Post by jeffolie on Aug 10, 2013 15:57:13 GMT -6
expensive wires: Transmission Lines power from wind, solar, dams, nukes, coal, nat gas, etc
During my career, I worked on many lawsuits including some for Billions focused on the wires transmitting electricity called Transmission Lines in the electric utility industry. The legal costs over fights as to building and use of the Transmissions lines last many years and cost many millions.
Planning to build and operate Transmission Lines features the deep wealth pockets of utilities plus electricity consuming industries which all want preferred access and lower costs.
Environmental laws featuring protections of the land, creatures and landscape complicate and add delays. Bones of Indians, bones of creatures, protected habitats, etc ... force planning changes or kill budgets
Rarely can a Transmission Line be created without POLITICS MATTERS intervening to avoid the issues by making exemptions to laws, rules, regulations imposed at state, federal and local levels.
After a Transmission Line exists the lawsuits never end resulting in owners incurring costs which at times get included in the impossible to understand methods used by electricity rate setting process and individual electric bills.
our solar escape: my sweet wife Olie and I escaped SCE by installing a home electric solar system ... now we are PAID TO PRODUCE ELECTRICITY under net metering
Dead nuke speaks for itself, ratepayer folk out $Billions
Crony capitalism in California helps SCE shareholders collect dividends on a deak nuke power plant
" .... So the shareholders continue to collect $1.35 per share in annual dividends while a plant accounting for 20% of the company's electricity generation sits idle. And ratepayers continue to pay tens of millions of dollars a year for the same nonfunctioning shell.
my jeffolie view: one of the reasons my sweet wife Olie and I escaped SCE by installing a home electric solar system ... now we are PAID TO PRODUCE ELECTRICITY under net metering included increasing rate hikes when nat gas should have been resulting in declining rates ... ratepayers continue to suffer increased energy expenses as I continuously predicted as a portion of 'screwflation'.
====================================================
Don't let wind power capacity just blow away: Editorial
08/09/2013
The largest wind farm in the world is not the congregation of hundreds of giant turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass.
That collection of science-fictiony whirling white blades you drive by on the way to Palm Springs is indeed huge, but only the seventh-biggest in the nation. The grandest group of windmills in the world is close by, though, up in Tehachapi, where the Alta Wind Energy Center as of this past spring is generating 1,320 megawatts.
Most of that power will be heading right down here to fuel the energy needs of the highly populated Southland, needs which are even more urgent with the forced closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant. Southern California Edison has a 25-year power purchase agreement with Alta, and that's why you're seeing the massive expansion of high power lines coming over the mountains from Kern County.
Because generating energy is one thing. Getting it to the places that need the energy is another. The windiest places in the world and the nation are not likely to be the places where most of us want to live. So the infrastructure must be in place to get the power to our homes and businesses.
Wind energy is going to be crucial in the new mix of post-coal, post-nuclear sources the nation and the world will turn to now that fully everyone understands two things: One, climate change is real, and is exacerbated by fossil fuels, especially the dirtiest ones such as coal. Two, the nuclear option is not really an option anymore. We have no safe place to store the deadly waste nuclear plants throw off, and when their reactors melt down, as happened in Fukushima after a tsunami hit Japan in 2011, we have no idea how to fix the problem.
As this paper's front-page story Thursday showed, climate change isn't in the future. It's now, an "immediate and growing threat," according to a report this week from the California Environmental Protection Agency. Our sea levels are already rising, there are already bigger and more frequent forest fires, and on average there are more hot summer days.
But climate change is not just a California problem. The country's heartland is an even better place to harvest the wind than our desert and mountain passes are. The Great Plains are both highly windy and relatively unpopulated, with vast areas suitable for wind farms. Iowa, for instance, leads the nation in windpower capacity per square mile, and South Dakota in actual generation of current use at 22 percent.
Fully built out, the Midwest could power the nation. But there's a problem, and it's that the nation's electricity grid can by no means handle getting the power to population centers. A McClatchy Newspapers investigation this week showed that even now with wind farms in their infancy, they are generating power that has no place to go. In one area of Kansas where energy companies and landowners have invested heavily in wind, the McClatchy report shows that there are already four to five "transmission curtailments" -- periods of such high congestion in the electrical grid that the wind units must be shut down -- each week.
What is needed is a significant national investment in upgrading the Midwest power grid. Critics say ratepayers would have to foot the bill. But we already foot the bill for oil, gas, coal and nuclear plants, with their highly fluctuating costs. Once transmission capacity is there, wind is cheap, and key to fighting climate change. California shouldn't allow that power to just blow away.
www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_23827440/dont-let-wind-power-capacity-just-blow-away
During my career, I worked on many lawsuits including some for Billions focused on the wires transmitting electricity called Transmission Lines in the electric utility industry. The legal costs over fights as to building and use of the Transmissions lines last many years and cost many millions.
Planning to build and operate Transmission Lines features the deep wealth pockets of utilities plus electricity consuming industries which all want preferred access and lower costs.
Environmental laws featuring protections of the land, creatures and landscape complicate and add delays. Bones of Indians, bones of creatures, protected habitats, etc ... force planning changes or kill budgets
Rarely can a Transmission Line be created without POLITICS MATTERS intervening to avoid the issues by making exemptions to laws, rules, regulations imposed at state, federal and local levels.
After a Transmission Line exists the lawsuits never end resulting in owners incurring costs which at times get included in the impossible to understand methods used by electricity rate setting process and individual electric bills.
our solar escape: my sweet wife Olie and I escaped SCE by installing a home electric solar system ... now we are PAID TO PRODUCE ELECTRICITY under net metering
Dead nuke speaks for itself, ratepayer folk out $Billions
Crony capitalism in California helps SCE shareholders collect dividends on a deak nuke power plant
" .... So the shareholders continue to collect $1.35 per share in annual dividends while a plant accounting for 20% of the company's electricity generation sits idle. And ratepayers continue to pay tens of millions of dollars a year for the same nonfunctioning shell.
my jeffolie view: one of the reasons my sweet wife Olie and I escaped SCE by installing a home electric solar system ... now we are PAID TO PRODUCE ELECTRICITY under net metering included increasing rate hikes when nat gas should have been resulting in declining rates ... ratepayers continue to suffer increased energy expenses as I continuously predicted as a portion of 'screwflation'.
====================================================
Don't let wind power capacity just blow away: Editorial
08/09/2013
The largest wind farm in the world is not the congregation of hundreds of giant turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass.
That collection of science-fictiony whirling white blades you drive by on the way to Palm Springs is indeed huge, but only the seventh-biggest in the nation. The grandest group of windmills in the world is close by, though, up in Tehachapi, where the Alta Wind Energy Center as of this past spring is generating 1,320 megawatts.
Most of that power will be heading right down here to fuel the energy needs of the highly populated Southland, needs which are even more urgent with the forced closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant. Southern California Edison has a 25-year power purchase agreement with Alta, and that's why you're seeing the massive expansion of high power lines coming over the mountains from Kern County.
Because generating energy is one thing. Getting it to the places that need the energy is another. The windiest places in the world and the nation are not likely to be the places where most of us want to live. So the infrastructure must be in place to get the power to our homes and businesses.
Wind energy is going to be crucial in the new mix of post-coal, post-nuclear sources the nation and the world will turn to now that fully everyone understands two things: One, climate change is real, and is exacerbated by fossil fuels, especially the dirtiest ones such as coal. Two, the nuclear option is not really an option anymore. We have no safe place to store the deadly waste nuclear plants throw off, and when their reactors melt down, as happened in Fukushima after a tsunami hit Japan in 2011, we have no idea how to fix the problem.
As this paper's front-page story Thursday showed, climate change isn't in the future. It's now, an "immediate and growing threat," according to a report this week from the California Environmental Protection Agency. Our sea levels are already rising, there are already bigger and more frequent forest fires, and on average there are more hot summer days.
But climate change is not just a California problem. The country's heartland is an even better place to harvest the wind than our desert and mountain passes are. The Great Plains are both highly windy and relatively unpopulated, with vast areas suitable for wind farms. Iowa, for instance, leads the nation in windpower capacity per square mile, and South Dakota in actual generation of current use at 22 percent.
Fully built out, the Midwest could power the nation. But there's a problem, and it's that the nation's electricity grid can by no means handle getting the power to population centers. A McClatchy Newspapers investigation this week showed that even now with wind farms in their infancy, they are generating power that has no place to go. In one area of Kansas where energy companies and landowners have invested heavily in wind, the McClatchy report shows that there are already four to five "transmission curtailments" -- periods of such high congestion in the electrical grid that the wind units must be shut down -- each week.
What is needed is a significant national investment in upgrading the Midwest power grid. Critics say ratepayers would have to foot the bill. But we already foot the bill for oil, gas, coal and nuclear plants, with their highly fluctuating costs. Once transmission capacity is there, wind is cheap, and key to fighting climate change. California shouldn't allow that power to just blow away.
www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_23827440/dont-let-wind-power-capacity-just-blow-away