Originally Posted By: CharlieBauer
See the bbc article on a success story with wind power.
The point here is that you can't take past examples of early attempts or poorly conceived clean energy projects and extrapolate them as what will be repeated over the next decades. Innovation and scale is a very powerful thing.
Why? We aren't in disagreement that wind is inexpensive, which was the point of your linked article. It's the fact that it is intermittent, and that fact hasn't changed and won't for the foreseeable future. So either you leverage storage, which, if we are using Lithium Ion batteries, has a finite lifespan and relatively small capacity, or we do what we are doing presently and prop it up with some other technology that is either on standby or can work in concert. Some technologies are better than others on this front. There is a cost to either method that needs to be factored in.
Originally Posted By: CharlieBauer
As I may have said before, our price is $0.20 rising to $0.28 per kWh. If I spend over $60 a month, installing a solar system on my roof has a positive ROI. That's the situation now with today's technology.
Right, so you will shortly be paying double what our average rate is here. Our rate increased to what we see now from $0.046/kWh only a short 10 years ago as the push to "greenify" the grid was forced on us using the very technologies we are discussing. This same government fully intended on shutting down the nukes as part of that plan. Yet here we are and not only has Ontario now committed to another 40+ years of existing nuclear power, but even federally we've now put money towards the development of SMR's to be deployed nationally to replace fossil sources.
I think that's a prime example of your earlier point, no? The plan and projection was this wind and solar utopia and the result was an outraged populous and further reliance on existing technologies. This in turn resulted in a surprise resurgence in nuclear development to achieve the goal.
Originally Posted By: CharlieBauer
Cost refers to the cost of producing electricity. You are referring to the end price paid by consumers.
Yes, I referring to end-costs because presently, even though wind is, as we have discussed, cheap, we are not paying bargain rates for it. There's a rather massive differential between its viability rate and the rate it is actually paid. Solar has a long way to come to match other technologies for cost per kWh, as even using your examples, it is 10x more expensive than wind.
Originally Posted By: CharlieBauer
Sure, if you lose tax revenue from gasoline, then you need to get it back from someplace else. However, electric is half the price of gasoline per mile already in CA. Elsewhere in the world, that differential is going to be even bigger. There is a huge ability to bear higher electric prices for vehicle use.
That's a rather simplistic and, IMHO, myopic way of looking at it.
In Ontario for example, per Litre, our fuel is taxed at $0.10 Federally, $0.14 Provincially and then $0.13 HST. The Federal revenues alone from those taxes tops $6.6 billion, in a country of ~30 million people. To match that revenue, the price of electricity will need to increase far more than it already has. For Ontario, the fuel tax alone reaps revenue of ~$3.2billion, so then we must include the HST on top of that, which would be another $3.2 billion, then the Federal portion of that would be around $2.7 billion. That's $9.1 billion from a single province. Ontario Power Generation, the publicly owned entity, showed a profit of $403 million in 2016. Hydro ONE, our biggest utility, which has now been more than 50% spun off, used to make roughly $1 billion a year as profit, we will probably see $400 million a year now. So that puts us at $800 million in profit. Direct generation costs were $13.47 billion on 155,450GWh generated, total costs recuperated from consumers was $17.8 billion on $137,000GWh consumed, with electricity at an average retail price of ~$0.13/kWh. To increase revenue by $9.1 billion to get the lost revenue back would push average retail rates up to $0.20/kWh, which means an off-peak price of $0.15/kWh, close to double what we pay presently, mid-peak of $0.22/kWh and an on peak of $0.30/kWh.
Now, I know, you've got your California numbers and that's still cheaper than Europe, but this does not include the cost of additional transmission infrastructure or increased generation resources, both of which will be required as demand increases, and all of which will add to that first number (Generation Costs) and drive up the per kWh rate further.
Then there's the trickle-down.
I heat with Natural Gas. It is insanely cheap. To get people weaned off natural gas and onto electric heat it will cripple people financially. There are already people here paying $2,000 a month for electricity (we are charged Delivery separately and it is somewhat proportionate to kWh used) in the winter months with electric heat. Add charging their car and doubled retail rates and it would be entirely unaffordable.
This is a hugely multi-facetted problem that affects people on more than one front. The elimination of fossil fuels from our lives will have a massive cost associated with it and consumers will bear the brunt of that, or be expected to.
Originally Posted By: CharlieBauer
Yes nuclear is the fastest way to a low carbon energy future.
It certainly is. The problem is the amount of money already wasted on alternatives that haven't gotten us there any faster and we are still paying for. Look at Germany, who has sworn off nuclear and the majority of their electricity is generated via coal. What's their plan here? Obviously decades of wind and solar and the resultant 2nd highest rates in Europe hasn't gotten them there