The Green Dream

[AlbertaFarmer5]

And I'm still waiting For chuck to Find an example of where these cheap renewables have been installed and power rates Have not gone Up drastically as a result. When the net cost to the consumer starts going down Thanks to renewables, I will be all on board. For some reason these Cheaper alternative always result in Catastrophically higher prices for the end users.

So either someone can't do math, or someone is lying to us.

[Guest]

Costs are Recouped in 5- 6 years on farm
Oh and don’t forget the gang who couldn’t shoot straight (Sask Party) have raised rates 55% in last few years

They are on there way to doubling so these fiscally incompetent ones can help with their budgets

55% increase
That is total horseshit , in fact it is closer to 5-10 %
Wished everything else we buy had only gone up that much
NG and power are a bargain here compared to the work they do ?
But lets not let facts interfere

[grassfarmer]

And I'm still waiting For chuck to Find an example of where these cheap renewables have been installed and power rates Have not gone Up drastically as a result. When the net cost to the consumer starts going down Thanks to renewables, I will be all on board. For some reason these Cheaper alternative always result in Catastrophically higher prices for the end users.

So either someone can't do math, or someone is lying to us.

Northern Indiana is saying they can save their customers $4 billion over the next 30 years. Time to get on board.

[furrowtickler]

Northern Indiana is saying they can save their customers $4 billion over the next 30 years. Time to get on board.

Lol , and the man jumped over the moon 🌚 lol

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Northern Indiana is saying they can save their customers $4 billion over the next 30 years. Time to get on board.

Every word in that statement is in the future tense. Every project has similar rosy future projections. They have all PROMISED lower costs in the future And EVERY time so far it has resulted in huge increases in electricity costs. It is almost like we are refusing to learn from anyone else's mistakes and insist on repeating the same experiment all over the world always expecting a different outcome.

Did anyone ever take a money losing business proposition to the bank (or government) and use that to ask for money? No, for obvious reasons.

I have no doubt that wind and solar will eventually be a significant and cost effective portion of power generation once all the pieces have been developed and perfected. But so far, in most(but not all) cases and locations, it is an expensive solution to a non existent problem.

[Hamloc]

Bump. I'm still waiting Jazz.

With a little googling it appears Sask Power started The Rural Underground Distribution Program in 1985. Hard to find much information but it appears they spent roughly $40 million a year. There is a Western Producer article from 1995 that suggests the Sask government was considering shutting it down because it was too costly but doesn't say whether it was and I can't find how many miles of line were buried. Certainly there are no powerlines buried in Alberta except of course in people's yards lol.

As for the green dream for me it is a pointless debate. Farming is about adapting to and surviving the situations we are confronted with. The weather is certainly one challenge, I am sure government regulation will become a greater challenge in the future. Enjoy your day.

[RTK]

It's already happening in Indiana - see my link above.

Excellent - start investing your own dollars as it seems to suggest it’s a license to print money. I can see no issues; projections are sure to be met or exceeded in terms of profitability and reliability. I would be interested to see the actual financial statements and a complete true costing of the project in ten years time so I can determine how wrong my original assessment of green projects given today’s technology are...

[chuckChuck]

Jazz you can put solar on existing roof tops. I chose ground mount because they are easier to clean of snow and face the best direction for winter.

On my farm alone I have over 16000 square feet of house and shop roofs that could be covered. At mid day on June 21 that would put out around 250,000 watts based on the output of a Canadian Solar 275 watt panel.

My ground mount system currently puts out around 25000 watts at peak production which produces enough annual electricity to cover our average of 35,000 kwh of usage.

So if I covered all my roofs I would generate 10 times my farm usage. These are all rough estimates and don't take into account bad roof angles. Most our roof angles face east west. So output may be only say 5-7 times usage. I am guessing. That is still a hell of a lot of electricity.

Panels are getting cheaper and more efficient. In the relatively dry, cold prairie climate of the southern prairies they work really well.

If affordable storage becomes a reality just like in California and in Indiana they will reduce the usage of fossil fuels.

Yes there is an environmental cost to every type of electricity production. That should be taken into account and reduced where ever possible.

[chuckChuck]

Excellent - start investing your own dollars as it seems to suggest it’s a license to print money. I can see no issues; projections are sure to be met or exceeded in terms of profitability and reliability. I would be interested to see the actual financial statements and a complete true costing of the project in ten years time so I can determine how wrong my original assessment of green projects given today’s technology are...

Depending on a lot of factors without including equipment failures my estimate of 25 years of solar production without including subsidies, the cost is roughly 8 cent per kwh. Currently the farm rate for electricity from Sask power is around 14 cents per kwh and going up.

In 20 years even if it is 10-15 cents per kwh for solar because of equipment failure, Saskpower rates could easily be 25-30 cents per kwh.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

My ground mount system currently puts out around 25000 watts at peak production which produces enough annual electricity to cover our average of 35,000 kwh of usage.

Since you are afraid to answer the question above about finding a jurisdiction where renewables haven't drastically inreased costs, I will give you a hint, and it is contained in the statement you just made.

Imagine that on your cricket farm you raise all the grain you need to feed your crickets year around, but have no way to store it, and in fact it is so volatile that it can't be stored at all, but has to be in transit constantly until it reaches an end user. So during harvest, you feed a few percent of your production to your crickets (whose peak feed demand is in the middle of winter, not during harvest), and haul the rest off to the elevator, who are mandated to buy it at full market value. Since they also can't store it, they have to haul it to another region, further south where harvest is finished, or further north where it hasn't yet started, and once that market is saturated, they have to haul it to another hemisphere where demand is out of sync with yours, they pay the freight, and eat the discounts for dumping into a saturated market. And if none of those are available in time, it has to be just dumped at a significant cost.

The day after you finish harvest, and every day until it starts again, the same elevator is now mandated to sell you cricket feed at the same price you sold it to them. So now they have to source the product and pay the freight to bring it from wherever in the world it is being harvested at that moment, if anywhere. Some days it isn't being harvested anywhere due to seasonality and weather, yet they are required to sell it to you at a fixed price regardless. The unbreakable laws of supply and demand kick in, and price goes nearly to infinity until someone decides it is worthwhile trying to harvest their cricket feed in a blizzard or hurricane.

Meanwhile, the elevator can't afford to lose money, so they make it up by passing those costs onto all of their other customers who grow more traditional products and feed more traditional animals, which don't have the severe limitations on storage and peak demand. And in this case, this elevator has a monopoly in the region, so all their other customers are stuck subsidizing your farm, at least until they go out of business because no one mandates what they buy or sell for, and they can't pass the costs onto their consumers.

[chuckChuck]

Your convoluted example is a pile of cricket shit!

The Forbes stories about Indiana, California on utility scale projects indicate that some renewables in some locations are already much cheaper than coal and gas. California is adding storage which is still cheaper.

Yes we still need backup and baseload from hydro and fossil fuels. How much renewables can we add to each system will depend on many factors.

Saskpower says 50% renewables by 2030. So end the bullshit that renewables can't be a significant part of the grid. You need to ask them what the cost impact is of adding renewables in Sakatchewan or elsewhere is. But if Indiana and California are examples it looks like it can be much lower cost for generation.

Farmers are receiving subsidized rates below residential rates in Saskatchewan even though the grid cost of delivering electricity is much higher to farmers than most residential customers. So farm customers are getting a very large subsidy in the current system. If you are so worried about unfair subsidies, bring that up and see how popular you are.

Grid cost may be rising for a variety of reasons, but suggesting renewables are driving all the increased costs is speculation at best and probably just anti-green power ranting from a climate change denier!

Fossil fuel production of electricity is also subsidized.

[blackpowder]

I'll be damned if, at 54, I'm buying a green banana let alone 5 digit rinky dink with +10 yr payback.
My highest cost month while blowing grain hardly covers total cost of money.
Why buy when you can rent.
In this case, principles and ideals are buffalo chips to me.

[bobofthenorth]

The big problem with so-called "green" energy that nobody talks about is its effect on spot pricing and utility profitability. Economic theory says that a firm will continue to sell product as long as the sale exceeds variable costs. The variable cost of solar or wind is negligible - virtually all of the cost is capital cost. So the spot market for electricity, when the "green" power is being produced, approaches zero. The system collapses without base capacity which comes from conventional sources - nuclear, coal, gas or hydro but there is no incentive to recapitalize those sources in an industry where the spot price routinely approaches zero. The industry is doomed. The only reason we have a stable grid is because the lifespan of the installations is so long but that lifespan is not infinite.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Chuck, if you think that example is convoluted, you should see the convolution Germany goes through with their neighbors trying to balance intermittent with demand. And the costs involved.

[sofa.king]

Ok chuck give me an example of farmers being subsidized.If you cant or won't, stop spreading your bs.