but you are still stealing from the poor to pay those who aren't poor, that is not good public policy. and if you read the Nelson paper, he is seriously concerned about a shift from power producers towards consumers. ("policy-induced wealth transfer from existing electricity producers to electricity consumers." on page 19, sounds like a good thing to me!) If it has the long term effect of raising electricity prices and the short term effect of being a transfer from poorer consumers to richer consumers then it isn't so good. ps: Anon, please tell me how you would supply such a system with nuclear power! (6000 kw Minimum and peaking at 37000) If we had to use 100% nuclear (which may end up necessary in some places without hydro resources) we could load follow the reactors and just accept that we're not running them at their optimum (fluid fuel reactors are very good at load following and even current reactors could do the job if needed). But he forgot to mention that wind power is price competitive, so the merit order effect for wind is real. Take away the subsidies and see how price competitive wind is then? i do not understand your final argument. So solar is bad, when it increases the price (cost for customers) and bad when it lowers it (cost for suppliers)? I'm not even sure what your question here is actually about.
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Post by sod on Jun 6, 2012 17:36:49 GMT 9.5
again: i am against taking even more money from the poor. But even in Germany a 10% (FiT) increase in electricity price sums up to a packet of cigarettes per month. it is not a non-issue, but it is much less important than other problems. blog.zeit.de/gruenegeschaefte/2012/06/05/die-fdp-als-bremser-der-energiewende/(in Germany, the market-liberal party FDP is complaining about the effects for the poor. They normally never care about the poor at all!) ----------------- please be more specific: what existing reactor can supply a system that swings between 6 and 37 every day?!? ----------------- you said: "Of course lowering the wholesale rate of electricity artificially is not a good thing if you're trying to get people to invest in new capacity" so you complain about solar increasing the price for customers and you complain about solar reducing the price for customers after the end of FiT. this doesn t make sense to me!
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Post by anonposter on Jun 6, 2012 19:20:09 GMT 9.5
again: i am against taking even more money from the poor. But even in Germany a 10% (FiT) increase in electricity price sums up to a packet of cigarettes per month. it is not a non-issue, but it is much less important than other problems. It's a bigger issue than the one the FiT is meant to solve (and I still contend that if you actually do want to subsidise renewables you're better off just paying the subsidy out of general revenue where it'll come more from the rich). Besides, if we say there's always a bigger issue then we'll never get anything done. please be more specific: what existing reactor can supply a system that swings between 6 and 37 every day?!? Basically all of them are capable of that kind of operation (with the possible exception of the remaining RBMKs where I can see good safety reasons for not operating like that). They don't usually do it because it's more profitable to run at full power all the time and let other generators (with higher fuel costs, e.g. fossil fuels or storage, e.g. hydro) handle peak but they are quite capable of running in such a manner (France has been load following nuclear reactors). If you need more load following ability than what current civilian power reactors can provide naval reactors can do quite a bit better (the limit to how quickly a nuclear reactor can load follow as I understand it is in the steam system, spend a bit more there and you can change power faster). so you complain about solar increasing the price for customers and you complain about solar reducing the price for customers after the end of FiT. this doesn t make sense to me! Increases in electricity price are a bad thing, but on the other hand if you need more capacity to be built then having the price too low can prevent that capacity from being built (since it wouldn't be able to make a profit). If the reduction in wholesale price comes about due to a genuinely cheaper technology then it wouldn't be a problem but the reduction which comes from a FiT doesn't come from a technology which is genuinely cheaper (if it were why have the FiT?).
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Post by sod on Jun 6, 2012 19:44:31 GMT 9.5
sorry anon, by i think you are a little optimistic in your assessment of load following capacity. here is what is being said about the fleet of french reactors: "PWR plants are very flexible at the beginning of their cycle, with fresh fuel and high reserve reactivity. But when the fuel cycle is around 65% through these reactors are less flexible, and they take a rapidly diminishing part in the third, load-following, aspect above. When they are 90% through the fuel cycle, they only take part in frequency regulation, and essentially no power variation is allowed (unless necessary for safety). " www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.htmlso please can you be a little bit more specific. what mix of currently running reactors would you use to supply a situation that looks like the graph on page 18 of the paper! www.eap-journal.com/archive/forthcoming/forthcoming_Tim_Nelson_Paul_Simshauser_and_James_Nelson.pdf
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Post by Graham Palmer on Jun 6, 2012 20:01:53 GMT 9.5
sod, the Nelson paper makes two important points. 1) It is that it is obvious that in the short-run, an increase in zero-marginal cost generation will decrease the wholesale price - the so-called merit order effect. But taken to the limit, with enough solar (or wind), the wholesale cost could even approach zero (or even negative as has happened with wind). But would the investment in expensive generating capacity lead to cheaper electricity in the long-run? Obviously not, hence the merit order is a transient phenomena that distorts the operation of otherwise efficient markets. 2) Taken to the limit, the investment in intermittent generation may distort the market sufficiently that the market is unwilling to invest in the dispatchable generation necessary to maintain grid stability and security because the intermittent renewables have essentially forced non-renewable generation to act as scavengers in an inefficient market.
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Post by anonposter on Jun 7, 2012 5:09:37 GMT 9.5
sod: Refuelling load following reactors more often would work (or just loading a bit more fuel into them at each refuelling).
What's worth noting though is that France doesn't need to load follow their nukes anywhere near as much as you'd need with a 100% nuclear grid and no interconnections so they don't need to design reactors which can load follow well enough to do it on their own (if you want to see an application where nuclear does indeed load follow look at naval reactors).
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Post by PaulQ on Jun 16, 2012 21:53:31 GMT 9.5
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Post by jasonk on Jun 26, 2012 12:27:30 GMT 9.5
I'm a little confused by the merit order effect. The benefit of having lots of solar/wind is that when they are generating at peak they push the spot/market price of electricity to zero. Am I right?
My question is this. How do you pay for maintenance of your system when you charge zero for the electricity? If you are exporting solar when you have an oversupply i.e. zero spot price then you are eating the costs to generate free electricity for your neighbor. So, its not really an export then... Unless you charge them, in which case the spot price is not zero.
It seems to me like using the merit order effect is an attempt to get people to think that if you build lots of solar then you get free electricity. This is false. You still have overhead and grid costs that you must charge the customer all the time. Am I wrong?
Costs are as important as price when determining a business case. If you can't sell a product for more than it costs to make then you don't have a sustainable private sector business.
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Post by davidm on Jun 26, 2012 16:19:35 GMT 9.5
Costs are as important as price when determining a business case. If you can't sell a product for more than it costs to make then you don't have a sustainable private sector business. Agreed. Now can we end the subsidies to fossil fuels and apply real costs to them? It's funny what a terrible time I have getting so called free market folks to buy real cost pricing.
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Post by anonposter on Jun 26, 2012 21:43:49 GMT 9.5
I'm a little confused by the merit order effect. The benefit of having lots of solar/wind is that when they are generating at peak they push the spot/market price of electricity to zero. Am I right? That's what the claim is. My question is this. How do you pay for maintenance of your system when you charge zero for the electricity? If you are exporting solar when you have an oversupply i.e. zero spot price then you are eating the costs to generate free electricity for your neighbor. So, its not really an export then... Unless you charge them, in which case the spot price is not zero. Renewable energy often gets other subsidies although over the longer term that is going to get you. It seems to me like using the merit order effect is an attempt to get people to think that if you build lots of solar then you get free electricity. This is false. You still have overhead and grid costs that you must charge the customer all the time. Am I wrong? You're quite correct. Costs are as important as price when determining a business case. If you can't sell a product for more than it costs to make then you don't have a sustainable private sector business. A bit of a tautology, but a lot of the people most in favour of renewable energy don't seem to like capitalism (it almost seems like they are using the environmental problems we've got as a means to attack capitalism and not as ends in themselves). Agreed. Now can we end the subsidies to fossil fuels and apply real costs to them? It's funny what a terrible time I have getting so called free market folks to buy real cost pricing. Define real cost?
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Post by cyrilr on Jun 26, 2012 23:08:57 GMT 9.5
The Ecofys report does not at all look at intermittency (supply-demand) using any real data.
That makes it a load of bullsnot. It's just another exercise of, add up all the unreliables quantitatively and make qualitative statements about the real problem, which is intermittency and supply-demand.
Of course this shallow nonsense is to be expected from the WWF, who is absolutely horrible in their energy analysis (this is widely recognized among energy experts - wwf is no authority at all on energy). If Ecofys is working with them, that hurts their credibility (up till now I considered ecofys to produce useful material; now I am forced to revert that standpoint).
It's amazing how so called "conservation" organisations are pushing for massive ecofootprint technologies like biomass, while dissing the one technology with the lowest ecosystem impact of them all - nuclear power. This shows these organisations are driven by ideology and are cut off from any scientific influence. Sad.
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Post by davidm on Jun 27, 2012 4:54:12 GMT 9.5
It's amazing how so called "conservation" organisations are pushing for massive ecofootprint technologies like biomass, while dissing the one technology with the lowest ecosystem impact of them all - nuclear power. It's hard to imagine that nuclear power would have a lower ecosystem impact than this.
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Post by proteos on Jun 27, 2012 5:08:41 GMT 9.5
I'm a little confused by the merit order effect. The benefit of having lots of solar/wind is that when they are generating at peak they push the spot/market price of electricity to zero. Am I right? This is right. Of course, before you reach a price of 0, you through all the intermediate prices when solar/wind produced energy grows. You can even get negative prices, because it costs money to stop & restart conventionnal plants: if the negative price episode is short enough, it makes sense to keep the station running. The cause is the economics: in a free competition market with no pricing power for undistinguishable goods, the price for all the production is the cost of the last unit produced, the so called marginal cost. For wind & solar, this is 0: once you have paid the wind mill & hired the guy that will do the maintenance, the energy produced will cost you nothing more. My question is this. How do you pay for maintenance of your system when you charge zero for the electricity? If you are exporting solar when you have an oversupply i.e. zero spot price then you are eating the costs to generate free electricity for your neighbor. So, its not really an export then... Unless you charge them, in which case the spot price is not zero. There are solutions to this. The first is to lobby for subsidies. This can only work if the sector is not too big though. The second is to be a monopoly. Economics tell that, with some government intervention, the average total cost — aka LCoE — will be charged. This only works with facilities that are relatively few and difficult to build. The third is to sign long term contracts with customers. Then you can say that you have expenses to cover to start providing them energy. However, customers may demand you annoying things such as reliability of supply. The fourth is to hope that when you will produce only a little energy, price will be high enough that you can repay your investment. As wind & solar do not fit with #2 & #3, I'm afraid only the avenues of #1 (subsidies) or #4 (very volatile prices) are open to support a big amount of wind and solar PV. If they're not too big, they just won't make a big difference in prices. It seems to me like using the merit order effect is an attempt to get people to think that if you build lots of solar then you get free electricity. This is false. You still have overhead and grid costs that you must charge the customer all the time. Am I wrong? You're right: this is to make people believe they will pay less with solar & wind. Yet, they won't: the LCoE of wind & solar are higher than other choices — in most places — so someone will have to pay more if these facilities are to be built.
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Post by anonposter on Jun 27, 2012 6:31:18 GMT 9.5
t's hard to imagine that nuclear power would have a lower ecosystem impact than this.That has the impact of the cows which produce the methane which require much more land than a uranium or thorium mine. Of course if the cows would be raised anyway for whatever reason then it's a better idea than letting the methane enter the atmosphere (and I am a supporter of using waste biomass for energy production) and you'd have the other environmental effects of cows anyway but that kind of thing just won't scale up to the point of being dominant.
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