California Poised To Hit 50 Percent Renewable Target a Full Decade Ahead of Schedule (cleantechnica.com) 247
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechnica: Every year, the California Energy Commission releases its Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) report, which gives details about the mix of energy experienced by all utilities within the state during the preceding 12 months. The report for this year, released in November, shows that all three of the state's investor-owned utilities -- Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric -- are projected to derive 50% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. That is a full decade ahead of schedule. PG&E reports it used 32.9% renewable energy in the past year. The figure for SoCal Edison was 28.2%. San Diego Gas & Electric led the pack with 43.2% renewable energy. Now that the 50% goal is within reach, California is looking ahead to its next milestone -- 80% renewables by 2050. "Once we get to about 50 percent, we're going to start to run into new challenges -- the second 50 percent will be trickier than the first 50 percent," Brown notes. Part of the challenge will be balancing the grid using new technologies to avoid the need for fossil fueled "peaker plants" to provide additional electricity when demand is high.
Do as the French do... (Score:5, Interesting)
Run nuclear plants as peakers -- yes, it can be done with the right design.
Nuclear isn't renewable, but it's a hell of a lot cleaner than fossil fools.
Re:Do as the French do... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Pumped storage is a proven technology. BUT ...
1. It has good points -- It's only mildly ecologically disastrous. Unlike batteries, it doesn't require nasty chemicals, self-immolate, lose capacity over time, etc. If nothing else, folks can probably fish, swim, and water ski in the pools.
2. It needs lots of water. California doesn't always HAVE lots of water. It's possible to use salt water of course, but that would suggest siting close to the coast.
3. It's surprisingly hard to find good sites for pumped
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Electrolysis is about 65 to 70% efficient, and a fuel cell is about 50%. Thus the round-trip efficiency is around 35%.
This significantly less than a battery, where the round trip efficiency is about 70%.
So no, we won't be doing this.
http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technologies/hydrogen-energy-storage
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With nuclear, they don't use electrolysis to split water, they use heat. Not sure what efficiency but much better than electrolysis. Process is called thermochemical water splitting. It's efficient because it doesn't require generating electricity as a step in the process, rather it uses the reactors own heat directly to fuel the operation.
I heard they tried that in Japan at Fukushima, it didn't end well.
Of course, there are more options about what to do with excess power. One option touted is compressing air into underground caves, or liquefying the compressed air into cryogenic tanks, then using the expansion of that air at times of peak load to drive turbines.
But I'm of the opinion that district level storage using chemical batteries (flow batteries seem promising) will provide the best value for money. That will allow the existing grids t
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The water is not lost; it's pumped back up the hill after being run down through turbines during peak load. Large lakes do of course suffer from evaporation loss.
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He did say "when this was available". The available amount varies from year to year, and using it for hydro doesn't prevent using it also for drinking and irrigation...though storage can be a problem.
But the real problem is it varies from year to year. Some years it would be a reasonable approach.
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Run nuclear plants as peakers -- yes, it can be done with the right design.
Yes it can, but why bother? I get to this in a bit.
Nuclear isn't renewable, but it's a hell of a lot cleaner than fossil fools.
True, just the radioactive material in coal ash should be enough to get coal plants shut down. That's if coal had to meet the same standards as nuclear for disposing of the naturally occurring uranium in the ash. But if it's safe for them to toss it in a ditch then certainly nuclear reactors can do the same?
So, why bother with nuclear as a supplier of peak demand? Let's consider that Germany discovered that for every 4 MW of wind power they need 3 MW of
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All this rationalization. Lets just take the real world examples;
Germany 19% nuclear, 20% wind+solar.
France, 70% nuclear, 5% wind+solar
France CO2 emissions per capita and per Kwh are about 1/2 of Germany
France's electricity costs are 0.169/kWh, Germany 0.306/kWh
Case closed.
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"Case closed."
Not hardly. Germany is trying to shut down its nuclear reactors without increasing dependence on Russian natural gas. As a result they are burning a lot of coal and therefore releasing a lot of CO2. France has virtually no fossil fuels, so they built a lot of nukes.
Their energy mixes are NOT comparable.
Personally, I think that Germany's priorities (other than not depending on Russia to stay warm in Winter) are kind of odd. But that's none of my business
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If I read that right, you're suggesting that once you commit to building nuclear power plants with sufficient capacity to cover a bad wind/sun day, there's no point in cluttering up the landscape with wind turbines? Interesting. I'm not a big fan of nuclear, but I'll go off and think about it.
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> Wind and nuclear are not too far apart in capital expense, wind at $70 and nuclear at $83.
I'm not sure what units you're using, you didn't post them. However, in $/Wp, wind is about $1.25 and nuclear is around $10.00. So, I disagree.
> Nuclear can load follow fairly well as it is right now.
No, it can't. The vast majority of plants in service around the world have about 25% throttling capability per 24 hours. There are a minority of designs that do much better than that, closer to 50%, which is what y
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If the US pulled its head out of its ass and went full reprocessing with breeder reactors until thorium tech was available there would be little to no waste issue, and what issue there was could be vitrified, encased in lead, and dumped in the Marianas Trench.
Re:Do as the French do... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes nuclear doesn't release CO2, but >>>
1. California's geology is not well suited to nuclear -- a patchwork of fault lines. At this time, no one knows where they all are, much less which are active. No one wants to build a multibillion dollar nuclear facility, then find out they've built on top of a blind thrust fault. (i.e. a fault with no surface indication).
2. Current, proven designs are steam boilers that need lots of water. For the most part, California doesn't have lots of long term reliable water inland. There's lots of coastline of course, but virtually none of it looks to be guaranteed to be stable.
3. The California culture is strongly antinuclear and costs will surely be exacerbated by endless lawsuits.
4. Recent nuclear plants in the developed world have had MAJOR problems with cost and schedule.
5. If you look at the historical costs of nuclear accidents, they show signs of having a highly skewed ("paretto" / "power-law") distribution. i.e. occasional industrial accidents whose costs can sanely be covered by an insurance pool ... and occasional catastrophic accidents with costs comparable to a war.
My feeling, and you're surely free to disagree. The world can be powered by wind. solar and nuclear. But the nuclear part may genuinely be risky.
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No they can't. A nuke plant takes days to ramp up electricity production. A nuke plant is not an instant on by any means.
A Nuke plant is a base load provider not a peak provider. It is near impossible to design a fast ramp up nuke plant. As in with in 30 minutes.
Gas and Hydro are near instantaneous power providers. Hydro being the fastest to provide power.
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That's true. But I've read posts elsewhere that sounded sane that argue that the inability to quickly fire up current reactors is an arbitrary design decision, not a fundamental property of fission power. And certainly there's nothing in the basics of fission that prevents ramping up heat pretty quickly. However, IANANE (I am NOT a nuclear engineer). For all I know, the thermal stress
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> certainly there's nothing in the basics of fission that prevents ramping up heat pretty quickly
No. Read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_neutron
Reactors often get a safety margin by operating slightly below the conditions needed for a chain reaction and then using the extra neutrons provided by fission products to make up the difference. Since these are generated over a period of minutes, there is a slow-following curve which makes it much easier to control. You can operate without this consi
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Hmmm. How fast can you bring up a sanely designed nuclear plant? Keep in mind that all thermal power plants take a while -- minutes, hours, days -- to get up to speed. That seems to be a real problem when trying to back up solar or wind. I think that the only backups that can act in tens of seconds are hydro and batteries. And I have my doubts about the latter. Not that one can't (probably) design a battery bank with a good backup profile for grid level wind. But I'm far from convinced that the Lion
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> How fast can you bring up a sanely designed nuclear plant?
From zero takes days and days. From 75% takes about 24 hours, at least for common designs like PWR.
> s of seconds are hydro and batteries. And I have my doubts about the
Don't. There was a recent brownout sequence in Austrailia that just happened to occur days after the Tesla pack went online. It managed to stabilize the frequency in real time.
The entire power industry is talking about this. They're using terms like "game changer" and "never t
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> Color me unimpressed. It kicked in a few MW for a short period of time.
You obviously don't work in the power industry.
I assure you, this is *very* impressive. People have been talking about solutions to this problem since I was a kid. When they were still working on Shiva. Before I bought my Atari 400.
> The question is whether Lion batteries can stabilize the South Australian grid for years on end without losing too much capacity
LiIon, like most batteries, loses capacity when you have wild swings in
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The control system allows the plant to accept step load increases of 10 percent and ramp load increases of 5 percent per minute over the load range of 15 to 100 percent of full power subject to xenon limitations. Equal step and ramp load reductions are possible over the range of 100 to 15 percent of full power. Losses of reactor load up to 100 percent of rated power without reactor trip can be accommodated by steam dump to the condenser conjunct with the control system.
Hmmm, 5 percent per minute, from 15 to 100 percent? That would mean 17 minutes to ramp up or down between full-throttle and idle. Quite flexible, and quite quick! Most peaker plants take between 10 to 30 minutes [powerengineeringint.com] to ramp up to rated output, so the nuclear plant - with power equal or greater than most natural gas peakers - responds as fast as the natural gas peakers. Imagine that!
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Nuclear is already far too expensive. Running nuclear plants as peakers makes this even worse.
BTW: nice article in the guardian on nuclear power and its economics (and where the myh its economical comes from):
https://www.theguardian.com/ne... [theguardian.com]
Re:Do as the French do... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do as the French do... (Score:5, Funny)
Before Donald Trump was elected, I might have argued with you about that. Now I'm not so sure.
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The US President has zero impact on moving technologies from the white board to real products and services. It is the legislative branch that create regulations or intrusive government meddling in technological advancements. If people would only redirect their complaints from the President towards Congress they my see some problems solved.
So many people complained to their GOPcongressmen that they've cancelled town hall meetings to avoid meeting with their constituents.
Complaining to congress has as much effect as as complaining about the president.
One example of Congressional maleficence and public idiocy would be the DACA program. The DACA program was created by the previous administration by executive order. There is some controversy about the legality of the executive order that created the DACA program . Trump didn't cancel the program. He just sent the entire matter to Congress to be approve and codify by into law. But all you hear are people telling sob stories about being deported because of Trumps decision.
While democrats overwhelmingly support the DACA program, even 40% of republicans don't believe it should be disbanded. Only 15% of the country thinks the DACA immigrants should be deported.
And really how callous do you have to be to think that the right thing to do is to deport children that had no choice in the matter and were illegally brought to this country by their parents -- some have lived in the USA their entire lives and have no friends/family back in their home country, yet people still want to send them back "home". It seems akin to putting a child in jail because he was in the back seat of the getaway car when his dad robbed a bank.
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"And I don't like any nuclear design that can serve more than 5,000 houses."
I think there's a subtle logical flaw there. There's not a lot of data, but what I've seen suggests that nuclear plant power output won't be a major variable in accident magnitude -- which is to say that a 30Mw facility supplying 5,000 houses (Numbers I got off the the Internet without a lot of checking) is about as likely to have a huge accident as a 1Gw power plant. If that's true, we'd want a few BIG power plants, not a lot of
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Humans + Nuclear power is just bad news.
You mean, beside being the safest source of energy, even including those 1960s reactors still in use? And that's by quite a margin above renewables.
If you count in the cost of externalities, it's also among the cheapest. For an iBooks-to-OPiPCs comparison, put a condom on every coal chimney and store both pollutants and CO2 forever (they don't decay with time like nuclear waste does) -- and only then we can talk about being fair.
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It would be nice to see an unbiased study on nuclear safety vs everything else. The studies I've seen have been very biased. They count construction deaths in wind and solar but not nuclear (I'd assume there's been a few construction worker deaths in construction of nuclear plants rather then zero), they count mining deaths in coal mining without counting deaths in uranium mining and count dams built for flood protection that failed as hydro failures.
Now I'm willing to believe that currently nuclear is safe
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Costs you quoted include all the externalities that other sources of energy get to offload to human health, animal health and so on. Nuclear is the only one that is required to cover anything that could possibly have resulted from it, including a good heap of nuke-haters' paranoia.
Wind doesn't require fuel (besides inefficiently mooching from a fusion reactor a few light minutes away), but requires maintenance (each turbine generates little power) and a lot of land. It also causes a lot of bird deaths and
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That chart only takes into account total energy generation. It doesn't account for the "quality" of the generation. For example, with a thermal power station, you can generate a known amount of electricity 24/7 with minimal investment in load balancing.
And the report states that they haven't considered any costs to deal with intermittency at all. All costs to deal with intermittency should be borne by renewables. In effect, we should match renewable capacity with some on-demand capacity. So, for example, th
Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). (Score:5, Interesting)
From Forbes: California's Growing Imported Electricity Problem [forbes.com] "California now imports 33% of its electricity supply from fast growing neighbors". Looks like a numbers game to me, but what do I know.
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Are there people who really believe Forbes?
http://www.latimes.com/project... [latimes.com]
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How about the US Government [eia.gov] which states that "California imports about a quarter of its electricity on average"? Do they count? Reading the article you linked, it is clear the LA Times "cherry picked" specific narrow dates to make their claim. On average, CA imports a full 25% of its power needs.
Seems you're a lot better off believing Forbes rather than the LA Times... At least when it comes to truthiness about power imports to California.
Re:Seems they import a lot of electricity (1/3). (Score:5, Interesting)
One op-ed from a guy who is a professional promoter of natural gas says "California should really buy more natural gas," and you're willing to conclude California is running a gigantic scam?
It's not like the source of the power is untraceable once it goes over the border, or CA is claiming the source of the power is a national security secret and just trust us it's much more expensive solar power, ignore that the power lines are running to coal fired power plants just over the border.
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I mean, it's NO different than you saying 'My water bill is down to half!! Look how good I am at water conservation!!!
That's not at all what it's like. Renewable energy sourced from the neighboring state doesn't run up the carbon in the atmosphere.
a LOT of that is coming from OTHER states is horse shit. So those states are at negative what?
Well, one, that's not how economics work. CA buying renewable energy and making it known well in advance that they're going to be increasing renewable energy doesn't mean all the renewable energy gets used up, it means people start building up renewable energy.
For another they're rapidly increasing their in-state renewable energy [wikipedia.org]
As much as CA wishes it were not part of the US, the only relevant number is how much energy in the US is renewable. Despite what people in CA think, CA cannot survive on it's own.
It seems to boil down to "I DON'T LIKE CALIFORN
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> replacing it with solar because it is simply so much cheaper
I've seen PPAs in the gulf at 2.2 cents/kWh.
> There's a difference between running solar power plants in the Persian Gulf
> and running them near Seattle. It's not a small one.
But there's basically zero difference between Seattle and Mohave. And not that much difference between Mohave and Idaho. And, of course, Seattle's offshore wind resource is amazing.
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From Forbes: California's Growing Imported Electricity Problem [forbes.com] "California now imports 33% of its electricity supply from fast growing neighbors". Looks like a numbers game to me, but what do I know.
About 22% of California's imported power comes from renewables
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About 22% of California's imported power comes from renewables
Right, California buys expensive renewable energy which reduces it's availability from the open market. They can make this claim only because they paid above market rates. Which is fine by me, I don't live in California and so their buying of renewable energy means more cheap natural gas, hydro, and nuclear energy for me. This is especially insane since if the goal is to reduce CO2 output they'd consider hydro and nuclear as "green" energy too. Solar produces more CO2 per energy output than nuclear and
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Made in UTAH. (Score:5, Informative)
California Electricity that is.
There are several plants in the state that do nothing but make electricity for California.
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> California Electricity is [made in Utah].
So?
California utilities still have to account for the source of the electricity that they use. If Utah sells PG&E power that comes from sources that are 50% coal-fired, then that impacts PG&E's EnviroScore or whatever.
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California Electricity that is.
There are several plants in the state that do nothing but make electricity for California.
Arizona is also heavily into the business of generating the power that California won't:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Look at the list of "Owners"
And this project is a large renewable but not renewable by the fake California definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Under "Distribution of power" note that the city of Los Angeles alone gets almost as much of the output as all of Arizona.
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That would be because there is no reliable refining capacity in the ME which means they have to export their oil and import their gas.
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The middle east is a lot closer to the equator, which improves solar efficiency remarkably. A more reasonably comparison would be Denmark or Germany, which also do a lot of solar, though I don't know the cost figures.
OTOH, if you're comparing the LA area, Texas, or Florida, that swath, then the middle east is a much more reasonable comparison. I believe that LA is about the same latitude as Israel.
Re:At what cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep in mind that medicine in the US is another industry that suffers from extreme price distortion due to various sorts of government intervention (such as excessive regulation, excessive education requirements, an artificially limited supply of practitioners, mandatory insurance that encourages excessive billing, and so on).
So you agree that coal leads to health problems, and you don't have a problem with that, you only have a problem with the way health costs are accounted? A 6 year with asthma is fine as long as the cost to treat him is accounted for properly?
Re:At what cost? (Score:5, Informative)
Your entire post represents perhaps the most gigantic misunderstanding an/or willful misrepresentation of facts about health care I have ever read, and I've been discussing the matter for several years with people here and elsewhere as someone who works for the public health care sector of Finland.
Let's get something clear:
1. The US health care system is the most privatized model in advanced economies, you're the only OECD member state that still doesn't have universal coverage
2. The US model is the most expensive model on the planet per capita, The combined tax+private spending is about 2-3 times that of most western economies, and even that's an understatement, because the per capita cost in your case divides the sum of total costs with all Americans, that is, including those who do not in fact have coverage. Therefore the total cost per citizen actually covered is even higher.
You have it entirely backwards. It is the lack of universal public insurance model that's causing the costs to skyrocket. In here, the government has a vested interest in making sure the system is cost-effective, because it ends up being paid for by the tax payer in most cases (well, we do have private clinics and insurances but those are used only by a tiny fraction of the wealthy for mainly non-urgent procedures). For the government, health care is a cost, like the police and the fire department. The government also suffers if people are not treated, because high levels of untreated people lead to increased unemployment, loss of productivity and tax income.
The current center-right government has been trying to open up our model and move it more towards the direction of an american model but maintain the universal nature, so that private hospitals could provide basic healthcare and the cost would be paid by the tax payer as it is now. The claim is that increasing private presence on the production side would increase efficiency and hence decrease cost, but this is blatantly false, which is why the bill has been slammed by every single expert analysis because data from the world, especially the US is clear that such a change will only increase costs as the private chains will start to charge overheads, which the public system obviously does not do, and because health care demand is inelastic. That is, increasing supply will not affect the demand, so building more (private) infrastructure to partially compete with the public one will only raise the costs for both the private and the public side, as each instance now treats only a part of the patients while having equal fixed costs. I wrote more about this and gave an actual example of how the inelasticity makes an entirely private market highly inefficient in keeping costs down for example here [slashdot.org].
Healthcare is one of those subjects in which the political discussion is often entirely detached from the scientific data we have on performance and cost-effectiveness. Again, all western nations besides the US have been running universal models - some based on a single payer model like here in the Nordics, others based on a mix of public and private insurance like in Germany - for over half a century and we've been doing so consistently with lower costs and equal or better treatment outcomes to that of the US. People live lon
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You're absolutely correct of course. The evidence is overwhelming. Privatized healthcare works only a few limited domains -- dentistry, optometry, cosmetic surgery. For most things, governments consistently deliver healthcare comparable to the US with costs between half and two thirds those of the US.
Go with what works. Governments should run healthcare. Capitalists should run department stores.
However, I should warn you, that logic and data have no affect on Americans at either political extreme -- ei
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Idiots like the GP poster seem to think that someone in an ambulance suffering a heart attack will engage in negotiations with hospitals to find the cheapest treatment for their ER treatment.
Even if that were true, this administration is making price comparison far more difficult by removing regulations that require accurate price quotes (including taxes, fees, etc.).
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You mean everyone doesn't haul out their cell phone and get three bids for emergency room treatment while the paramedics are trying to staunch the bleeding and stabilize their blood pressure? With consumers like that, how can any healthcare system work?
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Even if that were true, this administration is making price comparison far more difficult by removing regulations that require accurate price quotes (including taxes, fees, etc.).
I don't see anything wrong with that. I mean, it's not like having informed consumers was ever a basic axiom of a free-market economy.
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Actually, the biggest problem with the US's insane healthcare system is probably institutionalized cost shifting. Everybody routinely tries to shift their costs off onto somebody else. Furthermore, the rules of cost shifting are complex and truly archane. For the most part, individuals can't shift costs. They must sign up ahead of time with a player (i.e. an "insurer") who will try to shift their costs to other players who have no desire to pay those costs. Why anyone thinks this makes sense or could p
Re: At what cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
excessive regulation, excessive education requirements, an artificially limited supply of practitioners, mandatory insurance that encourages excessive billing
This is very misleading and also wrong. The regulations and education requirements do bring up the price of healthcare but account for a very small part of the increase. Do you honestly think regulations are why those general drug makers are increasing prices by 500% in a short time?
As for excessive billing... have you ever been billed for healthcare? Regulations have little to do if it. An uninsured person will get billed 4-5x the rate of an In Network insured patient. This was true before Obamacare. The insurance companies negotiated low rates but the end effect was to just raise prices on those without insurance.... the ones who can not afford the lower rate in the first place.
Additionally billing for a overnight stay at a hospital is horrendous. No one can give you an estimate for costs without a 20% margin! They can give you a rough likely price but say you could see additional billings from other providers?!? You will get a heavily discounted bill for the room that you do not need to pay until the insurance partially covers it. Then the rest is on you. And that might be corrected again later ending in a credit or additional billing.
Of course that is just the hospital. You came in through ER, another bill. Did the hospital use an external anesthesiologist, another bill. Did they use an external lab, another bill. Did you use an ambulance, another bill. Did your primary care physician come to check on you, another bill. Did a specialist come to check on you, another bill. Did they order special medication for you, another bill.
Each of these bills go through the back and forth discount, partial payment , review, adjustment, invoice, etc process. Many times people do not know their bill for 3-5 months! None of this is regulations based. Because the system charges those who can not pay more, there is a lot of unpaid bills. No one wants to be the bill collector and aggregate/bundle the costs. So each spends resources billing and negotiating their part of the equation.
Most readers are thinking that they do not see this complexity. You have the standard old plan of paying just the deductible. But this all happens in the background even for you and is handled by a complex network of healthcare payers and payees. People with HSAs will see a little behind the curtain. Those without proper insurance will see more and also deal with debt collectors who might contact them 6-12 months after service!
That horrible inefficient system is further burdened by arcane IT systems. Each provider has different ways to collect. Some only accept bank draft, others mailed/called CC info, others will have a website with disfunctional forms, etc. The reference that they provided you to tie back to the service is the cryptic procedure/medicine, its provider ID code, your name, date of procedure, billing company name, date of bill. That is it, good luck keeping track of all the bills if you visit an ER 2x in one year.
All these costs bundle into the cost of healthcare. And there is no incentive to reduce the complexity because you, the patient, do not get to choose the service nor provider nor know the bill up front. You are a captive customer.
Imagine going into a Kroger (grocery store) and walking out, not getting billed. Then a month later the bill arrives. Then another for each of the non-Kroger brands you bought. And you get a 70% discount if you are a member. No other industry is this absolutely stupid in IT and billing.
The industry has created a massive price distortion all by itself over the last 40 years. Congress knew about it and has been incompetent it addressing it for that long! Regulations have not really helped, but they are hardly a quarter of the pie. Insurance for all partially helps because you do not bill people for what they can not pay and avoid the resource wastage of that whole process!
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Meanwhile, here in BC, I took a friend to emergency last week as he was puking and shitting blood. It was slow, at least 20 minutes to get in and almost an hour before he was in a bed in a room though most of that time was spent trying to get an IV into him. He just got out, after a week and surgery, total cost to him, zero, without hassle.
There were clear signs that without coverage, it was about $350 for Canadian residents and $750 for non-residents for an emergency room visit. When I go to the doctors, t
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It was partially luck, a quiet night, would have been worse on the weekend or on welfare day and partially the triaging. Last time I went, for a nasty cut, it took a while due to a stream of people showing up in worse shape.
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20 minutes is NOTHING compared to the US. My dad, a friend, and I have been to the ER once over the last 5 years.
-Dad: The forms took 30 minutes to fill out. We spent 6 hours going to different rooms getting checked out (4 tests). The nurses didn't know what test was already done and what he was waiting on. The only people who knew the status, was the front RECEPTIONISTS who were already busy accepting walkins. Half the testing stations asked & took down the same damn information over and over agai
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Much is similar here, my friend got in quick as he had lost a lot of blood, so was triaged quick, it was a quiet night which really helped. Go to some hospitals on the weekend and they're busy and if you have a minor problem , the wait can be long.
The part we don't have is the bullshit about billing. Give them your health card (looks like a drivers license now as we've had a lot of problems with Americans faking being Canadians and you used to just need your number), put some stuff in the computer, mostly j
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As for excessive billing... have you ever been billed for healthcare? Regulations have little to do if it. An uninsured person will get billed 4-5x the rate of an In Network insured patient. This was true before Obamacare. The insurance companies negotiated low rates but the end effect was to just raise prices on those without insurance.... the ones who can not afford the lower rate in the first place.
I work at a hospital. I'll recount what our billing people have told our management people in meetings. Insurance pays out a percentage based on the hospital's MCR (Master Charge Record) which is what they charge the patient. Medicare/Caid pay about 33% along with most others and even the best insurance (from the hospital side) pay only 66%. So, of course, the hospital has to up the stated charge for care, and what is charged to those without insurance, so they can actually make the real cost of care at 33%
Re:At what cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Subsidies for renewables, which far exceed those of fossil fuels, are used to make them appear cost effective."
No, they are used so that people will have an incentive to adopt renewables, thus creating an economy of scale whereas renewables become commonplace. It's not just "for looks"
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The subsidies for renewables are tiny compared to fossil and nuclear anyway. And renewables are now profitable without subsidy in some cases. As far as I'm aware no major fossil fuel plant has ever been profitable subsidy free.
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> Citation for what renewable energy is profitable without a subsidy or some other form of crutch?
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/
Citation provided. You can find hundreds more by googling "lcoe renewables"
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"Subsidies for renewables, which far exceed those of fossil fuels, are used to make them appear cost effective."
No, they are used so that people will have an incentive to adopt renewables, thus creating an economy of scale whereas renewables become commonplace. It's not just "for looks"
That statement should be in the past tense. Fossil fuel extraction costs are an upward trending proposition because of increasing extraction costs. Once in a while you get dips like you got with the shale bubble but on the whole the trend is upward. The price of renewable energy technology is on on a downward trend due to economy of scale, you don't have do drill through the earth's crust or dig away mountains to get sun and wind. We are now at a place where renewables are getting cheaper than coal and gas
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"Subsidies for renewables... are used so that people will have an incentive to adopt renewables, thus creating an economy of scale whereas renewables become commonplace. It's not just "for looks"
If the subsidy doesn't automatically come off as the amount of subsidized construction reaches specified goals, then it's for looks.
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Then the question becomes, what is the specified goal and has it been reached yet? If the goal has not been reached yet.. then it's still valid.
While we're at it, what exactly is the incentive for fossil fuel subsidies and has that goal been reached?
Re: At what cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you know that air pollution costs us up to $1,000 per person per year [fullerton.edu]? Are you factoring that into the economics of renewables versus fossil fuels? (Probably not.)
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The incentive to adopt renewable technologies should come from them naturally being better from an economic standpoint (which they obviously aren't, in reality, thus the need for subsidies).
You're presenting a circular chicken and egg argument. The point of a subsidy is to kick-start an industry and create economies of scale. The end goal is to have all subsidies removed once it has reached a self sustaining level.
Although as evidence with coal and oil it would seem that nothing can ever self-sustain.
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"Subsidies for renewables, which far exceed those of fossil fuels."
That statement is patently false. Renewables receive about 1/10th the annual subsidy of oil and gas alone. Nuclear previously dwarfed even O&G, but that is winding down.
http://i.bnet.com/blogs/dbl_energy_subsidies_paper.pdf
> The incentive to adopt renewable technologies should come from them naturally
> being better from an economic standpoint
Absolutely!
> (which they obviously aren't
Renewables are dramatically less better from an
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If you want to end up totally baffled about costs, let me recommend that ultimate source for most of the numbers being batted around. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/a... [eia.gov] Wonderful document. You can cherry pick just about any answer you want from one or another of the tables. The exception being that there is probably not enough lipstick in the world to make Coal with CCS, Solar-The
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> So-called 'renewables' have serious opex associated with them
They are among the cheapest forms of power in OPEX terms:
http://www.power-technology.com/features/featurepower-plant-om-how-does-the-industry-stack-up-on-cost-4417756/
> Anything with moving parts
PV has no moving parts, so there's that.
Beyond that, it's also the *number* of moving parts that has an effect; more complex systems are generally more expensive to operate. And as you'll see at that source, this is clearly seen in the data - a NG
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That is not true. I just moved from Houston, Texas, the "energy corridor" to the Central Coast of California. I know it's not true because I have first-hand experience paying the bills in both places.
Gasoline is high at the pump, but electricity and natural gas don't work out to be much higher than in Houston. Plus, living here is worth every penny.
Also, food is more expensive in Houston - even meat, and property taxes are lower. School
Re:Price (Score:5, Informative)
I call BS. Houston power starts at $0.087 per kWh [vaultelectricity.com]. And power from PG&E for the Paso Robles area (central coast) start at $0.199 per kWh [pge.com] and go up. That's over twice as much. Using GasBuddy.com, gas in CA averages $3.07 per gallon, and in TX it is around $2.12 per gallon.
Paso Robles, CA is around 1.44 times [bestplaces.net] the national average for cost of living, Houston is at 1.02 [bestplaces.net] - just about average for the US.
Property tax rates in CA are fairly low compared to TX, but the average home in Houston is around $220,000 [bestplaces.net]. In Paso Robles, houses are twice that price [bestplaces.net]. Sure, property taxes are a bit lower in CA, but we also have a 13.3% income tax compared to 0% for TX [taxfoundation.org]. If you make just about anything more than $10,000 per year, your property tax "savings" in CA are swallowed up by State income tax.
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I call BS. Houston power starts at $0.087 per kWh [vaultelectricity.com].
Those rates assume 2000KWh of energy use/month - which is 6 months of my power usage in California since the climate is mild enough to need little heating or cooling.
Plus they don't include TDSP delivery charges (which vary between 3.6 and 7.6 cents/KWh (plus $3.50 - $10/month)) depending on your energy provider. So the true cost is somewhere between 12.3 - 16.3 cents/KWh.
and power from PG&E for the Paso Robles area (central coast) start at $0.199 per kWh [pge.com] and go up.
Those prices don't include any credits, the true cost ends up being around 15.6 cents/KWh [electricitylocal.com]
Though if you're going to look at prices for liv
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I haven't turned on heat or A/C since I've been here. Tonight's supposed to get chilly though, so I might relent. My utilities for the year project to be less than 20% of that in Houston, where you need A/C 10 months out of the year. Hell, the new houses going up in Houston don't even have windows that open.
The main difference though is that
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I do miss two things from Houston though: barbecue and Christmas tamales.
If you haven't already, you'll find tamale ladies around. They are literally everywhere in California. However, most of them try to murder you with masa. A little meat, please.
TX vs CA (Score:2)
Now, solar and wind make electricity and competitive commodity prices.
The private utilities are expensive and partly because of cost padding and profits, but the socialized municipal utilities in Los Angeles and Sacramento are quite cheap and also run on clean energy.
Improper use of hydro (Score:3)
Hydro needs to be used as a "peaker" to balance wind and solar. Using it for baseload let alone 100% is being anti-social.
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Hydro isn't "green" or "renewable" energy by California's law.
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You're correct that large scale hydro (30Mw generating capacity and up) are not counted as renewable by California in it's progress toward its energy goals. However, it sure looks to me like SDG&E at least is probably counting all hydro including out of state hydro (Hoover Dam) as "renewable" in its press releases. Not entirely sure as I found myself drowning in fluff reading their stuff and gave up.
BTW the big dams are used for irrigation water, domestic water, and flood control as well as power gene
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California, the second-largest U.S. hydroelectric producer, set goals for renewable energy sources in 2002 and 2011... But the state set a limit on the inclusion of hydropower. It allows utilities to count only the hydropower produced by smaller hydropower projects—those capable of producing 30 megawatts or less—toward the renewable mandate.
Yep, only tiny hydro installs (typically private, on private land - good luck getting a permit to make your own hydro plant and flood some land deemed valuable to someone) count. The big hydro we have installed in California - about 99% of all of it - is NOT renewable per the State. So yeah - no hydro for us!
Re: Price (Score:5, Informative)
The State of California [governing.com] does not consider hydro as a renewable resource:
California, the second-largest U.S. hydroelectric producer, set goals for renewable energy sources in 2002 and 2011... But the state set a limit on the inclusion of hydropower. It allows utilities to count only the hydropower produced by smaller hydropower projects—those capable of producing 30 megawatts or less—toward the renewable mandate.
Yep, only tiny hydro installs (typically private, on private land - good luck getting a permit to make your own hydro plant and flood some land deemed valuable to someone) count. The big hydro we have installed in California - about 99% of all of it - is NOT renewable per the State. So yeah - no hydro for us!
Large hydro plants typically come with huge amounts of environmental destruction - while today it would be unthinkable to flood Yosemite valley to use as a source of water and electricity, Hetch Hetchy Valley is said to rival Yosemite in beauty, yet it was flooded 100 years to to build O’Shaughnessy Dam.
Smaller hydro projects can be built with less (or no) environmental destruction.
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Yet when you look at power generation around the world, hydro is the king of renewables. All the other renewables are a rounding error compared to hydro. In California political correctness trumps (sorry!) mere science and engineering.
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All those "save the earth" coastal cities with money should be required to obtain all of their water from desal. Stop taking it from those who can't afford to buy water and don't have an ocean to obtain it from. Ag needs the water anyway, especially in drought years.
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We already have. Residential water use is a minor part of water use. Bulk is agriculture, followed by industrial. Most of the things to save on the residential side have already been put in place (primarily low flow shower and toilets, and xeriscaping).
So on that front we are simply using not that much. On the desal front, new one opened in Carlsbad just 2 years ago.
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Re: Renewables? (Score:2)
That's called biomass. But to use it usefully requires logging, something environmentalists hate.
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That's called biomass. But to use it usefully requires logging, something environmentalists hate.
Logging is a big part of how we got into this mess regarding fires in California. First, logging the whole state. Then, treating the whole state as a tree farm, instead of letting some growth get old and fire resistant. The entire california coast from a place south of point sur is meant to be covered in redwoods, for example — they should be a thick, unbroken strip along the coast all the way up into Canada. The fact that we have removed that contiguous forest of old giants has actually altered the w
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No, California's big problem is that the 20th century was geologically speaking really fucking wet for California and it's now going into what looks like a dorught period, which again geologically speaking, happen very often and some are in the century plus range. Redwoods on the coastline won't help the inland areas from catching on fire in drought conditions.