Deepwater Wind Will Increase Rhode Island Gov't Electricity Bills by $1.5 Million Each Year.

[NNadir]

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Deepwater Wind's initial project will raise state and local governments' electric bills by a combined $1.5 million in its first year, according to documents reviewed by the Target 12 Investigators.

Municipal electric bills will increase by a total of $1 million while state government's bill will rise by $476,630, according to an estimate commissioned by National Grid from Energy Security Analysis Inc. The cost would rise by 3.5 percent every year for the next two decades.

The estimate was included in a document National Grid asked the R.I. Public Utilities Commission to seal from the public view as the panel weighed whether to approve a controversial 20-year contract between Deepwater and Grid. The PUC denied that request, opening the town-by-town breakdown up for public inspection.

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/target_12/wind-power-will-cost-ri-taxpayers">Wind power will cost RI taxpayers $1.5M

Rhode Island, at an average retail price of 16.01 cents per kwh, already has the 5th highest electricity prices in the nation.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/profiles_sum.html">Electricity Prices By State.

[MadMaddie]

1. Okay

So not being a financial person I ask this as with any intial endeavor it usually costs upfront to to start the project and get it to sustainment. Gradually though the cost comes down. Any number crunchers here.

I am not sure why everyone in America is freaking out about the cost of infrastructure it costs money to build and get it to sustainment. If you are repairing it, it will cost money. If you don't repair it, "Bridges fall down"!

The story is leaving out a lot of facts and figures.

:shrug:

[Buzz Clik]

2. There are roughly half a million households in Rhode Island. That's $3 each per year.

Is this increase intended to be shocking?

[DCKit]

3. I like your perspective. This is the kind of thing the (R)s would kill... to save money. nt

[Buzz Clik]

4. I looked at the prices of electricity per state from the OP.

It's interesting that Washington is still ranked near the bottom. It was in a similar position when I lived there 30 years ago. (Damn, I'm old.) Anyway, the electricity is cheap, but the cost of water was huge. It all balanced out.

[AtheistCrusader]

12. My monthly water bill is about 20$

Household of 3. We get about 76% of our electricity from Hydroelectric, and the rest from Nuclear. Very cheap.
(I do use NG for the furnace though.)

[Gregorian]

6. I'd gladly pay $300 per year to help keep the planet habitable for future generations

And I'm sure the price would drop over time as we improve the different renewable technologies.

[NNadir]

7. Well, it's just the Government. Believe it or not, people also pay power bills and some...

...of them - believe it or not - have trouble paying for them.

A bourgeois brat living on $100,000 per years almost certainly couldn't care less, neither about the money or the environmental consequences of the wind scam, but a mother trying to feed two kids on a Burger King salary, might give a rat's ass about the matter.

I guess it all involves perspective.

I actually give a shit about the people working minimum wage jobs - they're called "poor people" if you've never heard of them - and yes, I think it represents just another scheme to enrich the rich further at the expense of the poor.

Have a nice evening.

[OnlinePoker]

11. On the other hand...

...this year, my power went up 4.5%, my telephone/internet/cable package went up 5%, my natural gas went up 1.5%, my bus pass went up 8%, my property/school/sewer tax went up 6.5%. Know what didn't go up? My pay! Everyone says...oh, it's just another $3, but it's $3 I would like to have a chance to decide on what I spend it on. My wife and I have cut back to one meal out of the house every 2 months because we can't afford more. If my entire life is spent earning money just to give to other people and not enjoying my own existence, what's the point?

[txlibdem]

14. If your life is just earning money so you can give it to someone else -- then you need Communism

Down with the Capitalista Lies. How many millions upon millions of Americans are in your shoes, just working so they can pay the car payment, so they can work, so they can pay the car payment... It's a Capitalist hamster wheel -- and you'll never get off it unless you give up on Capitalism.

Once you realize that Capitalism is a scam and our entire lives have been turned into virtual slavery to service the lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous then you will be able to get off the hamster wheel, tell the rich to go F**k themselves and start working towards global Communism.

[bonzotex]

5. 1.5 mill per year in minuscule, in Austin TX ....

I voluntarily pay a $.033 pkwh Green Energy fee in addition to the regular charge to support wind energy and my costs are still lower then the State average. The difference? Austin Energy is a public utility that turns over excess earnings to the city's general fund. It turns a profit for the city and costs less than Private sector providers.

Lessons:
Investments in green energy pay back both in environmental costs and actual bills.
The private sector doesn't do everything better or cheaper. In fact, private sector utilities cost more to the consumer and are less accountable to the public they milk for profit. If I wanted to go cheaper still I could drop the Green energy fee and my bill would be 30% less than average and about 50-60% less than the kwh cost of nearby private providers.

[jpak]

8. And how much would it go up if they built a new $8-11 billion nucukar power plant?

lots more than $1.5 million

yup

:rofl:

[AtheistCrusader]

13. But you'd get more than 30mw of power for more than half the day.

On the order of 1200mw, always on.

[Dead_Parrot]

9. For how much energy? nt

[OnlinePoker]

10. From the Deepwater website

The Block Island project will have a nameplate capacity of 28.8 MW and produce 107222 MWH per year. I did a quick calculation, and this comes to a capacity factor of 42.5%. The cost of electricity produced (from the Q&A portion of the link in the OP) is 24.4 cents per KWH, about 2 1/2 times the National grid average. This will increase by 3.5% annually for the full 20 years of the contract which means in the last year, it would be around $0.50 per KWH.

http://dwwind.com/block-island/block-island-project-overview
http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/qa-how-the-deepwater-wind-deal-works

[kristopher]

15. OP gives incomplete image of Deepwater project; I give examples of nuclear

As is clear in the information at the Deepwater site, the Deepwater rates being discussed in the OP are for a small scale preliminary demonstration project and are not representative of what might be expected from large scale projects. From the OP article:

The government cost estimates reflect the smaller of Deepwater's two projects, a demonstration wind farm off Block Island that will have up to eight turbines and is expected to be up and running by 2013.
The company – which was handpicked by Gov. Don Carcieri in 2008 to develop wind power off Rhode Island's coast – is also proposing a much larger, utility-scale development of up to 200 turbines that won't be in place until at least 2015.

What is the alternative to renewables that the OP poster hopes you will support if you are spooked about renewables?
He wants you to endorse nuclear; so, what is the status on that?

Well, there is Finland’s Olkiluoto plant. Its originally scheduled completion date in April 2009 has slipped 4 years to end of 2013. Originally projected to cost 3 billion euros but as of May 2009 the project cost has risen to 6 billion euros.
This project is heavily subsidized with an interest rate of only 2.6 percent; additionally, French citizens are paying for the cost over-runs on this singular (for the nuclear industry) turnkey fixed-price being built by their quasigovernmental French nuclear sales entity AREVA.

Levy County, Florida
Owner: Progress Energy
Originally completion date 2016
Already slipped to March 2018 with indications that hoped for date could slide further - to 2021
Original cost of $17 billion has risen to over $22 billion
Ratepayers already being billed for the project by authorization of Florida’s Construction Work in Progress or CWIP law that allows builders of nuclear plants to collect regardless of the actual progress on the plants. No other technology is given this option.

Georgia Vogtle
Owner: Georgia Power has proposed a two reactor expansion at the current facility.
$8.3 billion loan granted.
Georgia Power ratepayers are already paying $3.73/mo. for the new build even though the plant will not produce anything until about 2017. The reactor design hasn’t been approved by the NRC yet! Increases in the rate being charged are expected later this year.

Here are a couple more examples quoted directly from the paper where the above information was gleaned:

South Carolina and its SCE&G ratepayers are also being forced to pay in advance for a proposed two reactor project that is projected to cost almost $10 billion. proposed financing its planned $5.4 billion investment in the new power plant by raising rates, starting in 2009 with an increase of 0.49 percent in March and another 2.8 percent in October, followed by increases in each of the next 10 years.(25) Despite having a majority of the project costs financed in advance by SCE&G ratepayers, the state owned power company, Santee Cooper, is looking to reduce its share in the project from 45 percent to 20 percent, citing a reduced need for the electricity that would be generated.(26)

In Texas, a similar partnership struggled when CPS Energy in San Antonio reduced its stake in the South Texas Project from 50 percent to 7.625 percent, citing rising costs. The facility was originally projected to cost $ 5.4 billion, then it was $10 billion excluding financing costs, then $14 billion, causing CPS Energy to re-evaluate its position.(27) The total cost of the project, including financing costs is now projected to be over $18 billion.(28) The two reactor project is reported to be on schedule for operation in 2016 and 2017.(29) Executives for the two partners of the project with CPS have been reported as saying that cannot build the reactors without receiving a federal loan guarantee, which they have not yet received.(30)

http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/StatusNuclearPowerProjects2011.pdf

-Status of Proposed Nuclear Power Projects – January 201
IEER.ORG

[XemaSab]

16. I would think that naming any power project "Deepwater" would be right out

Three Mile Island Solar Farm, Johnstown Cogeneration Plant, Exxon Valdez Hydroelectric Project, Chernobyl Geothermal Area, Ixtoc Nuclear Plant, St. Francis Wind Farm... they don't work so good.

[kristopher]

17. Actually it refers to the place they can operate

Areas where the seabed is deeper than 60 ft are "deepwater" as far as wind is concerned.

Failures of the type you point to are the exclusive domain of nuclear and fossil fuels, solar and wind are CLEAN and their full lifecycle environmental impacts are virtually non-existent when compared to fossil fuels and nuclear.

[XemaSab]

18. You're right; I only named nuclear and fossil fuel projects

Other types of energy projects are all perfectly safe.

[kristopher]

19. .

"solar and wind are CLEAN and their full lifecycle environmental impacts are virtually non-existent when compared to fossil fuels and nuclear"

[XemaSab]

20. Yes, that's exactly what I said.

n/t