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What I'm trying to get at is that the "oh its just so unprofitable to have ready" smells fishy. When you really do have assets like that sitting around for a while, a company will seek to find some way to get it off their books and out of their hands. Because it still costs them in upkeep and other such things merely sitting there unused.
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Feb 24, 2017 05:24
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fishmech posted:What I'm trying to get at is that the "oh its just so unprofitable to have ready" smells fishy. When you really do have assets like that sitting around for a while, a company will seek to find some way to get it off their books and out of their hands. Because it still costs them in upkeep and other such things merely sitting there unused. Oh it is fishy. Prices peaked at something ridiculous like $14000/kWH.
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Feb 24, 2017 05:26
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fishmech posted:What I'm trying to get at is that the "oh its just so unprofitable to have ready" smells fishy. You have to have additional employees to be able to run that turbine. And if that turbine is only turning 4 days out of a year, then paying those employees for that just doesn't make economic sense. You can't just turn it on, you have to bring in personnel. And from what I can gather, in order to bid in the energy market, you have to have a reliable gas supply contract, guarantee to be able to supply. That costs money. And its not worth it to have a gas contract for a whole year, if its only turning 4 days of it. There might well be other issues as well. The business case and economics for this piece of equipment is Baseload it is not at all fishy that it cannot be profitable in a non baseload environment. quote:Prices peaked at something ridiculous like $14000/kWH. $14000 per MWH, you were an order of magnitude off. Shockingly, prices that high, for only 4 days a year, are insufficient to make this piece of equipment profitable. (not shocking at all, that was sarcasm) http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...facc1c0d79b2047 quote:GDF SUEZ Australia Energy group head, corporate affairs Jim Kouts said these factors combined to make full-scale production at Pelican Point unviable. BattleMoose fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 05:33
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BattleMoose posted:I can only guess at their decision making processes. And perhaps mothballing isn't the correct term to use. And honestly I don't know exactly what it entails for them to bring that turbine on-line, additional personnel? Securing Gas supplies? Guy I know owns a company that specializes in doing things like this and oh loving God is it not cheap. It'd be cheaper to buy a new turbine instead of trying to disassemble around a plant to get one out and then move it elsewhere.
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Feb 24, 2017 05:34
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Bates posted:While not strictly speaking energy generation it's at least tangentially related - battery production is popping these years: The market is going to exist if prices come down a bit more or solar continues to be installed like crazy. In Northern CA, using a time of use rate and doing energy arbitrage, charging at night when electricity is cheap and discharging it during peak hours to not draw from the grid, a residential battery can pay for itself in as little as 15-20 years (at high usage). Batteries don't exactly last that long at the moment, but the outlook for batteries is reminiscent of residential solar 10-15 years ago. There are already some weird edge cases where it makes sense, and the market is rapidly changing to make those more mainstream.
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Feb 24, 2017 06:38
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QuarkJets posted:All the more reason to nationalize power generation and distribution In SC, the state does own the utility that supplies most of the generation and transmission, and our republican led government is always trying to sell it off.
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Feb 24, 2017 13:29
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Number Ten Cocks posted:The US can't afford it. fishmech posted:So why not sell the unprofitable turbine to someone else, or transfer the turbine to another plant they own evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 15:40
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fermun posted:The market is going to exist if prices come down a bit more or solar continues to be installed like crazy. In Northern CA, using a time of use rate and doing energy arbitrage, charging at night when electricity is cheap and discharging it during peak hours to not draw from the grid, a residential battery can pay for itself in as little as 15-20 years (at high usage). Batteries don't exactly last that long at the moment, but the outlook for batteries is reminiscent of residential solar 10-15 years ago. There are already some weird edge cases where it makes sense, and the market is rapidly changing to make those more mainstream. Also cheaper renewables allow you to have more expensive storage, as the overall price of the system (generation plus storage) still decreases if only the generation side decreases.
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Feb 24, 2017 15:57
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https://www.ft.com/content/4f88cb60-f8f7-11e6-bd4e-68d53499ed71quote:Suppliers to Tesla and other electric carmakers are scrambling to secure shipments of the key battery material cobalt after a group of hedge funds amassed a large stockpile of the scarce metal, worth as much as $280m, according to the investors, traders and analysts.
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Feb 25, 2017 08:53
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BattleMoose posted:Pelican Point Power Station: I was talking about the engineering principles behind it - Any CCGT built this century can run a two-shifting regime and only run during the peaks of the day, if profitable to do so taking into account both the short run marginal costs, staffing/maintenance and the commercial costs involved with being available to offtake gas, export electricity. There's no reason to insist on "baseload or nothing".
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Feb 26, 2017 20:25
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fermun posted:The market is going to exist if prices come down a bit more or solar continues to be installed like crazy. In Northern CA, using a time of use rate and doing energy arbitrage, charging at night when electricity is cheap and discharging it during peak hours to not draw from the grid, a residential battery can pay for itself in as little as 15-20 years (at high usage). Batteries don't exactly last that long at the moment, but the outlook for batteries is reminiscent of residential solar 10-15 years ago. There are already some weird edge cases where it makes sense, and the market is rapidly changing to make those more mainstream. Energy arbitrage is great if you're the only one doing it, and your actions don't move the price of power. If one were to build a significant chunk of battery storage, and cycle it to import when power is cheap and export when power is expensive, the cost to run of the marginal plant to balance the system during the peak would reduce, as you're shifting the supply curve. This therefore reduces the power price over the peak. Similarly, the power price over the trough increases as the demand curve shifts. As more and more people pile into this highly profitable enterprise, you'll find the price differentials erode. This means that if you can build and get batteries on stream very quickly, have fun capturing all the lovely rent, but if you're not first, you're going to quickly find the margins driven down to the point where it might not be worth building the batteries at all.
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Feb 26, 2017 20:34
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OwlFancier posted:It's kind of a weird idea that a state cannot afford to own the things within its jurisdiction. That's exactly backwards. If a state could afford to own the things within its jurisdiction, then it would be a very impoverished state because it means that the citizens aren't creating very much in the way of wealth. Total revenue for all levels of government in the US is about $7 trillion, 3.6 of which is Federal. US GDP is more than double that. Would you look at the GDP and conclude that the government's revenues should be higher than that, every year? That would make no sense whatsoever, that would mean that the majority of economic activity was going directly to the government. Households and nonprofits in the US own $22 trillion in real estate. Corporations own about 10 trillion, noncorporate businesses own about another 10 trillion. Sure, the US could just print up a bunch of currency, but that would devalue the dollar and everything would wind up costing more. That sort of thing will be reflected in any modern state. UK tax revenues are 716 billion pounds, GDP is about 2.8 trillion. No state out there can afford to own the things within its jurisdiction; or, it it can, it's a degenerate edge case where you'd have things like some huge proportion of the labor force being foreign workers, or just no non-government economy to speak of. Like, maybe Saudi Arabia could afford to own the things within Saudi Arabia ($700 billion GDP, the House of Saud's estimated net worth is about double that).
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Feb 28, 2017 21:02
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Phanatic posted:That's exactly backwards. If a state could afford to own the things within its jurisdiction, then it would be a very impoverished state because it means that the citizens aren't creating very much in the way of wealth. That makes absolutely no sense.
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Feb 28, 2017 21:12
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Phanatic posted:That's exactly backwards. If a state could afford to own the things within its jurisdiction, then it would be a very impoverished state because it means that the citizens aren't creating very much in the way of wealth. Total revenue for all levels of government in the US is about $7 trillion, 3.6 of which is Federal. US GDP is more than double that. Would you look at the GDP and conclude that the government's revenues should be higher than that, every year? That would make no sense whatsoever, that would mean that the majority of economic activity was going directly to the government. Households and nonprofits in the US own $22 trillion in real estate. Corporations own about 10 trillion, noncorporate businesses own about another 10 trillion. Sure, the US could just print up a bunch of currency, but that would devalue the dollar and everything would wind up costing more. Which is to say, those states deliberately do not attempt to own things, not that they cannot own them. A state should have tax income proportional, even if not equivalent, to its GDP, which should give it the facility to take ownership of any part of its industry that it wants to. A thing does not stop making money because it's taken into state ownership, it simply means the state can run it at a loss if it is beneficial to the wider economy and fund it from taxes taken from that ensuing productivity, and pocket the profits if it does not. Like, roads. The state owns most roads where I live. It pays for their upkeep with tax money, principally from road use tax I would imagine. It can do this because it is the state and can make it illegal to use the road without paying road use tax. A private company would have to resort to toll booths which would, if universalized, make road transit rather inefficient. The state does this because if it didn't we wouldn't have functioning roads and nobody would be able to get anywhere and society would grind to a halt. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 21:32
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fishmech posted:That makes absolutely no sense. The state takes a portion of what is produced as revenue in the form of duties, taxes, fees, etc. For it to be able to afford all the things within its jurisdiction, then the potion of production it takes must be greater than the remaining production. Literally no modern state with a modern economy does this. Even Denmark, with the highest top tax rate in the world, has a GDP of $333 billion USD and revenues of $137 billion USD. The only governments that can afford all the things within their borders are degenerate economies like Saudi Arabia, which has an economy dominated by the petroleum sector, a hereditary government that controls that sector, and a workforce that is 80% foreign. Why would you think a government should be able to afford to purchase everything that's produced by the total productive capacity of its citizenry? OwlFancier posted:Which is to say, those states deliberately do not attempt to own things, not that they cannot own them. A state should have tax income proportional, even if not equivalent, to its GDP, States generally do have revenues proportional to GDP (Rank of OECD countries by GDP is pretty much the same as the rank of OECD countries by tax revenues). Having revenues *equivalent* to GDP would be disastrous, it would cause GDP to plummet to Afghanistan levels, because it would mean that the government is taxing all productivity at a rate of 100%. Say the GDP is $10, and government revenues are $10. Then I go to work and generate an additional $1 of stuff. Now the government needs to raise its revenues by $1 to keep revenue equal to GDP. That's a 100% tax rate on every marginal dollar of production. That would be an economic implosion. quote:which should give it the facility to take ownership of any part of its industry that it wants to. A state that goes around taking ownership of industry on a whim is a great way to destroy capital investment. Especially of foreign capital (which is one of the many things that imploded Venezuela's economy, nobody's going to invest capital in a country whose government can't be trusted not to just nationalize that industry and turn it over to his friends). I'm not taking a position here on nationalizing the energy industry, I'm just speaking to the underlying concept. But in any event, a state doesn't need to purchase an item to take control of it. If a modern state wants to nationalize an industrial sector, it can just do it outright through some legal mechanism, it doesn't have to afford to buy those assets at market prices. There are two notions you're presenting here: 1. If a nation has a GDP of $18 trillion, it should be able to afford to buy all of that $18 trillion in production. 2. If a nation has a GDP of $18 trillion, it needs to have revenues equal to that in order to take ownership of any part of its industry that it wants to. That first one is a weird notion, because that's not how economies work. The second one is just unnecessary; even the US can wield eminent domain if it's for public use (Hell, eminent domain here allows the government to confiscate someone's house and turn it over to a private company on the basis that the private company's use of that land will generate more tax revenue that the guy who was using it to live on). quote:Like, roads. The state owns most roads where I live. Sure, but it does not own the industries that design, construct, and provide all of the upkeep for those roads. It does not arbitrarily decide how much it costs to lay a mile of road. It does not set the price for fuel. Etc. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 21:37
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Phanatic, is there perhaps a hangup on where state operations can run on revenue?
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Feb 28, 2017 21:45
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Phanatic posted:The state takes a portion of what is produced as revenue in the form of duties, taxes, fees, etc. For it to be able to afford all the things within its jurisdiction, then the potion of production it takes must be greater than the remaining production. You're saying that a government cannot afford to take over an entity that generates profit. You understand that if profit is greater than 0 that you're actually making more money than you spend, right?
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Feb 28, 2017 21:58
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QuarkJets posted:You're saying that a government cannot afford to take over an entity that generates profit. No, I'm saying that a government cannot afford to take over everything within its jurisdiction except in weird edge cases and, conversely, there's nothing weird about a government not being able afford to do so. Potato Salad posted:Phanatic, is there perhaps a hangup on where state operations can run on revenue? Are there state operations that can self-fund themselves? Sure. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services runs on user fees. The state gamelands in PA are funded by mineral leases and ammunition and license taxes. I'm certainly not denying that is a possibility. I'm, again, not stating that you can't nationalize any given industry. I'm addressing the comment that "It's kind of a weird idea that a state cannot afford to own the things within its jurisdiction." Phanatic fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 22:03
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Phanatic posted:The state takes a portion of what is produced as revenue in the form of duties, taxes, fees, etc. For it to be able to afford all the things within its jurisdiction, then the potion of production it takes must be greater than the remaining production. Again, no, that makes no sense. That's not how nationalizing things works nor is it even how buying things works. By your logic it's also impossible for any corporation to afford to buy property it doesn't already have.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:07
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fishmech posted:Again, no, that makes no sense. That's not how nationalizing things works nor is it even how buying things works. I'm not talking about nationalizing anything. I'm addressing the notion that a state is or should be necessarily capable of affording all the stuff the people living in that state produce. fishmech posted:By your logic it's also impossible for any corporation to afford to buy property it doesn't already have. Huh?
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Feb 28, 2017 22:12
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While I wouldn't dispute that the process of a state attempting to own everything in its jurisdiction would certainly be entertaining to watch from a distance, I a) wasn't really intending to suggest that states should try to do that in the context of an energy infrastructure problem (though it would solve that problem, arguably) and b) would entirely dispute that it is impossible to have a single entity owning everything within a sovereign jurisdiction. By that logic it would be physically impossible for me to buy an island and run it as a subsistence farm with me as the landlord, which, well, I think quite a lot of American history might disprove.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:17
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OwlFancier posted:b) would entirely dispute that it is impossible to have a single entity owning everything within a sovereign jurisdiction. By that logic it would be physically impossible for me to buy an island and run it as a subsistence farm with me as the landlord, which, well, I think quite a lot of American history might disprove. Sure, and I specifically stated that low-productivity edge cases like that are an exception. When I started off saying "If a state could afford to own the things within its jurisdiction, then it would be a very impoverished state because it means that the citizens aren't creating very much in the way of wealth," that's actually exactly the exception I had in mind. Subsistence farming by definition is a state of poverty, not one of production.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:22
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I am now curious what makes the production of food to eat via labour not actually production. And also what happens between that and a larger, more industrial effort to make owning it impossible.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:24
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Phanatic posted:I'm not talking about nationalizing anything. I'm addressing the notion that a state is or should be necessarily capable of affording all the stuff the people living in that state produce. You don't need to be able to afford everything the factory produces to be able to afford the factory. What don't you get here?
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Feb 28, 2017 22:25
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Phanatic posted:Sure, and I specifically stated that low-productivity edge cases like that are an exception. When I started off saying "If a state could afford to own the things within its jurisdiction, then it would be a very impoverished state because it means that the citizens aren't creating very much in the way of wealth," that's actually exactly the exception I had in mind. Subsistence farming by definition is a state of poverty, not one of production. But you're also saying that it'd be impossible for him to run a profitable plantation on that island, or a profitable factory, or what-have-you. Phanatic posted:No, I'm saying that a government cannot afford to take over everything within its jurisdiction except in weird edge cases and, conversely, there's nothing weird about a government not being able afford to do so. If the government can afford to take over 1 profitable business, then why can't it afford to take over 1000 profitable businesses? Now apply that concept to an entire economy; if an entire economy is generating profit, then why is it unaffordable to take that over? The profit-making entity pays for itself.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:28
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fishmech posted:You don't need to be able to afford everything the factory produces to be able to afford the factory. What don't you get here? You're not even arguing with the point I'm making. I'm not the person who said the US can't afford to nationalize the energy industry. I'm the person saying it's not weird for a state not to be able to afford everything its citizens produce. OwlFancier posted:I am now curious what makes the production of food to eat via labour not actually production. It is production, if you can sell it to someone and get something in chance, but you just said "subsistence" farming, which by definition means "We have no excess production and everything we're producing is going directly to keep us alive. quote:And also what happens between that and a larger, more industrial effort to make owning it impossible. Again, I did not say that owning any particular thing is impossible. I said that in any modern state the citizens will be generating more production than the government is capable of affording, modulo degenerate cases. QuarkJets posted:But you're also saying that it'd be impossible for him to run a profitable plantation on that island, or a profitable factory, or what-have-you. No, I'm not. In his analogy, he buys an island full of subsistence farmers. There's no factory, there's no profitable plantation there. There's no excess productive capacity, so he can't raise the capital to built a factory by taxing those people. If he's got the revenue from some other source, then of course he could build a factory there. quote:If the government can afford to take over 1 profitable business, then why can't it afford to take over 1000 profitable businesses? It can afford to purchase 1000 profitable businesses, because it's got the % of productivity it's extracting from hundreds of thousands of profitable businesses to do it with. It can't afford to take over 1000 profitable businesses if its only source of revenue is the % of productivity it's extracting from those 1000 profitable businesses. It can't afford to take over hundreds of thousands of profitable businesses if the only revenue is has is the % of productivity it's extracting from those hundreds of thousands of businesses. quote:Now apply that concept to an entire economy; if an entire economy is generating profit, then why is it unaffordable to take that over? Because it doesn't have the revenue to do it with, because its source of revenue is a small percentage what the entire economy is generating. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 22:33
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Phanatic posted:It is production, if you can sell it to someone and get something in chance, but you just said "subsistence" farming, which by definition means "We have no excess production and everything we're producing is going directly to keep us alive. Well strictly it means you may be electing not to grow more because you have no interest in trading rather than no capacity to produce more. Subsistence as far as I know simply means producing only enough to use yourself, without a necessary inference that you are unable to produce more. In a modern context the reason people produce a lot is because there is property which allows them to produce more, owning that property means that you own the production, effectively, as you gain ownership of the products. The obvious example of this is the factory. You own the factory, you own what the factory produces. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 22:35
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Phanatic posted:You're not even arguing with the point I'm making. I'm not the person who said the US can't afford to nationalize the energy industry. I'm the person saying it's not weird for a state not to be able to afford everything its citizens produce. You said the state can't own the things within it. Then you said it's because they couldn't afford to buy all the things those things produce. That is your argument, why are you making it if you don't believe it?
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Feb 28, 2017 22:49
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oh my god
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Feb 28, 2017 22:51
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fishmech posted:You said the state can't own the things within it. Then you said it's because they couldn't afford to buy all the things those things produce. 1. Which is not the same thing as "The US can't afford to nationalize the energy industry." 2. I didn't say it's "because they can't afford to buy all the things those things produce." Even commercial real estate holdings are greater than US tax revenues. The US can't even afford to buy all the *land* the factories sit on, let alone the factories themselves, let alone the things those factories produce. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 22:54
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Phanatic posted:Which is not the same thing as "The US can't afford to nationalist the energy industry." It's also not true or relevant. In fact being able to afford all the things being produced by the means of production is utterly irrelevant to owning the means of production.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:56
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fishmech posted:It's also not true or relevant. In fact being able to afford all the things being produced by the means of production is utterly irrelevant to owning the means of production. That's hilarious. I own a factory that cost me some amount in capital expenditures. You seriously believe that the expected economic output of that factory is "utterly irrelevant" to the price I'd be willing to sell it to someone for?
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Feb 28, 2017 22:58
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Phanatic posted:That's hilarious. That affects the price, but it is not the price. Otherwise buying factories would be prohibitively expensive for any company, because they are all capable of producing billions upon billions of dollars of product after someone else buys it. That you don't understand this, is bizarre.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:03
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Phanatic posted:That's hilarious. I would... imagine that you would be willing to sell it for simply a suitable, immediate profit, and would not demand a sum equivalent to the maximum potential future productivity... Otherwise capital investments would never be bought or sold... because they would only ever be available for sale at an unprofitable price and nobody would ever want to buy them...
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Feb 28, 2017 23:03
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"Oh man, 26 new posts in the energy thread today! What cool story/breakthrough happened?!?" 
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Feb 28, 2017 23:11
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Phanatic posted:1. Which is not the same thing as "The US can't afford to nationalize the energy industry." You said "own". It doesn't cost anything for the US government to simply own real estate. But even if we change your wording to "nationalize" instead of "own", why would you assume that nationalization of all commercial real estate holdings would need to be performed with a single year of tax revenues? That's not how nationalization tends to work or how buying real estate works.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:17
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Also when you have a monopoly on force you can nationalize for whatever price you wish  "you see nationalized farming could never work because the proletariat could never afford to pay all the Kulaks for their productive land" What I'm saying is rise up and seize the means of energy production.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:21
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Baronjutter posted:Also when you have a monopoly on force you can nationalize for whatever price you wish I can get behind this proposal for helioconquest
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Feb 28, 2017 23:24
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Nationalized industries are not purchased at fair market value. This discussion is terrifyingly ignorant.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:24
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True they really should charge a lot more of them when they sell them off to private owners.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:26
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