Renewables Chuck

[LWeber]

Talk about missing the points!!!. And when will such people ever get their hands out of everyone else's pockets?

[chuckChuck]

Talk about missing the points!!!. And when will such people ever get their hands out of everyone else's pockets?

Many posters seem to forget that the oil industry is subsidized in multiple ways as well.

There are tens of thousands of orphan and suspended wells across western Canada which the oil companies want taxpayers to pay for the cleanup on. So who is subsidizing whom? When will the oil industry get their hands out of taxpayers pockets?

"Orphan wells: Alberta’s $47 billion problem"
https://www.producer.com/2018/03/orphan-wells-albertas-47-billion-problem/

"Increase in inactive oil and gas wells could cost Saskatchewan $4B in future cleanup: auditor"
Province has over 24,000 inactive wells — 90 per cent more than in 2005
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/inactive-wells-liability-auditor-1.4695882

"A 2016 study estimated that Canada spends $3.3 billion a year on fossil fuel subsidies, including $1.2 billion in favourable federal tax treatment of oil and gas extraction and development projects.

Last year, Canada's auditor-general criticized the federal government for failing to provide information on inefficient fossil fuel subsidies."
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/07/03/canada-oil-gas-subsidies-g7_a_23473843/

[SASKFARMER3]

Ok chuck blah blah blah. It’s noise from you always the same when your beat you look back at something and try to change the topic.

Yes the oil well reclamation needs work.

But subsidizing solar to get people interested is idiotic when we have well over a 100 plus years of oil and gas in the ground in canada.

Its worked out so well in Ontario under the previous liberal government.

Your a dreamer.

So sit back take a toke and thank your god JT Trudeau for giving you at least one promise.

Even though it’s still cheaper to get from your regular guy.

[Hamloc]

I don't understand how a capitalist USA can be installing renewable energy capacity if it doesn't work?

And China a communist state is installing renewable energy capacity as well. Hmmmm?

Perhaps it has nothing to do with politics and is about making pragmatic decisions based on what is the cheapest and cleanest source of electricity?

Meanwhile some posters can't seem to tolerate any renewable technology and spend most of their time trying to repeatedly explain the obvious current limitations of wind and solar.

It is a good thing our ancestors weren't as negative as some posters and didn't just stop innovating and inventing after they created fire and stone tools, or we would all be still sitting in a damp cave! LOL

Chuck I addressed China's advantages with solar power over Canada in an earlier post, you didn't respond. Then I went through what it costs for solar in Alberta and again you didn't respond. All you seem to want to do cut and paste and tell us how we are living in the past. I have priced it out and consider it a questionable investment at today's prices in our climate.

[SASKFARMER3]

Ah chuck the guy who doesn’t get it.

I did look at solar and actually buying a big wind mill and guess what I would be dead by the time it’s actually make money or broke from repairs.

I’ll take Sask power and sask energy any day.

Now duke energy does have solar in Florida and some other states.

[chuckChuck]

Chuck I addressed China's advantages with solar power over Canada in an earlier post, you didn't respond. Then I went through what it costs for solar in Alberta and again you didn't respond. All you seem to want to do cut and paste and tell us how we are living in the past. I have priced it out and consider it a questionable investment at today's prices in our climate.

You live in Alberta.

Saskatchewan net metering pays 12.658 cents per kwh for farms and around 14 cents per kwh for residential. You will get credit for any electricity you produce at those rates.

I think your net metering rates are much lower at 6.8 cents per kwh which makes it less attractive in Alberta.

Electricity rates will rise at least 2-3% per year. It is not a big money maker but solar will pay for itself in Saskatchewan and lock in lower rates for the long term than what you will pay Sask power for.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

You live in Alberta.

Saskatchewan net metering pays 11.8 cents per kwh for farms and around 14 cents per kwh for residential. You will get credit for any electricity you produce at those rates.

I think your net metering rates are much lower at 6.8 cents per kwh which makes it less attractive in Alberta.

Electricity rates will rise at least 2-3% per year. It is not a big money maker but solar will pay for itself in Saskatchewan and lock in lower rates for the long term than what you will pay Sask power for.

Can someone please explain to me why electricity prices will continue to rise at this rate in the future? We keep being told that renewables are cheaper than conventional. We also hear that new capacity is primarily renewable. So, at some point shouldn't electricity prices be coming down not up? We also have a shale revolution going on, Ensuring natural gas prices are going far anytime soon. Carbon taxes are supposed to be driving efficiencies lowering demand. Energy typically behaves like all mass produced commodities, Such as grains, and underperform inflation in the long term due to efficiencies and increasing economies of scale.

So why would a proponent of Renewable energy, Still budget for electricity price rises in the future, To make the renewable energy look more viable? Do they not believe their own hype?

And in the case of this poster, Why include inflation in the electricity price, but ignore the Time cost of the capital Invested in the renewable energy as was acknowledged in a previous post.

[chuckChuck]

[QUOTE=AlbertaFarmer5;397138]Can someone please explain to me why electricity prices will continue to rise at this rate in the future? We keep being told that renewables are cheaper than conventional. We also hear that new capacity is primarily renewable. So, at some point shouldn't electricity prices be coming down not up? We also have a shale revolution going on, Ensuring natural gas prices are going far anytime soon. Carbon taxes are supposed to be driving efficiencies lowering demand. Energy typically behaves like all mass produced commodities, Such as grains, and underperform inflation in the long term due to efficiencies and increasing economies of scale.

So why would a proponent of Renewable energy, Still budget for electricity price rises in the future, To make the renewable energy look more viable? Do they not believe their own hype?

And in the case of this poster, Why include inflation in the electricity price, but ignore the Time cost of the capital Invested in the renewable energy as was acknowledged in a previous post.[/QUOTE

Regardless of how electricity is produced there is still a distribution system to maintain and pay for.

In Saskatchewan we still have to pay for coal and carbon, capture and storage plus new gas plants and hydro imported from Manitoba.

Why don't you ask the utilities to explain cost increases.

[oneoff]

We concede that Chuck believes solar energy will improve HIS bottom line to some extent.


You can bet your bottom dollar that this class of people would never have made the move until subsidies and the promotional rhetoric overwhelmed their reluctance to take the jump.
BUT it also evident :
QUOTE

Chuck I addressed China's advantages with solar power over Canada in an earlier post, you didn't respond. Then I went through what it costs for solar in Alberta and again you didn't respond. All you seem to want to do cut and paste and tell us how we are living in the past. I have priced it out and consider it a questionable investment at today's prices in our climate.

UNQUOTE


I too have noticed that every differing opinion; every contrary thought; every fact that might give any pause to question any particular fact concerning renewable energy (except maybe renewable hydro which might be the next target) is completely ignored.

That's why the comment about one track agendas comes to mind. Trust me...people like Chuck will rue the day that sees the demise of petrochemicals and fossil fuel energy.

[jazz]

There is no locking in of anything with the govt. They can change those prices at will. Get everyone to build some solar and then cut the price in half and then you are stuck selling to them while your payback time doubles. Plus there are fees to do an interconnection study, application fee etc etc.

There was some guy on the news a few yrs back bragging about his windmill west of MJ. Thing doesn't move now. He must have got a few repair bills on it then phone up Saskpower the next day.

[jazz]

Sask is better off to have a giant biomass boiler where we can sell our worthless grain. Better off as electricity than food.

[chuckChuck]

In 2005 farmers were paying Saskpower 7.76 cents per kwh. In 2018 farmers are paying 12.658 cents per kwh. (just checked my last bill)

That is a 60 % increase in 13 years or about 4.5% increase per year. (Farmers are paying less than residential rates)

At that continued rate of increase farmers will be paying 18.35 cents per kwh in 2028.

So locking in lower rates with solar 30 years into future seems like a pretty good deal.

[chuckChuck]

Donald Sadoway from MIT will be on the CBC National tonight talking about this breakthrough in battery technology.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable-batteries-renewable-energy-0122

A new approach to rechargeable batteries

New metal-mesh membrane could solve longstanding problems and lead to inexpensive power storage.

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office
January 22, 2018
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A type of battery first invented nearly five decades ago could catapult to the forefront of energy storage technologies, thanks to a new finding by researchers at MIT. The battery, based on electrodes made of sodium and nickel chloride and using a new type of metal mesh membrane, could be used for grid-scale installations to make intermittent power sources such as wind and solar capable of delivering reliable baseload electricity.

The findings are being reported today in the journal Nature Energy, by a team led by MIT professor Donald Sadoway, postdocs Huayi Yin and Brice Chung, and four others.

Although the basic battery chemistry the team used, based on a liquid sodium electrode material, was first described in 1968, the concept never caught on as a practical approach because of one significant drawback: It required the use of a thin membrane to separate its molten components, and the only known material with the needed properties for that membrane was a brittle and fragile ceramic. These paper-thin membranes made the batteries too easily damaged in real-world operating conditions, so apart from a few specialized industrial applications, the system has never been widely implemented.

But Sadoway and his team took a different approach, realizing that the functions of that membrane could instead be performed by a specially coated metal mesh, a much stronger and more flexible material that could stand up to the rigors of use in industrial-scale storage systems.

“I consider this a breakthrough,” Sadoway says, because for the first time in five decades, this type of battery — whose advantages include cheap, abundant raw materials, very safe operational characteristics, and an ability to go through many charge-discharge cycles without degradation — could finally become practical.

While some companies have continued to make liquid-sodium batteries for specialized uses, “the cost was kept high because of the fragility of the ceramic membranes,” says Sadoway, the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry. “Nobody’s really been able to make that process work,” including GE, which spent nearly 10 years working on the technology before abandoning the project.

As Sadoway and his team explored various options for the different components in a molten-metal-based battery, they were surprised by the results of one of their tests using lead compounds. “We opened the cell and found droplets” inside the test chamber, which “would have to have been droplets of molten lead,” he says. But instead of acting as a membrane, as expected, the compound material “was acting as an electrode,” actively taking part in the battery’s electrochemical reaction.

“That really opened our eyes to a completely different technology,” he says. The membrane had performed its role — selectively allowing certain molecules to pass through while blocking others — in an entirely different way, using its electrical properties rather than the typical mechanical sorting based on the sizes of pores in the material.

In the end, after experimenting with various compounds, the team found that an ordinary steel mesh coated with a solution of titanium nitride could perform all the functions of the previously used ceramic membranes, but without the brittleness and fragility. The results could make possible a whole family of inexpensive and durable materials practical for large-scale rechargeable batteries.

The use of the new type of membrane can be applied to a wide variety of molten-electrode battery chemistries, he says, and opens up new avenues for battery design. “The fact that you can build a sodium-sulfur type of battery, or a sodium/nickel-chloride type of battery, without resorting to the use of fragile, brittle ceramic — that changes everything,” he says.

The work could lead to inexpensive batteries large enough to make intermittent, renewable power sources practical for grid-scale storage, and the same underlying technology could have other applications as well, such as for some kinds of metal production, Sadoway says.

Sadoway cautions that such batteries would not be suitable for some major uses, such as cars or phones. Their strong point is in large, fixed installations where cost is paramount, but size and weight are not, such as utility-scale load leveling. In those applications, inexpensive battery technology could potentially enable a much greater percentage of intermittent renewable energy sources to take the place of baseload, always-available power sources, which are now dominated by fossil fuels.

The research team included Fei Chen, a visiting scientist from Wuhan University of Technology; Nobuyuki Tanaka, a visiting scientist from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency; MIT research scientist Takanari Ouchi; and postdocs Huayi Yin, Brice Chung, and Ji Zhao. The work was supported by the French oil company Total S.A. through the MIT Energy Initiative.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Chuck, You didn't answer my question whatsoever. Instead you provided the evidence that electricity prices are rising much higher than inflation rates, Concurrent with the expansion of cheaper renewable energy sources. Now I know that correlation does not prove causation(In spite of what the warmunists might think ). But how do you account for this phenomenon occurring everywhere renewable energy is being increased?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

When the price I pay for electricity starts dropping due to all of the increased cheap renewable supplies, Then I will happily admit that your math skills were obviously better than mine. All of us on a agriville will be exceedingly grateful, and you will no longer need to troll agriville all day, convincing us of the merits of renewable power, since we will see it ourselves in the size of our power bills.

But for some reason, I think that will occur about the same time as the catastrophe you keep promising due to warming. Always be just around the corner.

Do you not see the hypocrisy in this issue?