Oil exploration teams (BP) taking a big hit.

[Skeet6]

Now we have reached the tipping point where renewables are the best economic choice and they will continue to be a better economic value going forward.

Can you give some examples of renewables being the best economic choice currently?

Mike B

 

[Snagglefoot]

Can you give some examples of renewables being the best economic choice currently?

Mike B

That's good point, and it leads to another issue. Depending on the source sometimes they lump something into the pie chart showing " renewables" to make it larger. The "something" is hydro. That's not fair since hydro should have its own category and not prop up solar and wind numbers.

 

[OVERKILL]

Can you give some examples of renewables being the best economic choice currently?

Mike B

This fantasy is typically based on CAPEX for procurement of a given capacity and ignores all the ancillary costs like transmission, fast-ramp gas backup and the fact that productivity will be dramatically lower.

Example, on a price per MW purchase wind is dramatically lower than pretty much anything else. It's usually around $1 million/MW, so a 10MW wind turbine would cost roughly $10 million dollars. So, if you wanted 1,000MW of wind capacity you'd be looking at $1 billion, this is about 12x cheaper than the AP1000 nuclear reactor currently under construction at Vogtle, so let's use that FOAK cost for Vogtle as our baseline here.

A single AP1000 at 93% CF will produce 8.2TWh/year
A 1,000MW wind farm at 30% CF will produce 2.6TWh/year and require full nameplate backup in the form of some other source, usually gas
A single AP1000 will last ~80 years
A 1000MW wind farm will last ~20-25 years

Now of course the AP1000 has staffing and maintenance costs which are significantly higher than the wind farm. A nuke doesn't have zero OPEX. Staffing makes up the largest cost of nuke OPEX.

Comparatively, the wind farm has next to zero OPEX, so the costs come from firming its output with other sources.

So, OPEX for a nuke is internalized and reflected in the per kWh rate paid to the facility. OPEX for a wind farm is externalized and becomes a "grid" cost, in terms of backup capacity, its staffing, fast-ramping, fuelling....etc.

This is why renewables are "cheap". Low CAPEX and externalized OPEX make it very easy to sell something of inherently low capacity value as something with good procurement value.

 

[OVERKILL]

That's good point, and it leads to another issue. Depending on the source sometimes they lump something into the pie chart showing " renewables" to make it larger. The "something" is hydro. That's not fair since hydro should have its own category and not prop up solar and wind numbers.

Even when it's broken out where that power goes is often not indicated. Ontario has 11TWh of wind generation, but almost all of it gets exported at rock bottom prices, so its output doesn't line up with its actual value, which approaches zero.

 

[PimTac]

To quote Scott Luft (@ScottLuft on twitter): "apparently this is a picture of a feature - not a bug. before 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning in Texas"

View attachment 45354

And from @TomHess_ in response to the below image: "For the size of the Texas Interconnection, there certainly is not a lot of intertie capacity, all HVDC & 1 VFT, which have been loaded at max import almost continuously. Eagle Pass may be on outage but is only rated at 30 MW."
View attachment 45356

Texas has close to 30,000MW of wind capacity, which was at 22% capacity this AM:
View attachment 45359

And a couple of tornadoes or those Texas sized hailstorms will bring that output down in a big hurry. Meanwhile other energy production plants hum along.

 

[4WD]

And a couple of tornadoes or those Texas sized hailstorms will bring that output down in a big hurry. Meanwhile other energy production plants hum along.

Oh man, was driving a GMC 2500 when I saw the road being pounded by near golf ball sized … I quickly stopped and backed under a tree - got by with hood damage only … (horrible sound) …

 

[4WD]

That's good point, and it leads to another issue. Depending on the source sometimes they lump something into the pie chart showing " renewables" to make it larger. The "something" is hydro. That's not fair since hydro should have its own category and not prop up solar and wind numbers.

hydro is not renewable because the water only flows one way

 

[OVERKILL]

And a couple of tornadoes or those Texas sized hailstorms will bring that output down in a big hurry. Meanwhile other energy production plants hum along.

Well, *it* hit the fan, 20% of Texas is without power as rolling blackouts take place. The collapse in wind generation and insufficient gas meant they just didn't have enough power.

*Glances at Pickering 5 producing 44MW above nameplate... *

 

[4WD]

Well, *it* hit the fan, 20% of Texas is without power as rolling blackouts take place. The collapse in wind generation and insufficient gas meant they just didn't have enough power.

*Glances at Pickering 5 producing 44MW above nameplate... *

San Antonio gets a portion of their power from South Texas Project … but I know the “grid” is just not tailored for heavy ice etc … I mean a line broke a hundred feet from my house and I know they worked on a brace up there a year back.
Kinda glad it failed at 30F and not 10F though … Way more guys up there this time, hopefully stronger now.
(I paid to get my line buried a few years back) …

 

[MrStamper]

Unless an EV has 1000 mile range, I ain't buying. Nothing more pathetic than driving from Ca to Wa and seeing Teslas hypermiling in the right lane behind truckers. Who wants to wait 40 min for the fast charge? Not me.

 

[IndyFan]

BP will go under or shrink massively with this. They'll take the applause from the free bubble-up and Rainbow Stew crowd and then quietly retreat and reinvigorate their exploration program, but it will be too late to recover to where they were before. They may even at some point require the UK government to bail them out.

I wish they could pull this off, but the technology just isn't mature yet. I do think it one day will be, but not yet. We'll be on oil for sometime to come.

 

[IndyFan]

This fantasy is typically based on CAPEX for procurement of a given capacity and ignores all the ancillary costs like transmission, fast-ramp gas backup and the fact that productivity will be dramatically lower.

Example, on a price per MW purchase wind is dramatically lower than pretty much anything else. It's usually around $1 million/MW, so a 10MW wind turbine would cost roughly $10 million dollars. So, if you wanted 1,000MW of wind capacity you'd be looking at $1 billion, this is about 12x cheaper than the AP1000 nuclear reactor currently under construction at Vogtle, so let's use that FOAK cost for Vogtle as our baseline here.

A single AP1000 at 93% CF will produce 8.2TWh/year
A 1,000MW wind farm at 30% CF will produce 2.6TWh/year and require full nameplate backup in the form of some other source, usually gas
A single AP1000 will last ~80 years
A 1000MW wind farm will last ~20-25 years

Now of course the AP1000 has staffing and maintenance costs which are significantly higher than the wind farm. A nuke doesn't have zero OPEX. Staffing makes up the largest cost of nuke OPEX.

Comparatively, the wind farm has next to zero OPEX, so the costs come from firming its output with other sources.

So, OPEX for a nuke is internalized and reflected in the per kWh rate paid to the facility. OPEX for a wind farm is externalized and becomes a "grid" cost, in terms of backup capacity, its staffing, fast-ramping, fuelling....etc.

This is why renewables are "cheap". Low CAPEX and externalized OPEX make it very easy to sell something of inherently low capacity value as something with good procurement value.

Nukes run when there is no wind power. Ask Texas how wind/solar has worked out for them the last couple days.

Don't get me wrong, I love wind/solar. But there has to be back-up, or reserve capacity. And right now that's nuke or fossil fuels. Can't make a clean break from them anytime soon. But we can sure reduce them, and any reduction is good, as long as demand can be met, IMHO.

 

[OVERKILL]

Nukes run when there is no wind power. Ask Texas how wind/solar has worked out for them the last couple days.

Don't get me wrong, I love wind/solar. But there has to be back-up, or reserve capacity. And right now that's nuke or fossil fuels. Can't make a clean break from them anytime soon. But we can sure reduce them, and any reduction is good, as long as demand can be met, IMHO.

I don't love wind/solar. Both have worked to drive-up our electricity costs significantly in Ontario due to feed-in subsidies. Wind here produces grossly out of phase with demand making it pretty much useless.

Solar, unsubsidized, can at least be used to depress daytime peaking at reasonable levels of penetration (not biting into baseload) and its morning/evening ramps can be dealt with via some moderate amounts of storage but wind, in locations where its output profile doesn't align with demand? useless. It's unfortunate that much of the data gathering that should have taken place prior to a full-steam-ahead roll-out wasn't because it didn't align with the narrative of the wind and solar utopia so Ontarians will be forced to pay for wind generation that's almost entirely exported at a massive loss for 20 years.

There are many tools in the tool box, it should ALWAYS be about choosing what the best tool for that job is, not about which one buys the most political brownie points/virtue signals the best.