The Battle for Solar Energy in the Country's Sunniest State (newyorker.com) 202
Carolyn Kormann, writing for The New Yorker: Steyer [billionaire Tom Steyer, who for years has tried to pass Proposition 127, an amendment to Arizona's constitution that would require power companies to generate fifty per cent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030] and his coalition say that the problem is simple: A.P.S. (state's largest utility, Arizona Public Service) is an investor-owned company, motivated primarily by its responsibility to protect profits for its shareholders, many of whom reside out of state. In 2017, the company made four hundred and eighty-eight million dollars, an increase of forty-six million from the previous year. The Arizona Corporation Commission (A.C.C.), a five-member elected "fourth branch" of state government, is supposed to keep the utility's monopoly in check -- setting limits on capital investments and pricing, while guaranteeing a certain margin of profit.
But critics have long argued that the arrangement incentivizes utilities to "gold-plate," or make inessential investments. (The phenomenon even has a name: the Averch-Johnson effect.) For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. "If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants."
But critics have long argued that the arrangement incentivizes utilities to "gold-plate," or make inessential investments. (The phenomenon even has a name: the Averch-Johnson effect.) For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. "If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants."
The return on investment is off the chart (Score:5, Interesting)
When you are buying politicians.
https://www.npr.org/sections/m... [npr.org]
Steyer has done uniquely well with it, but if you think he is about clean energy or this proposal is think again
https://www.azcentral.com/stor... [azcentral.com]
It will force the early shutdown of APS's nuclear power plant and likely boost greenhouse gas emissions.
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I will never understand extremists and their followers.
Re:The return on investment is off the chart (Score:5, Insightful)
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
P. J. O'Rourke
Re:The return on investment (megadrought) (Score:4, Interesting)
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Water on this planet is not being created or destroyed. it is only being maldistributed.
Vote No on 127 as I did, add more air-cooled nuclear capacity at Palo Verde, and have Los Angeles desalinate its own water supply with the added energy. With LA not sucking water from as far away as Wyoming, there will be plenty left over for inland users.
Think of it as trading Arizona energy for a part of California's allocation of inland water.
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Another APS employee posts on slashdot.
Logical fallacy: Argumentum ad monsantium.
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The southwest drying out won't so much be about climate change, I mean it's already dry -- and gets most of its water from elsewhere.
The real problem is allowing a metropolis of nearly 5m people to exist in a fucking desert (phoenix) -- and bleeding the Colorado dry to sustain it. There are some externalities at work here that defy logic, and are absolutely not sustainable.
(Not to mention they actually do grow corn and cotton in the phoenix metro area.. which seems completely god-damn bonkers)
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Utilities should not be private (Score:5, Insightful)
As for me, I'm in a city that saw smog days 80% of the time this summer. Screw the power company and their half a billion in profit. They need to be forced to build out solar so I can breath. Doesn't matter if I don't smoke if every day I go outside I'm getting the equivalent in bad air. I'm still gonna die of lung cancer in my 50s. And I don't get to move out of the city because I need money and like most working class Americans I live where the jobs are.
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How exactly is solar going to fix car exhausts?
Re:Utilities should not be private (Score:5, Insightful)
Knock-on effect as hybrids and pure electric cars phase into the overall carpool and are powered with electricity originating from solar plants.
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So what comes first, solar sources or electric car demands?
I'm hopeful I live long enough to justify solar on my roof to help power a useful electric car. And the A/C. Moderately affordably.
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Why not both? Solar sources will power more than just your car, so there's already a market for that, and the electric cars are being developed right now anyway.
This isn't a chicken or egg scenario.
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So what comes first, solar sources or electric car demands?
In terms of modern widespread usage, solar electricity came first. All-electric cars are still in the early adopter phase (though quickly approaching the end of it), while solar electricity is pretty well into the common availability phase.
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In the short term more solar would make electricity more expensive
Considering that solar power is the cheapest power on earth, that comment is pretty retarded.
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Per kWh generated at the solar plant ... not per kWh dimensioned for the grid, which includes the costs for the fossil fuel backup which is for now still present.
Until solar is cheaper than fuelling a fossil fuel plant it will raise electricity prizes, or be a rolling blackout waiting to happen.
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It is apparent that you didn't read the article. I'll give you a selected portion to demonstrate this.
Within days, the "irrespective of cost" language was front and center in Arizonans for Affordable Energy's television advertisements, which emphasized that any increase would be based on an initiative championed by a billionaire from California with larger political ambitions.
If solar power is the cheapest energy source on earth then there would be no need for this "irrespective of cost" provision. They admitted that solar power is expensive RIGHT ON THE BALLOT for the voters to see.
Also, if solar power is so cheap then Germany would be enjoying the lowest electricity costs in the whole of Europe. Germany would also not have similar laws forcing the use of solar power.
One las
Well for one thing cheaper electricity (Score:4, Informative)
The main thing is that for all the talk of "Clean Coal" and even natural gas those plants still crank out a lot of emissions. Yes, it is possible to build a zero emission coal or gas plant, but it's expensive as hell and you have to change the filters way more than they want to. By the time you're done you could have done solar.
But that's not the point. They want to spew out their particulates while spewing nonsense about Clean Coal and pocket the extra money.
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Most smog comes from stuff other than automobiles, especially the newer autos that have emission controls.
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How many days of sunshine does your city get yearly? Is public transit getting cars off the road? Is residential heating a need, and if so what is being used to provide it? And if not, then is cooling needed, and what's that solution?
Not knowing what city is yours, I'm not able to consider the sources of the smog. I'm hopeful, however, that it's not on the West Coast. That smog usually comes from cars, since the westerly sources are a longs ways off and we aren't legislating anything to solve those any time
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The UK seems to have managed privatizing the electricity and gas companies reasonably well and got a competitive marketplace that functions acceptably.
The problem is arguably, not that the utilities are private companies, but the way the market is structured.
Public != efficient (Score:2)
Since when has ANY government shown the ability to EFFICIENTLY run ANYTHING?
It isn't their money, so spending it wisely is inconvenient to maintaining oversized pensions.
As for the surcharge - government agencies do the same thing. There is a "convenience fee" for using a credit or debit card to pay a tax or license fee, because the government agency is not to be deprived of the FULL VALUE of what you are required to pay. Most businesses will negotiate for a lower rate, because it is a fee they pay. AT&
Re:Public != efficient (Score:5, Informative)
How many straw men can you get in one post?
Government is _exactly_ what's needed for necessary things like power and gas delivery.
What makes you think a company that answers to shareholders will do things more efficiently, and includes their profit margin, than a public utility that has no profits to generate.
E.g. your assumption that a public utility is inherently wasteful, or that too much money goes to pensions isn't supported by the large number of agencies that operate utilities very efficently .. the pensions and waste you cite are red herrings.
Most all public utilities have regulations in place that almost all of the money collected go towards providing the service being regulated.
There might be surcharges or forward fees in your bill for new infrastructure or power plants, but again, those things are for he use of the rate payers, not the profit margins of the shareholders.
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The credit card company demands a fee.
Not the business or the government agency you are dealing with.
That begs the question: how dumb are you?
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My government ran the electrical utility well for 70 years until we got a more right wing government that claimed to be good business people, who then lowered taxes and made up the deficit by demanding the utility borrow money and give it to the government.
Unluckily it just takes one election to vote in a bunch of idiots who can destroy things. They're usually business people who can't see past the next quarter and yes, things are good for a short while until the bills come due, usually under the next gover
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I'll take the bait.. the US managed WWII pretty efficiently!
War on two fronts, massive logistics and supply chain issues - and all within a span of ~4 years.
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Since when has ANY government shown the ability to EFFICIENTLY run ANYTHING?
I'd say the military is quite efficient at their job. But then their job is to kill people and break things.
The military gets real "inefficient" when they aren't doing their job or training for their job, because at those times they are just busy existing for the next time we need people dead and things broken. Those soldiers and sailors eat a lot of food and burn a lot of fuel when in peace time but when you want something blown up, well, that happens with great speed, accuracy, and just general efficien
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Until you get a right wing government that wants to lower taxes and balance the budget. Then they discover they can demand large royalties from the government owned power company, putting the power company into massive debt while making the governments books look balanced. This also leads to the excuse that the public power company is badly run and should be given to private interests because private is always better.
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I don't mind private utilities, although I am generally in favor of municipal ones. But I am absolutely opposed to private infrastructure. With public management of the grid, we can (theoretically) have fair competition between energy providers.
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What you are missing is that there is no competition. If competition were allowed you would see prices fall.
Steyer is such a waste (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, he is working at trying to kill off their nuclear power plant. Right now, Az is a low emitter BECAUSE of their nuclear power. Instead of trying to close nuke plants, the far left should focus on replacing fossil fuel plants. In this case, the bill should require that all utilities have a minimum of 60% clean energy, along with requiring 2/3 of the energy to be base-load (i.e. on-demand).
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Really? What about the Navajo Generating Station?
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Really? What about the Navajo Generating Station?
Ah yes, the Navajo coal plant that is notorious for creating smog in the Grans Canyon. It is sacrosanct because it's on the Navajo reservation, and a primary source of jobs.
The same reservation also has a lot of uranium, and there is still more available outside the res on the Kaibab Plateau. The same forces that are responsible for the foot-dragging on closing Navajo are trying to prevent exploitation of the uranium resource because it's, you know, nuclear and evil.
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> But with climate change, drought and rising temps who's to say we won't be pushing those cooling systems past their limits in 50 years?
Worth noting that there's been a few stories about nuclear plants in Europe having to throttle back because they are unable to reject their process heat, due to warmer surface waters.
This is a very valid concern that's not really come up before, and will get more relevant as time goes by.
=Smidge=
The real trouble is we run nuke plants past their (Score:2)
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Seriously, this is far more of an issue than the idea of building new ones.
In fact, if we were smart, we would put nuscale in place of coal plants
Then while also developing thorium, we could then put thorium reactors in the old nuke sites, re-use the 'waste' that is sitting on site for driving the thorium, while burning up all the 'waste'. THat would allow all of the utilities to continue making their profits, while we clean up the air, land, and water.
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Az's real problem is that they are apparently playing games with what is considered Colorado river water. It is even now going to court. BUT, because APS is using waste water, they will continue to have PLENTY.
Arizona's heading for a Water Crisis (Score:2)
Again, if Az would invest in new water infrastructure now it wouldn't be an issue. But it's a red state. They'll just sit around until it's a crisis, blame the poor for not planning and wait for federal dollars to bail them out (or not, and the entire state will collapse). I wish I could say I was exaggerating or trolling...
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So, solar, which is more expensive than Nuclear, will be pushed with this bill. And yet, you are going to argue economics? Really?
in 2015, the price from APS was $.043 / KWh. [wikipedia.org]
Note that solar or wind, with battery for both, costs a great deal more.
As to the whining about the 'safety issue', I fear AGW far far more (it is HAPPENING NOW), than a supposed possible accident in decent Nukes. Bear in mind that I want to close the older nukes. I think that we are making a mistake keeping them open.
The trouble with Nuke cost is overruns (Score:2)
Global Warming is a problem that needs solving, but nuclear plants with their 10+ years time to start up aren't going to solve it anyway. Solar can be up and running in 16 weeks [google.com] (ok, let's be honest , 32, but 8 months is better than 8 years). That's because you don't have to constantly watch every step and every screw. If you cut corners then it costs a bit more in ma
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Again, I agree with your assessment of nukes. That is why we need SMALL NUCLEAR REACTORS that are built offsite and transported there. That would keep the real costs and build time, low. In fact with nuscale, once they are started, once they are going and a site is approved, within 1-2 years, they would be up and running.
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If you cut corners then it costs a bit more in maintenance. Do the same on a nuke plant and you've got a meltdown + dead zone.
Here's an idea, don't let drunken Soviets design, build, and run your nuclear power plant. That should solve all the problems of a meltdown and dead zone.
It turns out that in the USA there's a shortage of drunken Soviets. I think we'll do just fine on that.
Oh, because I'm expecting someone to prop up another straw man from another nuclear accident, Arizona seems to have a shortage of tsunamis. I'm thinking Arizona is a very good place for some nuclear power, as is much of the USA.
It doesn't have to take
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That's.. a disingenuous argument. Fukushima was a very old design; one that relied on external inputs to maintain reaction safely. (For example relying on cooling pumps to keep the reactor from overheating. So if there's a power outage the cooling pumps stop working - and the reactor overheats and melts down)
Modern designs do the opposite -- for example having an ice plug that keeps the fuel in the reactor chamber. The fail-safe being; if the cooling mechanism that maintains the ice plug malfunctions (suc
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Idiot back at.
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Lets do everything unsubsidized. Make the power companies pay for insurance, market prices on land etc.
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They buy their land. What issue do you have?
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Generally governments give really good deals on land for pipelines (and even railroads, which ship a lot of energy), really good deals on land to drill or mine for energy, allow companies to leave a huge mess. In the case of nuclear, the insurance costs are very high and susidized and you're suggesting self insurance which equals company goes bankrupt if there are problems and the tax payers are on the hook. Nuclear is also given really good deals on water usage.
Utilities work on cost+ for investors (Score:2)
From TFA:
"For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. “If they were truly acti
This is not about reducing costs (Score:3)
From the ballot description, which was contested:
"irrespective of cost to consumers"
Despite the complaints of the supporters regarding the ballot description, it does appear that the proposition mandates the use of renewable energy sources, as defined in the proposition, without consideration of the cost to ratepayers. This got the attention of many of us in Arizona.
It's a laudable goal to use renewable sources, but somehow I cannot reconcile the complaints of the proponents of this measure against utility company profits with the apparent intention of the measure to mandate these changes no matter the costs. It's as if they don't mind if the utilities double their rates, with the attendant increases in profits, so long as it's renewable energy they are gouging us for. Or something.
I also don't much care for the government being put in charge of determining what energy sources will be installed. If renewable energy is desirable, or in some way 'better', this will become evident soon enough. Leave it alone.
Oh, and then I consider Tom Steyer, a nice enough guy, who lives in San Francisco. Perhaps, tom, you should be working on the problems your home town has, and leave us in Arizona to deal with our problems? Not enough problems in San Francisco? Just go away.
Yes, I've already voted 'no' on this. Not necessary, not helpful, not now.
Re:This is not about reducing costs (Score:4, Insightful)
I early-voted "No".
I strongly believe in Solar Power - especially in Az. We don't have much in the way of wind resources (and I hate the view of windmills anyway), but sun we've got an abundance of. Solar and Fossil fuels are neck-and-neck for 30-year amortized costs, but solar should win simply from a public health standpoint.
However, I really don't believe complex law should be ensconced in the State Constitution. The entire US Constitution is four handwritten pages long. The first ten amendments fit comfortably on another. This amendment is four pages long by itself. If this was coming up in the legislature, I'd probably support a version of it (using a definition of "clean power" that includes existing hydropower and nuclear power).
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And how many pages do the court cases on why the Constitution doesn't apply amount to? Just consider the 1st and 2nd amendments, which are very simple and all the exceptions ruled on by the courts instead of being put in the Constitution.
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Oh, and then I consider Tom Steyer, a nice enough guy, who lives in San Francisco. Perhaps, tom, you should be working on the problems your home town has, and leave us in Arizona to deal with our problems? Not enough problems in San Francisco? Just go away.
It would be good if places started putting limits on people from out of area owning too much.
public interest (Score:2)
Gold Plating (Score:2)
Only works to the extent that the regulated rate of return is better than market rates on Wall Street. No sane investor is going to dump money into assets when the payback is better elsewhere. The big problem with utilities is that they are usually guaranteed rates of return even on non-performing assets. That is: Build a power plant for $X and the utilities commission will allow you to charge 10% of X per year (or whatever the regulated rate is). Even if it generates no power. If it generates nothing, cust
AZ resident here - Here's why 127 will fail (Score:2)
While zero profit would be ideal for utilities like electricity, APS is mandated to only turn a 3% profit (no more). It's not like they're out to perpetually increase shareholder value via increasing net profits.
Also, while opponents to 127 have been putting up "No new taxes! No on 127", signage everywhere, taxes not the real driver among friends I've spoken with. It's the feeling that AZ is already moving in the right direction towards more renewables without the proposition - and that we'll get there soon
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They are, of course, provably wrong if they believe that. Take a look at how quickly incandescent light bulbs increased in energy efficiency after the so-called "incandescent bulb ban". And this is coming from someone who was initially against the ban, because I didn't think that the necessary improvements in efficiency would even be *possible*
Make greed work for you (Score:2)
âoeThey are fighting this so hard because they know they will make more money off of natural gas than they will off of renewables,â Mayes said. âoeThatâ(TM)s my viewpoint as a former regulator.â
Greed is human nature, of course they will choose the option that makes them the most money. Humans have survived as long as they have because people are greedy. Nobody can remove greed from the human soul. If you want solar power to succeed then make it cheaper than natural gas.
Carbon taxes won't fix this, that's an artificial cost that not only will be difficult to pass into law but also merely hides the costs in shuffling the numbers about. The true costs will still be reflected upon the consumer in
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Greed is human nature, of course they will choose the option that makes them the most money. Humans have survived as long as they have because people are greedy. Nobody can remove greed from the human soul.
Lots of evidence that it is actually altruism that has enabled humanity to survive for hundreds of thousands of years. Tribes that support each other is the reason that people are successful.
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Lots of evidence that it is actually altruism that has enabled humanity to survive for hundreds of thousands of years. Tribes that support each other is the reason that people are successful.
There's no altruism in laws mandating the use of solar power.
If these people wanting solar power were altruistic then they'd be funding these solar power projects themselves, not forcing others to pay for it. As it seems to me the problem isn't that solar power won't make money, it's that it doesn't make as much money as natural gas. Okay, then start a business that's profitable selling solar power. The altruism in this is taking a pay cut for the benefit others. In the end altruism won't pay the bills,
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Good points which I'm not knowledgeable enough to argue. I do know we had a pipeline explosion here (actually 500 miles north) the other week and it sure affected things. Gasoline instantly went up 20 cents a litre, people were told to lower their thermostats, businesses had to scale back, shutdown, or switch to alternatives such as diesel. I'd hate to think how things would have gone if we used it for electricity.
I think it already is cheaper (Score:2)
We've created an economic and political system that incentivizes short term profit and incu
Doesn't belong in a constitution (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in Arizona and voted 'no', but my reason is a little different. State constitutions are not the right place for energy policies. The constitution should include things about the structure of government, human rights, who is allowed to vote, powers reserved for the government, and limits to those powers. What kind of ass-hat tries to stick energy policy in a constitution? We have laws for things like that.
constitution as democracy restoration (Score:2)
When you are so corrupt that the ONLY way to do what the majority wants is to let the people vote on it directly--- that is when a constitution amendment is the solution. You can't pass a law because the system is too corrupted and the wealthy elites are too powerful they can hack the system. It's not clean but the system is dirty and polluting your constitution with a few popular amendments gets stuff DONE without waiting for the system to be cleaned... if that is even possible anymore.... you may want
Vote Yes on 127, Arizona (Score:2)
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utility can charge higher rates to recoup (Score:2)
"a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs"
I would think that the utility could charge rates to recoup investment costs of either solar or gas. What am I missing here? I would think that once you have recouped your investment costs, I would assume by charging rates, then it would be mostly profit since you don't have to purchase natural gas.
Prop 127 is hippie mom crap (Score:2)
Its intentions are laudable: fight carbon warming by promoting carbon-free energy sources. But not only does it leave out nuclear energy, which is already a large fraction of Arizona's baseload generation, but it leaves out the most important renewable, hydro, which happens to be another large fraction of Arizona's power base.
Prop 127 promotes only solar and wind as power sources. To put more of these on the grid would require that APS issue 'smart meters' to all customers that would measure demand load con
Re:Apples to oranges (Score:5)
$200M seems kinda cheap for a gas plant, can't be very big. Using EIA numbers at around $1000/kW for gas plants that would be a 200MW installation.
200MW is on the small side for large scale solar farms. Okay the cost is higher than gas, but I thought he point here was to spend as much money as possible.
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However the Sun seems to shine every day in Arizona, vs. having to transport natural gas to the location.
I am not Anti-Fossil Fuel. It is a high energy density, and easy to transport, this is a good form of energy for energy poor locations, where they can be shipped energy to them to operate. Arizona is rich in solar energy, while not as dense, they have a lot of solar energy beaming down on them, and their dessert climate, and the states large and relatively untouched areas. Means there is a lot of room
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and their dessert climate
Well, that explains the obesity problem. ;^) Sorry, couldn't let that typo slide by.
Heating your home with wood pellets is good for you now but what happens when more people also choose to do this? The price of wood pellets is a very simple supply vs. demand scenario. The price of heating oil and wood pellets is relatively stable because both can be tanked up, stored for long periods easily, transported with relative speed and low cost, therefore what you pay for it day to day, hour to hour, and even yea
Re:Apples to oranges (Score:4, Informative)
They already have more than enough power plants, the goal should be to diversify. Most power usage is during the day, and solar plants could easily cover this peak usage.
But the crux of the problem is not that the utility wants to build this plant in order to generate electricity; they want the more expensive plant because this will result in more profits when they are reimbursed for the costs of the plant.
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Another factor they don't understand is Arizona's role in being a lifeline of baseload power to California, which no longer deigns to generate power of its own. Several California cities have quietly bought fractional shares in Palo Verde, our giant nuclear plant, for this reason.
If we want to move towards carbon-free, if we want California to survive, we should add several new units at Palo Verde.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you should look at the cost structure of wind and solar and the payback over time.
E.g. larger up front cost - very low operating costs.
At this point in time, its cheaper per MW/h to build solar in a high sun exposure state than it is to build gas or nuclear.
So no, it's more economical to build solar than gas.
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When there is a freak cloudy but humid day people still want to run their air-conditioners.
Solar is to save fuel, you still need the gas plants for backup.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, countries like Germany have been working with solar for decades as part of their infrastructure without issue.
The other is that renewables are a multiheaded thing.
E.g. you don't just build solar, you also build wind, you build hydroelectric, you build stored energy plants like water pumps during the night, you interconnect the power grids so a shortfall in one source means drawing on other sources.
e.g. same idea as today, just with more power sources.
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First off, countries like Germany have been working with solar for decades as part of their infrastructure without issue.
Sure, that's quite likely true. There's a problem though. It's trivial to go from 0% unreliable energy to 20% unreliable energy. Going from 20% to 40% will be a bit harder but not insurmountable. From 40% to 60% will be very very difficult. Beyond that is effectively impossible.
Hydroelectric power is the only viable means we have of grid scale electric storage. Germany doesn't have a lot of hydro dams, neither does Arizona. That will make deploying wind and solar a problem beyond perhaps 20% or 40%.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah Germany ... did you know that apart from Energiewende they coined another great term, Dunkelflaute. It means when there is very little solar or wind, which can happen across all of Europe at the same time. Which has happened. The German backup is coal, gas and some French nuclear power. There is no other backup in sight either. Power to gas could work, if we want to multiply our electricity costs by an uncomfortably large amount.
There's a page on the English wikipedia for Energiewende, not for Dunkelflaute though.
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When there is a freak cloudy but humid day people still want to run their air-conditioners.
And why would you want to run an AC then? Sorry, that is beyond me.
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When there is a freak cloudy but humid day people still want to run their air-conditioners.
And why would you want to run an AC then? Sorry, that is beyond me.
When the humidity in a house gets above about 50% it can be very uncomfortable at any temperature, the AC will dehumidify as it cools and so people will still want to run the air conditioner even if the thermostat is set to what would otherwise be a comfortable temperature.
If the humidity gets above about 60% then it's not only uncomfortable but also unhealthy. I'm guessing that such high humidity is rare in Arizona but while I lived in Texas that kind of humidity was relatively common. I've been living i
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what about solar thermal? That molten sodium stays hot enough to turn a turbine for at least 24 hours, even with no sunlight.
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Solar thermal has limited room for cost reduction, it's expensive and it will stay so IMO.
PV I think can get cheap enough to be worth it simply for fuel saving of traditional plants. You'd still have those plants, you just wouldn't operate them most of the time.
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Which is it, want or need?
Also, why can't variable pricing be used in place of gas plants to prevent electrical shortages? Is demand for electricity perfectly inelastic?
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Sure, say after a tropical storm ...
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Aren't extreme weather events going to become a lot more common going forward? :)
Seriously though tropical storms aren't that rare even if global warming doesn't increase their frequency and they can put large parts of the US under cloud cover, the best parts for solar power too. I think the grid should be able to deal with it, yes. If you design the grid not to be able to deal with it you better be up front to voters about it, they don't expect rolling blackouts to be part of the equation under circumstanc
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Re:False dichotomy (Score:4, Informative)
Over 1/4 of total household power use in AZ is Airconditioning [eia.gov], during the day that is obviously most of the household use. Guess what is not needed after a tropical storm with cloud cover? It also helps the wind and hydro power will then be driven up to take over any excess. Also cloud cover doesn't end solar, still get 25% of the capacity, so when daytime demand is cut in half you will still have 1/4 of the solar power, so not that much makeup would be needed if PV was providing half the power, all is still good.
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https://www.azfamily.com/news/... [azfamily.com]
Cloudy, humid AND 107F ... why the fuck do people live in Phoenix?
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Clouds and humidity in Arizona?
Not all that often I assume, but night happens quite regularly. I haven't lived in Arizona myself but I know people that have, it gets hot even at night and you will need air conditioning after the sun sets. Even if the utility was able to store up the electricity produced during the day a single cloudy day could deplete any stores they might have. This will mean they will have to black out customers or buy electricity from somewhere else at a cost. With people running air conditioning in the early even
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Clouds and humidity in Arizona?
During summer monsoon, mid-July to mid-September.
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Do those cost estimates include unpredictable maintenance costs? Look at nuclear - the first nuclear plant shut down was killed off by repair and maintenance costs. Wind plants seem to be suffering from failures here and there, and the costs have rendered at least one dead. We don't really know how these are going to hold up. Gas turbine plants are fairly well understood.
And solar requires storage or alternative backup sources. That's not part of Prop 127.
Solar will sell itself soon enough. Let it.
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The snag comes in how the utilities earn money. Ie, they will go where the profit incentive is, as is natural. In the past this meant that selling electricity made them money, and conserving electricity cut into their profits, and building new plants was an an expense that had to be carefully considered. Then many states instituted rules that changed the profit motive. Utilities were given a maximum rate that they could charge customers, which meant that the equation changed and utilities could maximize
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It only cost $4.7B to put a telescope in space that provided a unique capability to observe the universe. Worth it? Probably, yes.
Solar works, as in *works* if you pay for it. It's economics. We should as a nation pursue long-term energy independence, beyond our current gas-fed mostly independent state. And if it takes decades, so be it. But arbitrary schedules don't make sense to me.
We have one car manufacturer producing electric vehicles at a profit. Others will follow. The industry will change in 20 year
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How well do those in power not in capitalist societies care about anyone else? Actual measurements, please.