The New Math of Alternative Energy

Yale Global / The Wall Street Journal ^ | 2/23/2007 | Rebecca Smith

[P-40]

I'll do it....if I can get a grant. :)

[Wiz]

I see no Solar updrift tower, OTEC (California will sure love this with purified water as bonus), and wave power generator on this article.

[P-40]

Why should alt energy be any different?

I don't have much of a problem with it so long as the subsidy is based on production and is more in the way of a tax credit.

[ASOC]

Well, we can thank Jimmy Karter (rapidly becoming my least favorite person)in no small part for a long list of things NOT to do for FedGov involvement in the energy sector.

Limited and specific tax credits or tax holidays are at least revenue neutral in the short run. As much as I hate to admit it in public, voluntary trading in 'green' (higher priced) electric can go a long way to shore up alt energy with little public expense.

Shoved down your throat in the form of higher rates, OTOH, not so good. Off topic - someone asked me how much radioactivity does a coal plant release, and how much radioactivity is released in coal mine tailings? Came up in a discussion of a new John Ringo novel. Anyone?

[BJClinton]

5.93 cents for nuclear

Includng waste disposal third generation nukes run about 1.7 cents per KW-Hr

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The math looks even more favorable if you consider the environmental cost of fossil fuels -- which most purely economic calculations don't.

Most calculations don't consider the environmental cost of alternate energy either.

[mulligan]

True, government is in many areas. Wonderful. Prices of everything just continue to go lower and lower and lower. And soon, we can not afford them. Government is the problem, not the solution. If we as a nation do not know that by now we have been spending too much time in our current educational programs. But, do not fret, more government help is on the way.

[P-40]

voluntary trading in 'green' (higher priced) electric can go a long way to shore up alt energy with little public expense.

We have that here. You join a program that lets you buy your energy from a 'green' source with the understanding that at times you will be paying more. The money goes to finance more 'green' production facilities. It has certainly been popular and the new facilities keep coming.

[Old Professer]

"Heat sources can be depleted if not carefully managed. At The Geysers, for instance, operators have had to retire at least half a dozen generating units, even though the field was developed largely only in the 1970s and 1980s."

The writer lost me right here so I did some looking, start here:

http://www.thegga.org/hottopics.html

[ASOC]

The best part is "YOU CHOOSE" to pay more for green energy.

Govt can hinder. A solar power plant was proposed for the Las Vegas area (2000?) - but the local Govt PUC would not issue the required permits because the electricity produced would have cost 1/2 cent more per KWh than with conventional fuel! So it was built using natural gas.

[Old Professer]

To go with my above post, it should be noted that 19 of the 21 power plants are owned by CALPINE, go here to read more:

http://www.geysers.com/

[Porterville]

There is a lot of energy all around you. I'd love to be free of liberal excuse and Persian oil.

[P-40]

The best part is "YOU CHOOSE" to pay more for green energy.

Yup. I made that choice and was doing really well when oil prices spiked. I haven't paid much attention to how it is doing lately though. With the backing of local, county, and state governments, permitting is not an issue here. For some areas of the state, it really brings in some income.

[Ditto]

However, when we modeled it in terms of reliability, what reserves we needed in case the wind died, or didn't blow on a still January or July day (in Minnesota), we found that it did not relieve us of the cost to build coal or nukes. Since so much of electric generation is in the capital investment, the running cost of the windmills would have to be negative to pay off."

Which also, BTW, drive up the marginal cost of the necessary back-up conventional cycling and peaking plants since their utilization is reduced by whatever amount to alternatives produce.

There are two pressing needs in the electric utility sector. One is to expand and modernize (and secure) the transmission grid. The second, on a national basis, is not so much putting more megawatts of installed capacity on the grid, but the need to modernize and replace the existing fleet of baseload plants. Our baseload plants, coal and nuclear, are aging --- average age of 30+ years -- and none of the alternatives, wind, solar, geothermal or biomass -- can serve as baseload generation.

It's fun and sexy playing with the "new" stuff, but if we don't address the need for new baseload power, we're in big trouble.

[Jack of all Trades]

Alternative energy has been very good to me. So far the math has been:

(Buy a used wood stove and install it myself: $300) + (Cut and split 6+ cords of wood each year: < $300 per year) = Reduce heating oil consumption buy 90%.

That's over a thousand bucks a year in savings. Sure it involves a bit of work, but for me it's worth it in dollars and in principle too.

[P-40]

if we don't address the need for new baseload power, we're in big trouble.

That is always a hard thing for people to understand and I don't think even the proponents for a lot of the new stuff always get it either. All this new technology is supposed to work in tandem with the old and not meant to replace it necessarily.

[Uncledave]

Keeps you in good shape, too!

[Ditto]

That is always a hard thing for people to understand and I don't think even the proponents for a lot of the new stuff always get it either.

Absolutely correct and it is frustrating as hell trying to explain it to them. When you hear people say that we don't need new coal and nuclear plants --- that we should build wind or solar instead, you know that they don't have a clue as to what the hell they are talking about.

All that these alternatives can do is decrease our reliance on cycling plants and gas fired peakers, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it has a cost that rate payers will have to absorb. But those alternatives can't replace the base load which is foundation for the entire system. If the base load collapses, it does not matter what other shiny new toys you have out there, the grid is going down and no one will get any power.

That's just basic physics and you can't change that with a million congressional resolutions.

[Ditto]

But have you measured your carbon footprint? ;~))