3 ms·

Plus the cost of the power lines and related equipment.

by patrickg_zill 8y ago

gandreani 8y ago
Exactly! That's probably %40-25 of the cost in our utility bills. The maintenance of these is never considered
- Retric 8y ago
  US has 700,000 miles of power lines, a few HVDC can send a lot of power east/west while being a rounding error.
Retric 8y ago
Sort of, if you want to send power north then sending power north east takes less extra lines then sending power east then nort. So, generall sending power 1,000 miles west requires up to but not nessisarily 1,000 miles of power lines.
Gibbon1 8y ago
Little goggling showed a proposed 3000 MW transmission line coming in at about $1.6M/mile. At a 1000 miles that would be 1.6X1000 or $1.6 billion $1.6b/3000W is $0.53/W capital cost. That doesn't seem crazy.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  people imagine that making renewables work is just TOO HARD yet if you look at all of the infrastructure requried to make fossil fuels work it is a massive amount of money, tech, and effort. We send cities out into the ocean to drill holes into the curst of the earth, massive boats the size of stadiums to bring the oil to shore, then massive facilities to refine it and on and on and on. Then people act like figuring out large scale energy storage is just too hard! Sorry have to deal with global warming! ridiculous
  - hueving 8y ago
    Argue with numbers, not emotions. If drilling wasn't cost effective at the current price per barrel, they wouldn't do it, it's that simple. Perhaps you're underestimating how much a drilling rig can extract. You're right about no pricing of global warming externalities, but that has nothing to do with your appeal to incredulity of 'cities on the ocean'. Have you seen the scale of a large offshore wind farm?
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      You're making an argument about variations inside of "hard", which is missing the point. There are people that act like renewables are in the "hard" class but coal/oil power isn't. They're wrong.
- hueving 8y ago
  You need opex and to show that a one hour shift is worth anything close to that. People in cold climates need heat in the dark. People in hot climates need air con in the evening after work. A 1 hour shift does little for that.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  It doesn't seem to be a crazy price, although I think your units need adjustment? Seems to be $533 per kilowatt of carrying capacity, which is 53.3 cents per W, as you mentioned. A kWh (1 hour x 1 kW) usually costs between 5 and 10 cents depending on the market, so, how many hours will the line need to be carrying its full complement of electricity in order to say, increase the cost by (a contrived number) only 1 cent per kWh? I fully admit I don't know the vagaries of load-shifting and transmission, however...
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    Think about it this way 3000 MW X 30 years X 8766 hr/year = 7.88X10^11 kwhr. So $1.6B/7.88X10^11kwhr is $0.002/kwh
    - patrickg_zill 8y ago
      That requires a 24x7 100% utilization level. Which is not reasonable if we are talking about wind or solar power. I think that the max power of the farm is 800 MW, so peak utilization would be about 25%, unless more capacity were to be added in some fashion.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - Retric 8y ago
        You don't just move power from a single farm for 30 years using just that line. Reality is end up with a network of these lines at various utilization numbers. But, an average of say 60% seems achievable which would put you at around 0.33 cents per kWh over 1000 miles. Now specifics becomes a rather complex geometry problem as the US is mostly above the equator etc, but it does show you can shift power more than 1 hour for under 1 cent per kWh which makes this cheaper than storage.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      > That requires a 24x7 100% utilization level Not really here nor there, the calculation is just gives one an idea where the decimal point is.

Plus the cost of the power lines and related equipment.

gandreani 8y ago

Exactly! That's probably %40-25 of the cost in our utility bills. The maintenance of these is never considered

Retric 8y ago
US has 700,000 miles of power lines, a few HVDC can send a lot of power east/west while being a rounding error.

Retric 8y ago

Sort of, if you want to send power north then sending power north east takes less extra lines then sending power east then nort. So, generall sending power 1,000 miles west requires up to but not nessisarily 1,000 miles of power lines.

Gibbon1 8y ago

Little goggling showed a proposed 3000 MW transmission line coming in at about $1.6M/mile. At a 1000 miles that would be 1.6X1000 or $1.6 billion $1.6b/3000W is $0.53/W capital cost. That doesn't seem crazy.

gameswithgo 8y ago
people imagine that making renewables work is just TOO HARD yet if you look at all of the infrastructure requried to make fossil fuels work it is a massive amount of money, tech, and effort. We send cities out into the ocean to drill holes into the curst of the earth, massive boats the size of stadiums to bring the oil to shore, then massive facilities to refine it and on and on and on. Then people act like figuring out large scale energy storage is just too hard! Sorry have to deal with global warming! ridiculous
- hueving 8y ago
  Argue with numbers, not emotions. If drilling wasn't cost effective at the current price per barrel, they wouldn't do it, it's that simple. Perhaps you're underestimating how much a drilling rig can extract. You're right about no pricing of global warming externalities, but that has nothing to do with your appeal to incredulity of 'cities on the ocean'. Have you seen the scale of a large offshore wind farm?
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    You're making an argument about variations inside of "hard", which is missing the point. There are people that act like renewables are in the "hard" class but coal/oil power isn't. They're wrong.
hueving 8y ago
You need opex and to show that a one hour shift is worth anything close to that. People in cold climates need heat in the dark. People in hot climates need air con in the evening after work. A 1 hour shift does little for that.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
It doesn't seem to be a crazy price, although I think your units need adjustment? Seems to be $533 per kilowatt of carrying capacity, which is 53.3 cents per W, as you mentioned. A kWh (1 hour x 1 kW) usually costs between 5 and 10 cents depending on the market, so, how many hours will the line need to be carrying its full complement of electricity in order to say, increase the cost by (a contrived number) only 1 cent per kWh? I fully admit I don't know the vagaries of load-shifting and transmission, however...
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Think about it this way 3000 MW X 30 years X 8766 hr/year = 7.88X10^11 kwhr. So $1.6B/7.88X10^11kwhr is $0.002/kwh
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    That requires a 24x7 100% utilization level. Which is not reasonable if we are talking about wind or solar power. I think that the max power of the farm is 800 MW, so peak utilization would be about 25%, unless more capacity were to be added in some fashion.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 8y ago
      You don't just move power from a single farm for 30 years using just that line. Reality is end up with a network of these lines at various utilization numbers. But, an average of say 60% seems achievable which would put you at around 0.33 cents per kWh over 1000 miles. Now specifics becomes a rather complex geometry problem as the US is mostly above the equator etc, but it does show you can shift power more than 1 hour for under 1 cent per kWh which makes this cheaper than storage.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    > That requires a 24x7 100% utilization level Not really here nor there, the calculation is just gives one an idea where the decimal point is.