The Energy Thread

[Uncle Ted]

Wind, solar produce 10 percent of US electricity for first time


Wind, solar produce 10 percent of US electricity for first time
Wind and solar produced 10 percent of the electricity generated in the United States for the first time in March, federal energy officials said Wednesday.


The Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) monthly power report for March found that wind produced 8 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. that month, with solar producing 2 percent.


The two sources combined to have their best month ever in terms of percentage of overall electricity production, EIA said. The agency expects the two sources topped 10 percent again in April but forecasts that their generation will fall below that mark during the summer months.
[...]

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-env...for-first-time

Surprisingly most of this renewable energy is generated in red states...

In Trump Country, Renewable Energy Is Thriving

Two years ago, Kansas repealed a law requiring that 20 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, seemingly a step backward on energy in a deeply conservative state.


Yet by the time the law was scrapped, it had become largely irrelevant. Kansas blew past that 20 percent target in 2014, and last year generated more than 30 percent of its power from wind. The state may be the first in the country to hit 50 percent wind generation in a year or two, unless Iowa gets there first.


Some of the fastest progress on clean energy is occurring in states led by Republican governors and legislators, and states carried by Donald J. Trump in the presidential election.


The five states that get the largest percentage of their power from wind turbines — Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma and North Dakota — all voted for Mr. Trump. So did Texas, which produces the most wind power in absolute terms. In fact, 69 percent of the wind power produced in the country comes from states that Mr. Trump carried in November.
[...]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/c...st-states.html

[Walter Sobchak]

Nuke baby, nuke!


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/op...ower.html?_r=0

Those opposing nuclear power are causing global warming.

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[Uncle Ted]

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Yep, the solution to climate change has been sitting there all along... The damn nuclear protesting hippies (and that pencil-neck Bill Nye, the anti-science guy) are to blame.



I hope you choke on your CO2, Bill Nye!

[Walter Sobchak]

Somewhat paradoxically, places that have adopted renewable energy most aggressively have seen energy prices soar... a German economist predicted this when solar hits 15% of production and wind hits 30% of production.

Wind, solar produce 10 percent of US electricity for first time

Wind and solar produced 10 percent of the electricity generated in the United States for the first time in March, federal energy officials said Wednesday.

The Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) monthly power report for March found that wind produced 8 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. that month, with solar producing 2 percent.

The two sources combined to have their best month ever in terms of percentage of overall electricity production, EIA said. The agency expects the two sources topped 10 percent again in April but forecasts that their generation will fall below that mark during the summer months.
[...]

Fascinating read...

If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?

Over the last year, the media have published story after story after story about the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines.

People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become.

And yet that’s not what’s happening. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Between 2009 and 2017, the price of solar panels per watt declined by 75 percent while the price of wind turbines per watt declined by 50 percent.

And yet — during the same period — the price of electricity in places that deployed significant quantities of renewables increased dramatically.

Electricity prices increased by:

• 51 percent in Germany during its expansion of solar and wind energy from 2006 to 2016;
• 24 percent in California during its solar energy build-out from 2011 to 2017;
• over 100 percent in Denmark since 1995 when it began deploying renewables (mostly wind) in earnest.

What gives? If solar panels and wind turbines became so much cheaper, why did the price of electricity rise instead of decline?



[...]

[Green Monstah]

My guess (and it’s just a guess) is the inflated price is the result of the lack of predictability ofwind and solar generation on a day to day basis. In order to meet demand, the utility commissions have to scramble to find power last minute and they pay a premium for it.

[Moliere]

The Energy Thread

Seems obvious that the price of electricity increases because the market share of solar/wind increases. Just because the price of those renewables have individually decreased doesn’t mean they are cheaper than coal or gas. When you use more of a more expensive form of energy, prices will likely go up unless the drop in cost of solar/wind offsets the increase in market share.

Solar/wind isn’t cheap. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the data (I worked for the local utility years ago so I used to have it on a monthly basis) but coal/gas at that time was like 4 times cheaper per Mwh.

[Walter Sobchak]

My guess (and it’s just a guess) is the inflated price is the result of the lack of predictability ofwind and solar generation on a day to day basis. In order to meet demand, the utility commissions have to scramble to find power last minute and they pay a premium for it.

yep.

The main reason appears to have been predicted by a young German economist in 2013.

In a paper for Energy Policy, Leon Hirth estimated that the economic value of wind and solar would decline significantly as they become a larger part of electricity supply.

The reason? Their fundamentally unreliable nature. Both solar and wind produce too much energy when societies don’t need it, and not enough when they do.

Solar and wind thus require that natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries or some other form of reliable power be ready at a moment’s notice to start churning out electricity when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining.

And unreliability requires solar- and/or wind-heavy places like Germany, California and Denmark to pay neighboring nations or states to take their solar and wind energy when they are producing too much of it.

Hirth predicted that the economic value of wind on the European grid would decline 40 percent once it becomes 30 percent of electricity while the value of solar would drop by 50 percent when it got to just 15 percent.

[Pelado]

My guess (and it’s just a guess) is the inflated price is the result of the lack of predictability ofwind and solar generation on a day to day basis. In order to meet demand, the utility commissions have to scramble to find power last minute and they pay a premium for it.

I attended a meeting on renewables a while ago and they said the unpredictability of wind and solar definitely adds cost and instability to the grid.

Seems obvious that the price of electricity increases because the market share of solar/wind increases. Just because the price of those renewables have individually decreased doesn’t mean they are cheaper than coal or gas. When you use more of a more expensive form of energy, prices will likely go up unless the drop in cost of solar/wind offsets the increase in market share.

Solar/wind isn’t cheap. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the data (I worked for the local utility years ago so I used to have it on a monthly basis) but coal/gas at that time was like 4 times cheaper per Mwh.

This also makes sense. I wonder, though, if the costs of maintaining the turbines and solar panels would still be pricier than other energy methods, or if it's just the initial capital outlay of renewables that is considerably more expensive than more traditional energy sources.

Another potential issue affecting the costs of energy in areas where they are highly focused on renewables - how much of the energy in those places has been coming from natural gas? If not very much, then that could help to explain why their costs are higher relative to the national average. Haven't natural gas prices come down significantly as a result of the additional supply brought about by the new fracking (or however that's spelled) techniques?

[Moliere]

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[Katy Lied]

I love my 6.5 cents per kWh here in Utah, which is about half of what California paid in 2011. But our infrastructure is aging and when we have to build more, our energy costs will double.

Hawaii is seeking to have 100% of its energy come from renewable resources by 2040.

ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Hawaii currently pays 33 cents per kWh.

ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha


When my brother visits my sister living in Hawaii, he insists on blasting the AC day and night because he finds it too hot and humid there. My sister always gets a bill for $450 for the extra AC when he leaves. She says she should just pay for him to stay at Aulani because it would be cheaper.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I love my 6.5 cents per kWh here in Utah, which is about half of what California paid in 2011. But our infrastructure is aging and when we have to build more, our energy costs will double.

Hawaii is seeking to have 100% of its energy come from renewable resources by 2040.

ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Hawaii currently pays 33 cents per kWh.

ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha


When my brother visits my sister living in Hawaii, he insists on blasting the AC day and night because he finds it too hot and humid there. My sister always gets a bill for $450 for the extra AC when he leaves. She says she should just pay for him to stay at Aulani because it would be cheaper.

Extra A/C in Hawaii? Really? Always seemed like pretty much the perfect temp to me.

[BigPiney]

We have a swamp cooler at my house. Because usually we have single digit humidity, or at least it seems. So it works well and the cost is not bad at all to run.

This past week we have had thunderstorms every day, humidity and 100 degree temps. Pretty sure this is what hell, or the South, feels like. It was terrible. Made me wish I had air conditioning, even though I am sure my wife wouldn't let me run it due to the cost.

[Uncle Ted]

Texas to pass Iraq and Iran as world's No. 3 oil powerhouse

Don't mess with Texas. It's a global oil superpower.

The shale oil boom has brought a gold rush mentality to the Lone Star State, which is home to not one but two massive oilfields.

Plunging drilling costs have sparked an explosion of production out of the Permian Basin of West Texas. In fact, Texas is pumping so much oil that it will surpass OPEC members Iran and Iraq next year, HSBC predicted in a recent report.

If it were a country, Texas would be the world's No. 3 oil producer, behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia, the investment bank said.
[...]

http://www.kitv.com/story/38665685/t...oil-powerhouse

:rockon2:"We're #3!"

[Moliere]

http://www.kitv.com/story/38665685/t...oil-powerhouse

:rockon2:"We're #3!"

[Uncle Ted]

EPA finally admits ethanol mandate is causing environmental damage

The federal requirement to blend ethanol into gasoline on the theory that it will reduce the hypothetical global warming that hasn’t appeared yet has been a joke from the start. By adding a huge amount of demand for corn, it did push up prices for that commodity, and made vast swaths of the rural Midwest prosperous, though it has injured poor Mexicans and others who depend on corn for a substantial portion of their nutrition and driven up the rice of feed used for animals, raising meat prices.


The net energy balance of ethanol production – subtracting the amount of energy necessary to grow he corn, transport it to refineries, and then transport the ethanol to gasoline producers has been controversial. But owing to improvements in cultivation techniques (which have caused increased agricultural runoff – see below), the US Department of Agriculture estimated in 2015 that the balance is positive:

Ethanol made the transition from an energy sink, to a moderate net energy gain in the 1990s, and to a substantial net energy gain by 2008.

Unlike oil, which is produced in large amounts at the wellhead, corn production is widely dispersed, so pipelines can't be used to transport it. Corn is trucked to the ethanol refinery, and then the ethanol is normally shipped in tank cars to oil refineries, where it is blended into gasoline. All of this transportation uses energy and imposes a cost from accidents, including derailments. Pipelines are more efficient and safer.
[...]
Alas, the mandate is so popular with corn farmers in Iowa, home of the first round of presidential nominations, that President Trump (and other politicians) that they not only maintain the mandate, President Trump just last week “told an audience in Iowa that he was "very close" to having EPA issue a waiver to the Clean Air Act to allow year-round sale of E-15.”


The madness continues.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...al_damage.html