Coal power

[oil pan 4]

Base rate for residential here is 7 cents per kwh.
My usage divided by my bill is usually 10 or 11 cents.
Generation rate is 3 cents per kwh, so if I make more solar power than I use I earn 3 cents per kwh.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

We're paying something like 10 cents per kWh in Portland. That's dirt cheap compared to the rest of the country and the world. The only cheaper power I've had is Washington at 8 cents.

I don't know that the rate would make much of a difference. Per the EIA Oregon pays 8.9 cents and the US average is 10.3 cents. I only average about $85 per month with an almost all electric house. (Only our hot water is gas, I pulled the gas furnace 2 years ago and had a heat pump installed) Even adding 10 to 15% to my rate isn't going to change my payback substantially.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

This is the last sunny week of the year. We're in for 5 months of overcast after that.

The projections from the 3 companies that quoted my job showed the solar still covering about 1/3 to 1/2 of my usage even during our rainy season. That matches what my neighbors with solar say they are getting. In the summer I would be exceeding my needs and feeding back into the grid.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

...and those figures are for nameplate output, not actual, right? That's why sendler is always on about. A nuke plant can deliver 90% of nameplate or something like that, while solar is something like 30%.

Yes, that is nameplate installed capacity. Nuke plants cost so much upfront that even a 90% of nameplate they cost more per kWh than coal, gas, solar, or wind.

Likewise a coal plant cost more to build, maintain, and run than a gas plant. Using the EIA numbers coal is 3x more expensive than gas.

Wind and Solar are less expensive to build out than a coal plant, less expensive to maintain, and the "fuel" is free. Using the EIA numbers wind and solar are the same price as coal per kWh at 1/3 of nameplate output when the coal plant is at 2/3rds of nameplate.

The biggest eyeopener for me was that the cost to install wind has dropped 25% and solar 67% in only 3 years.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by aerohead

*Europe will be also be inter-tied to Africa.

Not really dependable without major social & political changes. See e.g. Arab Oil Embargo.

[oil pan 4]

The cost of decent inverters is still 15 to 40 cents per watt for a bigger one.
That price hasn't come down much if any.
Copper, conduit, labor, racks, trackers all up.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Not really dependable without major social & political changes. See e.g. Arab Oil Embargo.

If you look at a Dymaxion projection map, the important inter-tie is across the Bering Strait. The same issues apply, maybe not as strongly, Russia used to run Alaska.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

A nuke plant can deliver 90% of nameplate or something like that, while solar is something like 30%.

Solar PV can make 30% of nameplate in a tropical high desert on trackers. The installation I have good data on at Ithaca, NY has averaged 13.7% over 4 years. Germany's nation wide average is 11%.

[redpoint5]

Which is why I'm always saying it's absurd for me to go solar where I live, considering it's overcast half of the days, not directly under the sun (45th parallel), and electricity is about the cheapest in the nation at 8 cents per kWh.

I would rather install solar on someone's home in Phoenix, have them pay me 8 cents per kWh produced, and reduce their bill by whatever it delivers. I win by producing much more power than I normally would have, and they win by paying lower rates than the utility charges.

No idea why such a model does not exist.

[sendler]

Even harder to understand is why Arizona has very little solar given the National incentives that are currently available.

[redpoint5]

There should essentially be no solar in the PNW valley, except that the states lean very "eco" (eco in the sense that people mean well, but still don't act rationally) and probably has tax incentives to subsidize it, on top of whatever federal subsidy there is. In a rational market, anyone that wanted to buy solar who lives in the PNW valley would buy it where it's sunnier and the electricity more expensive, such as AZ.

AZ has about average utility rates, ranked #27 in price per kWh. WA is something like #2.

There are quite a few micro wind turbines on farms around here too. Not sure how the numbers work out or the incentives, but surely these could be more optimally placed too. Land is not cheap here, and there is more wind in other locations.

[oil pan 4]

It looks like 1/3 of Americans struggle to pay energy bills and 11% of Americans skimped on something to pay an energy bill. 14% receiveda disconnect notice some time in 2015.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37072