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the dark side of cobalt

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Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: AVGresponding on July 17, 2023, 04:32:25 pm ---
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on July 17, 2023, 03:54:21 pm ---That 5 billion specifically sounds like a small sum of money, Finland can easily pay for it and much more, and we don't except anything in return.

--- End quote ---

That's because the maths is wrong. 5,000 x 5,000,000 is 25,000,000,000, not 5,000,000,000

--- End quote ---

Doesn't matter. Finland committed to pay another 20 billion in sanctions to EU by not submitting a simple document before the deadline like Sweden did, because the previous government was too busy cocaine partying, and because we apparently have raped all our forests here (hint: exactly as untrue as ridiculous it sounds, factually Finland has, by far, the most forest per capita and there are no significant changes how it is being used). I hope this money will get at least one 5000km HVDC transmission line built.

Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: tszaboo on July 17, 2023, 05:18:57 pm ---
--- Quote from: AVGresponding on July 17, 2023, 04:32:25 pm ---
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on July 17, 2023, 03:54:21 pm ---That 5 billion specifically sounds like a small sum of money, Finland can easily pay for it and much more, and we don't except anything in return.

--- End quote ---

That's because the maths is wrong. 5,000 x 5,000,000 is 25,000,000,000, not 5,000,000,000

--- End quote ---
Don't worry, because the price/kwh calculation is also wrong.

--- End quote ---

Let me try, with average price 4.5 million/mile and 40-year lifetime:
4500000/1.6 * 5000 / (12000000*0.75*40*365*24) = 0.00445 USD/kWh
doesn't sound too shabby, yes, or did I miscalculate it too?

This price matches my intuition. Power transfer is absolutely everywhere, even in many of the poorest of countries. It is simple and requires only very common materials and similar construction techniques roads and buildings are built with, everywhere. Transfering power for 500-1000km is nothing special currently. I fail to see the exponentially increasing complexity and cost people are assuming when discussing improving the current transmission systems.

Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: nctnico on July 17, 2023, 04:26:27 pm ---Run some numbers on it to determine price per kWh. Especially for keeping power plants ready to go once in a few years. I'm 100% sure the economics won't make sense because you'll be wasting massive amounts of money on systems that are severely under-utilised. The current way of generating power and distribution is not built because of the use of fossil fuels, it is built that way because it is most cost effective. Use that cost effectiveness as a template for a solution based on renewables. Anything else will just be more expensive due to under-utilisation.

--- End quote ---

The cost of standby fossil power generation is absolutely nothing new. Nuclear required a lot of it (for network stability in case of SCRAMs), it was maintained for this use, and nobody counted it as being a cost related to nuclear. It "just was" there.

Yes, it is very costly, but remember to divide that to the kWh used. What matters in the energy bill is the bottom line. And this electricity being expensive for a while works as an incentive to do load optimization, to the extent possible. On the other hand, even if you can't do anything about your consumption, two expensive weeks should not become a dominating factor in your annual bill even if it was 20x more expensive.

And if you don't like this, utilities will be selling you fixed-price contracts and handle the price volatility and risk within themselves, just like it has worked for decades already.

vad:

--- Quote from: tom66 on July 16, 2023, 10:36:22 pm ---
--- Quote from: TimFox on July 16, 2023, 10:25:15 pm ---A government report from 2018 estimated a range of about 1 to 8 million USD per mile for HVDC transmission lines.
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/electricity/hvdctransmission/pdf/transmission.pdf

--- End quote ---

So taking the high side figure of that... $8mn per mile or $5mn per km.  $5 billion to build a 5000km line.

If it transmitted the same power as the Chinese line - 12GW - and had 75% availability - it would move 78.9 TWh per year. 

So over a 100 year lifespan about 15c/kWh.  A bit more than I expected, but if the line costs closer to the low end at larger scales, it makes a lot more sense.

--- End quote ---
Three issues:

1) The correct investment amount is $25 billion, not $5 billion.
2) Interest on the 100-year loan is missing.
3) Math errors.

Assuming a 100-year fixed-rate loan at 7.5% with $0 down:

- Estimated monthly payments for principal + interest: $156 million/month.

- Energy delivered every month: 12 GW * 0.75 * 1,000,000 kW/GW * 30 days/month * 24 h/day = 6,480,000,000 kWh/month = 6,480 million kWh/month.

- Therefore, the average cost of delivering 1 kWh: $156 million/month / 6,480 million kWh/month = 0.024 $/kWh = 2.4 cents per kWh.

Given Dave’s advice that no project should be started unless revenue is at least 2.5 times the cost, and assuming grid owners are not too greedy, it would mean that about 6 US cents per kWh would be added to the wholesale delivery price. This would result in a delivery charge price hike on the order of magnitude of US 10 cents per kWh for consumers.

TimFox:
An interesting recent monograph about project planning, from home improvement up to large-scale projects:  Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner How Big Things Get Done, Currency 2023.
Besides important recommendations about planning, especially getting the errors made and corrected on paper rather than during construction, is a list of project types ranked from historically worst results to best results.
"Bad" means over budget; with statistics for mean overrun, % of projects in tail of distribution, and mean overrun of projects in tail.
Going from worst to best in his list, with major omissions:
Nuclear waste storage, Olympic Games, Nuclear Power, Hydroelectric dams, IT, ... , Bus transit, Rail, Airports, ... , Fossil thermal power, Roads, Pipelines, Wind power, Energy transmission, Solar power.
See his discussion of the list:  "solar power" is incredibly good, with a mean cost overrun of only 1%.
In his discussion, he points out that the worst stuff is always a one-off unique design (nuclear reactors are not in mass production, although future projects could change that);  Olympic Games are the poster child for this.
The best stuff is inherently modular, such as solar panels made in factories and installed on site.
Even fossil thermal power is just bolting together catalog items from the boiler factories.
The transport projects are somewhere in the middle of the list, with distribution tails falling between his "fat tails" (Olympic Games) and "thin tails" (power plants and transmission).

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