FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

[quigleydoor]

Now for some good news. This video (5 min) describes research projects, which sound to me a lot like the Public Private Partnerships which EJ wrote about in his book.

http://video.ft.com/v/983210935001/M...-solar-harvest

[santafe2]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

Now for some good news. This video (5 min) describes research projects, which sound to me a lot like the Public Private Partnerships which EJ wrote about in his book.

I'm not an expert with regard to wind technology but solar is moving forward quickly and panels will likely move to the sub $1 a watt region next year. To put this in perspective, the average solar panel cost $4 a watt three years ago. The next great leap will be in areas of installation costs.

[c1ue]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

What, you mean this "harvest"?

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/06/the-wind-farm-scam/

I never thought I’d agree with a member of the Kennedy clan, but Bobby Kennedy’s son got it right when he dismissed the much-hyped Cape Wind project that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved last week. “It’s a boondoggle of the worst kind,” Kennedy said. “It’s going to cost the people of Massachusetts $4 billion over the next 20 years in extra costs.”

If anything, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, underestimated the cost of Cape Wind. The project will see the construction of 130 wind-powered turbines off the coast of Cape Cod Massachusetts that will, according to its developers, generate an average of 170 megawatts of electricity for the Bay State. The turbines will cost about $1 billion to build. Let’s assume that the useful life of the wind turbines is twenty years, that the maintenance costs of the windmills is zero, and that nobody has to pay a dime of interest on the $1 billion worth of financing needed to construct these windmills. Even if we accept such wildly inaccurate and charitable assumptions, the cost of energy generated by Cape Wind over those twenty years will be over thirty-three cents per kilowatt. That’s more than six times the typical wholesale price for electrons today, around six cents per kilowatt, depending on the market.

Thanks to government subsidies, Massachusetts’ residents won’t have to pay the full price for Cape Wind power. Instead, they’ll only have to fork over four and a half times the going rate, rather that something over six times that benchmark. According to Bobby junior:

“We’re the windiest country on earth and we have lots and lots of land. Americans don’t want to pay 27 cents a kilowatt hour for energy.”

Truth be told, Americans don’t want to pay 26 cents a kilowatt for energy, or 25 cents a kilowatt, or one fraction of a penny more than they have to. They rather reasonably expect that the free enterprise system will function properly and allow them to find the most competitive – aka: least expensive – source of power available. Kennedy is putting the economic argument to use here in a very limited sense of course. The Kennedys don’t really care what you and I pay for power. It’s just that the Kennedys don’t want a forest of giant windmills interfering with their view while they’re yachting majestically down Nantucket Sound. But, the same logic in fact applies everywhere in the “windiest country on earth”: wind fired energy is expensive.

I recently asked an energy executive why his company was investing in wind-power so heavily, when we both know it doesn’t make any economic sense to do so. His reply was that it’s all about the government subsidies. Once those run out, they intend to forgo any further – very expensive – maintenance, run the things till they break down and then forget about them. Given the high cost of wind power, and the fact that you have to have an equivalent amount of fossil power ready to back up wind energy (since the wind doesn’t blow all the time outside of the halls of Congress) it’s reasonable to assume that this fellow isn’t the only person in the energy industry thinking along such lines.

Yet wind power projects are still all the rage and promise to be for quite a while yet. Wind power recently passed biomass power as number two on the Department of Energy’s renewable power rankings. The Obama administration loves windmills, but apparently not just because it’s “green energy.” It appears that there has been some spreading of the green involved as well. Former New York Sun managing editor Ira Stoll uncovered some of the connections at his website, Future of Capitalism. Stoll noted how $503 in stimulus money was awarded to a couple of wind energy companies that have close ties to the Obama administration:

“…the recipient of $294 million, Iberdrola SA, had executives who had donated more than $21,000 to the Obama campaign and related funds. Another $115 million in funds for windmills went to a company called First Wind, which, I noted, had owners that included D.E. Shaw and Madison Dearborn Partners. Shaw is the firm at which President Obama’s chief of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, held a $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job, and Madison Dearborn is the firm of which Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff, said, “They’ve been not only supporters of mine, they’re friends of mine.”

Odd that the mainstream media has shown no interest in these sorts of ties, especially after journalists spent eight years drawing every connection they could, no matter how tenuous, between the Bush administration and the oil industry. It’s not surprising that such ties exist of course. They smack of the kind of “pay to play” politics for which Chicago is justifiably famous.

If you really want to understand the futility of wind power, consider the following analysis. In 2007 (the last year for which verified data is currently available) the Department of Energy reported that there were 389 wind-farms producing electricity in the United States, with a net generation capacity of 16,596 megawatts. If all of those windmills were churning out electrons at capacity all of the time, they would have produced a little over 145 million megawatt hours of electricity in 2007. How much did they in fact produce? A little less than 27 million megawatt hours, or less than twenty percent of capacity (also called “capacity factor” in the business).

If a coal-fired plant providing base-load power operates at something less than a ninety percent capacity factor, it’s owners are going to take a long, hard look at the way it’s being run. But windmills – both because they’re expensive and thus often among the last units to called into service to meet demand, and because you just can’t count on the wind – are built in droves despite the fact they are eighty percent useless. But for government subsidies, Cape Wind, or any of the big wind farms sprouting up across the country, would not exist.

[c1ue]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

Oh, and let's not leave out solar:

http://knowledgeproblem.com/2011/05/...ial-condition/

Politicians show up, grinning for the cameras at groundbreaking, they come applauding the expansion announcement (and why not, public tax breaks and other policy support for solar power manufacturers were chief among the reasons the plants were built in the first place), but where are the toothy smiles of supporting public officials when the company closes the manufacturing plant down? Evergreen Solar, a prized clean-energy/green jobs catch of the state of Massachusetts thanks to some creative economic development work by state and local governments, is closing its manufacturing plant in Devens, MA.

According to one summary, “Among the incentives the state offered Evergreen Solar were a $15 million property tax break, a $7.5 million in state tax break, $2.7 million through a subsidized lease and $21 million in cash grants. Not to mention that the state spent $13 million in construction on roads and other infrastructure to support the plant.” Another report put the figure at “at least $43m in state aid.”

Massachusetts politicians no longer swarm the gates of Evergreen Solar; instead they send notice that they want the tax breaks back, seeking $22.5 million from a company that has been losing money so quickly that it may not survive to the end of 2011. And perhaps Massachusetts should not feel especially foolish, Evergreen managed to squeak out significant support from government entities in Germany (“grants totaling approximately $34 million at current exchange rates”) and China, too ($33 million in state-owned company loans to Evergreen and a similar amount to its Chinese partner).

Just another warning sign that the business of promoting business with tax breaks and other local subsidies is fraught with difficulty.

There was a harvest, for sure. Just not of electricity...

[charliebrown]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

+1, thanks for giving me a belly laugh.

[santafe2]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

Oh, and let's not leave out solar:

http://knowledgeproblem.com/2011/05/...ial-condition/

There was a harvest, for sure. Just not of electricity...

Evergreen is a company I've talked about before on iTulip. Five years ago when silicon cost $450 a kilo, their ribbon technology gave them a real advantage. It's more complex to manufacture but uses very little silicon. Now that contact pricing is in the $40-$50 a kilo range, Evergreen can no longer compete. They've moved their manufacturing to China to try to cut costs but low budget panels have dropped by 30% over the last 6 months and it will drive Evergreen out of business at some point.

As for the other story, Cape Wind is a bad idea. I've also commented previously on the expense and maintenance of deep water wind turbines. Land based wind energy is sold retail for under 10 cents a kWh which gives it cost parity with natural gas based electricity.

Solar installation costs have come down to about $4.50 a watt in California and Arizona for 5-10kw residential systems. Large residential users in the PG&E territory pay 30-34 cents per kWh for the majority of their electricity. Without incentives the payback for solar is about 8 years. With incentives it's about 5 years.

Installed costs for solar will be about $3.50 a watt by the end of 2012. The federal incentive will go away in 2017.

[we_are_toast]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

I'm not an expert with regard to wind technology but solar is moving forward quickly and panels will likely move to the sub $1 a watt region next year. To put this in perspective, the average solar panel cost $4 a watt three years ago. The next great leap will be in areas of installation costs.

But, But, the denialists said that solar would never be competitive! $1 a watt is absolutely amazing! I wonder where the denialists will move the goal posts now.

And as far as wind:

Source Percent Growth 1995 - 2009 Percent of US Energy Supply in 2009
Hydro -17.9% 2.83%
Geothermal 26.9% 0.39%
Solar 55.7% 0.12%
Wind 2,012.1% 0.74%
Biomass 15.9% 4.12%
Total Renewable 15.9% 8.20%
Data Source: Energy Information Administration

Every major car company in the world is offering Hybrid or outright electric vehicles, the price of PV's are dropping like a rock, and battery technology improvements are progressing on several fronts. As the denialists continue, and will continue, to deny, the market place is seeing the future. The ALT-E/conservation market boom is really just beginning. The transition will be bumpy, and very painful for some, but inevitable.

[BK]

Re: FT: CASH Harvesting and Deval Patrick

Amazing in just a few short years the Honorable Gov Deval Patrick goes from harvesting $360,000 per year as a Board Member of Ameriquest - a sub Prime Mortgage Company -
To Harvesting Tax Dollars in the as the Governor of Massachusetts to save us all from Peak Oil and High Energy costs.

Keep in mind he wasn't fired from Ameriquest for protesting the Sub prime Mortgages that Ameriquest Peddled on Poor Folk....he left because he knew the Gravy train had come to an end.

[snakela]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

I'm not an expert with regard to wind technology but solar is moving forward quickly and panels will likely move to the sub $1 a watt region next year. To put this in perspective, the average solar panel cost $4 a watt three years ago. The next great leap will be in areas of installation costs.

What's driving it? I've been looking around for PV arrays casually and they seem to be more than just a few months ago at the retail level. Maybe I'm comparing PVs made of different materials. Is there a specific technology that looks to be first to reach parity w/ dino-electric?

[quigleydoor]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

Anybody have the patience to watch the video and comment on the substance? Here is the content of the video I thought was interesting, and reminiscent of EJ's call for Public Private Partnerships:

1) Massachusetts has installed the country's largest wind turbine blade testing facility, with government funding. This is a boon to local research and manufacturing in wind turbines.

2) Prof. Don Sodoway at M.I.T., funded by DOE and Mass. Clean Energy Center, is researching battery storage for renewable electricity generators. Another PPP. Massachusetts will probably lead the country in manufacturing and engineering electricity storage plants.

Regarding EJ's conception of PPP, are these projects in the same spirit?

Please stick to the topic I introduced, instead of ranting about general ideas, history, and talking points we're all familiar with already.

[Starving Steve]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

Everything important for the public to know, the eco-frauds omit or conveniently forget to tell you....

Not just the boondoggle of wind and not just the boondoggle of solar, the eco-frauds have been trying to rip-off government grants for ethanol. The latter fuel, which at first glance appears to be wonderful because it has a high octane rating, does NOT have the same energy in combustion that gasoline has. So, you end-up filling your gas tank much more often because your miles per gallon goes way down. The eco-frauds never told you that the octane rating is a measure of how fast a fuel burns and NOT how much energy the fuel renders.

Not just the boondoggle with ethanol, windmills and solar, the eco-frauds now want a boondoggle with bio-diesel. The latter fuel, which at first glance appears to be wonderful because diesel is cheap and energy efficient, is not cheap because 10% of bio-diesel is alcohol and 1% of bio-diesel is lye. The latter two ingredients to make bio-diesel are NOT cheap. And to make vast quantities of bio-diesel, one would have to use farmland, not just sewage (waste-water) from treatment plants and not just the waste cooking-oil from fast-food restaurants. Anything grown on farmland for vegetable oil would be costly because farmland has an alternate use for food crops......... Trust the eco-frauds to always leave-out the important information, especially if they might rip-off a government grant for doing so.

And then there is another problem with diesel fuels of any type: Diesel is filthy. So motor oil ends-up dirty, and the oil wears into the motor, fast! Also, diesel motors have a higher compression than gasoline motors, so diesel motors are heavier to lug around. Also, higher compression wears-out a motor faster. Bottom-line is that diesel motors do not last as long as gasoline motors unless you do endless servicing of the motors, especially when the motors get old........... The eco-frauds always forget to tell you the important stuff to know.

Oh yahh, my truck-driver friend has a diesel truck and it still runs fine after 2000-gazillion miles---- blah, blah, blah......... All that I can say is go talk to some junk yards and also to some diesel-motor mechanics. The bottom-line is that what you save with a diesel in fuel-efficiency (MPG) you lose in repair bills and depreciation.... As I wrote, the eco-frauds always omit the important details to know.

Sure windmills work, at 20% of capacity, when the wind blows. Sure solar panels work to harvest more or less one-calorie per square centimetre per minute of energy, if the Sun shines and if the humidity is low and if you are in high-summer and if the solar panel is perpendicular to the Sun's rays, and if the time of day is near the solar noon, and if the sky is perfectly clear with not even cirrus clouds passing-by at high altitude. Then you might get enough energy to convert to electricity to maybe light-up a few bead-lights.... And similarly, I won't even get into the problems with diesel motors in extreme cold weather, like Canadian cold weather. Ever wonder why diesel trucks have their motors running all of the time in Canada during winter?..... I don't want to get into the real-world facts to disturb the party here.

One definitely would save a bundle in fuel-cost burning diesel from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay in winter. But then, one has to subtract-off the cost to keep the diesel motor running in Winnipeg and in Thunder Bay, at the truck stops, for maybe two-hours in Winnipeg and maybe another two-hours in Thunder Bay.... Ah yahh, but look at the heavy load we carried in the truck!

And Mac, the truck-driver, would be right.....

As I wrote, trust the eco-frauds to always leave-out the really important information for the public to know. And I have not even got into the capital costs of solar panels and windmills. I guess it doesn't matter because the governments are paying for part of the costs.... Hence, the word, "boondoggle" is appropriate.

Oh, and what about the costs to make the alcohol and the lye and gather-up the waste vegetable oil from sewage plants and fast-food restaurants? That takes energy, too. And if you keep those running-around costs hidden, then you can prepare your own bio-diesel, right at home............. Tell your friends in the Sierra Club: "You beat the system!"

As I have always posted, "I am the slow-learner here."

[c1ue]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

But, But, the denialists said that solar would never be competitive! $1 a watt is absolutely amazing! I wonder where the denialists will move the goal posts now.

Sure, so how many watts do you need to power an electric car?

If we take the (highly optimistic) 25 kwh per 100 miles, then we'd need at least 3 kilowatts installed just for the car. Of course we'd also need the electrical system plus a storage system - add on losses and you're looking at 4 to 5 kilowatts installed.

Tack on the average 900 kwh/month usage, and that's another 10 kilowatts installed.

And as for solar being a utility level electricity supplier: as of 2009 solar supplies 0.2% of US electricity. Just a bit far away.

Finally as to pricing: I'd like to see the details on what is being purported.

Wholesale solar only pricing - excluding electrical systems and storage - isn't helpful. Doubly so when the type of solar panel is talked about: there are huge lifespan and efficiency differences between thin film, monocrystalline, polycrystalline, SiGe, GaAs, single junction, multi-junction, etc etc.

[lektrode]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

What, you mean this "harvest"?

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/06/the-wind-farm-scam/

its HILARIOUS, isnt it?

There was a harvest, for sure. Just not of electricity...

same exact sitch going out here: we have (at least) 2 windmill graveyards: dozens of the HUGE MONSTROSITIES looking like something out of a sci-fi flick, ala Mad Max = a fitting tribute to crony capitalism/pork-politix if there ever was - see this:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/1780/

its simply amazing (in a disgusted sort of way) that 10's of MILLIONS of fed-bux were spent on these facilities and when the fed/pork was gone?

THEY LET THEM SIEZE UP AND RUST AND THEN ABANDONED THEM, to become a ghostly blight on the land and nobody seems to think this is a problem?

and in the classic aftermath of just another FAILURE OF ANOTHER .GOV PROGRAM, what happened?
why they doubled-down and built _another_ set of em!!! one has to wonder just how long the subsidy will keep these going and what will happen when that porkfest is all burned up: AND JUST HOW MUCH OF THE .45/kwh we are paying is due to this 'inside job' ????

and once again, little or nuthin from the lamestream media and THE HYPOCRISY of this silence is ***D E A F E N I N G***

“…the recipient of $294 million, Iberdrola SA, had executives who had donated more than $21,000 to the Obama campaign and related funds. Another $115 million in funds for windmills went to a company called First Wind, which, I noted, had owners that included D.E. Shaw and Madison Dearborn Partners. Shaw is the firm at which President Obama’s chief of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, held a $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job, and Madison Dearborn is the firm of which Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff, said, “They’ve been not only supporters of mine, they’re friends of mine.”

Odd that the mainstream media has shown no interest in these sorts of ties, especially after journalists spent eight years drawing every connection they could, no matter how tenuous, between the Bush administration and the oil industry. It’s not surprising that such ties exist of course. They smack of the kind of “pay to play” politics for which Chicago is justifiably famous.

[lektrode]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

Sure, so how many watts do you need to power an electric car?

If we take the (highly optimistic) 25 kwh per 100 miles, then we'd need at least 3 kilowatts installed just for the car. Of course we'd also need the electrical system plus a storage system - add on losses and you're looking at 4 to 5 kilowatts installed.

Tack on the average 900 kwh/month usage, and that's another 10 kilowatts installed....

i also think its H I L A R I O U S to listen to the 'lectric car crowd go on and on and ON about the supposed 'benefits' of this boondoggle, while at same time, these same people scream their fool heads off about The Evils of nuclear power

HOW IN HELL WILL WE EVER BE ABLE TO RUN ELECTRIC CARS WITHOUT A MASSIVE AND IMMEDIATE BUILD OUT OF NUCLEAR ENERGY?

i'm talkin: MOONSHOT MISSION CRITICAL MANHATTAN PROJECT II

or hey!
we can just keep fiddlin, re-arranging the deck chairs while the bernank burns OUR money so the dems in dc can buy a few more votes of the welfare class and the 'pubs pump up the military-industrial complex, so The US can continue to fight endless wars over oil in the middle east - BRILLIANT STRATEGY, dont ya think?

we'll be standing in the soup kitchen lines before ya know it - and then we can thank the dems FOR THAT, too!

writes the former resident (economic refugee) of taxachusettes

[DSpencer]

Re: FT: Massachusetts reaps a wind and solar harvest, 6/8/2011

Please stick to the topic I introduced, instead of ranting about general ideas, history, and talking points we're all familiar with already.

(The usual rant)

Well at least you tried.