Nice Photovoltaik Peak in Germany

[garo]

Interesting to read this 5 year old thread and chappy's critiques of the cost of green energy. Solar PV and wind have come a long way on those 5 years.

[pinhodecarlos]

Originally Posted by garo

Interesting to read this 5 year old thread and chappy's critiques of the cost of green energy. Solar PV and wind have come a long way on those 5 years.

One of our council clients here in the U.K. is largely investing on Solar PV systems. For example, I manage Measurement and Verification works for one 12MWp system where we guarantee its generation. Think the downside is still the high time and costs to maintain these systems and all associates issues but I can already see a trend of these costs dropping down, but these are still expensive.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Mark Rose

But wheels can be dangerous when they go flying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR7wJEmKds0

Now imagine a wheel with a million times the inertia.

One of the labs I had to do in an undergrad physics class involved a solid steel sphere at least 2 inches (5 cm) in diameter that was riding on a cushion of air in a fitted receptacle which however did not actually confine it, and was "spun up" by a jet of air hitting it from the side. That sphere could made to spin pretty darn fast. I think we were using a mark on the sphere and strobe light to measure how fast it was spinning.

All went well in the lab when my classmates and I were doing the experiment. But we soon heard about another lab session in which one of those spheres was spun up to maximum RPM's, and someone or something knocked it out of its receptacle. As soon as it landed on the lab counter or whatever and got a little traction, the lab became a giant pinball machine with a mighty big pinball moving very fast. Luckily, it didn't hit anybody, but the lab was rather the worse for wear.

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by VBCurtis

At these prices? Who is it that's making money on fuel, and which fuel?

What? Diesel fuel. It is a by-product of gasoline refinement. Yet, people are being charged more for it than gasoline. Gasoline costs a few pennies per gallon to make, so I've read. After the taxes, the rest is pure profit. The same would apply to diesel fuel. With things they way they have been because of COVID-19, prices have dropped. Diesel is still above gasoline. Supply versus demand has leveled a little.

Who? Exxon-Mobil. They are #2 on the Fortune 500 list, behind Walmart. Trickle-up economics. The cost burden is on the consumer. No retailer, and above, will settle for break-even and certainly not a loss.

[VBCurtis]

Originally Posted by storm5510

Who? Exxon-Mobil. They are #2 on the Fortune 500 list, behind Walmart. Trickle-up economics. The cost burden is on the consumer. No retailer, and above, will settle for break-even and certainly not a loss.

Exxon shares down 37% in 2020. Exxon's forecast profit in the current quarter: $2.6 billion loss. Nope, not making money in these conditions. Try again, or maybe explain how this massive loss is consistent with "still big $$$ being made [...]"
No idea how you get the idea "no retailer, and above, will settle for break even and certainly not a loss" as a business strategy. Not even Exxon controls the market for its goods.

What is it that fortune 500 list is measuring? It sure isn't market capitalization, nor profit. Is it sales? If it's sales, why would ranking by sales have anything to do with profits?

[storm5510]

This has gone way off-topic. End of story.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by storm5510

This has gone way off-topic. End of story.

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

I was looking at today's numbers (for reasons) and California is doing really well as of this moment of the renewables front.
http://www.caiso.com/Documents/Month...t-Apr2020.html
Much of the day I was seeing >50% of the power being used coming from in state renewable generation. And only 19MW of coal from state sources. I happened to see what was (at the time it was installed) the world's largest rooftop solar project a few weeks ago. It is massive.

Today I was seeing 60-65% renewables when I popped in.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by storm5510

After the taxes, the rest is pure profit.

Transport? Storage?

[storm5510]

My electrical service provider is Duke Energy based in North Carolina. They currently operate 6 nuclear plants, 18 coal burners, 21 hydroelectrics, 23 oil/gas fired plants, 6 solar farms, and one wind farm. They service six states. Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

Duke is proposing a 7th nuclear plant. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima left people fearful of nuclear power. An abandoned and never completed plant sits southwest of the community I live in. Huge cost overruns and poor construction killed it. Marble Hill is its name and there is a Wiki article about it. There are currently 60 nuclear plants operating 98 reactors in the U.S.

[kriesel]

Wisconsin fuel tax $0.33/gallon https://www.salestaxhandbook.com/wis...gasoline-fuel; federal $0.184/gallon gasoline or $0.244/gallon diesel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#United_States. So over $0.51/gallon combined is taxes charged at the pump. When fuel recently reached $0.999/gallon pump price in places, more than half the consumer cost was taxes.

Today's WTI price for crude oil is $33.56/42-gallon barrel. Just the crude oil raw material is $0.799/gallon currently, and it has been as high as triple that. https://markets.businessinsider.com/...?type=wti&op=1

A gallon of crude requires the expenditure of some energy for refining, some fraction of its content or the equivalent. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/7261027 However, the total volume produced is larger than the crude input because the products are less dense. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/...nd-outputs.php

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/...ine-prices.php describes many cost considerations that go into fuel production and delivery to retail customers.

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by kriesel

...https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/...ine-prices.php describes many cost considerations that go into fuel production and delivery to retail customers.

I did not do much research on what I wrote above, regarding crude oil products, when I should have. This is my fault.

I did do the research on Duke Energy. Being a long-time customer, I knew what to look for and where. A hydroelectric station about 30 miles up the Ohio River from where I live feeds directly into Duke's grid. This, I did not know. A 1.3 gigawatt coal burning plant sits in the river valley just a few miles west. It is one of six feeding areas of Northern Ohio. It would have seemed more practical to have built this one somewhere on the shore of Lake Erie. On the other hand, if a massive outage occurs here, it can be switched to feed the local area, like in 1974 when a large tornado took out the regional grid. Two other coal-burners, also situated on the river, are a half-hour drive from here. The coal barge traffic on the river is continuous. Loaded coming downstream, and empty going upstream.

Many politico's believe coal is the lest expensive way to go. Right now, it is 38.55 USD per ton. I do not know how they can claim that based on the cost.

Today's crude price is 33.25 USD per barrel, (42 gal.). The national average for natural gas is 10.03 USD per 1,000 cubic feet.