Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

billvon said:
The majority is labor - and the majority of the labor is the permitting, approval and inspection process. That's why countries like Spain and Aus have a much lower overall installation cost.

Still, even in the US, it's only about $3.20/watt.

Social incentives must drive the transition forward. And then tax the money back from those that were fortunate to take big advantage of the system.
 
sendler2112 said:
Social incentives must drive the transition forward.
Here in the US, most of those incentives are going to bureaucrats. (Which I guess is still an incentive.)
 
30% federal refund to any owners of grid tie solar and $0.03/ kWh feed in tariff for grid scale farms. If the Bureaucrats have had the good fortune of earning in the top 10%, then they must join in paying something extra back in taxes to cover it.
 
sendler2112 said:
30% federal refund to any owners of grid tie solar and $0.03/ kWh feed in tariff for grid scale farms. If the Bureaucrats have had the good fortune of earning in the top 10%, then they must join in paying something extra back in taxes to cover it.
Yep.

So US installation costs are about $3.20 per watt, compared to about $1.30 in AUS. (all pre-incentive and pre-tariff.) The systems are basically the same - so that's $1.90 more in bureaucracy cost.

Compare that to a 30% refund on that $3.20, which comes to 96 cents.

We also have to add on the tariffs now, which will increase solar prices by about 30%. Because it's such a small part of the system costs, that will be an additional 8% in system costs - which comes to 26 cents.

So to divide it up fairly, 60% would be "paid" by bureaucrats, 30% by solar power users and 10% by Trump.

Of course it would be much easier to just cancel the tariff, get rid of the excessive permitting requirements, get rid of the 30% rebate and go to real time pricing for everyone. Net cost for the homeowner would go down. But that will never happen, because the people who make the laws wouldn't get their cut.
 
"Limits to Growth" report warned us of what was coming way back in 1972 but we were already trapped in a growth based economic system based on cornucopian access to resources. It seems that there is still no way to implement a social change to a degrowth economy. Voluntarily.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse
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Cephalotus said:
Actual estimation for solr modul degradation is less than 0.2% per year, which means the solar modules could last an average 40, maybe 50 years......
Obviously the idea that a solar farm could function for 30-50 years without major rebuilds and upgrades , is laughable...but it is much more likely that the entire solar concept will be superceeded way before any normal failure mode takes them.
There are so many new technologies in the solar field , as well as Nuclear etc, that rhe current generation of solar systems will have a very finite life span.
 
Hillhater said:
Obviously the idea that a solar farm could function for 30-50 years without major rebuilds and upgrades , is laughable...

A recent NREL study looked at solar farms that are 30-40 years old. Panel degradation averaged .7% per year for all panels. But when limited to crystalline panels in long term (>10 year) installations, degradation averaged .43%.

Which means that after 50 years degradation would be less than 20% - and most definitions of "end of life" for a solar panel are 20 or 25%.

So not laughable at all.

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf

As for inverters - large inverter designs have the wear components (primarily fans and electrolytic capacitors) designed for easy replacement.

All of which means that you don't need to do "major rebuilds and upgrades" to keep a solar power plant working for 50 years. Just regular maintenance.

Of course, you might WANT to replace it with something else - but that's your choice, not a limitation of the system.

but it is much more likely that the entire solar concept will be superceeded way before any normal failure mode takes them.
There are so many new technologies in the solar field , as well as Nuclear etc, that rhe current generation of solar systems will have a very finite life span.
Great! So we build out solar to cover our needs in the immediate future, then when cheap fusion comes along, we switch to that. (Of course, people have been promising that since 1954.)
 
Yes, there are many hydro plants 50-60+ yrs in operation.
But there are also many coal fired generators that have remained in service for over 50 yrs, and several more that will pass that also.
Nuclear plants have a design life of 50 yrs and many surpass that also.
The most common reason to shut plants these days is either due to technology improvements leading to economic or environmental benifits....
.....or political decisions to win green votes !
 
As a side note:

Denmark (Birth home of Vestas, NEG Micon, Siemens WindPower etc.), now have a lot of landbased windmills exceeding 20 year lifespan. They estimated span for the installed turbines in 1995-2005 is 25-30 years!

After 20 years all turbines operate solely on spot-pricing market (ie. no subsidaries at all), and these prolonged turbines are maintained with spares producing a profit for owners around 30€/MWh = 0.03 €/kWh. *In Denmark even with our insane labourcosts*.

This is currently in the newsstream due to no of landbased mills beeing capped politically, so they will probably be scrapped eventhough they produce cheaply. That will of course be the result since you can get a new installation with even more profit from your site - go figure humans ressource-allocation.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals
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The Rockefeller Foundation asserts that "The key to financing and achieving the SDGs lies in mobilizing a greater share of the $200+ trillion in annual private capital investment flows toward development efforts, and philanthropy has a critical role to play in catalyzing this shift.
 
Paul Raskin has released his latest manifesto: Journey to Earthland:The Great Transition to a Planetary Civilization.
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https://www.greattransition.org/images/GTI_publications/Journey-to-Earthland.pdf
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Hillhater said:
Yes, there are many hydro plants 50-60+ yrs in operation.
But there are also many coal fired generators that have remained in service for over 50 yrs, and several more that will pass that also.
Nuclear plants have a design life of 50 yrs and many surpass that also.

I thought your point was time without "major rebuilds and upgrades", not "design life"?!
 
Hillhater said:
But there are also many coal fired generators that have remained in service for over 50 yrs, and several more that will pass that also.
Nuclear plants have a design life of 50 yrs and many surpass that also.
Not without major overhauls and upgrades.
 
Punx0r said:
Does any kind of power plant operate for 50 years without "major rebuilds and upgrades"? :?

The Hazelwood ran for 53 years without any major upgrades or rebuilds, it had a license to run till 2030.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station
The only reason it was shut down was due to the fact the state government thought they could get some easy money and tripled the tax royalty price for the coal that fed it.
It ran at a high capacity factor of 85%.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victorias-own-mining-tax-to-triple-as-treasurer-gouges-brown-coal-for-revenue-20160422-gocymk.html
The state government was so clueless about the electricity market they basically ranted to the public that tripling the royalty tax price of the coal that fed Hazelwood wouldn't increase the cost of electricity at all.
One month later after the government announcement, the Hazelwood owners then announced they would shut down their coal-power station. It was clear the Hazelwood owners were insulted that the government was so clueless about how much of a huge favor they were doing continuing to run Hazelwood for not only Victoria but for the power-bills of the entire eastern part of Australia.
quote from article state government "The (energy) companies will need to be very careful about whether or not they see there is any value in attempting to pass on rather than absorb these negligible increases."

When you have a government that gets all their news from Facebook renewable memes and ABC news that have so much power they basically playing games with peoples basic knowledge of the world, this is how insane things can get.

Because all the states aside from Western Australia are connected via an interstate grid the price of electricity quickly doubled from an average of $50MWh to over $100MWh. Losing that 1600MW electricity generation pushed the "Demand than Supply Law equilibrium" that is taught in basic economics class over the edge so it made electricity much more expensive permanently. Swap bananas with electricity, but not for a small town but 4 states. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeRnxSuLFI
The exception is SA who got rid of their coal a year earlier to depend on wind to make things expensive early.
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This is basically what happens when government leaders get all of their information from sources like ABC news that just constantly pounds the airwaves saying shutting down coal and moving to wind will make electricity a lot cheaper than coal, but it did the opposite.
This is what happens when you have taxpayer government-funded news agencies owning the news via Spectrum Privilege.. The brainwashing effect is amazing.
 
TheBeastie said:
The Hazelwood ran for 53 years without any major upgrades or rebuilds, it had a license to run till 2030.

Reality - it needed (literally) tons of repairs in 1996, and it is shutting down because they can't afford required repairs to five of the eight boilers.

You really need to get your information from reality-based sources.

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RWE’s experts returned Hazelwood power station to its full capacity after the major refurbishment of two boilers and turbines and a substantial overhaul of six other units, on time and to budget. . . .

In July 1996, a team of over 300 on-site personnel started extensive refurbishment work, supported by many off-site international engineers. Progress was helped by contractors air-freighting 50 tonnes of components from the UK and by transporting another 800 tonnes by sea from Europe.
=======
http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/mediablob/en/217470/data/0/1/RWEs-expert-successfully-returned-Hazelwood-power-station-to-full-capacity.pdf

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After 50 years of supplying Victoria with cheap electricity, the plant's owners Engie announced late last year that the site was no longer economically viable.

In the week leading up to its closure, there were last-ditch calls for government to step in and keep Hazelwood open. But these were dismissed by Engie as too late and too expensive.

Documents released to the ABC revealed the scale of improvements that would be needed to bring the plant up to scratch, with WorkSafe Victoria ordering Engie to repair five of the eight boilers to meet work health and safety standards.
=======
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-30/hazelwood-power-plant-shutdown-explained/8379756
 
billvon said:
TheBeastie said:
The Hazelwood ran for 53 years without any major upgrades or rebuilds, it had a license to run till 2030.

Reality - it needed (literally) tons of repairs in 1996, and it is shutting down because they can't afford required repairs to five of the eight boilers.
You really need to get your information from reality-based sources.

========
RWE’s experts returned Hazelwood power station to its full capacity after the major refurbishment of two boilers and turbines and a substantial overhaul of six other units, on time and to budget. . . .

In July 1996, a team of over 300 on-site personnel started extensive refurbishment work, supported by many off-site international engineers. Progress was helped by contractors air-freighting 50 tonnes of components from the UK and by transporting another 800 tonnes by sea from Europe.
=======
http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/mediablob/en/217470/data/0/1/RWEs-expert-successfully-returned-Hazelwood-power-station-to-full-capacity.pdf

========
After 50 years of supplying Victoria with cheap electricity, the plant's owners Engie announced late last year that the site was no longer economically viable.

In the week leading up to its closure, there were last-ditch calls for government to step in and keep Hazelwood open. But these were dismissed by Engie as too late and too expensive.

Documents released to the ABC revealed the scale of improvements that would be needed to bring the plant up to scratch, with WorkSafe Victoria ordering Engie to repair five of the eight boilers to meet work health and safety standards.
=======
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-30/hazelwood-power-plant-shutdown-explained/8379756

You really need to get your information from reality-based sources.

Wow ! That is quite a statement !..you should take notice of it yourself.
...or maybe you are not familiar with the politics of the ABC ?
Maintenance and Overhauls of thermal plants are big scale events, relining furnaces, replacing burners, grind mills, rebuilding steam turbines and generator units etc etc....this is all "big" engineering requireing a lot of labour and equipment.....
....but it is "normal" and is planned and costed into the overall operation. The original equipment and performance remained unaltered.
" Updates" are often necessary to comply with revised regulations such as safety or emmissions, Regulations that were not in existance when the plant originally entered service.
No, ... Hazelwood was forced to close due to the frocked up politics of the State government who hiked up the coal royalties to make it uneconomical and to pacify their green party alliances and ideology.
 
Punx0r said:
I thought your point was time without "major rebuilds and upgrades", not "design life"?!
My definition of a "major rebuild" to a plant , is when all the key process equipment is replaced with new components to restore the original performance.
An "upgrade" to a plant would be the same but with the objective being to increase the performance over the original.
 
Right, so the equivalent for a PV plant, which has no moving parts would to replace and/or reseal all the glass, change out the inverters and repair/replace corroded wiring.

All of which are unlikely to be required before the 30-50 year design life is up, but nonetheless would be acceptable bu your standards.

And yet you claim it is "laughable" that a PV plant could ever match the reliability of a Rube Goldberg fossil or nuclear plant.

Dp you realise the potential resiliance and fault tolerance of a PV plant with it's numerous simple, modular panels, racks and inverters?
 
Maintenance and Overhauls of thermal plants are big scale events, relining furnaces, replacing burners, grind mills, rebuilding steam turbines and generator units etc etc....this is all "big" engineering requireing a lot of labour and equipment.....
....but it is "normal" and is planned and costed into the overall operation.
So your statement that it "ran for 53 years without any major upgrades or rebuilds" is false. You meant "it had only the normal upgrades and rebuilds that any coal plant has." Which isn't true either; see below.
The original equipment and performance remained unaltered. " Updates" are often necessary to comply with revised regulations such as safety or emmissions, Regulations that were not in existance when the plant originally entered service.
Ah, you did not even read the link.

"Unit 7 was damaged in November 1993 when it failed on a run up, due to low water drum levels. The extent of the damage was
such that the unit was considered uneconomic to repair. The priority for the new owners of Hazelwood power station was returning the plant to its full capacity in a fast-track programme, by rectifying the catastrophic failure of unit 7 and carrying out extensive turbine
and generator work on other units . . . ."

"Rectifying catastrophic failure" is not "meeting new requirements."

Again, your reliance on your anti-renewable biased sources leads you to make foolish mistakes like this.
No, ... Hazelwood was forced to close due to the frocked up politics of the State government who hiked up the coal royalties to make it uneconomical and to pacify their green party alliances and ideology.
Given that it almost closed in 1996 for exactly the same reason (too expensive to maintain) that is provably false. In the real world, at least.
 
Bill, ..so the plant ( actually one of 8 units in the plant !). Was damaged by an accident, and had to be replaced.
So what ? , .. To me, that is still "Maintenance and repairs". ..much like replacing a car tyre after a blow out. !
it was then returned to CONTINUOUS 24/7 OPERATION, for another 25 yrs, ....and could have continued much longer if not for Political stupity.
 
Hillhater said:
Bill, ..so the plant ( actually one of 8 units in the plant !). Was damaged by an accident, and had to be replaced. So what ? , .. To me, that is still "Maintenance and repairs". ..much like replacing a car tyre after a blow out. !
In this case it's more like replacing the engine. And when you have to replace the engine, you ask yourself "is it worth it to keep the car, given that it's probably going to happen again? Or should I just get a completely different kind of car to avoid this in the future?" The first time they asked themselves that, they decided to keep it and fix it. Eventually they decided - naah, time to get a better car.
 
Utter rubbish !
One of eight units damaged ( most likely by lack of maintenance/human error ?). needing extensive repair and the other 7 units refurbished back to original working condition (after 30 years !)
That is the definition of operational maintenance , although wrongly managed to leave it all until one big exercise.
Obviously the owners DID believe it was an economical generator facility, as they continued to operate it for another 15 years
And no , it has not been replaced, the state just struggles on with 1600MW less generating capacity, often having to import power from other states to make up the shortfall.
Just a political gesture to appease a stupid AGW ideology !
 
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