Wind and Solar Power Have Become Amazingly Affordable

[Dashinka 24,172]

1 hour ago, Boketto said:

The article discusses cost efficiency of solar and wind energy which has dramatically improved over time due to improved technology. It is fallacious to discount that by rephrasing it as “affordability measures”, don’t you think? 

Generally speaking efficiency is a measure of energy output vs energy input based on the 1st law of thermodynamics.  I am not disputing that costs have come down in some regional areas as the article states, but I do not think energy efficiency has changed that much.

[Boketto 211]

3 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

Generally speaking efficiency is a measure of energy output vs energy input based on the 1st law of thermodynamics.  I am not disputing that costs have come down in some regional areas as the article states, but I do not think energy efficiency has changed that much.

The article was mainly discussing the improvement of cost efficiency, and the person I was responding to was also referring to cost, hence my response.

 

Of course, since the nomenclature used in the meme bothers you, I have made a high quality edit.

 

 

[90DayFinancier 910]

11 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

Generally speaking efficiency is a measure of energy output vs energy input based on the 1st law of thermodynamics.  I am not disputing that costs have come down in some regional areas as the article states, but I do not think energy efficiency has changed that much.

I don't know who generally speaks in terms of thermodyamics and physical laws of nature when decisions are made on investment. If you would like to petition to change the laws of nature, knock yourself out. 

 

The subject of the original post was money.  Who loves physics? Nerds. Who loves money? Everyone!

 

 

I slept through to much chem and physics, but not econ.

Renewables have reached the tipping point, and those with sagesse@layla will recognize the investment opportunities and put some money into these areas or upgrade their operations as the ROI climbs. It makes little sense to invest in coal and oil plants today ,and in the future it may make little sense to operate them. 

 

But go ahead and put your money on Exxon and BP who clean up their oil spills with paper towels or RD Shell who tried to drill in the artic but couldn't get their rig over the gulf of Alaska. On top of my moral and geopolitical objections, they are simple poor investments.

 

 

[90DayFinancier 910]

18 minutes ago, Boketto said:

The article was mainly discussing the improvement of cost efficiency, and the person I was responding to was also referring to cost, hence my response.

 

Of course, since the nomenclature used in the meme bothers you, I have made a high quality edit.

 

 

Energy inputs on edit, obviously low. Energy output from laughing, high. Congratulations you have overcome the first law of thermodyamics!

[Boketto 211]

12 minutes ago, 90DayFinancier said:

Energy inputs on edit, obviously low. 

 

Don’t say that... I had to, like, actually open MS paint... 

[Boiler 44,986]

4 hours ago, Steeleballz said:

 

  You live in a state that annually gets 250+ days of sunshine and averages wind speeds of 7+ MPH.

4.30 pm and the sun has gone down. Average wind is not a useful factor for determining wind power generation, somebody I know got a grant to install a wind turbine system, he told me that the maintenance contract cost is about the same as the electricity value.

[90DayFinancier 910]

5 minutes ago, Boiler said:

4.30 pm and the sun has gone down. Average wind is not a useful factor for determining wind power generation, somebody I know got a grant to install a wind turbine system, he told me that the maintenance contract cost is about the same as the electricity value.

I do know a man in Co who has personal Thermo system. It worked too well. He had left over heat so he warmed the driveway, had a heated  infinity pool around the year, melted snow from the roof. 

 

( not a great investment, set him back more than 50 k USD) 

[Steeleballz 7,550]

23 minutes ago, Boiler said:

4.30 pm and the sun has gone down. Average wind is not a useful factor for determining wind power generation, somebody I know got a grant to install a wind turbine system, he told me that the maintenance contract cost is about the same as the electricity value.

 

  Eight hours a day is enough to power an airport. When summer comes around, DIA is sell power back to XCEL energy.

[Boiler 44,986]

2 minutes ago, Steeleballz said:

 

  Eight hours a day is enough to power an airport. When summer comes around, DIA is sell power back to XCEL energy.

I believe many Airports are open longer than 8 hours. DIA certainly is and assume electricity is a small part of its total energy consumption.

 

 

 

 

[belinda63 3,022]

Best idea I ever saw is go to the big parking lots like Walmart in Texas, NM, etc. where parking in the shade is a premium. Make covers over the parking areas with solar panels on them. Customers win because they get to park in the shade and the store wins from all the electricity generated. Now how to stop them from being stolen, vandalized, etc would be another issue.

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,369]

I think the deal with solar, will be when we can find cheap, compact, sustainable ways to store the energy generated 

[luckytxn 2,264]

On 11/7/2019 at 8:11 PM, 90DayFinancier said:

 

Costs are falling so fast, it can make more sense to build new renewable capacity than to run old coal plants.

By 

Peter R. Orszag

November 7, 2019, 9:00 AM EST

They keep getting cheaper to build.

 Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images

In the midst of otherwise depressing developments in the progress of climate change, one bit of good news shines through: The economics of renewable energy have been improving fast — especially those of onshore wind and utility-scale solar power. A new analysis of the levelized cost of energy from Lazard, the company I work for, shows that over the past year the cost of generating energy from wind projects fell by 4% and large solar projects by 7%. 

The levelized cost of any particular energy technology is the break-even price that companies investing in that technology need in order to see a competitive rate of return. In the case of both utility-scale solar and onshore wind power, this rate has dropped to about $40 per megawatt hour — which is lower than the cost of building new power plants that burn natural gas or coal. It’s even close to being competitive with the marginal costs of running the coal and nuclear plants we already have.  

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2019-11-07/wind-and-solar-power-have-become-amazingly-affordable

 

Forgot to add this part.  With government subsidies...

 

Now when one can brings prices down head to head against each other without the subsidies required to even consider non efficient and costly renewable then we can talk. Until then fossil fuels are more efficient and cheaper and no it wasn't we have 50 years left of fossil fuels it is close to 100 years left and that is not including new fields yet tapped into.

[90DayFinancier 910]

1 hour ago, luckytxn said:

Forgot to add this part.  With government subsidies...

 

Now when one can brings prices down head to head against each other without the subsidies required to even consider non efficient and costly renewable then we can talk. Until then fossil fuels are more efficient and cheaper and no it wasn't we have 50 years left of fossil fuels it is close to 100 years left and that is not including new fields yet tapped into.

I agree with you on the oil reserves, there more out there if you don't care about the environmental impact.

I disagree with the leveling power of subsidies. What you are not counting is the tax preferences provided to oil and gas. 37 billion in I investment is supported by 88 billion in federal, state and local subsidies. On top of that you have the cost of subjectcation if personal property rights to mineral rights in some states.   And then there is foriegn oil extraction: America troops defending foriegn oil wells, infrastructure and transportation and of course the blood shed defending these tyrants who do not respect Western values. 

 

If you can show me the costs of defending windmills, solar and damns as outweighing the carbon cost, I will amend my opinion.

Edited November 9, 2019 by 90DayFinancier

[Boiler 44,986]

I do not know if they are still doing it but I know somebody who had a gig defending a damn, and that was in Colorado. Boring but paid well.

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

18 minutes ago, 90DayFinancier said:

I agree with you on the oil reserves, there more out there if you don't care about the environmental impact.

I disagree with the leveling power of subsidies. What you are not counting is the tax preferences provided to oil and gas. 37 billion in I investment is supported by 88 billion in federal, state and local subsidies. On top of that you have the cost of subjectcation if personal property rights to mineral rights in some states.   And then there is foriegn oil extraction: America troops defending foriegn oil wells, infrastructure and transportation and of course the blood shed defending these tyrants who do not respect Western values. 

 

If you can show me the costs of defending windmills, solar and damns as outweighing the carbon cost, I will amend my opinion.

Where are American troops defending foreign oil wells?