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Posted
On ‎2018‎-‎05‎-‎29 at 8:41 AM, Mark F said:

 

Any investments by the Federal Liberal government  in renewables?

so far nothing that I've seen.

Maybe I missed it.

 

I saw somewhere that McKenna was launching some $500 million fund for renewable energy.  Maybe Google it, if you are interested.

Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, kelownabomberfan said:

I am actually a bigger fan of solar than I am of wind power.  I just don't see solar being able to meet demand for power.  Alternating power sources like wind, solar and tidal are just never going to be able to compete in terms of price with nuclear, hydro and gas cogen.  And you can do an Ontario and blow your brains out at the taxpayers' expense, but that's not a long-term strategy for success.

 

Bloomberg

Quote

Rapid cost declines made renewable energy the United States’ cheapest available source of new electricity, without subsidies, in 2017. In many parts of the U.S., building new wind is cheaper than running existing coal, while nuclear and natural gas aren’t far behind. As renewable energy costs continue their relentless decline, they keep pushing fossil fuels further from profitability – and neither trend is slowing down.

There are all kinds of examples of this, and lots of reporting on it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/01/23/cheap-renewables-keep-pushing-fossil-fuels-further-away-from-profitability-despite-trumps-efforts/#66ef076e6ce9

Storage is being be solved, in the meantime, keep using natgas till not needed.

 

Edited by Mark F
Posted

In California they have introduced legislation that all new homes must have solar panels on the roof.  I don't agree with that strategy (legislation) but I do like that they are pushing solar so hard.  It really is the future.

Wind is an absolutely terrible source of power.  That should be the last option considered, IMO.

Posted (edited)

New renewable solar is cheaper right now, in Chile, than any other energy. 2.148 cents per kilowatt hour.

no subsidy. 

Edited by Mark F
Posted
16 hours ago, Mark F said:

I just read, as an example, currently the Alberta dilbit is piped to Oklahoma. Oklahoma is landlocked. So being landlocked has nothing to do with refining crude.

time sensitive..... same thing applies. If time mattered, then it makes more sense to do it in Alberta.

Also just read..... we send the raw material to the states, they refine it, then send it back to us, and charge us for the final products. how does that make economic sense?

You're right that renewable is the future, and sadly I haven't heard a thing about investing in it, from Trudeau, or Notley, or anyone in Canada.

or encouraging investment in it, in this country. It's  just about oil.

 shortsighted.

and I admit, I know little about dilbit processing, oil markets, and the rest of it.

But It bugs me that it hasn't even been considered in public discussions.

Yes there is some shipped to inland refineries, hell there are refineries in Edmonton too, but they are mainly for local supply, and there is enough capacity for the local uses in Canada already. Any further refineries would be purely excess and for export which is where you run into the problems. 

I know people think it's easy to just refine everything and sell the product, it's more profit, but if it were the case it would have been done ages ago. Refineries require massive investments and years to complete and they have small profit margins anyway because the world isn't short on refining capacity as it is. 

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, 17to85 said:

but if it were the case it would have been done ages ago. 

not necessarily. He who controls the refinery, controls the price of the refined product. 

one of the stock answers as to why retail gas price is going up, when price per barrel is going down is "refinery shutdown"

Quote

 

 

Gas prices spiked in the Lower Mainland recently, due in no small part to a planned shutdown of the Parkland Fuel Corp. (TSX:PKI) refinery (formerly owned by Chevron) in Burnaby.

“One of the reasons you’re paying $1.48 per litre has everything to do with the fact that Parkland’s closed down right now,” said Dan McTeague, a former Liberal MP and now senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.


 

anyway, I just read that all you have to do is install upgraders in Alberta to process dilbit..... then (so I read) the product can be refined at any refinery.

why not at least do that?

A refinery would have probably cost less than what this pipeline is going to cost. 

The one they built in Alberta was ten billion. Pipeline is going to cost more than that.

and, I don't trust big energy companies. 

Quote

 

 In the midst of the California energy troubles in early 2001, when power plants were under a federal order to deliver a full output of electricity, the Enron Corporation arranged to take a plant off-line on the same day that California was hit by rolling blackouts, according to audiotapes of company traders released here on Thursday.

The tapes and memorandums were made public by a small public utility north of Seattle that is fighting Enron over a power contract. They also showed that Enron, as early as 1998, was creating artificial energy shortages and running up prices in Canada in advance of California's larger experiment with deregulation.

 

 

Edited by Mark F
Posted
58 minutes ago, Mark F said:

and, I don't trust big energy companies. 

This is probably the most relevant part of your comment, and it is probably why you think it's a good idea to put refineries everywhere. Yes they are looking to make money, and if building refineries was where money was they'd build them. Yeah prices go up when they shut down refineries for maintenance, but when they're running they produce plenty, and if you have more then you wind up with an excess of product and how does that help the companies selling the product? You just wind up with spoiled fuel.

Posted
10 hours ago, Jacquie said:

Speaking of Churchill:

 

So Omnitrax Canada gets out of paying for the repair. That or they sold it for 50m lol

3 hours ago, Atomic said:

Wind is an absolutely terrible source of power.  That should be the last option considered, IMO.

Seeme to work in Notre Dame Des Lourdes Notre Dame de Lourdes and Altona on a big scale.

Posted
1 minute ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

So Omnitrax Canada gets out of paying for the repair. That or they sold it for 50m lol

Seeme to work in Notre Dame Des Lourdes Notre Dame de Lourdes and Altona on a big scale.

You are referring to the St Joseph wind farm by Altona.  What is your criteria for "seems to work"?  The amount of power generated by the wind farm is a drop in the bucket when compared against the power generated in Manitoba as a whole (think 0.1% or so), and it is incredibly volatile.  It takes up 125 square kilometers and gives us almost nothing.

Posted
On ‎2018‎-‎05‎-‎31 at 10:44 AM, Atomic said:

You are referring to the St Joseph wind farm by Altona.  What is your criteria for "seems to work"?  The amount of power generated by the wind farm is a drop in the bucket when compared against the power generated in Manitoba as a whole (think 0.1% or so), and it is incredibly volatile.  It takes up 125 square kilometers and gives us almost nothing.

How many local & migratory birds die from wind turbines?

Posted
On 2018-05-31 at 6:28 AM, Mark F said:

New renewable solar is cheaper right now, in Chile, than any other energy. 2.148 cents per kilowatt hour.

no subsidy. 

Do you have a link to that?  I read about how wind power is now very cheap in Alberta, but in reality they are just hiding the subsidies in different ways.  There is no way alternating power sources can be cheaper than a constant source of power like Hydro.  It just doesn't work that way.  And the problem with wind, as Ontario has found out, is that it mostly blows at night, when it's not really needed, leading to having to pay for the excess loading of the system.  Wind has been a disastrous investment for the province of Ontario, as it's proven to be everywhere it's been tried.  I was in Albany Western Australia a few years ago and everyone was complaining about the cost of the wind farm they had there.  It generated no where near the power they were promised, and at all the wrong times when it did.  Not to mention the bird kills, which I know wind power advocates try to play down by posting stats of birds killed by buildings and cats, but these are rare birds, migratory raptors and eagles. 

Posted

the thing that makes hydro pricey can be the size of the projects. You can build a small solar farm that has less capacity but come out cheaper per KW/hr. It's all about the up front cost. If the up front costs didn't matter we'd see a lot more nuclear power I think. 

Posted
On 2018-05-31 at 11:44 AM, Atomic said:

You are referring to the St Joseph wind farm by Altona.  What is your criteria for "seems to work"?  The amount of power generated by the wind farm is a drop in the bucket when compared against the power generated in Manitoba as a whole (think 0.1% or so), and it is incredibly volatile.  It takes up 125 square kilometers and gives us almost nothing.

Unlike solar they work day or night, 365 as long as there is a decent breeze. Why you no like?

Posted
3 hours ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Unlike solar they work day or night, 365 as long as there is a decent breeze. Why you no like?

They produce very little power.  I have a 24/7 view of power generation in Manitoba and the amount of power produced by wind is a joke.

Posted
Just now, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Sun News? WTF!

LOL - ok fine, shoot the messenger.  I get the feeling that no matter what I link I show you it will be poo-pooed.  I wish the mainstream media wasn't so married to the narrative about wind farms being a good thing, without ever talking about the down-side, which is extreme, and well documented.  Wind farms are really awful.  

http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/the-untold-ontario-green-energy-scandal-is-that-its-devastating-our-rural-areas

Posted
8 minutes ago, Atomic said:

They produce very little power.  I have a 24/7 view of power generation in Manitoba and the amount of power produced by wind is a joke.

where is the accountability?  These farms keep getting set up and horribly under-producing, and yet no one ever reports this, or if they do, it's dismissed as "Sun News? WTF?!"

Posted
14 minutes ago, rebusrankin said:

Ontario may elect an NDP government come Thursday or an NDP/Liberal coaltion. 50 cent dollar here we come.

yeah.  It's unfortunate that the PC's let their party get usurped by Doug Ford.  That was a major political boner.

Posted
9 minutes ago, rebusrankin said:

Ontario may elect an NDP government come Thursday or an NDP/Liberal coaltion. 50 cent dollar here we come.

The Lib leader admits they're not going to win but telling people to vote anyway for them anyway might be bad for the NDP unless their leader comes out and says something along the lines of it's either us or FordNation but atm she won't go there.

I'm interested to see if it's a minority. Always fun especially after the last election in B.C where 2nd/3rd were allowed to team up to take control.

 

Posted
2 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

. Always fun especially after the last election in B.C where 2nd/3rd were allowed to team up to take control.

 

Yes we are having a blast here in BC watching Horgan/Weaver steer the BC 747 straight into a mountain.

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