Comments on: Phase-Out of the Federal Wind Tax Credit a Good Thing?

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:59:00 +0000

Thanks!

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:50:00 +0000

There’s more than one market that trades in natural gas futures. I use the Henry Hub because I like the name…. ;o)

http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/energy/natural-gas/natural-gas.html

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:38:00 +0000

where’d you get those numbers? same source? useful to have on hand..

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:38:00 +0000

I would have written about electricity, not total energy, as this article is about electricity.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 18:56:00 +0000

You left out the ~$9 trillion we’ve spent (so far) fighting oil wars. And the cost of ‘homeland security’ – and the millions (billions?) of productive hours standing in line waiting for our privates to be fondled.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Some gas futures data…

Sep 2012 $2.776/MMBtu
Sep 2014 $3.911
Sep 2016 $4.346
Sep 2018 $4.849
Sep 2020 $5.458

If you bought eight years of gas futures you’d pay a median price of $4.117, 1.3x as much as the present price of gas.

I think that this says that someone could build a NG plant and be fairly safe in expecting to pay it off in a few years.

By: Matthew Rose

Matthew Rose — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:41:00 +0000

right, it is less than 2% of the US energy supply. What I was trying to get at, an “annual increase” of the entire energy portfolio. ex.

2015 Wind Energy makes up “2.5%” of the entire US energy portfolio
2016 Wind Energy makes up “3.5%” of the entire US energy portfolio.

How about this: the US needs to change its energy portfolio so that 2-3% of the total US energy needs are added by new alternative energy generation every year. Due to it is not feasibly possible to replace all of the carbon energy market next year, and it has to be a long-term market sustainable business model, while enabling a complete transfer from carbon based energy to national security engendering alternative sources.

How would you have written it?

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Let me try to think things through as a utility owner who doesn’t give a fig about the climate. (I’m sure there’s one or two.)

OK, the EPA has clamped down on coal plant emissions. It would cost a lot of money to upgrade an existing coal plant and new regulations could appear later on making it even more expensive, so time to shut down the old coal plant. (Or maybe the utility just needs more generation.)

So, what to do? Natural gas generation is pretty cheap at the moment. LCOE for combined cycle gas is running $0.02 to $0.05/kWh. If one could lock in some gas futures at a reasonable price then you could build the NG plant and pay it off before gas prices might climb significantly.

Wind is expected to fall from about $0.05/kWh to around $0.03/kWh. If that happens then one could install wind without subsidy in a few years for the present cost including the present $0.022/kWh FiT.

Wind is variable. The utility will need some sort of fill-in, either storage or dispatchable generation. There’s no guarantee that affordable storage will be available in the next few years. A paid off gas plant is good fill-in.

In about five years PV solar is expected to drop to under $0.10/kWh. When the price of solar drops below that of gas generation due to increasing fuel costs install a lot of PV and run gas as fill-in.

So, shut down coal, build combined cycle gas. Later add wind and solar when the cost of NG fuel starts to hurt.

—
Numbers from http://en.openei.org/apps/TCDB/

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:17:00 +0000

Wind is already over 3% of the total US electricity supply.

By: Matthew Rose

Matthew Rose — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:02:00 +0000

I think keeping the wind credit in place until which time wind energy generation equals an annual 1% replacement in the total United States energy portfolio of carbon based power.

By: Matthew Todd Peffly

Matthew Todd Peffly — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:27:00 +0000

Well lets cheer for all the other great thems the “even playing feild” boys are doing to help green energy.
1) Keep the $500 Billion/year hidden support to coal for health external in the US. http://cleantechnica.com/2011/02/17/cost-of-coal-500-billion-year-in-u-s-harvard-study-finds/
2) Keep the exist fossil fuel support in place (else it is raising taxes)
The Great Energy Challenge also includes fossil fuel subsidy data from developed countries (Figure 1), bringing the total global value close to $500 billion for 2010.
Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1kI4k)

3) Add another big break for oil (see Romey pledge)

And wind needs to justify getting any support every year, yea that makes it even.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:37:00 +0000

I suspect the wind industry would be fine with that.

Especially if subsidies for fossil fuel generation were also dropped.

And they could make it sweeter by requiring fossil fuels to pay their hidden costs – health, climate change, military costs we pay with our tax dollars and health insurance premiums.

Wind would be a very happy industry. I suspect even solar would be fine with that plan…

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:21:00 +0000

I think they should phase out the tax credit (im going to school to be a wind turbine technician) over a 10 year period with it dropping by 10% each year to encourage quick expansion and better quality