Guest essay by Eric Worrall
How does a green describe the catastrophic aftermath of the $16 billion Abengoa Solar Bankruptcy, the largest renewable corporate collapse in history?
Feeding frenzy in Spain’s renewable energy sector
A wind of change is blowing on Spain’s renewables: companies and investment funds have been on a buying spree, taking advantage of the know-how and growth prospects of a sector still limping out of a crisis.
In 2015 “total transactions reached 5 billion euros ($5.7 billion)”, says Joao Saint-Aubyn, a Madrid-based energy expert at global consultancy Roland Berger.
The biggest by far were the acquisition last year by US private equity firm Cerberus of renewables specialist Renovalia for about one billion euros, and investment group KKR’s buy-out of solar group Gestamp Solar for a similar amount.
And the spending frenzy is unlikely to die down, as German giant Siemens eyes up wind power group Gamesa, and Cerberus is thought to be considering joining forces with US billionaire George Soros to devour T-Solar and its solar farms.
…
Polo adds that another strong point of Spain’s wind energy sector is that companies involved in the entire production line are present in the country.
The know-how of companies has allowed them “to win projects elsewhere in the world,” says Rubio.
Gamesa for instance is among the world’s five biggest wind turbine manufacturers and is well established in several emerging countries like India, Brazil and China—of high interest to Siemens.
In order to keep growing, however, they need money.
“But many (wind farm) owners are struggling to cope with their debt,” says the AEE, after the sharp drop in public subsidies.
Read more: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-frenzy-spain-renewable-energy-sector.html
In the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, three major energy investment strategies appear to be emerging.
One strategy assumes that deeply indebted, cash strapped governments can be squeezed for more subsidies – that politicians can be relied upon to stick to their regularly “revised” commitments to generously subsidise uneconomical renewable energy schemes.
The second strategy is speculative – nuclear fusion, next generation nuclear. Technologies which promise a spectacular payoff, once technical hurdles are overcome.
The third strategy is based on evidence and evidence based forecasts of a tremendous ongoing global rise in fossil fuel usage, and massive ongoing investment in an energy sector which does not rely on government subsidies to make a profit.
ANd people still believe this spin and are angrily dedicated to it.
angry dedication…I like it! (I will use it)
Is this really spin? Seems like total disconnect from reality.
Mr. Goebbels’ secret!
http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/who-was-ty-cobb-the-history-we-know-thats-wrong/
I read this article this morning and immediately thought of how the media spreads climate propaganda, mainly because panic sells papers. In this case, it’s because calling someone a mean, cheating racist would sell books and papers.
I read Charles Leerhsen”s book: “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty” a few months ago. It was eye-opening in the amount of lies that were perpetrated about Cobb.
Front page story on this Morning’s (MON May 2 2016) San Francisco Chronicle.
” S.F. flips the switch for greener energy “” By Lizzie Johnson.
San Francisco Public Utilities just switched on free green clean renewable solar energy from “Clean Power SF” to deliver wind green power to 7800 residences and businesses.
California is aiming for 33% of of its power from green sources by 2020; four years from now.
But San Francisco is aiming high.
San Francisco is planning on ….. > 100 % < ….. green renewable clean energy by 2030.
Right now SF customers are automatically switched to Clean Power SF unless they opt out.
But right now SF customers have the option to demand 100% free clean green renewable electricity for just $6 to $15 more ! Doesn't say whether that is per megawatt hour or what; just it's more.
Did I say this green wonderment comes from a new farm of bird grinders, which are 260 foot high towers. From the picture, I would guesstimate the fan blade length is about 156 feet each blade.
The butt end of the cylindrical featherable joint of the blade seems to be right around six feet diameter, possibly seven feet. So these are big suckers.
Clean Power SF doesn't say when they will payback the cost of building this crap from the energy profits they make on their free clean green renewable self sustaining no backup wind power.
G
“where fools rush in angels fear to tread”
Spain literally taxes the sun by the way.
You need a license in Spain to collect solar as far as I know. There are inspectors that can inspect your property at whim, no court order, and fine you if you dare to collect the sun without paying your toll.
If I visit Spain, I will be sure to leave my solar powered pocket calculator at home.
Watch too; no cheating !
g
Popularly called the ‘Sun Tax’, it was to help ensure those with solar generation who are connected to the grid & benefit from the grid, paid their fair share of the grid’s availability for when the sun wasn’t shining over their property.
AFAIK, that tax was applied only to those with grid connections.
It may however, soon be withdrawn – “Parliament In Spain Removes Punitive ‘Sun Tax’ ”
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/10/parliament-spain-removes-punitive-sun-tax/
Was that to ensure they weren’t using generators to collect tariffs at night from their solar panels?
If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet
If you refuse to pay, do they kill all of your plants?
Supa Nova then a white dwarf!
It is true we have modelled the demise of our sun, laboratory scale in Spain
Did they assign a model tax to it?
Well, obviously it’s a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
The phenomenal universe, the laws of thermodynamics and economics, and implacable reality couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it.
I thought it was the fault of George W. Bush.
Nah, it’s the Koch Bros, didn’t you know?
July 3, 2010
Washington D.C. — In his weekly video address, President Obama announced today the offer of a conditional commitment to Abengoa Solar Inc. for a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to finance the construction and start-up of a concentrating solar power generating facility.
David,
She probably has no idea who the Koch brothers really are either.
Billionaires are bad, unless they support causes I like.
What a perfect little terrorist she is !
g
george,
She’s everywhere! But one thing’s certain: she never took an Econ course…
http://65.media.tumblr.com/7cadb13c0a9ef55420c98a82cac44e21/tumblr_o65bk4X3K61ty9rczo1_400.jpg
My first thought was that bankrupcy would allow the assets to be sold at a price at which they would be profitable.
My second thought was that interest rates are very very low right now. If the windmills aren’t profitable now, they will never be profitable … well maybe if oil goes to $200/bbl.
I think you left off digit or three off the oil price.
Oil won’t get to that level until the frackable reserves are nearing depletion. As oil climbs above $100/bbl, the incentive to frack shale reserves, tar sands, and thus produce, because high enough that prices stabilize… unless of course if Obama’s foreign policy results in the MidEast-Persian Gulf oil fields go up in flames and radioactive fallout in a nuclear war.
I think the lack of profitability means they consume more energy than they make available.
So you never get a head, no matter what real energy supplies cost.
G
I love reading about Green disasters and the failure of green energy programmes. It gladdens the heart when the carpet baggers meet their respective Waterloos although some poor taxpayer has already been fleecded.
“It gladdens the heart when the carpet baggers meet their respective Waterloos ”
Hey! I resemble that!
Hey! I resemble that!
Hey ! No pee in the swimmin’ pool !
g
That’s water-Loos pardner !
g
Yeah it’s amazing; they all seem to run out of steam just as they belly up to that 100 watt per square foot barrier; and then the fat hits the shin.
Gotta be some fundamental physical limit there somewhere Lawrence !!
g
The businesses might be going bankrupt, but you can BET that the owners aren’t 😉
+1000000000000000000
As a professional and MBA in the field, it might sound surprising but I’m not so confident in financial experts and firms. I’m from engineering, not financial, background: but the MBA opened me the world of corporate finance. While, for many financial experts, engineering world is still some kind of magic tricks going on. This said, I think that cost analysis often miss out three points:
– (real) load factor: 80% for gas and coal, 90% for nuclear, 10-15% for solar and 20-25% for well-spaced wind (no, closer wind turbines don’t work better);
– reliability: producing 15-20% a year, and often in unpredictable way, does not mean just that 1MW installed is less worth than 1MW installed of e.g. nuclear; it means other, hidden costs, on the grid, on the gas-fired backup plants, on the storage, on the user (it’s not nice at all for factories, to have overloads nor blackouts) etc.
– political bias: that’s clear enough here, I think; but I’d like to add that as political favour is good at time X, it can vanish at time X+n for every reason (see nuclear in Western Europe), from public opinion switches to unaffordable costs for state finances.
I think that a good part of “green economy” is indeed good (sorry for the joke), but another good part is a financial bubble, fed from state subsidies and strong marketing for private investors. As other bubbles, when it really bursts, many people (firms) will be hurt.
So you are an MBA.
So what Business are you currently Masterfully Administrating, and what is your after tax profit margin (annualized) ??
Or are you just an MBA academic.
I’d like a $1 for each otherwise successful business, I have watched MBAs Administrate into the ground.
G
After Receiving $191 Million in Taxpayer-Backed Loans, Spanish Solar Company Files for Bankruptcy
Is it the Export-import Bank of the United States (an independent, self-sustaining Executive Branch agency […] it is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, EXIM assumes credit and country risks that the private sector is unable or unwilling to accept)?
Only the greens would regard taxpayer-funded subsidies as economic growth
From your first link above:
“It just tells you everything that’s wrong with these programs,” de Rugy said. “The decisions are made based on politics and who you know. The more your know, the more double dipping you’re able to do.”
Say no more!
Watch for Cerberus and KKR to flip this stuff, both are masters at dressing up a pig and selling it as choice beef. Wouldn’t be surprised if they get the EU and IMF to back these “newly reorganized and highly efficient new enterprise(s)”
Yes, the vultures are circling.
Wind power is mostly intended to draw subsidies, not produce power, so the crucial factor is the willingness of the politicians to provide subsidies. Forced purchase programs are de-facto subsidies, and if anything the wind producers should be taxed to support the conventional generators required to back up their unreliable supply. In Texas, the local power company offers deep discounts to customers on smart meters who will use power in the wee hours, when they are required to buy wind power there is otherwise no demand for.
Without practical utility scale energy storage, wind and solar are manifestly impractical.
Even then, although the value of said energy would be raised, so would the cost, on top of an already ridiculously-expensive energy.
We need to find you a better “featured image” than this one of deicing turbine blades!
Well…..it does remind us of the old saying “Pi$$ing into the wind ” ……
Photo suggestions:
Feeding Frenzy
Or:
Red-spotted Purple butterflies
~~~~~~~~~~
WUWT posting here (484 comments; incl. comments by Ric & Eric)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/23/saturday-silliness-wind-turbine-photo-of-the-year/
Original image of a “test” was here:
http://www.nyteknik.se/energi/helikopter-stralen-ar-nya-vapnet-mot-isen-6395827
Find a picture of $1000 bills in the breeze driving the blades.
Call it “Gone With the Wind”!
Who exactly are buying these “white elephants”? I must be an idiot, as I don’t understand how anyone is making money off of these highly inefficient wind generators. As Tom Hanks says in the movie “BIG”, I don’t get it.
Who cares?
By the time the greenies, banks and lawyers finish with Spain, I will be able to buy Toledo for a song.
What does Spain have to do with Ohio?
They both have 4 letters. Except Spain.
I would rather buy Malaga, personally.
It is actually a very simple way of making a lot of money. It is well known in the mining industry, and has been used to varying success in others. I strongly suggest you watch the original Mel Brooks movie The Producers for a quick primer. The remake of the movie is rather poor in comparison.
A mine is a hole in the ground with a loud mouth liar on top. I have had personal experience watching this close at hand a few times. I refuse to go down that road.
I read many of the stories of the famous Comstock Mining period in Nevada. Investors were scammed over, and over, and over again as the dream of making easy money seemed too good to pass up.
J. PHILIP P…
Say you get grants and investor money and build a $1M business (land, buildings, equipment, and other stuff). Then you declare bankruptcy.
The so called “Vulture Investors” (link here) will make money from your misfortune, including continuing to harvest any remaining subsidizes.
ps: White elephants are “gifts” — not bought
What a pity that Sander got shot in the eye by ‘The Swede’, he’d have been right in there with the other vultures. (Apologies for linking to the Cayman Islands tax sheltering Scott Trust tax dodging Autotrader eco hypocritical Graun. but it’s quite amusing including their complete bewilderment/denial that the green hypocrites were the baddies)
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/apr/16/follow-the-money-recap-episodes-9-and-10-a-thrilling-and-fittingly-messy-finale
‘The second strategy is speculative – nuclear fusion, next generation nuclear. Technologies which promise a spectacular payoff, once technical hurdles are overcome.’
Next generation nuclear in the form of the molten salt reactor technology, has no technical hurdles to overcome. Molten salt reactors have operated since long ago. The only hurdles they faced was their
use of a graphite moderator, which took up too much space in the core, preventing the use of low level radioactive fuel, and the need for a container metal resistant to the corrosive effects of the molten salt
core. A new moderator material has solved the first problem and a new metal alloy that can withstand the corrosive effects has been created. There are no technical hurdles for this newly revised reactor technology. The big advantages of molten salt reactors is 1) low cost to manufacture – they can be built in a factory and shipped to the build site 2) they can burn nuclear wastes and also burn thorium and uranium
and extract virtually al of the fuel’s energy (versus 2-4% for a typical reactor), making fuel costs, regardless of type, an insignificant cost . The resulting material after burning is of low level radioactivity – it is easily stored and returnns to backgroubd levels in less than 150 years, eliminating the nuclear waste problem,
for all intents and purposes 4) it can produce power cheaper than any other technology, fossil fuels included. 5) the reactor is inherently safe – impossible for a meltdown or to eject radiactive substances
into the envirnment. See Transatomic Power for info concerning their design, now being tested.
Sell your house and invest it all in molten salt reactors, and make a killing.
G
I think I prefer the bonds.
The problem for renewables is the abundance of fossil fuels. That reality is destroying climate change policies, including these subsidy arrangements. Here how the activists are going after the problem.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/behind-the-alarmist-scene/
Remember the Dot Com bubble burst. The S&L bubble burst. The housing & banking bursts? Be prepared for a green bubble burst. If we enter a cooling trend and the systems fail, then who gets left holding the bag? The investors? Nope – they will likely get a government bailout. Nope – again, and again, we pay for the foibles of others, because they have inside contacts. A political donation goes a long way, these days? The truth is coming out about the power plays behind the scenery. Bull-feathers!
Should there be a significant cooling trend after we’ve crippled our electrical generating capacity, many people very well could pay with their lives. It gets a might cold in North Dakota and Minnesota.
That’s exactly what will happen. In fact, it’s already happening in the UK at least (and, I suspect, in Germany).
I “feel their pain” of the folks in the Dakotas. Minnesota? It may not be what they hoped for, but it IS what they voted for.
So it’s working!
Green investment => deindustrialization => lower CO2 levels => lower temps
OK, the last outcome is speculative but the other 2 are surefire results
Dakotas got it made. They fracked their way to comfortable bliss.
Minnesota; not so schmart !
g
A political donation goes a long way
==========
the best government money can buy.
Regarding the 2008 GFC, it’s easy to remember the GM bailout; the Freddie Mac / Fannie May bailouts; the CitiGroup bailout etc. It’s easy to forget how IndyMac and Lehman Brothers imploded.
My point is: in the case of the GFC the government did the unthinkable to fend off the unimaginable. With major financial institutions failing left and right, big companies (eg. GM, Citi) threatening to topple, and catastrophic levels of debt tied up in Fannie May / Freddie Mac (which the Clinton administration encouraged them to take on, with Bush allowing them to continue), Yes, some CEO types helped themselves to the government largess, but I would argue that it was certainly the preferred outcome to the entire system crashing down. Even as it was, investors lot big time. Don’t forget that the primary investment was various creatively packaged sub-prime mortgages, and as housing crashed out so did those investments. Even today, peoples 401K’s are years behind.
Now to the coming green crash. Of course there will be a bailout, and of course some upper types will cash out handsomely. But investors? They will be out in the cold. If a government steps in, these companies will be effectively nationalized, meaning the state owns them and the investor doesn’t. This is as it should be: anything that requires government money to exist a) probably shouldn’t exist in the first place; or b) should be an entirely state-owned entity.
It will be interesting to see how all those pension plans divesting fossil fuel stocks and buying renewables explain their losses to the pensioners when the bubble bursts.
I don’t blame the government for stepping in with the bailouts. I do blame them for short sighted policies that enabled and encouraged this to occur in the first place.
There is a new strategy designed to extract value from the collapse of the subsidy dependent business model and the coming cool future.
See: http://www.coolfuturesfundsmanagement.com
You cannot replace baseline power with intermittent power and run a modern economy. All that would do is force everyone to buy their own generators.
We lived in Port Moresby, PNG for a year. Power outages were common. Often a couple of times a day. Every business had a backup generator. The government had to pass a law making it illegal to run your own generator when the mains had power, because it was actually cheaper to run your own generator.
I don’t think you can extrapolate your experiences in papua new guinea to a modern economy 😉
benben, as if Germany or Dennmark have had good results with renewables in actual service–8 percent substitutuion rate? at double or triple the prices in the US?
Hey tom, you’re exaggerating by quite a wide margin. It’s more like ~ 50% higher (not 300%), which, as a fraction of total income of a family is still pretty negligible. And the energiewende has a very high support under germans (92% !!). Germany and Denmark have perfectly stable electricity grids with renewables producing ~50% of total electricity in 2016. As the saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts 😉
Cheers
Ben
http://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/
http://energytransition.de/2012/10/key-findings/
>>I don’t think you can extrapolate your experiences
>>in Papua New Guinea to a modern economy 😉
Oh, I think you can. During the NE blackout of 2003, a vast swathe of the US went back to the Neolithic Age within a day or two. Had this outage been in mid-winter, it would have been very serious, because nothing works in the modern world without electricity. No water, sewerage, fuel, heating, bread, transport, money, food, supermarkets etc: etc: Think about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
R
Yes ralfellis, and the US has almost no renewables but did experience massive outages. What does that tell you? It tells you that the US is massively underinvesting in infrastructure (that’s what you get if you don’t want to pay taxes). And indeed an outdated energy infrastructure cannot deal with renewables. This is very true. But an outdated energy infrastructure can’t deal with a heavy snowstorm either. But as a European, I don’t particularly care about outages in the US. The grid in my country is more than capable of dealing with both storms and renewables!
Still has nothing to do with PNG. I’m sure the grid in the US is not that bad 😉
Cheers,
Ben
(also my previous comment, I should have said 50% in west-germany)
While they might not have a modern economy, there are many cities in the developing world where rolling blackouts are normal several times per day. You have to learn when to take a bath to have hot water and lights to see what you are doing. The rolling blackouts are required due to insufficient generating capacity. Supermarkets in US have a backup generator in case of outage. I doubt they run them all of the time but suspect the supply contract with the power companies restrict their use to exercise, maintenance and outages.
benben,
The point is that if a society follows the yellow brick road to this Emerald City, people will be forced to use the same strategies they now use in Port Moresby.
I understand the point that is trying to be made, it’s just that it’s not true, as we can see from the FACT that scotland, west-germany and denmark are up to 50% renewables with absolutely no grid stability problems and very high public support (and yes also 50% higher electricity prices than the US), while a country like the US has experienced massive blackouts even with negligible renewables.
in other news:
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/02/lowest-solar-price-dubai-800-mw-solar-project/
Even unsubsidized, solar is becoming incredibly cheap
I love it when socialists assume that the answer to every problem is more govt spending.
solar has become incredibly cheap…
But still totally unreliable. I tried running a cat collar radio boundary with a solar cell, on the edge of the tropics, to stop our sweet feline wandering into the park and munching something endangered.
The cell was rated 3x required energy – but we had to keep an eye on the weather – even moderate cloud cover under the brilliant tropical sun sometimes caused the device to brown out.
Dubai has clouds too – even in winter when it doesn’t rain, the sky frequently clouds over. And I haven’t even mentioned the abrasive dust storms the sometimes experience.
oh sorry eric I posted the reply in the wrong reply-thread. See below 🙂
“benben May 2, 2016 at 9:07 am
I understand the point that is trying to be made, it’s just that it’s not true, as we can see from the FACT that scotland…”
Where is your supporting evidence Scotland produces upto 50% of power needs through renewables. And why is ScottishRenewables building in East Anglia?
And I don’t think you can extrapolate the situation in Europe to North America.
One ice storm a few years back put the HV transmission lines in Quebec out for a month’s time.
Flying debris in violent wind storms cut power lines.
benben, stick to Europe about wind and solar power!
Other Ben, looking at that, I’m not seeing the “50% from renewables” stat in your links. Where is that?
1: Considering the hype that came from Britain getting 20% last year, I am seriously skeptical of this stat. Even 50% of capacity is unbelievable. 50% actual achieved? I just don’t believe it.
2: you can’t count hydro in this. No one is debating the efficiency of dams.
3: You shouldn’t count biomass either. Wood burning is hardly environmentally friendly. (note, ignoring those, Britain got less than 10% from solar and wind in 2015).
4: Biased polls conducted by organizations with obvious agendas are very poor sources of information.
5: Yes, energy is a small direct cost for people and businesses. However, it is a significant indirect cost, as it raises the prices of everything up and down supply chains.
Hey other Ben! So Scotland is at ~50% of actual energy production, not nameplate capacity. However, you’re right, this does include all renewables. But you can easily see that, extrapolating the extraordinary growth rates of wind and solar in the past 12 months that have happened to achieve this 50%, you’d get very far very quickly. And that is logical considering wind costs as low as 30$/ MWh (no subsidies!) while coal costs 60-80$/ MWh. Anyone burning coal now is burning money (coal companies are actually demanding subsidies now to ‘keep jobs’, haha). Hence all the bankrupt coal companies 🙂
http://www.scottishenergynews.com/renewable-energy-sector-hits-50-of-scottish-electricity-generation-target-12-months-ahead-of-schedule/
Eric, thanks for your reply. Firstly, lets rejoice that we can agree on basic facts! The price of renewables is falling so fast that for moderate amounts (e.g. up to 30% of your demand, beyond that point you’d need to invest in more backup power) it already makes perfect economic sense for some sunny or windy countries. I say ~ 30% because any stable grid always maintains a hefty amount of spare capacity, even if you have 100% fossil fuel based generation (a fact that people often like to forget). Coal fired power plants also randomly break down every so often and that is a massive 500MW you lose in one go.
Then, your cat. I assume your cat didn’t do any load balancing 😉 Anyway, you’re right of course, it’s complicated. But as experience in many western European countries has shown, on a large scale it’s completely possible to go beyond 50% renewables without building additional reserve capacity (just because of the fact that over a large geographical area, there always is wind and sun somewhere). It’s just a matter of putting your engineers to work and maybe coordinate with some major consumers of electricity.
And once the price of renewables + storage goes below the price of natural gas even load balancing isn’t a consideration any more. This is not the case at the moment, but seems inevitable in the coming decade. I’m really looking forward to the moment when both skeptics and greenies alike can cheer for renewables, just because they are cheaper than fossil fuels, and reduce our reliance on nasty regimes 😉
Cheers
Ben
What’s it like living in Cloud Cuckoo Land?
I suppose it must be a lot like Camelot:
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Camelot, Camelot
That’s how conditions are.
The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.
It’s interesting, these type of replies. I mean, everyone here agrees that it makes economic sense to go for the cheapest energy option. Everyone can click the link and see that renewables are very very cheap compared to fossil fuel. And yet you’d rather put effort into making silly poems. How strange!
Modelling results and global warming, you can read into that whatever you want, but the stuff being discussed here is just facts. No interpretation necessary. I honestly wonder how long the crowd here can go on ignoring reality 🙂
benben says:
Everyone can click the link and see that renewables are very very cheap compared to fossil fuel.
benben, you’re either a juvenile, or very foolish and credulous, if you believe ‘clicking a link’ will get you honest information. If only life were that simple.
What you’re doing is ignoring subsidies. When you do that you’re not being honest.
FACT: Clean coal power is produced for ≈6¢ – ≈9¢ per kWh.
FACT: Windmill and solar power cost more than 25¢/kWh.
Which is cheaper?
FACT: DB hasn’t been clicking any links for the past five years.
“Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) had floated tenders for expansion of the Dubai solar power park. DEWA has reported that it received 5 final bids. The lowest bid among them is at a record-breaking 2.99¢/kWh, which makes the project the cheapest-ever in the world.”
These are just financial disclosures, not some kind of political flame war. Dubai doesn’t give a @ur momisugly#$ about what the Western world thinks of its renewable programs.
Also, DB, you made some very unpleasant statements about the suffering of people in third world countries in a previous comment. Could you perhaps refrain from responding to my comments in the future? I do not enjoy interacting with people capable of such acerbity.
Cheers,
Ben
benben,
I will be happy to refrain from commenting on your posts in the future. It’s very simple: just stop commenting. Problem solved.
But when you post what appears to be nonsense, it’s best to set the record straight for any new readers. You are welcome to respond, of course. And I will reply, maybe ad infinitum.
You have the key to break that cycle.
Oh, and thanx for corroborating my point that fossil fuel is cheap, especially when there are no onerous subsidies.
benben you are a fool who has been listening to much to “renewable” propaganda to often. Renewables simply do not work. Period. And no, West Germany DOES NOT get 50% of it’s energy from so called renewable.
good bye DB!
Stan, I can’t find the proper refs now. But Germany as a whole is at ~33% renewables, of which by far the most is in west germany not east. So let’s not hair split on the exact percentages but agree that it is quite high for such a massive, densely populated and industrialized area!
Cheers
Benben,
The price of renewables is falling so fast…
More likely the market is flooded with bankrupt stock.
30% of your demand, beyond that point you’d need to invest in more backup power
The solar panel didn’t work at night, or within an hour and a half or so of dusk or dawn. And this is on the edge of the tropics, where the sun is almost directly overhead at midday. So if I can only rely on 30% capacity on a normal day (and this is a gross overestimate – there were entire days it didn’t work), that has to be adjusted for night + 4 hours (assuming 12 hour night, 16 hours of night), and it has to be adjusted for up to a week of bad weather, when the device didn’t even make the 30% capacity.
So we need:
24 / (12 – 4) * 3 = 9 x rated capacity just for break even, not including extra capacity to cope with 7day+ outages due to poor weather.
I don’t “believe” in the basic technology, in this case I had a need which wasn’t easily answered by plugging into mains power. The solar system performed so poorly, I have now made the effort to run mains power to the system, so the cat doesn’t keep slipping over the barrier during frequent solar brownouts.
benben says:
good bye DB!
Good, glad you’re taking my advice and leaving the commentary to the adults here.
And you had to see the comment posted 20 minutes after yours, by Stan. Now that you’re leaving, you won’t get hurt feelings from being labeled a fool. Byebye, Benben.
Hey Eric, you’re totally right, without battery back-up solar does not really make sense in small communities (and I can’t imagine you’d want to build a 300 foot wind turbine for your cat!), except if fossil is really expensive so you can afford all those batteries (e.g. islands). But on a continental scale with good energy infrastructure it’s a completely different ball game. You can compare the two of course if you want, but it wouldn’t be a very relevant comparison.
Anyway, I understand the skeptics towards climate change models, but I hope you guys keep an open mind to the purely economic rationale of renewables (and the geopolitical bonus of not throwing massive amounts of money at nasty countries).
Cheers,
Ben
The reserve capacity is in the next country over.
The reserve capacity is in the next country over.
Thats even worse than my 9x over capacity – so they need enough capacity not only to cope with their own likely suboptimal days, but also with brownouts and blackouts in other countries, maybe more than one?
Just how much arable land do you plan to give over to renewables?
dbstealey said :”FACT: Windmill and solar power cost more than 25¢/kWh.”
Nope, not even close. http://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/18/new-low-for-wind-energy-costs-morocco-tender-averages-us30mwh/
Chris,
Your link says:
The pricing – revealed by its energy ministry at a ministerial round table at the International Renewable Energy summit in Abu Dhabi…
‘Scuse me if I look at that with a jaundiced eye. As one of the commenters pointed out:
…here is how things (unfortunately) still work in Eastern Europe. Lowest bidder wins (the winner is always backed by an influential decision maker within the government as they share the profits). After some time, when things quiet down, there is all of a sudden a made up reason to increase the price for whatever that needs to be done and then again and again. So the price many times doubles the original bidding price that came from the bidding process.
You can stop deflecting at any time. We’re comparing Europe and the US, not Abu Dhabi and Morocco.
Maybe Eric, but the prices qouted are per actually delivered kWh, not namaplate capacity. So it is kind of irrelevant that the capacity factor is lower. Unless you’re seriouusly constrained for space, but the EU is not (neither is the US), so whatever
“benben May 2, 2016 at 10:07 pm
Hey Eric, you’re totally right, without battery back-up solar does not really make sense in small communities …”
Without some form of backup, solar makes no sense at all for any community
Hang about benben. Scotland has 85% of the UK’s hydro-electric energy resource and bully for them. That’s the ultimate backup for any additional, unreliable wind and solar which can be used to pump water back uphil,l but where does that leave continents like Australia? We’re not all wet, miserable, billy goat lands that need plenty of whisky by the fire. Far from it and the Akubra and sunscreen are pretty superfluous on a balmy night.
Oh boy, when KKR comes in you know things are going to burn
Hoodat KKR chap ??
g
arthur 4563,
You have been listening to too much MSR flackerey
The US government had MSRs when they were making Plutonium in the 1940s and 1950s.
Yes the corrosion problems you mentioned did exist. But by far the worst problem the fluctuations in chain reaction rates caused by eddy currents in the molten salt which intensified output to problematic levels. Thereby producing near runaway conditions on occasion. Prior to TMI, the worst nuclear fission reactor problem occured in an MSR.
I other words, the MSRs could not be guaranteed not to runaway, merely due to random, uncontrolled, concentrations of nuclear reactants due to turbulent flow.
It is just what everyone wants…an uncontrollable and unpredictable nuclear fission reactor!
That is why the MSRs were abandoned early in the fission reactor age.
@ur momisugly Stas Peterson – Turbulence in Molten Salt Reactors:
Stas thanks for writing this, of course you’ve opened a new line of inquiry for me in my investigation of the feasibility of MSRs and also Liquid Metal Reactors. I’ll be following up on this and appreciate your orthogonal viewpoint. Having studied thermodynamics and turbulence for other reasons this should have been something that occurred to me earlier but it didn’t. Thanks to you, now it has.
Bad news has now been banned. The silent treatment is a common tactic in advocacy over reach and related party messaging.