[chicken steve]

America's dynamic duo steps in to stem the tide of the solar pandemic >

ALEC is trying to undermine the solar industry

With such an obsessive interest in influencing us.....>

http://kochcash.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/kochtopus.jpg {WASS}

~CS~

 

[Southeast Power]

It's very hard to understand why right wing politics would be against solar power and to the energy independence it contributes.
We export quite a bit of refined fuel, I would think that increasing that export and investing in solar panel production would be a good business model unless, you just want it all short term.

 

[HARRY304E]

America's dynamic duo steps in to stem the tide of the solar pandemic >

ALEC is trying to undermine the solar industry

With such an obsessive interest in influencing us.....>

http://kochcash.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/kochtopus.jpg {WASS}

~CS~

I'm sure the author has some sort of a point.

Sadly the article is full of his religious beliefs,the man is living in an a imaginary world of "Global Warming" and "Climate Change".

He seems to be talking about BIG OIL fighting with the Green industry,however he will not tell you how the Green industry is fighting the fossil fuel industry with the full backing of the news media all the way down to the public schools with this brainwashing global warming hoax.

He also won't tell you about all the birds that die because of solar panel farms all over the country having their wings vaporized as they fly over these places.

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...paths-are-burning-wings-of-birds-8942681.html





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[chicken steve]

Big Oil dwarfs the alt energy crowd Harry, so why don't they openly confront their viability, vs. all this backdoor legislation ?

~CS~

 

[drsparky]

From the utiliy comanys point a view solar costs money they can not recoup.
(I will use round made up numbers to illustrate my point)
Lets say CS power and light, (a small utility in Vermont) has a biofuel plant that puts out 10 MW, enough to supply all the customers in CSville. Now a bunch of stinky hippies put up solar and wind generators and sell 1 MW to CS Power and Light and use 1MW themselves for their medical marijuana farm.
CS power and light shuts down a boiler and scales back power to 8 MW and everyone is happy. Then it gets cloudy and the wind stops. CS Power and Light finds itself 2 MW short. It can't afford to keep the extra boiler lit that is not bring in any money and it takes hours to get it up to temperature. A public Utility is required to supply power, they have to buy peaker generators to make up for the difference when the alternative energy is off line. Peakers are basical jet engine powered generators that can be fired up quick but are very expensive too run.

So who pays for the peakers and fuel? Who pays for the grid improvements and expansions? Free solar power isn't free if you want reliable steady power to your pot farm.

 

[chicken steve]

From the utiliy comanys point a view solar costs money they can not recoup.
(I will use round made up numbers to illustrate my point)
Lets say CS power and light, (a small utility in Vermont) has a biofuel plant that puts out 10 MW, enough to supply all the customers in CSville. Now a bunch of stinky hippies put up solar and wind generators and sell 1 MW to CS Power and Light and use 1MW themselves for their medical marijuana farm.
CS power and light shuts down a boiler and scales back power to 8 MW and everyone is happy. Then it gets cloudy and the wind stops. CS Power and Light finds itself 2 MW short. It can't afford to keep the extra boiler lit that is not bring in any money and it takes hours to get it up to temperature. A public Utility is required to supply power, they have to buy peaker generators to make up for the difference when the alternative energy is off line. Peakers are basical jet engine powered generators that can be fired up quick but are very expensive too run.

So who pays for the peakers and fuel? Who pays for the grid improvements and expansions? Free solar power isn't free if you want reliable steady power to your pot farm.

An apt scenario , especially given we seem to be Hippie central for New England DrSpark

I'd wager the CEO's of CSP&L would seek rate hikes from the Public Service Board, the utility liaison. The reprocussions could even extent themselves to targeting the very individuals who essentially grid tied CSP&L into resorting to peakers.

It would be an interesting scenario considering our nuke plant (Yankee) is being decommissioned , and the state of Vt is actively deploying it's green machinists to mitigate it via retro's (they take all my patience btw)

Even more ironic is that CSP&L (i think i like that!:jester is ,like every other Vt poco, under the authority of the same PSB to enable 'efficiency charges' on the montly CSP&L billouts for this to occur

How all utterly collusive!

~CS~

 

[drsparky]

1. Anyone feeding into the grid should meet the same standards of reliable power production as CSP&L, or all other customers get stuck with the bill.
2. Most of the folks that hate big oil probably have Conoco Philips and Exxon Mobil in their retirement mutual funds. When big oil makes money, they make money.

 

[chicken steve]

1. Anyone feeding into the grid should meet the same standards of reliable power production as CSP&L, or all other customers get stuck with the bill.

But who gets to determine that & how is the $64 Q Dr.

2. Most of the folks that hate big oil probably have Conoco Philips and Exxon Mobil in their retirement mutual funds. When big oil makes money, they make money.

And maybe they've aggressive growth funds in alt energy @ the same time!

~CS~

 

[drsparky]

But who gets to determine that & how is the $64 Q Dr.




And maybe they've aggressive growth funds in alt energy @ the same time!

~CS~

Not a problem, the hippies buy their own peaker and provide reliable power or they don't sell any power at all.
alt energy funds...you retire to a life of eating cat food in a small unheated apartment, but you feel good about it.
Big Oil stocks...steak and lobster in your ocean front condo, and you don't give a damn.

 

[markore]

Do you believe in the free market's ability to power innovation?

Do we really have a free market for energy?

What do I mean? Do we have a market price for energy that varies based on supply and demand on a per minute basis?

If the price for energy was set by the clearance of the market for energy on a per minute or per second basis, then when it is sunny and/or windy and wind/solar is being supplied to the market that should automatically decrease the price for power due to oversupply. When air conditioning and heating loads, and workday loads are high we should see an increase in the price due to overdemand.

When markets are operating under less ideal conditions than these we will see speculative risks, and owner/agent dilemmas such as are being discussed in these bills.

How long it will take us to move to a more efficient time sensitive price driven market I can not say.

For the time being numerous parties on both sides of this particular debate are receiving value/profit from the realities on the ground and from the current laws regulating the exchange of electrical energy.

 

[HARRY304E]

Big Oil dwarfs the alt energy crowd Harry, so why don't they openly confront their viability, vs. all this backdoor legislation ?

~CS~

Yes but the green energy sector is doing the same thing with their own back door legislation too,they're blocking lots of OIL&Gas production for example.

 

[markore]

As the good-government website OurDC notes,”From 2008 to 2010, Pepco CEO Joe Rigby earned $8.8 million and Pepco top officers earned more than $22 million. During that same period, Pepco reported $882 million in profits, paid no federal and state income taxes and received $817 million in tax refunds.”

Yet as the money rolled in, the Maryland Public Service Commission allowed Pepco to cut back on maintenance, in order to divert funds to dividends and management bonuses…Pepco faces a simple reliability equation: The more it spends on improving service, the less is available for dividends and executive bonuses. CEO Rigby is a major shareholder, so in effect awards himself a commission when he keeps infrastructure spending low and dividends high.

Adding insult to injury, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, Pepco has not paid any net federal corporate income tax for the last decade (despite those millions in profits):
Pepco Holdings: The company recorded small restructuring charges in 2010. The study reallocated these charges to the years they were actually spent. This slightly increased U.S. pretax profits in 2010 and slightly reduced them in 2011. Tax deferrals, primarily from accelerated depreciation, reduced the company’s taxes substantially, as did other factors. The company does not appear to have paid any net federal income tax for at least a decade.

In the last four years, Pepco has actually paid a negative 39.5 percent corporate tax rate, meaning it received millions in tax subsidies from the government. And for that, D.C. residents received a company that can’t get the power back on for a week after a storm.

I'm trying hard not to be bitter. But those are pretty sweet tax rates for a company who's not investing. :whistling2:

 

[Big John]

...If the price for energy was set by the clearance of the market for energy on a per minute or per second basis, then when it is sunny and/or windy and wind/solar is being supplied to the market that should automatically decrease the price for power due to oversupply. When air conditioning and heating loads, and workday loads are high we should see an increase in the price due to overdemand....

It's not that tight, but many places bid in daily, and in some cases hourly depending on forecasted energy availability.

But there are also places that are lucky enough to have flat kWh contracts, and that's what they're paid at regardless of market conditions.

That said, I'm not under any illusions we have an energy free-market: There is an absolute massive amount of government manipulation in all segments of our energy industry, and contrary to popular belief, many of these companies benefit from it.

 

[macmikeman]

I was slightly surprised during a conversation last week with one of the local electrical inspectors by something he said to me. Before you are allowed to go completely off grid here , you structure must be a certain distance from the nearest power grid, otherwise you are mandated to have utility power run . I have to look into this some more before I buy it completely, but given that there is a requirement forcing at least one phone jack in every new residence in our precious code book (regardless of whether or not the customer has cut the cord) I won't be all that astonished to find such a mandate.

 

[markore]

He also won't tell you about all the birds that die because of solar panel farms all over the country having their wings vaporized as they fly over these places.

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...paths-are-burning-wings-of-birds-8942681.html

Harry, I think you are an honest and reputable man, so I take it you are unaware of the difference between solar panels and solar towers.

Solar towers are massive structures which are the focal point for a huge array of reflectors, and gather a tremendous amount of energy. They require a staggering amount of infrastructure to be efficient. You can think of them as the nuclear reactors of solar. :cowboy: Anything coming into contact with an active full scale tower would be destroyed just like it would if thrown into the center of an active powerplant. These structures require safety precautions and protection like other generation structures; you don't throw one on your roof.

These turbines require huge heat differentials and economies of scale to be viable, much higher than used in photovoltaics. One could say that it was merely a poorly written article and assume the journalist lacks technical understanding, however knowingly and intentionally mistaking the two technologies in rhretoric is not ethical.

 

[backstay]

It's very hard to understand why right wing politics would be against solar power and to the energy independence it contributes.
We export quite a bit of refined fuel, I would think that increasing that export and investing in solar panel production would be a good business model unless, you just want it all short term.

While solar can produce, it does nothing for generation. The power company still has to have available, enough capacity for when there is no sun or wind. Now I'm off grid and have been for 20 years, so I'm all for solar. But what we need is a way to store that energy. In hot climates, ice making is one form that can then be used for cooling. In cold climates, storage heat is an answer.

 

[macmikeman]

While solar can produce, it does nothing for generation. The power company still has to have available, enough capacity for when there is no sun or wind. Now I'm off grid and have been for 20 years, so I'm all for solar. But what we need is a way to store that energy. In hot climates, ice making is one form that can then be used for cooling. In cold climates, storage heat is an answer.

The way we solved this issue up here on Planet macmikeman was to relocate the planet to an orbit that provides the most satisfactory temperate year round climate possible. Due to the elliptical nature of orbiting bodies, there is a very slight deviation of degrees from time to time on the the order of +- 3 deg or so.

 

[Going_Commando]

It's not that tight, but many places bid in daily, and in some cases hourly depending on forecasted energy availability.

But there are also places that are lucky enough to have flat kWh contracts, and that's what they're paid at regardless of market conditions.

That said, I'm not under any illusions we have an energy free-market: There is an absolute massive amount of government manipulation in all segments of our energy industry, and contrary to popular belief, many of these companies benefit from it.

Yup. The PUC or whatever your state calls it sets the price for energy being sold to the consumer.

Being somewhat in the power generation industry, we sell our power (600kw hydro plant) based on the ISO New England rate, which varies by the hour, to the utility we are tied into. It varies from $0.00 to $22.00 per kWhr, but averages around $0.035 to $0.045 per kWhr.

Like DrSparky says, utilities are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to "green" energy production and things like "net metering". Nobody likes brownouts, but expect them in the future because the Public Utilities Commission is very skeptical of rate hikes to consumers. We may even see more demand metering put into effect, which will be much easier to implement with smart metering.

 

[backstay]

Yup. The PUC or whatever your state calls it sets the price for energy being sold to the consumer.

Being somewhat in the power generation industry, we sell our power (600kw hydro plant) based on the ISO New England rate, which varies by the hour, to the utility we are tied into. It varies from $0.00 to $22.00 per kWhr, but averages around $0.035 to $0.045 per kWhr.

Like DrSparky says, utilities are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to "green" energy production and things like "net metering". Nobody likes brownouts, but expect them in the future because the Public Utilities Commission is very skeptical of rate hikes to consumers. We may even see more demand metering put into effect, which will be much easier to implement with smart metering.

Smart metering will run a lot of the load in the future. Dishwashers and washing machines that run when the grid says they can. More draconian steps like the utility setting the temp in your fridge or house. If you(power generators) can't increase production because you can't get permits, what are they to do?

In my capacity as Science Czar of Planet Earth, and Ambassador to the Planet Macmikeman. I have been trying to obtain the technology to adjust the earth for a more favorable orbit.

 

[chicken steve]

I'm listening BackStay, and at least @ +- 3 , workin' on +-4.....:jester:~CS~