Really no change

[woodland]

The power plants out here are all humming along. Burning coal and gas currently and TransAlta says at the end of the year coal is done. Only a few acres stripped ahead of the last operating dragline so it’s probably true.

The fun has just begun.🍀

[chuckChuck]

Every year this discussion about electrcity comes up in December just before the shortest day of the year. Funny that.

There are 365 days in a year. What was the annual contribution of all generation sources? And what was the carbon emission of all sources?

As long as utilities have enough capacity either through gas, hydro, imports, cogeneration and in some cases nuclear to cover peak loads, then the intermittent sources can do their job of lowering carbon emissions and you will hardly know the difference.

Wind and solar are now some of the lowest cost generation sources, so their impact on generation costs are not as significant as some would have us believe.

Now if you are like some posters on this site who don't believe increasing carbon emissions are a problem and that human caused climate change is a threat, then I am sure you will dismiss any changes to our electrcity generation and distribution system as unnecessary and likely to fail.

[Hamloc]

Every year this discussion about electrcity comes up in December just before the shortest day of the year. Funny that.

There are 365 days in a year. What was the annual contribution of all generation sources? And what was the carbon emission of all sources?

As long as utilities have enough capacity either through gas, hydro, imports, cogeneration and in some cases nuclear to cover peak loads, then the intermittent sources can do their job of lowering carbon emissions and you will hardly know the difference.

Wind and solar are now some of the lowest cost generation sources, so their impact on generation costs are not as significant as some would have us believe.

Now if you are like some posters on this site who don't believe increasing carbon emissions are a problem and that human caused climate change is a threat, then I am sure you will dismiss any changes to our electrcity generation and distribution system as unnecessary and likely to fail.

Are they really the lowest cost? They are not a stand alone power source. You must have a second or third source ready and waiting to produce power. Look at Europe, I was just reading that the Paris based IEA found that electricity production from coal will be up 9% this year. The reason lower renewable productivity and high natural gas prices.

Simple comparison Chuck, which scenario makes more sense to you and which costs less. Let’s say you have a combine that will work 15% of the time powered by the sun, another combine that works 30% of the time and is powered by the wind. And when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing you have a third combine that works all the time except when it needs repairs obviously, that runs on diesel. So yes you emit less emissions when either of the first two work, but imagine the cost of buying 3 combines to do the job of one, first to the farmer and second to the environment!?!? Do you think this would lower his cost per acre to combine his crop?

[seldomseen]

Every year this discussion about electrcity comes up in December just before the shortest day of the year. Funny that.

There are 365 days in a year. What was the annual contribution of all generation sources? And what was the carbon emission of all sources?

As long as utilities have enough capacity either through gas, hydro, imports, cogeneration and in some cases nuclear to cover peak loads, then the intermittent sources can do their job of lowering carbon emissions and you will hardly know the difference.

Wind and solar are now some of the lowest cost generation sources, so their impact on generation costs are not as significant as some would have us believe.

Now if you are like some posters on this site who don't believe increasing carbon emissions are a problem and that human caused climate change is a threat, then I am sure you will dismiss any changes to our electrcity generation and distribution system as unnecessary and likely to fail.

It comes up at this time of year because if you haven't noticed the temps is about -30 or lower and the machine making heat in the basement becomes very important and needs to be reliable or life gets very uncomfortable very quickly. Again if you haven't noticed at the end of June heating your house is not that important.

[TASFarms]

Are they really the lowest cost? They are not a stand alone power source. You must have a second or third source ready and waiting to produce power. Look at Europe, I was just reading that the Paris based IEA found that electricity production from coal will be up 9% this year. The reason lower renewable productivity and high natural gas prices.

Simple comparison Chuck, which scenario makes more sense to you and which costs less. Let’s say you have a combine that will work 15% of the time powered by the sun, another combine that works 30% of the time and is powered by the wind. And when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing you have a third combine that works all the time except when it needs repairs obviously, that runs on diesel. So yes you emit less emissions when either of the first two work, but imagine the cost of buying 3 combines to do the job of one, first to the farmer and second to the environment!?!? Do you think this would lower his cost per acre to combine his crop?

Change it from farmer to custom harvester. And charge $90 an acre to cover the capital costs

[shtferbrains]

Change it from farmer to custom harvester. And charge $90 an acre to cover the capital costs

You just need some government support to make that work.

Your not thinking like a progressive Liberal.

[chuckChuck]

You need to have the actual numbers for the added cost of renewable generation systems supplementing hydro, fossil and nuclear systems.

Generation costs are only one part of the total system costs. There is generation, distribution, maintenance and administration.

No doubt there are increased costs with adding renewable and low carbon generation sources to provide electricity.

But what is the cost of reducing carbon emissions from the various options? For example is carbon capture and storage cheaper than wind? Without the actual numbers you are speculating.

Sask power said that carbon capture on coal was too expensive and has chosen more wind and more gas and imports of hydro from Manitoba.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Actually, the shortest day of the year is exactly when we need to base all of generation and cost projections.
While Chuck is spewing utter nonsense about " gas, hydro, imports, cogeneration and in some cases nuclear to cover peak loads", the politicians are promising zero carbon energy sources in impossibly short periods of time. So, eliminate the gas, and cogeneration from that list. It is apparent that he doesn't get invited to the meetings anymore. They must have gotten tired of hearing someone speak LOL at the end of every serious statement.

Chucks friends at the NFU are going way outside of their mandate and blocking any potential hydro dams, specifically targeting site C in BC, so eliminate that option. He obviously doesn't get invited to the NFU meetings anymore, apparently even they get tired of being called flat earther's too.

All of the greens are against Nuclear, almost none of the governments are suggesting that as an option, so eliminate that option.

The UN is insisiting that we are all going to do this together, so that means all your nearest neighbors will be committing energy harikari at the same time, so don't plan on imports from sane neighbors such as Norway anymore.

We will be left with wind and solar. No one freezes to death on the longest sunniest day of the year, no livestock freeze or critical infrastructure is going to suffer catastrophic failures from freezing without energy on the longest day of the year.

So we need to start from the worst case, no back up sources, shortest day of the year, highest demand, and as we have noted in the past few years, the wind can be calm for days on end. And keep in mind that at the present time, there is no scalable, affordable storage option.

[sumdumguy]

A huge Lithium source happens to be in Nevada. The source of the Lithium is an old tired volcano. Just imagine Lithium for all those green batteries. While many hale the mining of Lithium as a generator of great wealth in that dessert, the environmentalists and native bands have gone on the offence to the very idea. One of the wonders of the world! (Sarcasm)