Germany almost generates 100% of its energy from renewables

The no profits all day is where you lose me. I personally can't see them being in business if they need those two hours to make any money at all.

edit: Future wise-idk. Was only concerned with answering your specific question about how did they make money that day.

 

I could see that if it was a normal thing they do all the time, but for two hours on one Sunday? I doubt it hurt the plants already running badly enough to jack up prices to make up for that two hours.

 

Nope every single cent is counted then future rates set check the documentation from your power company some time.

 

Oh yes you do.

The question is why do you feel entitled to steal from your neighbors when not everyone can do what you are doing. If the system were perfectly distributed it would be unstable and nearly impossible to recover. You can have panels because not everyone has them.

 

Mine is 5.3 cents/kWh. Doesn't move.

Of course I live in deregulated Texas, where there are hundreds of electricity providers.

If those two hours are the make or break hours, they really need to revisit their business strategy. That's pathetic.

 

Actually it's $0.052XX. They carry out the decimal place very far you just don't see it.

 

They're not actually paying me an inflated price. They're just giving me credit at retail rates. And the excess energy I produce goes right to my neighbors to consume without having to traverse a complex transmission system. Those neighbors may or may not get charged the same retail rate as I got a credit for. It all depends what rate schedule they're on, and how much electricity they've used for for the month.

In California we have a variety of different rates, some of which are based on tiers where the more electricity you use during the month, the more you get charged. You get a base amount to use at 18.205 cents per kWh, and anything over a certain portion of that is charged a higher rate up to a certain usage level (24.081 cents a kWh), and then goes up again to a third tier (39.9.84 cents a kWh). We used to have 5 tiers where the top one was over 50 cents a kWh, but they've been collapsing the tiers lately down to the 3 we have now.

We also have time of use rates, which in addition to having tiers, charges a different amount for the tiers depending upon the time of day you are consuming electricity. Those rates start at 34.159 cents a kWh for peak day, 22.632 cents for partial-peak, and 14.954 cents a kWh for off-peak during the summer. The peak rate can go as high as 55.848 cents a kWh during the summer. Winter rates are a bit more reasonable starting at 17.071 cents per kWh for partial-peak, and 15.388 cents per kWh for off-peak. There is no peak rate during the winter. Partial peak rate peaks at 38.760 cents a kWh when you hit tier 3.

So if my panels are under-performing for some reason (cloudy or rainy day), I can pay more for my electricity than my neighbors. Or on a good day I might be generating tons of credits to offset those bad days.

PG&E pays a wholesale rate of about 4 cents a kWh to anybody who generates electricity, whether it's residential solar, a commercial natural-gas fired plant, or a wind-farm.

No, I'm illustrating how I'm paying more than my fair share for the net amount of electricity I actually use from the grid. In reality, I'm saving ~$1500 a year on my electricity costs. I used to pay PG&E an average of $250 a month for electricity. I now pay them about $10 a month (mandatory minimum amount that everyone has to pay, solar or no solar) & I pay the solar leasing company $110 per month. That's a pretty decent savings.

 

I'm not stealing from my neighbors. They're also perfectly free to put solar on their roof anytime they want. They could also install an off-grid system and disconnect from the grid and not pay PG&E any money. I could do the same, too. I wonder how PG&E would like it if a lot of their customers starting going off-grid. They'd have less load on the system, but potentially also less revenue.

There won't ever be a time where things are perfectly distributed. Too many factors affect what the load is at any one time on the system. Can you tell me what the difference is to the grid whether a 4 kW rooftop solar setup is offline or 4 people have turned on their air-conditioners?

You still seem to be stuck on the concept that if the entire CA grid goes down, all those solar installations are going to make it impossible to restart things and I'm having a hard time understanding why. As soon as the grid goes down, the inverters stop producing any output and disconnect from the grid. They won't reconnect back to the grid until they see a stable grid, and they certainly won't all automatically start back up at the same time. Are you envisioning some future setup where 30 or 40% of the grid is solar based? If so, in the that distant future, yes, that will provide some extra challenges to managing the grid, especially when there's been some sort of widespread failure. But we're not there yet, and we're not likely to get there in the next 10 years. The CA grid operator appears to be smart enough to know how to balance variable resources like wind and solar with that of traditional generation sources.

 

I haven't proposed anything. I'm not under the illusion that one day in my lifetime the majority of electricity will be somehow be produced by solar or wind. I do know that eventually we'll run out of fossil fuels, or the cost to use them will be exorbitantly high. Better that we start now encouraging new technologies that can replace those traditional generation sources.

I don't have an answer for that. But I know that we'll have to come up with some sort of way to store excess generation for later use. If we don't start thinking about these things now and start experimenting with the technology necessary now, then when the time comes that we need it, we'll be in a world of hurt.

 

Yes you are. Who do you think pays for that sweet credit you get at retail when at most you should get what is the incremental cost AKA the lambda? Your neighbors pay for it in their rates.

Not everyone the only reason yours works is because most others don't do what you are doing. You are like the guy who throws their trash out the window. It works for you because others don't. If all energy was distributed it would work. It's not physically possible for everyone to do this. So we are left with the haves and the have nots.

 

Also some have the integrity not to "steal" from their neighbors (in the form of tax payer paid for subsidies).

 

When gov picks winners and losers we are all losers. The current wind and solar technologies cannot compete in the market unless subsidized by the gov. This "selection" of technologies reduces research on technologies that can compete in the market with fossil, nuclear, and hydro. Ethanol is still with us even though it's been an energy bust. Politicians will not stop the ethanol subsidies because of the votes in the states of Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, etc ...

We have fossil fuel reserves for the next ~ 200 years and that number is going up every year.

 

Well, what is that incremental cost? What part of the unbundled rate is it part of? Distribution? Generation? Transmission? Those are just 3 out of the 12 parts that make up the full rate that I or my neighbors have to pay. And the amount of those components varies depending upon which rate schedule I, or my neighbors, are on.

I get that you object to me getting full retail credit for excess energy that I'm exporting to the grid. But paying me a wholesale rate for energy that I'm exporting isn't fair to me. My use of solar lessens the load on the grid, I'm not using the transmission & distribution network as much. Any excess power that I generate gets immediately consumed by my neighbors, again lessening the load on the grid, and the transmission & distribution network. I already have to pay a minimum amount every month regardless of how much electricity I consume (or don't consume as the case may be) and I already have to walk away from credits I can't use.

Well, the California PUC & Legislature clearly disagree with you (and the Investor Owned Utilities here in California). Just because you see it as stealing doesn't mean that others do. And just because I drive a more fuel efficient vehicle doesn't mean that I'm stealing gas tax dollars from other drivers, or depriving money for the roads. It just means that I made a smarter choice when it comes to driving a car. It's the same thing for the way that solar works.

 

If you are talking about fracking-derived fossil fuel sources, that may ultimately have a very high environmental cost associated with it that far outweighs the cost of solar and wind. I'm sure there are companies that have figured out how to do it more safely than others, but safety costs money, and when you are competing with cheap OPEC oil, costs have to be cut, and safety tends to be one of those costs that gets cut first because it's a drain on the bottom line.

Lets face it, all energy sources that we get and use are subsidized in some manner by the government, whether it's via tax breaks, allowing companies to drill on public land, or sending troops to the middle east to protect countries with lots of oil.

 

There is no evidence of any significant problems with fracking. Safety is always a concern and US fossil fuel industry invests in it. Accidents happen and corrective action is taken. There are regulations and inspectors involved. Nobody is cutting costs on safety in a systematic way. Developing our US oil resources increases global supply and results in lower prices. The ability of any cartel to control oil prices would be virtually eliminated by increased supply from the US.

And the subsidies received by wind turbines and solar are direct payments by US taxpayers. Those technologies are economic losers and will always be economic losers just as ethanol is now. The oil tax breaks are miniscule and involve expensing instead depreciation of equipment and depletion depreciation. This helps small independent oil producers much more than BIG OIL. Oil leases are granted to oil companies to drill on public land. These are not free. And we did not go into Iraq to steal it's oil if that's what you are getting at.

https://www.aei.org/publication/the-truth-about-all-those-subsidies-for-big-oil/

 

So you're thinking they jack it up by .000002 cents or something? I think the plants were ok for two hours on one sunny summer Sunday afternoon.

This story(the headline) is junk. I just don't think the regular plants were suffering. They just made a little less money that one Sunday.

 

The claim was in that day Germany generated all its energy from renewables and the margins gained during the 22 hours are lost in the 2 they are losing money.

Back to the core problem with solar and wind you have to have a huge generating capacity in standby not earning anything, not covering its cost. Who pays for those loses?

 

The headline was a lie. It occurred for two hours and it was electricity only(which is what is stated in the article). If the non renewable plants can only make money after running for 22 hours in a 24 hour period, they may need some financial advice.

I'm not discussing the future, or what would happen if switching. I'm talking about this one two hour period and that's it.

 

Its the cost to generate the next unit of power. You can look up yours. Every utility has to file their incremental cost for every hour of every day with FERC in their 714 annual report. It's probably between $0.03- $0.05/kwh. You are getting paid about 10 times what your power is worth with your neighbors picking up the bill. Most of what you rant about are fixed costs. Generating your own power in no way lowers those fixed costs.

That actually doesn't help. Load is needed for stability. Lightly loaded lines are actually a problem for the stability of a power system.

 

My bad.

AA

 

OK you don't what to discuss a pertinent issue......gotcha.

And yes if I run a car wash for 12 hours a day and for one of those hours I have no customers at the end of the day I could show a loss. At a minimum an operating margin not high enough to sustain the car wash. Same with a huge power generating plant. And then if course the goal with renewables is more and more hours everyday.

 

This whole debate is about Agenda 21 and is one of the planks of Communism. It has nothing to do with saving the environment or global warming. Its about globalisation of the world.

If you look at the evidence, its very clear that with current technology we will still have to run on some sort of coal power plants as there are times when the sun isn't shinning and the wind isn't blowing. Considering that todays storage technologies have about 60% efficiency at best (which means you have to produce twice the electricity as you would normally produce) there isn't enough suitable land available to handle US's current demand let alone future increases in demand.

Its like solar roadway. Sound good in theory but due to losses in the transportation of the electricity as well as surfaces issues (tires don't work well on glass surfaces). And losses in angle of the the solar panels. Solar road ways produce marginal excess electricty.

On germany reling on renewables. They actually get most of their energy from bio fuel (which by the way has a carbon footprint). So the article is misleading at best

 

Well your question was how did they make money that day. That's what I was answering for you. And those car washes need financial advice too.

 

What does the depreciation of the wind and solar power generation equipment including distribution do to the overall calculation of profit and loss for the entire 24 hour period ??

 

Great Point!

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