New York launches 2 GW renewable energy solicitation as natural gas prices drive up electricity bill

[Finishline42]

This is what happens when you have to pay for fuel - always. In this case power plants get built based on less than $3 nat gas and once committed, it doesn't take much and it goes up 300% and the case for economical generation of electricity goes out the door.

New York on Thursday launched its sixth competitive solicitation for large-scale renewable resources, seeking 2,000 MW to come online as late as 2028. Initial applications are due Nov. 16 to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

The solicitation encourages renewables paired with energy storage technologies, sets minimum U.S. iron and steel purchase requirements, and gives special consideration to projects benefiting disadvantaged communities.

The solicitation comes as New Yorkers are bracing for higher electricity costs. The New York Independent System Operator last week warned of “a sharp rise in wholesale electric costs expected this winter,” largely due to the cost of natural gas.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-york-renewable-energy-solicitation-nyserda/632417/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202022-09-29%20Utility%20Dive%20Renewable%20Energy%20%5Bissue:44881%5D&utm_term=Utility%20Dive:%20Renewable%20Energy

[NNadir]

1. That's incredibly stupid as the example of Germany shows.

It's fraudulent to proclaim wind junk as an alternative to dangerous fossil fuels. On the contrary they depend on fossil fuels. Without them the alternative is energy poverty.

The Germans are killing people today by burning coal and dumping the toxic waste directly into the planetary atmosphere because the wind isn't blowing.

The joke isn't funny anymore.

[Finishline42]

2. How much oil and gas is NY buying from Russia?

Obviously shutting down functional nuclear plants when you rely on Russian oil and gas for a significant amount of your energy doesn't make sense.

As I have said many times with regard to the market and fossil fuels, just because it's cheap and plentiful today doesn't make it so for the future.

Unlike wind and solar - they will continue to get cheaper and better. They need to be deployed with energy storage and transmission lines so that in times of excess supply it isn't given away.

[NNadir]

4. NY shut Indian point to burn gas.

Germany shut its nuclear plants to burn coal.

It doesn't matter where the fuck people get their fossil fuels. There is no right to dump this noxious waste on future generations because people have bullshit fantasies about short lived solar and wind junk.

Anyone who thinks this temporary disposable wind and solar disastrous crap is cheap should volunteer their salaries to pay the power bills of the poor Germans who will live in energy poverty this winter.

I've been hearing bullshit about energy storage for my whole fucking adult life, and I'm not young, hydrogen bullshit and battery bullshit.

Guess what?

New York shut its nuclear plants to burn gas. They don't have batteries to support their grid, nor do they have hydrogen.

Germany shut its nuclear plants to burn coal. They don't have batteries to support their grid, nor do they have hydrogen.

Those are facts, not tarot card readings.

While people were handing out stupid fantasies about batteries and hydrogen - obviously such people never took a college level course in thermodynamics - the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide surged by nearly 50 ppm this century.

Of course people still hand out "energy storage" bullshit, decade after decade after decade about their idiot fantasies of energy storage. Does anyone know why they can get away with this shit for brains marketing?

I know why. Because no one is required to offer simple statements of the law of thermodynamics to graduate high school.

Here's a clue: There aren't enough cobalt digging slaves on this planet to make batteries to shut Germany's coal plants.

There also aren't enough cobalt digging slaves on this planet to make batteries to shut New York's gas plants.

The bourgeois fantasy is played out. It's killing people on a grand scale. The world is being ripped apart by extreme weather. People died in their homes from extreme temperatures this Northern Summer. Vast forests burned.

And response is what?

More chanting? "Batteries, hydrogen, batteries, hydrogen, batteries and hydrogen?"

At long last can't a single fucking anti-nuke display even a superficial sense of decency?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

Cults often kill people, and this one is no exception.

[Finishline42]

5. Yep, Indian Point was shut down when gas was cheap

Which is my point, fossil fuels don't always remain cheap. But...

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration brokered the 2017 deal with Entergy that led to Indian Point’s shutdown, with Cuomo citing fears of a nuclear mishap at a power plant located some 35 miles from New York City. He chose to keep open three upstate nuclear plants – two on Lake Ontario and another near Rochester ? by arranging for some $7.6 billion in subsidies over 12 years.

NY also insured that the 3 upstate plants remained open at a time when they were under market pressure from cheap gas.

A network of transmission lines stretching from western New York to New York City is currently under construction, part of an effort to remove a bottleneck that kept clean energy stuck north of Albany. Upstate’s energy mix is decidedly cleaner than downstate’s. Upstate, three nuclear power plants and hydropower from the Robert Moses Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station contribute to a 91% carbon-free energy grid.

There are also plans to deliver hydropower to New York City from Canada by way of 340 miles of underground cable that will run in the Hudson River. Another 174-mile transmission line will bring upstate wind down to Queens along upstate rights-of-way.

But it will be years before these projects are up and running.

italicized from >>>
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/2022/07/22/new-york-fossil-fuels-increase-after-indian-point-nuclear-plant-shutdown/65379172007/

Were there operational issues at Indian Point that would justify the public fear of a mishap?

[NNadir]

6. Gas was "cheap" for whom?

Certainly it wasn't "cheap" for all future generations that will need to live with climate change or was it?

One of course doesn't know exactly whether to congratulate anti-nukes for generating the vast stupidity in which anti-nukes have marketed fear and ignorance in connection with these putative "nuclear mishaps" they've been hyping for decades, with gleeful anticipation or simply hold them in highly disgusted contempt.

I know what choice I make for myself.

Of course, if you ask an anti-nuke to produce as many people killed by radiation resulting from a "nuclear mishap" as will die in the next 48 hours from air pollution, they change the subject, or make some childish condition to avoid answering the question.

The same is true of so called "nuclear waste." About 18,000 people died today - not counting climate effects - from air pollution, aka "dangerous fossil fuel waste" and if you ask antinuke to demonstrate that 18,000 people have died from the storage of used nuclear fuel in the 70 years of commercial nuclear operations, they just change the subject, or say something stupid about batteries or hydrogen or other dubious fantasies about which they carry on decade after decade after decade with no result. Yet anti-nukes claim, without a shred of evidence, that used nuclear fuel is "too dangerous."

Climate change isn't "too dangerous."

Killed rivers aren't "too dangerous."

People dying from extreme weather isn't "too dangerous."

Air pollution isn't "too dangerous."

But used nuclear fuel is, because people bought the rote marketing stupidity that it without ever looking to see if it killed something like the 70 to 80 million people who died from air pollution while assholes whined about Fukushima.

Indeed, right here at DU, we have people who carry on about how much it "cost" to "clean up" Three Mile Island, without ever asking how many people would have died if instead of satisfying the idiot paranoia of antinukes, a high chain link fence with "Danger! Keep Out!" signs would have saved as many lives as the putative "clean up," did.

Where is there a shred of critical thinking?

Dumping the dangerous fossil fuel waste from the combustion of dangerous natural gas isn't "cheap." It's a deliberate and obvious attempt to dump the vast costs of appalling bourgeois fondness for convenience on future generations, which they have successfully done, at the expense of all humanity and all living things.

Somehow there are people who applaud this outcome, rationalize with bad superficial thinking, and excuse it. They are shallow enough to congratulate themselves on this highly successful marketing scam, waxing stupid about wind turbines and solar cells.

Closing Indian Point was a crime against humanity, and the fact that anyone can find it acceptable in bean counting terms personally disgusts me in the extreme.

I trust everyone had a nice weekend.

[Finishline42]

7. Of course Google has a different view...

Indian Point's antiquated once-through water cooling system kills over one billion fish and fish larvae each year. ...

Pools at the plant that house spent nuclear fuel have been leaking toxic, radioactive water into the ground since the 1990s, contaminating the local soil and the Hudson River.

[NNadir]

8. Well, regrettably although antinukes hold people who read...

...let's see how the types put it, "scientific screeds" in contempt, scientists don't live like idiots living by Google.

We leave living by Google for antivaxxers and other people who hold science in contempt.

The scientific unit for radioactivity is Beq/m^3. I fully understand that there are complete morons whose fear of radioactivity leads them to ignore the vast death toll associated with dangerous fossil fuels, but these people have no more credibility that people who are terrified of vaccines.

If one doesn't have even a vague idea of reality, one can make stuff up.

Is there any credible evidence that radioactivity has killed anything like 18,000 people per day, or is it just more bullshit from the vast circle jerk of antinuke ignorance?

No one needs to answer this rhetorical question. The answer is obvious.

[Finishline42]

9. You can on and on about Indian Point

But I would rather applaud keeping the 3 plants upstate open at a time when natgas was kicking nuclear's butt in the free market.

What happens when a for profit utility is losing money on a plant??? What do they cut? Does it make a plant unsafe?

I've said I am for keeping existing nuclear plants open but the market makes the call on building new ones and it ain't looking good.

there's no way we are building 100 new nuclear plants (doubling our current 20%).

[NNadir]

10. You can go on and on about the inability to do what has aleady been done.

My son is working on a Ph.D in nuclear engineering and really doesn't give shit what antinukes think about what has already been done being impossible.

He certainly wouldn't be working this hard if he bought into antinuke bullshit, would he?

I am curious though, as to why the subject changed from googling stupidly about radiation from leaking so called "nuclear waste" at Indian Point killing millions of fish.

Whenever I ask an antinuke to report on radiation deaths from so called "nuclear waste" on which their idiot ideology is so focused, in this case, the death of fish, they change the subject.

I can certainly cite lots of papers on the number of people killed by the dangerous fossil fuel waste, about which antinukes couldn't give a rat's ass, and often do so.

Did leaking so called nuclear waste from Indian Point kill people or fish or not?

[Finishline42]

3. And yet over the last 12 months over 38% of Germany's energy came from renewables...

Using your link,
Solar - 17.18%
Wind - 10.69%
Biomass - 8.02%
Hydro - 2.59%

Which is more than the 34.42% from Coal

How much more coal would be burned if it weren't for renewables?

[NNadir]

11. And yet there is a very simple experiment a junior high school student can do to obviate...

...what oblivious nonsense this is.

I've referenced this experiment before.

One sets a pot of water to boiling rapidly. One turns it off for a half hour because the wind is blowing. One restarts it an hour later. One observes that it does not immediately re-boil. Considerable energy must be added to bring the solution to boil again.

Shutting and starting coal plants, all of which work on the Rankine steam cycle is subject to the same laws. It's called "heat capacity." People should do this in a decent high school chemistry class, if they've had one.

For a period of time the coal is being burned and the waste being dumped by the Germans while producing no electricity at all. This makes the carbon intensity worse than if the plant ran continuously, and I note, raises O&M expenses - and rates - for the redundant dangerous fossil fuel (coal) system that kills people whenever it operates normally.

But that's not the point. The point is that Germany shut perfectly operable nuclear plants to kill people by burning coal under the theory that the purpose of so called "renewable energy" was to shut nuclear plants. The Germans don't give a shit about coal and who it kills. They don't give a shit about climate change. The so called "renewable energy" scam that has failed to do anything at all to address climate change was always about attacking the world's only form of reliable and clean and scalable form of climate change gas free energy, nuclear energy.

There was another country in Europe that was dependent on coal up until the 1980's.

Here, from the electricity map - albeit obviously subject to stupid misinterpretation in "percent talk" and typically indifferent to the simple laws of thermal physics - is the electrical generation profile of the only nation to successfully phase out coal after being dependent on it for decades:



Electricity Map, France 5 year History. (Accessed 10/04/22).

Note it is difficult to show that anyone in Germany has been killed by the storage of used nuclear fuel in that country, although like practically all "wind and solar will save us" types they exhibit extreme irrational paranoia about low level radioactivity and couldn't care less about who they kill with air pollution. Anyone who can show that anyone has been killed by used nuclear fuel storage in Germany, never mind anything like the 18,000 people who will die worldwide today from air pollution, is invited to do so.

[Finishline42]

12. France is facing problems in it's nuclear power plants

They have plans to build up to 14 new reactors but the first won't be online before 2035!

Plumes of steam towered above two reactors recently at the Chinon nuclear power plant in the heart of France’s verdant Loire Valley. But the skies above a third reactor there were unusually clear — its operations frozen after the worrisome discovery of cracks in the cooling system.

The partial shutdown isn’t unique: Around half of France’s atomic fleet, the largest in Europe, has been taken offline as a storm of unexpected problems swirls around the nation’s state-backed nuclear power operator, Électricité de France, or EDF.

As the European Union moves to cut ties to Russian oil and gas in the wake of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, France has been betting on its nuclear plants to weather a looming energy crunch. Nuclear power provides about 70 percent of France’s electricity, a bigger share than any other country in the world.

But the industry has tumbled into an unprecedented power crisis as EDF confronts troubles ranging from the mysterious emergence of stress corrosion inside nuclear plants to a hotter climate that is making it harder to cool the aging reactors.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-power-russia.html

[NNadir]

13. It's because Hollande and the first Macron administration bought...

...the idiotic "nuclear is too dangerous" propaganda put out in Europe, used EDF's nuclear infrastructure as cash cow to finance the useless fossil fuel dependent wind and solar industry at the behest of antinuke propaganda outfits like the New York Times, which has issued thousands of illiterate satisfying reports on Fukushima. By contrast, The Times didn't give a fuck beyond lip service to the tens of millions of people killed by air pollution while joining their fellow antinukes in murderous ignorance festivals.

It's like arsonists complaining about forest fires.

In effect, The Times has functioned as the Fox News of energy.

I posted here a full discussion, an interview with Mark Nelson, of how antnuke fantasies about the coal dependent so called "renewable energy" fantasy mimiced Shel Silverstein's parable of "The Giving Tree."

It's called "Something' Rotten in the French Nuclear Industry." It's in my journal. EDF, now run by executives who bought into this criminal solar and wind fantasy is bleeding money because of poor maintenance of nuclear infrastructure that, were it not for the success of antinuke marketing, might have enabled Europe to confront Putin with far less pain.

Instead German and French antinukes funded that murderer, with cheering from antinukes all over the planet.

Macron has seen the light, but it's too little, too late.

Basically antinuke ignorance won

Putin is not even remotely the worst beneficiary of this triumph of ignorance. All who suffer and die from air pollution and climate change are the primary victims, although there are certainly a lot of dead Ukrainians who lost their lives to German energy policy.

Congrats to all the antinuke assholes who carried on about Fukushima, so called "nuclear waste," Three Mile Island" and other bullshit. The world's on fire. Extreme weather is killing people all over the world. Vast ecosystems are dying. Glaciers on which billions of people depend are disappearing. Energy poverty is breaking out in formerly first world countries, all because people with their heads far up their asses won the day.

Again, congratulations.

One wonders why these people, at long last, have no sense of decency.

[Finishline42]

15. It's always going to be a problem with nuclear

When you have a complex machine that is going to operate 50+ years, it is going to be subject to various funding problems. You have documented the French problems, we have different ones.

We have for profit utilities that will make the same types of decisions - delayed maintenance, reduced staffing, unqualified people in important positions, needed upgrades that won't be performed because they don't make money under the current market system.

If we had a national organization similar to TVA that built and ran all our nuclear reactors the GOP would, when they could, cut funding just as they do to AMTRAK because it's government. Starve the beast...

It doesn't take much and we are fighting a disaster... We got rather lucky at 3 Mile Island.

The Japanese have been cleaning up Fukushima for over 10 years. How many billions have they spent?

You act like it's nothing...

[NNadir]

14. Something's Rotten In the French Nuclear Industry.

The link referenced in my previous post:

Something's Rotten In the French Nuclear Industry.

Congrats to all the anti-nuke arsonists who love to complain about forest fires.

The "aging reactors" to which the engineering illiterate New York Times reporter is referring - confirming my suspicion that one cannot get a degree in journalism, or a job at the New York Times if one has passed a college science course with a grade of C or better - might have been addressed if France had uprated its reactors rather than announce they were reducing reliance on reliable energy to fund unreliable energy represented by the wind and solar scam.

For the record, my son's Masters thesis involved welding. He certainly could have never gotten a job at the New York Times. He received a grade of A in all of his graduate courses.

Because of these arsonists complaining about forest fires, forests all over the world are literally on fire.

Congrats again to the anti-nuke community for their big win. The losers in this contest was humanity.