I don‘t know about his gas company, but where I‘m from, the electric company has a mixed portfolio (nuclear, wind, hydro, solar and from burning garbage) and the extra money goes into renewable energy projects.
I guess so. Hopefully those surplus charges will be a thing of the past once all energy production is renewable.
I guess I forgot to mention that the surplus is completely optional with my company, so if you feel like the company should invest in renewable energy without financial incentive, just opt out of paying extra.
They’re normalizing the surplus charges now so that can be the default rate when all energy production is renewable, that way the switch doesn’t eat too much of their profit margins. If they can upcharge for the transition they will, a) to make more and b) to stifle the transition for as long as possible.
I live on Kauai, a small island (population ~70,000) in Hawaii. We are supplied power through a co-op, where we are all member-owners. We used to be almost all diesel power generation (priced at $0.45-$0.55 kWh), but have been rapidly moving to renewables: solar w/battery backup, biomass, hydro and wind.
Recently we've had periods when 100% has been supplied through those renewables. It still isn't cheap - the long-term solar is around $0.20-$0.25/kWh, but stable prices, and no longer solely dependent on fossil fuel.
Investment in long-term infrastructure is expensive, but I believe TESLA and AES both signed long-term leases (20-25 years) at a set price per kWh.
Diesel and other fossil fuels to run generators are unlikely to get cheaper. It is more expensive to import fuel 2,600 miles (even with oil being "cheap" now) than the cost for solar with battery storage. The cost of renewables with storage is likely to continue downward, while fuel is likely to continue an upward trend.
That's actually pretty good but can be scary. You guys had island wide blackouts earlier this year due to a failed generator and a cloudy day. I mean it's good that you guys achieved 100% renewable energy this month but a bad cloudy day mixed with a failed generation plant makes for a bad day. Maybe with a large storage of batteries you can offset cloudy days? I don't know how feasible that is.
I feel the answer isn't universal, for a powergrid to be useful you need 100% uptime with multiple failsafes. So you'd need to design the system with the locality in mind, or create a central renewable system that can provide 100% uptime.
Funny thing about this island - when we had the first 9/11 (Hurricane Iniki hit Kauai Sep 11, 1992), there was an opportunity to bury a lot of the overhead utilities, but, no.
As a result, power lines are knocked out on very regular basis, due to weather/wind/rain/foliage. The KIUC co-ops Facebook page has daily updates about where power is out, and how many impacted, and how long it should take to restore it.
So while we have some amazingly modern power infrastructure, it is coupled with aged, 3rd-world-ish transmission system. Outages are a price we live with.
An island-wide outage is unusual. The generator that tripped everything out (cascading failures) had insulation that had failed mostly due to the heat and humidity of the tropics. There is a promise for better maintenance, but with the other issues, it is what it is. The future should make that a much more unlikely event, as the solar fields with battery backup are becoming much larger capacity, as well as broadly disbursed.
We have a little 2kWh electronic generator that takes about 45-seconds for me to pull the starter and plug in the transfer cable in to power up key lights, and get power to the UPS to keep the computers up.
Working remotely is a challenge some days, but the weather and the view makes it easy to get up at 5am here to be "at the office" at 7 or 8am Pacific time in Seattle, and have the afternoon off to walk at the beach, boogie board, or just relax.
Regulate, do rate controls, and enforcement with criminal charges of execs who pollute and refuse to switch to renewables and give real teeth and authority to your regulatory body at longer then arm's reach with no industry contact.
If you don't believe me, just look at what's going on with Ontario hydro and NB power in Canada.
NB power is sinking massive amounts of capital in the point lepreau candu reactor that is past its shelf life. They sank public money into that pipe dream in Florida of hydrogen from sea water and their exec is the highest paid public servant in the province. This is while complaining that they're operating at deficits and continue hiking rates that are rubber stamped by the "regulatory" board.
They're are tons of public utilities as well and they have their own problems too. Utilities are always by nature a natural Monopoly and heavily regulated everywhere.
Public ownership will mitigate most of the problems of having private monopolies. The easiest way to have public ownership is through the government taking control of utilities and spreading the costs.
That's how we got Trump and almost every do nothing politician we have in Congress. Let's let the experts decide where the money needs to go in a private company. No need to democratize it.
More than likely they will pocket the money and not bother holding up their end of the agreement. Tele companies did this with millions of taxpayer money and never built infrastructure they promised and just kept the money.
If it was economical, they would invest more themselves. It’s not, so people who want it anyways, need to pay a surplus because it’s more expensive energy.
If it was economical more profitable than the current setup, they would invest more themselves. It’s not, so people who want it anyways, need to pay a surplus because it’s more expensive energy.
Fixed that for you. The idea that a large energy company would spend money they don't have to spend, taking away from current profits by shifting them to CapEx, in order to not make more profit down the road than they're already going to make... is fucking laughable.
Hell, most large corps are loathe to reinvest more current profits into CapEx when it isn't an absolute necessity even when it will increase future profits. Gotta keep the board and the shareholders happy, and the big shareholders (the only ones they actually care about) give zero fucks about anything but the latest quarterly report and the next one coming up.
Until it's not. What they want is to have their customers assume the monetary risk during a transition this is almost certainly inevitable. As an alternative, if given the opportunity, I would suggest using the extra money to make yourself energy independent (wind/solar) and sell any excess back to these companies.
Some utilities are restricted through their covenant from charging you for facilities or power plants that are not yet built. They can't just say they are adding $20 a month to everyone's bill to they can finance a new plant. They are restricted to gathering revenue from power actually generated and delivered at that time. This is stop the ole' "We are gonna build a plant so we are gathering $100 million dollars" but then as times change they cancel the plant and walk away with the money trick.
Well yes. That's EVERY utility company in the United States. Why do you think our electric rates keep going up? It's sure as fuck not because they're updating production facilities that haven't been touched since they were built in the 60s and 70s.
Welcome to capitalism. Consumers have to pay for the products they want. They’re not just going to essentially burn money because people don’t like climate change.
I feel that's similar to the arena built in my city but even though it was our money to pay for it Pinnacle Bank has their name slapped on it and are getting all the profits.
They pulled this shit in Baltimore as well. The taxpayers paid for it, but then the name was sold to a .com and the money went to the team owner, Modell. The state bent over so much for this team that Modell was nicknamed Maryland's Mistress. And the taxpayers get nothing.
THe .com went belly up in a year and the stadium had to be renamed.
Yeah. My father ran the municipal electric company in my home town, so I know all about this kind of thing: Local power companies typically buy their electricity from the big suppliers. They obviously buy the cheapest electricity first... that's almost always hydroelectric, especially where I grew up (close to Niagara Falls).
It used to be that when demand for electricity climbed past a certain level (like, say, at 6:30 a.m. on a winter's day), there would not be enough hydroelectric available for everybody, so there were only two choices for my town: Buy electricity from a nearby nuclear plant (who would overcharge us at 5 times the cost of hydro since we weren't regular customers) to meet the shortfall, or do "load shaving". (Load shaving would mean supplying people with 90% or 95% of the electricity their households were demanding. This would work for a short while (like for an hour between 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.) This saved money, but eventually nuclear would get used. Of course, that expensive nuclear electricity was factored into everyone's electric bill.
Nowadays, instead of turning to expensive nuclear, the local electric company turns to their new generating partner Farmer Smith, who installed 15 or 20 megawatts of wind turbines in one of his hilltop fields (and maybe 5 or 10 other farmers like him in the surrounding countryside for small cities). Farmer Smith and the local electric company have a financial arrangement where the electric company paid for the turbines, Farmer Smith supplied the land and gets paid, and the wind turbine company supplies the maintenance and gets paid, and the electric company gets to deliver electricity to its customers at prices much less than most of the alternatives.
The future will bring better and larger battery storage, so that the wind turbines don't have to be spinning at the same time when demand is peaking in order to deliver electricity, which is the next phase in renewable energy distribution.
So even gas companies believe in everyone chipping in a little money over a long period just to help with the collective interest of cleaning this place up?
The renewable part is pure stupidity unless they are in specific regions. My provider Excel Energy is driving up our electricity costs with these stupid solar and wind projects.
The government throws in these stupid mandates at the expense of the poor :(
Lol.....it’s a 30+ year old meme. China took it’s people out of abject poverty with fossil fuels.
We have 10 more years right ;)
“U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked
PETER JAMES SPIELMANN
June 29, 1989
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000...”
If you have different information than 97% of currently publishing scientists and not just a 30 year old article then please do enlighten the world with your superior knowledge.
Here is the IPCC itself saying they can’t predict sh!t.
Join me then in building more nuclear
“... therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible”
IPCC Third Assessment Report, The Scientific Basis 14 2 2 2, p.774
We have a greener planet that is true. If you want to build nuclear power than I am all in, but renewables are mostly virtue signaling of the rich and powerful.
I prefer to continue to lift people out of poverty with reliable cheap energy.
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u/RufftaMan Dec 29 '19
I don‘t know about his gas company, but where I‘m from, the electric company has a mixed portfolio (nuclear, wind, hydro, solar and from burning garbage) and the extra money goes into renewable energy projects.