Cold Air from Wordpress

"While evidence that IBP [increasing-block pricing] incents energy efficiency is absent, the evidence is clear that IBP is a key driver behind the distributed solar PV movement in California. In fact, solar PV installers “work with” customers to optimally design systems so they just shave off the high-tier usage without touching the low-tier usage where the price is way too low for PV to save customers money. With federal subsidies that pay nearly half the cost of PV — and net metering that pays the residential customer for electricity supplied to the grid at the retail rate rather than the wholesale rate that other renewable generation sources receive – solar PV can beat the high-tier prices of IBP. That’s why solar PV installers are the most vocal opponents of rational rate reform that would call a kilowatt-hour a kilowatt-hour regardless of how many other kilowatt-hours you consume during the month."

A big part of explaining why economic growth, and sales tax revenue, were lower than expected? "Having successfully not spent the money he didn’t plan to spend, he’s now treating that $1 billion as a sign of the Liberal government’s gift for fiscal restraint. It’s an old trick. When the federal Liberals were enjoying budget surpluses in the early 2000s, they’d build in multibillion-dollar contingency funds to make the surpluses seem smaller. At the end of the year, they could overspend on some new goodies and still come in with better numbers than had been “predicted” when the contingency funds weren’t all spent. Of course, put the $1 billion aside and the government is still $300 million better off than its projections said it would be." ...The province did pull in $858 million more than anticipated from its Crown corporations. That’s a significant amount of money. Unfortunately, most of that came from Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One."

Writing my Cold Air blog , I try to remind myself of the premise that "nobody cares that you're mad. What's your point?" One reason I have this alternative blog is the possibility that premise is wrong. A sometimes very annoying part of writing is it causes more reading. Two of the dullest things I've recently read were bad legal rulings regarding wind at Ostrander Point  and the Darlington nuclear new built environmental assessment . I was motivated to read the Darlington decision due to a lawyer's implication ( twitter ) the judge considered the impacts of nuclear units within a context of options. This was not so. Lawyers and judges are, in general, annoying. Generalizations being a little cowardly, let me be specific: Diane Saxe is annoying. Diane Saxe co-writes a pedestrian summary of a legal ruling with: We hear from folks on the ground that, once projects start running, many neighbours have privately expressed pleasant surprise that the turbines cause...

I don't much like Harry Reid, or energy illiteracy, so this tweet doubly irked me: Last year 40% of new electricity installed was from renewable sources. #NCES7 pic.twitter.com/JaITgbud30 — Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) September 4, 2014 Here's the problem with the statement. Electricity wasn't installed; the capacity to generate electricity was. That equipment to generate electricity from renewable sources is probably not made with renewable sources (think steel - and the sources to produce energy in China). To illustrate, think Tesla and Nevada. Tesla has been shopping for a site to build an enormous battery factory, primarily for its electric cars which it often links to solar power in marketing. We won't know until tomorrow, at the earliest, what price will be paid to lure Tesla to Nevada or, given Harry Reid's influence in Congress, how the subsidies will split between Nevada and the federal government. We do know Tesla didn't choose Nevada because of a...

"It’s important to understand the nature of this EROEI limit. This is not a question of inadequate storage capacity – we can’t just buy or make more storage to make it work. It’s not a question of energy losses during charge and discharge, or the number of cycles a battery can deliver. We can’t look to new materials or technological advances, because the limits at the leading edge are those of earthmoving and civil engineering. The problem can’t be addressed through market support mechanisms, carbon pricing, or cost reductions. This is a fundamental energetic limit that will likely only shift if we find less materially intensive methods for dam construction. This is not to say wind and solar have no role to play. They can expand within a fossil fuel system, reducing overall emissions."

From Carol Goar's  Industry coaxes Canadian women to don hard hats : Image from Goar's article in the Toronto Star The electricity industry faces a major shortage of skilled workers in the coming years. It needs 23,000 new recruits by 2016 just to replace retiring baby boomers. When the imperative of upgrading Canada’s half-century-old power grid is factored in, the number balloons. Women are the sector’s largest untapped labour pool. Hoping to change that, the industry group has launched a $350,000 campaign called Bridging the Gap. It aims to persuade women to become engineers, electricians, power line technicians, construction millwrights, power station operators and industrial mechanics. Women currently make up 25 per cent of the electricity industry’s workforce, but they are heavily concentrated in administration and marketing. “We want to get them working on the technical side,” Branigan [chief executive of Electricity Human Resources Canada ] says.