‘Green’ energy…

Welp, California is looking at continued rolling blackouts if the heat wave continues (and it probably will for another week, based on the weather guessers).

Why, you might ask…

The greenies have gotten the state to go full econazi and ‘transition’ to green energy. Except… They can’t control the wind, or sunshine… And the few natural gas plants they still have are old and tend to break, which is what happened last week. A 470MW gas plant shut down unexpectedly and the wind died.

Oopsie…

After a week of unwelcome drama from a power grid repeatedly bumping up to the edge of of its capacity, Californians weary of living with the specter of rolling power outages–on top of five months with COVID–are wondering what’s gone wrong with the grid and when it can be fixed.

Full article, HERE.

But this statement just floors me… Nuclear is clean energy and they absolutely REFUSE to acknowledge that, or even mention it…

Meantime, advocates of the decades long transition to renewable energy do not doubt the wisdom of California’s commitment to that goal–and the unacceptably destructive environmental impact of doubling down on burning fossil fuels– but do see need for further tuning.

This is the same bunch that lives/works in Sacramento, which has its own power company, SMUD. 80% of SMUD’s power is 56% NG and 24% hydroelectric. They used to have Rancho Seco Nuclear Power station, but it was closed in 1989, after years of mismanagement (projected life for a nuke plant is 50 years).

California has also closed San Onofre and is planning to close Diablo Canyon at Avila Beach in 2024. Diablo Canyon currently produces 8.6% of total California generation and 23% of carbon-free generation. In the early 2000s when California went through the first round of blackouts, I remember the hippies in their Volvos protesting at Diablo Canyon when they brought the second plant on line to ameliorate the rolling blackouts.

The real problem is that dependence on solar (only good 12ish hours a day), and wind (fickle at best), is that unless you have a LOT of battery backup, or contracts for emergency power from the west coast grid, you’re going to be SOL when the weather doesn’t cooperate.

THAT is the situation they are in now. Not enough backup, and, according to a friend in the business, no emergency contracts, so they are paying ‘spot’ prices for power. Palo Verde in Arizona on 30 July sold 30,000MWH of power for $80.00/MWH for example. Other days, the price was under $30.00/MWH…

What long term contracts (LTC) do, is flatten the cost spikes over the long term availability. Here is one explanation-

To put some structure around how LTC prices relate to underlying market dynamics it is useful to deconstruct price drivers into five key categories set out below.

  1. Exposure: The structure of LTC pricing terms in relation to underlying commodity prices (e.g. fixed price, price indexation, upside sharing or cap & floor terms).
  2. Intrinsic value: The degree to which LTC value can be hedged against current forward market prices (i.e. the ‘in the $$$’ of the contract).
  3. Market conditions: The prevailing market pricing of flexibility contained in the LTC (e.g. driven by liquidity, price volatility, pricing/availability of alternative forms of flexibility).
  4. Duration: The term of the contract which influences available liquidity to manage LTC exposures as well as the level of uncertainty over future price evolution.
  5. Portfolio drivers: Other portfolio related value driven by factors such as ‘insurance premia’, risk limits, security of supply mandates or strategic considerations.

In summation, IMHO, California is screwed yet again… Power costs are going to go up, and probably sooner rather than later, they are going to run out of power, the ability to produce it at a sustainable level with just solar and wind, and be out of money to buy power.

Comments

‘Green’ energy… — 25 Comments

  1. Ahhh Jim, you don’t understand. The Californians are so virtuous. They are so wonderfully green, looking down their noses at the rest of the world as the sweat drips off of that gloriously green nose. Their virtue glows through their sweaty bodies and empty wallets as their energy bills rise almost as fast as their taxes.
    God bless the gunshine state of Florida and keep ’em out so they can’t mess with Texas.

  2. As in Oregon, the people who talk up renewable energy suddenly turn 180 degrees when you mention hydroelectric power. In southern Oregon, we’ve been (unsuccessfully) trying to keep 4 hydropower dams on the Klamath River from being demolished. We lost the ability to get Bonneville power at the low price years ago due to a court decision. Arggh.

    The push is for salmon on the Klamath downstream, but the tribes and the Cali powers that be never mention that they are damming the Trinity river in California, while insisting that the Klamath dams must go. Hint: the beneficiaries of the Klamath dams are mostly in Oregon, in a very red county, so we don’t count.

    We got some solar arrays to help a little. Not that much help, and it took out some nice hay cropland.

  3. Troubles with power generation are legion, but California is in a world of its own compared to other States. Some years back CA had a power shortage which was caused by CA selling power to its neighbors, who then were ecstatic to sell this power back to CA at a grossly inflated price. CA residents took it in the shorts, and no criminal investigation took place in spite of the fact that politicos made money like the bandits they are by investing in the commodities market.

    The cost of power is and always has been directly related to the price of petroleum products, including coal. Nuclear power, when the power plant is running at its best, is generally slightly cheaper than coal. When the plant goes down for an outage (refueling or otherwise) the plant becomes a money pit.

    I’m going to digress slightly and follow some rabbit tracks. I used to work at a nuclear power station in the mid-west. During a refueling outage, it was planned to replace the drive shaft on one of two main generators. This was scheduled well in advance, and the replacement shaft was safely stored in the warehouse – except no one could find it. This was a fourteen (14) foot long, three foot diameter stainless steel shaft, and it had gone missing. Three days the geniuses in the warehouse searched for the shaft, but no luck. One of my co-workers, an elderly man who was fairly bright, decided to go look for the shaft. He found it.

    The shaft was lying up against a wall and being used as a desk. So… lifting the shaft with the aid of a crane, an elderly engineer with heavy construction experience (skyscrapers), and Superman, the crate containing the shaft is lifted. That’s when things went from stupid to really fucking stupid.

    On the bottom side of the crate, the side that rested on the floor, was a notice in big letters: Caution! Do not store horizontally, as this will cause the shaft to warp.

    Oh yeah.

    This is just one example of the unbelievable blunders I witnessed at the nuclear plant. Believe me, there were others.

    The main problem with these oh-so-green energy sources is that no one has had a brutally honest cost analysis performed by a reputable source and published by commercial media. I’m sure someone could find the cost figures somewhere, but assembling and publishing is a much different matter.

    The simplest way to look at power efficiency is to see the rigs used by live aboard sailors. They use both wind and solar, and still have to supplement the power sources with a diesel generator.

  4. When I worked at Palo Verde in the ’90s, the Arizona Corporation Commission did us a huge favor. With the anti-nukes pressuring them, they disallowed putting Unit 3 in the rate base. The idea was that without a guaranteed rate of return Arizona Public Service would be forced to eat the cost of Unit 3. Turned out that we could sell the total output to So. Cal. for whatever the traffic would bear. Unit 3 became the most profitable generating facility in the APS system.

    The Generation II plants like San Onofre and Diablo Canyon were initially licensed for 40 years, most of the operating plants have had licenses extended by 20 years. Economically, there no reason to expect that most plants could be extended another 20 years. So California has thrown away or will throw away over 4000MWe of carbon free generating capacity for for the next 50 years or more. At least while they will be sweltering, Californians can congratulate themselves for saving the planet from the evils of carbon dioxide and nuclear power.

  5. I’m pleased to have made my CALEXIT. For a reasons which are legion.

  6. relatives in so. cal. are reporting electric bills of $550!!! a month! and that is with shutting down the ac at night, small house, etc. hate to see what other people may be paying.

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  8. The worst thing you can do to an aging natural gas generation facility is to make it a backup to a wind power system. The constant fluctuations and variations means that the natgas system is pulsing its power output more than the system was designed for.

    They are like, well, jet engines. Which work well at a relative standard burn rate. But doing wild things with them and the turbine life is shortened. Like using a jet engine in an airliner versus a fighter jet. Airliner engine gets a heck of a lot less stress on it, life measured in tens of thousands of hours, while the fighter jet engine is measured in hundreds of hours (with constant maintenance.)

    So glad not to be anywhere near California. Soooo glad.

  9. Nuclear is clean?
    I once called in to a St. Louis talk show where a nuclear power expert was answering question. I asked, “How long is the waste from a nuclear powerplant dangerous to human beings?” He changed the subject.
    Look it up. It’s XX,XXX years minimum.
    Now we have waste facilities with containers that are leaking and we have no idea what we’ll do next.
    Until we have a SAFE way to dispose of that lethal waste, we should stick with what we know.

    • We have several “SAFE” ways to handle radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. from the mid fifties until the early eighties, all “spent” fuel from the nuclear powered navy ships was reprocessed and recycled. The uranium was recovered and reused, the fission products and activated structural materials were stored and eventually calcined into dry beads for long term storage. Reprocessing navy fuel stopped because of political reasons. The dangerous fission products have half lives that average around 50 years or so, which means they need to be isolated from the environment for around 500 years. Without modern construction methods and materials the ancients built tombs that remained sealed for 3000 years. If we vitrified the the waste and sealed it in underground salt formations it would be contained for a geological time period.

      Long lived transuranics can be separated and burned in power reactor to produce energy and extend our uranium reserves. Nuclear waste handling isn’t a matter of having to develop the technology, it’s a matter of political will.

    • Greybeard,

      We have all sorts of ways to deal with nuclear waste. It can be reprocessed into its components, many of which have cost effective uses, including medical and power generation. The problem is that no one will allow a nuclear waste reprocessing plant to be built near them because it involves shipping nuclear waste.

      Also, the containers are leaking because they were not stored properly because the environmentalists filed lawsuits to prevent them from being shipped to where they could be stored properly (Yucca Mountain).

      50 year life? Not so fast.

      “https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/whats-lifespan-nuclear-reactor-much-longer-you-might-think”

      PS If you want to know my qualifications to comment, US Navy nuclear engineer. Not appealing to authority, just pointing out that I do know a little about the subject.

      • PPS Half-life is sort of irrelevant but sounds scary. The more dangerous elements have short half lives because they burn themselves out quickly. The less dangerous elements burn at low levels for a very long time.

  10. Roger- I know… sigh

    RC- Exactly, and if the American River doesn’t get enough snowmelt, SMUD will be in trouble, because… Snail Darter…

    Bill- That sounds like Rancho Seco. Sigh

    NRW- Yep, and they are STILL making bank on it!

    LL- Yep!

    Janie- I’ve heard the same thing.

    Beans- Concur.

    GB- Compared to the ebil coal and gas plants, yes… If you ignore the rods. And the problem with storage is the refusal to actually approve use the already designated and studied storage locations (Yucca Mountain comes to mind), due to Harry Reid’s full on hatred for it and his position as the Speaker. Obama followed suit and Congress has yet to actually pass the final approval, paying millions of dollars a year in penalties… Dammit…

  11. The rock salt mines are quarrying deposits that have had no water contact for millions of years. They are perfect place to store glassified (vitrified) rad waste where there is zero possibility of ground water contamination. We just don’t have the political will to do it.

    • Truth. However, the rest of the known world takes a hard look at government reliability and efficiency, then considers the clowns, fatheads, and incompetents who work for utility companies – and it isn’t just no, it’s hell no, not now, not ever.

      Can you blame them?

  12. Hey Old NFO;

    And as long as they can buy the power from other states and pass the cost to the consumer, they can play “Virtuous” all they want and the Greenies can congratulate themselves on their ecostate as long as they have other states to bail themselves out. As far as the cost, they can soak the taxpayer and the consumer and they don’t care until there is no tax base left in the state to tax.

  13. Consider the wild fires in California.

    Consider that they are apparently worse because of ‘environmentalist’ bans on cutting.

    Consider the air quality health impacts on human health of wildfires as compared to looser emissions regulations.

    Unreliable power, and burning the place down, would seem to impact the ability to project power from US military bases in California.

    If the Greens were being paid by the PRC, what would they be doing different?

    Counterargument, what Chinese Communist bureaucrat would have the selflessness and foresight not to simply steal the money instead of actually funding US useful idiots.

  14. Bob- But how many are going to be willing to pay $500 or more a month???

    Bobthe- Good point!!!

  15. > In the early 2000s when California went through the first round of blackouts,

    More like the late-mid 1960s, when I was a kid in Sacramento. Brownouts would start around noonish and go to the early evening, which made my mom mad when she missed her soap operas. Every now and then the brownout would turn into a blackout.

    That was when all the nukes were online and there was no “green” anything.

  16. > CA selling power to its neighbors, who then were ecstatic to sell this power back to CA at a grossly inflated price.
    —-
    > relatives in so. cal. are reporting electric bills of $550!!!

    And that’s why I have friends here in Arkansas paying about that much. “Dollar Billy” Clinton rode into the Governor’s office on a flood of money from teacher PACs and a Mississippi power utility which essentially owned him outright. When he left office our electric rates had tripled and the state’s only nuclear power plant was owned by Grand Gulf in Mississippi. All of Nuclear One’s output belongs to them now, which then sells it “back” at a much higher rate.

    There was a similar deal for some of the conventional plants, mostly with some outfit in Oklahoma.

    The deals he swung were so raw that the two local newspapers, which regularly proclaimed he walked on water and could turn water into whisky, were squalling about it. But they were all done deals before they noticed.

  17. Sam- Concur!

    TRX- I didn’t know about them, I was down south as a kid… LOL And yes, Clinton was crooked as a dog’s hind leg. He screwed Arkansas both literally and physically.