Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
WRT California building local power plants, where? Pretty much every significant hydro location is already used. Local wind & solar have the same use time issues. Fossil fuels? You pretty much have to ship in the fuel, which has its own costs. And with nuclear, you spend $1 billion on the plant, and $10 billion on the lawsuits from every anti-nuclear group under the sun.
|
Death Valley isn't being used for much.
CA residents deserve the rates they get, as they are responsible for electing people that represent their interests. If their interest is high cost renewable, that's what they get.
I actually want the Hoover dam battery plan to go through so I can see how the experiment plays out at others expense.
My numbers for payback assumed they can get renewable energy for free. Any cost for electricity above nothing will greatly extend out the amount of kwh of Hoover stored water required to break even with the expense to build it. Basically, the cost to purchase TX sun power plus the cost of storing that energy in the Hoover dam must be lower than the cost to just generate the power, or at least less than the current utility rate to customers, or it will cause an increase in utility rates.
I'm saying there is almost no way the project can be done without increasing the already extremely high CA utility rates. Someone has to have the highest utility rates, and Hawaii has held that title for too long.