Thursday, March 6, 2008

Clean? Effecient? Safe?

Cheap, nope, not a chance. There is a reason things sell for what they sell for. Either the market demand is so high and the supply is low, that drives up selling prices. Or the cost of a good or service is so high, the price must be set high to compensate. When things cost a lot, look under the hood and see why. In the case of regulated electricity, it's controlled by the government and is cost based, not demand driven. So when the electricity, the product, costs $1 a kWH then the profit has been set by the government regulatory agencies and the cost of supplying those kWHs is amortized across the time of delivery and the amount used.

So electricity rates, theoretically at least because it has to be a monopoly for the utilities to function, are controlled. A company builds a generating unit, the costs are analyzed by government auditors to make sure the rate charged is fair -- ie covers costs and allows for a profit.

Now comes this Tom-Foolery ...
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday he still wants to submerge giant turbines below the waters of the Golden Gate Bridge as a way to generate energy for the city, despite a study that recently concluded the idea would cost tens of millions of dollars and is not financially feasible.

A study paid for by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission found that the turbines would cost as much as $15 million each and $750,000 a year to maintain. Though the technology would make it possible create power by harnessing tides in the bay, the small amount of power the turbines would generate does not make paying the hefty price tag worthwhile, the report concluded.

Newsom, however, said the findings won't deter him from pushing ahead with the idea. On Tuesday, he said, "I am going to find a way to make it happen.

"I'm committed to it and am going to fight for it," Newsom said. "I don't care about the arguments against it. I care about the arguments for it."
The current rate comparison is the underwater winds mills could possibly generate a small amount of power for about $1 a kWH. Conventional high cost California power sells for $0.14-$0.17 a kWH. Yes, the liberal states of CA and NY top the high electricity cost list. Immediately the problem jumps right out at people with a brain, umm I think that is 5 times the already high cost. The costs for electricity across the US is from 0.08 kWH to as high as $0.20. Nuclear power generation yields a current cost in the US of under $0.03 a kWH.



Real windmills are almost as bad, but government subsidies takes care of the problem.

Liberals don't have brains, they run on 100% pure idiots emotion. It never occurs to people like this that the cost is in time, energy and materials to produce and maintain -- These costs are as much real as the costs associated with turning on a light bulb, someone pays.

What something costs, compared to like items doing the same functions can be boiled down to what the "energy costs" to make those products. This is a simple truth that the global warming nut-cases can't seem to figure out. For instance -- If Ethanol was such a low cost alternative to $100 a barrel oil, don't you think someone would have figured that out already, and we would be swimming in Ethanol? Or if tide powered generators could make power at a rate lower than conventional generation, don't you think someone would be doing that as well?

There is a power generation technology, it has been figured out, it is clean, generates no greenhouse gases, it is cheaper than conventional fossil fuel generation, and what might that be --- why it's nuclear power generation. Now why aren't we swimming in that? You need to ask the nut-cases, who currently are swimming out under the Golden Gate Bridge looking for what?

Seek help nutcases, your insanity is showing. We are not going back to the stone age to satisfy your yearning for the utopian socialist paradise of Gaia, get over it.

It's called SF-Freakshow for a reason.

1 comment:

ANIDEALWORLD said...

I say let them harvest the tides if they still want to- AFTER they've built a nuclear power plant.

Check out this bumper sticker!