In Fiscal Year 2019, the Board of Economic Development gave out $31.49 million in corporate welfare checks from the Reinvestment Payment Program to thirteen big businesses. Four big wind farms got $26.8 million, 85% of those sales and use tax rebates.
The Governor’s Office of Economic Development claims that those $31.49 million in handouts had something to do with creating or retaining 995 jobs (787 at Terex), representing a surrender of $31,600 in tax revenues per job. Looking at just the rebated wind farms, which contributed 44 jobs to GOED’s count, the tax surrender per job was $609,000.
Evidently the Board of Economic Development wants to take a breather on those rebates. Yesterday the board rejected Triple H Wind Farm’s application for a sales tax rebate on its 92-turbine Hyde County project:
Staff for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development had recommended the board deny the Triple H application.
Voting against Triple H were Matt Judson of Pierre, Sharon Casey of Chamberlain, Mike Luken of Watertown, Ted Hustead of Wall, Joy Nelson of Watertown, Kevin Tetzlaff of Brookings, Eric Yunag of Sioux Falls and chairman Jeff Erickson of Sioux Falls.
Three members voted against the denial: vice chairman Don Kettering of Yankton, Tom Jones of Viborg and Reed Kessler of Aberdeen [Bob Mercer, “In a Rare Move, State Board Rejects Reinvestment Payment to S.D. Wind Project,” KELO-TV, 2019.09.10].
The Public Utilities Commission approved the Triple H project in July. Watch those towers go up south of Highmore without corporate welfare… and be ready to point to that example to every other big-money entity who comes to the board claiming they need handouts to build their project in our fair state.
Without state subsidies, and given that the only income truly generated occurs when the wind energy is sold as electricity, the wind producers can get reimbursed for the costs of construction in a few ways.
First, pass on the expense of installation to the consumer via utility bills or carbon offsets that people volunteer for. Each of these is still a subsidy, just that the state isn’t providing it.
Second, invest in some form of energy storage. A lot of the wind energy is generated overnight, but people are asleep overnight, so the demand is lower. So you essentially need roughly 12 hours of storage, account for the inefficiencies of storage and recovery from storage, and address various maintenance/replacement/waste costs for the batteries. Probably there is a length of time needed before the investment costs are recovered, but if the electricity is sold when the cost is higher you make more than dumping the energy overnight at a lower cost.
Third, have ready-to-go dedicated uses of intermittent energy. Could be something for industry or for secondary heating and cooling. No storage of energy needed if you go outside the normal supply-demand processes.
I guess the fourth way is to send the energy somewhere else and have somebody else deal with the costs of intermittency, but that is largely what we are already doing right now. That is easier to do when the price of electricity is low.
In the gig economy of South Dakota, no one sleeps. The electric furnace keeps running, the electric air conditioner keeps running, the water heater, the security lights and on and on it goes. We use juice 24/7 doc, even when you sleep.
True, but we use more energy during the day when we are awake.
More so when people come back home from work and turn everything on at the same time.
Oh this is interesting….Wyoming is considering nuclear waste storage.
https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/wyoming-considering-nuclear-waste-storage-while-yucca-mountain-sits-dormant
Sounds like they want to investigate potential income that may offset declining coal revenues, but do not want to become THE de facto permanent site….which means they will have to define under what circumstances they would store the spent nuclear fuel, and for how long.
It will be interesting to see how much they focus on the potential retrievability of the waste…either for recycling or to be able to move waste to another site.
Looks like they already had the meeting and nothing really came of it.
Maybe Wyoming would make $10 million a year given what they know. Apparently that is not enough to make up for lost coal revenues and deal with getting the site approved.
Plus, federal law would have to be changed to allow waste to go to Wyoming instead of Yucca Mountain.
https://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/storing-nuclear-waste-would-only-net-wyoming-million-annually-/article_f38dee4e-9c16-5fae-bcbf-4c261250e406.html
OK, Tagger. One more chance before you go to remedial in research skills. GOOGLE – south dakota wind farm will have storage
My understanding of the Wyoming study is it is for storage, not disposal. I think DOE has authority for a storage site, but I might be wrong. Storage, of course, is a dumb idea for any number of reasons, mostly because, as with everything the Department of Energy does, it is likely not to be temporary, unless your idea of temporary is several hundred years to forever. At one point decades ago DOE was negotiating with one of the tribes (Crow Creek?) for Monitored Retrievable Storage for similar waste. And a shale project a few years ago at the SDSM&T was partly to scope out sites in Western South Dakota for a similar project.
Such a project in Wyoming might have impacts in South Dakota, depending on the location. I-90 would be a transportation route for waste coming from the east.
In Japan, they will dump radioactive storage waste into the Pacific Ocean. Enough is enough, get rid of all nukes…period. Actually, anything west of the 100th Meridian is considered appropriate for dumping whatever the hell they want to dump.https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/04/11/the-100th-meridian-where-the-great-plains-used-to-begin-now-moving-east/
Ol doc is the point man for the dumping. If you listen to him, there isn’t a thing wrong with radioactive waste, it’s kind of like human waste butt only with a glow.
Oh no. Not the Tesla batteries that were sub-par and caught fire for both walmart and amazon.
Here is an article you should definitely read.
https://listen.sdpb.org/post/unfurling-waste-problem-caused-wind-energy
“There aren’t many options to recycle or trash turbine blades, and what options do exist are expensive, partly because the U.S. wind industry is so young. It’s a waste problem that runs counter to what the industry is held up to be: a perfect solution for environmentalists looking to combat climate change, an attractive investment for companies such as Budweiser and Hormel Foods, and a job creator across the Midwest and Great Plains.”
South Dakota has no industry so we don’t need power. The wind charger guys will just sell it to states that actually have something going, like Minnesota, North Dakota or any other state other than here. That’s where the moolah is, certainly not here. We have the Sturgis thingy each year…and then lower your voice..nothing more…
Who cares about Tesla? Wind chargers run into the grid for other states just like Oahe power does. The batteries that caught fire are old news, gone and forgotten. Both company’s wrote them off big time.Market Summary > Tesla Inc
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Booyah, looks pretty solid to this old soldier
Why would a giant wind farm use batteries designed for a Walmart sized operation? Or did you just make that up, trying to be Dave Chapelle?
Also, why did you say the wind farm should look into storage when they’re already doing storage and the head of production posted about it several times on this blog? Was that during your summer off?
I hate to be the one to tell you this jerry, but the ocean had radioactivity prior to any nuclear power. This is not spent nuclear fuel or a sludge, this is radioactive elements mixed up in water.
They don’t have to do anything with the radioactive water for about 5 years. During that span, the same water becomes less radioactive due to decay.
Dilution is the solution in this case. But if you want to reduce the concentration further, there are alternatives for separation and extraction. Just a matter of how much you want to pay.
Meanwhile, I assume that you will continue to ignore the growing waste issue for wind power, and the intensity of the energy required to deal with those turbine blades. Good news jerry, the wind turbine blades that they must haul away are getting bigger, not smaller. If they burn those to reduce the volume of the waste, say hello to extra carbon emitted into the air.
LOL, indeed Porter. Doc is so busy trolling nukes that he forgot that wind chargers actually produce electricity rather than storing it. Funny stuff.
Jerry. One for the Doc’s side, today. President Trump said if there’s ever another 911, he’ll respond with a massive, nuclear weapons attack. That should make young Dr. McTags smile, huh?
I don’t know if you have been watching, but we went ahead and built a lot of wind power without any energy storage. That was because at the time, natural gas was the “bridge fuel”. Now people want to shut down the bridge.
Furthermore, we built all those wind turbines without a means of dealing with the wastes or recycling the critical elements. And they are only getting bigger.
With regard to Walmart and Amazon….sorry, it was the Tesla solar panels that were shoddy, not the batteries.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2019/08/26/amazon-also-experienced-tesla-solar-panel-roof-fire/
But Tesla is having problems with its batteries…
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1122728_report-tesla-panasonic-battery-waste-could-lead-to-battery-flaws
As are utilities with their own lithium batteries…..
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/aps-storage-facility-explosion-raises-questions-about-battery-safety/553540/
It just amazes me that if a nuclear power plant were to catch on fire with the frequency that batteries and wind turbines do (which happens, but not super-duper frequently), you would be calling for the end to nuclear power. If waste from nuclear power were collecting in the quantities without a plan, you would also want to stop nuclear power. But for wind…no problem.
Chubby hump said that he would drop a nuke bomb on Afghanistan and kill 10,000,000 people.
Jerry,
Wind turbines generate energy when the wind blows….not when there is a demand for it. If you do not have back-up energy, then you need the storage. When you just send the energy away…good news, somebody else has to deal with that problem. You have kicked the can down the road.
We should be prepared for the scenario that batteries will not be enough, but we still need to generate carbon-free power to fight climate change. That means renewables with flexible nuclear energy. I’ll take what batteries can deliver, but I don’t think we’ll have enough from them.
No Porter, I would rather convert nuclear material in missiles to nuclear fuel for a power plant. But if we are going to have them, it is better to have them and not use them…none have been used in conflict since WWII.
Sorry, the deal with Tesla and Walmart/Amazon was with their solar panels, not their batteries. But Tesla does have problems with their batteries too.
Look at their trading, not hurt a bit. Time to move on from that
Wind chargers are the future, nukes are the past. Solar is always there, it’s called the sun. When dark, use wind.
Electric cars made by Tesla are not widespread. Lithium batteries have some issues still, and there are supply constraints. Like wind turbines, we are not set up yet to recycle the batteries.
The waste management and recycling problems will have to become more acute for us to take them seriously…apparently.
I think we’ll have enough storage from batteries. Positive vs negative. Pun intended.
Tesla’s are everywhere in CO. You don’t see them in SD because…
Recycling worn out stuff is the least of what needs to be addressed. You just use it as a crutch when your tired ass argument has been disproven again. Get a new tactic.
I hope that a renewable energy system would sustainably accrue resources, and deal with wastes better than coal does. Hope springs eternal. You hope that we just ignore that and build more wind and batteries any way.
Without a true battery storage solution, we continue to burn natural gas. I would also hope you agree that more renewable energy without batteries means more natural gas….unless we do more nuclear.
And lest you forget, batteries would help nuclear as much as renewables.
Wind chargers produce power, they don’t store it. They sell the product called energy.
They sell the energy whenever it is produced. If the supply exceeds the demand, the price is lower, as it often is overnight.
The bad news is that what they accrue from electricity sales is also lower. So far the solution has been to subsidize them to offset the difference.
However, this distortion of the electricity market means the lower price of electricity impacts other means of generating electricity too, including nuclear. So we will see if nuclear will be allowed to be more flexible to provide more of its energy when renewables are lacking.
Our problem is foremost how to mitigate global warming. The C-List thinkers can clean up the renewables, later. If the foremost problem isn’t solved, nothing else matters. Get with the program, McTaggart. You’re wasting your potential by laziness, avoidance of the hard work, and distraction from the job at hand!
Ford pick up catch on fire too. If man makes it, it will fail. Danger danger!! https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/ford-recalls-full-sized-pickup-trucks-due-to-engine-fire-risk/
McTaggart is the wrong brain to be discussing clean energy with. Nuclear isn’t on the table and it’s all he’s got. Refusal to adapt is helping no one.
Today, General Motors recalls 3.5 million pickups. https://fortune.com/2019/09/11/general-motors-recall-pickups-suvs-chevrolet-gmc/
Just another day in the real world. Wind chargers keep charging electricity for sale to the highest bidder. Sweet
I keep saying renewables and nuclear, but that just isn’t enough for you. You would rather build more solar and wind than actually meet a climate change target.
We should adapt, replace the older reactors, and replace them with advanced reactors.
Ugh….it is not to the highest bidder. That wind energy goes onto the grid first because they are not storing it. It is not being dispatched in response to a demand.
The amount of clean energy from an older reactor actually increases over time. They perform uprates and update the engineering….i.e. they adapt. We can also run them like France does and change their output with the demand instead of running at a constant baseload. The latter is more efficient today.
At least with the water-cooled plants, batteries would allow nuclear plants to run in their most efficient baseload manner by storing the excess for later.
If south Dakota had more water, you could store excess energy in reservoirs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_Station
Porter, with regard to renewables, it makes sense to make the most of what is available.
But we should literally make the most of what is available for both renewables and nuclear. And we should deliver all the clean energy that people want, when they want it.
If batteries work, then great, we can accelerate the solution to climate change.
Cost is the bigger deal with nuclear at the moment in my opinion…it is clean and safe.
Why don’t you lobby GNOem for a nuke plant for South Dakota. Try this though, tell her that it would be kinda like a EB-5 thingy and that she could bring the whole gang back into this deal by selling green cards to the Chinese! Then be careful of shelter belts and hunting season as that could be detrimental to your health…just sayin
Cathy,
Different forms of energy storage have a different ability to ramp up or ramp down. And they all have their own efficiencies at storing energy and then releasing it without generating friction or heat.
Hydro storage is more akin to baseload power than something like a supercapacitor that has a quick burst of energy. The Tesla batteries are somewhere in-between.
In my opinion, South Dakota would be a good place for a small reactor…some day. Nobody here is going to be surprised that I favor that. But I don’t think that is going to happen until the current nuclear waste impasse is solved (storage and/or recycling and/or generating less waste in the first place).
Better biofuels are going to need process heat from somewhere, and perhaps food irradiation would tie in with interests in food safety.
Better to do things in the near term like attract companies to the research park that specialize in manufacturing components or devices, perform engineering design, enhance safety, or perform the quality control that is necessary to verify all of the standards.
The use of materials and devices in space (including methodologies that reduce doses to astronauts) would benefit space travel, and developing better methods of medical imaging and radiation therapy would benefit health care.
Go and lobby GNOem. Dangle some EB-5 ideas doc, be that guy. Put South Dakota pride on the map..but no corporate welfare, only promises of citizenship for the first 500 Chinese who put some moolah into the pot. Our governors are really good at that sort of thing.
Oh and lest we forget, wind chargers make electricity for sale..imagine that. They refuse to store it so they just make it and send it down the line to the grid…for profit, booyah.
Do we get credit for being carbon-free if down the line they have to burn gas to match supply and demand with the variable energy we send them?
Will the other states get to call themselves nuclear-free if we were to send them nuclear-generated electricity?
I guess if the bills are paid, who cares.
No credit, just cash for the electricity and lots of it for sale. No storage, just electricity into the grid for sale for cash from wind chargers…lovely
Dr. McT: South Dakota had a small reactor. It didn’t end well. South Dakota has ample wind and solar potential to meet its needs and more. Wind and solar, if implemented with the interests of landowners in mind, is more of an economic stimulus to the people who live there. Why import technology and enrich others, when you can enrich yourselves?
Here’s a big problem: if Noem can’t figure out hemp, which is a pretty simple situation, she can’t deal with a nuclear plant.
South Dakota did not have a small reactor that was even like the ones used by the Navy. It was basically experimental in nature, as it attempted to use superheated steam as the moderator of neutrons. The intent was to increase the thermal efficiency closer to that in a superheated coal plant. It failed not because of any nuclear core issue, but of mechanical issues outside the core….and they just decided not to spend money on it to fix it.
The small reactors coming up would use fuel that can operate at higher temperatures, and the fuel would be consumed for longer periods of time…so less of the energy would be thrown away. Plus these have to be Homer Simpson proof. If the reactor heats up for some reason, come back later after it has cooled. And these will not have to be water-cooled either. Moreover, these will be vetted first at the national labs and standardized…so operations can be tested out at national lab facilities.
South Dakota sends most of that wind energy elsewhere. There is not an accompanying growth in economic development and industry that uses that energy once it is generated. Much of the maintenance also comes from out of state. If you are fine with selling electricity at lower prices to other states, instead of being able to store it later and sell it at a higher price (i.e. to operate without subsidies), great.
And that energy is not on call. If the wind ain’t blowing, having a lot of wind turbines does you not one bit of good when you want to watch your show or do your laundry.
With regard to economic stimulus, I would have to disagree. One wind farm has a handful of permanent jobs. One nuclear plant has a lot more jobs, and a lot more jobs per kilowatt-hour produced, a lot more jobs per acre, and that power is available 24/7 for other industries to use. When the nuclear plant closes down, so does the tax base in the town it is in. They are good citizens and contribute to the community. Go to their web sites and they will have community initiatives.
Frankly, I don’t know what the Governor’s opinion of nuclear energy is, but I don’t think that is on the table until we solve the national nuclear waste impasse first.
We should make the most of what we have…including both renewables and nuclear…while not emitting carbon.
Dr. McT: Sure, the Pathfinder plant was different than current small reactors. Still, who wants to risk a mini-Chernobyl when you can just put up some wind towers. The worst malfunction in a wind tower would be if they toppled over. Safer, less bureaucracy required to make sure it’s safe, less capital expenditure, far fewer worries about the fuel cycle, etc., etc.
Doc doesn’t read what he himself writes. He speaks of selling the power to other users as if that doesn’t equate to jobs and money right here in South Dakota.
Jerry,
Local industries are not using up the energy before it gets out of the state. More or less these are being built to supply energy for out of state consumers. If they do not come with energy storage, then that issue of intermittency needs to be solved down the line (punt, pass, and kick the can down the road). The benefit of the related economic development from using the energy (instead of producing it) occurs elsewhere.
Donald,
The small reactors would not follow the Chernobyl plan. A Chernobyl style reactor would not have been approved by the NRC even in the 1980’s. The one benefit of the water-cooled reactor is that as long as you keep water to them, they are walk-away safe. The power oscillates between maxima and minima like a sine wave.
The issue for today’s reactors is maintaining enough coolant. But just wait until the new fuels are deployed…they will weather much higher temperature extremes.
Chernobyl was a graphite-moderated reactor, not a water-moderated reactor. If things are not done right, you get the exponential in the power curve instead of a sine wave with a water-cooled reactor.
Wait 100 years. We will have built up a supply of broken and old wind turbine blades, and we will not have recycled any of the magnetic rare earth elements used in the turbines. So we will mine more from China and other places. To reduce the volume, someone will come up with the bright idea of burning the turbine blades, thus releasing carbon.
I am not saying that we cannot figure out eventually how to do the waste management at the end of the life cycle for wind power. I am saying that we haven’t bothered to do so first before building more wind turbines. Good news, nuclear energy can help generate the energy needed to do the related sustainability tasks.
The worst that can happen at a wind turbine while operating is if a worker falls. Or there is a fire.
More intense storms that occur with climate change are not friendly to wind turbines and solar panels. Thus it is good to have a variety of ways of producing energy.
Who gives a care about local industries when you can send it to places that matter. Our state is clear that we don’t want any kind of operations that would make life better here for our working young folks. We are happy as clams to send them to other states.
Generate energy and sell it to other states. We can then hire folks to maintain the chargers and spend their checks locally.
Good news jerry,
The radioactive isotope that they are storing in water at Fukushima is tritium.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/09/12/its-really-ok-if-japan-dumps-radioactive-fukushima-water-into-the-ocean/
Tritium emits a beta particle (i.e. an electron) with a very low energy. 18 keV (max) vs. 156 keV (max) for Carbon-14. A human hair is more than thick enough to shield the beta ray from the beta ray emitted by tritium.
Moreover, tritium has a 12.3 year half-life. It only stays in the human body for an average of 10 days (also called the “biological half-life” for how long it takes the body to remove it). For fish the biological half-life for tritium is 2 days. So not many decays occur while it is in a human, and even fewer in a fish.
“In the end, it is impossible to get a significant radiation dose from tritium, unlike any other radionuclide. It exits the body and is diluted too quickly.”
#4Science
Great, then why are they dumping it in the Pacific when they should be drinking it? Something that clean and refreshing would be like having a Dr. Pepper to hit the spot. Clearly Abe needs to hear from you. Troll him for a while, great golfer that Abe is and quite the nationalist.
Better news doc, China has now taken our, the United States, place of increasing their adherence to the Paris Climate Accord! Imagine that, China, once the most polluting of countries is on target for the goal set in Paris! Glad that there are those who take climate change seriously…and for profit as well!
Here is the deal too, or as Biden would say, “Look” These guys are so far ahead of everyone else in wind development as well as solar that there is no match.
That’s how their regulations are written. The fear of radiation is worse than the actual radiation.
That fear is keeping us from generating as much clean energy as we want to consume. Part of this approach is based on a philosophy to reduce consumption altogether, instead of supplying all the clean energy that everybody wants.
We will actually need a lot of energy to displace fossil fuels from transportation, to pursue all of the recycling that is required, to generate clean water around the globe, to pull carbon out of the air, and to provide air conditioning and refrigeration for the billions on this planet that do not have it today.
The concentration of tritium in the ocean is actually much greater than what they are storing at Fukushima. Plus if they store it for 12.3 years, then half of the tritium disappears. The overall naturally-occurring radioactivity from all radioisotopes in the ocean already is much, much larger. It’s like worrying about one person with a Packers T-Shirt at a Vikings home game.
They produce cheap solar panels, and don’t have the same environmental laws that we do. They mine most of the rare earths used in wind turbines, without the same environmental laws and costs that we do.
We have also largely ceded much of the global nuclear industry to them too. We got in the habit of not building new nuclear plants. That needs to change both for climate change and to compete with China.
So we need to do it all.
You better sober up there doc and pay attention to the news, Chubby hump is getting rid of those pesky environmental laws, 85 of them so far…with Rounds approval of course. “85 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back Under Trump” New York Times 09/12/2014
What do you care if the solar panels are cheap…they work. They generate power for sale even to make money. No wonder their economic growth is about 5 times what ours is. No wonder.. Those pesky Chinese are better capitalists than we are. Life is funny like that.
The reason they are cheap is because they don’t have the same environmental regulations…and China is not really a free market. If we were to resource all of our batteries, wind power, and solar power from what could be generated domestically, it would cost more because of higher labor costs and tougher environmental rules here compared with places like China.
You would have a stronger case against the Trump administration regarding environmental regulations if you actually imposed proper regulations and the associated costs for renewables. That includes mining, manufacturing, infrastructure for dealing with intermittency, recycling, and waste management.
Lots of folks are missing at least part of the problem. The petro dollar. We have a ridiculously over valued money because of the petro dollar that demands we import everything and export nothing. We have been pushing people around all over the globe to make sure we keep that scheme going. Saddam Hussein and Gatdafi weren’t going to play that game anymore. Where are they???
To what lengths will we go to keep the petro dollar going? Taking over Venezuela? Building obscene vehicles while we destroy the world from CO2 emissions?
I would suggest that we have valued having access to energy whenever we want it with the lowest cost to the consumer. You may not like it, but we are not ready for petroleum access to end tomorrow.
Do we have enough batteries to replace every car with an electric car? Have we mined enough critical elements for those batteries? Is recycling ready? Are we ready to provide enough energy to power all of those vehicles?
Nope.
Well, Robert, I agree that we are definitely not ready for the end of the oil age. Chiefly, I believe, because those pulling the strings have no idea on how to replace the petro dollar. That is the force that has been driving us for many decades and its not going to go well for the country down the road.
I see our standard of living drastically declining when we no longer have overvalued currency to buy what the world wants to sell to us. I think our move to de-industrialize this country will be proven to be a mistake.
In the word’s of Pogo….We have met the enemy and he is us!
Some of the companies in the petro industry are hedging their bets and investing in other energy technologies. They certainly pay attention to the energy picture and where to put their money.
Actually China is surpassing the United States in environmental requirements and they are serious about making sure the law is followed. From Popular Science dated April 3, 2019.
“Pretty soon we’ll have to stop blaming China for global carbon emissions
The United States is lagging behind.” https://www.popsci.com/china-us-climate-greenhouse-emissions/
I wonder when the United States will take seriously the danger of climate change? When our chief competitor recognizes the problems and then does something, that is a sign of leadership. Remember when the United States used to be the undisputed sign of leadership? Make America Great Again, is a good motto, too bad it will probably never happen/
Drones from Yemen have attacked the major refinery in Saudi Arabia that controls at least 5% of the worlds oil. We’ll see how long it takes for them to get that refinery up and running again. In the meantime, we probably will be paying more at the pumps.
China is also building more nuclear power plants.
Jerry, “I wonder when the United States will take seriously the danger of climate change?”
Answer: when corporate interests stop profiting from it. If the choice is environment or profit, then money speaks loudest in a greed-inspired economy.
Robert, the lowest cost of our petroleum economy does not factor in the blood in Mid East sand or the financial burden of keeping much of the Mid East politically relevant and in need of stabilizing because they have the commodity we have chosen to base our economy on.
Petroleum is not the cheapest by fair economic factors, it has been made (or made to seem) the cheapest by constant encouragement and pruning of market forces.
The historic low cost of coal did not address health and environmental impacts of its emissions either.
I have argued that the present low cost of renewables does not address similar factors (namely what will be a growing waste management issue and resource recovery issue from either mining or recycling).
What is similar to all of these is the upfront cost is relatively low for the favored fuel, and other items are not included on the spreadsheet.
But what has changed relatively recently is several entities removing fossil fuel investments from their portfolios. Ironically that may lead to fossil fuel profits being concentrated in fewer hands…it hasn’t led to a dramatic decline in the use of fossil fuels (so far).
Thankfully Putin has stepped in the Saudi oil attack to tell Chubby to stand down. Good to have real leadership at times like these of Chubby’s own making. Now, let that gamed stock market rise!
“MOSCOW, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Russia on Monday urged countries in the Middle East and outside the region not to draw “hasty conclusions” on who staged the attacks on Saudi oil facilities.
***
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked about the U.S. statement, said: “We have a negative attitude towards rising tensions in the region and call for all countries in the region and outside of it to avoid any hasty steps or conclusions which may deepen destabilisation.”
In a separate statement on Monday, Russia’s foreign ministry said it believed that the exchange of strikes on civilian targets was “a direct consequence of the ongoing sharp military and political crisis in Yemen”.
We need more money for renewable energy and less money for wasted defense spending. When a million bucks will purchase the weaponry to stop the flow of dirty oil, then you know we are wasting billions on weaponry that does little to nothing in the shifting sands of the world.
Sioux Center ethanol plant is idling down and says they will not accept any corn this fall. Boss says if there is a turn around in the market they can be up and running in a week.
In the Business section of today’s Strib, Neil St. Anthony’s column updates us on Minnesota’s clean energy efforts. (There’s plenty here for SD to use.)
“• Burnsville-based 75F, which provides wireless controls for commercial buildings, raised $18 million in equity capital, including $7.5 million from a $1 billion oil and gas industry fund that is hedging its bets. Founder Deepinder Singh has broadened the focus from energy, where 75F software can cut costs up to 50% with its predictive software, to a portfolio of smart-building functions.
“The funding will allow the company to scale up, quickly grow to more than 100 employees and further invest in the product.
“• Golden Valley-based Mortenson, meanwhile, has been selected by Xcel Energy to build a $740 million wind farm in Colorado, one of Mortenson’s largest wind projects to date. In Minnesota, which gets nearly a fifth of its electrical energy from wind, Mortenson has built numerous wind farms. Wind is the fastest-growing source of power in the Midwest and considered the cheapest by some.
“• The McKnight Foundation which over 20 years invested in the nonprofits, forums and research that brought together utilities, regulators and business around renewable energy, plans to double over three years to $30 million its annual commitment to further transforming the clean-energy landscape. McKnight President Kate Wolford said last week that, as the Midwest electrical-power supply cuts emissions, the cutting-edge foundation wants to do more work in accelerating the transition to electric vehicles — charged overnight by increasingly green power — as well as to energy storage and more efficient buildings, which account for up to 15% of carbon emissions.
“Executive Director Gregg Mast of Clean Energy Economy Minnesota said: “Small businesses are the growth engine for clean energy and [energy efficiency] jobs. That sector in Minnesota grew jobs 2.5 times faster than overall job growth in 2018. And 72% of those jobs were companies that employ fewer [than] 20.”
“Minnesota lacks fossil fuels. We have brainpower, cheap wind and sun to replace coal and oil trains, and related pollution.”
So $ is out there and available to SD to ramp up renewable energy infrastructure.
Like Minnesota, SD lacks fossil fuels. Unlike Minnesota, SD is succeeding at running off its brainpower, but there’s still time to reverse that trend. SD has as much cheap wind and sun as Minnesota and an openness to exploiting that might cause some brainpower to stick around.
Fire protection standards for energy storage released.
https://community.nfpa.org/community/nfpa-today/blog/2019/09/11/new-nfpa-energy-storage-system-ess-technologies-standard-addresses-the-fire-risks-associated-with-new-power-sources
“Certain ESS technologies, however, pack a lot of energy in a small envelope therefore increasing fire and life safety hazards such as stranded energy, the release of toxic gases, and fire intensity. ”
“Manufacturers, likewise, want to appeal to energy-savvy customers and ensure that they are producing the safest, most compliant products. And of course, first responders need to keep pace with innovation and learn about potential hazards including HAZMAT issues, thermal runaway concerns, battery explosion and re-ignition.”
Looks to me as if SD has plenty of water. The energy storage solution most in use right now is pumped hydro. Of course it seems to be used only in high head situations but considering how unprofitable farming is flooding large area’s for low head pumped storage ought to work. The talk continues for a big national grid large pumped storage would work towards solving the wind and solar power availability problem.
Energy storage needs to respond to the demands of the grid. There is a time scale for the response of each kind of storage. Pumped hydro is more like baseload energy than a quick supercapacitor.
If the system cannot respond quickly enough, or not at all, then you will burn natural gas.
And you can take up land space that would otherwise be used to make food.
Grid? what grid ya talkin bout? The only grid in the world right now that really works is in China. The grid in the United States is antiquated and not worth squat. Chubby and the gang don’t have the money for upgrades, to busy stealing from military families for the unneeded wall to pay attention.
‘The North American electrical power grid is fragmented, which wastes renewable energy and increases electric bills. The Trump administration is holding up upgrades.
In January China’s main electrical grid operator announced that it has powered up a transmission line that sets world records for voltage, distance and power. The line is used for long-distance transmission of renewable energy that was wasted due to lack of transmission capacity in China, and use of the line is helping China gradually transition from coal to other energy sources, a massive undertaking given China’s overall energy growth.
The US has a similar problem. Electricity generated by Texas wind farms often cannot power homes in Arkansas because the US lacks transmission capacity. The problem is so severe that, as Jesper Starn reported in Bloomberg last month, wholesale electricity prices have even gone negative on days when excess renewable energy is generated in some regions. These negative prices are not passed on to consumers — instead, they signal owners of fossil-fuel-based electricity generators to shut down temporarily and restart later, an expensive process that increases electricity prices overall.”
China leads the way once more. Is this “Make America Great Again? Looks like that is just a tee vee slogan that means nothing. Real leaders do great things, and it looks like China has them and we have the pity party of Chubby and GNOem. Proud moments for sure. We need to start growing bananas for our banana republic.
It is called NIMBY (not in my backyard). Nobody wants the power infrastructure to be built, but they certainly want the power whenever they want it.
Some call this phenomenon BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody).
I don’t know why negative energy pricing is supposed to be a signal to build more intermittent renewables without any energy storage.
And I take your point that the grid itself is relatively fragmented, and that is a source of inefficiency.