BBC on Oil - are low prices here to stay

cells

Split this this two parts.

The value of any intermittent uncontrollable source of electricity is just the value of the fuel saved. Fuel has a different value dependant on location and also often the time of year

so for country X if the local fossil fuel price is Y you can calculate the true value of an intermittent source as follows. If its NatGas it will be ~ Y / 0.55 if it is coal it will be ~Y / 0.40

So as an example. In the UK at 40p a therm the value of solar output is 1.33 / 0.55 = 2.4 pence. Of course if the gas price goes higher the value of the solar output becomes more. If gas prices fall then the valie falls.

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Secondly there is the imaginary cost of carbon dioxide

What we know for sure is that for the past two hundred years this was reasonably set at zero. And now that we have the EU trading scheme it puts the value at about €6 euro a ton

You can point to any paper which asserts a value, it doesn't calculate a value as all the imaginary stuff used to calculate it are imaginary. What is the harm or benifit of a warmer world? Even the IPCC says net positive for some 70 years before a net negative.


and anyone who thinks fossil fuels have a net negative impact on society is plain deluded. Go look at nations that use little to no fossil fuels. What is life expectancy and wealth and wellbeing like in north korea or much of Africa or even tje UK 200 uears ago? Fossil fuels have been a massive blessing and benifit to humanity maybe speeding up our development by a thousand years.


But yes I will conceded that we can make imaginary costs real by the stick of government. But that price would have to be very very high to male solar HALF viable.

Even at £100 a ton CO2 that means a new CCGT producing 330 grams /KWh is charged 3.3 pennies per KWh. Add that to PV and we have PV go from ~2.4p to ~5.7p


of course in such a world with a £100/ton imaginary cost made real you would find a home that uses 15MWh of nat gas for heating is sent a real invoice for £277 per year for their central heating 'pollution'


And overall our ~7.5 ton per capita emission would see a real invoice of £750 for every man woman and child in the country. I wonder where you think an average family of 4 will find the £3000 per year to oay their real imaginary co2 bill?

Martyn1981

cells wrote: »

Wind-power also suffers the same problem of its uncontrollable nature but due to its higher capacity factors and a better seasonal correlation (more output in the winter than the summer) it offers much higher capability and usefulness

Solar in the UK can max out at ~15% of UK electricity needs
Offshore wind (or high CF onshore) can get closer to ~60% of UK electricity needs
Nuclear can get to ~90%

The current policy of all three is stupid as they all interfer with each other. UK should have gone wind or nuclear and left solar for someone else or just accepted that fossil fuels work and work well and just upgraded its coal and gas plants in due course.

Tiny problem with this argument. If you are suggesting wind power is useful (I agree) then you should also be aware that it produces most in the winter and least in the summer. PV does the opposite and is therefore the perfect partner.

But here's where it gets interesting, PV generation and wind generation cost roughly the same now. So think of PV as simply a boost/replacement for lost wind generation, or 'summertime wind' if you like, at the same cost.

There's no duplication of cost since both wind and PV are paid on generation, not capacity.

Since they compliment each other, and cost the same, it's hard to understand why you would support one, but argue against the other? Especially since our need to get rid of CO2 emissions will require a variety of renewables working in concert.

Mart.

cells

If you look at this imaginary co2 harm and take for example China who emmitts some 10 tons per capita

and take the $225 one of the posters here linked

that means for china the supposed cost is ~25% of GDP and for india over 30% of GDP



clearly whoever made that assertion of co2 costs was deluded

It would be far more accurate to say at low levels co2 and coal massively help a nation and its people. What portion of Chinese want to return to 30 years ago?

Even at mid to high levels I would put the net action of coal and co2 as positive.

Even such negatives of smog are nothing to do with coal but the way it is burnt. China coal use is abiut the same as Germany but as they burn it less cleanly they have problems. So that cost shouldn't be a cpst on voal or co2 but on upgrading plants to more efficiently burn and clean. Even coal mining deaths. Do you attribute its costs to coal or to lax safety standards?

overall I find the whole notion of co2 costs and especially ridiculous costs as dam silly

cells

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Tiny problem with this argument. If you are suggesting wind power is useful (I agree) then you should also be aware that it produces most in the winter and least in the summer. PV does the opposite and is therefore the perfect partner.

But here's where it gets interesting, PV generation and wind generation cost roughly the same now. So think of PV as simply a boost/replacement for lost wind generation, or 'summertime wind' if you like, at the same cost.

There's no duplication of cost since both wind and PV are paid on generation, not capacity.

Since they compliment each other, and cost the same, it's hard to understand why you would support one, but argue against the other? Especially since our need to get rid of CO2 emissions will require a variety of renewables working in concert.

Mart.

They may compliment each other on a monthly timescale but thats not what matters when eletricity supply and demand need to match on a second by second basis.

If you install for arguments sake 50GW of PV and 50GW of windpower what happens in summer when the PV is outputting 35GW and the wind power 35GW? How do you handle the 70GW of power when demand is 40GW? What do yoy do with the 35GW? You throw it away

so what was an already expensive technology made semi possible by imposing imaginary costs becomea an expensive technology where you have to discard a decent chunk

antrobus

cells wrote: »

If you look at this imaginary co2 harm ...

No 3 seems relevant. And maybe nos 30 and 38 as well.:)
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

cells

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Tiny problem with this argument. If you are suggesting wind power is useful (I agree) then you should also be aware that it produces most in the winter and least in the summer. PV does the opposite and is therefore the perfect partner.

But here's where it gets interesting, PV generation and wind generation cost roughly the same now. So think of PV as simply a boost/replacement for lost wind generation, or 'summertime wind' if you like, at the same cost.

There's no duplication of cost since both wind and PV are paid on generation, not capacity.

Since they compliment each other, and cost the same, it's hard to understand why you would support one, but argue against the other? Especially since our need to get rid of CO2 emissions will require a variety of renewables working in concert.

Mart.

You may be aware that Europe is perhaps heading towards a system of 'capacity payments' which will be awarded to coal gas nuclear biomass as they are controlable and not to uncontrollable tech like PV

That is a way to try and address the problem of PV/Wind true valie being a lot lower than wholesale value from demand following units.

If the capacity payments method is what we tend to, you will probably find wholesale prices fall to marginal fuel prices. That is to say eg wholesale falls from €50 euro a MWh to €25 euro a MWh and the difference is made up for the load followers by the capacity payments.


Thats a very long winded way of saying what I am saying. The value of uncontrollable sources is lower

Anyway by 2020 - 2025 the fate of PV and wind will be known as over a trillion dollars would have been invested by then

cells

antrobus wrote: »

No 3 seems relevant. And maybe nos 30 and 38 as well.:)
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

I think its within humanities abilities to already alter the temperature of earth so if you know what the perfect temperature is then do tell and we can make it happen. Prpblem is no one know what this perfect temperature is so how can we say we are above or below it?

I would say with confidence that an ice age would be a true disaster and one that is harder to reverse vs a heating event of a couple of degrees over a hundred+ years. I see the fossil induced heating as a good insurance policy against the next ice age

also solar panels being black in nature mean they reduce the albedo of earth and act as global warmers in that respect. Try to produce 5TW of power from PV paensl and you need 40 billion x 125wattp panels. Thats 40 billion square meters of black surface that wasn't balck before. Maybe each sqm of PV installed should require a sqm of mirror to net out additional absorption

antrobus

cells wrote: »

I think its within humanities abilities to already alter the temperature of earth so if you know what the perfect temperature is then do tell and we can make it happen. Prpblem is no one know what this perfect temperature is so how can we say we are above or below it?

I would say with confidence that an ice age would be a true disaster and one that is harder to reverse vs a heating event of a couple of degrees over a hundred+ years. I see the fossil induced heating as a good insurance policy against the next ice age
....

You might well think that, but the overwhelming scientific consensus says otherwise.

cells

Martyn1981 wrote: »

No probs I'm happy to share accurate and real information, rather than assumed, ill-informed info.

Not sure though why you want info on my set-up as it's a shallow pitch off-south system, with lots of GMT month shading, but here goes:

2012 partial data due to extension
2013 87.8kWh 89% of target
2014 86.6kWh 87% of target
2015 113.9kWh 115% of target.

If you want to work out real numbers, then try PVGIS, you'll find it extremely accurate. My lowest month against target is 82% (June 2012 (ESE only)) and my highest 131% July 2013. Because PV is affected by temperature it doesn't vary anywhere near as much as you might think.

A good example of the nullifying effect of temperature would be August last year, when the weather was pretty poor, but the low temps made up for the rather grey and damp weather and I hit 108% of target.

The numbers I gave last post were, as described, south facing with a 50d pitch. However they were based on roof mounted, so a ground mounted system would expect slightly more performance from increased cooling.

On this thread you've been lecturing somebody who lives in Austrlia, so just for fun, and a very basic (and rather poor comparison) lets move that 8kWp set up to Spain (try it on PVGIS). You should find, depending on where you stick the pin, that generation for Dec/Jan will be in the 550-750kWh range! Giving a daily (and more predictable) average of 20-25kWh.

I believe your 15kWh of leccy is way too high, my January import is approx 200kWh (202 this year, 200 last year) (June/July about 70pm) but even assuming all generation is consumed, which of course it won't be, that would only push my total consumption up to 10kWh per day. The real figure is probably high 8 low 9.

Again, I can only suggest, regarding batteries, consumption, generation etc, that you ask the people who are actually doing it, so that your posts can become less negative assumption and more realistic. It really isn't anywhere near as hard nor as expensive as you are trying to claim. Also you'll find that these people simply adapt to work with generation, accepting that each day will be different.

Mart.

I missed this post from you until now

can you keep it simple and just tell me what size of PV panels a home in england would need to guarantee winter supply. Aka they can go off grid and be 99.9% confident of not running out of juice if they had a 1 day battery (eg a 5kwh battery)

Typical UK England home uses I think 3300KWh a year or 9KWh a day but winter demand is higher than summer. Lets agree to use 12KWh for a January day the exact figure isn't critical it could be 10 or 14 but whatever 12 it is for our example.


So to generate 12KWh in the worst January day needs a system of X-KWp

please find X for us

cells

antrobus wrote: »

You might well think that, but the overwhelming scientific consensus says otherwise.

I am with them I have no doubt that we humans impact the climate probably primarily through land use. Eg england should be primarily woodland but its not

but my question was

what is the perfect temperature for earth?

15.2 centigrade?
15.6 centigrade?
14.8 centigrade?
22.7?
10.6?

What is the overwhelming concensus on that?

Surely there must be one as thats the whole point of it all. Temperate X is perfect and above X is bad. So what is X and is there a concensus?


if there is an X im all for reaching it. But that will most likely involve altering the albedo of earth to cool or heat it to figure X rather than fossol fuel use which is a crude and very slow way to reach X temperature.


But as far as I know there is no concensus on what X is