Electricity again

[chuckChuck]

Excellent news, so I can presume that you must have some evidence that North Dakotan's are now enjoying lower(relative) power bills than the backwards hicks elsewhere who have refused to embrace this cheaper technology?


I will get you started in case you are having trouble finding sources of info:
For the U.S. as a whole, electricity prices rose 7 percent while electricity from solar and wind grew from two to eight percent from 2009 to 2017
In North Dakota, electricity prices rose 40 percent while electricity from solar and wind grew from nine to 27 percent between 2009 and 2017

From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/04/25/yes-solar-and-wind-really-do-increase-electricity-prices-and-for-inherently-physical-reasons/#50b4da1017e8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/04/25/yes-solar-and-wind-really-do-increase-electricity-prices-and-for-inherently-physical-reasons/#50b4da1017e8

Sorry for getting involved, bus it is difficult to ignore when someone with an agenda presents half of the story, and avoids all facts that run counter to their biases.

As we have discussed before generation is only a portion of the cost of providing electricity to consumers. There is a whole lot of infrastructure in the grid. Generation costs could go down and grid expansion and maintenance costs could go up, still causing an increase in electricity prices.

In response to your question where is the evidence for lower costs? The evidence is in the hundreds of windmills already built in North Dakota and Saskatchewan and the plan for more.

Utilities obviously do their own analysis and make decisions based on their own situation. If Sask power and several North Dakota Utilities in Conservative run jurisdictions are heavily investing in wind, then there must be s strong business case for wind energy. That is all the evidence that anyone should need, unless you consider yourself smarter than the utilities?

[Braveheart]

As we have discussed before generation is only a portion of the cost of providing electricity to consumers. There is a whole lot of infrastructure in the grid. Generation costs could go down and grid expansion and maintenance costs could go up, still causing an increase in electricity prices.

In response to your question where is the evidence for lower costs? The evidence is in the hundreds of windmills already built in North Dakota and Saskatchewan and the plan for more.

Utilities obviously do their own analysis and make decisions based on their own situation. If Sask power and several North Dakota Utilities in Conservative run jurisdictions are heavily investing in wind, then there must be s strong business case for wind energy. That is all the evidence that anyone should need, unless you consider yourself smarter than the utilities?

As someone who had the opportunity once to "peek behind the curtain", I can tell you that the wind projects in North Dakota have been driven primarily by the desire to get the carbon credits that go with the projects. Heavy emitters would rather buy the credits than throttle emissions.

Nice. Unless, you have to farm around them like my neighbours do, or have to stare at ugly windmills like I do, or you're a migrating songbird.

[burnt]

There is zero evidence that commercial wind and solar are affordable, more sustainable, or cheaper than conventional generation.

There is plenty of support, though, that they are not only more costly, but completely unaffordable and unsustainable.

This is proven by the fact that not one person who has invested in solar or wind generation would do it to supply their own needs, unless there were other mitigating factors, such as accessibility to grid, that were in effect.

Commercial wind and solar electrical production are purely politically and ideologically driven.

When there is someone who is constantly beating the "renewables" drum, there can be only a couple of reasons - they are making money from the pain and loss of others, or they are abjectly, profoundly, irredeemably stupid, and likely ineducable.

[chuckChuck]

As someone who had the opportunity once to "peek behind the curtain", I can tell you that the wind projects in North Dakota have been driven primarily by the desire to get the carbon credits that go with the projects. Heavy emitters would rather buy the credits than throttle emissions.

Nice. Unless, you have to farm around them like my neighbours do, or have to stare at ugly windmills like I do, or you're a migrating songbird.

Glad to hear you are concerned about song birds. Do you have cats, windows, powers lines, drive much, spray pesticides, clear bush, breakup grass land, because they all affect the song bird population.

Yes and many farmers farm around ugly oil wells and in some cases the companies stop paying for the lease.

If you look at the costs of wind and solar in many jurisdictions the costs have come way down and are now cheaper than new coal and competitive with gas. We still need base load hydro and fossil sources to run intermittent renewables.

Saskatchewan is trying geo-thermal.

[bucket]

Glad to hear you are concerned about song birds. Do you have cats, windows, powers lines, drive much, spray pesticides, clear bush, breakup grass land, because they all affect the song bird population.

Yes and many farmers farm around ugly oil wells and in some cases the companies stop paying for the lease.

If you look at the costs of wind and solar in many jurisdictions the costs have come way down and are now cheaper than new coal and competitive with gas. We still need base load hydro and fossil sources to run intermittent renewables.

Saskatchewan is trying geo-thermal.

The government is trying geo thermal.....Trudeau announced 26 million for that project....taxpayers money...

And yet they have trouble finding dollars for Seed research into the future?????

Which do think is more sustainable????

[chuckChuck]

Levelized Cost and Levelized Avoided Cost of New Generation
Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2018

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

[chuckChuck]

The government is trying geo thermal.....Trudeau announced 26 million for that project....taxpayers money...

And yet they have trouble finding dollars for Seed research into the future?????

Which do think is more sustainable????

Not to mention $4.5 Billion into Transmountain! And Brad Wall put 1.5 billion into Carbon capture and Storage at Boundary so we can burn coal.

By all means invest more in public plant breeding.

[bucket]

Not to mention $4.5 Billion into Transmountain! And Brad Wall put 1.5 billion into Carbon capture and Storage at Boundary so we can burn coal.

By all means invest more in public plant breeding.

You have to admit shutting down our base power coal power plants isn't going to make a lot of difference to the world....and we will look pretty stupid if in a few years there is technology available to make them cleaner.....

[burnt]

You have to admit shutting down our base power coal power plants isn't going to make a lot of difference to the world....and we will look pretty stupid if in a few years there is technology available to make them cleaner.....

It already exists but was dismissed because the image is more important than the reality.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

As we have discussed before generation is only a portion of the cost of providing electricity to consumers. There is a whole lot of infrastructure in the grid. Generation costs could go down and grid expansion and maintenance costs could go up, still causing an increase in electricity prices.

And, can you think of anything that would have recently destabilized the grid and required considerable capital costs into infrastructure improvements and expansion, a hint is that it happened at the same time as renewables share increased.

In response to your question where is the evidence for lower costs? The evidence is in the hundreds of windmills already built in North Dakota and Saskatchewan and the plan for more.

This is what makes arguing anything with you as so frustratingly easy, you conflate the physical existence of something as evidence that it is therefore economic. And as the article which I've no doubt you ignored points out, in every example, they can be economical so long as the utility passes the drastic increases in costs onto the consumers, and are generously subsidised and mandated to do so. By your logic, you really need to seed your entire imaginary farm to pineapples this year, since the existence of the pineapple plants obviously guarantees their feasibility in your climate.

Utilities obviously do their own analysis and make decisions based on their own situation. If Sask power and several North Dakota Utilities in Conservative run jurisdictions are heavily investing in wind, then there must be s strong business case for wind energy. That is all the evidence that anyone should need, unless you consider yourself smarter than the utilities?

Is Warren Buffett a smart guy? Or at least a very good crony capitalist? He is heavily invested in renewables, for all the right reasons though, right?:

“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett

How about Spudco, it must have been a spectacular success considering the money invested in it, partially by a public utility no less.


I will now go back to ignoring you until you are able to present a jurisdiction enjoying cheaper energy thanks to installing renewables, rather than continually deflecting the question and presenting the existence of subsidies and mandates as evidence.

[chuckChuck]

A5 you are willfully wrong on several counts and quietly ignore the fact that fossil energy also receives generous subsidies and has external environmental and health costs which means that we are not paying for its full costs. The oil industry has a massive multi billion dollar liability in your province for orphaned and abandoned wells. Hmmmm. You don't have much to say about that do you? All you worry about is the renewables getting any little bit of support! You are an Alberta sized hypocrite!

I don't think there are tax credits for wind generation in Saskatchewan. Ask Sask Power?

So your arguments quickly fall apart.

And even in the face of subsidies for fossil fuels and renewables agriculture also receives subsidies.

The whole government mandated biofuel sector in the US and Canada has been responsible for keeping some grain prices higher than they normally would be.

So as a recipient of taxpayers subsidies and support, it is quite ironic that you are so strongly opposed to renewables receiving any kind of support when you as a grain producer benefit from bio-fuels.

But not surprising coming from you. Aren't you too busy to provide evidence? You seem to post a lot for such a busy guy! LOL

Read this:
Levelized Cost and Levelized Avoided Cost of New Generation
Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2018

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

[AlbertaFarmer5]

So, after months of searching you still can't find even one tropical island where the sun always shines and the wind blows all night where they previously had to import all of their energy via fossil fuels on a boat, who have seen lower costs due to replacing said fossil fuels with renewables? I thought this was going to be an easy one for you.

And, as usual, you did not address any of the points I made, just attacked.

[oneoff]

If you drive south of Minot ND to Bismarck you will see hundreds of windmills. This in a strongly red republican ND. I am not sure who owns all the windmills whether they are privately owned or cooperatively owned utilities.

Take a look at the following links to see that North Dakota is indeed a top producer of wind energy. How could all this wind energy exist if it wasn't economical? This flys in the face of all the negativity expressed on Agriville about renewable generation of electricity.

Some people have the misconception that renewables can't co-exist with base load sources and still be a cheaper cleaner option. Obviously they can and North Dakota is making them work.

https://www.grandforksherald.com/business/energy-and-mining/4492366-north-dakota-looking-meet-its-wind-energy-potential

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_North_Dakota

Wind power in North Dakota

North Dakota is a leading U.S. state in wind power generation, with 21.5 percent of all in state generated electricity in 2016 powered by wind.[1] As of the end of 2017, 2996 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity had been installed for wind power in North Dakota.[1] Additional capacity had been limited by transmission line constraints until the completion of a transmission line from Fargo to central Minnesota in 2015.[2] Additional wind farms are once again planned for the state.[3]

Very favorable wind conditions in the state enable wind farms to achieve capacity factors in excess of 40 percent. The Thunder Spirit wind farm, completed in 2015, is expected to have a capacity factor greater than 45 percent.[4][5]

Now I suppose the inference being made is that ND is right next to Sask and that their wind resources could all be duplicated in each and every region of Sask to replicate its success; of course when detractors and naysayers are silenced and suggestion made that they refrain from commenting.

Well chuck said it all in his quote above....south of Minot. Look North of Minot and you don't see the windmills. Maybe for the same reasons the one present on an acreage (a few years ago) a few miles east of chuck isn't still there because the owners apparently decided a solar array might better replace a new windmill that didn't apparently work out.

Anyway; some reliable data on ND wind speeds at 80 m heights is given in the link just below. Could somebody please post the map download from that page. As a picture is usually worth a thousand words; just maybe chuck could possibly gain some knowledge about how an overlay of topography could
possibly interact with more than a one track mind to allow a bit of knowledge and common sense to trickle through.

https://windexchange.energy.gov/states/nd

[oneoff]

If you drive south of Minot ND to Bismarck you will see hundreds of windmills. This in a strongly red republican ND. I am not sure who owns all the windmills whether they are privately owned or cooperatively owned utilities.

Take a look at the following links to see that North Dakota is indeed a top producer of wind energy. How could all this wind energy exist if it wasn't economical? This flys in the face of all the negativity expressed on Agriville about renewable generation of electricity.

Some people have the misconception that renewables can't co-exist with base load sources and still be a cheaper cleaner option. Obviously they can and North Dakota is making them work.

https://www.grandforksherald.com/business/energy-and-mining/4492366-north-dakota-looking-meet-its-wind-energy-potential

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_North_Dakota

Wind power in North Dakota

North Dakota is a leading U.S. state in wind power generation, with 21.5 percent of all in state generated electricity in 2016 powered by wind.[1] As of the end of 2017, 2996 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity had been installed for wind power in North Dakota.[1] Additional capacity had been limited by transmission line constraints until the completion of a transmission line from Fargo to central Minnesota in 2015.[2] Additional wind farms are once again planned for the state.[3]

Very favorable wind conditions in the state enable wind farms to achieve capacity factors in excess of 40 percent. The Thunder Spirit wind farm, completed in 2015, is expected to have a capacity factor greater than 45 percent.[4][5]

Now I suppose the inference being made is that ND is right next to Sask and that their wind resources could all be duplicated in each and every region of Sask to replicate its success; of course when detractors and naysayers are silenced and suggestion made that they refrain from commenting.

Well chuck said it all in his quote above....south of Minot. Look North of Minot and you don't see the windmills. Maybe for the same reasons the one present on an acreage (a few years ago) a few miles east of chuck isn't still there because the owners apparently decided a solar array might better replace a new windmill that didn't apparently work out.

Anyway; some reliable data on ND wind speeds at 80 m heights is given in the link just below. Could somebody please post the map download from that page. As a picture is usually worth a thousand words; just maybe chuck could possibly gain some knowledge about how an overlay of topography could
possibly interact with more than a one track mind to allow a bit of knowledge and common sense to trickle through.

https://windexchange.energy.gov/states/nd

[chuckChuck]

Wind companies do wind studies before choosing the best places for turbines. Just like oil companies do seismograph in order to place oil wells. Lots of open land with rolling hills and grassland south of Minot.

It shows up as an excellent location on the attached map.