Renewable energy firm heads to Maine’s high court to fight CMP’s $1 billion transmission line

Comment

Comment by Willem Post on May 12, 2019 at 3:57am

Cost Shifting is the Name of the Game Regarding Wind and Solar

 

Cost shifting is rarely mentioned, identified or quantified. Those costs, as c/kWh, could be quantified, but it is politically convenient to charge them to:

 

- Ratepayers, via electric rate schedules, and/or added taxes, fees and surcharges on electric bills

- Directly to taxpayers, such as carbon taxes and user fees.

- Directly to federal and state budgets and debts

 

No cost ever disappears. Eventually, the various costs would increase the prices of energy and of other goods and services.

Efficiencies improvements elsewhere in the economy may partially, or completely, offset such increases.

However, RE subsidies would divert capital from other sectors of the economy, which likely would result in fewer improvements in efficiencies.

 

Cost Shifting: Here is a partial list of the costs that were shifted, i.e., not charged to wind and solar plant owners, to make wind and solar appear less costly than in reality to the lay public and legislators.

 

1) The various forms of grid-stabilizing inertia (presently provided by synchronous gas, coal, oil, nuclear, bio and hydro plants).

 

2) The filling-in, peaking and balancing by traditional generators (mostly gas turbines in New England), due to wind and solar variability/intermittency, 24/7/365. The more wind and solar on the grid, the larger the required up/down ramping capacity of the gas turbines, which imparts added costs to owners for which they likely would not be paid:

 

- Less annual production to cover power plant costs, which jeopardizes the economic viability of the plant

 

- Inefficient remaining production (more fuel/kWh, more CO2/kWh), due to up/down ramping at part load, which further adds to owner costs, and reduces less CO2 than claimed. See URL

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions...

 

- More wear and tear on the gas turbine plants, which further adds to owner costs

 

NOTE: All of this is quite similar to a car efficiently operating at a steady 55 mph, versus a car inefficiently operating at continuously varying speeds between 45 mph to 65 mph.

 

3) Any battery systems to stabilize distribution grid with many solar systems. They would quickly offset downward spikes due to variable cloud cover. See URL.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/large-scale-solar-plant...

 

4) Any measures to deal with DUCK curves, such as a) daily gas turbine plant down and up ramping, b) utility-scale storage and c) demand management.

 

5) Grid-related costs, such as grid extensions and augmentations to connect the remotely distributed wind and solar, and to deal with variable/intermittent wind and solar on the grid. Those grid items usually are utilized at the low capacity factors of wind and solar, i.e., a lot of hardware doing little work.

 

6) Utility-scale electricity storage (presently provided by the world’s traditional fuel supply system).

https://www.neon-energie.de/Hirth-2013-Market-Value-Renewables-Sola...

 

The above 6 items are entirely separate from the high levels of direct and indirect subsidies. They serve to make wind and solar appearto be much less costly, than in reality. See sections 1 and 2 and Appendix.

  

All that enables wind and solar proponents to endlessly proclaim: “Wind and solar are competitive with fossil and nuclear”.

 

Example of Cost Shifting: For example, to bring wind electricity from the Panhandle in west Texas to population centers in east Texas, about 1000 miles, $7 billion of transmission was built. The entire cost was “socialized”, i.e., it appeared as a surcharge on residential electric bills.

 

Example of Cost Shifting: Often the expensive grid connection of offshore wind plants, say from 20 miles south of Martha's Vineyard, across the island, and then to the reinforced mainland grid, is not included in the capital cost estimates, i.e., all or part of it is provided by the utilities that buy the electricity under PPAs to make PPA-pricing appear smaller than in reality. That cost is “socialized”, i.e., it appears as a surcharge on residential electric bills, or is added to the rate base.

 

Wind and Solar Wholesale Prices in NE: Here are some wholesale prices of wind electricity RE folks in New England, especially in Maine, do not want to talk about. They would rather dream RE fantasies, obfuscate/fudge the numbers, and aim to convert others to their dream scenarios, somewhat like religious missionaries. See table 2.

 

Comments on table 2:

 

Indirect subsidies are due to loan interest deduction and depreciation deductions from taxable incomes.

Direct subsidies are due to up front grants, waiving of state sales taxes, and/or local property (municipal and school) taxes. See URL.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-subsidies-for...

 

Table 7	Direct/Indirect subsidies	Cost shifting	NE Wind	NE Solar
			Ridgeline	Field-mounted
			c/kWh	c/kWh
Owner price to utility	No	No	17 - 19	22 - 26
Owner price to utility	No	Yes	15 - 17	20 - 24
Owner price to utility	Yes	Yes	8.5 - 9	10.5 - 12.5

Comment by Willem Post on May 9, 2019 at 12:04pm

The transmission line from Hydro-Quebec providing 98% hydro power, that is STEADY, ALWAYS  THERE, UNLIKE WIND AND SOLAR WHICH DEPEND ON THE NEW ENGLAND WEATHER, should be built at soon as possible.

That electric city would cost about 6 c/kWh, one hell-of-a-lot less than highly subsidized VARIABLE/INTERMITTENT wind and solar at 9 c/kWh (ridgeline wind) and 12 c/kWh (field-mounted solar)

Hydro-Quebec Electricity Generation and Purchases: Google this URL for the 2017 facts. The H-Q electricity supply is an order of magnitude cleaner than the Vermont supply.
http://www.hydroquebec.com/sustainable-development/energy-environme...

 

Table 6/H-Q	2017
	GWh
Hydropower generated	177091
Purchased	44006
- Hydro	31610
- Wind	9634
- Biomass and waste reclamation	2021
- Other	741
Total RE generated and purchased	221097

 

NOTE:Gentilly-2 nuclear generating station, plus three thermal generating stations (Tracy, La Citière and Cadillac) were closed down.

 

Hydro-Quebec Export Electricity:H-Q net exports were 34.4 TWh/y in 2017; provided 27% of H-Q net income, or $780 million, i.e., very profitable.

 

H-Q export revenue was $1,651 million in 2017, or 1641/34.4 = 4.8 c/kWh.

See page 24 of Annual Report URL.

This is for a mix of old and new contracts.

Revenue = 1641

Net profit = 780

Cost = 1641 - 780 = 861

Average cost of H-Q generation = 861/34.4 = 2.5 c/kWh

 

GMP buys H-Q electricity, at the Vermont border, for 5.549 c/kWh, under a recent contract. GMP buys at 5.549 c/kWh, per GMP spreadsheet titled “GMP Test Year Power Supply Costs filed as VPSB Docket No: Attachment D, Schedule 2, April 14, 2017”.

H-Q is eager to sell more of its surplus electricity to New England and New York.

 

That is about 50% less than ridgeline wind and large-scale field-mounted solar, which are heavily subsidized to make their electricity appear to be less costly than reality. 

 

GMP sells to households at 19 c/kWh, per rate schedule, including taxes, fees and surcharges. Pricing for electricity is highly political. That is implemented by rate setting, taxes, fees, surcharges, etc., mostly on household electric bills, as in Denmark and Germany, etc. The rate setting is influenced by protecting State government “RE policy objectives”, which include highly subsidized, expensive microgrids, islanding, batteries and net metered solar and heat pumps.

 

http://www.hydroquebec.com/sustainable-development/energy-environme...

http://news.hydroquebec.com/en/press-releases/1338/annual-report-2917/

http://www.hydroquebec.com/data/documents-donnees/pdf/annual-report...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/green-mountain-power-co...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/increased-canadian-hydr...

Comment by Art Brigades on May 9, 2019 at 11:19am

*Wyman is a peaker not a beaker.

Comment by Art Brigades on May 9, 2019 at 11:08am

Newsflash:  Next Era might call itself a "renewable energy firm" because they wanted to use the NECEC corridor to throw up a few wind projects in the Sugarloaf-Bigelow area. They intervened and failed at trying to get the PUC to force NECEC to allow converters (on-ramps) for the proposed wind. But in their press release they probably didn't mention that the huge reason they oppose NECEC is because they own Maine's largest power plant, oil-fired Wyman Station in Yarmouth. Wyman is a beaker that will suffer lower prices and possible closure when NECEC goes online. NextEra also owns Seabrook Nuclear plant, which stands to lose at least $20 million per year just because of the market suppression that NECEC will cause in New England. Hope these facts were included in the BDN article (which is behind a pay wall).