Quality of Electricity Supply....

[ultrarunner]

The kW cost varies greatly around the country and 22 to 32 cents per kW when it is all said and done is what I see in the SF Bay Area...

 

[3930dave]

Here's another way to look at TOU......

Let's pretend...... Legislate away most/all of your heavy industry, and much of your smaller-scale manufacturing. Force appliance manufacturers to produce more efficient (but shorter lived) appliances, and set higher insulation standards for residential construction.... yada yada yada......

So..... with significant generating capacity not being used, and a declining demand baseload, how are you going to prop up your revenue stream ? What To Do, What To Do.......

A) Light up some green marketing, and charge premium prices during peak times, then pretend that you are offering consumers an "opportunity" to save money......

The math is pretty simple...... drop by the Electricity Cost thread, and you'll find various posts where people have taken their monthly total bill (before final taxes) under TOU, divided by their monthly kwh usage, and posted their average cents/kwh. TOU was a great way to crank up an exorbitant price increase, via green-washing.....

Getting a huge increase in a essential service cost is bad enough...... but, that's w/o even considering the billions spent to get to TOU.

Almost worth a Quality of Billing thread right there ....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

The kW cost varies greatly around the country and 22 to 32 cents per kW when it is all said and done is what I see in the SF Bay Area...

Under TOU here, we are close to the middle of that range, so not that far off you.

OK, American cents vs. Canadian cents , but since I earn in Canadian dollars, I can relate.....

Rgds, D.

 

[tjkubota93]

The next best thing to coal fired steam is hydro.

Have yall seen or heard of the hydro units that act as pump motors and pump up a mountain where there is a storage pond, then at peak demand, they drain the pond and the pumps are used as hydro generators?

Thats cool!

All the little piss ant generation is ok if efficient. One major problem is how quickly it can be brought online. It's not quick enough to respond to frequency changes. Might be fast enough for demand.

The fastest small generation is cts. Airplane engines hooked to gen sets. Not efficient.

 

[CobyRupert]

Not going to happen. EVs use expensive light battery technology. I know Math Is Hard but lets try:

Lets say one can purchase a 100 kWh Tesla battery for $25,000. This battery is claimed to last 500,000 miles and the car consumes 0.3 kWh/mile which is 150,000 kWh over the life of the battery. That means it costs $0.1667 per kWh to store. You will lose money selling power to the grid.

You might break even if you buy battery storage based on value. Automobile EV batteries are too expensive.



Hey! Have at it! Knock yourself out!

Your numbers are great, even though math is hard. Using numbers like those, I think we could say with certainty (in 1985) that the personal computer industry will be a complete failure!



It's so strange that I so often see many people in this country (the one that once put a man on the moon) say something cannot be done, it's impossible ("Not going to happen") ; while other countries are actually doing it today!
(Be it energy, or healthcare, or many other issues)

 

[Oaktree]

Here we've pulled most of our dams on major rivers because they're evil... now there's talk about blasting a 145 mile power line corrider through the state so that Massachusetts can have "green" hydro power coming in from Quebec. I'm not for or against it yet I am scratching my head; how are dams bad when they're in Maine, yet environmentally friendly when in Canada? I believe that the answer is spelled "NIMBY."

Yeah, we went thru that a few years ago here in northern N.H. with Northern Pass. Anyone here in the north country that opposed it was labeled a NIMBY by those in Mass. or downstate N.H. who seemed to think it was OK for us to "make a small sacrifice" so they could have "clean, renewable" power.

After a long battle the courts ruled against the project, which is why they're trying to pull the same thing in your state now.

What's ironic is that they probably could have built this project if they'd been willing to bury it the whole route. The utility claimed it would be "too expensive", but they probably spent most of the cost difference in lobbying, PR campaigns and various other schemes to try and bully this project thru.

 

[buickanddeere]

It is good to read stories written from a different point of view than my mindset. Canada has always intrigued me.

Western civilizations may be as fried as the world with electric grids. Time will tell.

We read about businesses in some countries using Power Wall like solutions from Tesla and others. Some are dirt cheap non lithium ion based as well.

My goal is to use hydrogen energy from the sun to power our EV's that we will be getting. Tesla is doing this today to fuel some of their Super Chargers.

The storage of solar power is on the way to becoming dirt cheap because size and weight is a not issue for land owners. Solar panels are becoming more efficient all of the time. Charge up the storage during the day and dump it into the EV's the next early morning so the storage batteries are more depleted so they will charge faster from the hydrogen energy heading their way.

Selling back to the grid could make charging EV's, etc FREE long term perhaps but with a steep up front cost. Using the grid from 11 pm to 5 am is cheaper for some people.

In short I see little factor in the state of the grid today and going full bore on EV usage over time. This is new to most of us today but that is changing. Fear of the unknown can be a factor.

In my mind FEAR stands for False Evidence Appearing Real 80% of the time.

There is no cheap or practical battery storage to operate any city in the summer . Let alone in the winter when the days are short and the days overcast .

 

[buickanddeere]

Your numbers are great, even though math is hard. Using numbers like those, I think we could say with certainty (in 1985) that the personal computer industry will be a complete failure!

View attachment 624838

It's so strange that I so often see many people in this country (the one that once put a man on the moon) say something cannot be done, it's impossible ("Not going to happen") ; while other countries are actually doing it today!
(Be it energy, or healthcare, or many other issues)

The problem with the “predictors of more research” is Jay they cherry pick their examples .
Any new tech that is practical and has market demand . There is a steep ramp of improving performance and declining cost . Airplanes, computers , vehicles , microwave ovens for example .
The issue is however as the tech matures the gains hit a knee on the curve . Costs rise much faster than the increase in performance .
The wide eyed in love with the environment and all fossil, industry and vaccines are bad crowd . They don’t want their dream of solar power and electric everything spoiled with facts .
You can research all you want but you will not find more elements on the periodic table or break the laws of physics . For instance the sound barrier was broken seven decades ago . Modern high tech aircraft are still limited by the sound barrier for practical priced flight .

 

[Industrial Toys]

Sometimes in the winter I hear the single phase 4800Volt line going past our place making noise. Put your ear to the wooden pole, and it sounds like some GIANT MACHINE! Very cool!

With hundreds of thousands of things turning on and off, that supply must have a pile of noise and irregularities. Here. Watch what happens when I draw 500 amps to start my ROTOCON!

 

[3930dave]

The next best thing to coal fired steam is hydro.

Have yall seen or heard of the hydro units that act as pump motors and pump up a mountain where there is a storage pond, then at peak demand, they drain the pond and the pumps are used as hydro generators?

Thats cool!

All the little piss ant generation is ok if efficient. One major problem is how quickly it can be brought online. It's not quick enough to respond to frequency changes. Might be fast enough for demand.

The fastest small generation is cts. Airplane engines hooked to gen sets. Not efficient.

One think I like about modern solar (large-scale furnace) designs, is the relative simplicity - once the the steam is generated, everything else that follows is stone-stock-standard utility design. Don't re-invent the wheel.....

Used to work in a building with an airplane engine on the roof. No, I wouldn't want the fuel bill.....

Rgds, D.