Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.

[wws]

A surplus of power is fine unless you are the guy who is trying to run the many MW power plants. Solar power has a daily cycle that doesn't match well with the daily demand curve. It peaks in midday and drops off toward evening when demand peaks. So the generating network has to rapidly ramp up in the late afternoon to keep the lights on. This is getting harder and harder to do as solar ramps up, with a significant fraction being residential.

In the Big Picture, demand actually does peak mid-day. I used to have TOU where peak rates were from noon to 6 PM. From the grid point of view, that has changed dramatically with the addition of solar - both on roof tops (e.g., 'behind the meter') and at the grid level. So now one sees the peak demanded from the grid shifted to the evening hours, and to a lesser extent, morning hours before solar really kicks in.

At some point it may become cheaper to charge our cars during the day than at night.

Solar generation in California

Notice the negative unit pricing during the day! Some generation can't be dialed back, like nuclear. Any time generating capacity is dialed back the unit cost increases since a capital asset lies fallow. I'm surprised the hydro isn't one of the dialed back generators. I don't even see gas on this chart unless it is included in "Thermal" which seems to be one of two dialed up in the afternoons along with "Imports".

Thermal is basically natgas - including both the highly efficient combined cycle plants and less efficient peaker plants. The California 'imports' are mostly hydro from the Northwest. Though there is some natgas and even coal power being imported. One of the few remaining coal generators was just shut down a month or two ago. I think the last remaining coal generator will be the IPP plant in Utah - which is supposed to be converted to a combination of natgas and solar by 2025.

 

[mspohr]

Remember that "just" and "only" are four letter words. Tesla installed a 100 MW/120 MWh battery for Australia. That is some 1500 model 3s they then could not build. It will be some time before we are able to supply enough battery storage to have a significant impact on the grid. Besides, there are better battery types available, but the whole thing needs to be researched much better.

The markets are currently developing with the encouragement of financial incentives. That is the way to do things if the government is going to be involved, not so much mandates. Remember gas rationing? Maybe you don't, I'm an old guy who doesn't want to repeat the mistakes we've already made before.

Financial incentives are what has destroyed the environment. We need mandates for clean energy.
I can't reconcile your complaint about too much surplus energy with your complaint about "mistakes" leading to energy shortages. AFAIK, we have lots of electricity and more on the way from clean renewables.

 

[nwdiver]

Tri-State Generation to close all of its Colorado, New Mexico coal-fired power plants and coal mines — 3 locations — by 2030

 

[SageBrush]

Tri-State Generation to close all of its Colorado, New Mexico coal-fired power plants and coal mines — 3 locations — by 2030

Scumbag of a company. It will be true when completed and not a minute sooner. And we'll have to see what the replacement sources are. TS is capable of importing coal sourced electricity from states other than CO or NM, or turning the coal plants into fracked NG.

 

[David_Cary]

Fredneck - question for you. Is your name a play on "redneck"? Just curious. You describe being old and you are from PA so a lot of your viewpoints are different from those here.

Solar panels typically have a 25 year warranty. That would happen whether they are on a new house (with only a 1 year comprehensive warranty) or not. There really isn't much to go wrong with a panel. Ignorance about panels would be an example of a difference from the majority of posters.

You question mandatory workplace charging? In a state that has mandated new condos have charging, mandated solar panels on all new construction, has their own gasoline formulation ....

My son has a classmate with a charging cord going over the sidewalk. Our city has plenty of street charging. It isn't that hard at all - street lights show that electricity is available at the street.

The practical issues are really easy. Any new parking structure/lot over 100 spaces designed for work needs 20% charger spots. Any existing over 5,000 needs the same. For 2021. And in 2023, and existing over 3,000. 2025, existing over 1000 and any new lot regardless of size. 2030 - all lots. In an area with good solar coverage and a spread out population, it makes sense. More than London I suppose.

Mspohr - I disagree that economic incentives do not work. Command and control creates inefficiencies - like the mandatory solar on new houses. While a new house makes it a bit cheaper, it can't compare to large utility scale costs. Mind you I have solar on our new house and our HERS score is comfortably negative with gas used just for cooking. But $6k from our utility combined with federal TC made it work. Without it, my wife would not have allowed and my answer to anyone that asked would be - "yes, it loses a lot of money". Now I can say that it is cash flow positive in a 30 year mortgage or the payback is about 15 years. Our electric rate is 11 cents all in.

The conversion to EVs comes very fast with a graduated carbon tax and mandatory charging spots at work. Graduated tax to make gasoline $10 a gallon over 5-10 years. (I did sneak some command and control in there with the mandatory workplace charging.)

 

[SageBrush]

While a new house makes it a bit cheaper, it can't compare to large utility scale costs.

Sure it does, once you include the savings of cutting out the utility middle-man. For a well placed installation in a sunny locale, residential PV over a lifetime (not including financing) costs ~ 2 cents a kWh per $1 a watt net installation cost after tax credits.

 

[dgpcolorado]

Tri-State Generation to close all of its Colorado, New Mexico coal-fired power plants and coal mines — 3 locations — by 2030

They already closed down the Nucla coal station and mine here several years ago, so this is the trend. I presume that much of the coal power will be replaced with natural gas, as SageBrush suggests.

Some of the member co-ops have been lobbying Tri-State to increase the local generation limit from 5% so that they can increase renewables. Where I live, in San Miguel Power Association territory, the local generation is mostly solar and micro hydro. Wind resources are poor here (this is one of the least windy places I've ever lived).

 

[mspohr]

Mspohr - I disagree that economic incentives do not work. Command and control creates inefficiencies - like the mandatory solar on new houses.

I do agree that economic incentives work. I think we have some confusion in terminology. You seem to think mandates work in some situations but don't like command and control... Don't know what that is...
All economic incentives, private and public, create inefficiency.

 

[Dr. J]

I do agree that economic incentives work. I think we have some confusion in terminology. You seem to think mandates work in some situations but don't like command and control... Don't know what that is...
All economic incentives, private and public, create inefficiency.

The greatest efficiency is realized from internalizing external costs (externalities). According to theory.

 

[nwdiver]

The greatest efficiency is realized from internalizing external costs (externalities). According to theory.

For better or worse social justice is inefficient but we ignore it at our peril.

 

[Dr. J]

social justice is inefficient

Most economists wouldn't, but I would classify social injustice as an externality.

 

[David_Cary]

Command and control is maybe an older term for communist economies. The CA EV mandate and is command and control. A carbon tax would be an alternative economic incentive. Both are inefficient but a carbon tax is less because people can make rational decisions to reduce carbon and save money. I don't think Fiat making a few EVs and losing money on them is anyone's idea of efficient. Paying $10 a gallon for gas would cause people to drive less and drive EVs.

We (US) do command and control because it is politically more palatable than a tax. Europe mostly prefers to use taxation - one of the reasons they went to small diesels. Old cities help also.

Sagebrush - You are using lifetime costs with no financing. Come on, that doesn't make sense. If you do that, then the utility can too and it is cheaper. By like a factor of 4. By "cutting out the middle man", you are really describing the incentive of net metering. Unless you have factored batteries in that equation and backup power for December, you can't cut out the middle man. Out west, December might not be a huge issue. But you still need to drive in December so you need a big array to go off grid. I have 11kw and I ran 33% this December so I would need a 33kw array to cover December. (Heat pumps and 2 Tesla's - The Tesla's still dominate).

 

[SageBrush]

Sagebrush - You are using lifetime costs with no financing. Come on, that doesn't make sense. If you do that, then the utility can too and it is cheaper. By like a factor of 4. By "cutting out the middle man", you are really describing the incentive of net metering. Unless you have factored batteries in that equation and backup power for December, you can't cut out the middle man. Out west, December might not be a huge issue. But you still need to drive in December so you need a big array to go off grid. I have 11kw and I ran 33% this December so I would need a 33kw array to cover December. (Heat pumps and 2 Tesla's - The Tesla's still dominate).

As I said, I excluded financing. I also excluded retail inflation adjustments by the utility.
The difference is 1-2% for people with good credit so the adjustment over 30 years would be ~ (1.015)^30 = 1.5x. Still way cheaper for the consumer to roll their own PV and not buy whatever slop the utility sells. And it gets really cheap to install additional panels to cover things like the cars, A/C via heat pumps and DHW since the fixed costs are covered and the additional generation comes down to panels + BOM. That approaches 1 penny a kWh before financing and inflation adjustments.

You are correct that net metering is presumed but from the utilities standpoint that is not much different than home energy conservation if you stay on the grid.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Command and control is maybe an older term for communist economies. The CA EV mandate and is command and control. A carbon tax would be an alternative economic incentive. Both are inefficient but a carbon tax is less because people can make rational decisions to reduce carbon and save money. I don't think Fiat making a few EVs and losing money on them is anyone's idea of efficient. Paying $10 a gallon for gas would cause people to drive less and drive EVs.

We (US) do command and control because it is politically more palatable than a tax. Europe mostly prefers to use taxation - one of the reasons they went to small diesels. Old cities help also.

Sagebrush - You are using lifetime costs with no financing. Come on, that doesn't make sense. If you do that, then the utility can too and it is cheaper. By like a factor of 4. By "cutting out the middle man", you are really describing the incentive of net metering. Unless you have factored batteries in that equation and backup power for December, you can't cut out the middle man. Out west, December might not be a huge issue. But you still need to drive in December so you need a big array to go off grid. I have 11kw and I ran 33% this December so I would need a 33kw array to cover December. (Heat pumps and 2 Tesla's - The Tesla's still dominate).

The funny thing about commodities is that taxation doesn't have the desired long term effect. When gas prices went up (regardless of taxes or crude oil prices), people economized until they grew numb to the "pain" and then it became simply a cost of doing business and consumption went back up again.

BEV's are barely becoming viable enough for a mass shift based on economics alone. Prior to this, mandates were necessary to overcome the massive inertia that a fossil-fuel based infrastructure possessed.

Some situations simply require the bludgeon of rule of law.

 

[David_Cary]

I suppose we can debate the issue until the end of time. Europe has higher gas prices and they use less. They buy smaller cars and a lot of diesels. Although, they aren't immune to the SUV trend.
Tesla has survived and flourished without an EV % mandate - although it did provide cash in the early days (and still in Europe).
The SUV trend has strengthened significantly on the backs of low oil prices.
If EV's are "barely becoming viable", then the right answer is buying cars instead of SUVs and we aren't even having that happen. The other right answer is not buying new cars. It would be foolish to buy an ICE if you knew that gas prices were going up significantly over time.
People can be rational. Not perfect - far from it. Command and control assumes people aren't rational.
I tend to believe in economic theory of internalizing the externalities. If gas prices of $5 don't work, then make them $10. If that doesn't work, make it $15.

 

[SageBrush]

They buy smaller cars and a lot of diesels.

Check out the trend

 

[SageBrush]

Command and control assumes people aren't rational.

Or it takes place in a place with huge externalized costs

 

[Mader Levap]

Command and control assumes people aren't rational.

That's pretty good assumption. People are not rational, period. One example: if they were, advertisments wouldn't ever work and no one would advertise.
Problems with command and control economies lie elsewhere - in inherent inefficiency and unscalability.

I tend to believe in economic theory of internalizing the externalities. If gas prices of $5 don't work, then make them $10. If that doesn't work, make it $15.

Expect riots on streets then. It already happened in various countries that had price jumps for various reasons (lastest was France I think).

 

[SageBrush]

Expect riots on streets then. It already happened in various countries that had price jumps for various reasons (lastest was France I think).

Your other choice is to rot from the pollution, presuming starvation does not intercede.

You think people will be accepting ?

 

[TheTalkingMule]

I think what we're seeing in TSLA over the last few weeks is a reflection of institutional investors abandoning most fossil fuel investment for good and begrudgingly shifting assets over to "clean energy" plays.

We've seen projections for peak global oil demand all come down to within 2030 over the last year, even from groups as closely tied to oil as the IEA. Occidental Petroleum just hedged their entire production for 2020/21 to protect their dividend. These are some pretty crazy and desperate indicators that the end is here.

It looks to me like the first few rats have begun to fleeing the sinking ship. This IMO could be what's going to crash us into the next global recession. Mass extinction of oil will have a much bigger impact than when coal died. We shall see.