There was a time that water actually ran over the top of the spillway at Hoover Dam. It was a sight to see.
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Makes me weirdly nostalgic.
I was a frequent visitor to the region in the late 70âs into the 80âs, as âthe big spillâ was intensely anticipated but not seen. When it finally took place it was wondrous.
That supere 8 video conveys it so that it is all alarmingly familiar, like I could still touch the rail and wet from the spray.
d fb
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I was water skiing on the lake in March. It was great the water was 55 degrees and it was just like Flathead lake in July. A bunch of us were laughing because all the locals had wet suits on. But what a fun lake to ski on, you could go forever.
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Wait until you see the cost of hundreds of floating wind turbines such as they are planning for Maine and California.
DB2
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I am waiting for oil and NG to heat up the plant. Those costs are far higher.
Bob you need to salivate over those costs as well.
Maybe yes, maybe no. It depends, for example, on the discount rate used for decades in the future. It depends, for example, on whether or not hurricanes increase in intensity over the decades. Some model types say yes, some say no.
DB2
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I thought we banned clowns. How did you get in?
LOL
Another expense in addition to electricity â food.
âConsumer food prices in richer countries would be 1.25 times higher with climate policies, even if producer prices are 2.73 times higher by 2050. In contrast, lower-income countries would see consumer food prices rise by a factor of 2.45 under ambitious climate policies by 2050, while producer prices would rise by a factor of 3.3.â
DB2
I have a question about methodology and the numbers. When calculating LCOE (or other statistics on the various forms of energy), do they tally up ALL the costs, or only the costs of successful projects that eventually actually produce energy. Take wind for example, Letâs say there are 100 wind projects, but only 90 of them end up actually producing energy. The other 10 projects were cancelled for various reasons before they were ever built, but did cost billions for studies, permits, plans, etc. Are those costs also included in the âwindâ total? Same for nuclear, when billions are spent planning nuclear plants that never get built, are those costs included in the ânuclearâ "total?
I assume the answer is âyesâ, but I canât find anything showing that is the case for certain. I assume âyesâ because for hydro, they include the dismantling of hydro projects as well. So it would make sense to also include stuff that was âdismantledâ before it even produced any energy.
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Donât worry someone else is dipping into your pocket.
I would guess they do not include all cancelled or failed projects because how would they know about all of them and have good records on companies that went out of business.
Mike
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It is my understanding that the risk of failure is included in the cost of financing. So the failed costs are there, but indirectly.
For renewables, the metric levelized avoided cost of energy (LACE) should be included. That is, how much money would it cost to generate the same amount of electricity using renewables vs. using existing resources that would be displaced. This is because renewables typically canât replace conventional sources 1:1.
If LACE > LOCE, then the renewable project generally makes financial sense.
They had to install plywood sheets on top of the spillways to keep Glen Canyon dam from overtopping.
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The LCOE numbers are not actual costs. The LCOE is only an estimate of what a new power generator would cost, given some assumptions of what past projects might be like.
The LCOE can be manipulated to show some technologies as cheaper or better than others. A hidden assumption in the LCOE is the power plant always being available to produce electricity. This is more or less true for dispatchable forms of power generation, but is obviously not true for wind and solar generators.
The LCOE can also be manipulated by assuming some plant lifetime or payoff period, which may or may not be reasonable. For instance, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) (part of the Dept of Energy) LCOE calculations assume a 30-year lifetime for power generators. But wind turbines generally only last 20 years, so the LCOE assumes that the wind turbine produces power for 10 more years after it is closed down. I donât think most solar PV panels last 30 years, either. The LCOE can also be manipulated by assuming a certain discount interest rate, i, that may or may not be reasonable, so as to show a particular technology to be more expensive than others.
The LCOE numbers reported for nuclear, given in the original post, are much higher than they should be, even given the cost overruns of the recent Vogtle projects in Georgia. The LCOE for nuclear is not as high as $221 per MWh, as the graphic says. In short, they wanted to make nuclear look bad.
As the old saying goes: âFigures donât lie, but liars sure can figure.â
_ Pete
These statements are nonsense. Why would scientists manipulate LCOE and publish the results? Where are your references?
Your statements are not true - new results show following:
The estimated operational lifespan of a PV module is about 30-35 years, although some may produce power much longer.
End-of-Life Management for Solar Photovoltaics | Department of Energy.
The expected service life of wind turbines is approximately 30 years.[3] This does not mean that every individual turbine component is designed to last for 30 years. While foundations and towers are expected to meet that timeline, blades, gearboxes, generators, and other smaller hardware may need to be repaired or replaced earlier. Replacement and repairs usually occur when a component has reached or exceeded its operational lifetime or because of excessive operational wear and tear. In addition, many components are upgraded as part of repowering.
Things can be left out/not considered unintentionally or intentionally. Unintentionally, it is a case of you didnât consider X (such as grid costs in this case). Intentionally, there are things such as motivated reasoning and prosocial censorship in the sciences.
Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda
Clark et al.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301642120
Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups. This perspective helps explain both recent findings on scientific censorship and recent changes to scientific institutions, such as the use of harm-based criteria to evaluate researchâŚ
A recent national survey of US faculty at four-year colleges and universities found the following: 1) 4 to 11% had been disciplined or threatened with discipline for teaching or research; 2) 6 to 36% supported soft punishment (condemnation, investigations) for peers who make controversial claims, with higher support among younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty; 3) 34% had been pressured by peers to avoid controversial research; 4) 25% reported being âveryâ or âextremelyâ likely to self-censor in academic publications; and 5) 91% reported being at least somewhat likely to self-censor in publications, meetings, presentations, or on social media.
DB2
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It should be noted that the warranties on solar PV panels is generally about how much degradation they have. My panels have a 25 year warranty that they will produce at least 80% of initial rating. Just because they might produce only 75% after 26 years (just as an example) doesnât mean they still arenât working and still lowering the LCOE for their lifetime.
If the panels themselves actually failed completely, that would be a different story, but Iâve not heard of that ever happening. Maybe a panel or two somewhere were dropped during shipping and failed at install time.
And, of course, the most fragile part is the inverter. In my case I have a 10 year warranty (IIRC) that means it expires in 5 months. Based on its design it can be swapped out in about 5 minutes. when needed.
Mike
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You do not understand the LCOE numbers. The LCOE numbers for nuclear range from $141 to $221 per MWh.