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Originally Posted by ericsvibe
I will tell you why, and it has nothing to do with coal or nukes.
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mkay. Let's take this a slice at a time?
Let me do Taxes by itself? That is a Very Detailed (but sort of fun) Analysis.
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Lets for instance say that a huge solar plant opens in Nevada, and the entire desert floor is covered in PV panels. You expect Idaho, for instance, to shut down all of their electric generation plants, and then have all of their electricity supplied from NV.
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well . . . to start with I sort of have to reject your idea of the "entire desert floor" . . . I follow that is sort of the Chile model, but here (US) it has worked Very Well to place Solar at or near the point of use. I guess you understand why Chile did not do that? Cities by the coast, cloudy, etc. But let's work on your Nevada / Idaho interchange model?
btw, THAT is a Very Good tag-team in this model. Good Choice.
But before you go too much further, you also have to look at how the Customers / Consumers in those areas use power? Turns out our BIG uses of Electricity -- at least until Electric Transportation comes fully on-line -- is Space Heating and Cooling. Heating and Cooling (Cooling is the bigger load) all our buildings.
While we could severely reduce that condition by seriously insulating, shading, etc. our buildings, we do not seem inclined to do so -- so expect that electricity demand to continue for a while. As far as Cooling -- Nevada has a bigger problem with that than Idaho. Makes sense, huh? Desert, further South, and all. But Idaho has some desert -- at least that is what the locals call it, too -- around Boise.
Nevada has a BIG demand based on its Cooling (aka HVAC) in the mid-to-late day, in the middle of Summer. Makes sense, right? So much so, that right now power costs for Time-of-Use Electricity (retail) are over 40 cents per kWh in the Summer Afternoon -- compared to 6 cents or less "off peak."
(Look at these numbers)
https://www.nvenergy.com/home/paymen...ofusenorth.cfm
BUT Solar -- since it makes power in the middle of the day can completely Game Change that.
Now let's bring Idaho into this.
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The state of ID would experience a huge drop in tax revenue as the ID based utilities go belly up.
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Let's save that Tax Analysis for a grouping below? It is huge, but in a whole different way than what you may be thinking.
Let's start with looking at power flow?
Idaho is Far North of Nevada (duh, huh?). But let's think what that means in terms of Summer Sun Daytime -- when the folks in Nevada are wanting all the Low(er) Cost power they can find.
It turns out that the SUMMER Desert around Boise, Idaho -- gets as much or MORE total daily sunshine than Las Vegas, Nevada.
Yeah, I know, hard to believe, but remember that being further North -- Idaho has a LONGER (Summer) Day.
I sort suspect Idaho MAY be sending Nevada power? At least during that Summer Daily Peak. Come Winter, Nevada may be sending Idaho power?
We find a lot of surprising things once we really set our preconceived beliefs aside and openly study these things.
(compare the numbers for 2-axis trackers, in June)
Nevada:
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data...sum2/23169.txt
Idaho:
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data...sum2/24131.txt
Once you span the Entire Day -- from Offshore Florida in the East to Offshore California in the West -- we may find ALL sorts of power flows and sharing that are not apparent at first glance.
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The only jobs will be maintenance of the utility lines.
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You are partly correct -- it is true that Renewables (once up and running) do tend to be much less labor intensive than olde skool plants. But that is also partly because many olde skool plants are OLD. We severely automate the newer Central Plants as well. But operation (when they are up and operating) is only a SMALL part of the picture.
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But first, a fun real story about labor and solar in particular. Did a Solar Thermal (mirrors) project out in California. Really nice "Pilot Project" Plant. About 5 acres. I had done a design for the mirrors to be self-cleaning (as well as self-scan for damage, etc.) -- BUT they stopped me on that part. You know why? The Union. The site was required to have at least two full-time maintenance guys -- by its generation size, etc -- so they planned on using them to wash the mirrors in the evening as the place went into overnight storage mode.
All good by me, because they would also do a daily trace walk down and find problems before they happened. (did you see what happened at Ivanhoe lately from mis-aligned mirrors?
Set itself on fire)
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But do not worry about not having enough work to do. To switch over to Renewable -- will be a MASSIVE labor project. Each and every solar PV panel still gets handled BY HAND to be put in place. Whether a residential roof-top or a whole IKEA store, or even large field arrays. All 100% by Hand.
And they ALL have some limited service life. (estimated 25 to 30 years, but we do not really know, yet) Along with the roofs they are mounted on. Again ALL hand work to remove, and replace them, along with 25 to 40 years of continued build out to 100% replace all the existing Coal and Nukes. Massive Work, ahead.
And then we STILL have Years and Years ahead of Coal and Nuke Plants and sites to CLEAN UP. Without any real plan yet of how do that. IF we could clean up *JUST ONE* Nuke a year (which we have not figured out) -- we would still be cleaning those up 100 years from now. MASSIVE work ahead on clean up, too.
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The company in NV will be making money hand over fist.
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Really we are just hoping Coal and Nukes do not all go Bankrupt and leave the rest of US to clean up their mess. (mho) Likely will wind up having to Tax Renewable before this is done to Clean Up the old. Do not go counting the money and chickens, yet.
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THIS is the main reason the deserts of the U.S. will not be turned into giant solar batteries to power the country.
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For now, the Main Reason, as you say, is because there is NO ONE to sell the power to. The Great Recession (2008) kicked the whole Generation Industry in the teeth. Never seen it coming, and had never had ANYTHING like it happen before -- at least in the Generation Industry.
We were used to planning year-on-year growth of at least 1 to 2%. At Least. That meant if you had . . . say 50 power plants in your network, you had to be building at least one more a year. Whole new plant. Every Year. Those are over $1B, each. Along with some old plants needed to be retired or have Major Major rebuilds, sometimes more. And these things take some year(S) to site, permit, plan, build and bring on line. So we all were planning out about 5 years or more, all in advance.
But when the Great Recession hit -- demand growth did not just stop -- it went NEGATIVE. Power Demand (although these numbers are kept kind of quiet in the US) Dropped about 5%. So then we had 5 years of New Power Plants in-the-works all just piling into that growing Surplus. Most everything stopped and that which did not / could not stop -- just lumbered into Bankruptcy. We still have brand-new Coal Plants laying in parts and pieces in Texas, never to be built.
Same across the country, and with de-industrialization, and energy efficiency and things like Variable Speed Drives and LED Lighting -- Electricity use is still weaker than expected. All the new stuff coming on-line now is Renewable, so even the Economic Recovery has not helped Central Generation a lot. Electric Transportation is sort of the only Long Term hope that Central Plant Generation still has.
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And to clarify one thing, I am NOT against solar power. I am against WIND power, as the amount of wind turbines needed to power the country would make most bird species go extinct within 10 to 20 years. Especially raptors, buzzards, and other bird species who spend most of their time in the air.
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Understood. Not a Huge fan (no pun) of Big Wind, either. But what has happened is convergence of TAX (yeah here is where Taxes start) Policy in Massive Favor of Big Wind. During the days of the Recovery.gov programs -- 2009 to 2012, in general -- you could get a Treasury Grant (a GRANT = Cash Income) for 30% of your Construction Costs for Wind, Solar, and some other Renewable.
So just for spending some Million(s) on Capital Construction -- you were guaranteed to get 30% of it right back. And you only had to declare them "started" during 2012 -- and remember we plan about 5 years out . . . So projects started back then are now still building out Big Time through the end of this year (2016) - still with the 30% Cash Grant. On top of that Grant Money, Big Wind gets another bonus of a 2.2 cents per kWh for all it puts up to the Grid -- so they run those things even when there is no demand for the power.
Here in Texas (also as noted in Germany in another thread) they run Big Wind into the Negative Numbers -- where they actually have to pay to get someone to take the electricity. It is because of the 2.2 Cent Tax Credits.
But (mho) look for the Big Wind growth to taper fast and maybe end after this year, as the Treasury Grants expire.
Solar is now cheaper (PV has come WAY down), and even without Grants now beats most everything around. Plus it makes electricity when Real World People actually want it --- the middle of the day -- just like those folks in Nevada we were talking about above.
btw, speaking of birds -- you should see the buzzards cruise up on the Huge Thermals from a Coal Plant. Nowadays, by the time the ash and dust is removed, along the NOx, and SOx Scrubbers -- the air from a stack is not so bad (at least compared to raw Coal) -- there is only trace Hg and some radiation -- but mostly massive billows of very warm CO2. The really big birds will come from miles around to loft up on that. They only have to fly to the top of the stack and then they just spiral up for thousand(s?) of feet. Looks like whole WW2 Bomber formations taking off.
Well that was pretty long. You are still due the Tax Analysis. (Good eye on that, btw, but it is much deeper and twisty -- so I will hit that on a separate post?)
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