Costsof renewable power link may not work

[tweety]

Never said it would cure anything, just said i'd rather see it go there.

Good enough, do nothing, oil execs need the money.

[Hamloc]

Tweety, you mention 2 things consistently, the finiteness of oil and excessive profits of oil companies.

Both federal and provincial governments want to shutter coal, no effect on oil consumption. Secondly over twice as much C02 emissions come from on road transportation as power generation. As well far more people drive on the roads than work at a coal fired electrical plant so the political fall out is much less. As for oil company profits, in Alberta coal plants are being replaced with natural gas, who sells natural gas? Oil companies. What are solar panels made from? More oil than coal. I would say present policies are hurting our future energy supplies rather than helping them. Just my contrary view!!!Also how many people heat their homes with coal? With natural gas? Which is more widely used? Which do we need to conserve?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

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Do any Agriville members power their homes year round by solar or wind? Would be interested to hear about farms doing this in a cold climate.

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I have a close neighbor and part time farmer entirely off the grid. Solar, wind turbine, wood boiler for heat and hot water, batteries and a back up gasoline generator an propane tank,wood fired tank heaters for stock tanks. All this was done to save the cost of 1/2 mile of powerline. It works, the cost is multiples of what the powerline would have cost. The wind turbine is useless, since it shuts down above a certain wind speed. Someone has to stay home everyday to babysit. They are satisfied with the end result, and will stick with it, but admit it was not cost effective.

A lot of other people out here in the wild west who wanted to go off the grid for various reasons, but eventually and after pouring a lot of money down a black hole gave up.

So it is possible.

[oneoff]

Alberta....if CHP (Combined heat and Power as defined by SaskPower); otherwise known as cogeneration (by others) is considered a part of "green" energy" which may have been hijacked by the "renewable energy movement"; then further examples could be cited..

But that would require an acceptance of that which has always been considered useless; requiring disposal through deliberately combusting flammable products with little intent of gaining any useful purpose therefrom.

The answer to your question is nearly the same as the conclusion of your neighbors experience.

It is certainly possible. For single use purposes it would likely have made multiple times more economic sense to pay for those public utility accesses and the monthly charges whatever they might be.

But if one asks if those hardy souls who do choose to invest their resources; their present and future babysitting time and their planning and construction abilities to utilize wasted and "underutilized" energy sources; we might be astounded by the responses.

Those people might say it was a worthwhile exercise on many fronts. Some aspects worked better than expected; whilst others were disappointing.

The support given by utilities who have only recently noticed these types of energy projects; probably never showed one iota of interest ; and without the subsidies; those utilities still would have nothing to manage in those alternate electrical energy areas.

The electrical and fossil energy utilities are more interested in FRANCHISE; regulatory approvals; safety; audits; their inspections branch and CSA approval of even the trenching that might trap someone's ankles under inches of caved in topsoil.

To the point where staying below the radar; and having fit between and within the statute and regulation lines are the important criteria to know about. Then as long as you don't have too much company (meaning similar minded developers) there is but a little gossip and chatter about what is being done that more likely is in the speculation and pretty shallow thinking arena.

The gems are where those entrepreneurial groundbreakers; have come up with multiple times more energy than they can figure out how to put it to use; and the bottlenecks of energy storage that could/should be tied into public grids .

That's one of the aspects that doesn't seem to have any workable solutions; and no one interested in investigating further.


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[tweety]

No one posting here needs to worry about it. We will have enough fossil fuels to last. And if it lasts for us, it technically is forever.

[chuckChuck]

NR Green Power has 4 cogeneration 5Mw waste heat recovery electrical stations on the Alliance Pipeline compressor stations at Alameda, Estlin, Kerrobert, and Loreburn SK. They are connected into the grid and help pay for the costs of compressing natural gas. They are probably in other provinces and states as well.

There are undoubtedly lots of other opportunities for cogeneration that were not done for various reasons.

Are there not some bio-gas plants attached to large dairy or hog barns in Alberta? These are also considered green energy and the left over manure is used for fertilizer.

We still need fossil or hydro electric baseload. But why not encourage all the other options to expand capacity that make sense, including small scale grid tied solar pv, utility scale wind and solar, co-generation, bio-gas, using flare gas?

How did we get into this fossil energy vs renewables debate? It is not one or the other. We can have both during the transition away from fossil energy. And we can also encourage conservation with better new building codes and higher levels of efficiency with everything we do.

[oneoff]

Oh so we can now have both fossil fuel and green energy. Its not one or other. Well so far it never ever really was about renewable energy; especially solar. First you have to break through the 1% level, and start to do it at less than 80.2cents per Kwh. Then there remains the 15% of the time that it can even make a contribution to production; and lastly old reliables still needed for all rest of the time.

I'd say the approval rate of Canadian pipelines and up till recently US Pipelines does not confirm this. Similarly the winding down of dirty coal for electrical generation in Canada has been extremely effective.

And whats the current status of the nasty tar sand resource in Alberta. ? Is somebodies driveway or favorite highway in need of a recap?

It will be interesting how prez Trump handles the resurgence in US coal mining. There was a fair bit of talk today about the new White House "clean coal" program and putting all those miners back to work..

That what the "debate" was and still is about. Seeing as how promoters really wouldn't agree to any of above.

[chuckChuck]

Oh so we can now have both fossil fuel and green energy. Its not one or other. Well so far it never ever really was about renewable energy; especially solar. First you have to break through the 1% level, and start to do it at less than 80.2cents per Kwh. Then there remains the 15% of the time that it can even make a contribution to production; and lastly old reliables still needed for all rest of the time.

I'd say the approval rate of Canadian pipelines and up till recently US Pipelines does not confirm this. Similarly the winding down of dirty coal for electrical generation in Canada has been extremely effective.

And whats the current status of the nasty tar sand resource in Alberta. ? Is somebodies driveway or favorite highway in need of a recap?

It will be interesting how prez Trump handles the resurgence in US coal mining. There was a fair bit of talk today about the new White House "clean coal" program and putting all those miners back to work..

That what the "debate" was and still is about. Seeing as how promoters really wouldn't agree to any of above.

You forget that in many parts of the world solar PV is a much bigger contributor. Did we not see a chart that showed 40Gw of solar production in germany during December days. Yes we need other sources to back up, but solar is part of the solution.

Why do only quote 80 cents a Kwh for solar when you know that in Saskatchewan farmers will only receive 11.8 cents for solar pv? What about about all the subsidies and hidden costs of coal and other fossil sources as identified by the IMF. Are you not in favour of a level playing field?

Coal and the tar sands will eventually price themselves out of business if renewable technology and storage improves. Canadian made solar panels have increased efficiency 8% in the last year alone.

Wind is another option which has a lower LCOE than new coal. So the economics of new capacity will include renewables which is exactly what is happening in Saskatchewan with the plan for 1600Mw of wind by 2030.