Idiot Tyler Hamilton celebrates Ontario FIT "success"

Our friend Tyler Hamilton of the Toronto Star has coughed up another story, and boy does it stink!

[Toronto Star] Hamilton: Ontario’s FIT program a success after one year

There's just too much absurdness in his deranged essay to do anything but shake your head and weep softly. You cannot simply approach it and argue point by point, because there are no points to grasp on to. How can you respond to the flailing insanity, such as where Tyler explains why it's OK that the Ontario government is paying twelve times more for solar power than retail rate:

Yes, we are paying 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for small rooftop solar, a rate often cited by critics to stir up anger over the program, but let’s keep it in perspective. Small solar only makes up 1 per cent of all FIT applications and its current contribution to Ontario’s overall system supply is about .08 per cent – too small to register on your bi-monthly bill.

It's so expensive, but don't worry because we're buying only a really tiny amount! Ow, our brain cells! Oh, and this is the article he titles "FIT program a success" -- ow! ow! ow!

But this maddening moron also knows how to pull the wool. Check out deviously-crafted sentence structure:

At the end of the day the private nuclear operator, Bruce Power, gets what it was contractually promised, as do the operators of natural gas-fired plants, which fetch an estimated 8 to 14 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Youza! Quite a juxtaposition there. Bruce Power gets what it is contractually promised, and that is

The contract with the Ontario Power Authority fixes the price for electricity produced at Bruce A at 6.3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

http://www.brucepower.com/pagecontentU12.aspx?navuid=5024&dtuid=2939

Quite a ways from the 13.5 c/kWh the province guarantees wind farms, no? Maybe... less than half?

Wind, which makes up about two-thirds of the approved FIT contracts, fetches 13.5 cents per kilowatt-hour under the FIT. Build a new nuclear plant today and wind is more than competitive, with the added bonus that it doesn’t carry any radioactive baggage.

Yeah, sure. More than competitive.

Of course, the most egregiously dishonest part of this greenwash isn't what Tyler wrote; it's what he omitted.

That Ontario is already wildly successful at "greening" its electricity, deriving 3/4ths of its electricity from clean sources. The unhyped, soft-spoken clean sources of nuclear and hydropower, energy sources so cheap they allow Ontario homes to buy electricity for just 6.5-7.5 c/kWh retail. That these wind-and-solar toys are not only ridiculous but redundant. Ontario's "green transition", it already happened; the nuclear-and-hydro success story is the real one. It is fifty times bigger than Ontario's "wind success story". It is a thousand times bigger than Ontario's "solar success story". It isn't worthy of a footnote in Tyler Hamilton's paper.

It's as if the wind-and-solar delusion is to pretend the easy and obvious engineering solutions don't exist. (Oh, and maybe that's just what it is. Here's a footnote in my paper. This is Tyler Hamilton, advocating for very high energy prices for their own sake -- because they force consumption cutbacks. Yes, really.)

Ontario electricity profile. Source: Ontario Energy Board

Ontario residential retail rates. Source: Ontario Energy Board

Does anyone know where the MIT "fuel cycles" report is?

Supposedly it was released today, but all I can find is a one-chapter summary.

[MIT] MIT releases major report: The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Update: Yes, I see the press release now says the report isn't released in full, and won't be until later this year. This is a correction: it was not present in the original release. Likewise, where the link now reads "download summary report", it originally read only "download report". The discrepancy is now resolved.

Blythe is a blight

The raw numbers behind the Blythe solar megaproject. You won't see these in any major newspaper.

$6 billion for 1,000 MWe nameplate.

The plant has a capacity of 1,000 megawatts. [...] The Blythe plant essentially groups four 250-MW plants, with the first slated to start generating electricity in 2013. The total pricetag is estimated at north of $6 billion.

[Reuters] World's largest solar plant wins key approval

Expected annual generation of 2,100 GWh.

[energy.ca.gov] Blythe Solar Power Project | Fact Sheet

2,100 GWh/year is the same as a constant 240 MW. $6 billion for the equivalent of 1/5th of an AP-1000, or 1/7th of an EPR. $25,000/kW average output. Capacity factor of 0.24.

A couple more short descriptions from the BLM and ca.gov.

(h/t to Willem Post on Meredith Angwin's blog who wrote a much more detailed article about this.)

IEA/OECD projected nuclear costs for 14 countries -- 2010 update

Look what I found!

From IEA/OECD Projected Costs of Generating Electricity: 2010 Edition

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/59/50/45528378.pdf

This is from the 2010 update of the joint IEA/OECD study. The full report is actually not free and costs €70 (no, I don't have a copy), but this particular graph is available for free on the errata list I linked to.

Full report for purchase:

[IEA/OECD] Projected Costs of Generating Electricity -- 2010 Edition, 218 pages

The death of the Severn tidal barrage: numbers you won't see in any other news source

I mean the simple fact that it could generate barely 1/5th its nameplate capacity. And the simple cost figure in $/W. Two numbers for some reason journalists rarely see fit to publish. Here's the first, buried in a PDF on the UK bureucracies' web site:

How much energy would a barrage produce?

It depends on where it would be located. The Cardiff-Weston scheme could have a generation capacity of some 8640 MW (Mega Watts) and an annual electricity output of 17 TWh/y (Tera Watt Hours per Year) or around 5% of UK annual electricity demand."

Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform | SEVERN TIDAL POWER Q&A

Peak generation is 8,640 MW.

Average generation is 1,940 MW (or 17 TWh/year). A 22% capacity factor.

Cost per watt? DIY only. The pricetag is £20 billion ($31 billion):

[Guardian] Severn green energy project loses government funding

$31 billion / 1.94 GW is $16 per watt.

The numbers make it clear: Severn barrage is a ridiculously intermittent and absurdly expensive power source. These two little numbers say more than pages of hand-waving journalistic verbiage.

22% c.f.

$16/W

Our first year with Steve's solar

Today we'll be taking a look at our solar panels on Steve Johnson's house in Boulder. Our panels are the subject of a new IEEE Spectrum feature by Steve Johnson:

[IEEE Spectrum] My First Year With Solar

Wait a minute, you interrupt, why are we calling them "our" panels? Surely these are Steve's panels. Well they are now, dear readers, but let's not forget so soon that we bought them for him. They were our little $43,000 present to Steve. Enjoy your present, Steve!

Here is the fine print behind our gift (from the article):

• Our panels cost $43,000
• They have a capacity of 5.88 kW(e)
• They generate about 8,500 kWh(e) per year

In redux: they cost $7.31 per watt nameplate. Their capacity factor is 16.5% (they average 973 W over the year); their cost per watt of actual generation is $44.30/W.

Clearly, this is a rather expensive gift, and not a very practical one. To illustrate this: it cost over ten times as much as a French nuclear reactor, like the new one at Flamanville, for the same amount of power:

[Bloomberg] EDF Said to Raise Flamanville Costs to $6.5 Billion, Delay Reactor Starts

That's $6.5 billion for 1,650 MW(e) nameplate. With a capacity factor of 90%, that's an average output of 1,485 MW(e), so $4.38/W. 1/10th the price of Steve's solar surprise.

	Cost	Electricity	Cost/Electricity output
Our solar panel	$43,000	8,524 kWh/year	$5.04 per (kWh per year) ($44.30 per W average)
Areva SA's nuclear reactor	$6.5 billion	13 billion kWh/year	$0.50 per (kWh per year) ($4.38 per W average)

This is puzzling. Why did we buy this silly and impractical gift for Steve? Also, who is 'we'? And why didn't 'we', whoever we are, get a bill? (Did you other we's remember getting a bill for this?)

Let's untangle the net. We are two sets of persons: the US taxpayers, and the Colorado utility ratepayers. (And if you're not, well then you're a different 'we' than we are.). Our money was taken by our governments -- the federal and the state -- and gifted to Steve as a present for his green-mindedness. Steve thinks he is saving money (he wrote a whole essay in Spectrum about how he "saved money" on solar panels). Perhaps I'm being brusque by asking for recognition for my gift, but Steve's not saving money -- he's taking it. Here's how much:

	Contribution	% Share
Xcel Energy	$26,000	60%
Internal Revenue Service	$5,100	12%
Steve	$11,900	28%
Total	$43,000

"I got a nice surprise from the federal government. As part of the big bank bailout of 2008, the government continued the 30 percent tax credit on solar photovoltaic installations and also eliminated the cap of $2000. So the cost of my system, which started at $43 000 list and was reduced to $17 000 after Xcel’s power rebates, was cut by another $5100 with the federal tax credit. The final system price: $11 900."

So, how did we split the bill?

Steve paid 28%, a little over one-quarter. He hit the jackpot. I wish my life was like this -- why can't I pay $12,000 towards a $43,000 car and call it even? My life is not fair.

The IRS paid 12%. This is federal tax revenue. It is an example of a direct subsidy.

Xcel paid 60%. Now this is a mysterious gift. Why would some energy company give $26,000 of their own money to some guy? They must be very nice people!

But wait a second -- look a bit closer, Xcel only gives these gifts to people living in Colorado. That's an odd gift. They must really like the people of Colorado! I can understand why. Coloradoans are nice people.

But back up -- when did Xcel start giving away free gifts? They're a utility! Their revenue is utility bills, and it's supposed to go to maintaining the power plants which their customers use. Here they're taking their customers' money and giving it away. It's the ratepayers -- the customers of Xcel electricity (in Colorado) -- which are footing the $26,000 rebate for Steve. Now they must be nice people.

But... as the cynical scrooges in my readership may have guessed, they aren't nice people after all. In fact their money was taken from them by an act of government. How you say? This is a different kind of subsidy, called an indirect subsidy. Denver isn't mailing tax checks to Steve. Instead, they forced Xcel -- the utility -- to raise their customers' bills and send their money to Steve. Well actually it's a bit less direct than that:

"Xcel’s Solar*Rewards Program was initiated to comply with Colorado's Amendment 37, approved by voters in 2004. The renewable energy standard (RES) component of Amendment 37 has since been amended and now requires Colorado’s investor-owned utilities, including Xcel Energy, to generate or purchase enough renewable energy to supply 20% of their retail electricity sales in Colorado by 2020. Of the electricity generated each year from eligible renewables, at least 4% must come from solar-electric technologies. At least one-half of the solar requirement must be generated by systems located at customers' facilities."

[DSIRE] Xcel Energy - Solar*Rewards Program

And that is how the subsidy works. A government mandate forces Xcel to get 4% of their electricity from solar panels. It doesn't force them to raise bills or send 5-figure checks to random suburban homeowners; that's just the inevitable consequence. Solar power is ten times more expensive than the leading brand, so, to build solar panels as mandated by the state, they must raise rates. But even with solar panels, central, utility-maintained plants are slightly less ridiculous than mounting individual systems on subsurban rooftops. And that's where the second clause comes in: "At least one-half of the solar requirement must be generated by systems located at customers' facilities". To comply with law, they need to get their customers to buy solar panels. And that is why they give away $26,000 rebates to people like Steve.