Friday, January 05, 2018

Renewables and Reviewables

It used to be you got your phone from AT&T and your electricity from the local owner of the telephone poles, but these days you can shop for anything, which makes it totally confusing, but then again merely training for picking health care plans.  In Eli's burrow, a bunny can source his or her electrons from different sources.  Eli chose the one that only sources green electrons.  For one thing they come on a green plate

However, and more to the point, they also provide a yearly summary of where they are getting those little tasty guys from as compared to the average for the other suppliers.

This gives Eli a good idea of what is available but of course it varies between suppliers.  What is particularly interesting and should be watched is the decrease in coal use for electrical generation, which has mostly been driven by replacement by gas since 2014, falling from 45% to 33% while gas has risen from 15% to 26%.   Still driving down coal use is progress and the availability of 100% renewable electricity is also progress.

The extra cost of the renewable electrons? About $50 per year over the past three years.

6 comments:

  1. That juice is cheap because it's really coming from the same grid full of dirty electrons generated by burning coal, natural gas and (cough) nium. I'm paying 13 cents euro per kWh used from a generator which gives me details regarding the CO2 they emit making the juice they generate, and the emissions for the average juice in the grid. But I'm not naive, the electrons I get are worth the average. And I have a hell of a time getting my family to turn off lights when they leave the room.

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  2. How much extra for green positrons we can use to amplify our virtue signaling gain by annihilating anthracite-fired electons ?

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  3. Dear Fernando every electron that Eli pays rent for generated from wind is another electron not sent on its way from pile of coal.

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  4. Good to hear that the added cost is not large. Perhaps we should work to the more fruitful argument about the level of constant power needed to stabilize a grid, and how do we as a community achieve that level.

    I get really tired of hearing repetitive unsourced arguments that we can't have electricity without fossil fuels.

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  5. The Scandanavian countries are getting very close with different mixes basically on wind, hydro and nuclear.

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  6. Vaguely related, the South Australian government recently had Tesla install a 100MW/129MWh lithium ion battery bank at the Hornsdale Power Reserve, following a severe storm that destroyed the state's interconnector with Victoria and which resulted in state-wide blackings-out. There was much derision from the conservative state opposition and the conservative Australian federal government (the Liberal-National parties of Australia are effectively a collection of fossil fuel-supporting, climate change-denying right-wing radicals) who said that it would be a white elephant.

    Anyway, the battery bank is proving its worth so well that it may actually pay for itself in 12 months:

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/how-teslas-big-battery-is-bringing-australias-gas-cartel-to-heel

    The right-wing is quietly petulant...

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