BBC on Oil - are low prices here to stay

cells

antrobus wrote: »

Maybe the price won't turn up. Maybe it has further to fall. People are seriously considering the possibility that a lot of the world's current known fossil fuel reserves are worth precisely nothing. Or as some people call it, the Carbon Bubble.

Depends dunnit. If we ever get to the point where oil is worthless, then perhaps we will be more than happy that we pumped the stuff out and flogged it when we could.

the time value of money means production now is worth more than in the future, that was even moreso important in the past when we were developing and the time value of money was thus higher.

see my examples above


as for fossil fuels being worth nothing its a stupid green nonsense argument.

at least 2 trillion barrels of oil, 750 billion tons of coal and 10,000 tcf of nat gas will be burnt before this century is over no amount of wind mills or pv cells will change that fact

Generali

cells wrote: »

as for fossil fuels being worth nothing its a stupid green nonsense argument.

at least 2 trillion barrels of oil, 750 billion tons of coal and 10,000 tcf of nat gas will be burnt before this century is over no amount of wind mills or pv cells will change that fact

I wouldn't be so hasty; the economics of solar are changing fast.

I was talking to a mate the other day who has just bought a new house just to the north of Sydney. He has recently put a bunch of solar panels on his roof. The reason? Despite paying 4x more for his electricity from the electrical company than he receives from the utilities provider for selling it back to them it costs him about $20 a fortnight less to buy the solar panels and associated gumpf on credit than it would for him to keep buying his electricity in the normal way. In 40 months (actually another 39) he will own his solar panels and be making >$4,000pa from them. That's about a quarter of his mortgage interest bill.

I wonder how much battery prices have to fall until he can get rid of the Utilities firm altogether and simply produce his own power? He's no Greenie BTW, this is purely driven by money.

In some parts of Australia it would be worth buying a house just to be able to put solar panels on the roof without planning permission.

antrobus

cells wrote: »

the time value of money means production now is worth more than in the future, that was even moreso important in the past when we were developing and the time value of money was thus higher....

Yup, I've already pointed out that $50 today is worth more than $50 tommorrow.

cells wrote: »

...as for fossil fuels being worth nothing its a stupid green nonsense argument....

You might think that, but nevertheless the likes of the Bank of England believe it to be at least a possibility.

The point is this; IF the world is actually going to deliver on its commitments to reduce CO2 emissions to prevent climate change, then it will have to NOT burn large quantities of the existing known oil reserves.

Assuming that the world is going to fail to meet the target would mean assuming that climate change is inevitable. And so if that science is right, it would mean a heap of big trouble.

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

I wouldn't be so hasty; the economics of solar are changing fast....

The cost of panels keep falling, and people are trying to develop new cheaper materials to make panels even more effective. And of course, a lot of money is being thrown at the storage problem as well.

Human ingenuity usually finds a way of solving any given problem.

CLAPTON

antrobus wrote: »

T

Human ingenuity usually finds a way of solving any given problem.

sadly an absurd statement

cells

Generali wrote: »

I wouldn't be so hasty; the economics of solar are changing fast.

I was talking to a mate the other day who has just bought a new house just to the north of Sydney. He has recently put a bunch of solar panels on his roof. The reason? Despite paying 4x more for his electricity from the electrical company than he receives from the utilities provider for selling it back to them it costs him about $20 a fortnight less to buy the solar panels and associated gumpf on credit than it would for him to keep buying his electricity in the normal way. In 40 months (actually another 39) he will own his solar panels and be making >$4,000pa from them. That's about a quarter of his mortgage interest bill.

I wonder how much battery prices have to fall until he can get rid of the Utilities firm altogether and simply produce his own power? He's no Greenie BTW, this is purely driven by money.

In some parts of Australia it would be worth buying a house just to be able to put solar panels on the roof without planning permission.

The value of an uncontrollable power source is just the fuel saved which means wind and solar are only worth the marginal cost of fuel saved.

That means in the UK a unit of PV output is only worth ~3p

A 4KWp system in the UK actually only produces £115 pa of value the rest is fake accounting.

Even in a very sunny location you might get double that at £230pa output but often sunny places have cheaper fuel (middle east Australia china USA all mucj cheaper fossil fuels for power generation)

Also PV panels degrade each year and don't last forever.


And a final note. Large scale solar is less than half tbe price of rooftop add 10% for distribution and you find that if solar PV is successful it will be successful under large scale plants rather than rooftop.

cells

antrobus wrote: »

The cost of panels keep falling, and people are trying to develop new cheaper materials to energy in tjr funaels even more effective. And of course, a lot ofis money is being thrown at the storage problem as well.

Human ingenuity usually finds a way of solving any given problem.

The storage problem as you put it can't be solved for two fundamental reasons. The first is that you can only store energy in the fundamental forces of physics. and no amount of R&D is going to change the force of gravity or the charge of an electron so to store more energy requires more stuff.

the second is that the cost of storage of fossil fuels is close to zero. A power station might stockpile a million tons of coal and the cost is just to heap it on the ground and leave it there until needed. How are batteries going to compete with 1 cent per ton coal storage energy?


PV can at most become a marginal fuel saver which means 20% of electricity or some 10% of primary energy max. Thay is still a significant amount but it means the ither 80% of electricity needs to be from coal and gas and hydro. And all of heatig industry and transport would still be left behind.


And PV only becomes a marginal fuel saver at around $0.5/watt fully installed and connected to a grid

cells

antrobus wrote: »

Yup, I've already pointed out that $50 today is worth more than $50 tommorrow.

You might think that, but nevertheless the likes of the Bank of England believe it to be at least a possibility.

The point is this; IF the world is actually going to deliver on its commitments to reduce CO2 emissions to prevent climate change, then it will have to NOT burn large quantities of the existing known oil reserves.

Assuming that the world is going to fail to meet the target would mean assuming that climate change is inevitable. And so if that science is right, it would mean a heap of big trouble.

Well at current rates the world is burning some 35 billion barrels of oil 10 billion tons of coal and some 130 tcf of nat gas per year.

All credible agency believes this will INCREASE over the next 25 years

Fortunately for the world the dangers of claimitchange is nowhere near as bad as the hippies like to portray and even the dire IPCC believes a warmer world will be a positive for some 70 years before it becomes a slight negative

cells

Generali wrote: »

I wouldn't be so hasty; the economics of solar are changing fast.

Not of late

which is why Germany install rate has crashed some 70-80% from peak even though they are still paying 4x the true worth of a solar unit input.

To truly work on its own merits it needs to get towards <$0.50 / watt fully installed. And even then once the local grid is saturated it would have to stop which means an upper limit of 15-30% of the local grid with the remainder being gas and coal.

if prices fall enough it can be a decent contribution but it won't change fossil fuels being the dominant source.

wind power is much closer and can achieve much more due to its higher CFs. 40-60% of a grid can be possible

Generali

cells wrote: »

The value of an uncontrollable power source is just the fuel saved which means wind and solar are only worth the marginal cost of fuel saved.

That means in the UK a unit of PV output is only worth ~3p

A 4KWp system in the UK actually only produces £115 pa of value the rest is fake accounting.

Even in a very sunny location you might get double that at £230pa output but often sunny places have cheaper fuel (middle east Australia china USA all mucj cheaper fossil fuels for power generation)

Also PV panels degrade each year and don't last forever.


And a final note. Large scale solar is less than half tbe price of rooftop add 10% for distribution and you find that if solar PV is successful it will be successful under large scale plants rather than rooftop.

The big saving in Aus however is that we have very expensive power infrastructure for two reasons:

1. Electricity is moved across huge distances as we are a large, sparsely populated country
2. Regulated utilities in Aus are allowed to price using a formula based on investment which encourages them to over-invest.

The fact is that in Aus, on a cash basis you can make a small amount of money by having solar panels on your roof even after financing costs. I've seen it tested and it works at a household level.

The problem is clearly that it doesn't make power at night. If only someone could come up with a way of storing electricity.

http://www.duracell.com/