Criminy these people are idiots. Here is Think Progress:
Now, with the help of a Freedom of Information Act request, the National Security Archive has obtained a newly declassified document that details talking points that emerged from a meeting between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and CENTCOM Commander General Tommy Franks in November 2001.
The talking points mainly revolve around the logistical planning for a war in Iraq. They detail the “decapitation” of the Iraqi government by U.S. forces and make regime change the goal. Interestingly, they already mention U.S. forces “coming out of Afghanistan” to join the invasion of Iraq. Yet the most alarming part of the document is a bullet point titled,
“How start?” (which is a discussion that actually appears after the planning of the entire war). The participants in the Rumsfeld-Frank meeting discussed possible ways to provoke a conflict with Iraq, including an attack by Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish north, the U.S. discovering a “Saddam connection” to 9/11 or the anthrax attacks, or a dispute over WMD inspections. It appears from the language of the talking points that the Bush administration had already decided to go to war with Iraq and was looking for an opportunity to invade
Really?
So in a lefty’s world the leader of the free world, and his administration, should not PLAN for all events? Should we just wait until an event happens or should we maybe….I don’t know….plan ahead?
Do they really think the Obama administration isn’t trying to stay 2 steps ahead of world events?
I mean come on….
Mac at Macsmind:
No, dumbasses. This is a situational assessment, not a planning war document. I’m quite familiar with the memo and the notes. They look at three specific scenarios that might occur that would lead to a conflict with Iraq.
1. An attack by Saddam on the Kurds (something the Clinton administration constantly feared), and in fact briefed the incoming Bush administration about.
2. “If” it were determined that Saddam had any connection to 9/11, which wasn’t absolutely certain in November of 2001, or.
3. The third scenario which Saddam actually violated, stalling WMD weapon inspections.
The whole post at George Soros site above is just mind numbingly retarded.
See author page
I saw another document recently posted by a lefty that blamed the US for destroying the Iraqi infrastructure. Saddam took none of the blame for taking all of the funding from the Shia provinces and infrastructures and socking all of his funds into the oil for food program. For every $ of oil money that went into the Oil for Food program, Saddam personally pocketed half. SOme of that went to UN officials who had to approve the inflated prices on the food, agriculture equipment and medicines. This also included parts to maintain water/waste water treatment plants and to improve the electrical distribution system. The Oil for Food program was likely the most corrupt program the world had seen.
A dispute over WMD inspections? I would think that would be the most likely way to go considering there were NO WMD inspectors in Iraq in 2001.
CAn’t fix stupid, nor for that matter really really dumb.
In 2004, Bush was warned about attacks within and outside of the united states by Saddam Hussein. Since the person who indicated these events were a threat was Vladimir Putin, I tend to think that there was a grain of truth to them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53096-2004Jun18.html
In most of the rest of the world, if not the entire world except the United States, paying off, graft, paying protection, under the table transfers, are all collective called “SOP” . . . Standard Operating Procedure. Prior to 1977 it was a common practice throughout the world of international business, even for United States businesses. How else do you think the United States obtain drilling rights in countries like Saudi Arabia or build a nuclear power plant in the Philippines, see the following link:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1986/09/01/67989/index.htm
Such practices were stopped, at least in accordance with LAW, by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. The paragraph below is quoted from:
http://library.findlaw.com/1997/Jan/1/126234.html
“The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was enacted in 1977 and substantially revised in 1988. The provisions of the FCPA prohibit the bribery of foreign government officials by U.S. persons and prescribe accounting and record-keeping practices.”
The impact of this law was profound on anyone from the US working in a foreign country and upon the US international business community. This act alone has resulted in the huge reduction in the US presence in many of the oil producing countries of the middle east. Many of the mid to high level bureaucrats relied on SOP as their primary source of income.
There continues to this day, many companies in the US that practice SOP, simply because without it, they would have NO business. Simply put, it is a “competitive advantage” that other countries recognize, legalize and support and “LEGALLY” the US prohibts.
As changes in SOP occurred and the US government began to crackdown on more and more people in corrupted regimes, up to and including dictators, plutocrats, kings, and communist despots. These people became by definition of US law criminals. This became the US government perspective, even though within their own countries the people were NOT breaking any law. The US operating through the foreign government at the highest level and with the MSM playing along such “criminal” regimes became highly visible to the average citizen of the US. WE BECAME THE GREAT SATAN. . .because we lead these people in to temptation before the law was passed and then criminalized them once the law was in affect.
This US Law had unbeliveably profound impact on the people of the regiems, entire lives were destroyed.
The result was that many countries in the middle east simply figured out a way to not use the US. The US became a disposable resource and our presence rapidly declined.
Some regimes in the middle east such as Iran and Iraq were lost to the US and became militant towards the US.
This militant relationship deteriorated to armed conflict or very strong feelings of animosity and continues to this day.
In summary . . . the “Oil for Food Program” . . . was corrupt only because WE in the US were “propogandized” to see it as corrupt . . . for Iraq . . . it was “SOP”.
Have the peeps at Think Progress sit down and watch the old movie, War Games.
Oh, there are plenty of other, even older, movies that touch on our vast numbers of contingency plans for every potential possibility.
But the very idea of NOT have contingency plans is insane.
Even a housewife who cooks knows you have to have things like cream of tarter, baking soda, baking power, pectin and jars on hand all the time.
You never know when you’ll need them.
But when you do need them, nothing else will do!
Yes the standard practice of a Liberal Admin is to wait till something happens, wait to see what everyone else in the world is going to do, then after you have waited too long you call the event a non event and point the blame at the last administration for causing the conditions in the first place. Carter proved the effectiveness of indecision and Bill Clinton refined it.
“The whole post at George Soros site above is just mind numbingly retarded.”
No shit, Sherlock. What else did you expect?
You mean like planning ahead for the day when plentiful supplies of oil run out, instead of denying that the day will ever come? Or trying to address a national obesity epidemic before the predictable pathology that follows doubles national health care costs?
GREG: hi, THEY surely not planning ahead for closing the borders,
this was a priority from the beginning, now IT’S out of control.
bye
More strawmen there Greg. I expect nothing less from you.
No one on our side is saying we will never run out of oil.
It’s not them trying to stop an “obesity epidemic.” It’s HOW they are trying to do it.
Greg;
Man it is going to be a hell of a bad day when Wacky-Mac’s runs out of burgers . . . Me thinks that would be a disaster worse than Katrina . . . or Holy Crap Batman . . . what the heck would the world come to if KFC ran out of chicken!!! Doggies . . . now that would a Rodney King a thousands times over . . . of course it would be some Tea Party, bigot, racist that forgot to ship the chicken!!! LOL
@Hard Right, #11:
If republicans don’t like the HOWS they should propose alternate solutions. The catch is that they need to sound like something that might have a remote chance of actually working.
The solution to the inevitability of a peak oil crisis lies in a diversified approach to alternative energy technologies, an updated grid, and maximizing energy efficiency on every front. Others focus primarily on depleting our 10 year domestic reserves to turn a quick buck, while scoffing at alternative technologies and deploring efficiency mandates that will clearly produce results. Is that a shining example of planning ahead?
If the kids are becoming increasingly obese, you look at what we’re feeding them. If you notice it’s become an enormous amount high-fat, high-sugar, high-sodium junk, you try to fix that. Opponents might point out that’s properly the responsibility of parents, and they’d be right, but parents don’t seem to be paying attention.
Consider those points to be stuffed with straw if you wish. I think they’re real, and illustrative of an important underlying difference between the present republican and democratic approaches to dealing with significant problems. The republican approach seems to be hands-off; Don’t meddle with the system, because it will fix itself through the magic of the free market place. Democrats, on the other hand, figure you go directly to a problem, analyze it, see what you’ve got in the tool kit, and try to fix it.
The Green River region of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are holding the equivalent of approximately 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil.
Proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia/Kuwait are ONLY 267 billion barrels.
I doubt we need to worry about running out anytime soon.
Greg;
I am a nuclear engineer . . . let me tell you man . . . you have no idea what you are talking about . . . you spout and shout, you can say the buzz words, you can even baffle some people with your BS . . . But you are singing your song to the wrong person.
You are as screwed up as the rest of the liberal smack salesmen . . . you don’t have a clue! Go read you bookies and drink your kool aid;.
@ Nan G, #14: “I doubt we need to worry about running out anytime soon.”
That’s geologically deep oil shale. Unfortunately the technology to economically extract and process it into supplies of a usable product on the scale that would be needed aren’t likely to be available anytime soon, either.
TALLGRASS: hi, YOU know how to make someone feel good with themself,
that’s funny, bye I’m teasing you
Please do not have Greg’s comments deleted from the blog. I often email them to my friends to show them how far out of touch the left is with reality.
Greg, Israel already holds a patent that can unlock oil from shale at a fraction of what oil sells for a barrel right now.
Although Israel’s own shale is much poorer than ours they are making a profit using their technique.
The oil released from the shale is NOT the high quality like light sweet but it is good enough to use in cars and many industrial uses.
Odd, that you, out of one side of your mouth, say we MUST come up with alternatives, then, when someone brings out a feasible one, out of the other side of that same mouth you say, gee, we wouldn’t be able to do it any time soon.
Make up your mind, Greg.
BTW, scale.
To satisfy 1/6th of US needs as of last year (assuming NO GROWTH whatsoever) we would need solar ”farms” covering our Southwestern deserts over an area equivalent to the size of Texas.
To satisfy 1/6th of US needs as of last year (assuming NO GROWTH whatsoever) would require wind turbines off our coasts of all the Atlantic, all the Pacific, and all of the Gulf.
BUT, even if we did that, the 1/3rd electricity we could possibly get would all need back-up generation of electricity from gas or coal generating plants because wind and solar are not consistent sources of power.
@Zipity: #8 I wanted to say the same thing, but in a more polite way. George Soros = mind numbingly retarded. In all honesty though, he is a known socialist who wants the USA to go socialist and is doing all he can to accomplish his mission.
I’m guessing that if it weren’t for conservative blogs wanting to find out what the liberal blogs are up to, they wouldn’t have many people reading their conservative blogs.
Actually, it’s been estimated that a single 100 mile by 100 mile solar power installation could meet the electrical needs of the entire United States, using presently-existing thermal concentrator technology such as is found in the Stirling Energy Systems SunCatcher.
At what cost Greg? 100×100 miles of enviroment plowed up for the construction. Not to mention the number of towers that would be built for something like that. Ok, so you build all broken up and in different locations. That would likely hurt it’s effectiveness and complicate things quite a bit. Also, would it be as cost effective as what we have now? I doubt it.
Smorg, years ago AZ had very strict marijuana laws. Zero tolerance, in fact. Then some “billionaire” pumped all kinds of money into the state in a campaign to ease the restrictions. It went on the ballot and won. We both know who the billionaire was, don’t we?
Just wanted to spread this around, but you may want to boycott movies with Shia Le Bouffe (I call him Le Douche). You see, the last time Chavez came to the U.S. there were the usual traitors in attendance like Stone, Penn, and Glover. However, there was a new face there- Shia Le Douche. For the new Wall Street movie he was spending time with Soros to learn about WS, day trading, etc. Big shock eh?
@ Hard Right, #23: I’ve always been curious about the constitutional basis for marijuana prohibition, the forfeiture of personal property without the necessity of criminal charges against the owner, etc.
@Hard Right: #23 I quit watching today’s movies a long time ago. Can anyone name a TV show or movie where sex is not EXPECTED on the first date, or where daddy is still married to mommy, or where daddy isn’t a nut, or where the preacher is dedicated to his religion and preaches the Bible? Keep in mind that I ain’t a church goer, but stuff like this bothers me.
Many years ago a radio talk show host said that he takes his kids to Disney movies for the G rating. He noticed that in every movie daddy wasn’t married to mommy and mommy was raising the kids.
The libs are trying to get daddy out of the picture so that it will be easier to brainwash the kids. If you are a divorced daddy, please stay in constant contact with your kids. Studies have shown that without daddy in the picture the kids are more likely to get pregnant, be violent, go to jail, do drugs, etc.
@Greg: #24 I would like to see a small area of the USA volunteer to test legalizing all illegal drugs. The only way I could go along with it is as follows”
(1) You can only get them at a pharmacy to make sure they are what you pay for and that they are safe. Competition will keep the price down.
(2) There would be a list of drugs that if a person uses any of them, they don’t drive, operate machinery, employers can refuse to hire them, employers can test for drugs at any time as long as it is on company time or the employee is paid for the extra time, etc.
Everybody should see a video a trucking company I drove for showed me. It explained how marijuana actually blocks the receptors in the brain cells. It also told about pilots being tested on a simulator. The pilots smoked some marijuana and flew on the simulator just fine.
It was discovered that it takes time for the marijuana to take effect. They put pilots on a simulator again, only this time they waited two hours after the pilots smoked marijuana. Some of the pilots landing the plane missed the center of the runway by 100 ft.
Those of you who use marijuana, test it yourself. Have someone record you doing something that takes concentration. Then smoke the marijuana, wait two hours, and try it again. Let us know how it went.
Alternative Energy Sources:
Ethanol: Ethanol is produced, principally from cereal grains, corn, wheat, barley and rice (mostly corn). The use of these human edible or animal ediable grains have skyrocketed in price. Thus every product that uses them has gone up in price, beef, bread, and every product that uses corn sweetener (since in the US corn is also the principal source of sugar & sweeteners) Ethanol is a “net BTU negative” fuel, meaning that it takes more energy to produce 1 gallon of ethanol than the 1 gallon of ethanol contains. The governmnet recognizes this and gives the producer a subsidy by reducing the tax on ethanol.
Phtotovoltaic Cells: These devices are a semiconductor and the manufacturing of semiconductors uses large quantities of hazardous chemicals and also produce hazardous waste that must be disposed of. End result is that waste disposal is very high. Photovoltaic works only in sunlight, so during the hours of darkness another source must be provided. Consideration of pump storage (putting water back into the lake from below the dam) or some form of compressed air storage is considered as a way to make power during the night time. This overall cost, the photovoltaic systems and storage systems result in a very high cost of power, to the an order of magnitude greater than other methods of energy production.
Wind Turbines: Are distributed across wide areas of land, they are a known hazard for animal migration (especially birds), recently they have been identified as a hazard for aircraft due to the quantity of ground clutter that is produced on flight control radar systems, they require wind to blow before they will operate and therefore require a back-up source similar to voltaic cells. It has been proven time over time in just the past 10 years that the investment in wind turbines is never recovered. Utilities that sell “wind power” all ready ask the consumer to voluntarily pay a higher rate for “wind power”
Hydro Power: A few years ago the State of New York went kind of bonkers over “cheap hydro power” from Canada. Turned out the cheap hydro power was coming from the Ontario “Hydro” Nuclear Power Plants on the Canada side of the Great Lakes. The term “HYDRO” turned out to be nuclear . . . cheap nuclear power. The Army Corp of Engineers designs and builds most of the real hydro power plants in the US, and it is the position of the Corp that most of the “developable” hydro power is already done, there just isn’t much left in the US.
Grid & Transmission Systems: These are hugely unpopular with the population, especially when routed the most direct route to the location where power is needed. All along the West Coast the Environmental Groups instantly fill law suits to protect the environment with result rise in the cost of transmission. When the government talks about grid modernization all they are really talking about is more fidelity in the use of the existing capacity . . . ie . . . the need for power tends to follow the sun . . . East to West . . . the peak need for power is dependent on the time of day. By higher fidelity use, power can be routed from a power plant in one location in the country to another. This is a very complex process and is currently done by the various “Power Authorities” from control complexes in 7 different regions of the country that coordinate directly with the dispatching centers owned by the utilities that then control the power generated at the utility facitlities. Yes, this system could be improved, but it would not fill the future need for more generation capacity.
Nuclear Power: Nuclear is a viable source of power and could be a major contributor to our electrical needs. It is still widely unpopular, mostly due to an uninformed fear of the technology. Peoples attention has been directed at “nuclear waste” . . . each plant producing approximately 1 cubic yard of waste each year, actually a very small quantity. But then people go nutty and think it has to be stored for “billions and billions” of years. When this waste can be reprocessed using technology that the US military has had for over 60 years. No civilian company is allowed to own this equipment since it was developed during WWII for nuclear weapons programs.
Coal: The US has the largest coal reserve of any country in the world. “Clean Coal” concepts have proven to be somewhat less value than the US has been lead to believe. Yes the power plants themselves are producing less polution, but the added cost has caused the price of coal generated power to be 5 or 6 times the cost of power from a nuclear plant.
Electric Power Generation perspective: In the past there was comparisons to using nuclear power costs and “equivalent” oil replacement value. Even though we can compare the equivalent energy in a barrell of oil to the equivalent amount of electric power from nuclear power plant, this is misleading. Why? Because oil is not used as a significant resource from which electric power is generated. So there would be no oil saved. Think about this.
Other Methods of Alternative Energy and Technologies:
The US Auto Industry has developed many other types of power plants or engines to power an automobile. Some of these include: Steam Power (Stanley Steamer), Gas Turbines (Chrysler in the 1960’s), Sterling Engines (but only as prototypes), hydrogen fueled prototypes and other more exotics have been built. None of these have proven to be cost effective, technologically feasible and reliable. The internal combustion engine is here to stay whether we like it or not. Someone even invented a “Mr. Fusion” but all that did was burn up court houses and take Calvin Clien back to the future, lol.
This paints a not very good picture. Yes, there is probably something in someones garage somewhere that will in the future revolutionize the energy industry, but it will be a long time in coming, or heck, it could flash into the present from out of the past who knows . . . only the shadow knows. All of us would welcome it with open arms. The creative mind never rests . . . and we can place our hopes in that aspect of capitalism . . . as long as we don’t destroy it . . . wealth is a major motivator for our way of life . . . wealth stimulates creativity.
Tallgrass #27: Great post with article possibilities to be developed. Go on with it, please.
@ Greg
The SunCathcher project is actually quite interesting. I had to find a article from someone I felt was unbiased first, so I did: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/solar-wind/4288743
The problem with most energy delivery systems is storage. Seems they have it figured out. I’m all for it. Bring that on, bring on nuke energy, and get your buddies on the left to allow the grids to be updated.
But, back on topic…we didn’t go to war with Iraq for their oil. If we had, shouldn’t we be seeing some of it by now. Weren’t they supposed to help pay for some of the war and rebuilding with oil profits? How much of that have we seen? Yeah, that would be um…nothing.
@ Aqua, #29:
Thanks for posting the link! That’s an excellent article about the SunCatcher and one that I hadn’t seen before.
The Imperial Valley Solar Project–an installation which will consist of 28,000 SunCatchers generating 709 megawatts–is now very close to final approval, which should come in the next month or two. So are 7 additional California installations using various solar technologies. The Blythe Solar Power Project, a 1,000 megawatt installation, will be the largest. Blythe will use parabolic trough technology.
1 megawatt per hour is enough to power around 300 average households at peak demand.
@ Tallgrass, #27:
SunCatchers aren’t photovoltaic. They convert heat to mechanical energy and mechanical energy into electricity, reaching conversion efficiency levels exceeding 31 percent. No toxic chemicals are involved. They don’t even require water to produce steam.
Greg/Aqua
Efficiency of 31% is, these days, very low . . . some combined cycle power plants have efficiencies as high as 60%. Combined Cycle is described in the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle
Consider what this number is actually telling you. The basic meaning is “how much of the fuel is actually converted to the final end product . . . example . . . in numbers that mean something to us . . . 10 pound of coal are burned to fire a boiler and produce steam that is sent to a steam turbine to turn the turbine and make electric power. Considering all the losses throughout the system . . . the energy from 3.1 pounds of coal actually is converted to electric power, this mens that 6.9 pounds of coal are LOST in the form of waste heat. However, all 10 pounds of coal are burned and fly ash remains . . . this is not to say that 10 pounds of coal makes 10 pounds of fly ash . . . what it does say is that a major percentage of the coal is lost to fly ash.
Well, now . . . if you have a home that is heated with electric power (total electric) then would it not be wiser to bring that entire 10 pounds of coal to your home and burn it in a coal heater since about 80 to 90% of the heat from the coal actually goes into your home?
Apply this same concept to your parabolic mirror or parabolic mirror trough, where a large percentage of the heat from the sun collected by the parabolic mirrors would be put into your home. Bring a single system to your home, now doesn’t that sound like a more efficient use of the sun’s energy?
So that makes you wonder . . . why has this not already been done? The single most driving factor in this is cost, with reliability being a close second. Yes, it could be done . . . wow, what a novel idea . . . I could have it, yep sure could. Why don’t I? Cost . . . 10 thousand dollars? (or more, since no one is really making these things) . . . well, then comes the realization I get plenty heat during the day and NONE at night . . . I still have to have another technology system to heat my home at night . . . ok, lets go with an electric one . . . now I have “two systems” a solar system for the day time and an electric one for night time . . . I just added another 6 to 10 thousand dollars to the cost of my home heating system. Do you really think that I would ever recover my investment in the systems? Do you really think that the maintenance costs of two systems, the solar one being “very high” tech and the electric one, would be afforable? My Plumber he would just love me, he’d be making a damn good living off me and I would be very cold (literally).
I read these posts, I see words like “They don’t even require water to produce steam” and it makes me want to help people “UNDERSTAND” what they are saying. See the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam
Reading the link, Steam is the gaseous phase of WATER. You can not make “steam” without water. This is not NIT PICKING . . . it is an instant indication to a knowledgeable person that there is a grave misunderstanding by someone that is talking about something they have a very cursory understanding about. Please, Please, for YOUR own sake use that old adage that my grandfather used to say, “GOTAWANA” . . . If you really want to know the details of how something works you have to have the GOTWANA!!! Get some of it and teach yourself ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT IT!! Look at the “good” and the “bad” . . . learn enough to place your thoughts into a “well understood”, knowledgeable, good judgement category.
Solar mirror or parabolic reflector systems, large ones have “Already” been built to commercial stage. The first one that I ever saw was in 1979, designed and built by Black & Veatch . . . my one time employer. The project was located in Arizona. A demonstration project was built and actually operated for several years. If my memory serves me correct, it consisted of “flat mirrors” that focused the sun on a “tower mounted” steam generator/generator. This project was not a commercial success (now doesn’t that sound much better, PC is required these days) than just to say it was a failure. Sad, but to a great extent, NOT SUCCESSFUL . . . to some means that . . . well, maybe they just did something wrong . . . and IT COULD BE SUCCESSFUL.
Fast forward to today:
The only thing that has substantially changed is the amount of evaluation and study this technology has been subjected to. Oh, yes we know a lot more about it now than we did back in the late 1970’s. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to design, build and operate the exact kind of facility that is the subject of the link at “Popular Mechanics”. This is taking into consideration that governments throughout the world fund such projects, including the USA, China, Israel, England, France, Germany. . . world wide have spent money on just exactly this technology.
We in the US have already built several:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Mojave_Desert
I truly do hope that these power plants are “successful, beyond our wildest imaginations”. I have never seen the “cost of power” . . . what it would cost me, as consumer, to buy the power from these plants.
Only through “operational” experience will the overall costs be determined and financial success determined. In another perspective, Success is ALREADY ACHIEVED . . . society demands it!
Solar Power Article (very detailed engineering study)
The link provides some detail information about the “Solar One” plant built at Barstow, Ca.
This is the plant that Black & Veatch was the Architect/Engineer for:
http://www.powerfromthesun.net/Chapter10/Chapter10new.htm
Here is a link to “Ten Facts About Solar Power: I will quote a paragraph from Fact #10 because is says something that is very important, the COST!!!
http://web.archive.org/web/20080804091231/http://www.solel.com/faq/
“Even without pricing cost externalities, the cost of solar thermal power is going down. Currently, the cost of solar thermal produced energy can be close to 12 cents (US) per k/Wh. However, many economists and investors predict that this price will continuously drop over the next ten years with increased installed capacity, to 6 cents per kW/h, as a result of technological improvements, economies of scale and volume production.”
I do trust that the cost of power from the solar plants will decrease, I honestly do. However here are a couple more FACTS:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html
The above link contains cost information for electric power from Hydro, Fossil Fuel (conventional cycle), Combined Cycle and Nuclear:
Note the numbers below are from 2008, I have not been able to find 2009 numbers, 2010 obviously will not be available until 2011 or later:
With Hydro cheapest at .9 cents/KwH, Nuclear at 2.1 cents/KwH, Fossil Steam at 3.5 and Combined-cycle at 6.9 cents/KwH.
Also be aware that these numbers represent “Utility” cost. These do not represent the cost to consumer . . . as that is determined, usually by a State Agency . . . Such as the “State Corporation Commission” . . . most states regulate the cost that the consumer pays. However, the cost to YOU the consumer is highly dependent on the cost of power production.
Summary:
At the current cost for Solar at 12 cents/KwH . . . the consumer could expect to pay 15 cents/Kwh.
This is a number based on my experience, that the corporation commission allows the utility to “earn” reasonable profit to pay to the “share holder” of the corporation and to allow the utility to retain sufficient funds to remain a viable company both for current company operational costs and to remain sufficiently “technology current”, this includes building new generating capcity for growth of the serviced area.
Very clearly, it is seen that solar power would cause YOUR electric bill to go up . . . maybe as much as 3 times the bill you currently pay.
My electric bill, since I have a total electric home, in the summer time is running me about $450.00 dollars per month. IF the bill went up by a factor of two, to $900.00 per month . . . I would have to sell my home, if it went up by a factor of 3 to $1350.00 per month . . . I would have no choice but to turn off my electric, I absolutely could not afford these costs . . . My life style would be destroyed. Note, in the cooler times of the year, my electric bill is substantially lower, since I do not have to run the air conditioning. I could probably keep my home if my electric costs only doubled, but I would never be able to use the air conditioning.
So there is my story of how solar is so wonderful . . . NOT!!!
@ Tallgrass
Got no idea what you’re talking about. Did you read the article?
I don’t know if any of this will work, but I’m an “all of the above” kind of person. Drill, solar, and most definitely nuclear. I hope the suncatcher system works, I hope it works so well that we have no coal or oil electric plants plants in the next five years. I hope we bankrupt the Saudis in 10 years. But until then, we have to use everything we have.
It would be very low, if we were talking about burning fossil fuels. It’s very high when we’re talking about converting an inexhaustable supply of free sunshine directly into electricity.
The Imperial Valley Solar Project should be interesting to watch. SunCatcher technology works on the small scale. It seems to have been designed for a rapid scaling up from the onset . If you want more power you just add more units, as quickly as they roll off the assembly line. The more you build the cheaper they get, and an increasing demand for the electrical power they produce is guaranteed.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to get large-scale, inexpensive solar power production right. It would be great if this turned out to be the time.
Greg;
Yes, I will watch the development of the solar based technologies. I have been watching such technologies for 40 years. Strange is it not, that when people get the “option” to pay more for wind power by checking the little box on their electric bill . . . nobody does it, lol. I believe that the technology will come to life, regardless of the final cost to consumer of electric power produced from them. Just as we have seen the wind farms come to life.
Clearly, we have current technologies that will produce electric power at 1/6 to 1/3 the projected costs from the solar plants . . . but there does appear to be this uncontrollable HOPE that some technology will come along that will raise the cost by 3 to 6 times what it currently costs. Don’t ask me why that HOPE exists, it is irrational if you ask me. Someone has to be a little off kilter to support a technology when clearly it is only going to raise the cost of the service provided. But that does appear to be the mentality of some.
Consider, if you have two absolutely identical products, 100% the same . . . which one are YOU going to buy . . . the more expensive one or the more economical one?
Are you investing your money in these technologies?
Anecdotally, I live in ”sunny Southern California.”
A few years ago we asked a solar installer to give us a bid for all the south-facing roofs of our condo complex, in hopes of lowering our bills/carbon footprint.
He was honest.
We don’t get enough sunny days in our part od sunny southern California to make totally covering all our south roof with panels worthwhile.
It would NEVER pay for itself!
NEVER.
So, we didn’t do it.
And I am far more aware of our less-than-sunny weather.
It is amazing how often the sun is behind clouds here.
Amazing.
OTOH, we have cut our water bill from the average for our 27 condos to what would be average for only 14 condos!
We did that with an award-winning drought-resistant, native garden and new washers, shower heads, toilets and faucet heads.
Our electric bill is also lower because of a switch to solar outdoor lights for walkways and porches, and motion-detector on/off switches for laundry and garage areas.
Nope, but the thought has been on my mind lately. Tessera Solar shares are cheap at this point.
It’s interesting that Tessera just cancelled early-stage plans to build a 250 MW SunCatcher implacement in Arizona. They couldn’t find an Arizona utility company willing purchase their output. This seems odd, as Arizona anticipates a 50% increase in power demand by 2025, and as of late 2009 had no plans to build new coal-fired power stations. Maybe that has changed recently.
Greg;
No the problem with building the plant was NOT selling the power . . . there is a FEDERAL law that requires the local utility to BUY power from a third party producer. However, the local utility is only required to pay their generation costs. This means that where ever the plant is located in the US of A . . . that the local utitlity is required to do two things . . . provide a tie-in to the grid and buy the power at the cost that the utitlity determines to be their “IN HOUSE” generation costs. This would include any power company in the US of A that was willing to buy the power at their in-house costs . . . this means if the plant is located in Arizona and a buyer for the power was found in Mass or New York, that the utility in Az would have to provide them with a tie-in to the grid and then the power would be “Wheeled” to the buyer in Where Ever.
The problem you see is that the expected cost of the power as I mentioned before is right now 12 cents/KwH and the average in house generating costs is about 3 or 4 cents a KwH . . . so the plant builder would be selling the power to a buyer at 8 cents/Kwh loss.
See my friend their is much more to the power business than just have a technology that is the “super” efficient for “It’s Kind”.
See what I mean about people having all these huge HOPES and it JUST don’t work that way in the real world?