So Tell me again Why WE INVEST HEAVILY IN A BUGGY WHIP PLANT ??

[mustardman]

http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdfhttp://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
USA Average Levilized cots of energy (LCOE) for plants coming on stream in 2022 in USA in 2015 $/Mwh. No subsidies included.

Coal with CCS - $139.5
Natural Gas Conventional Combined cycle - $58.1
Natural Gas Advanced Combined cycle -$57.2
Natural Gas CC with CCS -$84.8
Natural Gas Conventional Combustion Turbine - $110.8
Natural Gas Advanced Combustion Turbine - $94.7

Advanced Nuclear - $102.8
Geothermal -$45
Biomass -$96.1

Wind - $64.5
Wind Offshore - $158.1
Solar PV - $84.7
Solar Thermal -$235.9
Hydroelectric -$67.8

[oneoff]

When in doubt turn to Wiki

Carbon Capture and Storage Demonstration Project[edit]
Boundary Dam Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage Demonstration is a project to retrofit the lignite-fired Unit #3 with carbon capture and an enhanced oil recovery system.[7] It consists of two distinct parts: Repowering of the existing Unit #3 and the installation of the Carbon Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide and NOx capture facility. Its primary purpose is to provide a low-cost source of carbon dioxide, to the mature Weyburn Oil Field, for Enhanced Oil Recovery.[8][9] It is expected to result in a 90 percent (1 million tonnes/year) reduction in CO2 emissions and will also reduce the output of Unit 3 from 139 MW to 110 MW.[10] However, critics point out that the 90% figure refers to the percentage of total CO2 emissions captured, and that only about a half of this CO2 will be actually be permanently stored. The remainder is released into the atmosphere during capturing, and the processing in the oil field.[11] The retrofitted unit was officially opened in October 2014,[12] and is the world's first commercial-scale, lignite-fired power plant equipped with carbon capture and storage technology[13][14]

In 2015, internal documents from SaskPower revealed that there were "serious design issues" in the carbon capture system, resulting in regular breakdowns and maintenance problems that led the unit to only be operational 40% of the time. SNC-Lavalin had been contracted to engineer, procure, and build the facility, and the documents asserted that it "has neither the will or the ability to fix some of these fundamental flaws."[15] The low productivity of the plant had in turn meant that SaskPower was only able to sell half of the 800,000 tonnes of captured carbon dioxide that it had contracted to sell to Cenovus Energy for use in enhanced oil recovery at a cost of $25 per tonne. In addition to the lost sales, this meant that SaskPower had been forced to pay Cenovus $12 million in penalties.[16] In June 2016, and to avoid paying a $91-million penalty, SaskPower renegotiated its CO2 supply contract with Cenovus. That renegotiation means annual revenues are reduced from $25-million to "$16-17-million". Over the 30-year project life this represents reduced revenue of $240-million to $270-million and will further weaken the project economics. [17]

Several major publications have noted what they deem poor economics of the project, among them The Economist,[18] The Financial Times,[19] The MIT Technology Review,[20] and The New York Times.[21][22] An April 2016 Parliamentary Budget Office report found that CCS at Boundary Dam doubles the price of electricity. [23]

Financial concerns appear to fall into three main areas:

negative earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, in part due to the pioneering nature of the project;.[24]
the existence of cheaper alternatives, such as wind turbines, which urgently need to be developed.[11][25][26]
the potential for substantial losses for initial investors (Saskatchewan taxpayers and SaskPower ratepayers), in excess of $1-billion [11][27]
Among environmental concerns, critics note that while 90% of CO2 smokestack emissions are indeed captured, only a portion is actually stored.Almost half of captured emissions end up being released in the atmosphere by processing in the oil field and the capturing process.[28]

Among other concerns, critics point to the following:

The foremost goal of the CCS project is to keep the aging plant from becoming a stranded asset. "Unless SaskPower outfits the boilers of the Boundary Dam station with CCS, they have to shut down by 2020"[11] due to Canadian federal regulation.[29]
The unfair sharing of the costs, risks and benefits: Energy consumers are said to be saddled with a "very expensive carbon tax", while Saskatchewan's aging oil industry, namely Weyburn Consortium (headed by Cenovus Energy), which owns the Weyburn oil field receives a "backdoor subsidy." In essence, critics claim, the project is designed to sequester not carbon as much as tax dollars.[11][30]
All of these concerns are compounded by a lack of transparency: As of 2015 the project operators had not presented any financial or environmental performance numbers.

Capital cost[edit]
In February 2008 the Saskatchewan government announced that it would proceed with a 7-year reconstruction and repowering of Boundary Dam's Unit 3. The initial project cost was $C 1.24 billion[31] out of which $C 240-million was from the federal government.[10][32] Budget over-runs have led to the plant having a total cost of some $C 1.5 billion.[33][34]

A first 2015 financial analysis [35] by energy lobby group Saskatchewan Community Wind found that the project "generates losses in excess of [Canadian]$1-billion for electricity consumers of Saskatchewan: they will be paying for those losses through higher electricity prices for many years to come."[28] The report calculates the project reduces CO2 at a cost of $100/tonne and claims it is in effect "a very high carbon tax" levied on Saskatchewan households and other energy consumers.

Revenue[edit]
Other than the generation of electricity, the plant will have several by-products which will generate revenue.


Sample of solid carbon dioxide or "dry ice" pellets
Carbon dioxide[edit]
The facility will capture 90 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions from Unit 3[36] or one million tonnes annually.[37]

Most of the total annual carbon dioxide capture volume, at least for the first ten years of the project, is being sold to Alberta-based Cenovus Energy,[38] the operator of the Weyburn Oil Field.[39] SaskPower has not publicly disclosed the sale price but Minister Boyd has stated that it is "in the range of" $25 per tonne.[40] Annual revenue from carbon dioxide sales is thus estimated at $25 million. Cenovus Energy will use the carbon dioxide mainly for field injection work to increase crude oil production.

Sulphuric acid[edit]
Most of the sulphur emissions from the power station (predominantly sulphur dioxide) will be captured,[36] converted to sulphuric acid and sold. SaskPower sulphur dioxide emissions are approximately 5 tonnes per gigawatt hour of system generation.[41] Given annual electricity generation of 1,010 gigawatt hours, it follows that total annual sulphur capture will be 5,050 tonnes.

Fly ash[edit]
Fly ash, also known as flue ash, is one of the residues generated following the combustion of coal and lignite. In the past it was simply released into the atmosphere through the smoke stack but pollution control requirements have put an end to that practice. It is now captured by electrostatic precipitators and stored at the point of generation, placed in landfills or recycled - where it will typically replace Portland Cement in concrete production. Typical fly ash recovery rates, for Saskatchewan lignite-fired power stations, are 31 kilograms per megawatt hour.[42] Fly ash, depending on its use, can attract a range of prices. The best arises from concrete-quality ash which fetches $22–$49 per tonne.[43]

Expenses[edit]
There appear to be two main expense items: Operations and maintenance, and parasitic load. In the latter, carbon and sulphur dioxide amine-based capture units, such as the one at Boundary Dam, consume significant amounts of electricity and heat in operation and the largest single component is associated with solvent regeneration.[44] Significant electrical load is also used to run additional emission control components (e.g. NOx and Mercury capture) as well as associated pumps and other equipment.

[oneoff]

Bits and pieces that enter into the mix....including figures about Sask wind producing power 40% of time and solar power a measly 15% of potential uptime contribution. Just as I suspected. Anybody else shocked about putting many eggs in wind and solar basket. Here are directquotes from above article:

"In Saskatchewan, coal accounts for 44 per cent of our fuel and produces 70 per cent of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Wind and solar can only provide power part of the time because wind conditions have to be just right and the sun only shines part of the day. In Saskatchewan, wind turbines can produce power to meet our needs 40 per cent of the time, and our climate and geography make solar power, which could meet our needs up to 15 per cent of the time, an expensive option."

Also there is a quote about 50% of current electrical generating capacity in Sask coming from the three coal fired generating stations...some of which seem to have been commissioned a relatively short while ago at great cost and were expected to have decades more useful lifespans.

[oneoff]

There's more to the full economic equation than a LCOE. To be completely fair one would look at LACE calculations as well to get a slightly more accurate comparison amonst alternatives

" Levelized Avoided Cost of Electricity (LACE) as an additional indicator
Since projected utilization rates, the existing resource mix, and capacity values can all vary dramatically
across regions where new generation capacity may be needed, the direct comparison of LCOE across
technologies is often problematic and can be misleading as a method to assess the economic
competitiveness of various generation alternatives. Conceptually, a better assessment of economic
competitiveness can be gained through consideration of avoided cost, a measure of what it would cost
the grid to generate the electricity that is otherwise displaced by a new generation project, as well as its
levelized cost. Avoided cost, which provides a proxy measure for the annual economic value of a
candidate project, may be summed over its financial life and converted to a level annualized value that
is divided by average annual output of the project to develop its “levelized” avoided cost of electricity
(LACE).
5 The LACE value may then be compared with the LCOE value for the candidate project to provide
an indication of whether or not the project’s value exceeds its cost. If multiple technologies are available
to meet load, comparisons of each project’s LACE to its LCOE may be used to determine which project
provides the best net economic value. Estimating avoided costs is more complex than estimating
levelized costs because it requires information about how the system would have operated without the
option under evaluation. In this discussion, the calculation of avoided costs is based on the marginal
value of energy and capacity that would result from adding a unit of a given technology to the system as
it exists or is projected to exist at a specified future date and represents the potential value available to
the project owner from the project’s contribution to satisfying both energy and capacity requirements.
While the economic decisions for capacity additions in EIA’s long-term projections use neither LACE nor
LCOE concepts, the LACE and net value estimates presented in this report are generally more
representative of the factors contributing to the projections than looking at LCOE alone. However, both
the LACE and LCOE estimates are simplifications of modeled decisions, and may not fully capture all
decision factors or match modeled results.
Policy-related factors, such as environmental regulations and investment or production tax credits for
specified generation sources, can also impact investment decisions. The LCOE and LACE values
presented here are derived from the AEO 2016 Reference case, which includes the impacts of the Clean
5 Further discussion of the levelized avoided cost concept and its use in assessing economic competitiveness can be found in
this article: http://www.eia.gov/renewable/workshop/gencosts/.
U.S. Energy Information Administration | AEO2016 Levelized Costs 3
Power Plan (CPP), state-level renewable electricity requirements as of December 2015, and an extension
and phase-out of federal tax credits for renewable generation.
Finally, although levelized cost calculations are generally made using an assumed set of capital and
operating costs, the inherent uncertainty about future fuel prices and future policies may cause plant
owners or investors who finance plants to place a value on portfolio diversification. While EIA considers
many of the factors discussed in the previous paragraphs above in its analysis of technology choice in
the electricity sector in NEMS, not all of these concepts are included in LCOE or LACE calculations."

[Hamloc]

Muustardman you and Chuck2 quite frequently put up your costs for different sources of power. What you don't tell us is this and maybe it is included you don't specify. As stated in the Sask power article wind produces 40% of the time and solar 15% of the time, requiring the equivalent amount of natural gas or some other form of electrical generation back up for wind or solar or basically building twice the generation capacity for each kilowatt supplied by wind or solar. So Mustardman, while you and your socialist buddy Chuck2 constantly give us figures on electrical cost, please address this reality!!

[oneoff]

Attn "Ham"

Very, very, very well put sir. If we could get a reply to your concise and compelling question...then the overall costs for a reliable electrical generating network would be conceded to be

WIND or SOLAR (LCOE or LACE) plus the baseload demand duplication of facilities we currently trust and depend upon.

Unless you're willing to buy 50% of Sask current power at spot prices over which no one has any control and the sky high price truly is the limit in peak demand periods.

[ado089]

I hope you're not counting on wind power to stay warm tonight.

[ajl]

When I am premier I will immediately move to can both CCS and all wind and solar subsidies. All are a waste of time and money. The biggest mistake that politicians like Stephen Harper and Brad Wall have made was to partially go along with the AGW scam thinking that would broaden their support base. I didn't because those loons have the NDP, the Liberals. and the Greens to chose from already.

[chuckChuck]

Germany is a world leader in renewable energy. 38% of their electricity comes from renewables. 6.4% is from PV and 32.5% is from wind. There is lots of good information in the following link. Including that since 2006 PV power plants have fallen in cost 13% per year for a total of 75%!

Solar PV will really take off once there are good storage systems. At this point in time Germany and Canada we will still need to rely on fossil fuels to provide base loads. Which we already knew. Wind is probably the best investment at this time and that is why there are alot of wind turbines in North Dakota and many being planned for Saskatchewan. Purchasing surplus hydro from Manitoba may be another very good investment but will require our grids to be hooked together.

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/veroeffentlichungen-pdf-dateien-en/studien-und-konzeptpapiere/recent-facts-about-photovoltaics-in-germany.pdf

[chuckChuck]

Since none of us have the training, knowledge or time to adequately study the issue of the current system and the transition to renewables I think we should assume that since Brad Wall and Sask Power have committed to produce 50% of Saskatchewan's power from renewables by 2030 that they have looked at the numbers and have decided that it can be done and is a good investment.

If you don't believe Sask Power or Brad Wall then it is up to you to challenge their plans directly with them. They are the ones who are responsible for the decisions that will be made.