the death of coal?

Quote: AZDuffman

Redneck engineering, baby!

redneck?? I don't think the good ol' boys around here would ever accord me the title of redneck. they still remember when I walked into the coffee section of a gas station store here and asked for a "latte". they didn't know what was but they sure knew it tweren't something no american should be drinking.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/9/new-yorks-electricity-market-is-a-scam.html

Prices are artificial, if it were a capitalist free market, prices for electricity would drop. The subsidy's for Alcoa are absurd.

In the middle of the night on Sunday, September 13, the wholesale price of electricity in Texas was negative $8.52 per megawatt-hour. (The windmill operators had to pay the utilities to accept their excess electricity.)

Texas has entered the eery, bizarre world of too many windmills.

Quote: reno

In the middle of the night on Sunday, September 13, the wholesale price of electricity in Texas was negative $8.52 per megawatt-hour. (The windmill operators had to pay the utilities to accept their excess electricity.)

Texas has entered the eery, bizarre world of too many windmills.

Looks like thanks to the crony Federal system they still made lots of money on the deal.

I think the electricity producers in Texas would like to be able to sell their power out of state, or maybe should invest in batteries.

Quote: reno

In the middle of the night on Sunday, September 13, the wholesale price of electricity in Texas was negative $8.52 per megawatt-hour. (The windmill operators had to pay the utilities to accept their excess electricity.)

But the feds paid them 23.00.

Texas has entered the eery, bizarre world of too many windmills.

Quote: petroglyph

But the feds paid them 23.00..

Will this subsidy last forever? Of course not.

If I'm reading this article correctly, the $23 per megawatt hour federal tax credit only applies to windmills manufactured prior to December 31, 2014.

Incidentally, Texas received 9 percent of their electricity from wind in 2014. That's incredible, considering it's the 2nd largest state in the U.S. by population.

Quote: AZDuffman

Looks like thanks to the crony Federal system they still made lots of money on the deal.

A lot of Tea Partiers in Texas want the state to secede from the U.S.

That's one way to end the $23 subsidy! :)

Quote: reno

A lot of Tea Partiers in Texas want the state to secede from the U.S.

If they did I might move!

Quote: reno

Will this subsidy last forever? Of course not.

If I'm reading this article correctly, the $23 per megawatt hour federal tax credit only applies to windmills manufactured prior to December 31, 2014.

Incidentally, Texas received 9 percent of their electricity from wind in 2014. That's incredible, considering it's the 2nd largest state in the U.S. by population.

From your link: "Bloomberg) -- Wind power will be cheaper than electricity produced from natural gas within a decade, even without a federal tax incentive, according to a U.S. Energy Department analysis." Hard for me to know where to start? First, Bloomberg. My next contention with the author who wrote this opinion is they say it will be cheaper than nat gas within a decade. That is bullcrap 6ft. deep. Right now, you can order combined cycle turbine generators, which are just a jet engine that run on either nat gas or jetA and they are nearly plug in and hook to the grid. Infinitely reliable, put them anywhere. End of story on nat gas gen. These can be controlled remotely, and almost forget they are in the system. The US has an estimated 200 years worth of recoverable gas. Pipeline infrastructure in place, etc.

They are used for baseload and aren't at the whims of the wind gods, smooth and as reliable as the next Boeing or Mcdonald Douglass plane you ride one. After installing heat recovery, their efficiency increases IIRC about 10%.

The cost of operating a wind farm in breezy states like Iowa and South Dakota dropped by more than a third to $45 a megawatt-hour in 2013 from $71 in 2008. Costs will continue declining as tower heights increase by as much as 50 percent The cost has dropped ot 45$ and it is sold [in Texas] for 8.23? I also recall Obama signing an exemption for raptor strikes. Now they want to go taller and knock planes out of the air. Here is an article, 440 thousand kills "http://www.newsmax.com/Reagan/Windmills-wind-solar-obama/2013/11/26/id/538744/" And the killing continues, unabated.

These things are deadly in flyways. Migratory birds are channeling their migration pathways in the same areas, for the same reasons as the site locators do, for where to place the windmills. They kill so many eagles that the POTUS had to sign an exemption. Ducks, geese, owls, hawks, are getting slaughtered. It's hard to imagine how fast the outward tip of the blade is travelling? The windmills when the ice builds up on the blades, will throw several hundred pound chunks of ice over a hundred yards. From 200ft. up that can easily kill humans or cows or whatever. People that live near them complain they are noisy, and constantly vibrating.

''Renewing the tax credit is main focus of the American Wind Energy Association," That is self explanatory, if these things made economic sense, and were actually competitive, they could focus on something else. One of the manufacturers GE, pays no federal income tax., this is a charity program for global corporations.

The power industry will use 23 percent less water if wind power meets 35 percent of U.S. electricity demand by 2050 If this, if that, 35 years from now, 90% of the wind generators installed today, will have long quit working and the debt by the taxpayer will have been refinanced several times. The debt, at interest, will roll over in perpetuity as these things will never pay for themselves, it will actually be cheaper if they fall down.

"...avoiding 23,000 premature deaths due to air pollution.

Making the PTC permanent would “provide the kind of stability that’s needed, not only for developers to move forward and put more wind turbines up and get more wind on the grid, but also for manufacturers to make decisions to locate their facilities here in the U.S.,” Utech said. The deaths from the pollution to manufacture these damn things is never taken into account. These are manufactured off shore, mostly in China who uses dirty coal to smelt the ore which is shipped from Australia on dirty polluting ships, after being mined by smoke billowing equipment and hauled to the ship on polluting trucks, off loaded in China largely by equipment that has no concept of clean air, smelted, rolled, shipped, melted again, stamped and formed, than the same thing again with copper, the blades, back on a ship to good ole clean air carbon credit USA, who ship it to the sites which are cut out of the earth, in bird sanctuary's by smoky machines, and maintained by the same. That pollution doesn't get factored into the true cost of these things.

O's adviser in this case, may have been the same source for financing "Solyndra" which has gone bankrupt, and on and on infinitum. Solar power works also, but it has to be supported by tax payers as they also don't pay for themselves, and that is before factoring in they start decaying the day they see the sun or having to wash them once a week, while the southwest is in a drought.