Hydrogen is just a red herring. It’s not an energy source, just a fairly poor energy storage medium. Natural gas is still a hydrocarbon, but the greenwashers in the hydrogen business don’t bother to mention that it is the effective source for hydrogen. It is rather high in hydrogen, and thus it makes most sense to use it as it is. The higher efficiency of combustion, etc, make it the transition / stopgap.
Your observations about the over all energy budget and costs encapsulate the scope and seriousness of the problem before us. I believe it’s obvious that the best start is to reduce over all energy use. The biggest problem is that the system is built on faulty premises.
Regarding falling prices for renewables, at least in part I expect that is due to declining cash flow to Chinese businesses. If that’s the case, it could be corporate subsidy and desperation as much as efficiency.
I guess where you live plays a big role. 10 years ago, gas here was about .94/litre, now it’s 1.10. 10 years ago my hydro bill was about 120/month, now it’s 210/month.
That alludes to supply and demand. As was discussed earlier, factor in road tax on “fuel” into the bigger picture of EV advantages. And as the grid is expanded, significant costs passed to the end consumer for that.
Even with wood you are benefiting from scaled technologies with billions of investment in fact that is a big part of what makes a gasifier cheap. You are utilizing a scaled investment in engine technology, steel technology, forestry, etc.
The only real difference is the scaling is going on now for solar. It doesn’t mean other technology hasn’t benefited from the elite billionaires and government assistance to get started.
It also doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from it. It just hasn’t worked it way down in the market yet, it is too new and still expanding.
Gary I was in Tiawan for about a year and a half about 10 years ago now. Back then the Chinese government was investing tons of money in the form of low interest loans and honestly just the ability at all to open a factory for both wind and solar. One thing you might not know in China the government owns the land and building your factory is on all the company owns is the equipment inside the building. So they gave out good rent terms for wind and solar factories and didn’t offer terms to other businesses they didn’t want to focus on. Just the difference between capitalism and communist governments. The point I am getting at is the owner of the company I was consulting with told me they wished they where in the solar industry but they has tied all there resources up in our process for loop and hook fasteners. Because as they told me the deal was structured in such a way that the solar industry didn’t have to pay back the incentives over there and that in about 7 years as the factories came up to full production and the equipment was capitalized the cost of solar and wind would drop like crazy because the company’s simply wouldn’t have capital expenses just operating costs. They said at the time they didn’t know if china was just trying to corner the export market or if they wanted to go solar as a national power system. I would say we are now seeing that it was the desire to go alternative energy in China. I was there and still didn’t really understand just how they explained it but the business men in tiawan knew it was the place to be back then and everyone who had capital was putting it into those two markets.
IIRC Canada redid a lot of their hydro so you are probably still paying for the upgrades. The grid upgrade stuff really goes back to the 2003 blackout and they are trying to make the grid more reliable. Canada is actually part of the US grid regions and regulatory process.
That is part of it, but they are also starting to pay off their overhead costs like the actual factories and tooling. Once you get the building and tools paid off, you can lower the price and maintain the same profit margin.
The hydro infrastructure is pretty dated save for gas peaker plants, new Niagara Falls hydro capacity, and the new Solar and Wind projects. The reason hydro is so high is that the province contracted for supply of green energy via a feed in tariff, and a massive premium was paid for wind and solar. Even the average working stiff could get in on the action through the “micro-FIT” contract which allowed anyone to apply up to a maximum 10KW array, if you were approved you were paid $0.80/KWHR (not a typo, 80 cents per KWHR) on whatever you fed into the grid. They were 20 year contracts, and we’re roughly half way through.
The other big factor is that the public power generation corporation (OPG) is filled with employees who are on the sunshine list making over 100,000.00 per year. All the employees are unionized even though they work for the government, and over the years their pay, benefits, and defined benefit pension plans have put major pressure on hydro costs.
Finally, right now we have way more capacity than we need, and the province is selling the overage off to PQ and a couple US states for pennies. The shortfall on these kwhrs is added to the hydro bill.
The situation with hydro is one where I may not live to see it get fixed, more likely hydro bills will hit the point were politicians will have to do something or lose the next election. Unfortunately, they’ll probably just kick the can down the road and borrow to subsidize the costs leaving the core problems intact. Right now, our Premiere is selling off the distribution system to private interests up to 60% to raise badly needed revenue, this will likey cause more upward pressure on rates as the combined private interests will hold the majority stake once the selloff is complete. We used to have some of the best rates in the world!
I don’t plan to go off grid with gasification, but it sure would be nice to have the option of supplementing some of my usage via self generation.
Here we go again. I won’t rehash ontario politics for our American friends let’s leave it at rates are high. Remove quebec from the mix and remove coal fired extremely dirty generation from the mix and ontario rates are right in the middle of North American urban areas. New York pays 50 percent more, California pays twice as much. None of that matters to the thread. Fuel costs will catch up soon enough.
They are trying to put high power lines from canadian hydro through northern NH down to Boston. Or actual it will join the grid in southern NH just before you get to the border. For some reason I can’t understand the path of choice from Niagara Falls to Boston Mass is to go across Canada and down through NH. Seems like it would be alot shorter with alot less lines lines and line loss to go through NY right down 90 where there is a highway right away already. But no for some reason they want to run massive high voltage lines thought our tourist attractions and our new governor seems to think it is a great idea. Just one more reason I think disturbed power generation is better you don’t need those nasty high voltage lines with big magnet fields.
Don’t worry though I figure once they get all those new lines in canadian power prices will drop and their export price will skyrocket.
It is my understanding that the power comes from Niagara. But is already crossing Candia and there was some issue in Candia about environmental damage already done by the power company so they are forced to use the lines they already have. It was about 5 years ago when they started planning the project and it was shot down that I knew about it. Now I hear it has gotten new life.
There’s probably some cooperation between Canadian and US utilities, I imagine things can get pretty complex. I have a family member who works at one of the nukes out near Toronto, he told me there are always folks from the US at the plant.
As for power prices dropping, I hope you’re right!
What they are trying to do most likely is hit the high power lines. They are essentially trying to create big loops for redundancy throughout a region. 5 years is a pretty short permitting and planning period to be honest usually it is around 10 years. The -other- part is, you can qualify for both rural electrification funds and “grid improvement” funds for flattening the grids, but you have to choose the right path.
In the internet of things your car is just another thing to have a chat with.
In the same way your smart meter tells the utility how much electricity you are using your car could tell the utility how much road tax to charge to your hydro bill.
A fiendishly clever person could probably find a work around for that but cars will not tell lies about how many miles they covered if the two numbers do not mesh.
I would think a woodgas car is safe as long as it does not share any automation that can tell on you.
Something else came to mind.
It is amazing how much we worry about and try to avoid taxes.
Someone has got to pay for the roads.
I think it might be very good if you got a road tax bill and then looked at the shape of our roads and bridges.
People might get mad and demand better service if you know what I mean.
But someone has to pay the taxes.
More and more it’s the little guy who can not dodge the tax man.
All the while the wealthy get tax cuts.
Something is going to give one of these days and its those who do not share the burden of supporting this country that are in for a shock.
Probably will never happen for just that reason. The pavement out in front of my house is probably 30-40 years old, it would be hard to justify continual rate increases if most people were in the same boat. Better to just keep all the line items hidden. Folks out my way have been making noise about bag tags having gone up over 50% in less than 5 years for the same service (that property taxes used to cover). They see the costs go up huge, but they also see the service stay the same. They start asking questions…
Myself, I don’t mind paying taxes, I pay over half of what I make in a year. What gets me is when the taxes are basically wasted and we have a growing collection of millionaire public servants at the trough.
I know i am probley out of pace with the last questain or statement, Though i have a questain for the smart folks talking on electric cars, how many watts too charge a full ev car too drive 200 miles, not counting interest payments on the car ,or cost too human life when it will be likely be charged with nukelier power.?_?