Noah Smith’s classic definition of “derp” as “the constant repetition of strong priors” was developed with particular reference to solar energy, to refer to people who’ve taken the view, at some point in the past, that solar energy can’t work, and who are neither willing to change their minds, whatever the evidence, nor to state their views once and for all and remain silent thereafter.
The classic illustration of this would have to be Ted Trainer of the University of New South Wales. For the past 20 years, he’s been writing and rewriting the same paper, showing that renewables can’t possibly sustain a consumer society. Here’s a version from 1995, and from 2003, and here’s the latest.
What’s striking is that, while the numbers change dramatically, the conclusions don’t. The 1995 report says, in essence, that solar PV is totally unaffordable for all practical purposes. [1] So, our only hope is to embrace a massively simpler lifestyle,
The most recent version, written at a time when cheap solar power is a reality, has much less scary numbers. He estimates that the capital investment required for decarbonization of the economy would amount to 11 per cent of GDP. That’s still an over-estimate but it’s in the right ballpark. Trainer rightly observes that this number far exceeds current investment levels and is unlikely to be attained. But, unlikely as it may be, it would certainly be chosen if people accepted Turner’s conclusion that the only alternative was to live in huts with peat roofs.
And, over time, the insistence on negativity about renewables has led Trainer to promote views that are the opposite of his original concerns about simplicity For quite a few years, his work was published primarily at pro-nuclear site, Brave New Climate[2].
If Ted Trainer actually wants to help save the planet it’s time for him to abandon the campaign against renewables and urge society to accept the relative modest reduction in the rate of growth of income needed to decarbonize energy supply. Once the prospect of massive extinction has been staved off, we will have plenty of tiem to think about a simpler lifestyle.
fn1. As an illustration, the cost of a system to charge an electric car is estimated at $350 000, an estimate that is supposed to take account of optimistic projections of efficiency gains. These systems haven’t quite arrived yet (as usual, there are a bunch of technical difficulties to be overcome) but it appears they will soon be on the market for less than $10000. These systems have an obvious potential to resolve the problem of mismatch between peak PV availability at midday and peak demand in the evening, and may therefore reduce the conflict associated with the idea of a “utility death spiral”/
fn2. BNC ran into the same problem. In his eagerness to push the idea that nuclear power is the only way to save the planet from global warming, Barry Brook ran slabs of anti-renewable nonsense from climate delusionists such as Peter Lang.
John Quiggin 
In Australia, we fortunately don’t have to worry about nuclear power yet. We don’t have any. What we do have to worry about is the approx. $10 billion annual fossil fuel subsidy mainly to big business.The big ticket items are;
“1. Paying the fuel bill for big mining companies – around $2 billion a year
The average Australian pays 38 cents of tax per litre of fuel. But big mining companies operating in Australia pay just 6c a litre. Instead of paying their fair share, they get a massive tax refund costing the Australian taxpayer around $2 billion a year.
2. Subsiding cheaper fuel for airlines – $5 billion over four years
Australian taxpayers are funding cheap fuel for big airline companies like Qantas and Virgin. If these companies paid their own way it would literally save us billions3, and the airlines would have more incentive to be more fuel efficient, meaning less pollution.
3. 3. Special tax treatment for big oil, coal and gas projects – more than $2 billion over the next four years
The coal, oil and gas sectors get special treatment under Australia’s tax system allowing them to depreciate their assets like drilling rigs and pipelines over a much shorter period than they are actually in use. Detailed analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation found that this legal tax dodge for big oil, gas and coal projects is costing the rest of us billions, and it’s growing. 4
Thanks to the Paid to Pollute campaign, the Federal Government reduced this loophole at the budget in May 2013, saving Australian taxpayers $1.1 billion over the next four years, but there is still another $1 billion being lost to big polluters.
4. Handouts to Australia’s dirtiest power stations – $1 billion in 2013-14
The carbon price is an important reform that is starting the transition to a cleaner Australian economy.
However one part of the carbon price package represented a massive payday for polluters. Under the Energy Security Fund, Australia’s dirtiest power stations have been receiving around $1 billion in assistance annually.5 These payments should be scrapped to allow the carbon price to send a clear signal to companies to reduce their pollution.” – From the Paid to Pollute website.
Another point, to add to my 2 posts above.
In arguing the merits or demerits of solar PV versus the rest, we tend to forget solar hot water. Water heating accounts for about 25% of a houshold’s power use. Solar hot water can replace about 20% of total power use (allowing 5% for back-up heating). There is a much greater efficiency in heating water on site directly from the sun. There are no transmission costs and no energy loss in conversion from coal or nuclear power to eletrical power and back to heat.
The total efficiency value of solar power for houses needs to factor in the very useful contribution from solar hot water. Such on site heating reduces overall transmission grid load from high voltage lines (about 5% or 10% saving) to the local residential grid where the load factor saving must be about 20%. This saving must free up local grid capacity to allow more solar PV feed-in in the local area without the capital cost of boosting local grid and transformer capacity. This is a significant advantage accruing from distributed solar hot water.
It is also the case that residential solar PV production tends to peak when air-con demand peaks. Thus solar PV assists local grids at this time and concommittantly reduces the need to “gold-plate” high voltage transmission lines to meet hot weather peaks. Some studies have suggested that this makes peak rate solar very valuable and solar PV FITs are earned and deserved due to the inherent savings in peak-proofing the grid.
In the coming age, it is becoming the case that distributed systems are becoming more powerful, more flexible and more cost-effective than highly centralised systems. We see this in computing from the internet to supercomputers which can use up to 250,000 processors connected by high-speed optical cable. Power grids would seem to be following a similar trend where relatively small components (solar PV panels) and multipied and connected. Even wind turbines are individually small in output compared to traditional power stations.
There are many advantages to distributed systems. The advantages attributed to distributed computer systems can also be seen to generally apply to distributed, automated power systems.
– Economics
– Speed
– Inherent distribution
– Reliability
– Incremental growth (flexible scalability)
A sea-change in power economics is coming. Nuclear power just won’t cut it. It is more expensive and more dangerous and leaves the grid open to much greater strategic vulnerability from accidents, natural disasters and even terrorist and military strikes.
Here is another possibility for you, Hermit.
http://otherpower.com/steamengine.html
The little engines that the kids ride on are rated at one horsepower. I’m doing some research to see how compact a 2kw wood powered alternator can be.
@BilB
I would be very afraid of home built or legacy boilers. Boiler explosions are very dangerous. So whoever is building or resurrecting boilers needs boiler-maker certification IMO.
@ Ikon whether tax breaks are the same as subsidies is arguable. I’m gobsmacked by the $1bn cash to the brown coal burners then $1 bn in free permits a few days before the federal election. Note Alcoa got so many free permits they flogged some. I’m not sure but the same prominent businessman behind the RET review may have been behind the generosity to polluters.
According to CER a few months back there were 1.2m PV installations and 0.7m solar HWS.
@ BilB wood along with weeds and even garbage is one form of labile carbon that’s already in the loop of the biosphere not taken from eons underground. However I can’t see how to eliminate hydrocarbon guzzling vehicles, chainsaws and other machines from the wood gathering process. Ideally the nutrient rich ash should be recycled back to the forest. Unlike PV wood gathering is not ‘set and forget’.
Yes, bio-fuel (wood, trash, bagasse etc.) is niche not a main game thing.
@BilB
Also these blokes.
Interesting article on Germany’s Energiegewende:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/4/14/policy-politics/end-germanys-grassroots-transition?utm_source=exact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=702447&utm_campaign=cs_daily&modapt=
The Germans are on track to meet their renewables targets, but subsidising heavy industry out of the pickets of consumers and rival SMEs seems to be the major constraint on growth in the sector.
Hmmm capitalist governments … What can you say?
@Fran Barlow
Good, thanks for that article Fran. Once again, it exposes the outright LIES peddled by big business and nuclear lobbyists.
Ronald, it’s true that the electricity a household uses directly from its panels doesn’t incur grid costs. But very little of the electricity the panels produce will actually be used in the household. That’s because panels generate most of their power during a few hours either side of solar noon, when people are usually out of the house. So most of that solar power is overproduction—especially for a 10 kw system!–and has to be exported to the grid (or else wasted). Conversely, most of the electricity the household actually uses will be imported from the grid during hours when people are home but the panels have gone to sleep.
So rooftop PV without storage is “grid power” as surely as electricity from a coal or nuclear plant, and it therefore costs the grid just as much to transmit and distribute. Even if rooftop solar were the only power source in Australia, the grid would still have to exist—indeed, it would expand—and be paid for by assessments on solar electricity. How those costs are priced and billed in Australia is a different matter, which I don’t pretend to understand. Solar households do get a feed-in tariff, which is what makes the whole scheme seem economically feasible although it really just shifts the grid costs to others.
Another way to see this is to imagine snipping the grid connection. Then none of the solar power would flow to the grid—but most of the electricity would also be wasted overproduction that the household could not absorb. That means the capacity factor—usable kwh per installed kw—would plummet even further below 15 percent to, what? 10 percent? 5 percent?—and the cost per usable kwh would correspondingly balloon.
The other possibility is to build a true off-grid solar system with storage batteries and backup diesel generators, and cut the grid connection. Then you could honestly say that rooftop PV was free of grid costs. But those batteries and generators themselves cost a lot of money, and you have to add that to the capital cost of the system, maybe doubling it or more above your $2 per watt estimate.
So to accurately price rooftop PV you either have to price it as an off-grid system complete with batteries and backup generators, or you have to assess it the full grid costs that dispatchable electricity pays.
“That’s because panels generate most of their power during a few hours either side of solar noon”
“That means the capacity factor—usable kwh per installed kw—would plummet even further below 15 percent ”
So… Much… Derp…
You might want to think about things for a bit, Will. Maybe check some things out. And perhaps then you’ll be able to work out why people slap their foreheads when you write things like this.
I’ll give you a hand to get you started: If one kilowatt of solar PV is situated so that it so that it generates most of its electricity, “during a few hours either side of solar noon”, then about how many kilowatt-hours will that PV generate on a cloudless day?
@Will Boisvert
Once again your assumptions and reasoning are wrong. To accurately assess domestic and commercial premises solar power you must take notice of both solar PV and the latest solar hot water technologies (usually evacuated tube).
For all-electrical households, about 25% of energy costs come from heating water. Using solar hot water heating, about 20% of the total electricity cost can be saved (allowing 5% for back-up heating). This means the house is now drawing 20% less power from the grid. Right there is a massive saving to the grid load suburb by suburb.
Also, your either-or assumption re solar PV connection is a false dichotomy in costing terms for several reasons. The position of grid-connected power is that is does save costs on average for all users. Solar excess fed to the grid by day is very useful. It helps counter daytime peaks and aircon peaks. This saves on high costs for peak power and it may save on major transmission line costs (as more power is generated locally on the grid).
The overall position is that the grid benefits in robustness and stability from local generation especially when local generation is widespread. Intermittancy and local grid capacity do become a problem at high levels of penetration of wind and solar. But contrary to your characterisations this too can be solved and solved at a reasonable cost.
Finally, it is not true in the net sense to say very little of daytime solar PV power will be directly used by households. There are many households operating through the day. All households with a stay-at-home partner and all households with retirees tend to operate through the day and some use air-con in summer. I will put a caveat on this.
Persons more knowlegable about grids and grid connection can comment. It may or may not be the case that you can neatly say or impute that grid-connected solar PV in the daytime “flows” directly to the house producing it if that house is using power. Smart meters record it that way but does that reflect where the exact EMF load is incurred in the grid in supply terms? Houses that have “anti-islanding” for blackout and no backup for blackout may be wired into the grid a bit differently. Such houses might tend to feed the grid only and draw from the grid only even when doing both together. (Note 1) Houses with more complicated systems and back-up batteries can feed anywhere and draw anywhere by automated control ie. feed to grid, house or batteries and draw from grid or batteries based on system needs and costs and prices programmed in as parameters to the controller.
Note 1: We can envisage the difference in plumbing terms. I could have a rainwater tank and a pressure pump such that I could pipe this water direct into my house sytem and save on using metered water from the mains or I could push it into the street main and run my water meter backwards. This encapsulates the difference. Never mind, for the purposes of the illustration, that the water supply authority would never allow me to push into the mains untreated water with no quality control. Solar inverters can push appropriate quality controlled power into power mains.
@ Ikonoclast, on nuclear subsidies.
Try this link (http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/) . In 2010, the latest data I could find, the US paid about $2.5 billion in subsidies to nuclear, $3.3 billion to fossil fuels, and $14.7 billion to renewables. That’s about 0.3 cents per kwh of nuclear electricity produced. Wind and solar got $6 billion in subsidy, much more than nuclear in return for several times less electricity produced.
Compare with German renewable subsidies: Last year Germany spent about EU 23 billion on the renewable surcharge subsidy—not the total cost of the power, just the subsidy portion—and produced 152 TWh of renewable electricity, an average subsidy of about 15 euro-cents per kwh, or almost four times the wholesale price. There’s no subsidy like renewable subsidies.
–To gauge how unreliable UCS’s report on nuclear subsidies is, let’s look at Koplow’s treatment of the nuclear loan guarantees. This is distorted by his general method of reckoning the subsidy as the imputed “value” to the recipient rather than the cost to the government. Koplow estimates that the $18.5 billion of budgeted loan guarantees will “cost” the government $4.7 billion—the (exaggerated) odds of default multiplied by the loan guarantees. But then he reckons the “present value” of the loan guarantee to the recipients in lowered borrowing costs at $23 billion to $34 billion. (That’s a per-kwh subsidy of 2.5 to 3.7 cents per kwh over the entire 30-year span of the loan guarantee, he contends). In other words, he estimates that the present value of the loan guarantee to the nuclear utility is larger than the present value of the loan itself!
To reckon more realistic numbers for the loan guarantee subsidy, let’s consider the $8.3 billion loan guarantee to the Vogtle build. Southern Company’s bonds get roughly 5 percent; let’s over-estimate that the loan guarantee lowers the cost of borrowing by 2 percentage points. That would mean that the first year the reactor goes online, the avoided interest costs from the loan guarantee would be 2 percent of about $8.3 billion, or about $166 million. Divided by the plant’s output of 17.6 terawatt-hours, that’s 0.93 cents per kwh. (Interest costs would of course decline in subsequent years as principal is retired.) So Koplow’s estimate of the value of the loan guarantee subsidy, 2.4 to 3.7 cents per kwh for 30 years, is at least 3-4 times too high.
There are even more bizarre distortions in the report.
Oops, should be about $20 billion on the German renewable surcharge last year, so 13 euro-cents per kwh–still a lot!
Will Boisvert,
You are starting from way behind on this.
There are quite a number of household management systems that assist in managing solar energy to best purpose (at least 2 from Australia alone). These switch in loads according to priority and schedule. loads such as dishwashing, clothes washing, battery charging, refrigerator operation, swimming pool filtering, charging cars, operating slow cookers, and ovens, and air conditioning.
Where the heavy loads are operated during the day time the load on batteries can be managed well and maintained at a minimum with the use of LED lighting, the use of gas for hot plate cooking, boiling kettles, grilling and baking.
These are all relatively minor adjustments. Apart from that grid can be used to charge vehicles remotely with the use of a broker to manage the cost of wheeling power across the grid with that cost being a function of distance. This might be done where the vehicle spends all day in a remote parking location with the power being drawn being managed to match that which is supplied to the grid from the rooftop system.
An intelligent grid operator will recognise the direction that all of this will take and invest in the most efficient energy production system to complement coming reality. In Australia the power transmission grid is (meant to be) independent of the power generators, so it is an energy highway, the energy itself is supplied by a large variety of operators.
@Will Boisvert
The situation in Australia is that some states had FiTs for PV grid export up to 66c per kwh, some at 44c and some at 26c. My understanding is that by 2019 the Australia wide FiT will be around 8c with at least one region already at 6c I believe. If smart meters that could handle time-of-use pricing were widespread the FiT on a mild sunny day could be just a couple of cents or perhaps curtailed.
That would essentially mean home PV becomes ‘use it or lose it’ which might spur the uptake of home batteries or BEVs for those with spare cash. For home solar installation (PV or water heaters) to get back to the 2012 peak may require the return of strong incentives (FiT and purchase rebates) which appear to be off the agenda at all levels of government.
@Will Boisvert
As usual with such reports, the devil is in the detail. Let us go through it. I will use direct quotes and just comment at need.
Quote 1. “As requested, this report updates the previous report using FY 2010 data and is limited to subsidies that are provided by the federal government, provide a financial benefit with an identifiable federal budget impact, and are specifically targeted at energy markets. Subsidies to federal electric utilities, in the way of financial support, are also included, as requested. These criteria do exclude some subsidies beneficial to energy sector activities and this should be kept in mind when comparing this report to other studies that may use narrower or more expansive inclusion criteria.”
Note 1: It is worth noting other reports may use narrower or wider criteria. There is no evidence here whether narrower or wider criteria would show nuclear in a better or worse light.
Quote 2. “Not included are:
– Section 199 of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, referred to as the domestic manufacturing deduction, provides reductions in taxable income for American manufacturers…
– Accelerated depreciation schedules
– Subsidized credit
– Tax-exempt municipal bonds
– Foreign tax credits
– Special treatment for some publicly-traded partnerships (PTP)
– Another potential subsidy source not addressed in this report is associated with energy-related trust funds financed by taxes and fees. Examples include the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the Pipeline Safety Fund, the Aquatic Resources Trust Fund, the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund, the Nuclear Waste Fund, and the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund.”
Note 2 : For many of the listed items there is no evidence here whether or not these criteria would apply more heavily to nuclear power. However, the final item includes items specific to nuclear power (among others) and none apparently specific to renewables.
Quote 3: “This report also does not attempt to quantify the potential subsidy resulting from limits to liability in case of a nuclear accident provided by Section 170 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Price-Anderson Act. The Price-Anderson Act requires each operator of a nuclear power plant to obtain the maximum amount of primary coverage of liability insurance. Currently, the amount is about $400 million. Damages exceeding that amount would be funded with a retroactive assessment on all other firms owning commercial reactors based upon the number of reactors they own. However, Price-Anderson places a limit on the total liability to all owners of commercial reactors at about $12 billion.”
Note 3: Here is a subsidy to nuclear which could perhaps be valued by accounting the true annual cost of unlimited liability insurance if the nuclear industry has to take it out.
Quote 4: “Research and development accounted for 22 percent of the total subsidies and support to the electric power sector. Nuclear accounted for the highest level of R&D expenditures at $1,169 million, followed by renewables at $632 million, and coal at $575 million.”
Note 4: These are accounted for in totals so these costs are counted for all energy types.
Other notes: I would like to point out an item on Table ES2 – Quantified energy-specific subsidies and support by type, FY 2010 and FY 2007 (million 2010 dollars). This is the item “biofuels” which is very largely ethanol from corn. It comes under the heading “Renewables”. It takes a lion’s share of subsidies at 6.64 billion unmatched by an other direct subsidy to energy. Now, I take it that you haven’t imputed this against wind or solar.
Indeed, it is truly false to even impute this against Renewables. Rather it is a corn grower’s agricultural subsidy and not a real energy subsidy. This is for the very reason that Pimental et. al. have assessed, namely that the EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) of biofuel ethanol is barely, if at all, better than 1:1. In other words this is a huge waste of time and money. Energy production in general and renewables in particular would be far better off if this wassteful and counter-productive subsidy was never made. No true renewables greenie favours this huge and inefficient agricultural subsidy.
Quote 5 “Relative to their share of total electricity generation, renewables received a large share of direct federal subsidies and support in FY 2010. For example, renewable fuels accounted for 10.3 percent of total generation, while they received 55.3 percent of federal subsidies and support (Tables ES4 and ES5). However, caution should be used when making such calculations because many factors can drive the results. For example, many of the programs that showed the largest increases in subsidies between FY 2007 and FY 2010 are supporting facilities that are still under construction, including energy equipment manufacturing facilities that may not affect energy consumption or production for several years. Furthermore, the ARRA 1603 grant program, that allows investors to choose an upfront grant instead of a 10-year production tax credit, tended to lead to much higher overall electricity subsidy estimates for renewables in FY 2010 than would have occurred had they continued to rely on the existing production tax credit program, which does not front-load subsidy costs. Focusing on a single year’s data also does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years across all energy fuels and technologies.”
Note 5: This percentage for renewables subsidies, 55.3%, relies on Table ES4 – Fiscal year 2010 electricity production subsidies and support (million 2010 dollars) so it is correct. This does not include the biofuels figure. However, the report itself adds cautions and caveats for this large percentage. So renewables extra share is not as great as first appears though there appears to be no data on how to render it in truly equivalent fashion to nuclear subsdies. Clearly, though the distorting effect is significant. After all the report wording is that this effect “tended to lead to much higher overall electricity subsidy estimates for renewables in FY 2010.”
The report paragraph above also refers to “the largest increases in subsidies between FY 2007 and FY 2010 are supporting facilities that are still under construction, including energy equipment manufacturing facilities that may not affect energy consumption or production for several years.” Essentially this mean the building of factories to build wind generating equipment and ancilleries (on my interpretation). Thus they are factory building and tooling up to make generators for the future.
Conclusion: The situation is for renewables not nearly as unabalanced as you imply. A number of specifically nuclear costs are not in the report as per its admitted method. A number of big renewable costs, especially for wind, are front-loaded both financially and in terms of building factories now to get generating plant built and operational later. So you cannot validly compare current nuclear subsidies (numerator) and current mature nuclear generation (denominator) to current wind subsidies (numerator) to current wind generation (denominator) where with wind the costs accrue now and in a very front-loaded fashion and the generating capacity benefits will come later.
QED. 🙂
@Fran Barlow This bit also ties in with Asset sales, yet again
@Hermit
Well Hermit it certainly seems extremely derpish of you to mention the issue of German coal mining, given that I had already said that the reason for that (hopefully temporary) reliance is because they are phasing out nuclear.
I’m tempted to use bold, but I know it’s wrong!
@Will Boisvert
You really are seriously confused about this topic, and as Ronald has suggested, it would be better to educate yourself. Just a few things that I don’t think others have pointed out yet
1. you are talking simultaneously about the current situation, where a minority of households have solar, and a hypothetical situation where excess solar gets ‘wasted’. It doesn’t get wasted, it gets used.
2. I’m told by people who know that my excess solar power goes to the households nearest me first. Distribution costs are low.
3. Energy companies in Victoria charge ‘service charges’ (is this done in all states?). These are for the costs of infrastructure and distribution. They have been steadily rising as a proportion of the bill. Everyone who is on the grid pays them. For example I generated three times as much power as I used in the last quarter, but I still pay the same service charges as comparable households.
4. I am on the 8c FIT, so my energy company pays me 8c per KWh for the excess power I generate. They sell it to others for about 21c per kwh. Remember that I generated about 3x as much as I used, and then think about who is the winner there.
John Davidson, who writes for Brian Bahnisch’s new blog climateplus, and also has his own blog, is looking at this in detail. It’s complicated, but your belief that people with solar are ripping off other consumers seems completely off the mark. People with solar who are receiving 8c FIT may in fact be the ones who are being ripped off the most.
@ BilB,
What you’re describing is a rooftop PV household that’s still heavily dependent on the grid, even with battery storage, smart-meter shifting of load to sunny hours and the use of gas for cooking (a big step in the wrong direction, because that has lots more greenhouse emissions than if we used clean electric ranges.) We would still need “ the use of a broker to manage the cost of wheeling power across the grid with that cost being a function of distance,“ just to charge the car.
The complexity, cost, inconvenience and GHG burden of your scenario makes my head hurt, and it sure doesn’t free rooftop PV from the expense of the transmission grid on which it must still rely.
@Will Boisvert
Will B: You cannot equate the German renewable surcharge, or even the earmarked part of it, with a subsidy. The reason is that the wholesale price has dropped, mainly because of renewables creaming off a good part of the most valuable daytime load. Retail prices are a function both of the surcharge and the wholesale price – in fact they are not rising today in spite of scare headlines about the surcharge. To estimate how much subsidy Germany pays to renewables, you would need to compare the current track with alternative feasible pathways. The government, for EU legal reasons, insists that the FIT system is not a subsidy and SFIK has taken care not to carry out such calculations.
The important point to my mind is not the total subsidy, whatever it is, but the fact that it’s a legacy charge. New German onshore wind gets a rate close to average wholesale. New residential solar gets well under half retail; still above wholesale, but if you allow for value-of-solar benefits including avoided transmission costs, the subsidy element, if there is one, is very low. Offshore wind gets a clearly subsidised high FIT: perhaps that’s OK with you, as the technology is big, macho and expensive. New nuclear, at Vogtle or Hinkley, in contrast requires and gets large subsidies.
John: You’ve allowed Will Boisvert to hijack the thread, on a post about a back-to-nature opponent of renewables, with his nuclear obsession. Or is it profession?
@ Val, on the cost of solar PV,
Val, thanks for your comments, but they actually prove my point.
“I’m told by people who know that my excess solar power goes to the households nearest me first. Distribution costs are low.”
That’s not really how grids work, but even if it were, what happens when all your neighbors also have solar panels and can’t absorb your excess because they are trying to export their own? Then the whole area’s excess will have to be exported someplace where the sun don’t shine, as they say (or else be wasted). That will require an expansion of long-distance transmission. As solar power increases, it requires more transmission, not less.
“I generated three times as much power as I used in the last quarter, but I still pay the same service charges as comparable households.”
Val, think about what that means in terms of grid usage and your proper share of the grid costs. You used X kwh from your solar panels, but exported 3X of your solar power to the grid and reaped the FIT from those exports. That means the total amount of electricity flowing over the grid increased considerably, by 2X, because of your solar panels. Had the grid not been there, you would have had to waste that 3X of electricity and forego the 8 cents per kwh income stream from it, which would have made the economic proposition of your solar panels look starkly different.
So since your solar household increases electricity traffic on the grid by exporting your excess, and thus imposes grid burdens larger than those of comparable non-solar households, your grid charges should be higher than that of other households, not the same. You’re the one who’s receiving an implicit subsidy on grid charges. And you’re getting paid a further subsidy of whatever the difference between your 8 cent per kwh FIT and the wholesale electricity price is.
“I am on the 8c FIT, so my energy company pays me 8c per KWh for the excess power I generate. They sell it to others for about 21c per kwh. Remember that I generated about 3x as much as I used, and then think about who is the winner there.”
Val, the reason for that price mark-up is that it costs money for the grid to distribute the surplus electricity that it buys from you to other users. What if the grid wasn’t there and you had to distribute it yourself? Then you’d have to build your own network of transmission lines and substations and connect them to other users, and hire repairmen to maintain them, and hire grid managers to regulate the flow over the wires so the system doesn’t black out or short out, and hire more employees to bill the people you sell your electricity to, etc. Pretty expensive!
“People with solar who are receiving 8c FIT may in fact be the ones who are being ripped off the most.”
–Imagine if a coal plant operator went to the grid company and said, “My plant is exporting more electricity to the grid than it’s using, yet I’m being charged the same grid usage fee as everyone else. And you’re only paying me 8 cents per kilowatt-hour for my electricity, but then you’re charging everyone else 21 cents per kilowatt-hour retail to use it. I’m being ripped off!” That argument sounds pretty stupid coming from a coal plant, right? It’s just as stupid when solar homeowners make it.
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post…
Will Boisvert,
The primary aim of the exercise here is to reduce CO2 emissions. Each and every Australian consumes 15 cubic metres of fossil fuel each year releasing some 42 tonnes of CO2. This scenario dramatically reduces those emissions to virtually nil.
From “How Stuff Works”
“The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that cooking accounts for 4.5 percent of the energy we use at home [source: U.S. Department of Energy]. Because that’s a relatively tiny slice of our household carbon emissions, the question of whether a gas or electric stove saves more energy isn’t a burning one for people looking to minimize their carbon footprints [source: American Council for Energy Efficient Economy].”
The advantage not using electric for cooking is because of the momentary size of the load on the batteries and inverters. A regular (Australian) stove appliance can draw over 7 kilowatts at any one time if all elements are on.
The secondary aim of the exercise is to save money. This system does that very well.
The exercise does not aim to make the householder a puritanical isolationist, something that Denialists routinely demand of Renewables, the “the grid is ours if you don’t use it all then you can’t have any of it” thinking (its a little bit childish). The fact is that in NSW the public paid for the power transmission grid, not the power companies.
Charging cars remotely via the grid is an option not a requirement. Another way that charging can be managed is to charge from solar houses and business (microgrids) in the vacinity where the car is parked. The VW GTE Hybrid will cost $2 to charge its 8kwhr battery for 50 klms driving.
There is one thing that is absolutely beyond contestation. I can put solar on the roof of my house and factory Years, if not decades before Nuclear origin electricity could possibly arrive any near my house.
It is those years that are the vital difference to minimise Global Warming.
I think that you need a powder and a lie down to rest your hurting head.
@Val
This sounds like censorship. Germany is providing a real world demonstration of the difficulties of high penetration renewables despite 16 bn euros a year in subsidies. Their emissions are expected to increase until 2020 with the nuclear phaseout by 2022 but they are still on 15% nuclear as we speak.
In reply to an inevitable question South Australia’s 30% renewables is backed by 50% gas unlike Germany which tries to do the job with coal. Germany would otherwise need gas from Russia but SA will soon have to compete with Gladstone Qld LNG.
Will Boisvert
Of the regular posters here I’m probably one of the least unsympathetic to your perspective. Unlike the others, I have no problem, in principle, with nuclear energy. That, as I understand it, is also our host’s general view. If, tomorrow, the majority of the country became fixated on rapid, unilateral decarbonisation and expressed that as a desire to retire all of our coal and gas fired energy capacity with nuclear power by 2020 I’d be more than happy. I’d celebrate.
One often struggles to imagine things about which one can be certain in politics, but I’m certain that or anything roughly like it won’t happen tomorrow, or any day between now and 2020, your enthusiastic advocacy notwithstanding. Far less swingeing changes than that are the subject of controversy here.
You seemed to accept my word on the political status of nuclear power in an earlier post, so I do wonder why you think your current advocacy is worth offering here. It’s not as if we are discussing a matter of ethics.
As you’d know, a ton of CO2e emissions avoided here is exactly as valuable to abatement as one avoided in Russia or Brazil or Indonesia or the UAE. Would it not be better to press for countries who can’t afford energy infrastructure development and that have no significant opposition to nuclear power to tool up with the assistance of governments that are signatories to the CDM?
If nuclear power is indeed the single most feasible decarbonisation tool available then let us fund it elsewhere, where it is welcomed. If there are concerns about hazmat and proliferation why wouldn’t Australia offer, for a suitable fee, to sequester the material? It’s not as if there are not secure geological strata here where longterm sequestration from contact with the rest of the ecosystem would be a problem.
That policy would be controversial too, but it’s far less unlikely than Australia going to nuclear power. It’s also far more likely to effect an early start on abatement.
Maybe we don’t have to do anything if a bit of worldwide recession is OK. One author opines that emissions could drop 60% between 2010 and 2030 due to converging Peak Oil and a credit crunch
http://theenergycollective.com/gail-tverberg/367541/oil-limits-and-climate-change-how-they-fit-together
The IPCC onwards-and-upwards scenarios appear to assume we can at least maintain GDP which perhaps should not be a given.
aargh. Berked the formatting. Trying again…
Another author thinks that solar energy will supply 100% of the world’s energy needs in 16 years. Personally, I’d rate both authors as roughly equal in credibility on this issue (although only one of them has made any successful predictions). 😉
The online Peak Oil community seems to be another rich source of derp. The lead authors have now been predicting that global collapse is imminent for approaching two decades, while steadfastly ignoring the repeated failures of their earlier prognostications.
BTW Prof Q could you kindly delete the version of my comment which is in moderation.
@Will Boisvert
Will the subject is complicated as I said, but to keep things simple and address the main points:
You are talking as if we have reached saturation point with solar but we haven’t. That was my first point, and you’re still doing it. It’s irrelevant to what’s actually happening.
Consumers pay the costs of distribution of electricity (the grid). You seem to be suggesting that producers should pay it. That seems a really strange argument!
Of course those costs are reflected in the price producers get, which is why the argument over the FIT is complex. But to suggest I should be paying a higher service charge than my neighbours because I’m producing electricity as well as consuming it – sounds novel.
@Hermit
It’s not censorship Hermit – derp is about when people keep repeating the same position even when they’ve been given different information that theoretically should lead them to alter or modify their position. In this comment you’ve acknowledged that there is a real challenge for Germany in simultaneously phasing out nuclear and reaching renewables targets, so it’s still an argument, but not derp, whereas before you didn’t seem to be acknowledging the information that the commitment to phasing out nuclear was creating a (hopefully temporary) increased reliance on fossil fuels.
That isn’t very well expressed but I’m pretty sure you actually know what I mean.
@Will Boisvert
Hi Will I’ve done some more research on this to see where your ideas are coming from and I think I’ve found a possible source https://www.esaa.com.au/policy/distributed_generation_implications_for_australian_electricity_markets
(ESAA is Energy Supply Association of Australia)
Ok again I’ll try not to make this too long but this is the main arguments with my comments:
Not all grid costs are covered by service charge, some are built into the retailers’ unit price per kWh, so when people reduce the amount of electricity they are buying from the retailer, they also reduce the amount they pay for the grid.
Feeding electricity back into the grid “may” cause some additional costs to the grid (this is speculative, the report does not produce evidence of it)
The infrastructure costs of the grid are largely sunk.
Translates as: people who reduce their electricity usage [note this would apply to anyone who does this, not just people with solar] are a problem for us suppliers, because our system of charges wasn’t designed to cope with this. [Btw the report also assumes that demand will keep growing even though that isn’t happening]. Possibly people with solar PV who feed electricity back into the grid might be causing us some extra costs, although we can’t say what they are. Anyway we’ve built this bloody grid now, so bad luck, we have to find some way of making you pay for it.
@Tim Macknay
Interesting you should mention fossil fuel derps. I was one. Whilst admitting to a derpish history, I can at least lay claim to being one of the few derps who can absorb empirical data and change his views based on that.
Gail the Actuary on her blog has really gone out on a limb. She is predicting a “Seneca cliff” collapse from 2015. All forms of energy production are shown in one of her latest graphs as plummeting after 2015. Gail posits a vicious spiral down. Energy gets scarce. Finances and economy then begin to collapse. Even less energy is produced due to economic chaos and said chaos gets worse. Feedbacks kick in and the spiral continues down until we are roughly back in the middle ages.
A few years ago I instigated a bet with Prof. J.Q. that world GDP or world income would be less in 2020 than in 2010 in inflation adjusted dollars. I suspect now I will lose that bet. However, that does not imply I was hypothesising a Seneca cliff collapse. A failure to grow much from 2010, followed by a protracted slow decline from 2015 would do it.
I now see it as possible that wind and solar energy could make up our fossil fuel decline. However, energy issues might not be the most critical of the potential problems we face. Shortages of fresh water for agriculture and of course climate change are two more problems we face. We also face the issue of various problems compounding and making the entire situation worse.
Gail the Actuary dogmatically denies the possibility that wind and solar will ever be viable net energy sources. Gail also seems to view our political and economic systems as entirely unadaptive. She sees an extensive financial collapse as a game-ender. If capitalism cannot fund mining, industrial and agricultural activity then that activity simply will not happen. It will all stop dead. That is Gail’s view if I interpret her correctly.
In my view, Gail’s picture of financial collapse, even capitalistic collapse, being civilizationally terminal is incorrect. Gail fails to see the possibilities of state action. Specifically, in crises, a still functional and strong state can conscript labour (even beyond army and security personnel) and commandeer resources. When General Motors collapsed it was Chapter 11’ed and kept running. If a major crisis caused the entire oil recovery and refinery business to collapse in the US, Washington would not say “Oh well, that’s it. No more oil, no more petrol and no more war machine.” No indeed, if capitalism fails the state steps in, with martial law if necessary, to keep things running.
Ultimately, energetic and material resources availability will be the deciding factor, along with our efficiency or inefficiency in using them, in determining our civilizational trajectory from this point. Our system is certainly vulnerable to various kinds of systemic crises in key sub-systems. But I do not view our entire system as so maladaptive that it can’t find a way to “cut the Gordian knot” and get things running again at a materially sustainable level. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy is an example of cutting the Gordian knot of finance. Martial law cuts the Gordian knot of civil law breakdown (or at least attempts to).
Kunstler’s picture of “The Long Emergency” is likely closer to what will happen than a “Seneca cliff”. If so-called collapse occurs, or even a partial regress, it will a be a long grinding process of 50 to 100 years. Rapid collapse is not on the cards IMO unless we see something like a comet impact, a supervolcano or a nuclear war (usually the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies but none of these events is impossible).
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@ Val, on rooftop PV and grid costs,
1) “You are talking as if we have reached saturation point with solar but we haven’t. That was my first point, and you’re still doing it. It’s irrelevant to what’s actually happening.”
Good point. With transmission we’re talking about “scaling system costs”, which are not very relevant when solar and wind penetration is low. But they are crucially relevant if we look ahead to high penetrations of intermittents, necessary if solar and wind play a significant role in decarbonization. As more people near you build rooftop PV, power surges during sunny hours will grow and eventually overload the grid; then new transmission lines will have to be built to carry that power to distant places. At significant penetrations, intermittent power requires more transmission lines to shuttle electricity from areas where it is surging to other areas where it is slumping. Otherwise local surpluses will be wasted by curtailment while local deficits are made up with fossil fuels.
Germany has reached that point. With 15 percent penetration of intermittents, they are building tens of billions of euros of new transmission capacity to cope with the chaotic output of wind and solar. Australia will have to do likewise when its intermittents penetration grows as large, and the costs of that new transmission capacity should be imputed to the cost of wind and solar electricity.
2) “Consumers pay the costs of distribution of electricity (the grid). You seem to be suggesting that producers should pay it. That seems a really strange argument!….But to suggest I should be paying a higher service charge than my neighbours because I’m producing electricity as well as consuming it – sounds novel.”
Also a good point. (Although in principle the generator could pay the shipping costs of grid power rather than the consumer; it’s the sender of a letter who pays the postage, rather than the recipient.) But the larger point isn’t which party pays for the grid, but rather how much cost solar power imposes on the grid, (or relieves from the grid).
Those costs don’t break down easily on a marginal per-kwh basis, because they are mainly overhead. The mite of electricity your panels export to the grid doesn’t really add any cost in itself (until the aggregate exports of many solar households require us to build more transmission capacity). Conversely, when you import less grid power because of your solar panels, that doesn’t reduce the costs of the grid. As long as you need the grid to export your power during solar surges and import power during slumps, the costs the grid incurs by serving you remain essentially the same, even if you reduce your usage of grid electricity. So you’re right that you should not have a higher service charge than non-solar neighbors, nor a lower one.
3) “Anyway we’ve built this bloody grid now, so bad luck, we have to find some way of making you pay for it.”
Precisely! Unless you can go completely off grid, the grid does have to be paid for, even if people are using less electricity from it. If everyone were to use 50 percent less electricity per day, the grid could not scrap half its power lines and substations or fire half its repairmen and grid managers. The grid overhead costs remain as long as people need any grid power, and if part of the grid costs are paid through per-kwh usage fees those costs will have to be shifted to the service charge if usage declines.
That means your solar home has to pay an equal share of grid costs along with everyone else, even though some of its electricity now comes from panels. That’s fair; as we saw upthread, you use the grid more than comparable households because you ship so much excess solar power over it, collecting a FIT along the way that makes the finances of your panels feasible. The grid is very good luck indeed for your solar system.
But if you think you’re getting a bad deal from the grid, nobody’s forcing you to stay on it. You can buy the batteries and backup generator, snip the wire and live in splendid isolation with your solar panels. I think you’ll find that more expensive than your grid service charge.
4) This discussion was sparked by the question of whether grid transmission and distribution costs should be imputed to rooftop solar power. Ronald Brak implied (I think; he’s kind of Sphinx-like) that they should not be, that rooftop PV is somehow free of grid costs. That can’t be right: as we’ve seen above most rooftop PV electricity is exported and shipped over the grid, so solar power mostly is grid power.
It’s difficult and improper to assess grid costs in the marginal per-kwh LCOE framework that Ronald uses because they are overhead costs; that’s why LCOE calculations usually exclude grid costs. What we do know—from the logic of surge-and-slump intermittent generation, from the example of Germany, from the performance of solar systems like yours, Val—is that transmission capacity has to expand, and its costs rise, as solar and wind penetrations increase. So in the aggregate, rooftop PV should be imputed higher transmission and distribution costs than dispatchable generators like fossil, hydro and nuclear.
I see Will Boisvert hasn’t let us know if he has worked out about how many kilowatt-hours will be generated by one kilowatt of PV situated to produce most of its electricity “during a few hours either side of solar noon” on a cloudless day. It’s such a pity that a learning opportunity may have been missed.
@Ronald Brak
Let’s go on the ‘rule of four’ for mid latitudes like Melbourne whereby a 1 kw nameplate polycrystalline panel generates about 4 kwhe a day on average. Times 365 is is 1,460 kwh for the year. However if it could produce that 1 kw for 8,670 hours a year it would be 8,760 kwh. Therefore the annual capacity factor is 1460/8760 = 0.17 call it 17%. Most thermal plant can produce 90% of its rated capacity year round including at night and when it’s raining.
17% for Victorian annual PV capacity factor is a smidgin higher than given in for example Figure 17 in this report Melbourne Energy Institute: The impact of distributed solar generation on the wholesale electricity market. June 2103
@Will Boisvert
You persist in writing as if solar and wind generation have all the problems and nuclear generation has no problems. This is not the case of course. All power generation methods have problems. All power generation methods have positives and negatives.
The big argument from you seems to be that solar and wind power are intermittent and thus wholly unreliable and that nuclear power is constant and utterly dependable. Also, it seems to be your claim that nuclear power presents no or very few distribution problems and that solar and wind suffer irretrievably from distribution problems. None of your contentions are correct.
All electricity grids have to grapple with the issues of fluctuating demand AND fluctuating supply. Demand fluctuations can be managed to some extent but a considerable amount of demand fluctuation will always be an issue. On the supply side, a number of measures are taken (and new ones being investigated) to deal with demand fluctuation.
I don’t want to fight the baseload argument. Baseload exists in a broad sense as the base line that can be drawn on a typical 24 hour load graph such that the minimum load does not fall below the baseload. However, the shape of the 24 hour load graph and the level at which baseload falls currently is to some extent a pricing artifact. Further, this pricing is to some extent an outcome of the need to keep legacy heavy dispatchable plants (baseload) running as constantly as possible 24/7. Pricing can change, as a demand management measure, to deal with new generation regimes.
Currently power generator units fall into three broad categories; baseload, load-following, and peaking power plants. Traditional or legacy generation systems heavy on baseload stations (coal and nuclear stations) had to keep back-up heavy plants running all the time in case a loaded station had a breakdown. This was a large overhead cost. The addition of load-following and peaking power plants gave grid operators more flexibility.
It is not the case that nuclear power stations are perfectly reliable. They do breakdown or face forced powerdowns due to accidents, malfunctions, floods, cooling water problems and tsunamis to name a few. When a nucelar power station makes an unscheduled, forced shutdown that puts a big hole in generating capacity often causing extended blackouts. Smaller, distributed generators amounting to the same capacity are extraordinarily unlikely to all shut down simultaneous in an unplanned and unforeseeable manner.
Solar and wind are intermittent. This is not the same as unreliable or unpredictable though it still presents problems. Solar and wind can supplement each other. Wind can blow at night. Sun often shines brightly on still days. The other issue is wide distribution. A continent wide or semi-continent wide system of solar and wind has a wide distribution in a variety of conditions. Furthemore, insolation and wind-speed prediction by a computerised system allows accurate warnings of supply change at least an hour ahead. This is enough for other changes in the system like bringing on load following power.
Finally, you are discounting storage solutions and 24 hour renewable supply solutions. Hydro power can be spun up or spun down rapidly with response times in minutes or less. Pumped hydro can absorb power and pump water back uphill to the reservoir. Pumped hydro is not particularly energy efficient though. However, molten salt heat storage for concentrating solar thermal only introduces 1% more energy loss than occurs from immediate thermal energy to electrical energy conversion. Also, solar convection towers can run 24/7. Economics will determine what mix of these solutions is best.
Nuclear power is already losing the battle. It is being phased out due to its uneconomical and dangerous nature. The empirical facts in the field already show you are fighting a losing battle in attempting to promote nuclear power. Like all the failing geostrategists of history you are now calling up the phantom battalions, reinforcements that don’t even exist yet like commercial breeder reactors, commercial thorium reactors, uranium from seawater and other absurd fantasies.
@Hermit
That is comparing apples to oranges. Performance against rated nameplate capacity is irrelevant except for the same style plants. Performance against rated nameplate capacity is not what governs the cost economics of power generation. It is easy to demonstrate the pointlessness of your statistical argument. Are you saying baseload thermal is more economical by a ratio of 17 to 90? The real numbers do not bear that out so what is the point of your false statistic and false comparison?
If you want to compare power sources then cents per kWh is the only thing that counts. This is true unless we bring in the costs of negative externalities which then makes clear the reality that coal and nuclear costs are a whole lot worse.
Hermit et al
In the interests of not being a derp myself, I want to acknowledge that there is now an argument going on here about why Germany is increasing coal use. The main view still seems to be that it’s because of the nuclear phase out, but others are suggesting that it’s related to increasing prices for gas, particularly because renewables are already making up for the decline in nuclear. There’s also the declining value of utilities, the influence of fossil fuel interests, and the issue of EU targets in the mix.
I don’t really have time to look into it all in detail now, but I follow @EnergiewendeGER which provides a lot of information if you want to look at it.
@ Ikon as fair as I know no solar thermal plant with storage has achieved an annual capacity factor anywhere near 90%. Some like the Ivanpah US plant with winter gas boost but no heat storage have an annual capacity factor around 32% if I recall.
@Val Germany clearly has an aversion to Russian gas in case of supply disruption. Woes with the Energiewende are regularly reported by the English language Der Spiegel. To their credit Germany doesn’t hide anything. Now eastern Australia is becoming gas averse with a looming doubling or tripling of the price when LNG exports start from Queensland next year. That state is mothballing the 385 MW Swanbank E gas fired power station and restarting part of the Tarong coal fired power station. Despite the ‘miracle’ of fracking even the US is worried about increasing gas prices. Gas rich UAE is going nukular. World peak gas is in sight, circa 2030 some reckon.
I’ve just been reading about the UAE. Suffice to say that given that utility scale solar is currently being installed for about a euro a watt it is considerably cheaper than the $30 or billion they are spending on nuclear capacity. While currently low by most standard electricity rates in the UAE have been increasing rapidly this decade and given that a one year term deposit yeilds the princely sum of 1.3%, some people there are likely to have very low discount rates which would make point of use solar at German or Australian interest rates competitive with retail rates. The UAE’s gas and oil derived electricity is of course heavily subsidised and the actual cost is much higher than the retail rate.
I also checked what French people were paying for electricity in the daytime. About 22.5 cents a kilowatt-hour. At European installation costs that of course makes solar very competitive. With a 5% discount rate and German installation costs rooftop solar in a Nice location (see what I did there?) can generate electricity for well under half the retail rate.
As for South Korea doing OK with nuclear, that’s unfortunately far from the case. Nuclear power was planned to increase from 26% of total energy supply in 2013 to 41% in 2030 but that target has been lowered to 29%. Last year 3 reactors were shut down on account of thousands of forged safety certificates.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4e8c1872-7cf7-11e3-81dd-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2z287EcYQ
@Hermit
You didn’t understand my point. Capacity factor is not the issue. Cost of electricity and amelioration of environmental damage are the issues. Capacity factors can only be validly compared when you compare like to like. That means comparing one thermal coal station to another thermal coal station of similar scale and design. It is certainly irrelevant to compare capacity factors of solar plants to coal plants. It has no practical bearing on the issue at hand.
But since you want to obsess about capacity factors;
“According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2009 the capacity factors were as follows:
Natural Gas Plant–42.5%
Oil–7.8%
Hydroelectric–39.8%
Other renewables (Wind/Solar/Biomass)–33.9%
Coal–63.8%
Nuclear–90.3%
However they do tend to vary.
Wind farms 20-40%.
Photovoltaic solar in Massachusetts 13-15%.
Photovoltaic solar in Arizona 19%.
CSP solar in California 33%.
CSP solar with storage and Natural Gas backup in Spain 63%.
Hydroelectricity, worldwide average 44%.
Nuclear power 70% (1971–2009 average of USA’s plants).
Nuclear power 88.7% (2006 – 2012 average of US’s plants).” – Wikipedia.
If capacity factor has a meaning both within and between all styles of energy production it can only be when taken in relation to fuel costs, capital costs and other costs. For example, a fairly standard coal thermal plant might have a capacity factor of 70%. By heavily over-engineering a coal thermal plant we might double its capital cost and raise its capacity factor to 90%. Would this be an efficient use of the capital? Would the electricity have to cost more or less? Obviously it would have to cost more. Looking at the capacity factor in isolation of all other factors and costs is meaningless.
@Ronald Brak
I don’t know about you Ronald, but I have vowed to not let Will or Hermit to have the last word on this thread. I suspect JQ will have to close the comments to stop this comment war. 😉
Ikonoclast, if arguing has sharpened your wits and led you to learn something you didn’t already know, or perhaps even changed the way you view the world, then you have already won. But if you set victory as being changing the hearts and minds of others, then you have already lost, for you have surrended control over your fate.
Not, mind you, that there has been much arguing on this thread. A lot of contradiction, yes. There have been a number of potted arguments thrown out but not much actual arguing, on account of how some sort of basic agreement on reality is reqired for an argument. If there is no basic agreement on reality then there is no argument, just a fight. So sometimes I like to check on whether or not we live in the same reality by asking a simple question such as, about how many kilowatt-hours will one kilowatt of solar panels generate on a cloudless day? People who are not connected to reality flee from these kinds of questions.
@Will Boisvert
Again trying to keep it brief Will, the key point is that moving to renewables requires change, and that will likely involve change in the way electricity is distributed. Rather than trying to penalise people who are shifting to solar, we all (including energy and distribution companies) need to think about how we manage that transition.
My current work on ‘climate change denial’ leads me to think that there are two key aspects to it:
-human beings in general can find change difficult, especially when it’s broad ranging and uncertain rather than specific and clear, and some find it more difficult than others. There is built in inertia in our current systems and practices
-those who have the most ‘invested’ in the current system, in political (ie in terms of power, not just party politics), economic and psychological terms, are likely to resist change the most.
Btw the way the ESAA report also agrees with what I said in my first post that solar (distributed generation in general) tends to have lower distribution costs because it’s used nearer the point of production. Makes sense when you think about it. Systems using widely distributed production from local small to medium systems of generation could actually have a lot of advantages, but it requires change in the way we do things.
I’m a great believer in the importance of social factors, but we do still have free will, and you can choose whether you want to be on the side of the transition to renewables or try to block it. Advocating nuclear is a blocking action.