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It's not so much about making people curb their usage, as making it so the appliance does. A few weeks ago I installed some ludicrous 84 inch 4K display in a business, but it only draws 196 watts peak. You could easily draw 200 watts from an old time 19 inch all-vacuum tube set back in the day, or a larger CRT later on. Meanwhile normal people get mere 50 inch sets that only draw like 100 watts. Or you know houses that used to be full of 60 watt incandescents, and now every lamp was replaced by a cheap 7 watt LED. Fridges that use way less power, houses that bother to have insulation, et cetera. OwlFancier posted:How do you put energy back into the grid without a powerplant sized transformer? By only putting out a small amount at each house, naturally.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:32
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Kaal posted:Liberal political organizations have been slow to respond to this oil industry talking point, and it's been spreading like wildfire in Republican states that are hostile to environmentalism. There's a real need to develop the idea that home solar represents a direct investment in the community energy grid, which reduces costs for everyone by expanding the generation base and increasing line efficiency. Investment in home solar reduces the need for costly infrastructure expansion that has to be paid for via bank loans and rate increases. These rooftop projects also help develop the local economy by employing local small businesses, as opposed to large out-of-state corporations that build and fuel the oil and gas plants. This fiscal viewpoint isn't being advocated sufficiently, particularly in conservative areas that are more interested in the bottom-line than climate concerns. Solar power generated at a customer level requires increased distribution infrastructure costs if penetration increases to a significant level. Generally the grid needs to support time of use metering for customer installations, additional potential metering infrastructure to help keep voltage in check if significant generation exists on the distribution feeder and if enough generation exists the potential for switching/protection upgrades could become required to verify that faults are cleared properly. Also, since peak solar production generally leads peak demand by an hour to two hours, there is no savings in distribution equipment sizing and if the local generation exceeds local demand additional work may need to be done to support the export of energy to other load centers. Some of these points are also things that will generally happen to the grid as technology and price of those features comes done but it's rather disingenuous to claim that rooftop PV makes the grid cheaper to build or maintain. Kaal posted:I'd be happy to hear more about those concerns, if you're able to find those kinds of presentations and relate them to us. The utility losses all the energy lost in the distribution system and has to pay for the equipment used to transmit the solar energy, pay salaries for the technicians and operators, telecom, billing etc. You are correct, net metering isn't a zero profit setup for the utility; it's a negative profit. Depending on where you are located only half-3/4 of the price you pay for electrical energy is for the actual energy. freezepops fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 15:34
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Bread Zeppelin posted:I had solar panels installed last year and my power bill is now $9 a month, which is the minimum that my power company will allow to be connected to the grid. I think I have enough surplus credits to keep the thermostat at 58F until fall. My poo poo Republican state is going to push legislation through that would make solar not worth it for most people. Arglebargle III posted:If you ever needed proof that human people are not the Republican constituency. The personal solar issue is about 90% about loving over people who don't own solar, only about 10% about loving over the electric company. You're cost shifting and adding inefficient capacity, not lowering costs. A somewhat simplified example: Consider a traditional utility with 2000 MW of peak load that happens between 6 pm and 9 pm. They charge fuel at cost (regularly updated through regulatory procedures) and earn maybe 9% regulated profit on their capital infrastructure (transmission and distribution infrastructure plus the generation assets they own). Now let's say a whole lot of customers install solar panels, enough to produce 200 MW of energy during the day and saving them personally a whole lot of money. How much does this hurt the electric company's profits and how much does it reduce their costs? Essentially zero impact on profit, but costs go up slightly. All of that 2000 MW of generation capacity that already existed is still necessary at night, so you can't retire any of it. All of the savings during the day are fuel for idled peaking plants (which will still run at night), which the company doesn't make or lose any money on. The electric company has to spend a little more money and time hooking up and dealing with the solar generating customers, but it's not significant and ideally the solar customers pay for that themselves. So what happens to the customers who don't own solar panels? Their rates go up enough to support the lost revenue from the solar customers. All of those unchanged capital costs are built into usage per MW, and the solar customers aren't using as many MW, so the capital cost per MW of other customers has to climb to compensate. The electric company profit is unchanged, the solar customers save money, the other customer spend more money, everyone hates the electric company. Now in aggregate that solar has some ability to retire capacity. For generator maintenance that can be accomplished in a few hours during the day, you can substitute solar for redundant gas peakers to cover that downtime. But until storage become economical you can't retire any of your generation necessary for peak load, which happens at night. You can plan for this by the utility building or contracting for its own solar capacity, but ad hoc individuals on short term contracts don't help with required reliability capacity planning on 20 year horizons. Bad state incentives implementing avoided costs for qualifying facilities under PURPA have resulted in huge overcapacity being built by small (<80 MW) solar facilities in California and Idaho that they are constantly curtailing. Idaho Power has something like 1800 MW of peak load and 1300 of mandatory solar purchases and crushing Idaho rate payers. This is driving rapid integration of outlying states with CAISO's energy imbalance market, as California desperately tries to shift this useless energy to the east and take advantage of those areas hitting their peak load while California still has some sunshine. Idaho is still going to be hosed, because there's no significant load to their east they can transmit it to. Kaal posted:Liberal political organizations have been slow to respond to this oil industry talking point, and it's been spreading like wildfire in Republican states that are hostile to environmentalism. There's a real need to develop the idea that home solar represents a direct investment in the community energy grid, which reduces costs for everyone by expanding the generation base and increasing line efficiency. This is all wrong. Kaal posted:But the utility takes that power and sells it to someone else, right? So it's not really zero profit at all. By taking on local power generation, home solar actually reduces production costs for the utility - participating in the public good and driving down rates by increasing overall supply and reducing the demand on the utility. Home solar projects are a net benefit to everyone on the electric grid, including the utility. Each installation represents, in the final sense, a reduced need for costly infrastructure bonds and rate increases. This, too. Incidentally, zero is a common price for (small) energy sales between balancing areas. It's often cheaper (or has reliability impacts) to give away your useless energy for nothing than to shut off or curtail its source. If you need to meet 50 MW more of load and you have to start up a 73 MW minimum generator to meet it, you might as well give that surplus 23 MW away to to a neighboring BA if they're willing to take it rather than have too much power on your system. You'll hopefully catch it from the other direction enough to offset. Syzygy Stardust fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 15:36
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fishmech posted:By only putting out a small amount at each house, naturally. I mean, doesn't the power grid run on extremely high voltage to minimize transmission loss which is then stepped down for domestic use? So unless you have a really powerful transformer and a lot to feed it, how do you get it back into the main grid? I guess you might be able to run some to a neighbour's house but presumably you can't send it very far at, er, 120v I think US power runs on?
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Aug 10, 2017 15:41
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, doesn't the power grid run on extremely high voltage to minimize transmission loss which is then stepped down for domestic use? You don't run a full on high voltage line directly into each neighborhood you know. It only needs to go up to a few thousand volts for the connection from the locxal substation to the nearest transformer to the house.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:51
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, doesn't the power grid run on extremely high voltage to minimize transmission loss which is then stepped down for domestic use? The stuff in your *house* is 120V, but there's a pole pig outside that's being fed a minimum of a couple thousand volts in order to feed your house that 120V. All a grid-tie inverter needs to do it turn your solar DC in to AC that matches the voltage and phase of what's coming into your house, the transformers already in the grid do the rest.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:59
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, doesn't the power grid run on extremely high voltage to minimize transmission loss which is then stepped down for domestic use? Transformers work both ways. So the small pole top or pad mount transformer can step up voltage from your 120v solar source up to 12kV distribution voltages, and so on. When it is a small amount on a distribution feeder, the utility doesn't care that much. If everyone starts putting in solar/wind generators in their backyard, then other problems develop. The protection systems for distribution lines typically assume that there is only load downstream from them. If there is enough generation on that distribution line, the protection equipment may not operate correctly for a fault, or may incorrectly de-energize the line when there is not a fault. Not to mention the fact that if the generation is not installed with proper protection, they can backfeed the distribution line when it is supposed to be off due to a fault. That has the potential to damage your devices, your neighbors electronics, or get a utility worker killed. This circles back to the fact that end user generation has costs to the utility that the average person has no clue about. Add to this the fact that residential electricity is the most expensive rate that a utility gets to charge. So paying an end user for excess generation isn't in a utility's best interest. At best they can resell it at 0 revenue. At worst it is used to offset much cheaper generation from large scale generators.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:01
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Orvin posted:Transformers work both ways. So the small pole top or pad mount transformer can step up voltage from your 120v solar source up to 12kV distribution voltages, and so on. There's also the problem that on a cold winter day, the town still needs all the power it usually does, and the electric company has to supply it. So they still have the capital costs of building and maintaining full generating capacity, without being able to derive any profit from it much of the time. Distributed generation certainly can work, it's just not a good fit for our system in its current form. It will take a full rethink and redesign of everything in the system. Whether there is the political and economic will to do that is another matter.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:09
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freezepops posted:Some of these points are also things that will generally happen to the grid as technology and price of those features comes done but it's rather disingenuous to claim that rooftop PV makes the grid cheaper to build or maintain. The grid upgrades you're talking about are paid for by the home solar installation because they're obviously critical to being able to achieve basic functionality. The idea that this investment into the grid should be ignored because it directly benefits the owner makes no sense at all - they're paying for the upgrade rather than that money coming out of the rate payments. It's clearly saving money for consumers as a whole, particularly because these improvements are happening regardless of the development of home solar. quote:The utility losses all the energy lost in the distribution system and has to pay for the equipment used to transmit the solar energy, pay salaries for the technicians and operators, telecom, billing etc. You are correct, net metering isn't a zero profit setup for the utility; it's a negative profit. Depending on where you are located only half-3/4 of the price you pay for electrical energy is for the actual energy. If there is a market issue where consumers are not paying or being paid the actual market rate, then that should be addressed, but basically what you're saying is that the market rate isn't pegged correctly and the utility is inherently unprofitable. That has nothing to do with home solar, if it is actually happening. I think that you're conflating things here. Syzygy Stardust posted:The personal solar issue is about 90% about loving over people who don't own solar, only about 10% about loving over the electric company. You're cost shifting and adding inefficient capacity, not lowering costs. This is simply outdated thinking that ignores the positive impacts of solar power. The entire reason that California has shifted its peak pricing periods to the evening is because solar has taken such a significant bite out of the traditional daytime peak. They are single-handedly flattening out the power usage curves, which has meant that a lot of power plants have been able to be retired or never built in the first place. That is saving Californian rate payers a ton of money, though of course for-profit utilities like Edison don't really see that as a benefit. Rooftop solar is helping drive down costs to all consumers, reduce brownouts, develop the line infrastructure, etc., but this sort of obsolete thinking is focused entirely on the reduced need for baseline oil plants. Now there's a conversation to be had about how profitable these utility companies can really expect to be in an open market, but I'm not seeing a justification for the government thumbing the scale in order to deter solar installations. All these sorts of mandatory usage subsidies do is increase consumption and ensure a continued reliance on big, centralized infrastructure investment (along with the bonds and rate increases that go along with them). Kaal fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 16:29
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I guess I thought that the transformer between your house and the grid would either not really do much with small amounts of solar excess, or would cause problems if you start pumping extra power back into the local grid randomly. Either way it would seem rather odd for a power company to want to buy power off you at full price.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:39
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OwlFancier posted:Either way it would seem rather odd for a power company to want to buy power off you at full price. The investors of a for-profit utility want to see sustained annual rate increases, usage increases, expensive infrastructure bonds, and a shuttering of any enterprise that would interfere with their service monopoly. That's inherent to the system and their self-interest. But those desires obviously need to be balanced against the good of the community as a whole. In this case, providing home solar market access is a net benefit to everyone because it increases electricity supply and thereby reduces prices. The only arguments against it can be equally levied against consumption reduction methods as a whole - the Edison company also doesn't want you to use EnergyStar home appliances and reduce your energy footprint, but that doesn't mean that we should encourage that as policy. There's no justification here for maintaining these sorts of for-profit monopolies. Kaal fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 16:53
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The distributed solar debate sides are based on the two separate starting points: Either A, bottom up) When most people have solar power and rudimentary storage they cover the majority of their own power needs and the needs of their neighbors on each substation grid, and can pass excess in the neighborhood up into distribution to supply commercial and industrial customers. Or B, top down) A utility needs to control the means to produce enough to meet peak demand, or the ability to get supplied by larger utilities once local centralized supply is exceeded. In case A the grid supply's the means for distributed balancing, which it isn't designed for right now. The utility then must be the intermediator between all the parties involved (Which should just be autonomous billing, most of the time) and have a means for handling commercial and industrial demand fluctuations. In case B each home that has solar puts financial burden on the utility because the business model has been top down for decades, and that swings in clouds have a noticeable effect on the big customers of strip malls and industrial facilities. I think a good compromise policy decision would be that everyone needs to pay a minimum fee to be grid connected, and the utility capital infrastructure cost is subsidized by the taxes of the community while the utility gets the excess solar of each household for 'free'. The upfront cost for each homes solar is amortized over a few years by splitting the purchase cost between the homeowner and the utility by a negotiable fraction based on homeowner income, and over a few years the cost of the panels to the homeowner is paid back by the power they 'sell' back to the grid. That process may be tax credits, it may be subsidies given to the utility to pay the homeowner for their power. Each of these homes would need to meet basic safety requirements like having low voltage cutouts and transient protection so they can island themselves from the grid when needed. (As an aside I was reading a research paper where they talked about encoding a command into the 60Hz baseband on the HV side that could be picked up by the metering gear on the homes LV side to issue a command to disconnect from the grid until power was restored and the command was issued to reconnect. It was essentially a few bytes of 'command + MAC + error correction' that was passed at an incredibly low baud rate) I'm of the opinion that utilities need to adapt to the distributed grid system. There's a business model there and they just need to stop dragging rear end and get on it, its not like the grid infrastructure hasn't been hurting for upgrades for a decade anyway, use this as impetuous. The major utilities will still be needed to power cities and industrial centers that draw MW/acre, and centrallized solar/nuclear/NG peaker plants will be needed there. Another possibility is to combine those with centralized storage at the same sites so that the peaking is covered by storage that has been built up by distributed solar or constant running generators.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:55
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Kaal posted:The investors of a for-profit utility want to see sustained annual rate increases, usage increases, expensive infrastructure bonds, and a shuttering of any enterprise that would interfere with their service monopoly. That's inherent to the system and their self-interest. But those desires obviously need to be balanced against the good of the community as a whole. In this case, providing home solar market access is a net benefit to everyone because it increases electricity supply and thereby reduces prices. The only arguments against it can be equally levied against consumption reduction methods as a whole - the Edison company also doesn't want you to use EnergyStar home appliances and reduce your energy footprint, but that doesn't mean that we should encourage that as policy. There's no justification here for maintaining these sorts of for-profit monopolies. I mean, I agree, full electrocommunism now, but I was more wondering why do they pay you for it currently?
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Aug 10, 2017 16:59
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, I agree, full electrocommunism now, but I was more wondering why do they pay you for it currently? Well I think the justification is vested in the government's antitrust role. The utilities are the stewards of the electric lines infrastructure, but it was built for and by the public - often on the back of public bonds. There is a reasonable expectation that smaller players should be permitted access to that market, and that the public benefits by denying these utilities a monopoly of service. And of course it should be remembered that this energy is quickly resold to another consumer at market rates as well, far more efficiently than producing and transmitting that same energy across the state. It saves everyone money. And the proof is staring us right in the face, in the form of the peak usage periods flattening out to the point that noon - traditionally one of the most expensive periods of the day - is now one of the cheapest periods to buy and sell power. The system clearly works, but there is backlash developing as the fossil fuel companies realize that solar power is changing their profitable status quo.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:23
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Kaal posted:The investors of a for-profit utility want to see sustained annual rate increases, usage increases, expensive infrastructure bonds, and a shuttering of any enterprise that would interfere with their service monopoly. That's inherent to the system and their self-interest. But those desires obviously need to be balanced against the good of the community as a whole. In this case, providing home solar market access is a net benefit to everyone because it increases electricity supply and thereby reduces prices. The only arguments against it can be equally levied against consumption reduction methods as a whole - the Edison company also doesn't want you to use EnergyStar home appliances and reduce your energy footprint, but that doesn't mean that we should encourage that as policy. There's no justification here for maintaining these sorts of for-profit monopolies. I agree, and to your earlier question about what engineers I had been listening to....I work for an electric cooperative, and all the engineers I've had access to also worked for non-profits. From OwlFancier posted:I mean, I agree, full electrocommunism now, but I was more wondering why do they pay you for it currently? Because being against it is bad PR, and because local legislators demand it in some cases. The government gets the appearance of supporting green power without actually spending any budget money. angryrobots fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 17:31
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angryrobots posted:From "our" standpoint, the current model of distributed solar is both unsustainable, and is being subsidized by our members who cannot afford solar. (And in many cases, the installation costs of individuals will take many years if they ever pay off. So the real beneficiary here is a private contractor who charges exorbitant installation fees to put in the PV array, with a big sales pitch and promises). I think the concern here (and it mirrors similar debates in other parts of the green economy sector) is that the desire to ensure everyone pays their "fair share" is going to result in a huge over-correction that discourages anyone from investing in green technologies because there's no personal benefit. And that the public loses out on the opportunities offered by these consumption reductions and increased efficiency. That is certainly occurring with these solar rate changes, where Republican legislators are intent on eliminating any possible benefit for solar adopters, in the hopes that oil and gas plants will remain the default solution. You see this in the "road tax" proposals that would have electric cars heavily subsidizing fuel hogs and semi-trucks, or water usage tiers that make high consumption easily affordable without offering any reward for conservation. It's this bizarre inversion of the free market, with Republicans defending the role of centralized private/public monopolies and promoting the concept of price fixing. Surely any reasonable system must be able to discourage waste, and encourage diversified investment into that market when it would improve the system as a whole. As a corollary: Each year the EnergyStar program saves Americans upwards of $15 billion in energy costs. It has created a massive industry in appliance upgrades and recycling. In many ways it has had more of an impact on the energy sector than all the rooftop solar projects combined. But all that rides on the microeconomics of personal benefit; if the money that those consumers save was systematically redistributed to subsidize the non-adopters and the electric utility profits, then they would never make those investments. And the nation as a whole would be so much the worse for it. The clear mandate here is to ensure that these sorts of programs can be viable going forward, and that consumers have a reason to invest in green technologies that benefit their communities as a whole. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 17:59
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I mean, price fixing and monopoly are sort of features of the free market.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:06
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, price fixing and monopoly are sort of features of the free market. Lol, I can always count on you to make vague, low content anti-capitalism posts. Price fixing and monopoly are actually intended features of your ideal political system consisting wholly of state-run services.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:34
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I mean if you have a reason why the party of the wealthiest business owners would want to take action against them I'd love to hear it? Otherwise it sounds rather predictable from the Republicans. They hate the idea of the government intervening in private business and love the idea of really low effort money farms that can't be destabilized due to being a monopoly. Also I don't think they necessarily believe there is an environment much less that they should do something to preserve it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 18:36
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The New York Times posted:Over the past six years, rooftop solar panel installations have seen explosive growth — as much as 900 percent by one estimate.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:06
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Orvin posted:Transformers work both ways. So the small pole top or pad mount transformer can step up voltage from your 120v solar source up to 12kV distribution voltages, and so on. This is a tremendously underrated and good post. You can't adequately size distribution transformers and their protective devices if you can't predict the load. Solar and wind are notoriously unpredictable and can skew demand. This leads to uneconomical and unsafe decisions.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:26
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, I agree, full electrocommunism now, but I was more wondering why do they pay you for it currently? In many places they don't. In others it's because of explicit legislation. In still others, it's because of legal precedent from the first people installing home solar and trying into the grid - often they only got "paid" in this system via rolling back their usage. And then when they could put so much on the grid that they had negative billing period usage, and the utility disagreed on how to handle, lawsuits happened.
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Aug 11, 2017 05:14
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Arglebargle III posted:If you ever needed proof that human people are not the Republican constituency. While Republicans would oppose roof solar on principle, it's also true that liberal places are also scaling back solar subsidies and pay-back programs. Part of this is going to be money in politics, the other part is that there are real costs to the utility that cause 1:1 buyback programs to be unsustainable, so you either scale back those programs or jack up your fees
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Aug 11, 2017 06:38
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Pander posted:This is a tremendously underrated and good post. I rated it a 5/5 with the forums rating system but on the shitposter scale it only gets a 1/5, which I think is appropriate given its authentic nature
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Aug 11, 2017 08:27
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Nice  This is great news. Tear all those coal plants down! https://thinkprogress.org/solar-wind-keep-getting-cheaper-33c38350fb95/ quote:
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Nov 23, 2017 07:37
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Full life cycle costs don’t mean much for existing plants.
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Nov 24, 2017 19:33
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hobbesmaster posted:Full life cycle costs don’t mean much for existing plants. It's eye popping that it's lower than just maintenance and fuel for existing though. Are there any other limiting factors? When steam was transitioning to slow speed diesel on ships the limiting factor for steam was not initially fuel costs. It was reduction gears. Direct drive diesel bypassed a bottle neck in reduction gears. Unless there is a similar bottle neck for renewables that cross over makes them a slam dunk for anything new.
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Nov 24, 2017 21:08
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BrandorKP posted:It's eye popping that it's lower than just maintenance and fuel for existing though. All I'm seeing in that thing is comparisons of generation costs, with no mention of associated storage/load-shifting costs that would be needed, say, to actually replace a nuke plant with solar panels. It also seems to specifically mention coal costs going up, but coal has been massively shrinking for years in favor of natural gas so it's not like that's going to help coal's outlook there. And all those natural gas plants are still dumping exhaust. Certain sorts of people would whine that we don't include those costs for existing plants, but that's because you adjust their output directly, rather than needing to "adjust output" for a solar/wind facility by having to store it somewhere.
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Nov 24, 2017 21:20
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There are a lot more details on the LCOE at the Lazard website https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/
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Nov 24, 2017 22:16
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Trabisnikof posted:There are a lot more details on the LCOE at the Lazard website quote:As LCOE values for alternative energy technologies continue to decline, in some scenarios the full-lifecycle costs of building and operating renewables-based projects have dropped below the operating costs alone of conventional generation technologies such as coal or nuclear. This is expected to lead to ongoing and significant deployment of alternative energy capacity. Sounds plausible?
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Nov 24, 2017 22:19
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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While renewable energy generation is here to stay, it isn’t the magic bullet that solves all the energy needs of the US on its own. The one thing I don’t see getting discussed often is the need for reactive power resources (both capacitive and inductive), and sources of inertia for the system to ride through transient events like faults. There are devices out there that will help with this issue. SVC (static Var compensator) are a good resource that can add or subtract Vars from the grid in a matter of cycles. But a transmission voltage SVC costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million installed for 600 MVar. That’s going to be a little expensive for utilities to swallow.
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Nov 24, 2017 22:59
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Trabisnikof posted:There are a lot more details on the LCOE at the Lazard website Holy poo poo wind is cheaper than Cogas! Fishmech and Orvin, I think you both make good points.
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Nov 25, 2017 06:33
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None of this matters, cryptocurrencies have basically undone the last 10 years of efficiency gains simply by existing.
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Nov 25, 2017 07:07
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QuarkJets posted:None of this matters, cryptocurrencies have basically undone the last 10 years of efficiency gains simply by existing. Ban butt coin.
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Nov 25, 2017 08:39
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blowfish posted:Ban butt coin. no don't, we need to keep libertarians busy doing something far removed from normal society.
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Nov 26, 2017 00:48
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Trabisnikof posted:There are a lot more details on the LCOE at the Lazard website  I am allegedly an economist and a large part of the economics work I do (which is not a majority of my workweek) is lifecycle cost stuff. This is basically porn for me.
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Nov 26, 2017 04:45
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GreyjoyBastard posted:
You should look at SNAME. It's been long time for me but they had a whole bunch of good papers on that. All for Marine propulsion, but that's roughly equivalent to shoreside power generation. That's basically what I did my undergrad capstone on. We had to design the plant ( and sub systems ) for an LNG carrier and calculate the life cycle costs for the different options.
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Nov 26, 2017 06:41
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I am genuinely surprised that the NH Site Evaluation Committee unanimously rejected the Northern Pass proposal which will hopefully finally stick a fork in this thing. It may get appealed to the NH Supreme Court but due to Democratic governors being in power for the majority of the last 20 years it's pretty heavily democratic and its unlikely they would overturn the Sec decision. Eversource is pissed but gently caress them. They were counting on this pretty heavily to help meet some of the renewable energy requirements passed by Massachusetts. This project was never about adding jobs to NH or reducing our energy prices. It was about destroying one of our more important resources that continuously brings a huge amount of money to poorer areas of the state in order to sell power to southern New England. If Eversource would have been serious about his benefiting NH they would have guaranteed lower rates to ratepayers and reduced carbon emissions from their portfolio as part of the deal but of course they would never do that.
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Feb 2, 2018 15:56
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On the one hand, I grew up in Oregon's Willamette Valley which had all sorts of power lines running through the forests down from the dams and wind farms on the Columbia and the Willamette, and they really aren't a big deal. It's a price to be paid for having clean energy, and it's a fairly minor one. On the other hand, it's good that the regulators are paying attention to the desire of the citizenry, rather than just ignoring the people who will primarily affected. So one part "grumble grumble idiot NIMBYs" and one part "nice work with the responsive small government".
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Feb 4, 2018 06:59
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I might be missing something, but what is the complaint about this line? They are putting underground cable through the National Forest section. Yes, for a year there will be some destruction of the forest as they install the underground conduit for the cable. But after that, no towers to obstruct the view, and after some number of years, the trees will have grown back.
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Feb 4, 2018 16:12
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