New England’s electricity rates expected to keep rising over next few years (BDN /AP)

Comment

Comment by arthur qwenk on January 13, 2022 at 9:24am

Governor DeSantis is not that Stupid compared to the old hag in The Blaine House, and Maine's continued election of subsidy sucking lying self serving politicians like Angus "The Windmill" King.

Florida has Gas infrastructure , and Nuclear.. Renewables are rejected  as non-competitive w/o subsidy, and electric rates are 10 Cents/KWH , delivered....TEN CENTS DELIVERED....in Florida (FPL Electric). What are Maine rates now, and increasing????

Dumb Energy policy in Maine and political corruption  are  the causes for Maine's energy bind. 

Comment by Robert Feller on January 8, 2022 at 9:10am

Too bad those people who want “all electric cars only” in the future don’t think about this......  Just wondering - Hurricane season with Electric Vehicles 

 

Imagine Florida with a hurricane coming toward Miami.  The governor orders an evacuation.  All cars head north.

They all need to be charged up in Jacksonville.  How does that work.? Has anyone thought about this.?

 If all cars were electric and were caught up in a three-hour traffic jam with dead batteries, then what.?  Not to mention that there's virtually no heating or air conditioning in an electric vehicle because of high battery consumption.

If you get stuck on the road all night, no battery, no heating, no windshield wipers, no radio, no GPS (all these drains the batteries), all you can do is try calling 911 to take women and children to safety.  But they cannot come to help you because all roads are blocked, and they will probably require all police cars will be electric also.  When the roads become unblocked no one can move.!  Their batteries are dead.

How do you charge the thousands of cars in the traffic jam.?  Same problem during summer vacation departures with miles of traffic jams.  Yes, AAA is starting to prepare tow trucks to charge electric vehicles.  How many can they charge before returning to home base and recharge the trucks.?

There would be virtually no air conditioning in an electric vehicle.

It would drain the batteries quickly.  Where is this electricity going to come from.?  Today's grid barely handles users' needs.

Can't use nuclear, natural gas is quickly running out.  Oil fired is out of the question, then where.?

What will be done with billions of dead batteries, can’t bury them in the soil, can’t go to landfills.

The cart is way ahead of the horse.  No thought whatsoever to handle any of the problems that batteries can cause.

 

The press doesn't want to talk or report on any of this.

 

“RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILE”

Comment by Willem Post on January 8, 2022 at 7:32am

MAKE NEW ENGLAND GREAT AGAIN

THIS IS SIMILAR TO THE DEFORESTATION OF THE 1800s

Comment by Willem Post on January 7, 2022 at 7:33pm

WIND AND SOLAR TO PROVIDE 30 PERCENT OF NEW ENGLAND ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION BY 2050

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/wind-and-solar-provide...

 

Energy systems analysts of Denmark, Ireland, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, etc., have known for decades, if you have a significant percentage of (wind + solar) on your grid, you better have available:

 

- An adequate capacity, MW, of other power plants to counteract any variations of (W+S), 24/7/365

- High-capacity, MW, connections to nearby grids

- An adequate capacity of energy storage, such as:

 

1) Pumped hydro storage

2) Hydro plants with reservoir storage

3) Grid-scale battery systems

 

The more presence of variable (W+S) on the NE grid, the more the other generators have to vary their outputs, which causes these other generators to be less efficient (more wear and tear, more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh).

Owners in European countries with much wind and solar on the grids get compensated for their losses.

Those compensations are charged to the general public, not to the Owners of wind and solar systems, as part of the political (subsidy + cost shifting) regimen, to make wind and solar appear price-competitive versus fossil fuels.

 

RE folks often advocate:

 

1) Electricity must be 100% renewable, or zero carbon, or carbon-neutral by 2050

2) Getting rid of the remaining nuclear plants

3) Getting rid of natural gas, coal, and oil plants

4) More biomass burning

 

About This Article

 

This article has four parts and an Appendix

 

Part 1 provides an introduction to miscellaneous energy topics, and consumption of world energy quantities

Part 2 provides an introduction to existing NE grid conditions

Part 3 provides an introduction to daily NE grid load shaping, to deal with heat pumps and EVs in 2030

Part 4 provides the future NE grid conditions with 20% wind and 10% solar in 2050

The Appendix shows various energy topics, such as:

 

- Turnkey Capital Costs of Grid-scale Battery Systems

- Grid-scale Battery System Operating Cost in New England

- Energy Losses of Battery Systems

- “All-in” Electricity Cost of Wind and Solar in New England

“All-in” Electricity Cost of Wind and Solar in New England

 

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-costs-of-wind-sol...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-na...

 

Pro RE folks point to the “price paid to owner” as the cost of wind and solar, purposely ignoring the other cost categories. The all-in cost of wind and solar, c/kWh, includes:

 

1) Above-market-price paid to Owners 

2) Subsidies paid to Owners

3) Owner return on invested capital at about 9%/y

4) Grid extension/augmentation

5) Grid support services

6) Future battery systems

 

Comments on table 5

   

- Vermont legacy Standard Offer solar systems had greater subsidies paid to owner, than newer systems

 

- Wind prices paid to owner did not have the drastic reductions as solar prices.

 

- Vermont utilities are paid about 3.5 c/kWh for various costs they incur regarding net-metered solar systems

 

- "Added to rate base" is the cost wind and solar are added to the utility rate base, used to set electric rates.

 

- “Total cost”, including subsidies to owner and grid support, is the cost at which wind/solar are added to the utility rate base

 

- “NE utility cost” is the annual average cost of purchased electricity, about 6 c/kWh, plus NE grid operator charges, about 1.6 c/kWh

for a total of 7.6 c/kWh.

 

- “Grid support costs” would increase with increased use of battery systems to counteract the variability and intermittency of increased build-outs of wind and solar systems.

 

NOTES:

1) NE wholesale grid price averaged about 5 c/kWh, starting in 2009, due to low-cost CCGT and nuclear plants providing at least 65% of all electricity loaded onto the NE grid, in 2019.

 

https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/

https://nepool.com/uploads/NPC_20200305_Composite4.pdf

2) There are Owning costs, and Operating and Maintenance costs, of the NE grid

ISO-NE charges these costs to utilities at about 1.6 c/kWh. The ISO-NE charges include: 

 
Regional network services, RNS, based on the utility peak demand occurring during a month

Forward capacity market, FCM, based on the utility peak demand occurring during a year.

 

Table 5/VT & NE sources	Paid to	Subsidy	Grid	GMP	Added	ISO-NE	Total	NE	Times
		paid to	support		to rate	RNS+		utility
	owner	towner	cost	adder	base	FCM	cost	cost
	c/kWh	c/kWh	c/kWh	c/kWh	c/kWh	c/kWh	c/kWh	c/kWh
Solar, rooftop, net-metered, new	17.4	5.2	2.1	3.5	20.9	1.6	29.8	7.6	3.92
Solar, rooftop, net-metered, legacy	18.2	5.4	2.1	3.5	21.7	1.6	30.8	7.6	4.05
Solar, standard offer, combo	11.0	6.74	2.1		11.0	1.6	21.44	7.6	2.82
Solar, standard offer, legacy	21.7	10.5	2.1		21.7	1.6	35.9	7.6	4.72
Wind, ridge line, new	9.0	4.1	2.4		9.0	1.6	17.1	7.6	2.25
Wind, offshore, new	12.1	5.4	2.8		12.1	1.6	21.9	7.6	2.88

 

Sample calculation; NE utility cost = 6, Purchased + 1.6, (RNS + FCM) = 7.6 c/kWh

Sample calculation; added to utility base = 17.4 + 3.5 = 20.9 c/kWh

Sample calculation; total cost = 17.4 + 5.2 + 2.1 + 3.5 + 1.6 = 29.8 c/kWh

 

Excludes costs for very expensive battery systems

Excludes costs for very expensive floating, offshore wind systems

Excludes cost for dealing with shortfalls during multi-day wind/solar lulls. See URL

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/wind-and-solar-provide...

 

“Added to rate base” is for recent 20-y electricity supply contracts awarded by competitive bidding in NE.

“Added to rate base” would be much higher without subsidies and cost shifting.

Areas with better wind and solar conditions, and lower construction costs/MW have lower c/MWh, than NE

Comment by Penny Gray on January 7, 2022 at 6:14pm

Why is it so hard for politicians to understand this shit?

Comment by Willem Post on January 7, 2022 at 6:04pm

Robert Feller,

The EU and Germany confirmed Russia had been delivering gas, as requested by clients, throughout the year.

There are gas meters all over Europe that confirm Russia’s deliveries 

Any requests were honored by Russia, if those clients had signed, long term contracts for gas supply from Russia.

The EU bureaucrats had told EU countries not to sigh long-term contracts, because that would look bad from a “green” aspect.

The EU bureaucrats were on mindless auto-pilot. They did not foresee the lack of wind.

As a result:

1) increased purchases on the spot market became very expensive, and

2) gas storage meant for winter was depleted, and

3) old, dirty coal plants had to be re-started.

4) LNG tankers were rerouted by evil-capitalist owners to collect huge sums of money, because the gas was sourced in a low-priced market, such as the US, and will be sold in a high-priced area, such as Europe.

It is called arbitrage

It has been estimated, this “green”, EU-bureaucrat stupidity will cost Europe an additional $400 billion in energy costs, before winter even starts, plus inflict major hardships on low-income folks, plus adversely affect business profitability.

Oh, I forgot, Nordstream2, capacity 55 billion cubic meters per year, is ready to pump gas, but is on administrative hold until June 2022.

There were numerous attempts to blame all of the brouhaha on Russia, but the gas line operating data proved to big an obstacle to sustain the lies/fake news

Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on January 7, 2022 at 5:21pm

Willem, Rube Goldberg would be in awe of what you describe.  So would Joseph Goebbels, looking at the mainstream media.

Comment by Willem Post on January 7, 2022 at 1:29pm

Brace yourself for very costly upgrades to transmission and distribution grids to accommodate heat pumps, electric vehicles, smart meter shenanigans, such as using your EV battery for grid stability, all in addition to the wind and sun and weather-dependent, never-there-when-needed, unreliable, very expensive, heavily subsidized,  wind and solar.

Comment by Robert Feller on January 7, 2022 at 12:02pm

Europe faces ongoing energy shortages, and Reuters reports it is due to a predictable wind deficit.

Industrial wind power, and to a lesser extent solar, were supposed to be Europe’s solution to climate change, decarbonizing while keeping the lights on. It turns out they do not provide much of either.

Europe’s industrial wind complexes produced just 14 percent of their capacity from July through September 2021, down from the previous-low average of 20 to 26 percent of capacity. The result has been price spikes and power shortages as Europe has been forced to purchase more imported natural gas at inflated prices, largely from Russia, and to reopen shuttered coal-fueled power plants.

"If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes," Rory McCarthy, a senior analyst at the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, told Reuters.

Europe has led the push for renewable electric power generation, and Germany has been at its vanguard. Germany’s wind energy production fell by 16 percent over the past year, because of poor wind conditions, even as its government has continued to push wind into an ever-larger share of the nation’s electric power portfolio.

The problem, as analysts have long known but governments have ignored, is that when renewable energy projects are mandated the governments tout "the total capacity, or maximum energy that could be produced from the wind farm on an annual basis," as the Daily Caller notes. "Both wind and solar projects typically produce a small fraction of that capacity."

As a result, energy consumers were hit with huge increases in the price of electric power as Russia cut gas exports to Europe while wind production declined.

Although some coal plants restarted, limiting the number of power failures, the price of power from restarted coal plants has also been rising because the operators have to purchase carbon dioxide credits in the European carbon-trading scheme. The increased demand and politically restricted supply have caused the price of these credits to soar, more than doubling since the start of 2021.

It’s an energy Catch-22 of Europe’s own making.

SOURCES: Daily Caller, Reuters

Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on January 7, 2022 at 9:51am

Wake The F UP or DIE - Special Jan 6 Emergency Broadcast: You Are Living Through WW4 – FULL SHOW 1/6/22
https://banned.video/watch?id=61d774a9a9e8f75d34c87ba7